“The Asis do. They are always within a few miles of Berryvine. That’s because they have no access to decent migration routes. Their whole way of life has been compromised. But having their own land would fix that forever.”
Zera rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “Honestly, Nicolas, now you’re grasping. What you say is possible, it’s true, but there are a dozen other explanations that are just as likely. You are desperate to save the boy, so you’re seeing what you want to see.”
Lenoir was baffled. It was so obvious to him now that he was amazed that he had not worked it out before. Yet Zera was determined to discard his theory entirely. “How can you ignore the connection?” he asked incredulously.
She gave a dismissive wave. “Because it’s imaginary, a product of your own construction. Whether it’s a constellation or merely stars depends on who is looking.”
Lenoir paused. He regarded Zera in silence. Had he ever used that phrase in her presence? He had been drunk too many times in these apartments to be sure, but it seemed highly unlikely. He had mocked Kody mercilessly every time the sergeant trotted it out. To the best of his knowledge, he had never used it himself.
He was certain Zera had never met Kody. They had spoken of the sergeant only a few days ago, and Zera had not known who he was. “That is an interesting analogy,” he said carefully.
She gave him a quizzical look. “About the stars? It’s a common saying. Have you never heard it?” She smiled warmly, the elegant hostess once again.
It was that shift in her expression, so effortless, yet so incongruous in the moment, that betrayed her.
Only a few minutes before, Lenoir had referred to Kody in the past tense. Zera had not picked up on that. Zera picked up on everything.
As though in answer to his thoughts, her smile turned suddenly sad. “What a pity, Nicolas. We get along so well.”
A blow landed heavily against the back of Lenoir’s head. Pain erupted in his skull, and he tumbled out of his chair. He looked up to find a servant standing over him with a fireplace poker. It came down in a humming arc, and Lenoir rolled aside, the heavy iron slamming into the floorboards where his head had been. He hooked the man’s ankles with his foot and swept his feet out from under him. The servant came down hard. Lenoir managed to wrest the poker free, simultaneously driving his knee into the other man’s groin. He struck a blow across the servant’s face with the poker, and the man went still.
Zera backed away toward the windows. Her eyes blazed with defiance, and she made a sharp movement with her hand. Lenoir realized that he had misread her gesture moments before. She hadn’t been dismissing his argument; she had been calling reinforcements.
You blind fool,
he cursed himself inwardly.
He dared a glance around the room, looking for any hint of movement. Whomever Zera had signaled to was concealed somewhere nearby. He held the poker at the ready, his mind frantically trying to gauge the distance to the stairs.
“Did you kill them?” he cried, surprised at his own anger.
“Who? Your hounds?” She sneered. “What do you care? I thought you despised them.”
“Hardin did not deserve to die. Kody does not deserve to die.”
“Deserve?” She laughed bitterly. “I never thought to hear such naïveté from you, Nicolas.”
The creak of a floorboard alerted Lenoir to movement behind him, and he spun, leading with the poker. The weapon crashed against the side of a man’s face, caving in his cheekbone and sending a spray of blood across the creamy velvet upholstery of a nearby chair. The man slumped to the floor.
“A pity about the chair,” Lenoir said. The comment was rewarded with a shriek and a glass projectile thrown at his head. He ducked as the delicate ornament shattered into a thousand tinkling shards behind him.
Footsteps thundered overhead and on the stairs. Lenoir had no idea how many men might be in these apartments; he was not even sure how many floors there were. He needed to get out. Casting a final glance at Zera to make sure she was staying put, he turned and headed down the stairs.
He met only one servant on his way out, heading the opposite direction on the stairs. Lenoir grabbed the handrails with both hands and swung his boots into the man’s face, sending him tumbling back down to the marble landing. He was still moving when Lenoir got to the bottom of the stairs, but not quickly enough to be a threat. Lenoir ran past him and out the door onto the high street. He swung himself onto his horse with the vigor of a man of twenty. Then, with one final look at the place that had been a haven for him for so long, he galloped off into the rain.
