The Black Star (Book 3) (15 page)

"See for yourself," she said. "Either way, I'm keeping the silver."

He couldn't believe it, yet her confidence undermined his own. What would motivate Blays to trade with those who'd once been their worst enemies? Was Cee mistaken? Was Blays up to something? Or had he simply moved on, putting his past with Setteven behind him as thoroughly as he'd done so with Narashtovik? If so, he wouldn't be the first to forsake everything else in pursuit of a life of wealth and pleasure. Maybe he thought he had nothing left to him.

Dante lapsed into silence. They had crossed a few villages after leaving Narashtovik, but they were currently traveling a stretch of woods populated entirely by squirrels and owls. That night, they had to make camp in the wilds. Compared to sleeping in caves in the Woduns, however, the discomfort was trifling.

They made steady progress, pushing the horses without exceeding their limits, stabling them in a new town each night. Dante wanted nothing more than to race all the way to Setteven, but his impatience was tempered by an ironclad fact: if Cee was right about Blays, he wouldn't be going anywhere soon. Not if he was in bed with the capital. Not when there was a fortune to be had.

It was an odd thing. Blays had never been greedy. Even when Dante had been elevated to the Council, and all the wealth of Narashtovik had been at their disposal, Blays had shown little interest in throwing it around. He'd wanted no more than clean clothes, sharp swords, and the occasional night in the taverns. He'd mocked merchants more than once, scorning them for scurrying around after slivers of silver, noses buried too deep in their ledgers to ever see the world around them.

But the death of Lira had broken him. That much was clear. It was why Blays had left. In that state, he could have become anything. Grief had a way of transforming a person into what they most hated. Perhaps instead of killing himself, falling in with the enemy was Blays' way of destroying everything he'd once been—and his pain with it.

Mile after mile faded behind them, pine forests and grassy plains and ridges of weathered limestone. He gave some thought to sailing to Yallen and then heading upriver to the capital, but in all likelihood that would require backtracking to Narashtovik to find passage on a boat. Instead, they took the road nearly all the way to Dollendun before cutting overland to the west, intercepting the road and the river after a day in the wilds.

The mountains of Gallador sat in the south, gauzed in mist. A fork in the road fed them straight toward Setteven. They were deep in Gask now and Dante rode with his cowl pulled over his head. He wasn't certain what would happen if he were recognized. Narashtovik had been at peace with its former masters for more than three years, and while the two states weren't throwing each other tea parties, neither were they on the brink of conflict.

But peaceful relations between countries would mean nothing to anyone who bore Dante a personal grudge. A blood relative of the slain Cassinder, for instance. Or the friends and family of the thousands of Gaskan soldiers killed in the war. Dante's role had generated far too much anguish to assume he could move through these lands in safety.

On the morning of the day they expected to reach Setteven, they entered a quiet forest. Sparrows flitted across the road, passing through thin beams of light. They had traveled close to four hundred miles, and with their destination so close, Dante let the horses amble at their own pace.

"Redshirts," Cee murmured.

Dante snapped up his head. Down the leaf-littered road, men in red doublets blocked the way. King's men. Just like the thousands Dante had plunged to their deaths in the final battle of the Chainbreakers' War. This time, there were just eight. He could kill them in moments if it came to it. Yet his pulse quickened. The last thing Dante needed was to draw attention. And by definition, there was no such thing as a safe fight.

Hurriedly, he called on the nether and went to work on his face. Shifting the planes of his cheekbones. Lengthening his nose. Thickening his brows. The illusions were slight, a dim version of the method Cally had used when he'd infiltrated the Council, but it should be enough to hide his identity.

"Act normal," he said. "No killing."

Cee gave him a look. "Do your friends normally have to be ordered not to kill strangers?"

"He's reminding himself," Lew muttered.

Dante shook his head. He let Cee lead. She slowed as they approached the soldiers. The men watched them alertly, but didn't reach for swords or bows. Once Cee rode within twenty feet, a trooper held up his hand. Cee stopped and nodded in greeting.

"Where are you headed?" the soldier said.

"Setteven," Cee said; early in the trip, they'd arranged a cover story. "We're on business from Tantonnen."

"Are you armed?"

