Page 48 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

FLICK

Flick didn’t have to wait long for the door to her prison to open. When it did, she was ready, brass knuckles snug over her injured fingers. She had stretched her aching arms until they didn’t feel like foreign things attached to her shoulders.

She braced for the Ram, but it was one of her black-clad men.

A knot loosened in Flick’s chest, and she held herself very still, not wanting to spook him too soon.

When he noticed she wasn’t hanging from the manacles, he was already mostly through the door.

Flick threw her weight against it, slamming it shut before he could back his way through.

The lock fell, but Flick wasn’t worried.

He had a key on him, and she intended to take it.

Her heart was pounding in her chest. The man whirled toward her, but Flick was ready. She threw a punch, imagining Jin’s presence behind her, guiding her fist, loosening the tense length of her arm, lending her the strength the manacles had stolen from her.

She hit the man square in his chin with her brass knuckles.

He sputtered. Her breathing was the only sound grating in her ears. He stared at her for a beat before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell like a sack of potatoes.

That, love, is a glass jaw.

“Did I kill him?” she asked the empty room. She could feel the pressure in her chest building. Her exhales were coming out in tiny bursts.

Calm down , she told herself. You were ready to kill the woman you once called Mother .

And there was no time to waste. She had lost track of the hours and when Jin and Arthie returned from Ceylan; she needed to be there— unless they had failed.

She refused to let herself dwell on that alternative.

Arthie would claw her way out of any grave her enemies fathomed to place her in, and she’d make sure Jin was by her side.

She never failed. Which was another reason why Flick needed to be there at the docks when they returned.

To warn them, yes, but if they noticed she was missing, that she wasn’t in the Athereum, they would rain destruction on the Ram, plans be damned.

One might have called it haughty to think such a thing, but Flick knew with utmost certainty that the care Jin and Arthie had for her warranted nothing less.

Flick dropped to her knees beside the man, and after wriggling her throbbing fingers to will them back to their original selves, she riffled through his pockets until she found what she needed: a heavy iron key.

She shot back to her feet. It took several tries to slide the key into the lock. It felt silly, unlocking a door from the inside, but locking up one’s daughter ought to be silly too.

As she turned the key, an idea struck. There was an easy way to slip through this unfamiliar domain: by looking like the ones who were allowed to be here.

Flick unraveled the black cloth around the man’s head, peeling back the layers over his face to reveal a boy who couldn’t be much older than she was. Why? Flick wanted to ask him. Why did he work for the Ram to the point where he strung up a girl for no reason?

It had to be coin that forged such loyalty. Flick refused to believe they saw anything worthy in the Ram’s cause. She couldn’t see someone so young being so resolute and set in their ways. Jin snorted in her head. Have you met Arthie?

How would Arthie look at these men? She wouldn’t see them working for coin as a thing of disgust, no.

Arthie would see a benefit.

The men having no loyalty would be a benefit. Like the head of a snake, if the Ram was out of the picture, they would do nothing.

Still have to figure out how to get her out of the picture.

Flick draped the head wrapping over the chair to air out before pulling off the boy’s shirt.

It was a struggle. An unconscious body was far heavier than she thought it could be.

With a huff, she yanked the shirt free, wincing when his head thudded to the floorboards.

She pulled it over her shirt that was now more grime than white, and knelt again to remove his trousers.

She unbuttoned them, thinking of Jin and the time she’d torn away his shirt to mend his wound. Heat flushed down her skin. Undressing someone else is not the time to be thinking of him, Flick , she chided, immediately relieved the boy was wearing drawers underneath.

She had to remove his shoes to get the trousers off him, but the job was done and she moved to winding his head wrap around her face, a job that was tedious with trembling hands and without a mirror.

She straightened the shirt and adjusted her trousers before tucking that wicked knife into the sheath sewn on the side of the trousers’ leg.

Had his shirt been tucked into the waist of his trousers?

