I’d been set up.
“I can’t have an alibi for something I didn’t do.” I stood and braced myself against the table. “I can’t prove I wasn’t somewhere at some secret time if I don’t know when and where it happened.”
“The proof of your innocence is your business.” Ruby shrugged. “Where were you last night?”
I gritted my teeth together. I’d only passed one other auditioner last night, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Sleeping.”
“Alone?” Emerald asked. “Did anyone see you?”
“No.” I shook my head, every thought and hope crashing in my mind. They couldn’t disqualify me. They couldn’t. I’d given up everything. I’d no money, no way back south, and no home left. I couldn’t face Rath if I failed. “I sleep alone. My servant didn’t see me till the morning.”
“Unfortunate.” Ruby clucked and beckoned a guard near the door.
I was enough for Opal.
“You lying little meddler.” I clenched my hands into fists to keep from leaping across the table and punching Four. “You’re using me as your cover, and it’ll come back to bite you.”
I’d only one way out of this, one possible way to keep them from disqualifying me. I might die outright for even trying it, but that was hardly worse than disqualification.
Emerald tilted her head to the side. “How do you know it was Four if you were asleep?”
“Because he’s the only one fiddling with his hands and not watching on with glee,” I said.
“I saw you.” Four nodded to me, still not meeting my eyes. “It’s a better way to go than dying.”
Ruby’s hand closed around my arm.
I flinched and turned toward Ruby. “I thought you were better than them.”
“What?” Ruby dragged me out the door, nails digging into the thin flesh of my upper arm, and motioned for Emerald to wait. “Better than who?”
“Your noble friends.” I pried myself from his grip. “None of them would get tossed out or sent to jail with no evidence of their crime. Would you disqualify Five and all your invited noble favorites on nothing more than heresy and lies?”
This always happened. I should’ve known. Two and Four weren’t as rich or as noble-blooded as Five, but they were handpicked, and nobles never let their kids or favorites wait for a real verdict in court. They got lawyers and trials and motions and apologies. People like me got court-paid folks who couldn’t tell the judge from their chair. We got punished.
Truth and justice be damned.
Ruby shoved me against the door, slamming it shut and looming over me till his chest hit mine with each unsteady breath. A knife slipped from his sleeve to his hand and nicked my chin. Blood dripped between us. “Let’s clear up whatever misconceptions you have rattling around that cracked skull of yours—you don’t know me. That’s the point. You don’t know me, what I’ve done, or what I did. So don’t come whining to me about the fairness of courts and the priority of laws. I know. I gave up everything I’d ever worked for to make sure all those nobles and their favorites received their dues. I lost my life to see justice done. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
The silence between us tightened till it snapped. Ruby laughed.
“Delightful.” He sheathed his knife. “And you do bring up a good point.”
I swallowed, heart racing. Ruby had been many things, but he’d never been cold like that—voice low and hands calm while ready to slit my throat from ear to ear.
“What?” I said, wincing as my voice cracked.
“Your disqualification.” He patted my head like some bemused master consoling a dog who’d lost their stick. “Do you want to have some fun?”
“It involve me getting stabbed?”
“Probably.” He opened the door and nodded me through it. “But not by me.”
I slunk through the door, back of my neck prickling at the echo of his footsteps behind me, and Emerald cleared her throat. Amethyst set down her tea.
“New plan!” Ruby clapped his hands and tilted his head to Emerald. “Because none of us saw the alleged murder and we’re who matters—not the singular account of someone who wants the other auditioners dead and gone—Twenty-Three is on probation.”
The cup in Five’s hand cracked.
Probation. I could work with that. I’d get back to being Twenty-Three and the Left Hand would be all the more impressed for it. No hard feelings.
Ruby and I were even.
Emerald and Amethyst looked at each other. Emerald sighed, long and loud and annoyed.
“Twenty-Three will be banned from killing other auditioners and will have until tomorrow at sundown to prove his innocence—exactly like a real court of law would work.” Ruby gestured to Emerald, some secret hand signal I’d not seen them use before now, and turned back to me. “And anyone who kills Twenty-Three before then, with proof provided, will be granted immunity for one day—no one will be allowed to harm them.”
I swallowed down the shuddering fear taking root in my spine. Chin up, shoulders back. I would never let them see me tremble.
I stared down Four till he looked away.
“You’re dismissed,” Ruby said with a wave of his hand.
I slipped back outside and touched my blood-damp chin. Ruby’s words lingered. He could threaten me all he liked as long as he followed through on probation. Whoever he’d been before he was Ruby would’ve been a good person to know though. He wasn’t nice, but I was fine with that.
Except now there was a price on my head.
I’d killed Seve and gotten blamed for Six.
And if I couldn’t prove Four was lying, nothing mattered.
I’d done everything as planned, and it was all for nothing. Maud had trusted me to be Opal, and I’d let her down, not just me. I might as well be dead to Elise because I’d no chance of seeing her again.
No Opal, no Elise, no Maud, and nowhere to go that was safe.
I needed a place to hide—a place the others wouldn’t look. I sprinted from the inner circle of the grounds, through the woods and over the river, back into the buildings where we’d slept on our first night here. The guards only glanced as I raced past, and the burn in my legs overpowered the spreading panic in my chest. I need to live, and Twenty-Three wasn’t going to. I had to be someone else.
I could panic later.
Steam clouded the horizon to my left. I took off toward it, clawing my way onto the roof of a neighboring building. The little pathways and alleys around the laundry were crowded and well lit, servants scurrying about, and I circled the roof till I spotted the carts full of dirty clothes at the back of the building. I darted to the unguarded carts near the edge and fished out clothes that looked like they’d fit me. Red spotted the shirtfront and dirt hemmed the pants. I climbed back onto the safety of the roof when no one was looking.