“No.” He could convince me to accept the slaves’ deaths because I had grown up in Midnight. I recognized that as necessary, though I wished I were naive enough to dream otherwise, but Nathaniel’s plan would hurt more than slaves. “Take the vampires’ property. Fine. Brina’s greenhouse, Jeshickah’s mansion, Taro’s estate, all of them. I will help you slaughter all the innocent, broken souls you intend to sacrifice if I must. But don’t touch the bloodtraitors’ village or the market.”
“They’re all parts of Midnight’s economy,” Nathaniel argued. “If—”
“If you want my cooperation, you will promise me, on your reputation as a businessman, that you will leave the village and the market. Otherwise you won’t just be leveling Midnight. You’ll destroy the shapeshifters, too.”
The look in his eye was cool, calculating. The serpiente and avians were clearly acceptable losses in his eyes.
“If I disappear, Vance and Kadee will question you,” I said, before he could decide I had just become a liability. “Vance is your link to the Azteka and Kadee has the ear of the Shantel. You can’t risk alienating them. Besides, leaving the fields and market will make the shapeshifters stronger. Maybe they can stand up to Jeshickah if she tries to rebuild.”
Nathaniel let out a frustrated sigh, and finally extended his hand, saying, “Fine. I will leave the fields and market intact. And you will turn your power toward helping me create a sufficient distraction while I find a way to burn this place to the ground.”
I reached out and shook his hand. It was foolish to trust a mercenary’s honesty or kindness, but one could always trust them to hold to a business deal. “Fire won’t burn stone,” I answered, thinking of my own prophecy in the face of Midnight proper’s granite and marble walls—and then frowned, because I had heard those words before. Not personally, but…Kadee.
“You look like you’ve thought of something.”
“When Midnight was threatening the Shantel, one of its witches created a spell he said could burn even the magically protected Shantel forest.” Kadee and Vance hadn’t shared all the details of their adventures with the rest of our guild, but I had overheard her describing that particular threat to Farrell. “In the same conversation, he tried to barter for some of Vance’s blood. He said he could use it to make a fire that would burn stone.”
After I spoke, I realized that Vance might not like my offering his blood up as a possible solution to our problem, but it was too late to take it back.
Nathaniel looked intrigued, but not overly optimistic. “I know the witch you’re talking about. He’s centuries older than Jeshickah, and has spent all that time working on his craft. I only wish I had someone with his level of power on my side, but he’s far too enamored with Jeshickah’s empire for me to risk approaching him. Adjila and the hunters have some power, but unless Vance can get a bloodwitch to join us, I think we’re limited to knives and torches.”
We had three months. I had been given the daunting task of instigating a slave riot. Nathaniel needed to find a way to burn stone. And I needed to accept that the price of our success would be the death of every man, woman, and child who had the bad fortune to be dragged into Midnight’s walls.
“YOU’RE STALLING,” MISTRESS Jeshickah accused. “We both know you could have finished with the cobra and moved on by now if you wanted to. Instead you’re wasting time.”
“It’s my time to waste,” Master Gabriel replied. His voice was calm, but Ashley could see the tension that always ran through his frame when he argued with her.
“You’ve been neglecting—”
“Don’t forget, Jeshickah,” he interrupted sharply, “I am your employee, not your slave. I’m the best you have, and—”
“Arrogant wretch.”
“—you know it. You also know that, unlike your other trainers, I could walk away. So don’t push me.”
Mistress Jeshickah scoffed. “Where would you go?” she challenged him. “Silver’s little town in the hills, where ownership means nothing and your profession is outlawed? The first thing they would do is steal your little hawk, just to prove they could.”
“What makes you think I need a master?” As he spoke, he instinctively reached behind himself, wrapping an arm around Ashley’s waist and pulling her protectively against his side. “I own land in a dozen different countries, and can live quite comfortably on the income from my trading enterprises.”
