I was deposited in a chair. Light and a matted tangle of hair blinded me as the bag was hauled off, and I faced my intended killer.
I pushed my hair away with bound hands and squinted.
The infamous face of Incarnadine peered back. She bent over before me, hands on her knees as she examined me in turn. Her eyes were an uncanny green, green as southern waters under a warm sun. Her hair was a simple brown, pulled up under a bowler hat. She wore a practical walking ensemble in a slightly faded plum, the jacket currently unbuttoned to show a plain blouse. She was, according to the papers, around forty-five, but looked younger—a gift of her soft, round cheeks.
I met her gaze until the moment stretched too long. Discomfited, I leaned back in the chair and glanced at the other occupants of the room.
There were half a dozen. I recognized one from the papers, a Zealot lieutenant known as Mr. Graves. I had taken the name for popular nonsense but now that I saw him in person, with his pale skin, heavy shadows under his eyes, and thickly muscled upper body, I found it apt.
“Rushforth,” Incarnadine muttered, straightening. “He wants me to kill a Rushforth. Not that I am opposed, but I do tire of our Grand General pretending I am his lapdog.”
“You couldnotkill me,” I suggested. I found I felt particularly brazen, in a numb, harried sort of way that made my blood light and my wits shallow. “Are these hangings and such not overdone? Whipping a dead horse, as it were.The masses are desensitized. My suggestion would be not to involve death, though I understand if you feel a casual beating might be necessary. I make a fine ransom. And do you know what money buys? Guns! Explosives. Better hideouts.” At the last, I looked meaningfully around the room, which was a bare cellar that stank of floodwaters.
“No, I want to kill you,” Incarnadine replied, her voice so calm and cool even Madge might have shivered. She continued to take me in, seeming particularly unimpressed by my rumpled gown. “It’s not often I have one of your kind in reach.”
“My kind? I hate the Guild as much as you do.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“I’m a Rogue. I am trying to stay away from them.”
“You are the worst of your kind,” she replied. I had struck a nerve and found myself regretting that under the intensity of her glare. “You, assured of your value, the value of your power and your blood. Yourworth. And yet you run and hide, withholding that power.”
“You sound like a Separatist,” I said.
She smiled, her eyes lightening a fraction. “I was one, for a time. But they consider themselves above a powerless human, even if I was born onto the same blood they were.”
I paused. “Pardon me?”
“I was born to Guild parents,” Incarnadine stated. Her people looked on, unsurprised. This was no secret, it seemed, within her underworld. “But I have no power. A failed experiment of their monstrous breeding regime. So, I know you. I know your kind. I know your family. We are two sides of the same coin, you and I. You, born with power, I, without. You, elevated, I, cast aside. But at least I have done something with my life instead of hiding.”
“Bombing civilians is truly something to aspire to,” I snapped. My skipping, agitated mind slowed with these revelations, the complexities of the situation mounting.
The head of the Zealots was not simply the figurehead of ignorant discontents. She had lived inside the Guild. She was informed, intentional, and her crusade was personal.
I could already feel a noose around my neck.
“We do not bomb civilians,” Incarnadine replied sternly. “Separatists do.”
“I thought we were being honest with one another.”
“We were, and it was cathartic,” Incarnadine said, letting out a short breath. “You will be the most noteworthy Entwined I’ve ever killed.”
“I am honored,” I said, but wavered. My bravado was failing—I had to get it back. Rallying, I lifted my chin and asked, “How am I to be murdered?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I have considerable stakes in the venture.”
Incarnadine tilted her head slightly to one side. “You are one of those, I see. All jest and bravado, until the noose is around your throat.”
Her words elicited a rise of terror, momentarily overwhelming. But my expression did not waver.
There was a knock at the cellar door. One of Incarnadine’s lackeys opened it and exchanged a word, then closed the door again and handed a note to Incarnadine.
She stepped away from me and read the missive. She turned partially away, but I caught a flicker of irritation in her eyes. The light from the lamp cut across her face and throat. She would have made an imperious mage, if that throat had not been devoid of threads.
A greater sense of dread came upon me. But up through that mire swam one clear thought. One possibility of, if not salvation, perhaps division, and reprieve.
