Our trunks waited on the docks, quickly taken upby porters at Pretoria’s direction and borne along as we approached the iron rails which guarded the berth from the crowds. Locals, clad in various combinations of tunics, trousers, skirts, and loose, off-shoulder shawls, offered new arrivals hotels and carriages and horses and tours, along with a dizzying array of wares and foods. Foreigners, ranging from bewildered to jovial to scowling at the chaos, bottlenecked at the dock’s open gates.
A woman fought her way through this throng and waved to us. She wore a long local tunic over trousers similar to ours, and her brown hair was wound into a dishevelled bun. Her cheeks were high and full of color—color which deepened fractionally as she took Pretoria’s hands and kissed her cheek.
“Welcome,” she said, a little breathless. She looked from Pretoria to me and added, “Adelaide Kerrie, though I am sure you know that already.”
“I do.” I smiled in greeting. “Tori has told me next to nothing of you and your compatriots.”
Pretoria tucked Adelaide’s arm through hers. “Ottilie does not like to know the details of our club’s activities. She will spend her time reading and staring at dusty relics, I imagine.”
“Club.” Adelaide repeated the word with a half-grin. She added in a low voice, nearly lost in the bedlam, “A rather timid way of describing the hope of the Entwined?”
That was where my patience for the meeting waned. I cleared my throat, nodding to the waiting porters, and we proceeded through the gate.
A private carriage carried us to Adelaide’s residence, which proved to be atop one of the bridges, with dark, frothy water of the southmost river rushing below. The steady passage of that water hummed through the stones and scented the air with a sweet cleanliness, despite the closeness of the city.
Adelaide was not the only one in residence—a dozen people greeted us between the street and the stairs, the parlor and the room we had been assigned. This was the nature of our travels, and, indeed, that of most of the other ‘guests.’ Adelaide’s home, perhaps I need not say, was a safehouse for Rogue Entwined.
I still did not classify myself as Rogue, at least not in the sense that Pretoria and Adelaide did. We were all hiding from the Harren Guild, or the Guilds of other more stringent nations, but theirs was an active roguishness, and mine was distinctly passive.
So over the next several weeks, while Pretoria, Adelaide, and an assemblage of their unruly brethren set about some scheme of theft or subterfuge, I explored Sarre Grand and read in the quiet of our room. I visited the city’s vast museums—under the close and corrupted supervision of the Seaussen, though this was before the invasion proper—and joined tours outside the city to ancient sites. These consisted of ruined temple complexes and lofty, crumbling fortresses.
It was at one of these sites where I, quite by chance, saw him.
Lewis Illing stood in the shade of a fortress wall, speaking with another officer. His pale khaki uniform was well-maintained but his boots were covered with dust. His pith helmet was under one arm and there was perspiration on his brow while, with his free hand, he passed a flask to his companion. Both wore Guild pips on their high collars.
Every thought in my head evaporated, along with any claim I had ever made that I had not, in fact, fallen for Lewis Illing.
A cluster of Lusterless soldiers passed between the Guild officers and me, followed by the cough and roar of a canvas-clad truck.
When the truck had passed only one figure remained. Lewis watched me with a startled furrow in his brow, and the flask forgotten in his hand.
A fragment of sense returned to me and I nodded, stiffly, towards the shelter of a stand of trees. Then I set off, endeavoring to put one foot in front of the other with dignity and grace.
I stumbled on a rock. A nearby gentleman in a boater hat and a blindingly white linen suit happily caught me, his hands lingering and his smile too wide.
“Whoa there, now,” he said. “Why, you are far too pretty to be here alone, miss.”
I ‘accidentally’ stepped on his foot. He let me go, more in consternation than pain.
“She is not alone,” Lewis’s familiar voice said. His arm came through mine and he touched the brim of his helmet—now returned to his head—at the man in the linen suit.
The touch of Lewis’s muscular arm did nothing to subdue the conflict inside me. Increasingly flustered and irritated with myself, I was grateful for the shade under the trees as we moved on.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him in a low voice.
“What has Pretoria dragged you into now?” he asked at the same time.
He had let go of me and stepped a pace away, facing me under the shade of the leaves. A sea breeze rustled over our heads.
I shrugged in answer to his question.
He frowned, and answered mine. “Officially, I am on loan to the Harren Settlement Office, via the Guild’s agreement with the General Army.” His pale eyes searched my face, quietly assessing and concerned. “Unofficially, I am guarding stuffy tombs and securing antiquities for the Guild.”
The simplicity with which he confessed this no-doubt confidential truth made me raise my brows.
“How adventurous,” I observed. “What does the Guild want with Sarren antiquities?”
Lewis shrugged. The gesture was so casual, so common, it made our unexpected meeting feel all the more surreal. “Wealth and prestige, same as anyone else. Do you truly not know why Pretoria is here?”
