“I would assume that it is no more my strength than it is yours,” he muttered.
“Ask then, my time runs short,” I said.
“I listened this morning from the ladder. I was on my way down to—well, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I overheard you talking to Dylan about the merchants.” His eyes darted to the side, and he sighed before looking back. “I agree with you. I hate hearing the words coming from my mouth, but I have, for some time, doubted that the plan had merit. In fact, you voiced the words that I only felt.” His admission seemed to pain him. “But today, I thought of another solution, one in which we may be able to make our enemies pay for…” He nodded toward the house. “The endeavor itself. However, I need your help for it. Please, help me. I will repay you in any way I can.”
Standing before me in the heat, sweating so profusely and surrounded in squalor, he was the picture of the desperate man.
I cleared my throat. “I wish I could help you.”
Stepping away, he made a swearing-like sound but no words came out.
I held up my injured hand. “I will help you, but first I need to heal this.” My voice broke in the middle of the speech. The sight of my hand was much worse than I’d expected. Not only was my middle finger invisible, but half my hand with it. I dropped my arm to my side. “When that is done…” I cleared my throat and started again, “If I accomplish this task, I will find you, and if your task is not abhorrent to me, I will help you.”
“Or I can help you and you me,” he said. “I’ll take you to the Congregational Library myself and help you in any way you need.”
I shook my head. “I’m not asking for your help.”
“Then consider it a bargain between us,” he said. “Neither of us has the money to pay the other.” He nodded to my hand. “You’ll be no good to me invisible, unless your powers will still work then.”
“I haven’t tried, but I doubt my ability will. Otherwise, why would the magicians do this to me?” I considered as I examined my hand.
“You think I’m serious?”
“Aren’t you?”
“You must think I’m a complete monster—no, I wouldn’t use you without helping you. I’m not depraved.” His jaw worked like I’d somehow again offended him.
I leaned in just a little. “I’d have to say that you did a good impression of a monster last night. And if anyone looks out their window, they’ll think you raving mad as well.”
His gaze darted around the houses. “As if I’d care.” Pointing down to my hand, he asked, “What do you need to do for that?”
“How long will your task take? I have little time. This injury seems to be quickening its pace.”
“It’s a ten-minute walk to the docks, and then it’ll take about another half an hour.”
I looked off down the unfamiliar winding street we stood on. I could spend ten times that lost in the streets of Hopesworth. I nodded. “First, show me your needs. I do not want to be locked into a contract with you that I do not feel comfortable fulfilling.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do something that would compromise your morals.”
I glanced to his pocket. “You don’t think thieving will compromise my morals? That’s what you want from me, is it not?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
He leaned in, threatening to drip his sweat onto my shoulder. “Only from our common enemy.”
“I see.” Looking away toward the spires over the rooftops, I realized I didn’t only feel obligated to help him, but I also wanted to. I wanted to steal from my enemies; I wanted to take what they cherished so dearly. I wanted to see their coin fulfill my father’s dream even if it was my final act. I nodded and whispered, “I’ll go with you.”
14
The Crimson Ring
Tony
As I collided into my doorframe, I decided there was nothing I hated so dearly as the blasted monks.
“Are you okay, sir?”
I dropped the hand that had come up instinctively to my aching forehead.
One of my servants rushed toward me, the one who had likely delivered the summons.
Summons.
I was being summoned to my own damned entertaining room, in my own damned manor.
“Are you okay, sir? Would you like a cold compress?”
“I’m fine. Go do… whatever it is you do. I don’t need your aid.” I waved a hand at him as I squinted into his face. Actually, I wasn’t sure which one he was. It could be the summons-servant or any other I’d brought with me; with their painted faces, they all appeared so similar.
I hadn’t had much of a choice but insist my servants adopt the rather hideous painted fad. Wretched Collin took up the wretched fashions of the North, and now every servant of every society member had decorated faces. It made them hard to keep track of. But what was to keep track of, really? They were likely all traitors.
When the man reached out to me, I waved wildly. “Didn’t I tell you to go away?” The waving caused me to sway and I bumped into the wall, before pushing myself vertical.
The servant was still standing there, his hands out like he might scoop me up.
“Go away!”
After a moment of hesitation, he did, scurrying off to hopefully do something useful for a change.
I started down the hall as it slowly rotated around me. My eyelids grew heavy and I focused on my feet treading from black to white marble. I lifted my head just in time and blinked against the light of the sun blasting into the entertaining room.
Two sets of all-black eyes watched me as I staggered in. Their long crimson robes contrasted with the abstract painting behind them stretching across the wall in shades of blue. The monks did not smile, which was a relief.
They were so hideous that I feared if they were to smile, I would empty the liquid contents of my stomach right onto them.
“Drunkenness is looked down on by the Congregation,” one hissed.
