by Wren Weston
“Maybe.”
Max laughed. “Well, good luck with that one. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I’m not even sure if he’s real.”
“Good to know. Always a pleasure, Max. Tell Ms. Schreiber to go on vacation for a while. There will be questions after this. Questions she won’t want to be around for. I’m doing her a favor this time, and only because it’s you.”
Lila ended the call in the middle of Max’s grumbling complaint.
She ate the rest of her cookie and then turned her attention to more pressing problems. For the next hour, she searched for more information on Sun Leasing, Muller and Davies, and anything that might help locate Zephyr. Unfortunately, she found nothing.
Time was growing short. Trapping Chairwoman Wilson might give them more information, but it also might spook Zephyr into running. It was a risk, but one that she’d have to take. After all, a running Zephyr was a busy Zephyr. She’d have more time to search.
After putting her computer to sleep, Lila padded downstairs, bound for the security office once again. She eased behind Isabel, who dusted the bookshelves in the study, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland propped open with a heavy silver statue. Isabel wiped absently with the feathers, too engrossed in the text to hear the footfalls behind her.
Isabel never stole the silver. She dealt with Jewel’s craziness, as well as the chairwoman’s cold perfection, on a daily basis with little complaint. If the worst thing the woman did was read while dusting, the family should count themselves lucky.
Lila left Isabel to her dreaming.
A flood of leaves fell over Lila as she ventured from the great house, little bursts of yellow carried on puffs of wind. The sky threatened, heavy and gray, as she walked to the security office, dodging a few scrambling slaves laden with bags, bundles, and crates, intent on their Friday afternoon errands.
If Lila hadn’t been searching the horizon for rain, she might not have noticed the flash of brown on a roof across the street from the estate and the flutter of short, dark hair.
Waving to Sergeant Hill and his rookie in the guard post, Lila strolled across the street. She used her master key to gain access to the building and sprinted up the stairwell, each floor painted in perfect yellow lines and smelling of metal.
Moments later, she emerged on the roof.
Tristan leaned against a temperature-control unit, face turned away. “Your family owns this building, don’t they?”
“Of course. We own, lease, or have some sort of stake in everything around the property for two or three blocks, but you already knew that.”
“It wouldn’t do for the poorer classes to get too close.”
“It wouldn’t do for anyone to get too close. There are security issues, Tristan. Not everything is a class issue.”
Lila dug her palm from her pocket and brought up her messages.
Another alert.
“Did I miss your call?”
“No. I didn’t bother. I didn’t want you to dismiss me with a few words.”
“You want an update already?”
Tristan shoved his back off the temperature unit. A dark red bruise had formed over his right eye, which was slightly swollen. “I already know—”
“What happened to your eye?”
Tristan looked away, turning toward the empty streets around the Randolph estate. “It’s nothing. Don’t change the subject. You already went to see Chairwoman Wilson. I want to know what you learned.”
“Are you following me again, Tristan?”
“One of my people saw you drive in with the chairwoman’s daughter. You didn’t even bother to call me.”
“Of course I didn’t.” Lila said, taking another long peek at his eye. “It was only a couple of hours ago, and I have a lot of other business on my plate right now.”
“What did she say?”
“She confessed to everything, Tristan. Cried for an hour, begged me not to take her to Chief Shaw. We hugged, sang songs, drank Sangre, and braided each other’s hair. What do you think she said?”
“Okay, so then we break into her—”
“The bug I planted in her office offered much more intel than our conversation. Nothing I learn through the bug is admissible as evidence against her, and I’ll be surprised if it isn’t discovered by the end of the day, but I did find out she’s meeting with Valandra Schreiber tomorrow morning.”
“Valandra?”
“Thought that might interest you. Something I said spooked her, and she’s decided to run.”
“I knew it. She’s going to Burgundy. We have to get to her before—”
Lila shook her head. “We aren’t going to do anything. I already have someone tailing her. She and her guest will be in a holding cell by noon tomorrow, compliments of Chief Shaw.”
“Her guest?”
“Chairwoman Wilson asked Ms. Schreiber for some sort of forged documents for herself and a boy. I suspect they’ll be entry visas to Burgundy. Alex believes that either Simon or her brother Patrick will be accompanying her. Maybe both.”
“You don’t believe that. I don’t either. Who do you think it really is?”
Lila shrugged. “Simon’s a long shot. If he went missing from the Masson vineyard, it would raise an alert, and it would make it more difficult for the chairwoman to escape. She wouldn’t risk taking anyone with her who might get her caught, not unless the person was precious in some way. Simon is nothing to her now. He’s of no use, just like Alex.”
Tristan studied her face. “I didn’t ask who it wouldn’t be. I asked who it would. You already have an idea, don’t you?”
“Perhaps.”
Lila kept the idea to herself. It seemed too ludicrous to speak aloud. Overhead, a few birds called out, as if agreeing with her, the only noise over the closed shops around the estate.
“So how will we get to her before she runs?”
“We don’t. Like I said, we let Bullstow scoop her up.”
