She waves me off irritably, rounding the desk and dropping bodily into the chair. “You’d have a better chance if there weren’t ten charges of treason against you,” she says, leveling her gaze. “The entire city guard has been looking for you. The city is in an uproar that you conspired to kidnap the Chancellor and the council is demanding answers.”
“I made no effort to hide,” I tell her honestly. “I was at the mansion all night.”
Evie eyes me ruefully. “That isnotwhat Calloway told me. In fact, he seemed to imply that you’d taken your skiff directly into the Storven Sea, never to return. Something about a life goal to become a pirate?”
I press my lips together to keep from laughing. I can only imagine the joy with which Cal spun that story. He’s always had a flair for the dramatics. “Just a miscommunication between friends.”
Evie makes a disbelieving sound, a reluctant smile playing at her lips. She is rare, someone who was born on the streets of Nadjaa and then never left. She stayed, working her way up from the slums to be a successful merchant. Though she resides in the Hithe district, the wealthiest part of the city that surrounds the port, she chose to run for office in the Barrow. A small strip of land that protrudes into the Bay of Reflection, where orphans with swollen bellies run the streets and despite all the splendor of Nadjaa, life is still hard. It’s where Evie was born and even with everything she has now, she’s never forgotten the people that gave her life.
It’s this propensity for fairness and kindness that brings me to her now. I will have to answer for my crimes eventually, but I can’t do it before Denver returns. There isn’t enough time.
“I need you to put the council off.”
“I figured this wasn’t a friendly visit,” she mutters, resigned. She throws her slippered feet on the desk and a few spare papers flutter to the ground. “You attacked a council member in front of half the city. How long do you expect I’ll be able to put them off? If Denver were here to speak on your behalf, it might be possible. Has he truly been taken?”
I tug at the collar of my shirt. Before leaving, I exchanged the soothing leather of training clothes for the heavy fabrics favored by the business class. They are suffocating, making my limbs feel glued to my body. I resist the urge to throw my arms up and burst the seams. Once a beast, always a beast.
“He has. The Achijj of Yen Girene abducted him while he was coming home from visiting the Xamani villages.”
Evie scrubs at her eyes and a pang of guilt shoots through me at the dark circles there. She most likely spent her night here in the dank walls of the council house dealing with my mess, instead of celebrating the moon with her fiancé.
“To what end?” she asks. It’s a fair question, one that I’m not entirely sure I can answer. It seems unwise to start ranting about prophecies and magic to someone as pragmatic as Evie, even if she’s always harbored a soft spot for me.
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a power grab for the city.”
She mulls this over. “There have been rumors that the Praeceptor has been moving against various warlords. Silently overthrowing them and grabbing more land around the Boundary. Do you think this has something to do with it?”
Dread coils in my stomach at the mention of the Praeceptor. I’ve wondered the same thing in the darkest parts of night. I arrange my face into one of disinterested boredom. “It could,” I hedge noncommittally.
She narrows her eyes. “Shaw, we need Denver. Jayan has never approved of the peaceful running of this city and already has half the council whipped into a frenzy, calling for war on whoever’s done this. It’s just the excuse he needs to wage war on neighboring warlords, to grab for more land and more power. Nadjaa’s peace only lasts as long as the people vote for it.”
My chest tightens. Nadjaa’s peace and law is a novelty in Ferusa and a new one at that. It still has its skeptics, Dark Worlders suspicious of giving up even a bit of freedom for the good of the whole. Everything Denver has worked for teeters on the edge of a cliff. His permanent disappearance will be Nadjaa’s death.
“Maybe it would be better to get the city guard involved,” Evie muses, “There are men qualified to deal with this sort of thing. There are protocols and procedures the council must adhere to in order to ensure the safety of the city.”
I press my lips together and breathe savagely through my nose. “It is those exact protocols that will keep them from doing what needs to be done. I adhere to no such morals.”
Evie regards me sadly. “Shaw, you don’t have to do this alone. You’re just a boy.”
I gaze back stonily. “We both know that I am not just a boy.”
I feel cold, having alluded to what Evie has never mentioned. Since I met her, she has never treated me as anything other than another mischievous teen, warm but stern. But if I am to earn her help in holding off the council, she needs to know who I really am.
She removes her feet from her desk and sits straight in the chair, raising herself to her full height. She nods once. “Very well. Five days, Shaw. And then you face the council. I can only hope that when you do, Denver is by your side.”
I know better than to argue with the time I’ve been given, even if the brevity leaves me breathless. Five days to break into an unbreakable fortress and save both Mirren and Denver without getting us all killed. Or worse.
“Go out the way you came,” Evie says, a clear dismissal.
I nod. “Thank you, Evie. Truly.”
She turns toward the window, staring out at the sprawling expanse of the city. “Don’t thank me, Shaw. I fear we are only delaying the inevitable.”
ChapterThirty-One
Mirren
“This isn’t a good idea,” Anrai says doubtfully.
