A faint smile crossed Leena’s lips. She leaned forward eagerly, the teacup tinkling on her knee. “No information comes for free.”
A pause.
“She learns quickly.” His tone was dry.
Mr. St. Silas stood up abruptly from his chair and walked toward the mantel. For a moment there was no sound except the crackling of the burning logs.
“What question do you have?” he finally said into the fire, his tone carefully indifferent.
“I beg your pardon?”
He kept his back turned. “I want to know about Lady Hargreaves. Ask me something in return.”
Leena had a dawning sense that this request was wrestled out of him, that he was not used to making concessions, and she felt a surge of triumph.
Leena tried carefully not to show her hand. She took another sip of her cooling tea. “Tell me about the Wake.”
It was a stab in the dark. She was still unsure if the Wake was a product of fevers or a real, tangible thing, but she would know for certain one way or the other—if not for her mother’s sake, then her father’s.
“Your secret first, madam.” Mr. St. Silas turned, and she felt once more triumphant. That he didn’t look perplexed by her question could only mean that this Wake wasnota figment of her imagination.
She cleared her throat. Talking to his back was much easier than when he fully faced her; then she had to contend with the sharp intelligence of his eyes, and there was no hiding behind semi-truths and half-lies.
She weighed her words carefully. “The ghost that haunted Lord Hargreaves was indeed that of his wife. She didn’t die of a wasting illness. She…” Leena hesitated, feeling a creep of shame for revealing His Lordship’s grief.
When she fled His Lordship’s employment and began working instead as a laundress, all the Wardens were cruel and quick to punish her for the smallest infractions. Working for His Lordship had been a completely different experience. He was a steady employer, not quick to rail against his servants, and she had never forgotten the unwavering way the phantom had followed him. As if his longing for his dead wife kept a part of her trapped on this soil. It wasunnatural.Unholy.
It was the first phantom she’d ever seen.
She’d initially noticed the murky figure when she rose from a night of illness after fainting in the estate gardens.
It was a woman in a soaking dress, hair dripping, lips tinged blue, and bare feet that left no wet prints on the floor. No one else had noticed this woman trailing behind Lord Hargreaves, and Leena had learned very quickly not to ask.
“Continue,” Mr. St. Silas demanded, no longer hiding his impatience.
She didn’t immediately answer, a part of her still missing in the past.
“Drowned,” Leena finally replied into the still room, that single word echoing like water droplets in a cave. “Her pockets were filled with rocks.”
He absorbed the information hungrily. “That’s why they lied about the cause of her death.” Mr. St. Silas’s brows furrowed as if rapidly working through a puzzle. Watching him carefully once more, Leena wondered why a tragic family affair would interest him to this extent. Surely he had athousandbetter secrets.
“I believe it is your turn now, sir,” Leena challenged after a long interim.
Mr. St. Silas sat down again, folding his arms over the hard planes of his chest. “The Wake is a group of aristocrats that tends to work in the shadows, dealing in all manner of…business.”
“What do they have to do with prisoners?” Leena asked, her own hunger now showing. She thought of her baba. Why else, as her mother had warned, would thisWaketake him?
Mr. St. Silas played this game too well. Now it was his turn to drag out the silence to torture. Finally, his response came, slow and calculated. “There is a booming business involved in trading prisoners, both across Morland and…to other continents. Most aristo families have not safeguarded their wealth sufficiently, so they must find other ways to restore their family coffers. Smuggling prisoners out of Newtorn Prison and…selling them…is extraordinarily profitable these days.”
Leena’s mouth went dry, and a wave of nausea rolled through her stomach.
“Who do they sell the prisoners to?” Leena edged forward in her seat in agitation.
“I believe I have met my end of the bargain, Miss Al-Sayer—surely you must agree?” Mr. St. Silas glanced away from her and toward the timepiece attached to his waistcoat, a habit Leena noticed he regularly displayed. “If you would like more information, then you must be willing to trade another secret in turn.”
Fury burned Leena’s face like a kiss.
“What do you want to know?” she spat through gritted teeth.