Flick folded the hem and unfolded it, trying to picture him and the countless black-clad men she’d evaded and fought against.

How could she not have noticed something so obvious?

Perhaps because you were focused on staying alive , she reminded herself.

Flick tugged on his large gloves, wriggling her fingers to fit as best as she could and pulled on Jin’s brass knuckles, immediately feeling a little stronger, a little less alone, then pulled her sleeve as low as she could to shield them from view.

Key in hand, heart in throat, Flick walked to the door. She still needed to find out why the Ram had referred to this place in her ledger with such importance, why it was so close to the palace where the tribute was to occur, and what those strange pill-shaped things were.

But she also needed to get to the docks.

No, what she needed was a calendar to see what day it was and whether the Casimirs could even be back just yet.

Her hands continued to quiver, throbbing no differently than when one was stung by an insect, only it spanned the entirety of her arms. They hurt so terribly that she barely felt the pain pulsing down the rest of her.

She opened the door, stepped through, closed it. One step at a time. She tucked the key into her pocket, stifling a sneeze when fuzz from the cloth around her face tickled her nose.

Though her room had been bare and cloistered, outside was far more spacious and furnished. Round lights hung from the ceiling at intervals, none too bright, casting the beige walls in an almost sinister glow. And it was large , halls running every which way, rooms spreading wide.

Flick took several steps from her door and recognized the large meeting chamber nearest her, the halls extending from either end in oddly placed positions.

This was the place. The location sketched in her mother’s ledger.

But why had Flick’s sleuthing taken her to an empty lawn?

She hadn’t seen anything this large by the palace.

Someone bumped past her. Black-clad men were everywhere, some lugging boxes, others holding notes or reports or some such, while even more loitered in hushed conversation. The air thrummed with a sense of fear.

She saw a calendar tacked to the wall by a desk full of folders and documents organized into little bins. Much of the month had been crossed off, which meant… Flick blinked at it again. The tribute was in six days? That couldn’t be right.

“Oi, why are you standing there?” someone shouted, and then smacked her head with the flat of their hand.

Flick whirled around to face the man, schooling her eyes before her sudden spurt of anger could give her away.

“Well?” he asked.

“Thought the days weren’t rightly crossed off,” Flick said as gruffly as she could. She sounded like she had a cold and a sore throat.

He squinted at the calendar. “Oh, yeah. They aren’t.”

He snatched up a pen from a cup on the desk and crossed off a day. Five days until the tribute. Then he crossed off another. Four days. And another.

Three days.

Flick’s breath stuttered, but he dropped the pen at last.

Three days until the tribute. Jin and the others should be on their way back by now.

The man grunted as he faced her again. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“Y-yes,” Flick said. She gestured into the direction of her room. “I’m—”

He smothered a laugh, and she noticed he was looking toward the room directly across from hers. “That boy thinks he’s putting up a fight, a’right. A high captain, my arse. More manacles ought to do the trick. Have fun, eh?”

Have fun? Flick swallowed her disgust, wishing she could throw the manacles into the dustbin.

She didn’t realize there were other prisoners here.

Then she remembered the sounds of a scuffle she’d heard earlier.

She tried to imagine who else her mother would need to interrogate.

Chester! No, it wasn’t any of the boys. Whoever that was sounded older, and Chester, Felix, or Reni wouldn’t allow themselves to get caught as Flick had.

Don’t write yourself off so soon, love.

Indeed. She was still standing, still breathing, and as the man walked away, she exhaled in relief because she’d just passed her first test.

She looked down the hall to either side of her, wishing she could walk straight up to one of the Ram’s men and ask to be escorted home.

She recalled her notes from the ledger and headed in the direction of the room with the pill-shaped things, keeping her eyes from swiveling through her surroundings too obviously.

She tried the door to her right, surprised to find it unlocked. It was a storeroom, and she was about to close the door again before Arthie’s voice crept into her thoughts, reminding Flick that anything could prove valuable. She slipped inside and tugged on the light.