That was the problem of choosing to side with the most powerful son of a bitch around: Terre Verte could probably make good on that silent threat.
It had been a long time since Cupric had been frightened of one man.
He hoped the Followers of the Quinacridone felt the same.
“I’ll try, but I make no promises,” he said grudgingly.
Terre Verte nodded. “Dismissed.”
Fuck you, Cupric thought back. But he didn’t have the gall to say it aloud.
Cupric knew one Quin who would be allowed into restricted archives if anyone would be. Unfortunately, Hansa hadn’t been too pleased to see him before and probably wouldn’t be anxious to help him now.
On the other hand, people said Hansa Viridian was a “good man.” That usually meant someone was a sentimental, protective sap. Hansa would probably look at the document before giving it to Cupric and therefore Terre Verte, but something the Quinacridone wanted to hide wasn’t necessarily something the lover of an Abyss-spawn would find threatening. As long as he didn’t think doing so would endanger his own friends, Hansa might agree to help just because he was that nice.
First though, Cupric had to find and talk to Hansa when Umber wasn’t about to make things uncomfortable. It was hard to be around the Abyss-spawn without remembering him sprawled across the bed, and Hansa obviously didn’t appreciate reminders that his lover had a past.
The Quin could get over it. There were Good Deeds to be done, after all.
Chapter 10
Cadmia
As dawn approached, they prepared for the day ahead. While Alizarin scouted the mancer temple, Hansa and Umber exchanged moping, uncomfortable glances, and they all waited for Lydie to arrive, Cadmia meditated—and planned. She sat in front of the fire with her knees crossed and her eyes closed, blocked the sounds of her companions and the rest of the Fens from her awareness, and silently put pieces together in her mind.
Like Hansa, Cadmia feared what violence Verte intended, but before they could respond they needed to know his plans. Cupric had implied the once-prince wanted to overthrow the Quin government and take back Kavet. It seemed a plausible motivation, but what would gathering the mancers together accomplish?
Rose might know. Cadmia had been born in the Order of A’hknet, but had craved a higher education and more “respectable” life and had gone to the Order of Napthol. Rose Atrament had joined the Order of Napthol as a child and had been admired as a scholar there before she walked away from it to join the Order of A’hknet. Their paths had crossed many times since, as Rose refused to be dissuaded from her study of magic no matter how often the Quin arrested her. She could be a valuable resource, if Cadmia could convince her to talk to them.
And one I won’t need to counsel for relationship problems, Cadmia thought, as a moment of worry about Hansa and Umber wormed into her attempt to form a solid plan. When Umber had first kissed the stranger at the door, Hansa had looked startled and awkward, but had made an attempt to keep his always-so-readable expression unflustered and even welcoming. I can be mature about this, that expression had said.
It was only when the kiss hadn’t stopped, when it had become something that sang of sweat-slicked nights and sated days, that Hansa’s self-control had slipped.
It’s not my problem.
Unless they made it her problem.
Back to the matter at hand. She noticed a thread of her power peeking loose from the careful cocoon she had spun it into that morning and tucked it back away, then turned her mind back to Verte, Rose, and mancers until she heard Lydie ask, “Where are we going?”
Cadmia jumped, startled that the necromancer had made it into the room without her noticing, and opened her eyes in time to see Hansa do the same. Umber was in the middle of packing up the last of their supplies, and turned toward Lydie slowly enough Cadmia had a feeling he was pointedly trying to pretend he hadn’t been surprised.
“My home,” Umber answered. “It’s in South Bay.”
“South Bay—and you’ve been sleeping here?” Lydie asked incredulously.
“How did you get in without our hearing the door open?” Hansa asked Lydie, at the same time Umber answered, “We had other guests previously, who I didn’t want to invite to my private residence.”
Lydie shrugged understanding and dismissal at Umber’s answer, and rolled her eyes at Hansa.
