“To use a woman as your scapegoat,” Patrick uttered, still shaking, “you must be the worst sort of man.”
Shop hardly seemed moved by the comment. “Your soldiers have killed countless women and children in your rash explosions and bombings. Nina willlive. She will help us bring peace to the continent.”
And she’d be a slave to the House again, digging up their terranium for as long as she drew breath.
“This is the way of it, Patty,” his father said, coming to clap a hand over his shoulder. “The road to glory’s a bloody battlefield.”
If there was a hidden message in that, Patrick couldn’t glean it.
He eyed the contract atop the desk, the barrel of the gun in Shop’s hand.
“We have the same goal, Mr. Colson,” the lord said. “As regrettable as the means may be.”
Patrick closed his eyes for a moment, trying just tothink. To find a solution.
The doors opened again. Ridgeback and Kilmartin came through awkwardly, each of their arms looped under the slack form of Nina.
Her head lolled. Her eyes blinked, unseeing, and then closed. Both arms were tightly wrapped in white gauze.
“You can leave her on the settee,” Lord Shop said, but Patrick had strode forward and taken Nina in his hands. He shouldered Ridgeback and Kilmartin away, and they relinquished her with relief.
She seemed to weigh nothing. Her face was younger, her eyelids purple. He was momentarily startled by the memory of a girl with a lopsided ribbon. He walked her to the settee, all of her bones and organs in his hands. He was suddenly terrified that he would break her.
Nina barely twitched when he lowered her down onto the cushion. Her blond hair was matted in places, her lips bloodless. There was gore on her neck, and he wiped it away with his thumb.
“She’s right powerful, ain’t she?” came John’s voice over Patrick’s shoulder. “Shook the whole bloody ground. Thought we were all goin’ to hell for a bit there.”
Patrick had the alarming thought that if Nina died she would look like this, and he placed the palm of his hand tentatively against her chest. Her heart beat reassuringly against it.
She stirred, eyes slitting open. Hazel and green-flecked, they caught onto Patrick’s immediately. They were so painfully close.
Patrick swallowed. “You’re all right,” he told her, though it couldn’t be further from the truth. He only knew that he couldn’t stomach the crumpling of her face. Perhaps unconsciousness was better. Soon, the visions would wallop back. The noose and the lever and the snap of the neck. He could see it happening now. Her eyes misted. He felt the compulsion to strip her of the memory and hated that he couldn’t.
She shut her eyes again as if shutting out reality, and after several long moments, slipped back into unconsciousness. Patrick cursed beneath his breath.
He stood and turned to face the newest in a long line of enemies, crooked thieves, and thugs. They were all the same, whether branded or from the brink. They were all men clawing a lofty existence out of a world that owed them no more than their breath.
Lord Shop stared back at him expectantly, as though he had already choreographed Patrick’s every move.
Patrick thought him a man at least as cunning as he. Maybe more so.
Poison coated Patrick’s tongue. He’d bet the bastard’s jaw would shatter with a single punch. His ribs would snap like twigs. There was nothing to him—he was as reedy as the cane he held. The man had surely never seen another man bleed to death, never gouged out a man’s eyes, never smelled the burning flesh of a town on fire. He’d die badly, screaming and pissing himself.
Patrick’s bloodlust couldn’t be satisfied, though, not yet. Lord Shop was a man of games.
If Patrick was to win, he’d need to play.
“When will it happen?” he said.
“Noon tomorrow,” replied the lord. He held the quill aloft. “I’ll ensure it is quick.”
THE TRENCH TRIBUNEHEAD OF HOUSE SLAIN BY EARTH CHARMER
By official scribble from the National House, The Trench Tribunewas informed this evening that our Head of House, the Right Honorable Lord Tanner, is dead.
The scribble stated, in no uncertain terms, that Lord Geoffry Tanner was assassinated by the infamous earth Charmer, Nina Clarke, during a routine courtyard inspection, where he was left vulnerable to Clarke’s arsenal.
The 23rd Head of House, an accomplished stone Mason, will be remembered for his legacy in architecture, including the Gyser bridge and monoliths in the city’s south. He is surely reunited with his late wife, Olivette Tanner, in the arms of Idia herself.
