by P. T. Hylton
“Did he seem like a man who is up for the hard work of rebuilding a business?”
“Not at all,” Zane said. “So why did he tell me that story?”
“Because he wants you to take the job.”
“Have I given him any reason to think I select my cases based on their moral validity?”
Lily smiled. “No. But it’s a better play than I want you to kill this guy to help my business.”
“Perhaps.”
“So you’ll be turning down the job?”
“I didn’t say that. Just because he’s lying doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting.”
Lily suppressed the strange urge to laugh. She’d known from the moment Graze said the words kill Irving Farns. Zane wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge of trying to assassinate the world’s leading expert in protective magic. In a way, he was like those eager young abditus Graze had described. He wanted to test himself against a fellow master.
Of course, she would never say that out loud. She was half-convinced Zane didn’t realize he had underlying reasons for anything he did. He considered himself one-hundred-percent logical.
“So you’re taking the job?” she asked.
“I didn’t say that, either.” He sat up straight and stretched. “I’m considering it.”
She waited, knowing there would be more, some small job he would assign her to aid in the decision-making process.
“This will be good for you,” he said. “The magical world is a tough one to crack.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Find out anything you can about Irving Farns’s past. Any known associates. Enemies. Friends. Lovers. Whatever. Where he’s been hiding these past twenty-five years. Any other connection to the Graze family our client didn’t reveal.”
Lily nodded briskly. “Got any names for me to start with?” She knew what the answer would be, but she had to ask. Just in case.
“Absolutely not. This is about you building your network of informants, not using mine.”
Lily sniffed, then hoped the sound hadn’t come off as defiant. This was the job. This was what she’d signed up for. Or been selected for, depending on how she looked at it. “I can do that. And what will you be doing while I dig up the info on Farns?”
Zane leapt to his feet, patted her on the shoulder, and treated her to a rare smile. “Just following a hunch. One that may take me a day or two to investigate. Let’s meet back here tomorrow night. I’ll have Doris prepare a ham.”
Doris was a widow from the neighborhood Zane occasionally hired to cook.
“I’ll get right to work,” Lily said.
What happened next was her own fault. She was so eager to begin, she forgot herself and left by the main exit. She should have slipped out the back and snuck through the alley. Or climbed out the upstairs window, crossed to the neighbor’s roof, and gone down their storm pipe. Or, barring all that, at least taken a long careful look out the window to ensure there was no one lying in wait. But she didn’t do any of those things, so she paid the price.
As soon as Lily opened the door, she heard three quick whistles, a signal she knew far too well. A bucket’s worth of mud slammed into her chest and splattered all over her face and arms. She heard the giggling of children and the retreating sound of feet pounding the dirt.
“Run all you like!” she called after them lamely. “I know where you live!”
She squealed in frustration and turned to go back inside. Zane stood watching, a smile of genuine delight on his face.
“That was worth the money ten times over,” he said.
Lily reminded herself this man was a world-class assassin and she’d be better off not punching him in the face. Instead, she brushed past him and went to her room to change.
The mud-hurling children were the Eakharts from next door. There were eight of them and they seemed to have the exit covered at all hours, day and night. They’d even caught her going out the back once. Perhaps it had something to do with the three coppers Zane paid the children each time they got her. He said it was part of her training, being alert at all times and stealthy in her movements, but she suspected he just found it funny.
With her clothes changed, she exited the second-story window to avoid the Eakhart children.
Lily walked for nearly half an hour, making her way through narrow trash-ridden streets with houses that huddled close together as if for warmth, before she realized where she was going. It was the only place she could go, really, though she wasn’t happy about it. Her personal network of informants consisted of a confidence man who ran a low-stakes game on local shops, a woman who ran an upper-class brothel on the South End of town, and a delivery man who owed her a favor. She’d been in the city for nearly two years, and she’d made no real friends and only a handful of acquaintances. She had nothing resembling a connection in the magical world. Stealth and weapons came easily to her, but building the types of relationships that allowed for favors and the trade of information did not. Zane had made it clear he wasn’t happy with how she was progressing in this area. Which was likely the reason he’d given her this assignment.
As she walked, the space between the houses grew larger. Soon, thick old-growth trees provided her shade as she walked. The streets became quieter, too. Fewer children playing and more sharply dressed men hurrying primly along in silent straight lines. Having grown up poor, raised on a farm halfway across the country, Lily felt less at home in these wealthy neighborhoods. As a child, she’d been shy and awkward. She realized now that her poor, close-knit community had saved her from retreating even further into her shell, and she appreciated it.
Lily stopped in front of a small but handsome building with an unobtrusive sign that read Daria & Gilbert, Solicitors. The sign, like the rest of the building, was fresh and clean, as if a coat of paint had been applied that very morning. What it lacked in flair, it made up for with simple class. Lily took a deep breath and entered the building.
She walked past the woman at the desk with an unhurried confident gait, and the woman didn’t stop her. In her time with Zane, she’d learned that if you looked like you knew where you were going, people rarely questioned you. Even at a high-class solicitor’s office.