L
enoir did not exactly
decide
to ride to the hospital; he simply steered his horse there, without conscious thought. He needed a familiar face, and Bran Kody was just about the last person left in the Five Villages that Lenoir had spent any significant time with over the past few years. Pathetic, certainly, but a fact nonetheless, and so Lenoir made his way to Mindale Hospital, the only clinic in Kennian that the Metropolitan Police trusted to care for their own. If Kody was still alive, he would be here. It was probably too much to hope that the sergeant might be awake, but Lenoir could accept that. He had always found Kody’s company to be much more agreeable when the sergeant did not speak.
Lenoir was shown to a cramped little room at the end of a long, foul-smelling corridor. He found the physician bent over Kody’s cot, checking the patient’s pulse. Lenoir waited in the corridor.
“He’s alive,” the physician said as he quit the room.
Lenoir waited for him to elaborate, but he did not. “How is he? Will he recover?”
The physician shrugged. “Anyone’s guess. The stomach wound is all right, but the head wound—that’s another matter. He’ll either wake up, or he won’t.” So saying, he took his leave, his footsteps echoing along the barren walls.
Lenoir entered the room hesitantly. He found a stool jammed in the narrow space between the wall and the pallet on which the sergeant lay, and he perched on the edge of it, folding his fingers awkwardly in his lap. As his gaze took in the length of Kody’s prostrate form, something suspiciously like guilt tugged at the bottom of his stomach.
The sergeant’s features were cast in harsh relief, brushed in lamplight and chiseled out of shadow. Combined with the pallor of his skin, it gave him a ghoulish look, like a man hovering somewhere between life and death—which, Lenoir supposed, was exactly what he was. He was too tall for the pallet, his feet hanging over the edge in a position that would surely have been uncomfortable if he were awake. Lenoir rose from the stool and propped it under Kody’s feet. Bereft of any place to sit, he slumped against the wall.
How sentimental you have become, Lenoir.
A week ago, you would not have bothered to visit this man at all. Now you fret over his circulation.
He was not really sure why he had come. To pass the time, he supposed, until darkness fell. It was better than being alone. Kody was alone too; his parents no longer lived in Kennian, and his fellow hounds were out scouring the streets for his attacker. Lenoir could have pointed them in the right direction, but Zera would certainly have fled by the time they arrived, and he could not risk unleashing hordes of incompetent hounds on his crime scene. They would only destroy whatever clues might remain. Better to wait for Vincent, who was more useful than any backup the Metropolitan Police Department had to offer.
He would not have long to wait. The afternoon was waning fast. The days were growing short, and darkness would drop swiftly from the sky like a hawk diving for its prey. He should be looking forward to dusk, to Vincent’s arrival. In spite of his miserable failure with the duke, he had tangible progress to report. He should be thrilled to have stumbled across such an important lead. It was providence itself, a life preserver in a heaving sea, thrown to his grasping arms in the final moments before drowning. But he could not find it in himself to be grateful for it. Instead he felt more alone than ever before.
“Why should I care, Kody?” he asked aloud. “What was she to me, or I to her?”
The man on the bed did not stir.
“I confided little in her, and she still less in me. I was just another patron in her salon.” Yet they had been kindred spirits, if not exactly friends, keen students of human nature who perceived the world around them with uncommon clarity. They saw the hidden gears and levers that powered the machine of society. Even more significantly, they understood each other, a rare and precious bond for two people who were not accustomed to being understood. Close or not, Zera had known Lenoir better than anyone else in the Five Villages. That she should be involved in the only crime he had cared about in a decade was a bitter twist of fate.
“How blind I have become. As bad as every other slob in the kennel, unable to follow his own logic to its necessary conclusion. Instead I sit in perfect ignorance until the perpetrator herself spells it out for me.” He shook his head in disgust. “Of course a man like Warrick has no connections in the Adali community. Even if the idea was his own, how could he have found someone willing to admit they practiced
khekra
? He would need a proxy, someone with connections in that world.”
Kody’s handsome features were stern, even in repose. His eyebrows sat heavily over his eyelids, and his mouth turned down slightly at the edges, giving it a disapproving cast.
