Page 108

“You’re a sneaky lot,” Val commented once they were all outside. “Have either of you considered poison running?”

Gabe looked stricken, but Bastian shrugged. “Not as such, no, but never say never. Although my current schedule wouldn’t allow for it.”

“That’s a shame.” Mari shook her head. “Our crew is dwindling rapidly these days.”

“Arrests?” Lore asked quietly. Val’s operation might be newly legal, but bloodcoats had been known to arrest anyone they didn’t like the look of.

“If only it were that simple.” A laugh huffed from Mari’s mouth, twisting into the air like smoke. “Our most loyal are still around—everyone you’d know, mouse, don’t worry—but the newer folks keep getting lured away.” She tightened the knot on her headscarf again, lips twisting wryly. “I guess getting paid enough to cover your rent for a year with one night of work is a hard bargain to pass up.”

The words registered with all three of them at the same time. Bastian’s eyes widened. Gabe’s lips went flat. Lore’s pulse thumped in her wrists. “You know about the cargo movements?”

“Cargo,” Val said derisively. “It’s contraband, has to be. No one pays that amount of money to move anything legal.”

“Oh, it’s absolutely not legal.” Mari snorted. “Phillip let some of the details slip when he came by to quit, and you’d think he’d signed his own execution warrant when he realized. I had to promise up and down for nearly an hour that I wouldn’t tell anyone before he’d go.”

“Do you have any information about where they move it to?” Gabe sounded like he was conducting an interrogation. Lore scowled at him. He paid no mind. “Or anything about who is actually doing the hiring?”

Val gave him an icy glance. “I believe Mari just said she promised a friend not to disclose anything.”

The skin on Lore’s shoulders prickled. The last thing she needed was for Gabe to goad Val into a fight. She was certain Gabe would lose.

Bastian apparently thought the same thing. “Of course we would never want someone to go back on a promise,” he interjected with a smile. “I apologize for my friend’s impertinence.”

If looks could light someone on fire, the glance Gabe shot Bastian would’ve left him in cinders.

Mari crossed her arms, thoughtfully chewed her lip. “This is information you need, though, isn’t it?” she asked Lore softly. “For whatever they’re having you do up at the Citadel. Which means it’s more than just hauling contraband.”

“Yes,” Lore said. She’d never been able to lie to Mari. She saw through to the core of things, even when you tried to hide them.

Her mothers’ eyes flickered toward each other. “Can you tell us anything, Lore?” Mari asked softly.

She wanted to. She wanted to let all of it go—the bodies, the lies, the esoteric mysteries she knew had to fit in somewhere, and the specter of war hanging over it all—but knowledge could be a noose.

They could stop it. She and Bastian, and Gabe, if he’d still work with them after this. No need to make Val and Mari panic. No need to get them mixed up in this any more than she had to, at least until there was no other choice.

“No,” Lore murmured. “I’m sorry, but no.”

Beside her, Bastian’s hand tensed, rose the slightest bit into the air. Like he’d lay it on her arm. But he didn’t.

“That’s fine, mouse,” Val said. “We understand.”

Mari nodded, a determined bob of her chin. “I don’t know much,” she said. “But just the little bit that Phillip told me was enough to make him nearly wet his pants, so I need to know you’ll be careful. All of you.”

“Of course,” Bastian murmured. Gabe nodded. Lore did, too.

“All I know,” Mari said with a sigh, “is that whatever they’re moving, they’re taking it to the catacombs. Deep in the catacombs. All the way under the Citadel.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Every shape of affection can maim

but a triangle’s formed most like a blade.

—Bar song lyric

Tomorrow night.” Bastian affected no nonchalance, not anymore. He stood with his hands braced on the back of Lore and Gabe’s couch, his hair falling over his brow and shadowing his face. “It has to be tomorrow night. We can’t wait longer; it could mean another village if we did.”

“Won’t the guards get suspicious?” Lore stirred the embers in the fireplace with the gleaming silver poker, then blew a thin stream of air to make them ignite. Her skin was still goose-bumped from channeling Mortem, a cold worked bone-deep. “It’s one thing to sneak into the city; it’s entirely another to sneak into the Presque Mort’s supposedly secret garden with its supposedly secret catacombs entrance.”