“I was training for it,” he said quietly.
It all made sense. Bregonians lived on honor and courage; no matter who he’d become and what his history was, she’d seen glimmers of both in him. Perhaps…perhaps he could still be brave and honorable. Perhaps he could still change.
She stared at him, outlined in sharp-cut edges against the starless night, half-shrouded in shadows. He was a man in a mask, an enigma that she had been trying to decipher since the first day she had met him. There was still so much she didn’t know about him—so much she would never know. “How did a Royal Navy recruit become a Cyrilian crime lord?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” A weight seemed to settle into the lines of his shoulders, and his eyes clouded as he turned to her. “So, you know the plan. The carriage will be waiting outside the passageway for you at the tenth hour. One moment past ten, and it’ll be gone.”
“I know,” Ana said.
Ramson dug something from the pockets of his black suit and slipped it into her hands.
A silver pocket watch. Ana almost smiled at how practical his gift was.
But his next sentence thudded like the strike of a gavel. “There isn’t much time left, Ana. I suppose this is good-bye.”
Ana stared at him, a sudden feeling of apprehension tightening in her stomach. She’d thought this part of the plan had been clear to her: get Tetsyev, return to her brother, sort everything out. And then, once all that was over, she would fulfill her end of the bargain.
She hadn’t expected good-bye this fast.
Her carefully constructed world of possibilities and future scenarios dissolved into haze. “But—our Trade,” she found herself saying, against all odds. “You haven’t asked me for my end of it.”
He huffed, his breath forming a whorl of mist in the air. “I don’t need anything from you anymore. It all ends tonight.”
Something about that phrase didn’t sit right, and she struggled for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. But he was already turning, reaching to put his mask back on.
Her hands shot out. Clasped his wrists.
Ramson’s gaze snapped to her; his lips parted. “What—”
“Come with me,” Ana said before he could speak. “You could be good.” The words tumbled from her mouth, jumbled and rushed, and she could think of nothing else to say after.
Something shifted in Ramson’s expression, and it was like the fog had cleared and she was looking straight at him for the first time. There was an earnestness to his bright hazel eyes that she had never seen before when he spoke again. “When I was small, my father told me that there was no pure good or pure evil in the world. He said that humans only exist in different shades of gray.” He shifted, and his fingers slid around her wrists, his touch raising gooseflesh on her arms even through her gloves. “I believed that, until I met you, Ana. So…thank you.”
Shades of gray. Why did that ring another bell within her? Humans only existed in different shades of gray—
What defines you is how you choose to wield it. A gentle wind kissed her cheeks and brought her brother’s voice back to her.
“You’re right,” she said quietly, holding Ramson’s gaze. “The world doesn’t exist in black and white. But I would like to believe that it is our choices that define us.” His hands were warm and steady on hers. “Make the right choice, Ramson.”
Something wet fell on her cheek, and Ramson’s expression shifted to wonder. Ana felt another touch of coldness and wetness, and another, and another. And as the first snowflakes gently landed on Ramson’s hair, she realized that it was snowing.
They angled their faces to the sky, at the silver flecks that twirled silently in the air and came to rest on their shoulders, on their clothes, on their faces and lips and necks. If there was a single moment she wanted to imprint in a sketch, this was it; this was a scene she wanted to remember.
Ramson let go of her hands. Through the softly falling flakes that caught in his hair and on his lashes and cheeks, he looked younger and more vulnerable than she had ever seen, hunching into his suit to ward out the cold. Something flickered in his expression, and then his eyes shuttered. “Good-bye, Ana.”
Wait, she wanted to say. Tell me your real name. Tell me who you are. Something, anything, to get him to stay.
But she could only breathe, “Good-bye, Ramson,” as she watched his retreating back disappear into a night of silently falling snow.
She turned to the balustrade, composing herself for a moment, trying to tease out the tangled, gnarled strands of her emotions. The snow was coming thickly now, whirling in a blur.
Below, on the veranda leading out to the gardens, a figure stepped into the dark, clad in robes of white. And as Ana’s gaze fell to him, her heart pounded and her blood roared in her ears.
The man tilted his face to the sky, and it was like looking at a ghost.
Tetsyev was here.
Ramson had worn many masks in his life, donning them and shedding them like second skins. He’d always played whatever role he needed to get the job done. Tonight, as he looked at his reflection in the mirror—clean-shaven in his black tuxedo and slicked hair—he felt as though he were simply wearing another mask and preparing for another show.
Except…
Standing there under the softly falling snow with Ana, he’d felt unmasked and raw. Something about this girl lured out the whisper of the boy he’d once been. Something about this girl made him want to be that boy. And his chest was heavy with the possibility of what that might have been were he a better man who made better choices.
Come with me. You could be good.
Ana had been that choice. And in some ways, Ramson had seen it through. He’d made a detour prior to arriving at Kerlan’s tonight. He’d gone to a courier’s cottage in the city and sent out a snowhawk, its feathers pure as freshly fallen snow.
Tonight, at the Kerlan Estate, by the First Snow.
