Rafe kept his posture casual, legs stretched out across the carpet. He laced his fingers over his stomach. “You worked with sleazy opportunists like Verney. Opposed a dozen legislations that would’ve been good for our people.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Voted to take over Ironheart, for Sel’s sake.” He could no longer keep his anger hidden. “What were you thinking?”
Her dark eyes sparkled, but her voice remained cool. “Everything I did was to ensure the safety of Oakhaven from the krin. That’s the whole reason the title of Marquis of Rocquespur even exists. The sole reason why we have the five votes in the Assembly. Build a railway into the Outer Fells? Open up a mine in the middle of nowhere? Faugh! Have you any idea how many people would’ve been claimed by the krin? If that scheme had gone through, I’d still have been camped out there, clearing out the Soul Eaters!”
“And what about Ironheart?”
She gave him a look of astonishment. “You were there. You saw how badly it had been hit.”
“They’d have gotten back on their feet.”
“Eventually. How many would the krin have gotten, though, before then?”
“You gave them no chance. They were our
allies
, not children. Not a client state.”
“They are vulnerable,” she lashed back. “What use is liberty when you’re
dead
? Or worse, krin-possessed?”
“You sound like Blackstone.”
“And you sound like a spoilt little armchair political theorist who has never been cold and hungry and in the
dark
.”
Rafe scoffed. “I was in the military. I fought against Blackstone in the last war. Where were you then? Oh, I forget. In the convent, stitching samplers.”
“Do
not
mock me.” Isabella rose up on her knees, like an eruption, then forced herself to subside. She rocked back on her heels. “You have
no
idea of what I did at the convent and
no
idea of my training and…” Pink suffused her cheeks and she pressed her lips together. “You are a thorn and a pest, Grenfeld,” she said without heat.
“Funny. I’ve often thought the same about you
and
Rocquespur,” he drawled out. His mouth crooked. “I do have one burning question. Actually two.”
“Oh?” She raised her eyebrow, wary, defensive. He’d actually unsettled her, but he didn’t really know what to do with an off-balance Isabella. The air crackled with tension, but if they were to work together—and they had a job to do that was bigger than both them—they needed to diffuse that.
“You were keeping Pyotr in that warehouse, weren’t you?”
Isabella nodded slowly. “Yes. I had him smuggled out of Blackstone. He’s the one who told me about the Key in Ironheart. The Ironheart man who was murdered, your friend’s grandfather, was also Pyotr’s brother. Verney”—and her voice was flat and hard—“was supposed to keep the lights on in that warehouse. His miserliness cost Pyotr his life. Karzov may have sent those krin specifically for him. I looked for them, but they were gone. Krin in Oakhaven itself!” Her nostrils flared as if it were a personal insult.
Rafe said nothing. He couldn’t say anything that would make Pyotr’s death be all right for either of them,
“What’s your next question, then?”
“Next: how’d you do it? How’d you fool everyone for the last eight years into believing that you were a…” He paused, trying to say it politely.
“A rather nasty old man with repulsive habits?” Isabella’s smile was lopsided. “There was a reason for all those wigs, and the makeup, and the awful clothes, and the garish jewelry.”
“And snuff.” Rafe tried to see Rocquespur’s features on Isabella.
“Don’t bother. Sable’s very good at what she does.”
“One last question, for now.” Rafe let a note of petulance creep into his voice. “Why’d you go and vote against my receiving the Assembly’s Medal of Valor all those years ago, anyway?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You already had several other medals. I thought being over-decorated would go to your head.”
“Of course. I suppose I should thank you for keeping my pride in check. Uncle Leo was rather livid about it.” A pang went through Rafe. Uncle Leo. The king. Wil and the rest of his friends, men he’d worked with, served his country with.
They all thought he was a traitor.
Isabella placed her fingertips on the back of his hand. “It’s thankless work, keeping everyone safe from the krin. There are no medals, no recognition, and no glory.” Her eyes met his directly, but there was sympathy in her voice and touch.
Rafe turned over one of his hands and clasped hers, palm to palm. Her hand was dry and cool. “And Bryony?”
Isabella shook her head. “Rocquespur’s a traitor now. He cannot help you. He can’t ever return home again.” She exhaled. “I’ve gambled everything on the Tors Lumena. Thrown away the Rocquespur influence for it.”
