Leena felt suddenly lightheaded. What was the connection between Lord Avon, St. Silas, the Wake, and her father? Why had Mama delivered her a warning without any explanation about how Leena should act onit?
She swiveled to look at St. Silas, but she could not read his expression behind the mask.
“Who do they trade the prisoners to?” Leena asked, afraid of the answer already.
“I have also not been privy to that information. I merely follow instructions.”
There was a moment of tense silence.
“Any further questions?” St. Silas asked Leena, his exposed mouth upturned at her with a glimmer of interest.
She addressed Basil Richards again. “Do you know if an Ali Al-Sayer is a prisoner who has been traded by the Wake? He is Algaraan, less than middling height with black hair. He cannot speak Morish very well, but he has been sentenced to life imprisonment for attempting to start a union.”
“I don’t know an Ali Al-Sayer,” Basil muttered. “But then, I don’t bother to learn their names.” An echo of the words of the Warden of Newtorn Prison.
Leena felt an anger so potent it drew stars behind her eyelids. She had just that morning learned an Algaraan word for this sort of anger—the kind that dragged ships of despair behind it:thalam.
“Have you now finished?” St. Silas asked her. “Basil and I still have to discuss what he chose to divulge about me to his new friends. Will this be a lengthy conversation, do you think, Basil?” St. Silas didn’t acknowledge her stiff nod, nor the shudder that went through Basil’s large frame. “Wait for me outside the cathedral. The rest won’t be a fit sight for you.”
She leveled one last look of disgust at Basil before weaving through the statues and back to the exit. Her palms dampened. She knew exactly what would happen behind her back, and she didn’t flinch even when the gunshot sounded after a few long minutes, the noise ringing like another drumbeat of the festival.
Leena ripped themask from her face the moment she reached the street outside the cathedral, leaning on a tree to catch her breath. Revelers passed her, their laughter and joy a discordant sound in her ears. She felt like a phantom caught in the world of the living.
A tug on her shoulder drew her attention. She looked up to find herself staring into brown eyes the exact same shade as her own.
“Rami!” she cried.
He didn’t wear a mask, and it was clear that his health had improved since she’d seen him last. Tall, wiry, with a dimple appearing on his cheek, he had returned to the boy she’d always known. She wasn’t supposed to see him until tomorrow and had been counting the days, so this felt like an unexpected blessing.
Except he glowered at her, his brows like slashes on his face.
“Come with me,” he growled, tugging her into an empty alleyway. His right sleeve was pinned to his shoulder, and Leena had sudden images of the night Rami lost the arm. Her brother swaying on the threshold—I lost control of the horse, Leena—then flashes ofthe grizzled doctor tutting under his breath as he examined the mangled limb.Gotta come off.
Rami had been only fourteen.
Baba had forced Leena outside during the procedure, but she’d hidden beneath Rami’s window, unable to bear the thought of her younger brother alone with the surgeon’s steel. She must’ve soaked in all Rami’s screams that day, for somewhere in the empty chambers of her body they still reverberated.
Leena shrugged away from Rami’s grip, glancing over her shoulder for St. Silas. He had still not returned.
“What—” she began, but Rami interrupted her with a quick wave of his hand.
“You lied to me,” he ground out. Rami had been running with the Black Coats ever since Baba had been taken away, and he’d adopted their quick, sarcastic speech. He even wore his hair like them, slightly long at the back, tied with a leather string. “You said you had found employment as a nanny. I had to learn from a damned Black Coat that my sister is now working for the most notorious man in Golborne.”
Leena urgently glanced over her shoulder again. “I understand your anger, but I’ll see you tomorrow and explain everything.”
Rami jammed his hand into his hair. “I have a fight for the Black Coats tomorrow. You will explain everythingnow.”
“No, Rami, I can’t. I will try to come find you the day after tomorrow, in the morning.” Leena wasn’t sure if St. Silas would accept the change in date, but pushed on despite her worries. “Wait for me until then.”
“I won’t go anywhere without you,” he growled. “Whatever the Saint is blackmailing you with doesn’t matter. We can outrun him.”
Leena laughed mirthlessly, memories of all the men St. Silas had butchered roaring in her mind. “I am indentured to him, Rami. Wecannotoutrun him, and we cannot fight him. This is my life now.”
St. Silas’s smooth voice cut through the alleyway. “Ah, this must be yourspecial friend.”
Leena whipped back to look at St. Silas; he was no longer wearing his mask. She noticed the flecks of Basil’s blood staining his shoes.
Rami—always impulsive—stepped in front of her and unsheathed the sword he carried by his hip in one fluid motion. Leena silently cursed his stupidity. Of course he would reach for his sword as his first line of action.