“Yes,” said Lenoir quietly, “I am blind. Whatever the scenario—they came to him, or he to them—there is simply no way it plays out without a go-between. Someone the duke already knows, someone well placed in Kennian society. Who else could it have been?” Zera alone had a foot in both worlds; in this, she was certainly unique. If Lenoir had not been such a fool, he would have seen that.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the whole enterprise was Zera’s doing. Lady Zera had long been in the business of giving people what they wanted. Lenoir had often admired her almost uncanny ability to home in on secret desires and find a way to satisfy them. She knew how to connect people, how to manipulate them, putting them together as easily as she would a child’s jigsaw puzzle. She knew how to make sure that powerful people were in her debt. Powerful people like the Duke of Warrick.
“Of course she would want the duke in her pocket. An Adal trying to make her way in the big city. So vulnerable. Always just one rumor away from disaster. The duke could free her from that forever.” Lenoir understood the cutthroat world of “polite society” too well to consider such designs trivial; he knew them for the matter of survival they truly were.
It was all so obvious, yet Lenoir had failed to see any of it until he was quite literally beaten over the head with it. Years of apathy and inaction had dulled his edge. He had already paid for his sins with his own life, though the debt had yet to be collected. He accepted that. What he could not accept was that Zach might be forced to pay the same toll.
Lenoir leaned over the bed. “Can you hear me?” If so, Kody made no sign. Even his eyeballs were perfectly still beneath the lids. It was just as well, really. If Kody knew how incompetent his supervisor had become, he might conclude that Lenoir was responsible for his state. And he would be right.
Shadows pooled along the floorboards like water in the hull of a slowly sinking ship. The corridor grew dark as weakening shafts of sunlight were slowly strangled by the shutters. Lenoir watched Kody in silence, the passage of time marked by the steady rise and fall of the sergeant’s chest.
Lenoir would have sworn that he
felt
it when Vincent arrived, for the touch of darkness raised the hairs on his arms.
The voice spoke behind him, smooth and cold as a pebble. “Did you find the corpse thieves?”
Lenoir did not turn around. “No. But I found something else.”
“I seek nothing else.”
Lenoir sighed. “I know what you seek, Vincent. And we are very close to finding it. Now that it is dark, I need your help.”
The spirit rounded the bed, coming to stand before Lenoir. His absinthe eyes glimmered eagerly in the growing dark. “Tell me.”
Lenoir grabbed his coat and stood. “We can talk on the way.”
• • •
The streetlamps cast softly glowing cones onto the flagstones of the high street. Vincent remained outside their reach, whether by choice or necessity, Lenoir could not tell. They stood before the sandstone facade of Lady Zera’s apartments. The windows were dark.
“She most likely left this place right after I did.” Lenoir had been reconciled to this fact from the moment he fled the scene, but it still caused his guts to twist over. If he had lost her, he had lost Zach.
“There are people inside,” said Vincent.
Lenoir exhaled slowly, savoring the taste of his relief. “How do you know?”
“I smell their blood.”
Lenoir shuddered. “You have many gifts, Vincent,” he said darkly as he started up the steps. The doors were locked, but that proved to be no obstacle. Vincent simply vanished, and a moment later, the latch opened and the door swung wide. Lenoir stepped into the gloom. The foyer seemed small and close, its familiar outlines suffused in shadow. All was silent. It occurred to him that whoever was in the apartments was almost certainly waiting for him, and they probably assumed he would return with reinforcements. “We should expect resistance,” he said, drawing his pistols from under his coat.
The spirit turned his uncanny gaze on Lenoir, and though his face remained expressionless, he somehow exuded an unmistakable air of disdain. He was not concerned about resistance.
Lenoir led the way to the second floor, moving cautiously. A stair creaked beneath his weight; he stopped, listening intently, but there was no movement. He continued on. The second floor spread out before him, illuminated only by the pale glow of streetlamps struggling through thick windows. Zera’s sumptuous furnishings were little more than misshapen lumps of shadow. Lenoir scanned the darkness, tracking his pistols from right to left. He took a step, and glass crunched beneath his boot—the remains of the ornament Zera had thrown at him. She had not bothered to tidy up. She was long gone, presumably. Whoever was still in this house had been left behind to deal with the hounds they assumed were coming. So much the better; it left him with someone to interrogate.
