Page 7 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)
The midnight air thrummed with distant hoofbeats as Ransom prowled along the Verne, treading an all-too-familiar path.
Nightguards patrolled the city, trying to stamp out the rising flames of rebellion.
But dissent was spreading across Fantome, and it was catching in the outlying towns and villages too.
The people were unsettled, unsafe. Without their beloved Aurore, they believed the fate of the kingdom was changing.
That King Bertrand himself had deserted them during their hour of need, sitting safe and cossetted in one of his many castles while a plague of ravenous monsters had stalked the city, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake.
Even now, they feared the monsters would return to Fantome.
And there would be no one to protect them when they did.
All along the riverbank, the royal banners burned. On clear nights, fires flickered across the rooftops like stars, as effigies of the king hung from some of the oldest buildings in Valterre. A clear-throated message from its people:
Fantome no longer bows before its king .
Rebellion had taken root in the heart of the kingdom, which meant the king’s enemies were growing in number every week.
The Daggers had never been busier. And all the while, Seraphine Marchant was working tirelessly against them, paying calculated visits to Ransom’s network of smugglers in a bid to lure them to her side and choke his supply of Shade.
She was a different, more dangerous kind of threat.
She wasn’t running around his city, burning flags and desecrating royal statues.
She was stripping away the age-old man-made power of Fantome, bit by bit.
Clever. Taunting.
He should have resented her for it. And yet, there was a part of him that enjoyed the challenge, that relished the creeping sense that their paths might cross once more.
What had become of his once-innocent farmgirl in the months since he’d last seen her?
This calculating creature remade with vengeance and Lightfire.
If he saw her again, would she burn him?
Would he let her come close enough to try?
Dangerous thoughts.
A cat darting from a nearby alley jolted Ransom from his thoughts.
The city returned in a flood of noise and colour.
When he looked up, he was standing outside the townhouse that belonged to Benoit Renard, one of the richest merchants in Valterre.
An oil lamp flickered in a window on the fourth floor, casting shadows on the drapes. Renard was about to meet one more.
Downing a vial of Shade, Ransom barely registered the acrid taste as he yanked a shadow from the drainpipe and climbed up the trim red-brick exterior.
The sash window was wide open, saving him the trouble of kicking it in.
He slipped inside, parting the drapes, like a reaper coming through the gates of hell.
And was met with a stifled curse.
Renard was standing at the end of his bed in his nightcap and gown, brandishing a brass poker. ‘Figured you’d show up sooner or later,’ he said, in a voice that was commendably even.
Pulling a shadow off the wall, Ransom said, ‘That’s what happens when you plot to kill your king, Renard.’
Renard’s pale face went translucent. The poor fool really thought he would get away with it.
‘Next time you pay a gang of toothless mercenaries to assassinate the most protected man in Valterre, make sure they’re not a bunch of blabbering drunkards,’ said Ransom, slowly winding the shadow into a noose. ‘Actually, never mind. There won’t be a next time.’
Renard found his voice. ‘Perhaps not for me. But others will try. The king’s days are numbered. The People’s Saint is coming. His followers grow by the day. You cannot kill us all.’
Despite his urgency to get this over with, Ransom paused. The People’s Saint . This was the second time in less than a week that a mark had pledged their dying allegiance to a saint that Ransom had never even heard of.
Renard’s yellowed teeth glowed in the dimness.
‘The old ways are changing, Dagger. The king has failed his people, failed the memory of our blessed saints. Fate has given us a new one. He who will stand up to monsters and protect his people. Courage is catching throughout Valterre.’ He dared a sneer.
‘I suspect it will be bad for your business.’
‘Maybe.’ Ransom feigned a shrug, shoving his curiosity aside. A distracted Dagger made for a runaway mark. ‘But not quite yet.’
He tossed the shadow-noose, tightening the shadows around Renard’s throat just as the wily trader whipped a vial from his pocket. It smashed on the floorboards between them, scorching the bedchamber with blinding bright light.
The Shade left Ransom like a swift and violent wind.
‘Fuck,’ he hissed, falling to his knees.
Fuck .
As the light cleared, he spied the broken vial on the floor, the label as small as his thumbnail.
