“Right now, Mrs. Riley! Much as I enjoy being in this company, I have other places to be!”
“Wait!” said Rafe. The room was illuminated by a single lamp on the wall, halfway between himself and Karzov. “What use is one Key to you, Karzov? Surely we can come to an agreement. Blackstone has other wants, other desires. Trade, perhaps? Water rights?” He walked out into the middle of the room, hands out to show that he had no weapons.
Karzov gave him a mildly impatient look. “For Blackstone to have any bargaining power, we need the Key first.” He stared at the baby who had opened his eyes and was staring in a squinting unfocused kind of way at Karzov. One small hand snuck up from the swaddling cloths and fluttered to the baby’s mouth. “You know, I have never killed a baby before,” he mused.
“You can have it!” Felicity whirled and went to the wall beside the range. Her fingers fumbled with a loose brick.
“Good girl.” Karzov clucked his tongue at the baby. “Hello, little one! My name is Death. What’s yours?”
Rafe and Isabella exchanged glances. Rafe tilted his head toward the lamp, and Isabella snaked a hard glittering glance at Karzov. Let Karzov get the Key, get the baby back, turn off the lights, and tackle him in the confusion before he got out the back door.
Felicity held the Key out with trembling fingers. It was not a uniform color, like the others Rafe had seen. Swirls of orange and amber covered its surface. Gold wire inlaid the bottom half. “Give me Ellis first.”
“And lose my leverage? Don’t be stupid, my dear. Scoot the Key across the table to me first.”
Felicity did so, but the Key made it only halfway across the surface.
“Put Ellis in here,” Coop pushed a basket towards Karzov with his foot. “Put him down. Please.” Fear blanched his face and shook his voice.
Karzov ignored him, shifted his knife to his other hand—the baby stared wonderingly at it and reached out with tiny fingers—and picked up the Key. Rafe tried to nudge the device into awakening, but he couldn’t even feel its power, much less do anything with it.
So much for that rohkayan talent.
“Interesting.” Karzov held the Key up. “Wait! Look! It sparks.” He turned it around as if mesmerized.
Rafe tried once again to enter the part of his mind he’d bricked up since that original bout of quartz sickness, the place that the fierce wild light poured into. Something barred his way, something like a wall. He couldn’t tear it down—he didn’t know how—but maybe he could poke some holes into part of it.
He visualized it as a fine net, porous.
Surely something could get through.
Rafe braced himself and reached out for the quartz energy. There was not much here, only a yellowish trickle, but he pulled it into himself—wincing as it crawled like acid through his veins—and pushed it at the Key, willing it do something.
A flash of light and heat burst from the Key. With a shocked cry, Karzov dropped it.
And everyone moved.
Isabella dived for the Key. Cooper and Felicity slammed into the table, arms out for Ellis.
Karzov recovered, held up the baby. “Catch!” And he tossed the child into the air, at no one in particular as the light and heat from the Key faded.
And Rafe realized that burst of magic had snuffed the light from the gas lamp as he ran to where he guessed the baby would land. He collided with warm bodies, the edge of the table, heard the baby scream in real pain, and then, Felicity sobbing, “I’ve got him, I’ve got him!”
By the time they got the light turned back on, Karzov was gone.
And so were Isabella and the Key.
And the baby was screaming and screaming, little face scrunched in pain, skin red and raw.
“This is all your fault.”
Rafe lifted his head from his arms. He was exhausted and drained from the sick ooze he’d poured into the Key, and he had quickly dropped onto a stool beside Felicity’s kitchen table. He stared uncomprehendingly at Coop through headache-nibbled vision.
Coop stood with fists clenched at both sides, taut as a string. His face was a mask, a mask of a stranger, all good humor and ready wit locked tight behind pain and anger.
“Coop.” Rafe spoke slowly, enunciating his words through the haze surrounding him. “You’re angry. Your grandfather was murdered, your sister was threatened, your nephew injured, your family heirloom stolen. You’re taking it out on me.”
“And don’t you deserve it?” Coop’s breath came out fast and furious. “You and that smug Oakhaven ambassador and your bullying Oakhaven government. You waltzed in here, ready to bribe, force, or steal the Key from us. You and that woman of yours brought the Blackstone Shadow upon us. If you could’ve resisted poking around, my nephew would not have a broken arm and burns on his face. Good God, he may be blinded from this!”
