Rone didn’t pick the lock on the gate that sectioned off Ernst Renad’s neighborhood; he scaled it in the same place he’d used five days ago, where the road naturally bumped to give him a lift. The route had been proven once before; why change it now?
Rone tried to remember everything he’d seen in the sitting room where he’d lifted the Noscon headpiece. Armor, but that was too heavy to carry. He wanted small, light, valuable pieces. There had been some egg things on the mantle. If the jewels in them were real, a couple in his pockets might be enough to persuade the warden to actually listen to the law.
He’d snap the strings on the harp while he was at it.
As he reached the intersection for Renad’s road, a light crossed his path, forcing him to backpedal or be spotted. The warden’s claim about the scarlets keeping Gerech’s cells full so they themselves wouldn’t occupy them ran through his mind.
They were corrupt, all of them. The police, the triumvirate, even the Celesians with their precious Angelic. They were no better than the mobs and grafters.
Black ashes and slag, he hated this place.
Retracing his steps, Rone hugged the edge of the narrow road between fancy three-story houses and stuck his hands in his pockets. He fiddled absently with his amarinth. Cut through someone’s backyard to circumvent the scarlets. His pulse was starting to pick up in anticipation of meeting the bastard responsible for his mother’s suffering. He ought to throw Renad out the window.
A moving chain to his right. Rone turned in time to see two glowing eyes charging toward him. The dog barked, and Rone backed up two steps. The dog’s chain yanked the animal back a foot from where Rone stood.
The moment the light hit the back of his head, he realized he wasn’t wearing his fancy collar. That, in fact, he still smelled alarmingly of sewage.
Groaning inwardly, Rone turned and held his hand up to block the light from his face. Not tonight, Renad. But soon. He’d have to blandish his way out of this one and hope the bloodstains on his shirt from his now-healed gunshot wound weren’t terribly noticeable.
“Can I help you, sir?” asked a large man in his fifties. He wore a gray mustache and a tightly buttoned scarlet uniform. “This your home?” He appraised Rone’s clothing skeptically.
“No, I’m down that way.” He randomly gestured to his left. “Thought I saw someone creeping around over here, but turned out the Fensteins moved their dog’s post. After what happened to Ernst, you can’t be too careful.”
A second officer came up beside the first, holding a lamp of his own. “That’s why we told everyone to stay inside after dusk.”
Whoops. “Like I said, I thought I saw—”
The first scarlet elbowed the second and gestured toward Rone with a tilt of his head. Rone didn’t like that tilt. He backed up, only to have the mutt behind him try to take a bite out of his thigh.
The second officer asked, “What’s your name, sir?”
Stay calm. You’ve done nothing wrong. Yet. “Peter Aves. I’m sorry for the trouble. I can head back home.” He stepped away from the dog.
Officer number one held up a hand. “I’d like you to come with us for a moment.”
Rone took another step away. “Why’s that?”
Both scarlets stared at his face like they’d never seen another human before. The second held up his light. He muttered something to the first that sounded alarmingly like “That’s him.”
The pieces clicked together.
They knew who he was. They knew what he looked like.
“They’ll do whatever they can to bring you down,” Sandis had said.
Wanted sketches. Had to be. Nothing swayed the Kolin justice system like money, and Kazen was no doubt loaded.
Rone ran.
“Stop!” the first officer bellowed after him, but Rone bolted down the street, cutting through the first property without a high fence. Keeping anything—houses, brush, trees—between himself and the scarlets. He needed to gain as much distance as he could before they called their friends.
Their whistles tore through the night as he leapt a fence, landing hard in the darkness on the other side.
“Put this on.”
Rone handed Sandis a strip of cloth he’d procured from the gray shirt he’d worn into the sewer—the one that had been festering inside his canvas bag while he lay on the floor with a gunshot wound. After losing the scarlets and making it back to Kurtz’s home, he’d scrubbed the shirt until the woven fibers threatened to pull apart, then cut it into two wide strips. His old master had kindly painted a four-petaled lily on the center of each one. Though Kurtz had not commented on Rone’s absence, he seemed to know about it nevertheless. The man always knew everything.
Sandis turned it over. “What is it?”
Rone rubbed wakefulness into his eyes. “A pilgrimage band for your left arm. How is it you’ve lived in Dresberg your whole life and you haven’t worn one of these, or at least seen someone else . . .”
He swallowed his words. Oh yeah, because you were poor. Also a slave. Good one, Rone.
Sandis merely blinked at him. He covered for himself by helping her tie the sash around her arm. There was a certain way to do the knot.
She smelled good. Like lavender and sugar. Had she always smelled like that? Rone fumbled his knot and started over. Sandis reached her hand around and pressed it into the center of his work to hold it in place.
“It’s a joke, really.” He stepped back and scrubbed weariness from his face, though the sweet scents of lavender and sugar lingered. He tied his own with the use of his teeth as his master entered the room and fiddled with some dishes. “From here it’s, what, a six-mile pilgrimage? Some show of faith that is.”
Rone thought he saw the slightest smile on his old master’s mouth before the man slopped overnight porridge into two bowls and set them down on the table. He gestured for them to sit. This morning, Rone was more than happy to oblige.
“Go out the front door”—Kurtz handed out spoons—“but not until the clock tower strikes and the shift changes. I don’t want any lurking grafters to spy you coming out of my house.” He focused on Sandis. “I don’t mean offense, young lady, but they are not the kind of folk I want to be associated with.”
Sandis nodded, but Rone didn’t miss the glimmer of light that died in her eyes. First Rone’s flat, now Kurtz’s. One safe house after another was turning them out. The Lily Tower would be next . . . he knew it. For all their preaching for righteousness and charity, the Celesian priests were some of the coldest people he knew.
After last night, he didn’t know if he had any other options left. How widely was his picture being circulated? Maybe there wasn’t a sketch at all. Maybe he was overthinking this.
Sandis stirred her porridge with her spoon. She looked toward the shuttered window near the flat’s door. She’d been doing that a lot this morning. “Are we sure they won’t see us?”
“No,” Rone said, “but it’s dawn, and there’s already a crowd outside—”
“That won’t stop them.” Sandis paused. “Not necessarily.”
“As good a deterrent as any,” Kurtz chimed in. “I’d cut through Grim Rig’s territory and loop around the courthouse. Both of those places should be safe enough from the grafters.”
Sandis shook her head. “Grim Rig has eight fingers because Kazen took two of them.”
Both men turned to her. “What?” asked Rone.
Sandis swallowed a mouse-sized bite of porridge. “I don’t know what happened. That was one of Heath’s missions . . .” She glanced at the window again. Blinked. “Isn’t the courthouse west of here?”
“The daily pilgrimage meets at the cathedral at noon, then they walk to the tower together.” Rone took a bite of porridge. It was surprisingly well seasoned.
“They walk all that way?”
“It’s a requirement, to show humility.” Satire laced his words. “They literally check your hems at the door. If they’re too clean, you have to walk around the city wall as penance.”
“That’s not true.” Kurtz hesitated and rubbed his chin. “Is it?”
Rone gave him a blank stare.