He squeezed her hand before withdrawing his own. “We’ll find it and it’ll light up the sky. And then…”
“Then?”
“Then, I’ll find Bryony.”
Rafe stared out the window at the Gathering Place, the trading outpost that Shimmer had established outside the dome that encased its valley, and tried not to think about the pale pink jacket and purple trousers Sable had insisted he wear.
She had undoubtedly raided the Marquis’ wardrobe to come up with what Rafe considered to be a sartorial crime of the highest order.
At least there were no patches.
Rocquespur’s train was only one of many at the Gathering Place, but by far the most elegant one. The rest were cargo trains, bringing in loads of quartz from all over this side of the Divide and taking away mage-made items. While Shimmer resolutely kept the doors of its dome closed to foreigners and preserved strict neutrality in the affairs of other states, its appetite for quartz was insatiable. Many of the cars Rafe saw were piled high with chunks of rough quartzite: rose, amber, moon, lilac. Workers cursed and called, pushed and loaded crates into warehouses and onto trains under moonlamps, the most powerful of the lights Shimmer exported. The warehouses, more like mansions with their marble facades and slate roofs, formed a graceful crescent around the trains. Behind them rose the brown hills that ringed the Shimmer Valley, haloed by the glow from its dome.
There was even a train from Blackstone, Rafe saw through narrowed eyes, painted red and black, the colors of the revolution. There was no bustle around it, and bored Blackstonians leaned against the soot-flecked paint, picked at their teeth, and scuffed their boots.
“Why, Rafe. Such magnificence. You’ll put me to shame.”
Rafe turned and met Isabella’s darkly amused eyes. She stood in the doorway, head tilted to one side, hand upon one outthrust hip.
He stared.
Sable had worked her magic on Isabella. A delicate tiara of curled and knotted gold sparkled in her shining hair, and long moon-colored tendrils swept her cheeks. Golden glitter outlined her eyes and brushed her cheekbones. Her dress was of a frothy gold whose skirts swirled down to past her knees. She looked young and flushed and alluring. This was
not
the kind of light he was used to seeing Isabella in.
Rafe recovered himself. “Mistress Sable,” he spoke to Sable standing over Isabella’s shoulder. “I salute you for a job well done.”
Isabella snorted as she came into the compartment. “Are you sure you’re the gallant everyone in Oakhaven society keeps fawning over? That’s hardly flattering.” Her skirts swished. Even her walk was different, languid and swaying. She almost seemed to dance, but that might’ve been just the effect of her shoes, delicate golden sandals that strapped halfway up her calves. Her toenails gleamed silver.
“Just making sure you’re still you under all that.” Rafe swept her a bow. “Lady. You get gold and silver, and I get
pink
?”
“It suits you.” Isabella tapped her cheek with a finger. “But it needs something a bit more. Sable, do we still have that dinner-plate brooch with the egg-sized amethyst in it?”
Sable chuckled at Rafe’s horrified look. “No, thankfully enough for young Grenfeld. She’s teasing.”
“Remarkable,” muttered Rafe.
Isabella teasing?
“Sable, you’ve done marvels, but are these costumes enough to get us inside? Does Rocquespur have an open invitation into Shimmer itself?”
Isabella grimaced. “No. My family has not been in Shimmer’s good graces for many years. My father, you see.”
Rafe didn’t, but now was not the time to push it. “So, we’re relying on my charm and your looks?”
“And Sable’s horticultural prowess.” Isabella went over to a marble-topped table and took off a domed silver cover. Under it was a tall vase of frosted glass, and in the vase was a cutting of the largest, most flamboyant flower Rafe had ever seen.
“The Monarique Rose,” said Isabella. “Our passport into Shimmer.”
Rafe bent to examine the flower. It was in shades of fiery red that flowed and melted together, overheating to orange and yellow at the center. Gold outlined the edges of each silk-smooth petal.
“Rohkayan Mirados, the Preceptor of Shimmer, is a great collector of botanical rarities. He won’t be able to resist this.”
“And he’s having a party tonight?”
“It’s Shimmer, Rafe. There’s
always
a party.”
“And we use the chaos to find the Renat Key, break the security around it,
and
slip away with it without anyone the wiser.”
“Something like it, though I’m expecting
you
to use your rohkayan ability to trace the Key.”
