Feargus

  After meeting with Kavelin that morning, I returned to my room at the brothel to find a wooden crate with a few bottles of Hockberry wine and Hocks spirits. The note card said:

  Stop doing dumb things,

  and you can keep your favour.

  It was signed with Everleigh’s modified treble clef.

  So, I packed up my belongings, told Tanis I had to go on leave again, and made for my cabin in the woods not too far from the city. I unloaded my new stash of alcohol, installed the new lock I’d picked up from the blacksmith, and stuffed a few new snacks in the nightstand.

  All right, mates, so it might have been a fun few days, but the problem was—it had been a few days. Six days without checking in on RAM, Faust or Alexander, or even Ivana. I’d been naughty and I knew it. Was I panicked? Aye, I was panicked. But was I panicking? No.

  Three of those days, I could explain away easily. “Why, I was following their wagon back to Oskari, of course. Business as usual. Rhian grumped, Strauss brooded, Michael was there.” But where was I for three more days? I’d have to hold on to that question. First, I needed information. What did they know? What have they heard? How much had I actually missed? The safest place to start was V. So after dropping off a few more things and locking up, I ran to the Widow’s Peak.

  “I was beginning to think Derek took you to the wilderness and left you there,” Ivana said after a quick hug and a kiss. “But seriously, it’s good you’re here so I can give you the heads-up. Everybody knows you were partying at the Gander all week. I think you’re in trouble.”

  And here I was really hoping to be able to answer, “Why hasn’t anyone seen you for six days?” with, “I’m just that good.” But at least I knew what I was walking into.

  “Also, Councilwoman Kelly’s here for some reason, she’s at Alexander’s with Zelda. I don’t think she’s here because of your absence, though. Just bad timing.”

  “All right, Kelly’s not so bad. It’ll be good to see her. What else?”

  “Helena Varis was turned.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, Lidia has an infiltrator now, so that’s a new variable for your friends.”

  A new variable? Listen—what happened to Helena Varis was entirely our faults. We collectively messed up. I couldn’t warn her, and RAM had also chosen to withhold information about the Anima and Lidia. Now, I don’t know how good her counter-telepathy training was, but Helena Varis was an excellent warrior, and had she been in the know, she may have been able to solve our problem much sooner. She also could have gone with RAM to Istok. Like I said, in hindsight we all had regrets, and that failure would inform how we’d make certain other decisions in the future.

  “Stracha’s Steed.” I had a sit on the cot. “Poor Varis.”

  Ivana pressed her lips together. “It’s rough. But if you ask me, she may be disciplined enough to handle it. The few times I met her, she seemed sort of empty. The problem will more likely be her loyalty to Lidia.”

  “Poor Michael, too,” I mused, mostly to myself.

  V nodded noncommittally.

  I looked to her then. “Why do I feel like there’s more?”

  “Well,” she said, “the missing villagers are back.”

  “There’s some good news.”

  “Sure, except Lidia’s turned them all, and your friends don’t seem to know yet.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. They’ve been saying Rhian rescued them and killed the kidnapper, but it seems unlikely without facing off against Lidia. Unless Lidia wanted her to rescue them.”

  “Why would she?”

  “She’ll usually offer someone in the group an ultimatum or a moral dilemma. It’s a bit early for that, but like I said, everything feels different this time.”

  I just shook my head. “Right. What else?”

  “Rhian’s gone.”

  “V, why didn’t you start with that?”

  “Because you needed to hear everything else, and I didn’t want you running away. She hasn’t been seen since the villagers returned.”

  “What are Strauss and Michael doing about it?”

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  “Well, they’re both still in town, so, nothing as far as I can tell.”

  “She’s fine, then.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “First of all, I’d know if she were dead.”

  “How can you say that if she’s never been dead?”

  “I just can. Second of all, if she were in trouble, Strauss and Michael wouldn’t be doing nothing.”

  V didn’t seem convinced, but it wasn’t her fault she didn’t understand the bond we all had.

  “Oh—that reminds me,” she added. “The priest is preparing a funeral for the missing boy they rescued from Istok.”

  Missing boy? I wondered if that’s who Rhian was talking to upstairs in the Fire House. “Ah, mate—what happened?”

  “The boy in her story always represents Alexander, and she typically turns him.”

  “But not this time?”

  Ivana shrugged.

  “Thanks, V.” I stood from the cot and gave her a quick kiss. “We’ve got some lost time to make up for, but I’ve gotta go get spanked first.”

  So, Alexander and Faust, and now Kelly, knew about my week of debauchery. Who snitched, you ask? Tanis? Highly unlikely. It could have been Kavelin, but I doubted it. I’ve seen that desperate look on his face before. He was one of us. Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be manipulated by someone else later, but—for now, I’d place my bets on half the city and Vivienne Delaterre. That’s the problem with agents who were their agents and not our agents. We needed more agents.