Cee flipped back her cloak to show the scabbard on her hip. "If I draw this, it'll flash."

"Why do you have weapons?"

"For the same reasons you do, I expect."

The redshirt nodded. "Have you run into trouble? Seen anything fishy?"

"Nothing but quiet. Something we should be wary of?"

"Highwaymen," the man spat. "We appear to have cleared out the vermin. But be on watch."

Cee tipped her head. "Will do. Safe travels."

The group parted, allowing them to ride through. Lew looked back. Dante didn't.

Cee waited until they were out of earshot. "Awfully close to the capital for bandits."

"Is this road normally patrolled?" Dante said.

"Rarely." She flashed a grin. "Or I would have been caught years ago."

Dante kept his eyes open and they crossed the forest without incident, riding into a wide plain of farms and hamlets. At one settlement, another group of redshirts eyed them, but let them pass without questions.

Then Setteven sprawled before them, stretched across the hills and the river, bustling with trade and life, smoky from chimneys, raucous with talk and clicking hooves and shutters squeaking closed against the growing cold of late afternoon. Dante could smell the manure from beyond the walls, but as they rode through the white gate on the south end of town, the odor was fought by wood smoke, the freshwater smell of the river, and frying bacon, which Setteven was famous for.

It looked younger than Narashtovik, perhaps because it wasn't littered with ruins, yet it had the unmistakable appearance of a city that's been around for eras. Many of the structures were patchwork: wooden upper floors atop stone ground floors; rowhouses grafted onto each other one after another; classical arches on a temple of Mennok beside a manor house designed with modern parallel lines. As in Narashtovik, many of the locals wore long coats, but the people here combined them with round hats trimmed with fur. One disdainful-looking lady wore a shirt made from a single piece of seamless leather. Dante recognized it vaguely: norren clothing.

Lew glanced from side to side. "Doesn't look like the capital felt the war at all."

"They felt it," Dante said. "You'll note they haven't come back."

"Time to get off the street," Cee said. "Establish a base of operations."

Dante had never been to Setteven before, so he left the logistics in her hands. She took them to an inn in the baker's district. Staff led the horses to their stables. The shutters in Dante's second-floor room were open and the whole room smelled of rising bread.

Despite the agreeable aroma, he closed up the window. "What now?"

"Depends," Cee said. "What are you going to do when you find him?"

"That's for me to decide."

"I don't care if you mean to spit him like a hog and serve him in honey. But what you want done impacts how I go about finding him."

Dante shook his head. "I won't know that until I know what he's doing here. Just get me the intel. Quietly."

Cee snorted. "Will do, boss. Guess you better stay out of sight until I'm back."

She took her sword and a small pack with her. Dante sent Lew downstairs for food and stoked up the fire. Lew returned with bread, stew, and the sour green apples that were Dante's favorite. He eyed Lew. Did the kid spy on his meals, too?

He couldn't complain about the fare, though. The stew was potatoes and bacon, and so heavily peppered it burnt his tongue. The sort of thing an innkeeper might do to hide the taste of spoiled meat, but the stew tasted so good Dante figured the Settevites just had a thing for spice.

"What if it turns out Cee's right?" Lew said around a mouthful of bread. "If he's doing business with Setteven, doesn't that make him a traitor?"

"No," Dante said after a moment. "We're not at war anymore. There's no use speculating until we hear what Cee has to say."

Mercifully, that put an end to the conversation. After dinner, Lew nodded off in his chair. With nothing better to do, Dante did the same. It was dark and quiet when Cee returned.

"Have a nice nap?" she said. "Ready to meet my informant, or would you rather catch another forty winks first?"

Dante stood. "Let's go."

Lew blinked from his chair, annoyed, but he followed them downstairs. Setteven was the Gaskan capital, but it was hardly better lit than any other major city. Cee found a wide street where lanterns burned at major intersections and over the stoops of public houses and tea shops.

She hooked right down a side street. Over the course of three blocks, the neighborhood shifted from pleasant and prosperous to mean and grim. Pools of stagnant water forced them to swerve like the drunks. The lanterns were gone, feebly replaced by the quarter moon and a few open windows. People cackled and argued. Dante pulled the nether to his hands.

