by Claire Luana
Lucas wore a newsboy cap low on his brow, and his scruff was long enough to pass for the beginnings of a beard. No one had recognized him on the street as Lucas Imbris, the missing heir to the Alesian crown. But Ruach had known him. It was a risk, coming here. If the man was in Daemastra’s thrall—if the bread infusion hadn’t worn off yet—he could turn Lucas in yet. But if he was in Alesia’s thrall, the gambit was forfeit anyway. The best way to know for sure was to see what the man did.
“Was hoping I could place a last-minute order,” Lucas said, taking off his cap.
Ruach straightened, setting a chair upside down on the table before him. When he saw Lucas, his brown eyes widened. “By the Sower,” he breathed. He looked around, striding past Lucas towards the door, flipping the lock. He began closing the wooden shutters on the tall shop windows. “Are you mad, coming here? Every man, woman, and child knows your face. You’re a wanted man.”
“I was hoping that I still had allies in the city,” Lucas said, shoving his hands in his pockets, trying to exude a calm he didn’t feel.
Ruach closed the last shutter and turned. He shook his head, as if he still couldn’t quite believe it. Then he crossed the room and enveloped Lucas in a tight embrace, clapping him on the back.
Tension drained from Lucas, and he patted the man back, a lump growing in his throat.
“It’s flaming good to see you,” Ruach said. “I’m so sorry about your family. Tell me you’ve got a plan to boot these Aprican bastards for good.”
“That depends,” Lucas said. “Could you make me the largest coffee you have? Black. Extra strong. Extra hot. With a sprinkle of pepper?” It was the code Killian’s men had agreed on. Nothing any normal person would order.
Ruach’s furry eyebrows rose. “Aye. That I could,” he said slowly. “When would you like it?”
“As soon as you can make it. Midnight if you can manage it.”
He nodded, a grin spreading across his weathered face. “I better get to it then.”
Ruach hurried into the back of the shop and returned with a bowler hat and cloak. He blew out the remaining lanterns before unlocking the front door, letting Lucas out before him and locking it behind them.
Lucas put his hat back on. A spitting Maradis rain had started.
Ruach offered his hand. “God speed, Lucas Imbris.”
Lucas shook it. “Do this for me, and you have my eternal gratitude.”
“You on the throne would be enough for me. Make those blond bastards pay.”
Lucas turned left and Ruach turned right, hurrying in the direction of the next coffee shop, Black Bean, White Cream.
Lucas cut into an alley where Ansel was waiting, leaning against the brick wall. “Well?” he asked.
“He said all the right things,” Lucas said. “It’s looking good.”
“Let’s see if he meant ’em,” Ansel said, shoving off the wall.
Ansel and Lucas walked onto the street, cloaks pulled tight against the rain. This part of the plan was the riskiest. If Ruach was indeed loyal to the Falconers, he would place the same order Lucas had at the next coffee shop down the line, then notify those he was in charge of to place their charges. The next coffee shop owner, if loyal, would do the same. Killian had set it up that way, so no one knew who all the other Falconers were, in case someone was compromised. But it was possible to activate the entire network of cells by a single order of the trigger phrase.
Ruach was a dim shadow ahead of them, hurrying up the street. If he went to the next coffee shop, they knew he was loyal. If he headed towards the palace to report that he had seen Lucas...if he had just been pretending...well, Ansel would take care of him. Lucas really, really hoped it didn’t come to that.
Ruach reached Black Bean, White Cream and pulled open the checkerboard door, heading inside. Lucas blew out a breath, grinning at Ansel. He couldn’t help himself. “He did it.”
“Your man came through,” Ansel said.
“Now let’s just hope everyone else down the line is as loyal,” Lucas replied.
