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“Well.” Finn shrugged. “Once they all knew what you could do, they became rather easy to convince that we could win. Both the remaining members of the Rotunda, and my friends left in the navy—which has been ready to sail for weeks, by the way. And yes, sure, I’m positive I can expect some attempts at backstabbing, especially if we actually manage to take over Auverraine.

But right now, they’re in the palms of our hands. ”

Our hands. So he was dressing it up as allyship, but really, Gabe and Malcolm were the linchpins in his plan—the hinges it turned on. Gabe assumed they had been all along, that every shred of help the former pirate had offered was to lead them to this.

But that also meant they had the bargaining power.

Gabe stood, straightening to his full height. It made the top of his head nearly brush the ceiling. Malcolm followed his lead, but Finn didn’t look cowed. He peered at them with a cocked brow, arms crossed over his chest expectantly.

“So you want us to join you,” Gabe said. “To use magic to fight against the Auverrani army.”

“Should be an easy task.” Finn grinned. “You can burn the place to the ground or grow a huge tree through the middle of the Citadel, it makes little difference to me. And I’ll let you keep the piece, do whatever you want with it. It rightfully belongs to you, really.”

There was one hurdle passed. “You do realize that we’d be going up against a god?” Malcolm tried to look nonchalant, but anxiety thrummed beneath his voice. This was what they’d been working toward, but the prospect of being the front line was daunting.

“You’re gods,” Finn said simply, for the second time. “I don’t think that will be much of an issue.”

Gabe couldn’t decide if he agreed. Couldn’t decide if it was comforting.

Power changes things , Hestraon murmured. Power moves mountains.

“We need terms.” Gabe had never been a good negotiator, but the conversation up to this point had been blunt enough that he didn’t think Finn was much of one, either. “Auverraine may be taken over by hostile forces, but it’s still our home. Its citizens cannot be collateral damage.”

“I understand.” Finn nodded, sobering. “Every attempt will be made to keep as many people alive as possible.”

Which was probably as good as they were going to get.

Gabe looked to Malcolm. This was everything they’d hoped for—the promise that, maybe, they could stop the creep of the Empire, a Holy Kingdom spanning the globe under Apollius’s thumb.

“We’ll need a ship,” Gabe said. “One of our own, when we leave.”

“Just getting Val’s back would be good,” Malcolm said. “She’s spitting mad about that, still.”

“Can’t give you one when we leave,” Finn said, “but once the fighting is done, you can have whatever you want from the fleet.”

So there was their passage to the Golden Mount. All it took was becoming weapons.

Malcolm’s face was drawn into uneasy lines. His mouth worked a moment, then he gave Gabe a slight nod. If Gabe was in, so was he.

“We’ll do it,” Gabe said. “But we have some requests.”

“Certainly.” Finn waved a hand. “Whatever you want. Within reason.”

“Our friends come with us.” No way were they leaving Michal and Val and Mari behind. Lore’s mothers would throttle him if he abandoned them in Caldien while he went closer to their daughter. “And we leave as soon as possible.”

“Done.” Finn turned toward the door. “Welcome to the Caldienan army, boys.”

“Gods dead and dying,” Malcolm cursed.

Gabe expected chaos in the streets, the citizens of Farramark reacting to the deposition of a Prime Minister who had seemed tolerated well enough.

But when Finn led them from the room—a cellar in the bottom of some well-kept house near the Rotunda, a surprisingly genteel imprisonment—things seemed to be progressing as if nothing had happened at all.

The roadways teemed with people on the way to their errands.

The carriages they passed gave them slight nods of acknowledgment.

“This is the most peaceful takeover I’ve ever seen,” Malcolm murmured, echoing Gabe’s thoughts.

“It’s because no one knows it happened,” Finn said, ambling ahead of them.

He twirled a finger in a circle by his head, indicating the whole of the city.

“This is how it goes, when the government doesn’t concern itself much with the people.

Life here will continue on as it always has, regardless of who the Prime Minister is. ”

“Until we start the war,” Gabe said.

“Well, yes. Until then.”

Fire crackled in Gabe’s fists, burned down his spine. War sounded good. War sounded perfect.

Next to him, Malcolm looked pensive. His hands opened and closed, his fingers flexing outward, as if he kept grabbing handfuls of something he didn’t want to touch.

Finn led them to the boardinghouse, cheerily greeted Mrs. Cavendish. Mari was helping her in the kitchen, kneading the bread their landlady made every day. When Gabe and Malcolm entered behind Finn, her deep-brown eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“I would love fish for dinner, I think.” Finn said it as if it were an idle thought. “Would that be possible, Mrs. Cavendish? I’m craving it something awful.”

“Of course, dear.” Mrs. Cavendish wiped her hands and set the cloth aside. “I was just about to go to market. It may take me a mite longer to go all the way to the harbor, but the walk will do me good.”

Finn gave her a winning smile. Mari’s eyes narrowed farther.

The poison runner didn’t mince words once the landlady was out of the house. “I knew you were a snake.”

“That’s hurtful.” But Finn’s ease belied the statement as he turned around a chair and sat in it backward, resting his hands under his chin. “Especially when I’m giving you what you want.”

Mari looked to Gabe and Malcolm, brow cocked. “Is he telling the truth, or is this a hostage situation?”

“A bit of both,” Malcolm answered.

Finn’s grin widened. “You wanted to march on Auverraine, right? Save your friends from a King unfortunately infected with godhood, save your daughter from the Burnt Isles?”

Mari’s breath caught, one hand absently pressing against her chest before she forced it back into her lap.

“I find myself with the Caldienan naval fleet under my command, and the urge to make sure Kirythea doesn’t even think about crossing the border,” Finn continued. His grin went fierce. “Help me do that, and I’ll do whatever I can to bring back your daughter.”

Mari stood, the sudden softening that the mention of Lore had brought to her face washed into wariness. “Let me get Val.”

“Right here, love.” The other poison runner had daggers in her eyes, and one in her hand.

The other rested on the hilt of a pistol always at her waist. For a smallish woman, Val certainly found lots of places to hide weapons.

“Care to tell us how, exactly, one such as yourself is now the head of the naval division?”

“Easy.” Finn shrugged. “I killed the Prime Minister, and all the Rotunda delegates who were in on it with me are too busy fighting over who gets his job or cowering in their giant houses to pay attention to who commands the fleet.”

“That assumes the fleet will listen to you.”

“They’re mobilized and waiting for my word.” The feigned nonchalance Finn had employed up to this point fell away, replaced with steely resolve. “They’ve been listening to me for years.”

Val stared at him, expression granite. But she slipped the dagger back into its hidden sheath on her forearm, and her grip on the pistol relaxed. She looked at Gabe, then Malcolm. “And you two are in support of this, I imagine.”

“I’m in support of anything that will save Lore,” Gabe said. Bastian, too, though he didn’t know yet how he could. He’d find a way. He’d save them both. Doing anything less was unfathomable.

Flame crept through his veins, his palms heated beneath the candle tattoos of a station he no longer held. When he blinked, the world was a tangle of red thread, fire waiting for a flint.

Val’s lips pursed. She nodded. With a sigh, she waved her hand. “All I ask is that you give my ship back. It cost a fucking fortune.”

Footnotes

1 An addendum written by an unknown Malfouran monk, only appearing in one Compendium circa 3 AGF.