Page 47 of A Tower of Half-Truths

Twenty-Eight

Maintaining a shroud was difficult enough while standing perfectly still in a dimly lit room.

Being on the move made it infinitely more taxing—especially on a night like this, when the twin moons were full and bathed the city streets in their blue-white glow.

The shroud faltered briefly as Mavery’s mark passed through a patch of moonlight.

It wouldn’t be much longer before the spell failed entirely.

The rain had let up since Mavery had first arrived at the Lettered Gentleman, and a lamplighter was now illuminating the gaslamps.

The mark, however, seemed to be in too much of a hurry to notice.

They passed under a lamp. When the shadows dispersed beneath its warm glow, Mavery spotted that familiar mane of red hair once again.

“Ellice!” she cried. “Stop!”

Her former accomplice came to a halt, looked at her now visible hands, then glanced over her shoulder. Upon realizing Mavery was right behind her, Ellice swore loudly and took off at a sprint.

“Gods damn it,” Mavery muttered.

She quickened her pace, and her knee protested immediately. She hissed through clenched teeth as her boots collided with the rain-slicked cobblestones.

Ellice rounded a corner and disappeared down an alley. Mavery continued her pursuit, but she couldn’t ignore the electric pain shooting up her leg.

The younger woman was far more spry, with no old injuries slowing her down, and easily put several yards between herself and Mavery. At this rate, Ellice would reach the other side of the alley and disappear into the flow of traffic the next street over.

Mavery slowed to a jog, then stopped altogether. She breathed deeply, channeling her arcana. She pushed both hands forward—the ritual for a simple protective ward—and focused her gaze on a spot a few paces ahead of Ellice. A blue aura rippled through the air, spanning from building to building.

Ellice, unable to see the warding magic, ran straight into it. With a shriek that resounded through the alley, she bounced off the ward and landed on her back.

As she lay prone in the mud, Mavery caught up at last. Arcana pulsing through her fingertips, she loomed over the younger woman with a scowl.

“All right, you got me,” Ellice groaned.

She raised a hand of surrender as she slowly sat upright, while her other hand rubbed the small of her back.

She winced as she rose to her feet, then tried in vain to wipe the mud from the seat of her trousers.

Ellice’s normally pristine locks were now caked with grime, and Mavery wasn’t above admitting that it was a pleasing sight.

“Fucking hells, Mave, you didn’t have to hit me that hard.”

“Try to run, and I’ll hit you with much worse.”

“Relax, I’m not going anywhere. Now, put your hands down and let’s chat like proper ladies.”

Mavery scoffed at the notion, but did as Ellice asked.

“Thank you,” Ellice said with a curtsy. “Now, I’m sure you have questions—”

“You’re damn right I have questions. What are you doing here? Did you follow me all the way from Burnslee?”

Ellice rolled her eyes. “Please, don’t flatter yourself. Nel and I were just passing through on our way to Durnatel. Our payout from the Roven job was running low—”

“You burned through two grand in less than two months?”

And five hundred of it was mine, she thought as her arcana flared.

Ellice frowned. “Nel thought he could double it. Turns out, his Tribute skills aren’t what they used to be.”

Neldren’s gambling habit had finally come back to bite him. It wasn’t the extent of the punishment he deserved, but at least it was something.

“As I was saying,” Ellice continued, “we were heading up to the capital to find work. We’d only planned to stay here for a few days, but then Nel spotted you in the Market District.”

“When was that?”

“Three weeks ago. He followed you—and the rich bloke you were protecting—to a Dragon-owned apothecary.”

Mavery’s eyes widened. She had Sensed shadow magic back at the Cracked Pestle. Neldren had to have been lurking outside, watching through the window. He would never set foot inside any place affiliated with the Brass Dragons.

“So, you’ve been tailing me for weeks now?”

Ellice scoffed. “There you go again, flattering yourself. No, we’ve spent most of our time looking for work. Turns out, if you’re not affiliated with the Dragons, finding it is next to impossible in this hellhole of a city.

“But you seemed to have landed yourself a nice little protection job. Once Nel got word that you were still around, he sent me to track you down. That’s why I followed you to that pub.

I assumed you were meeting with your buyer.

Little did I expect to find you making friends with my old history professor. ”

“What did you overhear?”

“Nothing.”

Mavery glared at her, and Ellice held up her hands.

“I swear it! I was keeping my distance, just in case my shrouding spell didn’t work. I doubt anyone in there would’ve recognized me, but you know how it is—you can’t be too careful.”

“So, Nel told you to follow me so that we could, what, talk business?”

Ellice shrugged. “More or less. He wanted to do the talking, mind. He only wanted me to keep an eye on you tonight.”

“Tailing people isn’t exactly your strong suit. Why not send Itri? Better yet, why didn’t he come find me himself?”

“Itri left just before we arrived here. He saw the ads Wincoff and Sons have been plastering in all the papers. Decided he’d rather break his back for the railroad barons than continue running with us.”

Mavery could have sighed with relief. That kind of work wasn’t luxurious, but at least the boy had managed to escape Neldren’s clutches.

“Besides, Nel didn’t know how receptive you’d be to a reunion.”

Mavery scowled. “You can tell him to take his reunion and shove it up his ass. After what happened in Burnslee, I have nothing to say to him, and I want nothing to do with him.”