“You can’t be serious. All she’d be charged with is carrying fraudulent papers to Burgundy. That’s a few years at best. She made sure her son got twenty.”
“Fraudulent papers would still give her a sentence. She’s a chairwoman. Her auction price will be so high that she’ll never be able to pay it off. Any sentence is a life sentence.”
“She has fifty million credits hidden outside the commonwealth. She’ll pay off her mark after she completes her sentence. Even if the Holguíns become her master, it’s still not enough.”
“What would be enough? How long would a highborn have to spend as a slave before you’d be appeased?”
Tristan rubbed his cheek, flush with stubble. “I don’t hate every highborn.”
“Just most of us?”
“Why aren’t you pushing for more? Because she’ll lose her position as chairwoman the moment she’s convicted? Because Bullstow will turn over the estate and accounts to Wolf Industries after her trial? I know you. That’s not your end game.”
Lila considered Tristan, considered the chance he would do something stupid if she did not share, at least some part of her suspicions. “You’re right. That’s not my end game. I suspect that Chief Shaw will find something else in the car that’s far more damning than fraudulent papers.”
“Which would be?”
“Just trust me, Tristan. Come tomorrow morning, she’ll be taken care of. Legally. Then you and my mother can both get off my back for a while,” she said grumpily, stepping back through the door.
Tristan, thankfully, did not follow. She jogged downstairs and shoved open the side door of the apartments, emerging in the alley.
She was so irritated that she didn’t notice the gun. Not at first, and not quickly enough.
Peter Kruger took a step toward her, a revolver in each hand. His tan skin bore few wrinkles and no scars despite his age a
nd experience, and his mud-brown hair fell to his shoulders. He wore black trousers, a sweater, and a cheap workborn peacoat, which fell to his hips. He seemed like a cross between a senator and militiaman and a slave. Perhaps he would have fit in all three worlds. Perhaps he fit into none.
Lila reached for her Colt.
“No.” Mr. Kruger aimed at her chest. “Hands up, or I will shoot the one on the roof after I’m done with you. I won’t use tranqs.”
Lila’s hands faltered. Even she couldn’t beat a loaded gun already pointed at her heart. She had messed up. She’d put a guard on Alex, she had increased security around the estate, but she hadn’t taken along a guard for herself. “I suppose Zephyr ordered this?”
“Zephyr?”
“Your boss.”
“I don’t know this Zephyr,” he said, his voice soft with disuse, never rising above her own.
Lila couldn’t tell if he was lying.
“Chairwoman Wilson commands you, then? Did she tell you to tranq me?”
“Only one of these guns holds tranqs, madam, but I’d do it that way if I could. I hear that a tranq overdose is more pleasant than a bullet in the brain, but I don’t know how to override the sensors. I’m sorry for that.”
“Working in the sewers prepared you for this?”
“I don’t just work in the sewers. I’m quite good with a knife. I can butcher a pig in less than forty-five minutes. They say there’s not much difference between a human and a pig. I guess I’ll find out. I’m sorry for that, too.”
Lila shifted her weight, ready to spring past the man, but he’d already fired.
A dart hit Lila’s neck.
She flinched at the bite and yanked it out as soon as it landed. She might have been pulling out a bee’s stinger.
“It already dosed you, madam, and you know it. Maybe not the full dose, but enough.”
Lila’s chest and back warmed suddenly, and the world spun around her. She lurched in place and grabbed the wall for support, then rested her cheek upon the cool, painted brick.
“I am sorry, for what it’s worth. You always smiled. You always gave me the courtesy of a title. You always told me ‘Good day, Mr. Kruger’ whenever you saw me, even when I stank of piss and shit. Not many people bothered. I wish it had been someone else.”
Lila slumped, crumpled onto the pavement, and landed on her shoulder. She struggled to flip onto her back so that she could see her death approach, so that she could know when it would happen.
Overhead, the sky rippled like the surface of a pond in a fresh rain.
Kruger bent over her, gun cocked in his hand.
Tranq darts did not fill the chamber.
“After you go missing and no one finds your body, you’ll live on as some sort of ghost story. The missing heir. People will claim to see you everywhere. They’ll tinker with your story, trying to prove what happened to you and why. Books will be written about you. You’ll live on far longer than you ever would have behind the walls of the Randolph compound. I promise you that.”
Kruger’s words made little sense to Lila. She didn’t want to be the ghost of an heir. She wanted to live. She wanted to eat Chef’s cookies, to spend another morning in the gym or at the gun range, to have her argument with Commander Sutton, to smoke another cigar with Alex, to hug her brothers and her father, to scowl once more at her mother and her sister. She wanted to see Shirley and the little ginger-headed boy. She had never even found out his name or why he wanted to help so much, and now it seemed so important for her to know.
She wanted to brag to Max that she had slipped into Liberté.
Twice.
She wanted to see Dixon again, to read his notebooks, to best him in a race over the city’s rooftops, to share another waltz and another bottle of Sangre.
She wanted to see Tristan, not just see him, but wrap her arms around him, inviting him in for a kiss. She wanted to wrap her legs around him, inviting him in for more.
