My three days were up. Will’s trial was tomorrow. A taut, tearing soreness lingered in my shoulders and arms, exhaustion slowing my steps. I stumbled around my room and shook out my bed, looking for Julian’s coat. Creek’s ghost watched from the desk.
“I could help if I knew what you were looking for?” he said, a poppy blooming blood red from the wound on his chest.
I kicked my bed. “You’re a figment of my guilt. You only know what I know.”
“And it’s so little.” He sighed and flicked a leaf at me. “Go to the very bottom.”
I lowered myself to the floor and stared under the bed. Nothing.
“Go back as far as you can,” he said, “and open the door.”
I reached beneath it. My fingers collided with the wall, and a slat of wood fell aside. Dried flowers and spiders tumbled out. I ripped my hand away.
“Where’s my coat, you ass?” I asked, but Creek’s ghost was gone.
A knock at the door nearly interrupted my tirade. I’d have to go to Noshwright without the coat.
“Come in!”
“I need to talk to you.” Hana Worth, her uniform fresh and her bandages clean, shut the door behind her and leaned against it. “You going to kill Alistair to save Will?”
I snorted. “No.”
She hadn’t been specific enough, and that was hardly my fault.
“You want to elaborate then?” she asked. “You’re up to something. He made you the representative of the Crown in charge of council matters this morning.”
Perfect timing.
“You’ve caught me in the middle of plotting his death.” I held out my arms for shackling and slumped. Magic pricked my tongue. “I’m going to make sure the council attempts to assassinate him.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine,” I said and dropped my hands at her raised brow. “Why are you his sacrificial guard?”
“Because I’ve met the rest of the court, and he’s better than who’d inherit it,” she said. “Why didn’t you save Willoughby Chase?”
“I don’t want to.” I laughed. “Don’t worry. The council won’t kill Alistair.”
Perhaps the truth was freeing.
“I was never worried for him.” Hana grinned, crooked and thin. “You said ‘attempt.’”
I left for Noshwright without another word, praying Mack was there. This was dangerous, the riskiest thing I’d done since fleeing Mori with no clue where to go. Mack was one of the only people I trusted to understand what I was doing and why. I nearly cried when I knocked on the door and he answered.
“I have an idea,” I said, hugging him close. “Trust me. Please.”
“Always,” he said. “It’s killing me Julian’s going for it, but with Will’s trial, he thinks this is the Chase legacy. This!”
Inside Will’s quarters were half the council. Lankin Northcott sat on Will’s right, the sigil on his chest bared. Julian sat on Will’s other side, and he rose to greet me, shaking off his father’s hand. I let him embrace me and rubbed his arm. He patted a stool behind his chair.
“Willoughby,” drawled Northcott, “is this not the girl working for His Excellency?”
I swallowed my pride and bowed my head to him. “Isn’t that why you need me? I can help you kill him, or you can try again without my help.”
One of the other councilors looked me up and down. “You’re the girl the Sundered Crown recruited, aren’t you?”
“She didn’t recruit me.” I unbuttoned my waistcoat and then my shirt, tugging them aside to show off the empty stretch of skin over my heart. “I’m dualwrought. I agreed to work for Alistair Wyrslaine in exchange for Will getting a fair trial.”
“Unbound?” Northcott licked his lips, fingers brushing his sigil, and he listed toward me. “The Sundered Crown certainly kept that fact to herself.”
“Understandable,” said a councilor I didn’t know, “but unbound wrought are rare and unpredictable.”
“As well as untrained,” Northcott said.
I nodded, grinding my teeth to keep my smile up, and refastened my clothes.
“She’s been a friend of the family for near a decade and came here for me. Hear her out,” Will said.
“Thanks,” I said in the most Felfolk accent I could. People always underestimated country drawls, and it was part of why Will could get away with so much. “I can’t lie. Falsities can’t get past my teeth without snapping my mouth shut, because the Sundered Crown didn’t want me lying to her, but I’m unbound and can do more than any wrought you’ve ever hired to kill Alistair. I just have one question before we start.”
