Leena met his glances steadily even if her heart was heavy withuncertainty. Every time St. Silas’s eyes returned to her, they flickered with annoyance—No,Leena thought jarringly,not annoyance,but with a sort of unwelcome realization, as if he was seeing her for the first time.
As if he was unearthing her.
It was anold Morish proverb:
Silence before the wolves approach is better than the silence afterward.
The next morning, as Leena waited for St. Silas outside the confession room, she expected his punishment. With a heavy heart, she anticipatedit.
None came.
In fact, St. Silas regarded her with only indifferent civility; that odd look he’d given her in the carriage the previous night had completely dissipated from his face by morning. He acted as if Leena holding a gun on him was a commonplace matter, not worth even a mention.
She knew without a doubt that it was a charade.
St. Silas didn’t forgive. He tended to his wrath like he tended to all his business—quietly, watchfully, until the perfect moment arose. Then he struck like a predator hidden between the vines.
Leena would hold her breath until then.
St. Silas’s hair was wet, the thick strands slightly curling at theedges. He still wore his overcoat, the heavy leather boots flecked with mud, and he held a riding crop in his left hand. A newspaper was tucked beneath his elbow.
He did not waste a moment on polite greetings. “The morning confessions are canceled.”
This was unprecedented. She didn’t dare ask for a free day, knowing St. Silas would never allow this.Especiallywhen tomorrow she was due to see Rami. She did not want to remind him of this, especially when she had changed the date without asking for permission.
At her surprised expression, he continued, “There have been riots in Ridgeways.”
“Riots?”she said incredulously.
All the city factories were located in Ridgeways, the ever-present soot blackening the bricks until it left the district looking burned. That was where Leena used to work before entering her contract with St. Silas; she’d spent days there bent over scalding laundry basins.
St. Silas dropped the newspaper into her hands. The front page blared:
Commander Yosif Takes the Capital.
Algaraan Malik in Chains.
The War Is Over.
Leena stared dumbly at it, the words blurring in front of her eyes. The war was over? Just like that? The same war that had seen her family forsaken, thrown to foreign lands, her mother buried in strange soil?
It seemed impossible to Leena that it should end with so little prelude, but the article went on to state that Commander Yosif and his fighters had breached the capital, imprisoned the noble families that had not managed to escape the city, and found the Malik hiding in an oil barrel. A few sentences tagged onto the end announcedthat Commander Yosif would be giving a speech the following morning to outline his plans for a new government.
“Are congratulations in order, Miss Al-Sayer, or commiserations?” There was no real interest in St. Silas’s voice as he watched her with his head tilted, hands in his pockets.
He knew her opinions on the war and had heard her whispered words of encouragement to the rebel captain captured within the depths of Newtorn Prison. He knew that treason lay in her heart, her sentiments staunchly anti-monarch and anti-King, but Leena would not give him any more access to her thoughts than he already possessed. Especially the kind of thoughts that would see her hanging from the gallows.
Stiffly, Leena folded the paper and handed it back to him, although she longed to read it again when she was not so stunned. Most of all, she longed to safeguard it as proof that even though she had been born with war in her veins, it did not always have to be that way. That there was peace in her future, as there was for her homeland. That shewouldhave peace.
It took effort to keep her face neutral in front of St. Silas’s watchful stare, and the small muscles around her eyes ached from it. She circumvented his question with one of her own. “Why are there riots in Ridgeways?”
“Can you not guess?” St. Silas’s brows rose faintly, vaguely indicating the newspaper. “Inspiration is a dangerous thing.”
Leena understood perfectly.
Still, she wanted to hear it confirmed from St. Silas’s mouth. She wanted to hear him say that all the small changes she had noticed lately taking root in Golborne would lead tosomething.That these protests would not falter and be extinguished like her father’s hopes of a union. “You think the Mors will one day overthrow their aristos?”
St. Silas must have sensed that Leena was rummaging for his own views on the matter. His smile was brief, a grim incline of the mouth. “Either way, Miss Al-Sayer, I will profit.”