“You could survive,” the Mistress of Midnight allowed. Her cold gaze settled on Ashley, heavy with speculation. “But you couldn’t live, not without the work you do best.”
—
The weeks that followed seemed to pass in agonizing slowness. Midnight harvested its first round of wheat and planted a second, and other crops were flourishing, while the serpiente struggled to even start trying to do the same. Misha’s approach to discipline and control made the task harder, since she kept accusing her would-be farmers of sedition. Her paranoia was obvious to everyone but Aaron, which was bad for the serpiente people in the short term, but at least made it easy to continue to convince Midnight that they didn’t need to step in.
Meanwhile, in the six weeks since I had come back to Midnight, I had become half convinced that Gabriel was either directly involved with Nathaniel’s plot, or else aware of it. He seemed focused on challenging Jeshickah at every turn, had refused multiple offers to sell Ashley, and though he was certainly spending some time working on Hara, Jeshickah wasn’t the only one who had noticed his lack of focus on that project. Did he know Midnight’s time was coming to an end, or had he always been this way?
As for me, I had managed to see Ashley a handful of times in the infirmary as she picked up materials, and was almost sure there was part of her left intact. Perhaps Gabriel’s waning interest in his career as a trainer had begun early enough that he had neglected those last few strands?
If any of her soul remained, I knew I wouldn’t be able to let her burn at Midnight’s end.
Finally, I heard a rumor that Gabriel would be out of the building for the next two nights. I counted down the hours before my intended visit.
“What do you see, when your gaze goes distant like that?”
I gasped at the feel of cool breath behind my ear. I had thought Theron was asleep, as I lay in his arms and let my visions wander among all the threads I was trying to keep track of in Midnight and among the serpiente.
“The cells beneath the serpiente palace,” I answered. It wasn’t entirely a lie. I had been there earlier. “They’re always full these days.”
“So I’ve heard,” Theron answered. “Taro has been given the task of finding jobs for all the serpents who’ve come to Midnight to flee Misha. Most of them are willing to take work previously done by the most menial slaves in exchange for protection from their own royal house.” He idly tickled the skin over my collarbone, and added, “You’re lucky you came here early, or you would never have been allowed to stay in Midnight proper.”
“It’s almost time to balance accounts. Do you know what Jeshickah plans to do if no one appears?”
Every four months, Midnight collected all the money shapeshifter nations owed to them for food, resources, and tariffs. In two weeks, when accounts were due, Jeshickah would have to decide whether to agree that the serpiente owed her nothing, or to attempt to collect whatever she felt she deserved. That would be the most dangerous time for the serpiente.
“As you predicted, the serpiente are already crumbling from the inside,” Theron replied. “Jeshickah is prepared to agree that the serpiente accounts are in good standing at the moment, in anticipation of charging a premium when they come begging for resources this winter.”
It was impossible to conceal how much of a relief it was to officially hear those words. Theron chuckled as my entire body relaxed, and remarked, “You are strangely protective of a group that has reviled and shunned you all your life.”
“I don’t care about most of them.” I did care, more than I liked to admit,
but it was easier to convince Theron that my motives were more personal. “But I owe it to Farrell to keep his son safe if I can, and Aika and Torquil were always good to me.”
I hadn’t seen Vance since Nathaniel had sent him to speak to the Azteka. Occasionally my magic let me know he was alive, but the bloodwitches he was with were blocking my vision from telling me more. Kadee was still with the Shantel; from that vantage, she probably knew more about Nathaniel’s plans for the attack than I did. I had personally proposed a dozen possible options for triggering the riot Nathaniel wanted, and the Shantel had declared all of them beyond their ability. What we needed was precise and potent, but Shantel magic weakened drastically outside their forest.
“I need to work,” Theron said regretfully, pulling away from me with a stretch. I rolled over lazily as he walked out as if I had no plans to go anywhere. But as soon as I was confident he wouldn’t see me, I dressed and hurried to Gabriel’s rooms.