“If you say so, but he’s been whinging about ‘clearing up some important details about the last time you saw each other,’ ” she said, curling her fingers for emphasis.

“He shot me. There’s nothing to clear up.”

Ellice’s eyes widened, and Mavery swore she heard the faintest gasp escape the younger woman’s lips. But then Ellice’s expression hardened once more.

“So,” she said, “you won’t even pass along the name of your buyer?”

Mavery replied with another glare.

“Have it your way, then. If you change your mind, we’ll be in the neighborhood. We’re renting a room at the Salty Surling.” She threw Mavery a wicked smile. “It’s not much, but it’s better than a dingy old boarding house.”

Mavery’s stomach plummeted.

“Be seeing you, Mave.”

Ellice sauntered away and, with a flick of mud-streaked hair, vanished around the corner.

Mavery remained in the alley, equal parts seething and on the verge of vomiting as dread morphed into panic.

The man who had left her for dead was not only in Leyport, he had sent his underling after her.

He wanted to talk. She doubted business and burying the proverbial hatchet were the only things on his mind.

Worst of all, he knew where she lived—and he was staying at a tavern only two blocks away.

A clap of thunder sounded in the distance. Mavery had been so preoccupied with Ellice, she hadn’t noticed the new batch of storm clouds that had rolled in, obscuring the moons. A raindrop wetted her hand. She looked up and another drop hit her cheek. Seconds later, the rain fell in sheets.

She raised her hand and conjured a blue veil above her head.

Her protective ward deflected the raindrops as she returned to the main road and flagged down a carriage.

On the way back to the boarding house, she chewed her nails ragged as her confrontation with Ellice replayed in her mind’s eye.

She worried that Ellice—or, gods forbid, Neldren—would be waiting for her on the stoop.

When she returned to the boarding house, there was not a soul outside, and only a handful of boarders on the inside.

But it would be foolish to expect that to remain the case for long.

Until Neldren burned through the final dregs of the payout, or Ellice finally convinced him to leave Leyport, Mavery would do everything she could to ensure their paths never crossed again.

Inside her bedroom, she wasted no time getting to work. At the bottom of her pack, tucked beneath her Compendium and lockpicking tools, she hid her savings. She now had over four hundred potins—almost as much as Neldren had stolen from her—alongside the antique coin Alain had given her.

Atop that, she filled her pack with her tiny collection of books and as many of her clothes as she could fit.

She layered the rest over her current outfit, followed by her coat and assistant’s robe.

She sweat beneath the many layers, and she couldn’t move her arms as freely as she wished, but this was no time to worry about comfort.

After giving the room a final sweep, she slipped out into the night.

For three blocks, she walked with one hand aloft to protect herself from the downpour, until finally coming across a carriage that took her the rest of the way to Steelforge Towers.

The horses trudged through the flooding streets, and the journey took nearly half an hour—barely faster than going by foot.

If Neldren had spotted her leaving the boarding house, following her would take little effort.

Mavery was such an anxious mess, she forgot to conjure another protective ward as she exited the carriage, and she was dripping wet by the time she entered the lobby.

She had never entered Alain’s building at this time of night.

Finding the front doors unlocked and no one at the front desk—not even the kutauss—did little to ease her concerns.

But once she reached the sixth floor and spotted Alain’s wards, she sighed with relief.

She hurried down the dimly lit corridor.

The magic rippled as she reached forward and knocked on his door.

Seconds passed with no answer. Mavery’s heart raced.

If he’d picked tonight of all nights to turn in early—

The door opened, revealing Alain dressed in his tartan dressing gown and pinstriped nightshirt, with his hair more mussed than usual. She was reminded of the day they’d first met. Only now, Alain’s lips were stained purple, his gaze was slightly cross-eyed, and he reeked of wine.

“M-Mavery?” He blinked slowly, and his eyes widened as he seemed to realize she wasn’t a drunken hallucination. “Gods, don’t tell me it’s morning already.”

“It’s still Middisday, at least for a few hours. I’m sorry to show up like this, but I didn’t know where else to—”

“What’s wrong? What happened?” he said quickly. The urgency of her words seemed to have pulled him from his stupor.

Despite wearing half her wardrobe, her body was trembling. She gave the empty corridor a sidelong glance. The rational part of her knew, had Neldren followed her here, he would have made himself known by now. But she was in no state to think rationally. She hated it with every fiber of her being.

“I… It’s a long story.”

Without needing further explanation, Alain pulled her into the apartment, closed the door behind them, and—though his wards rendered mundane locks unnecessary—slid the deadbolt into place.

The only light source was the fire, low and crackling, but it cast a comforting glow over the room. The familiar scent of leather and ink, interlaced with the metallic tang of warding magic, calmed Mavery’s nerves.

She handed Alain her rain-soaked robe, which he draped across his armchair to dry by the fire. Her coat found a home over the back of his desk chair. She stripped off her three extra blouses, then tossed them in a corner to deal with later.

“First thing in the morning,” Alain said, “I’m equipping your pack with a Transmutation spell. For now, make yourself at home.”

Mavery crossed to the sofa, where she didn’t hesitate to take a generous gulp from the wineglass on the tea table. Beside it were two bottles—one was empty, and the other was not quite half-full. Her second gulp drained the glass. As she refilled it, Alain lowered himself beside her.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

She took another long drink, followed by a deep breath. And then she told him everything.