She made her way toward a small room at the back of the building and entered without knocking.
Peter sat behind a small, neat desk, a quill in his hand. He looked up with a start when the door opened. He looked exhausted.
His eyes widened when he saw Lily. He waved her inside and nodded toward the door, gesturing for her to close it. She almost asked if he was embarrassed to be seen with her, but that wouldn’t help her cause. She was here to ask for a favor, after all. She slid the door shut behind her.
Peter carefully set the quill down on the desk. Probably didn’t want to smudge his work. Paper wasn’t easy to acquire in any quantity, even for the rich.
“Nice to see you,” he said with a forced smile.
“And you,” she said.
There was an awkward pause.
Lily had heard tales of the mental connection supposedly shared by twins. The way they inherently understood each other and could communicate through the subtlest of movements, often not needing words at all. It wasn’t like that for her and Peter. Or, maybe it had been when they were very young. But as soon as school started, Peter had become concerned with friends, and she’d been the inconvenient girl always hanging around. It seemed little had changed. Though they lived in the same city, they hadn’t spoken in months.
In some ways, they were almost too similar. Both were smart, inquisitive, and didn’t like to rock the boat. They were both following the career paths that had been assigned based on their Tens, the assessment tests all ten-year-olds were required to take. He worked for a solicitor in the hopes of one day becoming a partner, and she’d followed the path that led her to join up with the assassin Zane Halloway. And though Peter had followed his own prescribed path without complaint, he didn’t approve that
she’d also followed hers. He thought she was a simple ferox’s apprentice. Lily could only imagine how he’d react if he learned what Zane Halloway was really training her to do.
“How’s the job?” she asked.
Peter gave a tired sigh, but his face relaxed as if he was happy to discuss the topic. He nodded toward the piece of paper on his desk. “It’s crazy, is what it is. I’ve spent the last two weeks pouring over records and histories, trying to determine if a certain minor lord is forty-fifth or forty-sixth in the line of succession. He’s paid hundreds of thrones to have us research this, for no reason other than to settle an argument with a rival. It’s maddening.”
“Sounds a bit like my line of work.”
He raised an eyebrow at that.
“Rich people, huh?” Lily asked with a grin.
When Peter grimaced, she knew she’d made a misstep. He thought she considered him too obsessed with wealth. Which she did.
“What brings you here?” he asked.
No need to draw this out. Her brother would appreciate bluntness.
“I need your help,” she said.
“Of course you do.”
Lily ignored the barb. She leaned against the wall behind her, trying to use her body language to change the mood of the room. She was generally pretty good at this, but Peter seemed immune. Maybe he’d grown impervious while they’d shared a womb.
“I need to know whether magical employment is documented in the public record.”
Peter sat up a bit straighter and pushed his glasses up his long nose. “Well, that is an intriguing question.” He sounded genuinely surprised.
Lily smiled at him. “You thought I was going to ask for help breaking in somewhere, didn’t you?” Ferox—even the normal kind—were known to break a law or two in the line of duty. That was part of the reason Peter didn’t approve of her profession.
He glanced toward the door. “Lily, please.” But she could tell the thought had at least crossed his mind. “What kind of employment records?”
“Apprenticeship papers.”
“Ah,” he said, growing more comfortable by the minute. “From what era?”
“Thirty to forty years ago. During the golden age, or just before it.”
Peter hopped up and went to the shelf on his back wall. He pulled down the thickest of the three books. “You might just be in luck.”
He set the book on his desk. His fingers flipped the pages quickly, moving over them with the air of familiarity a musician might share with an instrument, until he found the section he wanted. “This is interesting, because the laws around this have changed repeatedly over the years. The Abditus Society has always fought to keep their own records. And currently they have the right to do so.”
Lily frowned.
“There was a period of time when that was not the case,” Peter said, turning the book around so she could see it. He stabbed one of his long fingers toward the page. “There was a petition filed to make abditus apprenticeship records public about a hundred years ago. And surprisingly it passed.”
“What was the reasoning?” Lily asked.
“Prior to that, if an abditus came and set up shop somewhere, it was very difficult to validate his or her credentials. The only way to do so was to go to the Abditus Society and put in a request. It was a lengthy process. What finally cost the Society their privacy was the case of a man named Phillip Hader.”
Lily waited. No use rushing him in the telling of a story. She knew he’d get surly and clam up.
“Mr. Hader went to the Society to check the credentials of a man who claimed he could make a balm that would cure Hader’s wife of a persistent breathing ailment. The balm was not cheap, so Hader wanted to make sure it was on the up-and-up. About a week after putting in his request, he received a message to come back to the Society hall for important information about the abditus. When he arrived at the hall, he found the city watch waiting for him.”
Lily raised an eyebrow.
“Turns out, Hader was wanted in some far off city for a crime he’d committed twenty years before.”
“And inquiring at the Society put the law on his trail?”
