“Blast,” Jade said, when she finished. “I thought you had gotten clean away.”
“We almost did,” Emily assured him. “It just took a little longer to make a clean break than you thought.”
Jade took a long breath. “Do you trust him?”
Emily shrugged. Tam was Imaiqah’s cousin, but she barely knew him. There was no reason why he couldn’t be secretly working for the king–or why he couldn’t have switched sides after the purge. And yet, the soldiers clearly hadn’t expected to encounter one magician, let alone two. She rather suspected they’d intended to trap Tam, not anyone else.
“I think we can trust him, provisionally,” she said, carefully. It was vanishingly rare for a merchantman to actually go back on his word, let alone betray his family. Tam would do everything in his power to ensure he got the best terms possible, but he’d stick to his word once he’d given it. No one would ever trust him again if he betrayed his word. “But…we have to make sure he doesn’t know everything.”
Jade stood. “I’m going to wash,” he said. “When Cat comes back, tell him to save some grub for me.”
Emily met his eyes. “Will you be alright? The two of you, I mean?”
“I think so.” Jade removed his sword belt and picked up a towel. “It isn’t the first time we’ve had a fight over…over nothing.”
Nothing, Emily thought, sourly. It could be worse, she supposed. They could have been fighting over her. But if it clears the air a little, who cares if they blacken each other’s eye?
“I put a handful of broadsheets on the table,” Jade added. “Have a look. See if they made a serious mistake and actually managed to tell the truth.”
Emily watched him go into the washroom, then turned her attention to the broadsheets. A handful seemed to have been printed only an hour or two ago, the ink having run a little instead of having been left to dry. The writing was largely clear, but a handful of words were blurred. She read it slowly, reminding herself–again–that she really needed to convince someone to write a dictionary. Phonic spellings were an absolute headache. A single word could be spelt half-a-dozen different ways.
It soon became clear that whoever had written the broadsheet either didn’t have the slightest idea of what had happened or had been given some very specific orders on what to write. It wasn’t a brothel that had been raided, he insisted; it was a merchant house. And the merchants had been conspiring with certain elements–the writer wasn’t very specific–to raise food prices right across the city. Thankfully, His Majesty had personally sent his soldiers to arrest the merchants and hang them for their crimes against His Majesty’s subjects. She couldn’t help feeling, as she read the fawning tones, that the writer was quietly taking the piss. His praise was so exaggerated that it was hard to believe he meant a single word.
Jade stepped out of the washroom. “What do you think?”
“This guy needs surgery to remove his lips from the king’s buttocks,” Emily said. She didn’t think Nightingale had fawned so much, at least when she’d been watching, and he was a professional butt-kisser. “I almost feel sorry for him.”
“Hah,” Jade said. “Anything useful?”
“I’m not sure,” Emily told him. “The writer insists the soldiers took prisoners, but who?”
She considered it for a moment, trying to stay away from the conclusion she knew to be inescapable. The soldiers hadn’t caught Cat or her, let alone Jade. And if they had caught Tam, after they’d parted ways, they wouldn’t be fool enough to tell the entire city. No, it was far more likely that they’d rounded up a handful of prostitutes, pimps and rioters and sentenced them to summary execution. It was the sort of thing she’d come to expect from a medieval justice system.
The pimps probably deserve it, she thought, remembering the pimps she’d ordered evicted from Cockatrice. They’d been no better than her stepfather, damn the man. They claimed to protect the women, if a customer decided he didn’t want to pay, but as long as they got paid they didn’t really care. And they kept most of the profits for themselves. But what about everyone else?
She skimmed through the rest of the broadsheets quickly. Half didn’t seem to mention the riot at all, choosing instead to claim everything was wonderful; the other half followed the party line, including praising the king for his swift action. She wondered, morbidly, if anyone actually believed Randor had given the order personally. It was far more likely to have come from the Captain of the Guard or the Custodian of the Watch.
And no one is going to believe the official figures either, she thought, as she read an article claiming that twenty thousand rebels had been killed by the soldiers. Who would be foolish enough to believe that an entire chunk of the population had been slaughtered?
There was a tap on the door. It opened, revealing Cat. He looked grim. Emily tried to meet his eyes, but he didn’t look at her. She felt…she didn’t know how she felt. Ideally, if they had been starting a relationship, they would have done it when they weren’t under so much pressure. It would have been easier to develop a relationship without the pressure of needing to rescue a friend from jail.
“You have to come with me,” he said. “There’s something you have to see.”
Jade buckled his sword into place. “Coming,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Trouble,” Cat said. He didn’t seem to be looking at Jade either. “It’s not good news.”
Chapter Nineteen
EMILY DID HER BEST TO STAY between Jade and Cat as they walked down the street, unsure quite how they felt about each other. Or her, for that matter. Jade didn’t have any right to object if she and Cat started a relationship, but…but she knew he regarded her as a little sister. He’d certainly warned Cat to behave himself when they’d gone on their first date. She wanted to cringe at the thought, even though there was something reassuring about thinking she had an older brother. Jade would be expected to kill anyone who laid hands on his real sister.
She took a long breath, tasting ash in the air. It was mid-morning, but the streets leading towards the brothel were practically deserted. Small clumps of soldiers stood on random street corners, their eyes flickering as if they expected to be attacked at any moment, while civilians scurried in and out of sight. She thought she was the only young woman within eyeshot, perhaps the only one on the city streets. No one trusted the soldiers to leave women alone any longer.
The smell grew stronger as they approached the brothel. A nasty thought grew in her mind, slowly turning into certainty. The brothel was no longer there. They rounded the corner and saw a pile of burned-out debris, guarded by a number of heavily armed soldiers. A small collection of bodies hung from makeshift gallows, turning slowly in the morning air. Emily ran her eyes over them quickly, but recognized none. They were nothing more than random strangers.
There was a morbid feeling in the air, she thought, as Jade led her around the edge of the burned-out shell. The other buildings had been scorched and pitted by the flames, their inhabitants probably forced to run or die in the blaze. A couple sat by the remains of their homes, staring at nothing; others were glancing at the soldiers, cold anger clearly visible on their faces. It wouldn’t be long, Emily thought, before a lone soldier took his life in his hands every time he walked outside the barracks. That would do wonders for morale.
“They insist they killed everyone in the building,” Cat said, so quietly that Emily had to strain to hear him. “But no one seems to know for sure.”