She wanted to know if Dixon had been right about them.
She wanted to finish her dream.
She wanted Tristan to say that he wanted her. Just once.
The sight of the gun brought her out of her stupor, out of her futile wanting and wishing. It was too late for all of that now. She’d spent all her time like bags of coins wasted and tossed away in a wishing well, all for the purchase of leather blackcoat and an empty bed.
She’d become an empty shell soon.
Switched off and gone forever.
Soon after, she’d become chunks of meat served up for Chairwoman Wilson’s pleasure.
The gun hovered in front of her face, but her arms were too heavy to bat it away. Her tongue was too thick to call for mercy.
She couldn’t even cry.
As the sedative coursed through her, warming her blood, numbing the force of her impending death, Lila found that she didn’t even care anymore. Not about any of it. Her family would get along without her. Tristan and Dixon would get along without her. The season would start without her.
She remembered caring only seconds before, but it seemed so hard to remember why.
Lila took the easy path and let the drugs take her.
Chapter 20
“Wake, Lila of New Bristol. We do not have much time.”
Lila’s eyes fluttered. She opened them with effort, finding herself on the morning room floor. Dishes peeked over the table, witnessing her yawn: a half-filled glass pitcher of orange juice, pulp glued to the side; a plate covered by a half-eaten pancake, drowning in maple syrup; eggs and bacon, piled near an abandoned fork; and two glasses of wine, standing watch over an empty bottle of Gregorie. Breakfast with her mother. She’d walked out for some reason, but she couldn’t remember what they’d argued about.
Apparently her mother had walked out, too.
“Wake, Lila of New Bristol,” came the voice again. Lila chased it, turning her head at the dispassionate tone. A blue-eyed blonde stood over her and nudged her shoulder with a boot.
A boot lined in fur.
Lila sat up and scooted away from the odd figure. The woman might have come from a movie, with her worn and dented leather armor. The well-used hilt of a sword peered over her shoulder, the grip fashioned to its owner hand, not by crafting, but by years of battle. A handmade bow had received the same treatment, a companion in war and travel. Taller than Lila, the woman had muscles that might have been sculpted by artist, if his muse had carved them by hard and bloody practice. She wore two large pearls around her neck, speared by leather.
Lila knew the woman at once: an oracle of old, a battle queen, both blessed and cursed by visions from the gods.
“Rise,” the oracle commanded.
It was the voice of a woman used to being followed, not in life but in battle.
Lila licked her lips and obeyed, nearly tripping over the hem of her blackcoat. She rested her fingertips on her Colt, brushing the grip. The woman’s eyes tracked the movement.
Lila did not remove her fingertips, but she didn’t draw her gun, either.
The pair stared at one another for several moments.
“I was…” Lila paused, unsure of where she had just been and what she had been doing.
“You were about to die. Poison runs through your blood.”
“Poison?”
“The kind your people carry in their weapons. The man who came for you weakened you before striking. He is a coward, too afraid to test his might against you in a fair fight. He will not go to the Halls.”
Lila nearly laughed. She could not remember any poison nor any man who might have come for her, but she knew that such a man hardly cared about some imaginary afterlife spent feasting and drinking and recounting sagas from—
With a start, Lila realized that she couldn’t remember what else people did in the Halls. She’d tuned Chef out whe
never the workborn had begun to speak about them.
Her mind backtracked, pondering the oracle’s words. “Then I am dead?”
The oracle turned away. She prowled along the windows, her disdainful eyes piercing the glass to judge the garden beyond. “This room is a coffin. You feast daily inside it, all the while locking yourself away from the beauty that grows on the other side of these walls, and yet you worry now about being dead?”
“It’s only the one room.”
“I am brought to battlefields. You bring me to the table.”
“I’m rather fond of tables.” Lila kept her distance while the oracle paced and glared at the world outside.
“We don’t have much time,” the woman said at last, pausing before the center pane of glass. She studied Lila, her eyes dropping from her face to her boots like a scanner. But rather than search for weapons, she seemed to search for some small modicum of usefulness.
Lila wondered if she found any.
“You have whittled away years in this place, wasting time on things that do not matter.”
“My family does not matter?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to send them your regards.”
“What will you tell them? You do not even know me.” The oracle crossed her arms over her chest, seeming all the more imposing as her biceps hardened. “I would succeed where my sisters and brothers have failed. Perhaps that means I must defer to the daughters of Sileas this time. When you wake, you will go see the one in your village. You will listen to what she has to say.”
“You want me to go see the oracle?”
“Yes. You have seen her before.”
Lila cringed. Alex had dragged her to the New Bristol oracle as a teen, but only as a lark. The pair had waited for five hours in the temple, both hiding their palms as they watched movies, both trying not to snicker whenever a lilac-robed women flitted by, telling everyone to pray until the oracle called them.
Lila hadn’t obeyed. She’d had better things to do than pray to storybook figures from other people’s imaginations. She’d never had time to watch movies, and she’d finished two before the pair had been called.