“I’m sorry, Coop.”
Coop pressed his hand to his eyes. “At least he’s sleeping now. At least the screaming stopped.” His voice was low and muffled. “I should’ve come straight here instead of stopping at that cursed inn. I should’ve come here as an Ironheart brother should’ve, instead of mincing around like an Oakhaven fop!” He smashed his fist on the table, making the metal clang.
Rafe opened his mouth to say something, but a voice from the door broke in. “Rafael Grenfeld?” It was Coop’s father and his voice was cold and flat.
Alarms blossomed to life all over Rafe. He rose, as every sense came on full alert in a heady rush that cut through the cloud of his exhaustion. “Yes, sir?”
“Is this your case?” Behind the councilman, an Ironheart militiaman in sober grey and blue held up Rafe’s bag. He and his companion held truncheons as if they expected a fight.
“It is.” Wariness crept into Rafe’s voice.
“And is this written in your hand?” The elder Cooper lifted up a folded piece of paper, a letter that Rafe had started aboard the boat.
“Yes.” Rafe clenched his teeth, knowing what next was coming.
“And did you write this?” The elder Cooper read, “Ironheart is too proud to give up the Key on its own, except through coercion. These people are not easily bribed.”
“I did. I was stating an opinion. I did not prescribe the action.”
Coop gave out a bitter laugh. “You met this woman in Oakhaven before. Is she going to meet you with the Key? Where? At the docks?”
“Isabella is not working with or for me.”
“There won’t be any meetings,” stated the elder Cooper. “You, Grenfeld, are under arrest. You will appear before a judge tomorrow, on charges of foreign meddling in the affairs of Ironheart and theft.” He indicated the two militiamen, who searched Rafe roughly, emptying his pockets of all their contents.
“You’re going to arrest me, and let Karzov and Isabella go?” Rafe shook his head in disbelief. Manacles clamped his wrists together, and a chain linked him quite securely to the belt of the larger militiaman.
“Oh, we’ll find them, don’t worry. Everyone who had a hand in this situation will be brought before the law.”
Somehow, the thought didn’t reassure.
The sentence was six months hard labor, handed down by a judge whose work clothes were visible beneath the short hem and open front of his too-small judicial robes. Bryerstar, who had refused all contact with Rafe, was there, clearly against his will. The ambassador looked even more out-of-place in the small courtroom, seated on a rickety chair and holding a scented handkerchief to his nose as if a bad smell permeated the room. When it was his turn to speak, he rose and made it plain that one Rafael Grenfeld had acted as an independent agent, without the authority and approval of his government, and Oakhaven would not stand behind one who violated the laws of an allied state.
Rafe knew it was coming but it still felt like a punch to the gut.
Bryerstar was gone almost before the judge banged his gavel after pronouncing sentence.
The Ironheart militia might be a bit rough, but they weren’t cruel. The rations were of thin soup and bread, simple fare, but sufficient for his needs. He received a green prison uniform that smelled of disinfectant and dye, a number—242—and an iron cuff around his wrist that, should he succeed in running away, would signal to every zealous citizen to turn him in at once. After that, he was marched out to some barracks where he spent the sleeping hours lying awake on a pallet, listening to the snores of his fellow inmates. Rafe thought vengefully of what he would do to Isabella when he next saw her.
The chance came sooner then he’d imagined.
Rafe started the next day laying bricks for a potter’s shed under minimal supervision, the guard being halfway down the street. He’d never laid bricks before but as the hours passed, he began to fancy that he was rather good at it, stopping every now and again for a gulp of lemon water or one of the cornmeal cakes provided by the future owners of the shed. Ironheart citizens treated their conscripted labor force well, prisoners or not.
“That wall needs more staggering.”
Rafe nearly choked on a mouthful of cake and spun around. Isabella stood in the middle of the street, dressed in the grey robes of a Selene novice, examining his work and
daring
to criticize his masonry.
After betraying him, no less.
The cake, which had tasted so good a moment ago, was a choking mouthful of dry ash. “You…” he spluttered and sprang over a knee-high section of wall.