He’d slipped a lock of black hair into the snowhawk’s beak. The animals had an impossibly keen sense of smell, capable of tracking the scent of their prey for miles in the cold, barren mountains of Cyrilia. Once trained, they made for the best type of courier birds.
The note was out, and his plans were in motion. And Ana—she would get as far away from this estate, this city, and his world of crime and darkness as possible. She was born for good. She was meant to fight for the light. And she would carry that faint possibility—the ghost of the man he might have been—on with her.
For Ramson, it was too late for that. The man he’d become believed that there was no good or bad; there were only various shades of gray.
Tonight, he would remember that—when he murdered Alaric Kerlan.
Ramson closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the world was sharper with clear-cut calculation, and he felt a wicked calmness settle into his chest. He was Ramson Quicktongue, future Head of the Order of the Lily. The ballroom lay beneath him, a theater of people in gaudy ball gowns and glittering jewels.
Ramson slipped his mask back on. The world was his stage; tonight was just another show.
The biggest show of his life.
The large clock suspended in the middle of the banquet hall showed seventeen minutes past nine. He had precisely forty-three minutes to find Kerlan, and to persuade him to reinstate Ramson as Deputy. He needed the words penned into the Order’s official mandate.
And then, as soon as Kerlan lifted his pen from the page, Ramson would kill him.
The hilt of his small dagger pressed into his sleeve, a perfect blade no longer than his forearm. A misericord, Bregonians called it, used to deliver the final blow of mercy to an opponent. At a single flick of his finger, the contraption that bound it to his arm would eject the blade into his palm.
For the first time tonight, he took in the hallways with a
sweeping glance. Memories rose, unbidden, in his mind. He could still see, on the plush red carpets, the writhing bodies of people he’d disposed of simply because they were in his way—fishermen and weapons traders and business owners who tried to cheat them. He could still hear their muffled screams through the closed doors that led to the basements below. Bit by bit, he’d helped Kerlan clear Cyrilia of anyone who stood in their way, extending the Order’s underground reach like an invisible hand unfurling beneath the broken empire.
No more, Ramson thought as he strode down the halls, away from the music and dancing and light. The carpets were less worn, the walls decorated with gilded frames—paintings of far-off places, mysterious islands, and oceans that glimmered turquoise.
Ramson recognized these places. It had always haunted him that he shared a home kingdom with Alaric Kerlan, that he’d almost traced Kerlan’s exact steps many years past, fleeing from their wrongdoings to establish themselves in a foreign empire. It was as though, in a desperate attempt to free himself from becoming the demon that was his father, Ramson had run onto a path that had made him into a different kind of monster.
The chandeliers above burned brightly, almost jarringly. Kerlan always made his entrances at his parties after nine o’clock. Ramson was getting closer to Kerlan’s living quarters, and he was surprised there wasn’t a guard—
“Stop.”
A figure peeled from the shadows of the next corridor, regarding Ramson with cold eyes. Ramson recognized him. He had a name: Felyks.
“Guests are welcome in Lord Kerlan’s banquet hall,” Felyks said. “His personal quarters are private.”
Ramson smiled a hungry smile. “I’m no ordinary guest, Felyks,” he said, and pulled off his mask.
Felyks did a double take; his eyes went round. His hand twitched for his sword, even as he backed into the wall. “Qui-Qui-Quicktongue.”
Ramson gave a mock bow. “In corporeal form. You seem happy to see me.” His cheery tone dropped. “I want to see Alaric.”
Felyks struggled. “I—I can’t let you do that,” he said at last, and unsheathed his sword. “The Kerlan Estate has rules.”
“Rules that I set in place,” Ramson said, stepping closer to the guard. He relished the way Felyks cringed slightly. “Now let me past, or I’ll be using your body as a doormat.”
“That’s hardly necessary,” came a light, familiar voice with the crystal-clear lilt of Cyrilian nobility. A man had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, by the turn to the next corridor. His indigo silk coat flapped lightly over his slight figure, and his gold-tipped shoes tapped rhythmically with each step as he approached.
“Hello again, Ramson,” said Alaric Kerlan, his eyes twinkling. “I’ve come to extend you a very personal welcome.”
Felyks straightened at the sight of his boss, who strolled past him as though he were a part of the wall. Ramson stood where he was, though something stretched taut within him. He felt rooted to the place as a strange helplessness descended upon him, trapping him under the presence of Alaric Kerlan once again.
“Ramson, my son.” Kerlan’s teeth glinted very white when he smiled. “It’s been so long.”
“I’ve counted every day.” Ramson’s cheeks felt frozen, his mouth stuck in a smile.
“I’m so honored.” Kerlan gestured at the nearest door. “It seems I’d be an extremely bad-mannered host to not have you for tea. Please, after you.”
Ramson stepped through the door to a nondescript study, walls lined with bookshelves that boasted gilded tomes and dusty books, as well as the occasional eccentric piece of decoration—or, as Kerlan preferred to call it, exotic. A jade-sculpted dragon from Kemeira; a curved brass lamp that looked to be from one of the southern crowns; a piece of rainbow-hued rock from the depths of the Silent Sea itself. In the corner was a large brass clock, its rhythmic ticks punctuating the silence.