Chapter 42
Wren sat in the corner of their cell, her back pressed to the cool walls. She wanted to sink into it, to disappear until she was no more. Maybe then these feelings, these thoughts, would be gone too. Lucas was dead. She hadn’t seen a body, but she had seen the pyre that had once been the Maradis Morning building, greedy flames licking to the sky. Their hands and feet had been bound—there was no way they could have escaped. Lucas was dead. Lucas and Trick and Ella. The last of the Imbris line. Olivia. Poor Olivia, who had only ever been kind and as sweet as syrup. Far too sweet for this world. Ansel and Bran. The last of her Red Wraith clan, only so recently resurrected. Her mind didn’t want to believe it.
Thom and Callidus seemed similarly numb with shock. Their Aprican guards had thrown them all into a cell together, little concerned that they would get up to anything. They were well and thoroughly defeated.
“Do you think they made it out alive?” Thom asked. His boyish face looked like it had aged years, tear-stained and puffy.
Wren knew she should lie for him, but she didn’t have the energy. “I don’t see how.”
Thom buried his face in his arm, his shoulders shaking.
Callidus laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and Thom leaned into him, sobs wracking his thin frame.
Wren wondered if she had run out of tears, for though the sight of Thom crying moved her, her own eyes were dry.
She had cried so many tears in the past months. For Kasper. For Sable. Virgil. For Hale, a dear friend lost to the dark of his own grief. For their city, their freedom. She had cried for Lucas, for how things had ended between them. For the thought that he had gone to his grave hating her, feeling nothing but scorn for her. Heat flooded through her as she tried to banish the thought of the flames limning his stately profile. It had been her last glimpse of him. It seemed that she was wrung dry of sorrow. But the horrors weren’t over, were they? For her and Thom and Callidus. For Pike, if he was still alive. They were just beginning. She didn’t know what she wished for. A clean death? A chance to live? Perhaps it would not be so bad, to make chocolate all her life with a shackle around her ankle. Surely, it was a better life than many. But Willings’s words from the carriage chilled her. What had he meant, that she would long for the days under King Imbris?
“I keep wondering if I could have done something differently,” Callidus said absently.
“Me too,” Wren added.
“Me three,” Thom said, his words muffled through his shirt.
“Less than two months in power, and I destroyed everything two centuries of guild masters before me worked to build. I guess my father was right. I guess I really am no good at this.”
Wren shook her head. “It’s not you. It’s these circumstances. What could any of us do against men like Hadrian Imbris or Emperor Evander? What hope could we have ever had to make a difference? If you try to stand in their way, you just get trampled.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Callidus said. “Maybe we were on a fool’s errand all along.”
“What would you do if you could do it again?” Wren asked.
“That’s the thing,” Callidus said. “I’m not sure what else I could have done.”
“We could have run. Ansel told me to run, and I didn’t listen. We were free in Forgotten Bay. We could have made a life somewhere, right? Evander’s reach has limits.”
“I don’t know that it does. He found Lucas, didn’t he?”
But the thought kept echoing in her mind. They could have run—all together, they could have made new lives for themselves. They’d come back because they’d felt a sense of duty and obligation to the city that had raised them, the Guild that had been their home. But the Guild wasn’t home. She was realizing that now. These people were. She’d come back to try to save a life that had changed her—given her meaning. But it hadn’t been the life that had done it. It had been the people. Everyone whom she cared about had been with her in that little fleet.
Except one. Hale.
Callidus leaned his head back against the wall, looking at the ceiling. “We could have run. But in a way I’m glad we didn’t. At least we tried.”
Wren nodded. She supposed he was right. It was a bittersweet consolation prize. “It would have been nice to try and win.”
Thom let out a strangled laugh, raising his head and wiping his nose. “We could still win.”
Callidus and Wren laughed blackly at that.
“What?” Thom said. “We’re not dead.”
Callidus cuffed him over the head gently.
“You are a fool optimist, aren’t you, Thom?” Wren said.
“It’s seen me through,” Thom said defensively.
“We’re so different, the three of us,” Callidus said. “I would have thought we’d have no common ground other than chocolate. But...”
Wren nodded, and in that moment, a tear did brim in the corner of her eye. “There’s no one else I’d rather be here with than you two.”
Thom and Callidus both nodded.
“It would be nice to have Sable here too,” Thom said.