Peter nodded. “The Society was checking more than just the credentials of their members. They were also investigating the background of anyone who inquired and happily collecting the bounty for anyone whose past wasn’t squeaky clean. Thing is, Hader wasn’t some commoner. He was a minor lord with an influential uncle.”
“Ha,” Lily said. “Serves the Abditus Society right. What happened to them?”
“While what they were doing wasn’t technically illegal, the magistrate decided the public interest would be better served by easier access to magical records. That law stood until ten years ago when a new law passed saying the Abditus Society could keep their own records going forward. But if the records you’re looking for are forty years old—”
“They’d still be in the public record?” Lily asked hopefully.
Peter nodded.
“Great. Tell me where to go.”
Peter pushed up his glasses again. If this all worked out, Lily promised herself she’d get him a new pair as a thank you gift.
“It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “You need to hire a solicitor to get the records for you.”
“You’re telling me the public can’t access the public records?”
“Yes, about twenty years ago, there was a case—”
“Peter, I don’t need to know the history.” She scratched her chin. “What’ll it cost me to hire you to do it?”
“I can’t. The hall keeps records, and if Daria or Gilbert asked—”
“Fine. Then help me break in.”
Peter smiled a sickly smile. “I knew it would come to that. I’m not helping you break in.”
“ But Peter—”
“I’m sorry, Lily.”
“Just give me your writ. I’ll tell them I’m a clerk working on your behalf.”
“Lily!” he said, a bit too loudly for the small office. He lowered his voice and said, “If this comes back on me, if Mr. Daria or Mr. Gilbert ask why I gave you my writ, I’d lose my job. I’m an apprentice, too. My bosses may not be ferox, but they will not hesitate to ruin lives.”
She scowled at him. “Fine. At least tell me where to find the records.”
He nodded. “Rear section of the northeast wing.”
“Thank you.” She turned to go.
“Lily,” he said. “Do me a favor. Don’t visit me at work again.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Zane worked his horse Pluck through the narrow streets, weaving around the people hurrying home to their families and the lamplighters rushing to illuminate the gaslights before night fell.
Pluck was a jet black stallion, sleek and strong, and—truth be told—a bit much for Zane’s needs. The creature drew attention to itself, which was something that could be deadly in Zane’s profession. He felt vaguely guilty using this world-class animal for such mundane tasks as carrying him to a late-night party at the Abditus Society’s Volst Hall.
He’d sent Lily out to develop her network of connections, a process the girl was fighting tooth and nail. In most respects, she was an ideal apprentice. A fast learner who took to most of the job-related tasks like she’d been doing them for years. And, God, the way she fought! Every training session with her was like a life and death duel. She never begged off or asked for a break, and she never cried for mercy when he demonstrated how to incapacitate a man. He dreaded the inevitable day when she would make her attempt on his life. Killing her would be a grim task. He hoped it was years away, and she was smart enough that it probably would be.
But the networking…she couldn’t seem to find the right approach. She came off either too strong or too subservient. He couldn’t help but blame himself.
While she was out building her network, Zane had been working his existing one. He’d had a hunch that the presence of Beth Farns might have attracted visiting abditus
from other cities. That hunch had proved accurate. Where there were visitors, there might be the opportunity for entry into the Volst Hall.
Through a blacksmith friend, he’d located an abditus visiting from the city of Laurn. Zane had done some work in Laurn and happened to be friendly with the city magistrate. Zane had paid the abditus, a man named Gale, a visit that afternoon. With the proper application of pressure, flattery, and alcohol, Zane had learned Gale was in town for the same reason all the other abditus were: to meet Beth Farns.
Gale had informed him Miss Farns was holding court every evening at Volst Hall. After the application of a little more pressure, a bit more flattery, and a lot more alcohol, Gale had agreed to let Zane be his guest at tonight’s dinner.
Zane had been in Volst Hall once before, and that had been to kill a man. He hadn’t used the main entrance on that moonless night.
Zane gave his name at the gate and was told to proceed through to the entrance where someone would be waiting to stable his horse. He urged Pluck forward and started down the curvy stone path, and he felt a pang of unease as the gate shut behind him.
Tall, elaborately carved hedges grew on both sides of the path, casting long shadows over the stone. As he made his way forward, the candles resting on the ground levitated to eye level, then descended and settled gently to the path after he passed. Zane shook his head. The wealth of the Society was absurd. The magical candles alone must have cost more than most of the homes in Zane’s neighborhood.
The hedges were carved into the likenesses of famous abditus. There was Gost. And Beverman. And Harriet Volst, the most famous of the lot and the woman after whom the hall was named. All Barnes abditus. He looked at the hedge to his right, and saw it was carved into the shape of Garrett Hans, the abditus who’d devised a thorn that could light the inside of a man on fire. He must have been lovely company. Zane decided these hedges were carved with magic. No way the Society would do actual labor when an overly elaborate and expensive magical solution would do just as well.
Zane rounded a bend and saw the hall. The sky was fully dark now—perhaps some time bending trick had made the journey down the path take longer than it should have, or maybe the darkness was magically induced. God, he hated magic.