The young necromancer looked better today, less ghastly—or so Cadmia thought. Even when making a conscious effort, Cadmia found it hard to focus directly on Lydie. Her eyes wanted to shut out the girl. Lydie’s seemingly-soundless passage into the room meant her ears wanted to as well. Cadmia didn’t remember having the same difficulty the night before, so decided this must be one of the ways Lydie had prepared herself to come with them.
Safety means being ignored, to her, Cadmia thought, reminded suddenly of Pearl, the orphan child she had helped raise in the Cobalt Hall. Pearl was Lydie’s opposite: bold and outgoing, an eternal optimist who would make friends with anyone who let her and therefore knew and was known by every guard in the 126. Her mismatched blue and green eyes were shadowed sometimes by her own personal fear of abandonment—her own mother had left her on the steps of the Cobalt Hall, walked away, and never returned—but as vast as that anxiety was, it couldn’t compare to the everyday terror Lydie must feel.
“How old are you?” Cadmia asked. She wanted to ask, How have you survived in Kavet? The girl might be as old as fourteen or fifteen, if she was a late bloomer; she also might be as young as eleven or twelve.
“Why do you care?” Lydie shifted the sack on her shoulder and said, “Let’s go. I don’t like walking around like this.”
Umber looked at them each in turn. He must have been satisfied by what he saw, because he nodded, and said, “Keep your heads down until we get out of the Fens. Once we’re to the dockside market, don’t hurry, don’t dawdle, and for Abyss’ sake don’t look around to see if we’re being watched or followed.” The reminders were clearly for Cadmia and Hansa, not for Lydie, who shifted impatiently as she listened. Cadmia felt anxiety curl and flex in her stomach like a restless lizard. “Remember you have every right to walk these streets, but also remember now isn’t the time to test the self-control holding the veils over your power. If someone recognizes you, be polite, but end the conversation as quickly as you can without drawing notice.”
“If you tell me where I’m going, I can meet you there,” Lydie grumbled. “I don’t need to walk through Kavet with a pair of celebrities.”
“You won’t be able to get inside without me,” Umber answered, “and you’ll look out of place idling on the street.”
“I wish Alizarin was here to do his magic trick again,” Hansa sighed.
“I’d make you both do the walk anyway,” Umber said. “Cadmia says she plans to go back to the Cobalt Hall as soon as possible, and you’ll want to leave the house at some point, too. You need to know you can do this.”
Lydie let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ll meet you at the fish market when you’re done talking about your—”
“We’re going,” Hansa said gruffly. “Lead the way, Umber.”
“You’re new to all this, aren’t you?” Lydie murmured as they stepped out of the Fens. She had ghosted up beside Cadmia’s left elbow, and her sudden, soft voice startled Cadmia from her hyper-focused, anxious daze. “You and him.” She nodded toward Hansa, then flicked her eyes briefly to Umber. “He knows his way around here and looks comfortable in it, but you two look like you’re expecting a lynching. Which, by the way, is the best way to get a lynching.”
“I should know better,” Cadmia sighed. She rolled her shoulders and twisted her head side to side, trying to dismiss the tension that had turned the muscles in her neck to stone. “I grew up in the Order of A’hknet. Scarlet’s daughter.” She glanced at the necromancer, wondering if she had any words to say on the subject of Cadmia’s mother, who had died five years previously.
If Lydie recogni
zed the name or felt any presence of Scarlet’s shade, it didn’t show.
Thankfully, getting from the Fens to South Bay didn’t involve passing through either the docks market or the upper city, where Cadmia and Hansa almost certainly would have been recognized. Even so, they took smaller back alleys Cadmia would normally have avoided. Alone, even as a Sister of Napthol she would have invited robbery; together, they weren’t a good target for a single alley-thief, and this area was too close to the upper city to be home to any larger gangs. Cadmia tried to keep her head up, as if she were taking a quick and familiar route, and not skulking.
Umber had stepped away from Hansa once they left the Fens, and they once again walked with a careful distance between them, avoiding any visible sign of their bond.
That empty space felt painful even to Cadmia.