“Yes. And Hale,” Wren added. “The old Hale.”
Callidus rolled his eyes. “Yes. Even Hale.”
Wren jumped as the door swung open. Her breath caught in her throat at the tall, broad figure silhouetted in the doorway. It was like their words had summoned a vision. “Hale?” she breathed. Even though she knew he was serving the Apricans now, a part of her trilled in hope. He had come to rescue them.
He stepped into the cell, his head nearly touching the ceiling. He didn’t meet her eyes. Behind him, two more Aprican legionnaires stepped in, seeming to take up all the space and air in the cell.
“That one.” Hale pointed, still not looking at her. “The girl.”
The Guildhall sat dark and forbidding, its white marble columns like the tiers of a macabre wedding cake. Trick and Ella flanked Olivia, their cloaks pulled up to shadow their faces. They had talked Lucas into letting them come, despite the risk of them being recognized. Trick had contacts at the Guilds too, and they needed all the help they could get.
“Are we ready for this?” Trick asked.
“No,” Olivia said. “But when have we been ready for any of it?” The thought of Dash loomed in her mind. The wound of his absence—his betrayal—was raw and stinging. Olivia shoved it aside savagely. Shoved aside the guilt. It was her fault that they were in this predicament. She had insisted that Dash could be trusted. And he had turned on them, gotten Pike caught. Ruined everything. She still couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t reconcile the chocolate brown eyes, the devastating smile, the heat of his sure fingers as they trailed across her skin. How could it have all been a lie? she wondered. But hadn’t the past proved that she couldn’t tell a lie from the truth? That was why she hesitated now. What if Lennon and Marina and Beckett and all the rest couldn’t be trusted? What if they were still under the influence of the infused bread?
She looked at Trick. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea for you both to come in with me. It’s too much of a risk.”
“You said yourself—we’ll go in the back and try to find your friend,” Ella said.
“We need to know,” Trick added. “It’s just as dangerous for us out here. Anyone could spot us.”
Olivia nodded, pushing down her nerves.
“Okay. Now or never.”
They hurried across Guilder’s Row, circling around the back of the Guildhall. An Aprican Guard was visible on the top stair before the door, his head down. He hadn’t seen them as they passed. Olivia let out a breath.
They slipped through the servant’s entrance, and it was like she’d never let. Familiar wooden floors, wrought-iron sconces, bowls of chocolate nestled in alcoves along the way. Her heart seized painfully in her chest. It was like she hadn’t even been missed. She’d always thought she and her grandaunt were integral to the running of the Guildhall. But perhaps she’d been wrong.
They padded up the servant’s stairs to the second floor’s long corridor of rooms. She knocked on Lennon’s first, her body alive with adrenaline. Please be there, she thought, the words a mantra in her mind. Please be alone, she added, horror striking her at the thought of someone being there with him. Someone who wasn’t friendly.
Lennon was their best chance. He had helped in the past—when they’d freed Hale, when they’d attacked the caravan holding Thom and the other Gifted. She hadn’t known then why Thom had been taken. It made so much more sense now.
The door opened to reveal Lennon’s earnest face.
“Lennon.” She threw herself into his arms, relief overtaking her.
“Olivia, my gods, what are you doing here? I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Can we come in?”
Lennon narrowed his dark eyes at the two cloaked figures behind her but nodded, stepping back to let them inside the room.
Olivia froze when she saw who else was there. Marina. Haughty as ever, wrapped in a gray sweater, her hair pulled into a bun. But the look on Marina’s face...it wasn’t what Olivia remembered. It was—relief? Hope?
“It’s good to see you,” Marina said, crossing the room and pulling her into an embrace.
Olivia patted the girl awkwardly. “You too.”
“Who are your friends?” Lennon asked.
Trick and Ella were standing by the closed door.
“Before I tell you that, I must ask. What do you think of Emperor Evander?” Olivia asked.
“I’d stick a knife in his gut myself,” Marina said, “if I could get close enough.”
Lennon shrugged. “What she said.” His voice was flat.
Trick and Ella threw back their hoods.
