You don’t belong to them.
The plan was this: Theo and I would claim different names and mediums and be ushered into a swank dining establishment in the night quarter, the owner of which frequented The Mistress and knew Tamir by name.
After that, it would take luck, flirtation. If the Scribbler was present this evening, I prayed they enjoyed a drink.
John had left The Mistress earlier that day and returned victorious, having procured what turned out to be mere tulleyroot.
“Tulleyrootis the tincture?” I had asked, incredulous. The miners wrapped their abrasions with the leaves to stave infection, but it was otherwise a noxious weed that strangled the moors in the east.
“Ever eaten it?” John had said, shaking the green vial between his fingers. “You’ll be numb-faced with just a swig.”
I hadn’t, but I’d seen enough numb-faced men, which was always credited to bluff. “If that’s true, then why haven’t the miners started uprooting every last hill?”
“Because tulleyroot rots your tongue,” Patrick answered blankly. “Right after you’ve finished waggin’ it.”
“And how will the Scribbler translate without a tongue?”
“Don’t need his tongue to scribble, does he?” he countered.
He had paused then, as though wondering if that might be enough to turn my stomach, to make me reassume my former principles.
It wasn’t.
While I dosed the unfortunate Scribbler, Patrick and John would be waiting in the alley with a wagon and the Testament.
I assumed, though I did not summon the integrity to ask, that the Scribbler would be left outside some hospital, tongue fermenting, their mind made into swill, after, of course, they’d been forced to transcribe the Stewards’ book.
Tamir had redressed in a three-piece suit that was so inoffensive, he was almost unrecognizable. His goatee was neatly oiled, his top hat meant for the theater.
He led us to the lamp-lined street and hustled us into a lopsided coach with two wooden wheels and two steel. “I’m quite a good driver,” he reassured all four of us, and shut us in.
We spent the carriage ride hitting our heads on the ceiling, or else slamming into the walls, our arses bouncing inelegantly the entire way. I was seated opposite Patrick, who watched with slow-moving wrath as I slid at each turn into Theo’s side, my thigh pressing into his.
If Theo were a smarter man, he might have committed his mind to the passing viaducts and vendors and street performers and plumes of smoke cloying the purple sky. To anything but the dress I wore and the parts of me it clung to.
I drew my shawl higher and higher until I was strangled with it.
“Did you leave your genteel manners in Belavere City, Teddy?” Patrick growled beneath the clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobbles and the bray of Tamir egging the poor creatures onward.
Theo, distracted until that point, tore his gaze away and turned a delicate pink. “I’m more gentleman than you’ll ever hope to be.”
“Yeah? Best you don’t forget it,” Patrick said darkly, hatred settling over his face.
John gave a low whistle, apparently entertained. He covered his smirk by way of smoothing his beard. “Lord. We ain’t got time to duke it out in here, boys,” he grunted. “Settle it away from the lady.”
I was food. A hide on a meat shank.
The image of a banquet came to mind, with all the men seated and the women carved up and dressed before them on platters. I pulled my shawl closer still.
Tamir called “whoa,” and the coach came to a bruising halt. Light beamed in.
The establishment was a solid concrete wall made of a thousand orange-lit windows and iron-grate balconies, pillars stamped with carved cherubs, slain mares, faces missing eye sockets. The doors were a glass-plated bloody maroon that betrayed the chandelier beyond, as well as the pearly tiling and polished ebony banisters.
Already, the noise from within the building drifted down to us, wave after wave of heavy chatter. Theo and I knew the scene from heart. Crystal glasses and crisp white shirts speckled with wine or meat blood. Hands clasping hands, lips on knuckles, pompous laughter.
Already, I felt sick.
Theo exited the coach first and proffered a hand—a routine from another lifetime we’d shared.
