Liren cuts me off with a loud laugh. “Oh, he’snevergoing to let you leave him here. Orion loves an impossible project, and you turned up and presented him with another chance at his ultimate conquest: rescuing you.”
“Rescuing me.” The words taste dry and bitter in my mouth, like a morning after too much moonshine. “From what?”
They shrug helplessly. “From whatever took you away from him, I guess. You’re his greatest failure and his greatest hope.” Liren gets back to their feet with another deep sigh, half-heartedly gathering the clothes on the bed into a single pile. “Sometimes I think he believes that if he can bring you back, it’ll be his sign.”
“His sign?” Even as the question falls out of my mouth, I wish I could take it back.
“That he can fix Trinity.”
Anger sparks down my spine and in my belly, tightening myjaw and my fists. Why iseveryonetrying to make me more than what I am? A saint, a symbol, a project. I never asked for it, and I don’t want it. I want Halle and Kelda and enough paper to get us out of town. That’s it.
“I’m not a puzzle to solve,” I say finally, the words ground out between clenched teeth.
Liren studies me for a moment, head cocked to the side. “Hey, I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad or anything like that. I just think you need to be aware of where he’s at. Because he will break himself trying to save you, Valene Bruinn.”
Their words slam into me like a dust storm, and I don’t know what to say or how to react. But I don’t have to. Because the door slams open, and Orion stands there, beaming.
“Get your game face on, V. It’s time for us to go downstairs and have a chat.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“THE EXISTENCE OF THIS SUPPOSED ‘BOOK OF SIGNS’ IS A HERESY AGAINST THE HERALDS, WHO HANDED DOWN THE SACRED LAW TO US DIRECTLY. THE IDEA THAT ANOTHER, ‘PURER’ HOLY BOOK IS OUT THERE SOMEWHERE UNDERMINES NOT ONLY THIS ADMINISTRATION, BUT THE AUTHORITY OF OUR CHAPELS AS WELL. ANY APOSTATE SPREADING LIES ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF THIS BOOK MUST BE HARSHLY PUT DOWN.”
—CONFIDENTIAL HERALDIC MINISTRY MEMORANDUM (YEAR 2089)
Orion’s supposed friend calls himself Fast Draw Ringo, which is exactly the name you give yourself when you’ve almost certainly never drawn a pistol in your life. But he says he’s got hot information for us, so I swallow down any blistering comments and take a seat with Orion at the little round table tucked into the back corner of the dram shop. It’s far enough away from the rest of the growing crowd that we should be able to talk without anyone being able to hear us over the jangling music and loud, crisscrossing conversations.
Fast Draw is a gangly man, a couple of years older than Orion and me, with a pointed chin and a longcoat that looks a size too big for him.
“Booker,” he says, low and entirely too serious, cutting his eyes around the room. “I’m taking a big risk coming here.”
I lean back in my chair, my hood pulled up, my arms crossed beneath the layer of my cowl. “What’s wrong with you? You watch too many serials or something?”
“Hey, play nice.” Orion nudges me in the ribs, hard enough for me to discover just how pointy his elbows are. “We’re kind of short on time, Fast Draw. What exactly do you know?”
The man scowls at me and lifts his chin, mouth twisting. “Not yet. Payment first.”
“Fair enough.” Orion digs into the bag he brought down and sets something on the table. It looks like a bulky, oversize pistol, but there’s no visible charger on it and the barrel is plugged with a six-pronged iron grapple. “My own invention. Nothing else like it out there. Pull the trigger and it’ll launch the grapple with a cord attached up to one hundred and fifty feet in the air. Pretty handy for scaling buildings, boarding low-flying airships—all of that.”
I glance at Orion, eyebrow raised. “You made that?”
He grins at me. “A guy needs hobbies.”
Fast Draw, however, seems much less impressed. “You want information on Gold Town business, I’m going to need something bigger.”
Orion takes a breath, looking like he’s about to haggle, but this is not a haggling situation. Not with Halle’s and Kelda’s lives on the line.
“What about that crystal, O?” I cut in before Orion can say anything. “The one you took off our pal Clarence? Something stolen off a high warden has to be worth a good deal, right?”
Orion gapes at me for a second, his expression flickering between shocked and kind of angry, but then he catches the look in my eyes, the hard set of my jaw, and all the fight goes out of him. He sighs and reaches into his inner vest pocket, taking out the palm-size red crystal and setting it on the table.
“Final offer, Fast Draw,” he says. “A warden skeleton key. Good to unlock any door they’ve got—jails, precincts, prisons, everywhere.” Fast Draw’s eyes light up and he makes a grab for it, but Orion scoops it just out of reach. “Tell us what you got, then you get it.”
“Fine.” Fast Draw tugs up the collar on his longcoat, cutting his eyes around the room again. “You familiar with the Gentleman’s Rack, down in the Shipyards? There’s been some suspicious comings and goings in the last day or two. I spotted them in the early-morning hours, when it was still dark, bringing in two people with bags over their heads. One looked like a young woman maybe. The other was small, like a child.”
Orion looks over at me. “Shipyards are South Parish. That matches up.”
So long as he’s telling the truth and not giving us the runaround. If he is…
