“What kind of devil bird preys at this hour?”
Suddenly there is a tinkle of breaking glass, and the solitary streetlamp goes out. I cannot help but grin in the darkness.
“Sirs, I will take my leave of you, and am mindful of the debt I owe you. It would be wise to leave before the Fleshers return. They will no doubt be armed this time.”
In the sudden darkness they are half-blind, so they barely see me slide past them and clamber up the wall of a nearby building.
“Wait!” Grantaire shouts, but I ignore them. I’m not afraid they’ll shoot me, because, unlike me, they are not accustomed to darkness. Well, that and I’ve stolen their pistols.
“Well, that was fairly rude. We did save her life,” comes Grantaire’s voice as I climb higher and higher, ignoring the pain in my side. “Then again,” he continues, “I can’t blame her for fleeing. You probably drove her away with your weary justice speech.”
“I am going to let you find your own way home if you don’t shut up, Grantaire,” St. Juste’s voice says clearly.
“Hold on a minute….Where’s my gun?”
My laughter carries on the wind, curling around them, caressing their skin like a kiss, before I am completely gone.
* * *
The Messenger is waiting for me, perched on the edge of an old gabled roof, so still he might be one of the city’s weathered gargoyles.
“Femi—”
“What did you think you were doing?” His voice is a snarl.
His barely controlled anger hits me like a wave, and I take a step back. “You took your sweet time,” I retort sharply.
“Aye, and if those two fools had not intervened, I’d have arrived only to sing a death song over your corpse.”
Femi turns, and it strikes me that there is something odd in the way he is standing.
“You took an oath that you would not seek her out, that you would not attempt to rescue her. Beating you to death was the most merciful thing the Fleshers might have done if they had discovered you were a girl. But the Tiger is afraid of nothing and no one. Law or no Law, he’d probably take you, just to see what the other Lords would do. He’d feed you the poppy, and turn you into…”
I blanche at his words.
“You swore you would not do this, Nina,” Femi says again. “You cannot help her. Not this way.”
Though I know his words are true, a storm of rage rises within me. “How can you speak of oaths while she is in there—you who swore you cared for her!”
It is as if I have slapped him across the face. He stops, trembling and towering over me in anger, his face turning hard and cold.
“It is because I care for her that I promised to protect you. It was the last thing she asked of me, Nina—the only thing she asked of me. If she’d asked me to flee with her, I’d have gone. If she had asked me for Death the Endless, I’d have given her a blade.” He swallows and looks down, cradling his hands. “And even though she did not ask it of me, did you really think I wouldn’t try to find her? I who hear all and see all that happens in the Guilds. Did you think I wouldn’t have called in every debt, paid every coin and jewel in my possession, to try to save her? Did you think I would not come for her myself?”
They broke his hands. Azelma’s terrified voice lances my brain.
I look in fear to his hands. He stills as I reach out and push back the long sleeves of his cloak to find a tangle of misshapen fingers, little more than gnarled claws, bruised, twisted, and broken.
“I am Aves, the Elanion, Messenger to the nine Guilds of the Miracle Court,” Femi says in a trembling voice. “But seeking to steal from a Guild Lord could not go unpunished. It is the Law. And only because I am trusted, only because I am Tomasis’s blood-born brother and he pleaded for me—for this alone I was spared.”
Horror seeps into every pore of my being. Horror, and fear and sickness at the sight of what they have done to him.
“I swore to protect you,” Femi says, his voice still quiet. “I promised her. What will I have left if I fail her in this as well?”
I turn from him, light-headed. I close my eyes and try clear my thoughts. “I cannot just forget her, Femi.”
“And you cannot rescue her. It cannot be done, not this way.”
I turn his words over in my mind, until I finally see the meaning behind them. My eyes snap open. “You believe there is another way?”
Femi straightens, tucking his ruined hands back under his cloak. I wonder how he managed to climb with his fingers so broken.
“She cannot be stolen, but perhaps she can be bought,” he says. His words are careful, deliberate.
Hope swells in my breast. “For how much? More than twelve coins of gold?” I can raise an impossible sum if needed. Stealing precious things is what I am good at.
Femi shakes his head. “The Tiger is rich beyond measure,” he says. “Gold means little to him. But he is a man who is never thwarted in any of his wishes. What you must find is something that he wants but cannot have. Make him desperate for it until he is ready to pay any price to attain it. If you are lucky, you might have power to dictate a price: the freedom of your sister.”
His words are genius. But I frown as a new thought blossoms.
“What is it that the Tiger wants?” I look up and find Femi staring at me, his face a grimace.
“What does he always want?” he asks.
The question hangs between us, unanswered. But even now I am aware; I have seen my sister, and the truth of what she has become is so terrible I dare not speak it aloud.
Sometimes we must pay a terrible price to protect the things we love.
Is there any price I will not pay to save my sister?
No. There is not.
THE FOX RENNART’S REVENGE
FROM STORIES OF THE MIRACLE COURT, BY THE DEAD LORD
Il était une fois…Rennart the Fox came to the house of Ysengrim the Boar, stealing into his lair in the darkness. The Fox’s blade was sharp, and his teeth hungered for the taste of blood. He stood before the crib where the daughter of Ysengrim lay sleeping, and he gazed upon her beautiful face.
It was for revenge that the Fox had come. Ysengrim and Rennart had once been like brothers. And yet Ysengrim had given to Rennart the gift of the seven hells. First he had betrayed his friendship. Then he had taken the Fox’s house and his name. He had killed the Fox’s loyal men. He had murdered his wife and his daughter. Lastly, he had cast the Fox into the darkest dungeon, les Oubliettes du Châtelet, the place of forgetting. And in the last of these seven hells, Rennart sat in the darkness and waited.