Soon enough they left behind the narrow, winding alleys in favor of a wide thoroughfare and a footbridge over the rocky river outlet that marked the southern edge of the city of Mars and the beginning of the outskirts. The streets here were broad, and cultivated beds in raised planters were replaced by naturally green spaces—not large ones, granted, but even a few paces between one home and the next made a difference. Instead of the low-slung buildings that made best use of the often-marshy land under the A’hknet village near the docks and the Fens, this area’s rocky footing provided ample support for two-and three-story buildings with elaborate steeple roofs, fanciful balconies and porches, and tall windows that sparkled in the dawning light.
“You’re teasing us,” Lydie choked out as they turned from the cobbled main street onto one of the well-maintained paths that ran parallel to the shore. “You have a lover who lives here, or . . .” She trailed off as Umber turned without comment toward one of the homes.
Here even Cadmia hesitated, trying—and failing—to come up with a plausible explanation for how a child orphaned as a toddler, who had clearly spent time homeless and hungry, had ended up living in a private residence on the banks of the South Shore. This particular home wasn’t the fanciest in the area, true, and it was situated on the least desirable piece of waterfront, which overlooked the harbor and the lower city instead of the open ocean, but it still sat, alone, on almost a quarter acre of land, within two miles of the city center or the docks.
“You don’t want to know,” Umber said, as if one of them had spoken aloud.
“But . . .” Hansa sputtered, looking at the house and ignoring Umber’s attempt to divert his question before it left his lips. “How . . .”
Lydie, less discreet, asked bluntly, “Did you kill someone for it?”
“No, I didn’t kill anyone,” Umber sighed. “I’ll grant I didn’t gain it in an entirely lawful manner, but I didn’t hurt anyone. Not much, anyway, and it wasn’t anyone who—look, that’s a story for another day. It has two bedrooms and a dormer that I’ve usually used as a study, but which should suit you, Lydie. It’s private, has a couch that should be plenty large enough to use as a bed, and the door locks.”
As a child, the only truly private space Cadmia had called her own was a nook under the stairs off the kitchen, which was low-ceilinged but had enough space for her bed and a small trunk. It didn’t have a real door, but her mother had repurposed an elaborate embroidered shawl one of her lovers had gifted her to make a curtain, and everyone in the household knew that it was Caddy’s space, never to be violated.
When she had joined the Order of Napthol, the room they had offered her had seemed cool and impersonal at first, cut off from the rest of her community by stone walls and a heavy wooden door, but it had been palatial nevertheless.
As far as Cadmia could tell, Umber never used a key. He put his hand on the front door latch and Cadmia heard the click of a lock disengaging before Umber pulled the door open, triggering a burst of blessedly warm air that made Cadmia close her eyes with a sigh.
“Is someone here already?” Lydie asked, as they stepped into a front parlor with painted walls and floors of gleaming hardwood instead of stone. She looked around, and frowned at the empty fireplace in the scarcely-decorated room.
“There are spells set into some of the brickwork to generate heat,” Umber explained as he hung his cloak on a rack next to the door. “They keep the place above freezing.”
The furniture was all fine quality, but oddly scarce, and though the built-in shelves boasted occasional books or knickknacks, they too seemed more empty than full. The only other piece in the room was a cherrywood entry table holding a handful of casually discarded items, including a wrapped package Cadmia remembered his buying not long before their adventure in the Abyss. It contained a red silk scarf. Whatever he had intended it for hadn’t happened.
“The house is warded,” Umber said, “so casual visitors won’t come by, and most mancers or other magic users won’t be able to get in if they do come calling. There’s a washroom there.” He gestured vaguely as he walked toward the back of the house. “Upstairs, the master bedroom is the one on the right, there’s a guest room on the left—Caddy, that will be yours—and Lydie, you’ll see stairs there up to the study. I’m going to put these things in the kitchen,” he concluded, hefting the bag of food supplies he had bought in the Fens in explanation.
Cadmia trailed after him, wondering at the juxtaposition of luxury and emptiness and whether they represented the man himself.