Julian smiled consolingly, his hand on my knee. “Course.”
“Are you certain that you can’t save more people?” I asked.
It was only fair I give them a chance.
“My dear girl, we have spent our lives studying economics and running businesses. These plans have been in the making for the last twelve years,” said the councilor across from Northcott. “Ten years is the optimal amount of time to pass before we retake the land. It will ensure that enough die so as to allow us to rule but not so many that the nation crumbles.”
“Once the Door opens, we wouldn’t even have time to move everyone,” said Julian with a shrug.
They would have no time. When the Door opened, the Vile would be suddenly standing next to them.
“I had to be sure.” I shrugged. What a terrible answer to mass murder. “All right. First order of business: you should kill Alistair at your trial.”
Will’s brows rose to his hairline. “You think you can keep me alive?”
“I think I can keep you from being sacrificed to the Door,” I said. “I won’t promise survival to anyone.”
“All of us will be there,” said Northcott.
I inclined my head to him. “You’ll outnumber him and any soldiers. I’ll take care of any bullets.”
They didn’t even bother asking me whose.
“And how do we kill him?” Julian asked. “Will you do it?”
“No. You’re going to shoot him.”
Julian sucked in a breath, and Northcott laughed. Lying wasn’t necessary; the silence that followed my statement told them what they wanted to hear.
“He killed the Sundered Crown with a needle when a knight couldn’t even do it with a sword,” said Will, his eyes narrowed at me. “How will this time be any different?”
“That’s the problem with assassinations—you think too singularly,” I said. “Alistair Wyrslaine is only one person. Like his mother, his vilewright can only do so much at once. If you all shoot at him, he can’t stop every bullet on his own. Wrights take time to work. Do you remember how long the Sundered Crown was down when Beatrice wounded her?”
All of it was the truth, but not all of it was honest. Alistair was so desperate to be understood that I knew every vulnerability of his vilewright. My own hummed unhappily.
Northcott nodded. “We thought she was dead, and then she wasn’t.”
“It took so long because her wrights took that long to work. Alistair cannot stop every bullet alone.” I nudged Julian with my foot. “Alistair will die. Will won’t be sacrificed to the Door.”
Not a single one of them asked me to specify what I meant.
“Kill the Crown, save my father, and open the Door on our own terms?” Julian glanced at Will. “I’m willing.”
“The contract I signed with him forbade us from hurting each other. All I can provide is information and an opening. I will distract him. You shoot at him then,” I said and tapped Julian’s knee. It was all true. The contract had forbidden us from hurting each other—until Alistair destroyed it. “Use your crossbow if you can get it in. He would have to use a different contract for it. I’m assuming you have a way to get your weapons into the courtroom?”
“Simple,” said Northcott. “The majority of the soldiers are already ours.”
Were they loyal to this plan, or were they loyal to their job? A web to untangle after.
“I admit,” said Will, “this is preferable to dying.”
“Alistair will not pardon you,” I said. My tongue burned. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the full truth.
Will smirked. “Did you ask?”
“I did,” I said, “and he refused.”
That conversation felt like decades ago, but it served me well now.
Northcott chuckled and patted his knee. “You’ve no need for a pardon if this succeeds.”
“True,” said Will. “You won’t stop our assassination?”
“No.” I smiled, wide and true. “If you’re done trying to catch me with the truth, we have a deal.”
We still had time until the Door opened, but it would be better if I knew when exactly it would open. But first, I needed access to every councilor’s safe havens and supplies. Letting Will go to his death with a guilty verdict would have gotten me only his. If tomorrow went well, I—as the representative of the Crown in charge of council matters—would own the property of every councilor found guilty of treason.
“Tomorrow,” said Will and held out his hand. “We lead the way for a new, better Cynlira with your help.”
I took it, and all I could remember was the feel of it against my teeth. “I will lead Alistair Wyrslaine to his death.”