Wake returned it twofold.
I cleared my throat, patting a few stray hairs back into line. “If you are finished?”
Wake ignored me and pulled me onwards, not towards one of the grand houses, but into an alleyway behind them.As the miscreants trooped off in pursuit of debauchery we strode into the darkness, away from the light.
We travelled a great deal further than I expected, and by the time Wake knocked at a back door, I was thoroughly turned about.
“Lord Stillwell has rented a town home?” I observed.
Wake nodded. The door opened. He exchanged quiet words with a bleary-looking scullery maid, then led me through the innards of Lord Stillwell’s manor until, through a cramped servants’ stair, we emerged into a dark study.
“We will wait here,” Wake said, turning on a desk lamp. For an instant, I might have sworn there was something strange about the way the light chased the shadows from his face. But my eyes were burning with fatigue, and I discarded the notion.
I moved further into the room, scanning the walls. There was a large painting in an unexpectedly lavish golden frame—the rest of the space was spare, with clean lines, no clutter, and not a book out of line.
The painting depicted the open green of the South Quarter, with the river in the background and the Old Citadel burning on the horizon. Armies of humans and Entwined clashed in a romanticized motif of flashing sabers, lines of pluming rifles, and a carpet of the dead and dying.
In the center of it all, a rendition of the young General Baffin held Queen Alessandra by her long black hair and looked at the stormy sky, as if in thanks, or in prayer. In his other hand he held his sword, the very one I had seen at the museum. The sword that had beheaded the last Entwined Empress.
Unease stirred in my belly. Stillwell, despite his station, had never struck me as a particularly passionate participant in the rivalry between humans and Entwined. He had flirted outrageously with my mother, back in the day, and even if he had not been an ally, he certainly had not been a devout foe.
I cast the rest of the office a second, more lingering look. Stillwell was obsessed with antiquities, but everything in this room, aside from the painting, was notably modern.
Slowly, I looked at Mr. Wake. He had situated himself ina comfortable chair and, as our eyes met, he cocked the pistol in his hand.
“This is not Stillwell’s house,” I determined.
“No.” He grinned and, with that expression, the thug I had known vanished. The smile was mindless in its malice, the smile of a madman on the gallows, and it sent a chill down my spine. “Sit down. The Grand General will be home soon.”
I charged him. The gun went off and I twisted, barely evading the path of the bullet before I seized his wrist in one hand and slammed his elbow with the other.
I heard, and felt, the joint crack. A shock of victory shot through me.
It died as quickly as it came. I looked down at where my hand still clutched his exposed wrist, where our skin connected, and saw my fingers had gone grey.
“You’re Entwined.” The words stuttered from my lips as all my strength, all my energy, fled my body. Leeching. A Silver’s Leeching. With it went my shock, and any wonderment I might have had at the alliance of a mage with General Baffin.
Wake only grunted in reply, prying off my locked fingers and shaking out his supposedly broken arm. Another crack and it refitted itself, leaving Wake whole and uninjured.
I, however, could not move. My blood was too slow, my vision blurred. The amount of energy—my stolen energy—required to heal a break was not small, and this, dear reader, is my excuse for what happened next.
I fainted, quite dramatically, onto the floor of Grand General Baffin’s study.
***
I awoke with a start and a shriek; my mind still embedded in the moment before I collapsed. But I was drowning now, drowning in the taste of oak, smoke, and spirits. It burned in my eyes and nose and sent me into a fit of coughing.
“A waste of good whiskey,” a male voice muttered.
I swiped at my eyes and discovered my hands had been bound in front of me. I stared at them, my breathing ragged,my eyes blurry and burning, then registered the men standing over me.
Grand General Baffin was dressed in his opera garb, though he had shed his coat and hat. He stood with an empty bottle in hand, the last few drops pattering onto the rug beside my ear.
“General,” I managed. Despite the raspiness of my voice, I sounded unruffled. I might have been proud of myself on any other occasion. But just then I could feel no victory, no confidence, and certainly no hope.
No, Mr. Wake did not work for Lord Stillwell. I had been deceived and had bargained myself right into the hands of my kin’s greatest enemy. Worse, I had convinced Wake I knew where the artifact was.
Yet Wake himself was Entwined. A Silver, given his Leeching abilities. A Silver working for General Baffin.