The door from the hall was not locked. After all, who would be crazy enough to come here without permission…except, of course, me?
I found Ashley at the desk in the trainer’s bedroom, leaning over a journal, sketching. I watched her, hypnotized by the focus in those golden eyes.
If anyone else had intruded, she probably would have looked up, expecting her master, but my white-viper’s blood gave me the chance to observe her. Though I could not read her book from where I stood, I could see that there were words beside her drawing.
Words indicated thoughts, self-awareness, beyond what a truly broken slave should possess.
I drifted closer, consciously trying to hold myself outside her awareness, but when I leaned over to read the words on the page my hair fell across my shoulder and brushed her cheek. She jumped, slamming the sketchbook closed at the same moment that she stood and pulled away from me, wedging herself between the wall and the desk with an expression of fear.
That, too, made no sense if she were as broken as everyone said. Slaves were afraid constantly, but they rarely let that fear influence their behavior.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Deliberately, wondering how she would respond, I added, “Alasdair.”
Her eyes widened further, and met mine directly as she said, “I know you.”
My heart leapt. Did she remember what I had done to her, or did she simply recognize Malachi, Mistress Jeshickah’s pet mongrel falcon, who had visited her a few weeks ago?
“I know you, as well,” I answered. I reached for the sketchbook, slowly, giving her a chance to tell me not to…but of course she didn’t. I wasn’t a vampire, but I wasn’t a slave, and unless her master had given her specific orders regarding what she should do with me, she wouldn’t get in my way.
Opening the book made it clear that she wasn’t recording anything Gabriel would have asked of her. Instead, I found snippets of poetry from the avian court, along with innumerable sketches. Many showed the trainer, but there were also graceful forms with wings, and images of the land as a painted tapestry, the way it looks to a bird flying above, where rivers become ribbons and thousands of trees blur together to look like a soft cushion. She used no color, but the black strokes revealed details from her mind she surely didn’t dare share anywhere else.
Some pages showed faces—some even labeled with names. These were hazy recollections in smudged charcoal, as if she had been unsatisfied with her ability to re-create them…or perhaps frustrated that she had even tried. One of the clearest made my breath catch. Shkei’s face was blurred, as if Alasdair had intentionally smudged out the lines of his cheeks and chin and brow, but his eyes and mouth were clear enough for me to feel as if I was staring directly at my brother.
“Do you remember him?” I asked.
“No.” The answer was too abrupt. Part of her did. She didn’t want to.
“Alasdair…if you want, I can take you away from here,” I said. A suicidal, impulsive offer, but even if it meant risking everything—Nathaniel’s plan, the fall of Midnight, my own life—I would have followed through with it if she said, “Yes.”
Instead, she said, “No, you can’t.”
“Do you want to leave here?” I asked.
She was bent, but some part of her was unbroken. How else could she put these images on a page? If I could get her away from the trainer, surely I could find that core of her soul that he had somehow missed—or intentionally left behind? People said the trainer Gabriel loved his slave.
Whether or not that was true, he would surely destroy someone who dared to steal her.
But she answered, “No. Please leave.”
The request only solidified my certainty that she could be saved. A broken slave didn’t make demands unless very clearly instructed to.
If I tried to take her out now, without a better plan, she would fight me. On the other hand, I had it on good authority that Midnight would be gone in less than two months.
Was I repeating the same mistakes that I had made with Misha? I just knew that abandoning Alasdair when Midnight fell would be like abandoning my brother all over again.
I backed away, saying only, “As you wish.” As long as I was checking on old sins, however, I wanted to look in on Hara, who had to be in the marble cell connected to the back of this room. The door was closed, and certainly locked, but the heavy black key hung next to it. “I just need to—”
“No.” She caught my wrist as I reached for the key.
“No?” I asked.
She didn’t flinch this time. Instead, she said, “Master Gabriel left instructions. That door must remain locked.”