“You didn’t think I’d leave without saying goodbye, did you?” asked Isabella, seemingly unperturbed by the murderous rage he knew was on his face. He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her until that fine white-blond hair fell out of her sleek bun in unruly strands. With difficulty, Rafe stuffed his hands into his pockets—and discovered his prison uniform didn’t have any.
“Look at this,” he yelled, shaking his fists in front of Isabella’s face. “I have no pockets!” Somehow this was the ultimate degradation, the final sign of how quickly he had sunk in the world.
“I see,” said Isabella, gravely, no hint of a smile.
“If you’re here to gloat, do it quickly. You won’t get far in those stolen garments once I shout ‘Thief’.” Rafe turned away.
“Actually, I
am
a novice in the Order of Selene,” commented Isabella mildly. “And I think it might be better for you to hear me out. I did come to explain… and apologize.” Her voice grew feather-soft and almost uncertain
“Oh? You’re going to explain why you broke into my uncle’s house and why you stole Coop’s family’s Key and why I’m here taking the blame for it? You’re going to explain why I found that wretched Pyotr in Rocquespur’s warehouse after you swore up and down you hated the Marquis? Well?” Rafe regarded her skeptically.
“I suppose,” said Isabella with a quirk of humor around her mouth, “it would be too late to persuade you to forget this whole Key business and go stay in the country with your brother for a few months?”
“I’m up to my neck in this, Isabella. I’m not giving up.”
“You are the sort to keep scrabbling and scratching away at it. Rather like an itch that won’t go away,” Isabella agreed.
That was an unflattering comparison, but there was no denying the truth of that statement. Rafe waited with an air of frigid politeness for the explanation she’d promised him. She narrowed her eyes at his masonry, as if it would tell her what lies to say.
“All right,” she said finally. “I don’t believe Leonius Grenfeld is interested in unearthing the Tors Lumena. What he wants is to crush Blackstone, the way Blackstone crushed his legs. He wants the Keys for the power he thinks they’ll give him over Blackstone, not to bring light to the Barrens.”
“And you discerned this from afar? Did you watch him from the shadows, or come to this conclusion during the half-stage you spent attempting to steal from him?”
Isabella gave him a clear-eyed look. “You mock me, but you’re too blinded by familial affection to see the truth. Why do you think your uncle’s been collecting those kayan artifacts all these years? Why do you think he urged the government to unearth the defensive wards and weaponry the kayan left behind in Oakhaven? He wants to power those things, and he’ll use the Keys to do it. He sure won’t let
you
traipse off with them into the Barrens.”
“Why should I believe a thief? You stole the damn Key from Coop and left me to take the blame!”
“I had to!” she snapped. “I had to make Karzov believe that we were not allied, to distance me from you. I had to let Ironheart arrest you—and yes, I knew that they would—to keep you safe from him. Have you any idea what kind of man he is? The sort who’d appear to be a fussy prim uncle, right up to the point he drives a needle into each of your eyeballs, crushes your finger bones, and stabs you in the gut, just because he’s never killed a person that way before!”
Rafe rattled his leg chains and raised his eyebrows. “And this is protecting me? What do I do if he comes after me, chained up as I am?”
“I’m keeping you out of his way for now,” said Isabella. “He’s dangerous.”
She was serious and there was turmoil in her eyes that might’ve been… what? Fear? Anger? It jolted him out of his simmering self-righteousness faster than a bucket of icy water.
“You and Karzov know each other. You both know what causes those bodies to collapse like that. Something you’re supposed to fight against. That darkness in that mine back in the Barrens.” He paused, but she didn’t offer any more information about the thing he’d seen. “Karzov’s not just a Blackstone agent, is he?”
“He is and he isn’t.”
“Like you?”
“Like me,” she agreed. “More like me than anything else.”
“Your dark side.”
“Rafe, I
am
my dark side.”
Rafe didn’t believe that. He hadn’t seen Isabella callously toss a baby into the air to fall where it may. “Is Karzov causing this plague of corpses?”
Isabella bit her lip, clearly troubled. “If he is,” she said, “then he has broken the only oath he ever kept and there is no limit to his madness.”
A sharp crack resounded against the sky. The earth shuddered as if a giant hand had slammed into it. Rafe and Isabella turned towards the sound as a ball of fire blossomed into the air above Ironheart.