Rafe grimaced. “I take it there is a lot of quartz in Shimmer?”
Isabella nodded. “How much do you know about the rohkayans?”
“Only that they’re the only ones who could do any magic at all this side of the Divide after the Scorching, and they’re secretive bastards, to boot.”
“Accurate, if not diplomatic,” said Sable wryly.
Isabella leaned against a cabinet and crossed her ankles. “Before the Scorching, there were three classes of magic-users,” she began.
“The kayan, the shahkayan, and the rohkayan,” said Rafe, “in descending order of power. I read my nursery tales like any other boy.”
“Right. They did magic by manipulating ka, the energy that flows through quartz.” Isabella cocked her head towards Rafe. “The same energy that you are able to detect, though one wonders why no one thought to send you to Shimmer for training.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the whole writhing painfully on the floor in the presence of quartz?” suggested Rafe.
“They wouldn’t take you now,” said Isabella as if he had never spoken. “You’re too old.” She looked speculatively at Rafe. “But it was most fortunate to find you. Your condition will make it so we don’t have to rifle through every drawer in the blasted place.”
“I’m useful!” Rafe wagged his finger at her. “And you called me a thorn and a pest.”
“That, too.” Isabella pushed off from the cabinet. “It’s almost time to present our compliments to the Stationmaster and get into Shimmer. Let me do the talking, Grenfeld.”
“Ahem.” Sable cleared her throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Isabella?” She looked pointedly at Isabella’s dress.
Isabella sighed, but nodded. Reluctantly, she reached into hidden slits in her dress, one at a time, and pulled out her twin daggers, still sheathed, one night, one moon. The hair at the back of Rafe’s neck rose at the sight of the dark one.
A sigh of wind, like a whisper, tickled his hearing.
“Shimmer security will sniff out those daggers,” Sable explained to him. “And if they find those, they’ll know that Isabella is a krin-slayer. And if they realize that, then they’ll have a shrewd guess who she is and where she’s from.”
Isabella put her daggers into a case built into the cabinet and locked the doors.
“You’re worried about krin in Shimmer?” Rafe asked quietly.
“There are none in Shimmer.” Isabella abandoned her society girl’s languor for her warrior’s watchful grace. “But there are things almost as bad.” She flicked a smile in Rafe’s direction. “Let’s go.”
“In a moment.” Rafe looked at Sable. “I need to send a letter to a friend in Ironheart.” He nodded out the window. “I saw a cargo train from Ironheart out there. Would you be able to get it out to them before they leave?”
“Of course.”
Isabella arched her eyebrows. “Feeling the need to unburden yourself of guilt, Grenfeld?”
“No.” Rafe pulled the Marquis’ thick lavender-colored stationary towards him. “I’m making sure that finding the Tors Lumena doesn’t depend only on us.”
S
HIMMER WAS A RIOT
of colors, a bouquet of scents, a psychedelic assault on Rafe’s senses. From the moment their transport—a filigreed sleigh floating a foot above the ground and with no discernable means of propulsion—slid in through the opalescent dome surrounding Shimmer, he was staring like a Blackstone drone in an Oakhaven agri-cave. Vast swathes of grass in shades of green, purple, and blue stretched in every direction under the warm golden glow of lights set high in the dome. Flowers burst out of every dimple and hollow in wild petal-shedding abandon. Water jetted out of fountains in physically impossible trajectories, danced past gleaming crystalline chimes suspended from posts, splintering rainbows. And off in the distance…
“Look!” Rafe pointed. “Those are horses.”
The animals, in hues of blue, silver, and gold, lifted their heads to stare at them out of limpid dark eyes. A soft wind ruffled the feathered wings that lay across their sides.
Rafe jerked back into his seat as small chirping creatures whizzed past his face in a blur of jewel-toned bodies and translucent wings. The light changed, from honey gold to burnt amber to silver starlight in the space of a few moments. Curtains of blue-purple light rippled in the air, obscuring the horses. All around, cunningly-wrought crystalline statues glowed with light—one a tree with its limbs all twisted over itself with the unnerving grace of a contortionist, another of a large feline poised to spring.
And ka flowed through it all. Rafe winced away at its touch, his muscles clenched, but it did not burn or pummel him. The touch of this ka was actually… pleasant.
Do the rohkayan process ka somehow? Tame it and make it more manageable?