“Can you see in this blackness?” Lenoir whispered.
“Of course.”
“Is there anyone here?”
Vincent moved through the room, his boots silent against the plush carpet, his eerie gaze sweeping systematically over the dark shapes of furniture. Lenoir could not suppress a shiver as he watched the spirit prowl. It felt like a nightmare, as though he were concealed behind the sofa, huddled in terror, watching himself from outside his own body as the spirit hunted him. The feeling of being stalked was so visceral that when Vincent looked over and met his eye, Lenoir felt momentarily faint.
“There is blood on the carpet,” Vincent said quietly, “but it is long since dried. There is no one in this room.”
“There are three rooms on this floor,” Lenoir whispered back.
The spirit vanished. Lenoir moved away from the stairs, positioning himself so that his back was against the wall, his pistols trained on the stairway leading down from above. The weapons shimmied slightly, revealing the unsteadiness of his hands. He should have taken a glass of wine before he came. He licked his lips, waiting.
Vincent reappeared, his report consisting of a short shake of his head. Lenoir flicked the barrel of his pistol at the stairs and cocked his chin. Vincent understood; he went first. Lenoir followed a few steps behind, one pistol pointed over the rail to cover the first floor as they ascended. His mind told him that Vincent had searched the room thoroughly, but it was impossible to shake the instinct to protect his flank.
The crack of a rifle shattered the silence. Lenoir started so badly that he nearly lost his balance, and he dropped one of his pistols as he grabbed the rail to prevent himself from falling. Vincent was tossed against the wall with the force of the bullet. For a moment, everything was still. Then the spirit righted himself and continued up the stairs, moving with the same fluid grace as before. He turned left at the top stair and disappeared from Lenoir’s view.
A second rifle shot sounded, followed by the hissing pops of flintlock weapons. The handrail exploded into splinters, and a painting plunged from the wall. Lenoir crouched with his arms over his head, his thumb cocking the hammer of his own flintlock even though it was pointed uselessly at the ceiling.
There was a pause, silence. Lenoir glanced up, but all he could see was smoke. It drifted and curled at the top of the stairs, as languid as an opium cloud, lending a strange aura of serenity to the scene. Then someone shouted—a strangled, horrified cry—and the air hummed with the sound of a whip. The floor shuddered beneath something heavy—a body going down, Lenoir guessed. At least one set of footsteps pounded up the stairs above his head. Then more shouting, cursing, and inevitably, screaming. Lenoir sat frozen on the stairs, unable to move, unwilling to bear witness to the horror taking place a few feet away. His scars seemed to itch and squirm, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow. He could hear someone thrashing just above, boots thumping and scraping against the floor.
Vincent would wade through them easily, one by one, driven not by rage or bloodlust, but by whatever power animated his long-dead limbs, whispered in his long-dead ears. He would not stop until Lenoir was the only mortal alive in these apartments.
He will kill them all, and I will never find Zach.
The thought came to him suddenly, with perfect clarity, and it was like oil applied to a rusted hinge. Lenoir’s knees unlocked. His head came up. His lungs drew air, slowly, unsteadily, until he was ready. He crested the stairs.
He was no longer worried about gunfire. Zera’s men had spent every barrel on Vincent, and there was no time to reload. Lenoir’s was the only pistol left in the equation, on this floor at least. He leveled it over what was left of the handrail and surveyed the scene.
Vincent was stooped over a body at the far end of the room, unwinding the coils of his scourge. He glanced only briefly at Lenoir, but he did not seem to be wounded. He had obviously been hit multiple times; his clothing was in tatters, his white skin glowing through the bullet holes like a galaxy of stars on a moonless night. Yet whatever injuries he had incurred were already gone. Lenoir recalled how quickly Vincent’s flesh had regenerated that day in the street, when the sunlight had melted the tissue from his bones. The screams of Zera’s men echoed anew in Lenoir’s mind, a sound of incomparable terror as they watched their bullets tear ineffectually through Vincent’s flesh.
Had there been blood, he wondered? Driving the thought away, he surveyed the rest of the room.