Twilling didn’t present half the problem Kai feared. Walking out of the office, numb from incense and the glassy stares of painted kittens in the motivational prints that adorned the man’s walls, she realized she need not have worried. Twilling didn’t know Kai, barely knew Jace, wasn’t privy to inner-mountain gossip. Theology, he’d said, standing by the window—he didn’t have a proper desk, only three lecterns piled with papers where he stood to work—theological rigor was an asset his branch seldom possessed, and if Kai could convert a pilgrim using her skills in that area, this was to be celebrated, and by the way, he was glad to hear Kai patched things up with Ms. Batan, and he always felt it was a mistake to silo verticals, which phrase Kai understood but felt dirty for understanding. In short, he said, spreading hands, we might make a closer out of you yet. Who knows to what heights you might rise? He handed over the paperwork without fuss, once he found the right form and signed his name with a quill pen and a sleeve-flaring flourish.
The hardest part of the conversation had been to keep a straight face when Twilling’s verbiage swerved into the arcane and he began to invent new meanings for the word “leverage.” She rode the lift down from the office, self-satisfied, bobbing her head to the ghostly music of a steel drum.
When the lift reached the lobby, the doors opened and she saw Claude.
He waited straight backed on the edge of a leather couch, his face fixed in that even, distant stare watchmen and other Penitent survivors had, the one that seemed deeper than blind. The blank wall in front of him was painted cream. He wore his uniform shirt and pressed khakis and mirror-shined shoes. He didn’t look at his reflection in the patent leather.
Penitents stood guard outside the lobby’s glass doors. Three suited shamans squeezed past them into the alchemically cooled air.
Claude noticed her before she could decide whether to stay in the lift and hide.
“Kai!”
If he wanted her in an official capacity, the offices upstairs offered no protection; if he wanted her unofficially, she could just brush past. She walked as briskly as her limp allowed, her cane taps loud on the floor.
He cut her off at the doors. She tried to circle around him, but he blocked her path. “What do you want?” Not good, but better than her other options, most a variation on “so are you going to arrest me or what?”
He adopted that smile he thought was comforting. “We need to talk.”
“I have business.” She held the signed contract between them like a herald’s rod. “A client meeting. We can talk later.”
“I don’t want to make this official.”
“Did you come here to make it official?”
“You vanished last night.” He stepped closer, and she stepped back. “We have to talk about Margot. The sky’s about to fall. The Iskari legate’s up the ridge, waving his holy symbol around and threatening to rain all hells down on the chief if we don’t get him answers. I’m on the line. I have to tell them something. The chief, if not the ambassador. Why did I go to Margot’s house before there was any report of fire?”
“Why do you ever go on patrol?”
“Yesterday, I went because you asked me to.”
“Not when I asked, though.”
“You wanted me to arrest a private citizen, Kai. A foreigner. It took me a while to set things up.”
“You arrest foreigners all the time.”
“Stowaway creeps caught peddling bennies in the Godsdistrikt. We don’t grab bona fide rent-paying residents. I put myself on the line for you.”
“And someone got killed.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t tell anyone the story, Claude, except for you. I told you, and you promised not to tell anyone else, and somehow Margot ends up dead.”
“You don’t think I…” He trailed off.
“I don’t think you killed him. But you told someone.”
The words struck Claude exactly like a slap—he barely moved. She’d slapped him before, and knew the signs. Shirtfront shifted as he flexed and relaxed his chest. “I didn’t.”
When Claude lied, silence was the best response. She walked past, and he did not try to stop her with anything but words.
“You made some wild accusations. I had to check.”
She kept her voice low. Security guards had already glanced their way. “I showed you proof.”
“You showed me a piece of paper. That isn’t enough. And you haven’t exactly been yourself lately. Irrational. Jumping at shadows.”
Her teeth ground. She forced the anger from her voice—without, it was level like a guillotine blade. “Who did you tell?”
“My team. The watch officer.”
“Who else?” Pulling him in two directions: duty to the watch, keeping silent, and duty to her, to speak. Duty was the cord that bound them. Not love. Maybe it never had been love.
“I sent a runner up the mountain. To ask if they knew anything about Margot.”
“To the mountain. To whom?”
“Jace,” he said.
“Gods.” After all her care to gather evidence, to give Jace solid proof. She closed her eyes and was back in the spider’s web, back on the bed, strapped in, tubes leading from her arms. “I told you not to tell anyone. And you told five people, at least. Who knows how many they told?”
“He trusts you, Kai. The reply came late, but it came. He said he trusted you. That was all I needed.”
“You should have trusted me without him. Instead you needed someone else to tell you it was okay to believe the crazy girl. Every link in the chain could be a leak. The runner. Your partners. The duty officer. Anyone.”
He tried to touch her, and she pulled away.
“No. A man’s dead, and I have to go.”
“I could make you come with me.”
“Do it, then.”
He had stone in him, in his bones and marrow, as much almost as the Penitents outside. Little veins stood out on the backs of his hands.
But he didn’t stop her as she left.
She pushed through the revolving doors out into the sea’s breath and the heat and the Penitents’ shadow. One turned its head to watch her, leaning on her cane. Stone groaned, and the prisoner too. She did not acknowledge their attention. A cab stopped for her, and she got in.
“Just drive,” she told the horse. She closed the door, slid the curtains shut, and sat in red-tinged solitude.
Leaning back into cushions, she wished she could disappear.
Jace knew about Margot. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe now he’d see it was futile to keep her on the sidelines. Or, more likely, he’d kick her out forever.
Especially if he discovered what she was about to do.
In which case she should hurry.
She cracked the door, leaned out into traffic, and shouted over the rush: “Take me to the Regency.”