The Silvered (65 page)

He recognized his purse when she pulled it out to pay and her brows lowered as she silently dared him to say something. “Spoils of war,” he said. The shop girl frowned, Tomas scowled, but Mirian laughed, and losing his back pay seemed worth it. It wasn’t like he’d need it after tomorrow.

Leaving the shop carrying a worn carpetbag, dressed in their new clothes, Tomas had the easy confidence of the aristocracy. Watching him move with a grace Reiter knew he’d never master, no one would suspect the younger man ran on four feet and ate raw rabbit.

Mirian twitched at her clothing and looked annoyed. “How can you run in a skirt like this?”

“Perhaps Imperial ladies don’t run.”

The skirt didn’t look all that tight to Reiter. It fell straighter than what she’d been wearing, but with fabric enough gathered in the back for her to take a full stride. He’d watched her check the range of movement in the shop. On the other hand, he
did
have a sister even if he hadn’t seen her for some years. “The color suits you.” The dress was a deep burgundy with black trim. “You look nice.”

“Thank you.”

Any of the young men under his command would have jumped in with further compliments or a protest of how she shouldn’t care what the enemy thought. Tomas remained silent, clearly very certain of his place.

“Where are you taking us now?”

Reiter tried not to resent the easy way she’d tucked her hand into the bend of Tomas’ elbow. “To a guesthouse where relatives of officers stay when they’re in Karis. The Soothsayers didn’t give a lot of warning for this festival, so there should be room. My sister lives in Aboos, it’s a northern port. That should be enough to explain your accents.” The narrow streets off the square were still essentially empty and, as he had no way of knowing who else might be at the guesthouse, it was safer to talk while walking. “Get into the palace as early as you can tomorrow then make your way to the first assembly room. It’s powder blue with winged babies on the ceiling. I’ll find you there. He has them—the women—on a shifted sleep schedule, and if we can get to them early, it’ll still be night in their rooms.”

“Cells,” Mirian corrected.

He let it stand because she was right.

“Won’t having to wake them slow us?”

“Fewer guards on at night,” Tomas told her.

Reiter nodded. “There’s a limited number of guards. I’ll bet most of them sleep when the women do.”

“If there’s a garrison right on the square, how can there be a limited number of guards?”

“The guards in the north wing are his private guards. They’re not army, not soldiers, they’re…” He took a deep breath and locked down the memories of them watching as Adeline slashed open Danika’s chest, as they dragged the wolf from the observation room. “…they’re prison guards who’ve bought into his insanity.”

“If it’s so bad, and you know how to get the nets off, why have you waited?” Tomas asked. “You know the palace. You know where they’re kept.”

“You think it’s easy to commit treason? You could turn on your…” What was he called? “…on your Pack Leader?”

“I wouldn’t get the chance. If a Pack Leader went crazy, the nearest Alphas would take them down.”

“Seriously?”

Tomas frowned. “Of course. A crazy Pack Leader can’t take care of the Pack.”

“Politicians…”

“They’d likely be the nearest Alphas.”

No using the insanity of their leader to consolidate their own hold on power. “I like your system.”

“So do we.”

“So, if it isn’t easy to commit treason,” Mirian said quietly, “when did you decide to make the effort?”

“When I saw you in the square.” When he saw
her
in the square, but with luck he sounded like he meant both of them. “If you were stupid enough…”

“Hey!”

“…to come into the heart of the empire,” Reiter continued, ignoring Tomas’ protest, “knowing what would happen to both of you if you were caught, then I can be stupid enough to help.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“It’s not smart. He has…Pack as well as the mages. It’s going to take all three of us to get them out. This is it.”

“This is what?”

“The guesthouse.”

There was a room available, and his old purse held just enough for one night, so he took them to the tavern next door and bought
them dinner, emptying his new. Leaving them on their own unsupervised was just asking for trouble. They had better table manners than he did.

He escorted them up to their room and stepped inside to murmur, “The palace gates will open at nine. Be careful. Don’t attract attention and, most of all, don’t…” He waved a hand. “…you know. He knows you’re coming. It was Seen and he’s had word from Tardford.”

She flushed. “That was an accident.”

“Don’t have another.” He nodded and backed away, allowing the door to close between them.

The first night after they’d escaped from the Imperials, Mirian had slept curled around him, clutching his fur, taking what comfort the presence of the Pack provided. They’d slept together in caves, old barns, on a filthy carpet in the midst of the homeless, under trees, in a nest of blankets on Jake and Gryham’s floor. She’d defined both the distance and the closeness between them.

