I bite my tongue and follow.
After a moment he peers back, as if surprised I’ve obeyed. He blinks. “Here, by the way.” The atmosphere around us both shimmers just before our fa?ade of being a captain and general falls away, revealing our black hooded cloaks and Faelen clothes. He turns and descends faster.
I take the steps two at a time to keep up and try to refocus before my anger at the Bron soldiers and Gowon boils over for what they’ve just done to Kel. “So that’s how you do it—create a mirage out of air.”
He shrugs. “A mental mirage perhaps. It’s merely a matter of using words to manipulate the untrained mind.”
“But it worked on me.”
“Because you heard me suggest something as true to the guard. Thus, for a bit, you saw it as such.”
“Except I could see through it.”
His voice lowers. “Hmm. Yesss. Better than most. Still haven’t figured out how.”
“Can Rasha see through your mirages?”
His answer is simply a face contorted in irritation as he stops and waits for me at the staircase base. He opens another door, this one unguarded, and leads us into a hall lit by those same curious hanging lanterns.
“What do you think Rasha’s guards needed her for?” I whisper.
He snorts. “No idea, but let’s hope her royal wretchedness is putting those Luminescent curvesss to something sensually useful.”
I glare at him. “Don’t talk about her that way.” And walk faster to shove down my guilt that I’m doing the very thing she asked me not to. Not to mention I’ve no idea where she even is.
“Hmm. You’re in a rather testy mood tonight.”
“I just think that rather than being a pig about her, perhaps you could’ve used your abilities to help her. Or to help the man killed in that blood sport, or the boy Sir Gowon just had beaten, for that matter.”
“You and I both know that man was already dying—his opponent merely ended it quickly. And having spent your life as a Faelen slave, you should know better than most that people worship their own lawsss and tradition—and flouting them will always inflict a penalty.”
“Which is exactly why if I’d had my abilities, I would’ve stopped them both.”
“And started another war. As for my abilities, I prefer to keep them hidden as long as possssible, if you can manage that for the time being.”
“Nice justification.”
“Saysss the girl still keeping Draewulf alive.”
He halts in front of a door and waits for me to catch up before we’re slipping outside into a small moonlit alcove where two palace watchmen are standing. Even though I nudge the metal shut without a sound, they turn and peer in our direction, hands on their swords. I press against the wall in the overhang’s shadow, instinctively thinking to squat and feel around for a rock to toss in distraction. But Myles takes my elbow again and steps into the light.
“Merely making the roundsss, gentlemen.”
“Ah, very good, sir.”
Without another glance, they wave us through the alcove before returning to their discussion. Ducking around them, we step out into one of those wide streets that make up the spindle city.
I gasp.
It’s foggy and serene and cast in a dreamlike glow, lit with torches mounted in perfectly distanced rows along the walkways.
Myles’s cold fingers press over my cloaked arm, his chill creeping through my skin as he pushes me to the left walkway and begins hurrying from one street to the next through the organized maze of matching buildings.
It’s not until we’ve gone down four of the streets that I notice the quiet. A shiver runs across my shoulders, because even though we’re doing our best to hide in the shadows as we go, there seems no need for it. The place is empty. Not just empty, it’s silent even inside the houses.
“Where is everyone?”
He glances down an alley. “It’s past curfew. Those who are not part of the banquet are asleep.”
I raise a brow. “And that’s not eerie at—”
A small movement catches my eye, bringing me up short. At the end of the alley ahead of us something’s huddled under a cloak. A child? A man? I crinkle my brow and step hesitantly toward it but stop after five paces. The smell. It’s gagging and vaguely familiar in a way that reminds me of that one section in Litchfell Forest with Colin. The bodies. Even the bolcranes had left them alone. It smells like the plague. “Something’s wrong,” I whisper.
“For bleeding’s sakesss, girl—do you ever stop talking? I can’t imagine even Eogan finding it endearing.” But he’s looking down the alley too as I glare ice picks up his thin nostrils.
“Probably someone whose lover threw them out for talking too much.” But he flips around and backtracks us up one of the side streets we just walked. I’m tempted to argue, to go see if they need help, but . . . that smell.
“So this woman we’re going to see—what kind of abilities will she give me?”
“That, my dear, is something to ask her.”