A single burning flame. He blinked up at Renard just as the bastard swung the brass poker.
It smashed into the side of Ransom’s head.
He sagged against the bedpost, barely dodging the next blow.
Staggering to his feet, he stumbled backwards, hitting the windowsill.
‘Where did you get that Lightfire?’ he said, half slurring.
Renard paused, poker raised. ‘Bought it from a trusted trader yesterday morning. Cost a pretty penny. Though I’ve been assured the next batch will be cheaper.’
Seraphine . Ransom swallowed the name like a bitter pill as he slipped another vial of Shade from his pocket. Always bring a spare . He resented the waste, but he was not losing his mark tonight.
Renard reached for another vial. This one exploded in his pocket. He cursed, desperately swinging his poker.
Ransom ducked. By the time Renard swung again, the Shade was already working its way down Ransom’s gullet. Renard drew back, his hands trembling. All out of Lightfire, then.
Ransom pulled every shadow off the wall and smothered the screaming merchant, brass poker and all. He collapsed in a sea of blackness.
Rubbing the growing welt on his head, Ransom perched on the windowsill and counted to ten.
When he pulled the shadows off, the whites of Renard’s eyes were black, his mouth still open mid-scream.
Ransom looked away, his stomach turning.
Every kill – every mark – took him one step further from the freedom he had almost won all those months ago.
From the one who had believed he was worth saving.
How wrong she had been about him.
‘Where is your precious People’s Saint now?
’ he muttered, bending down to take Renard’s signet ring.
A gift for the king. He pocketed it, then paused, taking a piece of the broken vial of Lightfire too.
On the way home, he stuffed his hands into his coat pockets, idly running the pad of his thumb over that tiny golden flame.
So, Lightfire had finally made its way to the city. He wondered how long it would be until it flooded the streets, filling the cupboards and pockets of criminals and townsfolk alike? Until it suppressed Shade for ever.
A familiar bronze-flecked cerulean gaze flooded his mind, his thoughts turning to the music of her laugh and that smart, curving mouth.
His spitfire was quicker than he thought…
but for all her boldness, she was not yet winning.
The Order of Daggers had never been busier.
With the growing unrest caused by the monsters of Fantome, and the rise of the mysterious People’s Saint, enemies of the Crown were cropping up like cockroaches, and the king was keen to stomp them all out.
Ransom was the boot, and the coin had never been better.
It would take more than a few vials of Lightfire to topple the Daggers.
But Seraphine was clever enough to know that.
And strangely, he found himself welcoming her next move.
It gave him something to look forward to.
As he neared Old Haven, his thoughts returned to Renard, whose dying threat had sounded so eerily similar to the last words of Ravi Dyrren.
Dyrren was a prisoner who had spent over a decade in the king’s dungeon, and a decade more on the king’s battlefield before that.
War had turned him bitter, the lack of coin that came after a gruesome leg injury on the Urnica border igniting a desperation that made him dangerous to the Crown.
Dangerous to the city. He was one of many former soldiers who nursed long-worn grudges against the king.
Dyrren had been in the Iron Keep, the oldest prison in Valterre, until two weeks ago, when out of the blue, the doors had been thrown open, the head guard freeing hundreds of prisoners and scattering seasoned mercenaries and deadly enemies of the Crown across the plains of Valterre.
He’d been hanged for it the next day, but by then it was too late.
Like Renard, Dyrren had gone down swinging, spittle foaming through the gaps of his missing teeth as his eyes turned black. And still he managed to hiss a parting shot that now haunted Ransom.
Where one of us falls, ten more will rise .
The Age of Kings is coming to an end .
The People’s Saint is rising,
And we will follow him into fire and death .
Well, Dyrren had been right about the death part. But had a brand-new saint truly come? Could such a magic be real? Or did they have a trickster on their hands?
The question nipped at his heels as he neared the catacombs. Already Ransom could feel his new shadow-mark taking root. It licked the skin of his lower left rib like a cold flame. A familiar hollowness yawned inside him, turning his steps sluggish.
The clouds over Old Haven were soft, the air balmy with the beginnings of spring. But there was a coldness here that had nothing to do with the seasons and everything to do with death: the nearness of it in the graveyards, the promise of it slumbering down in the catacombs.