I stopped behind a high-backed chair, setting my hand on the blue velvet. “Of course, I must apologize. I think I forgot to eat my lunch and supper.” The sycophantic words were as repugnant to me as the monk’s hideous faces.
“Sit,” one said.
My fingers squeezed into the velvet. “Of course.” I held onto the chair for as long as possible as I stepped around it.
They did not step closer, yet, somehow, they both bent over me. I pressed my head into the velvet cushion, but it gave me no distance. When I was in the South on my pilgrimage, a snake trainer had set up a show in the center of the inn my party dined in. A beautiful woman had sat cross-legged in the center of the ring, staring down two cobras that were raised above her head, hoods out.
I felt like that woman now.
“It has not only been your drunkenness that has drawn our attention,” one said in his deep whispery voice.
“You were first brought to our attention because of your relationship with Collin Stewart.”
The colors blurred around their pallid faces. Heat surged into my face. My eyes started to water. I shoved it down, pushed it back.
I would not panic.
“The accusation against me is false,” I said as loud and steady as I could manage. “My servants spread false rumors about me often.” The words didn’t come out as dismissive as I wished. For the first time since my final parting with Collin and my father’s death two days after, I wished I was sober.
“Are you saying that your relationship with Collin was at no time romantic in nature?” one of the monks asked.
The girl’s voice that had been echoing through my mind for days came again.
“Why would you do this to me, Tony? I love you—I’m perhaps the only person in the world who knows everything about you—I don’t care that you would rather be with a boy, not at all. I love you. I love you even though you’re a complete ass most of the time. You’re like a brother to me, and I know you think of me like a sister—not a wife! Why are you ruining both of our cha
nces at happiness?”
The headache that followed the remembered words felt like I had taken an ax to the skull. Bile surged up in my throat, and I swallowed it back down. My nose and mouth burned with the acid. “That’s what I’m saying—it never happened. I think I am feeling a little ill. Would it be all right if I retired for the evening?”
They ignored my request and continued to bend over me.
Reflected in their black eyes, I appeared as gaunt and pale as a decaying corpse.
One asked, “Are you saying Lord Stewart and his heir, the honorable Collin Stewart, lied to the Congregation?”
My stomach plummeted as if I’d fallen a great height only to smash into the ground.
Every day I reminded myself that I hated Collin now. For some time, the connection between us had soured. Yet, I could not accuse him of that crime, not when the sentence was death. His face flashed in my mind, a little smirk at the corner of his full mouth. His beautiful bright eyes on mine.
Wetness coated my cheeks, and I realized that I was crying. Tears were falling down my face, and there was nothing I could do about it. My voice came out no more than a whisper, “No. I-I mean that it’s over—long over. We never did more than wish that it wasn’t forbidden. Please, don’t punish Collin—he did nothing.”
“If you do this, Tony, neither of us will ever be able to fall in love. You will destroy our happiness—our relationship—for what? Is it just that if you can’t find happiness, you’d destroy my chance at it—could you be that hateful? It’s as if the more you drink, the more you rot on the inside. You act as if you hate everyone—even me. I don’t even recognize you these days.”
“It is forbidden by the Congregation, but at the private bequest of Lord Stewart, the magicians have considered the matter.”
I nodded as chills traveled down my body, followed by an uncontrollable shaking. “Are you going to punish me?”
“We may reward you.” As if they had planned it in advance, identical yellow smiles spread across their faces.
“Reward me?”
“I would never have betrayed you—never. I would have kept your secret even if the entire Congregation descended upon me. And yet, you betray me?”
They nodded and said in unison, “The magicians have discussed that possibility.”
Something strange bloomed in me, something I hadn’t felt in over an annos. It may have even been hope. The feeling felt as it always had, a desperate, disbelieving yearning. Though my body still felt hollow, save for a sulfurous gas threatening to shoot up from my stomach.
“A union between two boys—or men as you both now are—is not allowed by the Congregation, but it was never forbidden by the gods,” one said.
The other continued, “It is often said that Sun loves Weire in this way, as Weire loves Nirsha, and Nirsha loves Ester. This is what continues to move the days, the seasons, and the anni.”
“The Congregation has… changed its stance?” My words came out a whisper. I wished I could take the question back just so I could delay knowing its answer.
“The Congregation cannot allow it to happen—openly.” Again, they both smiled.
The other one said, “The Stewarts have agreed to pay a monthly sum to the Congregation for our blessing. The honorable Collin Stewart has agreed to always deny his tastes, to marry soon and produce an heir. The flow of power in Domengrad must stay strong.”
“I see…” I swallowed heavily, “I-I’d be willing to do that as well, the—the fee and all that.” Humiliatingly, the tears would not stop coursing down my face. In just a few words, they had brought me to my lowest by tearing me open and then offering me hope.
“The price for you is not in money, Lord Klein. We request another payment—”
“A payment of loyalty.”
I sniffed up the snot running from my nose. “I see. How must I prove my loyalty?”