  I braced myself before entering the estate. It wasn’t every day a foreign Councilwoman showed up in another territory.

  Peter met me at the door, and I tucked my shirt and laced up my vest on the way to the library.

  All right, I know I should have been thinking about how much trouble I was about to be in, but I have to say: seeing that portrait of Zack above the mantle killed me every time. Half the territory was looking for the man, half the territory didn’t want to wake him. Little did they know, I was over at the Law’s place every night singing songs and talking about our feelings.

  “There he is,” Kelly said. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can we?”

  “Correct.” I grinned, and, walking past a stern-looking Faust and Alexander on the couch, I went to sit on the arm of Kelly’s wingback chair. “And I’m not gonna say it’s your fault for not deploying Rhian with me, but it’s entirely your fault for not deploying Rhian with me.”

  Kelly laughed, Alexander smirked, and Faust spoke next.

  “You’ve arrived just in time, too. Davina and I have to return to Palisade shortly, but first I'll need you to come with me to the village. We can discuss your unapproved vacation along the way.”

  That’s funny, we didn’t even get approved vacations.

  “Only if we must,” I replied.

  Faust flicked her eyebrows at me, which was to say, “We must.”

  I was itching to know why Kelly was in Amalia, but I figured they’d want updates first. I was wrong. Alexander had been keeping an eye on RAM while I was away. As for Rhian, I was told she was living in the forest for some unknown reason, but Alexander reassured me she was safe.

  With that out of the way, Kelly tucked her short hair behind her ears and shifted in the chair. “Look, Gus, I came to speak with you personally because I’d never actually been to Amalia, for one.”

  I chuckled. “No joke?”

  Kelly shook her head. “But also, this is the longest you’ve been away from Palisade for one job, and I wanted to check in on you, and in a roundabout way, on Rhian, too. Now you’ve had a chance to get settled in and understand what you’re up against, is there anything you need from us?”

  I’d been giving this some thought, mates. What would the natural progression of RAM’s quest to slay Lidia look like? Well, Rhian wouldn’t want to stop the slaying at Lidia for one. So what would she do? She’d arrange a mass casualty situation. Rhian loved mass casualty situations. My sister was efficient like that. Now, what would an Anima mass casualty situation require—well, it’d require the Anima to all be in one place, and I could think of at least one place, and then—

  “Aye, I need fire-powder and an engineer.”

  Alexander paused mid-puff.

  “The idea, Agent Finlay, is for us to observe how your companions choose to deal with the Anima, not for you to decide for them, and lay the cobbles while you’re at it,” Faust explained.

  “I understand the idea. But it’s not me deciding. I’m only asking for what Rhian will need for Rhian’s plan. By the time she conceives it, there may not be time to make arrangements. That’s not a methodology issue. That's a logistics issue. So if your concern is their approach, then I’m telling you: I know what Rhian will want to do, and she’ll need fire-powder and an engineer.”

  Alexander resumed smoking while Faust and Kelly shared a loaded glance.

  “Fire-powder is one thing,” Kelly said. “But a whole engineer—“

  I rubbed my beard because it felt nice, and it made me appear thoughtful. “Isn’t Blanchett’s kid a tinkerer? There ought to be someone in her skill circle you could recruit.”

  “Her circle? Adeline Blanchett is—“ Faust hesitated. “Actually, Davina—do you think?”

  While I waited for everybody to arrive at my destination, I had another glance over at Zack above the fireplace. Oh, and that reminds me, folks: I did eventually track Zack down here in the present day. He said the world was called World before he named it Auditoria.

  That’s why we call it the world. Go figure.

  Kelly pulled one leg up on the chair. “I’m thinking it could work. Adelaide would be tickled to not have to look at her anymore. We’d be doing her a favour, and we could use one of those.”

  I didn’t see my parents often, but I couldn’t imagine them not wanting to look at me. Never mind doing her mother a favour, we’d be doing this Adeline lass a favour by the sounds of things. But what’s important is: I knew Adeline Blanchett was handy with fire-powder. I knew she and Rhian had become close. They’d schemed together, broken into the asylum together, and managed the consequences together. If she could slot in with Rhian, she’d slot in with the others just fine.

  Kelly and Faust had a conversation with their eyes that went a lot like, “It really could work,” and, “Aye, it really could,” and then they both looked at me.

  “Anything else?” Kelly asked.

  “Aye.” I turned to Faust. “Does Andrei Strauss have a middle name?”

  The Councilwoman cocked her head. “It’s Isaak.”

  “All right,” I said. “That’s it, then.”