It was apparent the young Urchin enjoyed the attention he was receiving over that terrible moment as he smiled hugely, his mustache rising at the corners. “Well,” he said, “I looked over at the girl, and she was all in hysterics, crying and shouting, and I thought: This is the last person I’d want to be eaten by wolves with. So I beat the horses into the fastest gallop imaginable, hoping to outrun them.”
The four men left the backroom in a single file, making for the main room of the shop. Alora followed them in a rage, wishing beyond anything that she could reveal herself as that hysterical girl and rip the bedraggled caterpillar from Mr. Salvoy’s thin upper lip. She imagined it would come off all at once—how satisfying. Rather than continuing past the counter, the Urchins turned and headed up the stairs.
“I heard the guard was already dead by the time you reached the gate. How did you manage past it?”
“I heard the lever is still being repaired. Did you run it over?”
“I was there after it happened. There was a branch broken across it.”
“No,” said Salvoy, and for the first time, Alora heard the uncertainty in his voice. She wondered if the others did. If theyguessed that the Urchin embellished for his own sake. “No, I didn’t run it over. It’s true a branch fell at the exact moment we would have smashed into the gate. It happened to land upon the lever, which was obviously a stroke of good luck.”
Finally, a bit of truth from him. The door atop the stairs swung in, and the Urchins moved through it.
“Do you think it was her? Can she control the wind? It’s been unchecked over the grounds ever since, and the captain must have thought she was worth some trouble to send you with her rather than a guard.”
Another laughed. “Worth so much that he blackened the eye of that skin-burning prat over her too.”
“Did he, really? I hadn’t heard that one yet. What’s gotten into him?”
Salvoy snorted. “More like how long has she been letting him get into her?”
Alora’s fist clenched so hard, she thought surely her nails had punctured the skin of her palms. She should have punched him when she’d had the chance, there in that wagon.
“Easy. Don’t go there, Salvoy.” The oldest Urchin frowned at him before striking a match. The lamp lit a moment later.
Alora stilled on the threshold. She absorbed the room with new eyes. The black-curtained windows. The lack of fireplace. The twin chairs, the end tables, and the sofa. Thatsofa.
She’d been here before. She’d lain on that couch. The cushion the Urchin captain had propped her foot upon sat crooked at its corner. This was the room above Potions and Peculiarities. A secret meeting place for Urchins.
She held her hand out to the doorframe to steady herself.
The same Urchin as before ordered the rest about, “Get dressed. We’ve work to do.”
Together, the four of them moved to the wall. The closets were hidden in the panels, and Alora could only stare blankly as oneby one they were pushed open. Black coats. Black boots. Black masks. Black gloves.
“It’s a terrible shame about Ezra. He was one of the best. I can’t think of how he would have been overcome unless there were many of them.”
Ezra,Alora thought. Was this the Urchin captain’s true name?Bash’strue name?
“There were. Eight in total, I think, including the two turned to stone.”
Alora swung her attention toward the rasping voice. It wasn’t the captain’s voice, but the rough quality was the same. The Urchin was dressed, all but for his gloves, which he donned now. His mouth was masked and hidden from her.
“Do we know how that could have happened? How the beasts were petrified?” The oldest Urchin spoke again, except now his voice was changed, too: the same rasping quality as the last. A mask also covered the lower portion of his face.
One by one, all four donned their garb, and one by one, their true voices fell away.
The masks are enchanted.
The captain hadn’t pitched his voice to purposefully frighten her. The mask had done that for him. She shook her head at her folly. At the secrets she still uncovered.
“If anyone knows, they’re keeping quiet about it.” This Urchin reached back into the shadows, and when his arm retracted, Alora gaped at what she saw held in his hand.
The baton was smooth and thick, the wood dark. It was a replica of what she’d found tucked away on the shelf that day Bash brewed a potion to assist her memory. An object that the Potions and Peculiarities proprietor deemed the most dangerous item in his shop. For all her struggles in her focus lately, she could still picture him clearly. The way the soft light of the lantern had skipped across the hollows and settled instead onthe angular cut of his jaw and cheekbones. How it’d lit his eyes a forest green as he’d threatened to send her out to the mule.
How he’d baited her into sharing her dream…
The core of her had warmed with want even as he’d admonished and teased her, and she should have known.