Lennon and Marina exchanged startled glances. “You’re...Patrick Imbris?” Lennon said.
Olivia nodded. “Lennon, Marina, meet Trick and Ella Imbris. Trick’s with the Vintner’s Guild. Or was before all this mess started.”
“There’s a price on both your heads,” Marina said. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story,” Olivia said. “We’ll explain everything, but first I must tell you something that you may not believe. Magic is real.”
Marina waved a hand. “Yes, yes. The Gifted, the magic food.”
Olivia recoiled. “You know?” She looked to Lennon. “You both know?”
He nodded.
“My father told us a few hours ago when our minds started to come back to us. We couldn’t explain the things we’d been doing. The fog we’ve been living in. He figured it out.”
“And how does he feel about it?” Olivia asked carefully. Marina’s father, Grandmaster Beckett, had been no friend to them in the past. He had been the one who had betrayed Callidus, Chandler, and the other guildmasters to King Imbris.
“He’s furious,” Marina said. “I know my father’s ways may have seemed questionable in the past, but he always did what he thought was right for Maradis and the Guild. This—” She shook her head. “It’s horrific. There’s a meeting between the guildmasters in half an hour to discuss what to do.”
“All of them?” Hope bloomed in Olivia.
“All of them that are left,” Lennon said. “The Spicer’s Guild has been disbanded. But the others are meeting.”
“Guildmaster Alban?” Trick asked, referring to the head of his own guild.
Marina nodded. “My father’s heard very little, as everyone’s only just coming back to themselves. But from what he’s said, the Guilds are furious. Ready to revolt. But the Apricans are so powerful. I’m just not sure what we’re going to do.”
Olivia exchanged a knowing glance with Ella and Trick. “I think we can help with that.”
Chapter 43
Lucas and Ansel waited in the dark back hallways of the Tradehall for hours, Lucas pacing the halls, Ansel lounging and sharpening his myriad knives.
Finally, the door pushed open. It was Bran.
Ansel rose, clapping hands with his second-in
-command as they bumped each other on the backs. “Griff’s ships are in position,” Bran said. ”When the explosions go off, our men will be ready to scale the outer walls and breach the palace.”
“Good work,” Ansel said.
“I brought two dozen men. They’re in the alley. Should be quite a scramble as the guards try to figure out where the attacks are coming from.”
“Excellent.” Ansel grinned his cocky, chipped-tooth smile. “This should be fun.”
“And your men know what to do once we get in there?” Lucas asked. “Find Wren, Thom, Pike, and Callidus? Find the emperor?”
“They know the drill. If they’re in there, we’ll get ’em back,” Ansel replied.
Lucas tried not to focus on the other sentiment hidden in those words. If they’re still alive. Wren had to be still alive. He wondered what she was going through. Was she mourning him, thinking he was dead? Thinking that their last words to each other had been furious and tense? His anger towards her seemed insignificant now, a waste of a night together. Moments they could have shared, could have reveled in each other. He’d been a damned fool. Wren had only been doing the best she could—what she’d thought was right. And he had judged her for it.
Lucas’s eyes drifted to Ansel. Was Wren mourning the mercenary too? Which loss does she feel more deeply? the little voice in his head asked. Ansel or Lucas? He banished the thought. It was no help right now.
The door creaked open again and the men fell silent, but for the slow, slick sound of Ansel drawing his sword from its sheath.
A figure materialized in the flickering light of their lantern. Trick. Lucas breathed out and rushed forward to embrace his brother. “Everything okay?” he asked, soaking in his brother’s presence. His last brother. From six, down to one. Trick and Ella were more precious than gold to him now. The only family he had left.
“Better than okay,” Trick said, stepping aside. More figures began to materialize. Ella and Olivia. Trick’s guildmaster, dark-haired with white at his temples. What was the man’s name? That was right. Alban. And more. Chandler—the distiller’s guildmaster. The one-armed wiry man who ran the Cheesemonger’s Guild. The huge brute who ran the Butcher’s. Bruxius? Was that his name?