Cee swung into an alley littered with garbage and sleeping vagabonds. Wash lines criss-crossed the air between the crooked rowhouses. She turned into a dead end abutting the backs of several connected buildings. There, a bearded man sat on a blanket, clicking around a set of clay tiles inscribed with what looked to be Old Gaskan runes.

"Took you long enough," he said.

Cee jerked her thumb at Dante. "Tell him what you told me."

Still fiddling with his tiles, the man gazed at Dante. "Couple months back, one of Lord Pendelles' servants had me arrested for loitering. Lives on Dunvern Street. Big pink house."

"Did you see him?" Dante said.

"The man himself?" The bearded man laughed. "Course not. They had me arrested so people like him wouldn't
have
to see me."

"Do you know if he still lives here?"

"Yeah, let me check with my vizier."

"Pay him," Cee said. "Five hammers."

Dante spent enough time on the streets to recognize the slang for iron coins. He counted them out and handed them to the man, who rattled them around his palm and nodded. Cee thanked him and walked away.

"That's it?" Dante said. "Why didn't you just tell me yourself?"

"Because you would have demanded I take you straight to him to ask your own questions." She brushed back her hair. "Anyway, I wasn't about to spend
my
money."

On the way back to the inn, they hashed out their next step. They knew where Pendelles lived; now it was time to determine whether Pendelles was in fact Blays. While Lew might be able to positively identify him, Dante wanted to do so himself. That meant staking out Dunvern Street. Dante could disguise himself, be it magically or mundanely, but if he were to hang out in the open, Blays was canny enough to recognize him by posture or gesture.

He couldn't use a dead bug to infiltrate the house, either. They never moved right. To most people, it would just look like his moth spy was sick, but Blays would know it for what it was. Dante needed somewhere he could watch from in secret.

That meant attempting to rent a room. Cee could handle that, but they were dressed for travel, not doing business in one of Setteven's trendiest neighborhood. If they were to walk into Dunvern Street in dirty cloaks and scuffed boots, they might be kicked out on sight. Even if they were allowed to roam around, no landlord or innkeeper would let Cee degrade his property with her presence.

In short, they needed new clothes.

Acquiring these ate up the next morning. As soon as they finished, Cee hired a carriage—she couldn't arrive on foot for the same reason she couldn't wander around in dingy clothes, and besides, the hackney might know who in the neighborhood was renting—and headed off for richer pastures.

That left Dante and Lew in their room. Dante had brought a kapper scale with him and killed time trying to study it, but since he couldn't reach inside it with the nether, there was little for him to see. Lew had got his hands on parchment and a quill. He spent all day parked in the window scribbling away. A report to Olivander? If so, it certainly was detailed. Anyway, Lew would probably be less open about it. Poetry, then. Or a letter to his mom.

At sunset, catcalls erupted from the common room downstairs. Dante wasn't surprised in the slightest when Cee opened their door a minute later. She had chosen a sleek purple dress that wasn't shy about expressing her décolletage.

She gave Dante a look that could have cut boiled leather. "One word and you can book your room yourself."

He splayed his palms. "I think you look regal."

"If nothing else, I'm the queen of getting things done. Your room is right across the street."

"Can we go now?"

"Sure. But unless you want to crack your skull, you should stay seated until you hear the bill."

She quoted him the room's rate, but the silver meant nothing to him. They packed their things and Dante and Lew donned their new dress: formal longjackets, shiny boots, and fur-trimmed hats. They flagged a carriage and headed across town.

As the name suggested, Dunvern Street straddled a high hill interrupted by parks, paths, and assorted greenery. Below its crest, the road leveled, overlooking a slope too steep for structures. The city sprawled to all sides, darkness pricked by ten thousand lanterns and candles. Miles away, moonlight bounced from a lake and shined on the confectionary eminence of the palace.

The road curved from the cliffs into rows of stately residences with little space between them. The carriage creaked to a stop in front of a pillared white structure labeled The Hotel Osterre. Dante paid the driver and exited. He wore a hat and had selected a coat with a collar that rose to his nose, yet in the cold, quiet street, he felt exposed to the world. He dreaded every second Cee and Lew dawdled inside the carriage.