“She’s already left,” Ivy told me.
Awesome. I didn’t have her number or any way to contact her. I did have Nero’s number. I wondered if he’d pass along a message for me, something along the lines of: ‘SOS, Colonel Fireswift is a sadistic son of a bitch. Please send a replacement, someone who doesn’t staple his own soldiers to the wall. Love, Leda’. Or something like that. I still had to iron out the exact wording.
I got off the cot, leaving it for the next patient. A line was forming, and it already extended into the hallway. I pushed past the curtain that led to the back room, where the Pilgrims were resting in their beds, recovering from their injuries.
“Hi,” I said, waving at them. “You’re all looking better already.”
“You’re not.” Valiant looked my torn and bloodstained athletic suit up and down, frowning. “What happened? Monsters?”
He had no idea just how right he was. Colonel Fireswift was more a monster than all the monsters combined that we’d faced during the pilgrimage. How ironic that he claimed his methods were designed to rid the world of monsters.
“Colonel Fireswift happened,” I said.
“Colonel Fireswift,” Valiant repeated, grimacing. Apparently, he wasn’t a fan either.
“We’ve heard the hooded bandit is the rogue angel Osiris Wardbreaker,” one of the Pilgrims said.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked him.
“Everyone is talking about it.”
So much for Nyx’s secrets.
“Valiant wants to go back to the Lost City to find the relics,” another Pilgrim said.
“After what happened to you? Really?” I asked Valiant, shocked. Though I really shouldn’t have been.
“We can’t go,” a Pilgrim said. “Colonel Fireswift is in charge of the mission now, and he’s not letting any of us out of this building. We had trackers put on us. He claims it’s for our protection.”
“Colonel Fireswift is an insufferable ass,” Valiant declared.
I had to fight not to laugh. It was not proper for a soldier of the Legion to laugh at an angel. I only said, “Colonel Fireswift is right. It is too dangerous out there for you.”
“The Legion is using my research to discover the Lost Relics and save them from a rogue angel. All without me,” Valiant grumbled. “I won’t even be there when my life’s work, my legacy, is realized. And all so Colonel Fireswift can steal the glory.”
I wasn’t sure he was wrong about that. Colonel Fireswift was a glory hog. He believed there was a finite amount to go around in the world, and he wanted to save it for him and his. But I still thought the Pilgrims were better off staying here. Protecting them had nearly gotten my team killed.
“You’re injured. And you don’t heal as fast as we do,” I reminded Valiant. “This isn’t about glory or who gets to make the great discovery. This is about keeping these powerful relics from those who would use them to hurt lots of people. You can help me save lives.”
“Of course, whatever you need,” a Pilgrim said.
“Is there anything you know about the Treasury that holds the relics? Anything that might help me?”
“Some say Sierra, the last angel known to wear them, died with the relics on her, but her body was never found,” Grace told me. “An old battle hymn tells of her bringing them into the treasury for safekeeping as the city crumbled to the ground. To save them for a day they would be needed again.”
“Needed again? That’s a pretty romantic view of an angel-killing weapon,” I commented.
“It’s epic poetry. That’s how they are. Romantic,” she said.
“How do you know the Treasury even survived the city’s destruction?” I asked.
“The Treasury is protected by magic, by great spells. These spells keep it from being crushed. And it keeps thieves out.”
“So if the Treasury is protected, how did you plan to get in? And if that protection spell is so powerful, aren’t the relics safer left there?”
Valiant looked horrified that I would even suggest such a thing. Academics had their idealistic heads stuck in the clouds.
“Another epic poem says the keepers of the Treasury left behind the clues to unlocking its wonders, so that someday a hero might reclaim these lost treasures.”
I lifted my eyebrows. Hero? There was that romantic angle again.
“A hero with a great mind. Someone with the intellect to puzzle it out,” Valiant said. “ ‘For in the midnight hour, the sun and moon will shine, and a new hero will rise, his mind unlocking the secrets within.’ “
“That poem was the last piece to the puzzle,” Grace said. “Valiant and I found it last month.”
“There’s supposed to be a picture on the wall of a building in the sunken city. When you reach it, you are at the door,” Valiant added.
“What kind of picture?” I asked.
“The text only tell us we’ll know it when we see it.”
Well, that wasn’t cryptic at all.
“Why are you helping me if you don’t want the Legion to do this without you?” I asked him.
“Because you’re different than soldiers like Colonel Fireswift. You aren’t seeking glory or your own advancement,” he said. “So if someone in the Legion has to find it, I want it to be you.”
The other Pilgrims nodded in agreement, offering their good luck wishes.
As I turned to leave, Valiant said, “The rogue angel who stole my notebook has all of this information and my notes. He knows what you know.” He set his hands over mine. “Be careful.”
I left the overcrowded medical ward, walking back toward my apartment. I needed to shower and change into something that wasn’t stained in my own blood.
“Leda.”
I looked back to find Jace hurrying down the hall after me. He wasn’t bleeding anymore. Colonel Fireswift must have healed him himself.
“Are you ok?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
He turned his eyes from my bloody clothes. “I’m sorry about my father.”
He sounded genuine—and he had helped me in the fight, while putting on a show for his father. At least I thought it had been a show.
“Have you visited the medical ward to see what the victims of Colonel Fireswift’s training look like?”
“I haven’t, but I can imagine. Angels are different from us,” he said, echoing Calli’s words. “Especially angels from the early years of the Legion. Times were different. Here, let me show you something.” He took my hand, leading me to Nero’s office. No, Colonel Fireswift’s office. It was his now.