The kitchen spanned the rear of the house, blending into a rotunda that served as dining and living room both. The windows here were unshuttered and looked out over the river and across to the Mars harbor, which at this distance seemed full of toy boats. A deep window-sill bench occupied one wall, next to a low bookcase haphazardly stuffed with a combination of bound books and loose notes held down with chips of polished stone.
Unfortunately, it was hard to enjoy the beautiful view due to the ghastly stench that rose up as they entered. Cadmia’s stomach, always a bit sensitive these days, twisted and heaved, and she hastened in the direction Umber had identified as the washroom. As she puked in what turned out to be a rather nicely equipped bathroom—Umber must have a cistern on the roof, since he seemed to have running water—Hansa came in and matter-of-factly gathered up her strawberry-blond hair to lift it out of the way.
“Apparently Umber was in the middle of making dinner when I summoned him,” Hansa remarked. “He and Lydie are going to clean it up. She says the smell doesn’t bother—sorry.” He broke off because just the reference to that scent brought on a fresh bout of retching. He tucked her hair behind her, stood long enough to run the tap, and put a bracingly cold cloth on the back of her neck.
She pulled the cloth off to wipe her mouth instead. “Thanks,” she murmured, trying not to look at the sludge in the bowl. She thought she was done for now, but didn’t dare stand yet. Not until the shakiness passed.
Hansa shrugged. “I don’t know if you knew him well enough to remember, but Jenkins had that stupid long hair. They don’t tell you in the brochures, but when you first join the One-Twenty-Six, you spend a lot of time puking your guts out before you get used to the things you see. Having the sight made it worse for him.”
As he spoke, he found the chain to run the water and clear the basin.
“You’re really planning to go back to the Cobalt Hall?” he asked, subdued, as she rinsed out her mouth.
“You’re really not going back?” she countered. “I can get information from small magic users and others who live at the edge of Kavet’s society. That’s valuable, but not enough on its own. We need to know what the Quin have heard, what they believe, and what they plan to do about it.”
Hansa froze at the words, like a rabbit caught under a hedge.
“What were you planning to do?” Cadmia prompted. Despite her earlier, pointed words, she kept this question neutral, the way she might have asked it in a counseling session. “You said earlier you wanted to do something about Terre Verte.”
“Something about him, yes, but not . . .” He trailed off with an overwhelmed
sigh. “I’ll see what Jenkins says. Maybe, between his information and what Alizarin can learn at the mancer temple, we’ll have a better idea of our next steps.”
She nodded, and something in her expression made him flinch defensively. “The work you do at the Cobalt Hall helps people. If I go back, not only will I be around some of the most powerful sighted individuals in the country, I’ll be expected to track down people like Xaz, and Lydie, and Umber—and you. I can’t go back, then refuse to perform the basic function of my job.” He let that sink in, then added, “As for Terre Verte, I don’t think he’s a problem that’s going to be solved with soldiers.”
Cadmia shivered. It was as though Hansa’s words had brought the chill of the divine into the room. When traveling with Umber and Alizarin, it was easy to feel almost safe. They were powerful, and knew what they were doing.
Hansa’s words reminded her of a simple fact: In Kavet, people “like her,” and like Lydie and Umber and Hansa, were caught all the time. Caught, arrested, branded, and executed. Despite the illusion of Umber’s rich and magically warded home, the mortal plane was no safer for them than the Abyss had been.
Chapter 11
Hansa
It took hours to make Umber’s home livable again. As he helped discard rotten produce and open windows to chase away the stench, Hansa had to keep swallowing down guilty apologies. He had spoken one of them aloud—two, actually, since Umber had only grunted in response to the first—and then Umber had snapped at him to stop sniveling.
“You should be able to salvage this pan,” Lydie said, wrinkling her nose as she scoured a cast-iron pan that had been abandoned with half-cooked chopped potatoes in it for the last several weeks. “It will need to be seasoned again, but the rust isn’t deep.”
Yes, cast-iron pans were expensive—Hansa had mostly copper himself—but Umber’s relieved sigh still seemed disproportionate to the possible loss. He mulled it over, then risked a cautious question.
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