“There is a man traveling your way to pay a surprise visit, a painter by the name of Fauve.”
I nodded. “Fauve Matisse? I know Fauve. I’ve known him most of my life. He was a childhood friend of my father and uncle, baseborn, but respected as an artist.”
“Fauve Matisse is a known heretic. We have been following his movements for some time now—”
“We intercepted a letter from the iconoclast to Fauve Matisse.”
“We allowed the letter to reach him. We believe he is on his way here to render aid to the iconoclast—”
“We plan to pull back from the manor, and we expect that when this happens, the iconoclast will make herself known to Fauve. You must watch him closely, and have the servants you trust do the same. If you see him talking to himself, or interacting with someone he can’t see, you must contact us. If you see objects move around him that he didn’t appear to touch, you must contact us.”
“How will I contact you?” My voice was harsh as I uttered the question.
One of the monks reached into his robes and pulled out a wide crimson ring. “Wear this on your finger, and when you’re sure that you see some sign of the iconoclast—”
“Drop it.”
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked as I leaned deeper into the velvet.
“Ask.”
“The iconoclast—did I know her before she turned into a heretic?”
“You did,” they answered.
“Was she my cousin?” I asked.
“She was once your cousin, but now she is nothing to you. She is nothing but a parasite. She is a threat to Domengrad. Take the ring.”
“Of course,” I said, but I couldn’t force my arm to lift or my hand to outstretch toward it. The room was too bright and my mind too muddled. The crimson ring consumed everything, vividly red against his flaxen palm.
“There is the alternative, of course,” one said, I wasn’t sure which, because I couldn’t tear my eyes from the ring.
“You could choose not to assist us—”
“Which would be tantamount to aiding the heretics and iconoclasts—”
“The sentence for which is death.”
“I apologize, I mean to help you—I mean to help you.” My words crackled out, as dry as my spirit felt, like a withered thing, a husk inside of me. “I don’t remember her at all,” I said as I lifted my open hand.
The monk plucked up the ring with his free hand and placed it on my palm. The moment it touched my skin, a spark of static shocked me.
“Wear it on your thumb,” one said.
I looked up into their faces, finding that tears had started again. How low they had brought me. Three times in my life I had been brought this low—the first was my father’s beating and the second when my father told me to forget my infatuation for he could not handle a political scandal. But here and now, it was the third and by far the worst.
As I stared at the crimson ring, I realized I was wrong. There was a fourth moment—one that had been blurred in my memory but appeared in my mind with perfect clarity.
I had been standing in Collin’s father’s office, and my fist had flown at the cleft of Collin’s chin.
He’d dodged out of the way and grabbed me as I tipped forward with the punch. “Stop it, Tony,” he’d shouted, grabbing me to his chest.
I spat out clumps of his long, chestnut hair. “Let go of me, you idiotic prat! You piece of hound shit! You baseborn son of a strumpet!”
He squeezed me to him. He was always so much stronger than me physically. “I said I was sorry. Damn it, Tony. I said I was sorry.”
I pushed him from me until I felt him let go. Staggering away, I almost fell when he reached out and grabbed my arm.
“You’re drinking too much.”
“That’s none of your business.” I pushed his hand away. “Don’t touch me ever again.” The neat, seemingly unused study blurred around me as I stumbled to find my balance.
He ran his hands through his hair, his face twisting in frustration. “You wouldn’t talk to me or write me—I didn’t know what to do.”
&nbs
p; I pointed into his face. His strong, chiseled, and beloved features went in and out of focus. “So you kiss my cousin—my closest friend in the world? I confided in you that she—that she is my only faithful friend—the only person I trust entirely—and you try to take that from me?”
“I am sorry—I am. I was jealous watching you two so happy together. I was jealous,” he whispered the last words. “And I had this—this insane idea…”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What idea?”
“If I married your cousin, we could be together. We could be together for the rest of our lives.” A tear formed on his eyelashes before falling onto his cheek.
I grabbed my whiskey glass from where I had set it on Lord Stewart’s desk and threw it at the wall.
Collin flinched and closed his eyes as the glass smashed into the bookshelf, raining down glass. He grabbed the edge of the desk. “I would do it to be with you, Tony. You know I would.”
“Never! You will never do that to me!” Tears splashed onto my own cheeks as I turned from him. “We will forget—we will forget everything. It never happened.”
I blinked out of the memory and into the monk’s faces. They smiled down at me, two vultures watching the final remnants of my heart die.
My hand closed around the ring. “I understand what I have to do.” The words burned on the way out.
“You have until exactly high noon tomorrow. Make sure she is with Fauve Matisse when you drop the ring. If you drop the ring before such a time, we will deem that you did so in the aid of the iconoclast.”
Tremors racked my entire body. “One day? What if she does not contact him in so short a time?”
Yellowing smiles filled the entirety of my vision. “She will.”
15
An Improper Theft
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