“Or maybe he’s not working for Kirythea, no matter how much August and Anton think he is. They have no real reason to suspect him; at least, not one they’ve told us.”
“Anton wouldn’t be so insistent that you investigate Bastian if he didn’t have a good reason.” Gabe propped his elbow on the arm of the couch and his forehead in his hand. “And what other reason would he have? Just because they haven’t shared all the information with us doesn’t mean they don’t have it.”
Clearly, she wouldn’t get anywhere with Gabe. The man had been programmed to march to whatever tune Anton played. Her thoughts turned again to Bastian, to what he’d shared while they danced. My uncle has controlled his life for fourteen years.
With a sigh, Lore pressed the heels of her palms against her brow, rested her elbows on her knees, and changed the subject back to something that didn’t have the potential to become a fight. “How did he even get the horse? I know the story he told us was bullshit.”
“Maybe not,” Gabe said. “Bastian does have friends in the Citadel guard. Some lovers, too. They carted the body away from the Ward to be burned, but someone might’ve told him about it as an idle curiosity. He must’ve been intrigued enough to have them spirit it away, and the other guards just let it happen.”
“Truly stupendous minds in that garrison. Just the best of the best.” She dropped her hands, looked at him. “Should we tell them?”
Them: August and Anton. She didn’t have to spell it out. Silence strung bowstring-tight between her and Gabe, waiting to see who’d slice it.
If she was useless to the Arceneaux brothers as a spy, she’d be kept in a cell until they needed her to raise the dead. And once that was finished, she’d get a one-way ticket to the Burnt Isle mines.
“No,” Gabe said softly, as if he could read the thought in her head. “No, we don’t need to tell them. Not right now.”
“Thank you,” Lore murmured.
He gave one quick, firm nod.
A stack of envelopes sat on the table before the couch, gleaming bright in the gloomy glow of the fire. They’d been pushed beneath the door when she and Gabe reached the suite, and he’d gathered them up, tossed them all here. Lore picked up a stack and idly flipped through the fine paper.
Invitations. Teas, dinners, dances, even a night of card games—Bastian had declared them relevant by inviting them to his masque, and the court followed suit. Just the thought of so many social engagements made Lore’s head pound. “Surely we aren’t expected to attend all of these?”
“All, no. Some, yes.” Gabe continued his moody survey of the banked fire, pointedly not looking at the pile of envelopes. “And all of them aren’t for both of us, you’ll notice.”
“Is that why you’re in such a sparkling mood? Feeling left out?”
Another grunt. “The court is eager to talk with you. You’re a new commodity. Not as many of them want to socialize with a Presque Mort on hiatus.” He grinned, then, tossing it her way with a sarcastic edge. “A fact that I am thankful for, actually. You’ll be begging for holy orders after two teas.”
“Yes, especially since you make holy orders look so appealing.” She flipped through the envelopes, selecting one at random. The handwriting was thin and flourishing, addressed to them both, but only by first names. Lore and Gabe, with a tiny flower drawn after the last e. Her brow furrowed as she opened the flap, trying her best not to tear it. The paper felt more expensive than anything she’d worn before coming to the Citadel.
An invitation to a croquet game. From Alienor. “We should probably attend this one.”
Gabe reached for the invitation; Lore handed it over. His jaw went rigid, but he said nothing, handing it back with the gravitas of a judge handing down a sentencing.
Lore turned the silky paper over and over in her hands and fought between tactfulness and curiosity. Curiosity won. “How did you two… I mean, what…”
“Our parents agreed to the match when we were both barely untied from leading strings.” Gabe’s voice was low and monotone, his answer coming like something rehearsed. He stared at the window across from the couch without really seeing it. “We were childhood friends, as much as two children can be friends with an eventual marriage hanging over their heads. It ended when I was ten, for obvious reasons. That’s all there is to tell.”
A quick sliver of pain—she’d given herself a paper cut on the invitation’s edge. “Is she engaged to someone else now?”
“Not that I know of. Not that it matters.”
It seemed to matter, if the set of his shoulders was any indication. And it made something unpleasant prick in the center of her stomach, that it mattered to her if it mattered to him.
The connection she’d felt between them had faded, no longer a constant feeling of déjà vu. Faded, but not gone. There was still the disconcerting sense that she knew Gabe, that they were something more than tentative allies thrown together mere days ago.
It didn’t mean anything. When she first started spying on other poison runners, Mari had warned her against trusting feelings of quick closeness born from strange situations. The mind looked for connection in such cases, wanting something to cling to.
Lore placed the invitation on top of the table with all the other unopened envelopes. “Well. I hope you know how to play croquet, because I certainly don’t.”
“I’m rather rusty. We didn’t play croquet much at Northreach.”
“No, you were too busy staring dewy-eyed at paintings of Apollius and reading the Tracts until you could recite them in your sleep.”
“Precisely.” Gabe stood in a flurry of motion, stretching his arms over his head. “Are you as tired of this room as I am? I have a deep desire to be elsewhere.”
“Do you have an elsewhere where we won’t run into curious courtiers or ex-fiancées or asshole princes with dead horses?”
“As a matter of fact,” Gabe said, walking toward the door, “I do.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nyxara’s power was death, but death made concrete—the essence of un-living, independent of a host. Only someone who has touched death can channel its raw form, cycling it through themselves and then into something else, rendering it dormant. Channeling this raw death—which we have elected to call Mortem—into living matter can kill weaker hosts, such as plants, but cannot kill stronger hosts, such as healthy humans and animals. However, there is a way to carefully channel Mortem into a living host that does not kill it, but rather makes it appear as stone, balanced somewhere between life and death through an equilibrium of Mortem and Spiritum. This method appears to work on all living matter, if the channeler is skilled enough to do it correctly.
—From the notes of Hakem Tabbal, Eroccan naturalist, dated two years AGF (after Godsfall)
Elsewhere turned out to be a garden made of stone.
Not entirely made of stone—there were a few living flowers twined among their rocky counterparts. Bloody-crimson roses blooming out of a bank of granite doppelg?ngers; green ivy climbing up the statues of their fellows. But mostly, everything was stone.