He looked down at the unconscious man between them. “Does that mean you don’t need my help disposing of this man?”
Lila tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m not sure I need it, but I’d certainly appreciate it.” She knelt to take one of Elsor’s arms, and Alucard reached for the other, but halfway there, he stopped and seemed to reconsider. He folded his arms, his eyes dark and his mouth a grim line.
“What is it now?” asked Lila, straightening.
“This is an expensive secret Bard,” he said. “I’ll keep it, in trade for another.”
Dammit, thought Lila. She’d made it months at sea without sharing a thing she didn’t want to. “I’ll give you one question,” she said at last. “One answer.”
Alucard had asked the same ones over and over and over: Who are you, and What are you, and Where did you come from? And the answers she’d told him over and over and over weren’t even lies. Delilah Bard. One of a kind. London.
But standing there on the docks that night, Alucard didn’t ask any of those questions.
“You say you’re from London …” He looked her in the eyes. “But you don’t mean this one, do you?”
Lila’s heart lurched, and she felt herself smile, even though this was the one question she couldn’t answer with a lie. “No,” she said. “Now help me with this body.”
*
Alucard proved disturbingly adept at making someone disappear.
Lila leaned against a set of boxes at the transport end of the docks—devoted to the ships coming and going instead of the ones set in for the length of the tournament—and turned Elsor’s S pin over in her fingers. Elsor himself sat on the ground, slumped against the crates, while Alucard tried to convince a pair of rough-looking men to take on a last-minute piece of cargo. She only caught snippets of the conversation, most of them Alucard’s, tuned as she was to his Arnesian.
“Where do you put in … that’s what, a fortnight this time of year …?”
Lila pocketed the pin and sifted through Elsor’s papers, holding them up to the nearest lantern light. The man liked to draw. Small pictures lined the edges of every scrap of paper, save the formal invitation. That was a lovely thing, edged in gold—it reminded her of the invite to Prince Rhy’s birthday ball—marred only by a single fold down the center. Elsor had also been carrying a half-written letter, and a few sparse notes on the other competitors. Lila smiled when she saw his one-word note on Alucard Emery:
Performer.
She folded the pages and tucked them into her coat. Speaking of coats—she crouched and began to peel the unconscious man out of his. It was fine, a dark charcoal grey with a low, stiff collar and a belted waist. For a moment she considered trading, but couldn’t bring herself to part with Calla’s masterpiece, so instead she took a wool blanket from a cart and wrapped it around Elsor so he wouldn’t freeze.
Lastly she produced a knife and cut a lock of hair from the man’s head, tying it in a knot before dropping it in her pocket.
“I don’t want to know,” muttered Alucard, who was suddenly standing over her, the sailors a step behind. He nodded to the man on the ground. “Ker tas naster,” he grumbled. There’s your man.
One of the sailors toed Elsor with his boot. “Drunk?”
The other sailor knelt, and clapped a pair of irons around Elsor’s wrists, and Lila saw Alucard flinch reflexively.
“Mind him,” he said as they hauled the man to his feet.
The sailor shrugged and mumbled something so garbled Lila couldn’t tell where one word ended and the next began. Alucard only nodded as they turned and began to haul him toward the ship.
“That’s it?” asked Lila.
Alucard frowned. “You know the most valuable currency in life, Bard?”
“What?”
“A favor.” His eyes narrowed. “I now owe those men. And you owe me.” He kept his eyes trained on the sailors as they hauled the unconscious Elsor aboard. “I’ve gotten rid of your problem, but it won’t stay gone. That’s a criminal transport. Once it sets out, it’s not authorized to turn around until it reaches Delonar. And he’s not on the charter, so by the time it docks, they’ll know they’re carrying an innocent man. So no matter what happens, you better not be here when he gets back.”
The meaning in the words was clear, but she still had to ask. “And the Spire?”
Alucard looked at her, jaw set. “It only has room for one criminal.” He let out a low breath, which turned to fog before his mouth. “But I wouldn’t worry.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’ll get caught long before we sail away.”
Lila managed a grim smirk as Stasion Elsor and the sailors vanished below deck. “Have a little faith, Captain.”