“I didn’t bringanythinghere! And I’ve corresponded with the coalition of northern Praetors—”
“Every month? Every two months?” His smile widened when she ground her teeth. “Without a Bridger, word takes much too long to travel across the country. You barely catch up to a northern locale’s going-ons in one letter before you hear of a new crisis in the next. You have no understanding of what the north even faces now.Who are you saving?”
“EveryoneI can!” she spat. “Can you say the same?”
“Why should I? You fought two Tetrarchs, a Guild, and the Order and got this in thanks.” Silvus indicated the riotous crowd.
“People like you areexactlywhy Aelius thrived for so long.”
Pale eyes traversed the length of her shaking frame and lit with what looked oddly like elation. “Others like him will rise. And you’ll be just as powerless when they do. Unless…”
“Unless?” she echoed, rage evaporating into scorn. Her pulse slowed its slamming against her ribs. “Unless I ally with the Order? Now,that’sboring, Inquisitor.”
A frisson of fury on his veiled face. “We needn’t be enemies. Abandon your Magus Supreme, or you won’t survive what’s coming.”
Dread arced through her. “So, the Order plans on targeting Kadra.”If they find out that he’s—she shoved the thought away. “Thank you for the warning. He’ll appreciate it.”
Silvus’s face gained a dangerous edge. “He’s had such a stroke of luck, hasn’t he?” The words formed a strangely dulcet hiss as though he was struggling to modulate his voice behind that veil. “He merely had to die for you to trust him implicitly. Did he fuck you hard enough into believing that you know him?”
Air fled her in a rush. She willed herself into blank composure. “I think I’d prefer that we be enemies, Inquisitor, seeing how you treat prospective allies.”
“I thought truth was your only task,” he reminded her of their argument in the Academiae’s chapel. “Did you want it sugarcoated?”
A bite of pain in her palm told her that her nails had drawn blood. Without releasing his stare, she wiped it overzostaon her armilla and waited.
He wet his lips behind the veil. “You don’t know him. You know nothing of his secrets.”
True.She swallowed. “And you do?”
“You…” he prowled forward and paused when she didn’t recoil this time, “might be surprised.”
An unhappy suspicion coalesced into clarity. “What grudge do you have against him?”
“You’ve greater concerns than that.” His shoulder-length black hair fluttered in the wind, half-pulled off his face with a few loose strands to soften his angular cheekbones. He looked around Kadra’s age. “Boil beetles alone can’t cause this widespread madness.” He tilted his head to the raving survivors now being piled onto wagons. “I hear they were largely whitesleep users, but that won’t aid you either. No drugmaker worth their salt aims to kill their clientele. And they’re all spouting the same thing.”
“I know.” Faces boiled red around them. Voices followed the war cry led by the elated Cleric. She could almost feel her hands clinging to the edge of a cliff. She no longer had the strength for anger. “Did you or the Order cause any of this?”
He cut her a startled glance before pity smoothed his brow. “No.”
True.
“But it is to our advantage.” He departed from her line of sight to stand at her shoulder, surveying the chaos. “A crumbling country needs a scapegoat. Don’t let them take you.” He tsked at the people shoving at the vigiles guarding the site of the massacre as Kadra and Cassandane began torching every beetle in sight with lightning. “Offer up the Magus Supreme instead.”
She let silence speak for her.
“I won’t warn you again.” His diction altered, northern accent coming to the forefront, and something almost hypnotic underlying the words. “Iunderstand your powerlessness, but I won’t excuse your stupidity. Use that saviour complex on yourself, Petitor Sarai. No one else will save you, and what’s the world to do if even you won’t?”
He swept past her and into the crowd. It was almost a relief. She had no rebuttal. She’d barely been able to keep track of the blows.
At least that is two suspects eliminated.He and the Order—to his knowledge, at least—weren’t behind this string of deaths. Which left only one place with answers.
Across the blood-streaked marketplace, the Tetrarchy had vanished inside a makeshift tent.Good. What she needed to do had solidified over the last half hour. And it cut to the bone.
She approached Gaius. “How many vigiles do you trust to undertake a fifty-day journey?”
He caught her meaning and smiled sadly. “A few, Petitor Sarai. Shall I tell them to be ready?”
“Please do.” Her throat drew tight. “If Kadra asks for me, tell him that there was something I needed from Aoran Tower,” she managed a watery smile. “It isn’t a lie, so he won’t be able to tell.”
