Page 73 of Rogue’s Mark

So I tell her. The suitcase, the firm, everything. How my father got all the way up to the firm and ran out of time before he could see who it was protecting.

Alice nods slowly the whole way through, like none of it surprises her. Guess none of it does.

"The firm's the wall he couldn't get over," she says. "I told you that. Follow the firm." She tips her head. "And now you can actually do it. So here's what I've got, and it's more than I've given you before, because you've earned it and because your dad’s alive. That changes what's worth the risk." She pauses. "The firm doesn't operate out of Rothwell anymore. They pulled up stakes about the time everything fell apart. Smart. A dead city's no place to run a business."

"Do you know where they went?"

"I know where they went." And she names a city. A real one, a living one, a couple hours from here, the kind of place that still has working courts and newspapers and people who'd be very interested in a respectable firm's dirty laundry. "A firm leaves tracks, Vi. It has to. It's a business, it needs an address, a sign, lawyers who show up to work. That's the thing about the firm, it can't fully disappear, not the way the people behind it did. The people at the top, the ones it protects? Those, you'll never trace. But the firm? The firm has a front door."

"That's the way in," I say.

"That's the way in." She reaches into her faded gray jacket and comes out with a scrap of paper, scribbling on it with a pen she pulls from another pocket. "Here’s a name of someone who worked there, near the top, until they decided they didn't need her anymore and cut her loose. People who get cut loose remember things. Especially the ones who thought they were family right up until the locks changed."

She presses the paper into my hand. "She might talk to you. She might not. But she's the loosest brick in that wall, and if anybody can pull it, it's the woman who just walked in here different than she walked out last time."

I close my hand around the paper like it's worth more than anything in my father's whole suitcase. Maybe it is.

"Alice." I look at her, really look. "Why do you live like this? Down here. Looking like—" I stop, not wanting it to come out wrong.

"Like a woman nobody would recognize?" The corner of her mouth moves. "Because that's what I am." She runs a hand over her bare scalp, almost fond. "I had hair down to here once. Nice clothes. Designer shoes. A city ID with my real name on it and a desk two doors down from your father's. I knew everything he knew, and then some, and when they came for him, I understood it was only a matter of time before they came for me too." She shrugs. "So I made sure there was nobody left to come for. That woman, the old me, doesn’t exist anymore. I shaved her off. Wore her out of style. Disappeared into a dead mall where nobody looks twice at one more hard-luck face."

Her eyes find mine. "Your father vanished his way. Fischer vanished his way. Everybody who knew the truth had to become somebody else to keep breathing. That's what these people do, Vi. It's not enough that they take everything you have. To survive them, you have to stop being yourself. You have to give up your name, your life, until it’s all gone.”

Somewhere far off, a generator hums.

"We're going to make them stop," I say.

"I believe you might." She steps back toward the dark she came out of, already folding herself away. "Be careful in that city. It's their ground, not yours. The minute you start digging, somebody's going to feel it, and these are not people who feel a tug and let it go."

A last look, steady as ever. "Tell your father, when you can, that Alice said it's about damn time."

Then she's gone, the way she always goes, swallowed by a passage I couldn't find again if my life depended on it.

I stand there a second with a city in my head and a name in my fist.

The door's right there. Now we go knock it down.

49

VI

The rest of the day disappears into getting ready to go.

Now that we have a city, and a name inside it, the plan stops being an idea and turns into a list of things that have to happen before we leave. Who travels. What we carry. How you move on a firm in a place that belongs to them and not us, without tripping every wire the second we show up. Armen runs the logistics. Sting works the route. I stay buried in the documents, because the deeper I'm in them before we go, the sharper I'll be when we get there.

By the time the Rot goes quiet, it's set. We move at first light.

And I'm wired down to the bone. Too keyed up to sleep, and not willing to lie in the dark alone with what's coming.

So I don't. I go find them.

They're in Armen's room, the three of them, not doing much of anything, which tells me they're as wound up about tomorrow as I am. Armen's in a chair. Rogue's sprawled on the bed like he owns it. Sting's sitting on the floor. All three of them look up when I come through the door, and something in the room shifts the second they see my face.

"Couldn't sleep," I say.

"No," Armen agrees. "Neither could we."

I don't have to explain what I came for. That's the thing about these three. I never have to explain.