Yet as Ramson took in the room around him, he was suddenly struck with a realization so stark that it left him reeling. He remembered this room well, too well—it was almost as though he had been standing in it yesterday, rain-soaked and lost and wild, a boy with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run.
* * *
—
After Jonah’s death, Ramson had wanted nothing more than to get away from the military, from his father, from Bregon, from every single bit of the world that he’d thought of as safe and good, but that had betrayed him.
Twelve years old, he’d boarded one of the supply wagons from the military in the dead of night, with nothing on him but a pouch of coins and a name and address hastily scrawled on a piece of paper. He still remembered huddling in the back of the wagon between crates of stale vegetables and rotting meat, watching as the winking torchlights of the Blue Fort grew smaller and smaller.
The wagon driver found him curled up in the back the next morning and kicked him out. Ramson clambered to his feet alone but for the cloud-filled skies, rolling moors, and endless rain in all directions. He was lost then, without Jonah or his compass. He wanted to crawl into a water-soaked ditch and die right there in the mud, but he was too afraid, and he was too angry.
So he put one foot in front of the other, and every day, he told himself, Just one more day. Just one more day and you can see Jonah again.
Somehow, either by the Deities’ will or by some other miracle, he made it to a town. He stumbled into a bar, holding his pouch of dimes and begging for food and water.
Later that day, a group of older boys waylaid him. They dragged him, screaming and kicking, into a back alley, beat him, took his money and his dagger, and left him to die.
Still, Ramson did not die.
When he finally summoned the courage to hobble out of the alley, night had fallen. His lip was cut and swelling, his nose broken, and his ribs bruised, but he was alive.
This was the world as it really was. Not good and bright and filled with light—but rather, the gray place that Jonah had painted for him, where the strong prevailed over the weak and evil triumphed and flourished.
There was no goodness or kindness in this world. Jonah had told Ramson that—and eventually, the darkness had claimed even him.
Ramson begged the first person he saw, an old man in a horse cart, for shelter. That night, he curled up in the old man’s barn, unable to sleep. He pulled out the balled-up, soaked piece of paper with the name. The ink had bled into the parchment and smudged on his fingers when he tried to smooth out the wrinkles. But he whispered the name to himself over and over again that night. A sense of purpose gathered in his heart, filling his veins with a wrathful, churning energy.
In the early hours of the morning, he stole away with the horse and the cart of the old man who had saved him. He boarded a ship that night and never looked back, even as Bregon turned into a small speck on the horizon and then was swallowed whole by the infinite dark sea.
Weeks later and an ocean away, clutching the piece of paper with that name, he found himself in front of the gilded gates of the most beautiful mansion he had ever seen.
The guard laughed when he demanded to see Lord Alaric Kerlan. “I assure you, he’ll want to see me,” Ramson argued in his broken schoolboy’s Cyrilian.
The other guard roared with laughter. “This one’ll give you a run for your pluck, Nikolay!” he chortled.
Ramson was furious. “You don’t know who I am,” he snarled. “You don’t know how much value I’ll be to Lord Kerlan. And I’ll wager you that if he finds out you turned me away from his gates, you won’t live to see your family the next morning.”
The two guards howled with laughter.
“My, my. I certainly hope I haven’t garnered that kind of a reputation among the neighbors.”
Ramson spun around.
A slight man in a purple bowler hat stood before them. He was middle-aged, but he was the same height and build as Ramson, with a m
op of receding brown hair and a twinkle in his eyes. Dressed in an ordinary shirt and breeches, he looked like a friendly next-door neighbor.
The guards stilled, their faces molding into casts. “Lord Kerlan,” they murmured.
Ramson stared. He’d heard his father speak of how the Bregonian criminal had fled to Cyrilia and built an empire on thievery and coercion, one with almost as much power as the Cyrilian throne. Alaric Kerlan was a legend and a monster, a sinister man in the darkness with a smile that sliced.
Yet now he stood at the height of an adolescent boy, a friendly beam on his face. Could this really be the man whom his father spoke of with such bone-deep hatred, that Admiral Roran Farrald sought to bring down?
“What is it that I can do for you, boy?”
Ramson of the Quick Tongue was at a loss for words. He spluttered inelegantly, “I can…I can help you.”
Kerlan looked amused. “What’s your name, boy?”
“R-Ramson. Ramson Farrald.”
Kerlan’s lip curled almost imperceptibly. “A Bregonian boy, then,” he said. “Invite him in, Nikolay. I’d like to hear what brought a young Bregonian so far from his homeland.”
Kerlan had known whose son Ramson was—of course he had known. But Ramson’s arrogance had blinded him. Half an hour later, he found himself in a room, wearing an oversized vest and breeches, with silk slippers replacing his mud-caked boots.
The room was lined with shelves that were neatly stacked with leather-bound books. When Ramson looked closely, he could see gold letters shining off their spines. A large red carpet sprawled across the middle of the floor, tucked beneath an ebony coffee table. The room wasn’t filled to the roof with gold statues, but its opulence pulsed subtly in the lapis lazuli–laced designs on the table and the rare Kemeiran vases dispersed across the shelves.
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