“No idea,” I said. The Babylon Road is a path between two points. It could get us there and back by the candle’s light, but where “there” was going to be was anybody’s guess. “Wherever August went.”
“Come back when you can,” called Acacia, from somewhere in the fog. I couldn’t see her anymore. Maybe that was a kindness. “I’m always happy for your company.”
“I’ll try,” I called, and I didn’t hear anything from her after that. The fog was too thick, obscuring the stable walls entirely.
But it didn’t obscure the path that seemed to unspool beneath my feet, leading off into the distance. I started walking, cautiously at first, and then—when I didn’t slam face-first into the stable wall—faster, Simon and Quentin following behind. Quentin looked eager, relieved even. We were on an adventure, and we were leaving his nightmares behind. Simon looked distant, his face settling into an expression of neutral contemplation.
I glanced at him. “I thought you would have seen Blind Michael’s lands before.” It was as close as I could come to accusing him of using some forgotten, forsaken corner of the islet as a prison, back when Luna and Raysel had been in his custody.
Simon jumped a little, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “It was too dangerous to tempt the attention of two of the Firstborn. I shared my bed and my heart with the youngest of their number, the one who understood the least about her own strength, and there were times I thought Amandine might kill me by mistake. I avoided them whenever I could.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I would have thought that if anyone would understand the inability to keep out of the path of the Firstborn, it would be you,” he said, and attempted a smile. It fell flat. He could tell, because he gave it up quickly, and said, “My . . . eventual employer was always there, watching, but as she seemed content to maintain her personal masquerade, I felt it was safe to go about my business, despite the proximity of two of my wife’s sisters. Had I brought Blind Michael and the Mother of Trees into the matter, I might have expired from sheer nervousness.”
“Oh,” I said again.
He sighed. “You’ll have to ask me eventually. You might as well stop dancing around the topic and have your answers given to you.”
“I don’t want to hate you more than I already do when I still need to work with you,” I said.
Quentin said nothing, but he stepped a little closer to me, matching his steps to mine, so that it was clear that whatever Simon said next, I wasn’t going to be dealing with it alone. That was a good thing. Simon had been bound not to act against me, but there was nothing that was going to stop me from breaking his nose if I thought it was necessary.
Simon sighed. The sound carried through the fog, seeming to echo across whatever landscape we were now walking through. The light from our candle was the only constant, and it wasn’t strong enough to give us any sense of presence or place. We were somewhere, and we were in the process of transitioning to someplace else. Everything around us was inconsequential. Or maybe it was very consequential, and a dragon was going to come charging out of the fog to devour us all. We wouldn’t know until it happened.
“Everything I did, I did for August,” he said. “I lacked your skill at asking the right boons of the sea witch—or perhaps I merely lacked her goodwill. I was the brother-in-law she never asked for, the failure who had married her youngest sister when Amandine deserved so much better than a landless younger son whose only aspiration was to own the nicest vest in the Westlands. When I asked her to aid me, she said she could do it, but that the price would be more than I could bear. I would have done it anyway, if she had been able to promise August would be safe. The woman I wound up pledging myself to, she was willing to make that promise.”
“Yeah, well, the woman you went to work for lied.”
Simon grimaced. “I know that now.”
The Luidaeg can’t lie. She’s incapable of it. Everything she says is carefully considered and sounded out, to avoid possible contradictions. Evening, on the other hand, is a liar born and bred, and she had probably been willing to tell Simon whatever she thought he wanted to hear, especially if Oleander—her favorite pet—had been asking to keep him. Upset Amandine, make sure August stayed lost, and placate Oleander, all at the same time. It was elegant and efficient, two things Evening loved.
“At first, I was trying to find a way to open the doors,” said Simon softly. “I was learning alchemy and mixing potions and making deliveries. I was transforming her enemies. It all started so small, and everything we did seemed to take us a step closer to finding the door August had walked through, to prying it open and reaching the other side. Amandine had her own ways of looking. She wanted nothing to do with me. She blamed me, and my brother, for giving August the example of heroism. With time, it became less about the immediate results, and more about keeping my mistress happy—and keeping Oleander happy, of course. I doubt our mutual owner would have been more than mildly annoyed if Oleander had slit my throat one day. She would have made Oleander clean up the mess, but Oleander was always the more productive of the two of us. I was a prize. The fallen Torquill, the bad brother, the one she’d lured astray. Oleander, she made things function.”
Quentin started to open his mouth. I shook my head, cutting him off. Simon’s voice dripped with bitterness and loathing, almost all of it self-directed. If we interrupted him now, he wasn’t going to resume.
“I am . . . very sorry for what I am about to say,” said Simon slowly. “When my mistress saw that Sylvester had taken an interest in the latest scion of Amandine’s line, when she saw that there was going to be another chance for the prophecy to be fulfilled, when she understood that being partially mortal didn’t make you harmless, she decided the best way to act without breaking her own bindings, which forbid her to directly harm the children of Amandine’s line, was to task me to destroy my brother. And I am so sorry, but I went along willingly, because he hadn’t been there for me when I lost my daughter, when I lost my wife as a consequence. I hated that he was happy and I wasn’t. I wanted him to suffer. I thought that after you disappeared, presumed dead, she would let me bring them home. I was wrong.”
I stopped walking to stare at Simon. “You’re telling me you kidnapped them because of me? Because you didn’t want Sylvester to be there to take care of me?”
“She wanted you gone and believed my brother might present an obstacle to your own self-destruction; she wanted him distracted before you were removed from the board,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m so sorry, October. I would lie to you, if I didn’t think you were tired of being lied to.”