But this, this wasn’t adventure. This wasn’t war. This wasn’t excusable. This was something he’d have to explain to his mother. Or worse, to
her
mother. He couldn’t pace in fur; his toenails clicked against the wooden floor exposing him to the people in the rooms around them, so he paced in skin. And his trousers.

“Tomas.”

Wiping his palms against the fabric covering his thighs, he turned and faced her.

“Take a deep breath.”

A pillow hit him in the face as he inhaled.

“Through your nose!”

Familiar. Powerful.

“Tell me how I smell?”

He rolled his eyes but told her. “Amazing. You smell amazing.”

His trousers ended up on the chair with the rest of his clothes. The mattress gave under him as he rolled onto his side, then gave again as Mirian fitted herself against his back, her hand over his heart. The same way they slept when he was in fur. The sheets smelled of soap.

Her breath lapped warm against the back of his neck when she sighed. “I can’t believe after all we’ve been through and what we have to face tomorrow, you got upset by a bed.”

When Danika closed her eyes, she dreamed of the white room. But not of Kirstin, of Ryder. Of his skin hanging from jutting bones, of his throat pierced by silver spikes, of his teeth…of blood on his teeth.

She lay in her nest on the floor by the door and she stared into an artificial darkness. She whispered strength to the others and listened for the fall of Stina’s door.

Reiter stared at the ceiling and thought of treason.

Mirian woke with the Sunrise bell, snuggled her face into the pillow, and wished that she’d stayed in the carriage and continued on to Trouge with her parents. That she’d never been cold or wet or hungry or afraid. That she’d never had to discover how a man’s flesh smelled as it burned. That she’d never had to wake in the morning and face anything more difficult than the new books
still
not having arrived at the lending library. That she’d tested too low to enter the university and she’d married the dark-haired young clerk at her father’s bank who had sad eyes but had nearly smiled at her once or twice. That she wasn’t about to get up and get dressed and walk into the Imperial palace and do whatever she had to do to steal both Pack and Mage-pack away from a crazy emperor.

After a moment, she sighed. Given the chance to do it again, she knew she wouldn’t stay in the carriage, so there was no point pretending she could have faced a life of walks and shopping and a safe, affectionate marriage without screaming. She couldn’t honestly say she’d been fundamentally changed by everything that had happened to her and around her since that morning. She was who she’d always been. Practical. Stubborn. More aware of what she could do. Less naive, perhaps. But not really any different.

She carefully pulled away from the warmth of Tomas’ back, rolled over, and slid out of bed.

The bucket of hot water had already been left outside the door. She didn’t see it at first, stubbed her toe on the side, then brought it in and emptied it into the large washbasin. At home, one of the maids would have brought in a pitcher of hot water, opened the curtains, and lit a fire depending on the time of year. The guesthouse, with the chipped basin, the frayed wash flannel, and the mug half filled with soft soap, would have appalled her mother. Her mother had never spent a night under the bent boughs of an evergreen. Or in a cave. Or on a pile of straw that smelled strongly of goat.

Mirian liked the room. She liked the worn furniture, the too-soft mattress, the uneven floor. She liked that someone had made an attempt to dress it up with chintz curtains and bits of glass that hung in the window to catch the sun. Although, they worshiped the sun in the empire, so maybe the glass pieces were religious rather than decorative.

The window faced east, and she reached out a finger and touched patterns of light that danced across the faded wallpaper. Followed the places where sunlight poured through clear pieces of glass and broke into rainbows. When she was young, Mirian used to sneak down early to the dining room and open the curtains to watch the crystal drops on the chandelier paint the walls with rainbows, courting a lecture on how sunlight faded expensive, imported silk carpets.

Light that broke into colors…

White light. The Soothsayer by the well in Herdon had touched her and said
white light
.

Leaning over the washstand, Mirian stared into the small oval mirror, forcing her eyes open as wide as possible. She’d tested high but had no mage marks. She smelled of power but had no mage marks.

Her eyes were paler than she remembered. The edges of her pupils no longer smoothly curved. As she turned her head, she could see patches of silver slide across the black, the blurring of her vision following the movement.

The more powerful the mage, the more mage marks they carried.

The Air-master at the university had marks enough that, at first sight, her brown eyes looked almost blue.

Gryham told her that mages had become unwilling to pay the
price the old way of power demanded and had bound mage-craft in rules.