She would be certain, and assertive, in response to his commands.
“Is Hara in there?” I asked.
The hawk nodded. Quietly, she added, “If you unlock the door, she will probably kill you.”
Was that a warning, or did I detect a hint of protectiveness in her soft voice? Did she know me, really know me, and know that I was Shkei’s brother?
Or did she know that I was the villain who had sold her to the trainer in the first place?
I couldn’t concentrate on either possibility without going mad. Instead, I thought about Hara, who needed to remain behind a locked door. That meant the trainer thought she would run, which meant she wasn’t broken. Yet.
My glimpses of Gabriel’s ongoing conflict with Jeshickah had shown me the truth—Gabriel had put off working with her, either because he had other projects he found more interesting, or because he was deliberately baiting Mistress Jeshickah.
Or perhaps he was utilizing a more subtle strategy? A trainer who wasn’t in a hurry could still erode the will of a captive over time, even if he didn’t dedicate his energy to finalizing the destruction. Misha and Shkei had been in that situation; their white-viper blood had kept them from ever being the center of attention, but it hadn’t been sufficient to stave off the daily cruelty—or occasional kindness—that could chip away at even the strongest will.
“I KNOW YOU.”
Ashley tried to ignore the cobra when she spoke. She had been ordered to tend the newcomer’s wounds, nothing else. She didn’t even want to look into the woman’s eyes.
“Alasdair.”
That name. How she hated that name now! It brought nothing but memories of pain, guilt, and self-loathing.
“Don’t you remember me?” Why did people keep asking that? “We’ve spoken a dozen times,” the woman insisted. “Just last fall, we talked for an hour about my mate, Jabari, and your search for an—”
“Stop it!” Ashley hissed, looking up at the serpent’s jewel-bright eyes. “I’m not that woman anymore. I don’t want to talk about her.”
Instead of relenting, the cobra’s gaze widened with triumph. “Do broken slaves often want things?” she asked. “You remember who you were. Admit it.”
“If I admit it, will you be quiet?”
The cobra tilted her head as she considered, and then winced as if the movement hurt. “If you remember who you are, why do you stay here?” Hara
asked. “Why do you let him do this to you?”
Hara was a shapeshifter. She wouldn’t die of her wounds or get an infection.
Master Gabriel would understand.
Ashley walked out, and locked the door behind her.
—
As I contemplated Hara’s situation and Alasdair’s state, I realized the serpiente princess had seen the same things I had. She had been just as certain as I was that “Ashley” wasn’t all that was left of the hawk princess.
Now, how was I supposed to get her out of Midnight before the fire came?
I shoved that thought aside as I stepped back into the living room, only to find Jaguar seated with his feet up on the coffee table, looking directly at me.
“It’s funny,” the trainer said, never taking his eyes off my frozen form, “but when Gabriel asked me to check in on his cobra while he was gone, he neglected to mention that you might drop by.”
I needed a good excuse, and I needed it immediately.
Nothing came to mind.
Think, Malachi!
Jaguar stood, and pushed past me as he walked into the bedroom. For an instant I thought I had been miraculously dismissed, but when I tried to slink away he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me after him. I caught his hand in mine, but I couldn’t do anything to escape.
Fighting my way out wouldn’t be wise even if I could. All the white-viper magic in the world would not keep a trainer from catching me if I tried to run. That was their nature. Even if he didn’t intend to harm me yet, he would be forced to make a point if I challenged him.
My heart nearly stopped when he asked Ashley, “Are you all right?”
If she told him what I had said, I was a dead man. No, worse than a dead man. Dead men couldn’t feel pain.
“I am fine,” the hawk answered. Was it just wishful thinking that I perceived dislike in her clipped, careful voice? There was no way for me to know her motivation, only that she did not volunteer more of an answer. Hopefully the trainer would refrain from asking anything like, “What did he say to you?”