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“I dunno,” Bard said. “But I did my part. The rebellion is coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it now, Slúagh cunt. I only wish the both of you would’ve burned down with the rest of your cursed court and that godsforsaken castle. Next ti—”
He stopped midsentence, eyes widened in shock, as Scion’s fist made a sickening thump against his jaw.
A spray of crimson droplets dotted my face as Bard stumbled backward and slumped against the wall behind him.
Neither Scion nor I moved, the shock of it freezing us both in place.
“No magic?” I asked after a moment.
It was a foolish question and far too simple in the moment, yet it was all I could think to say.
Scion looked just as shocked as I felt, and perhaps that was why he answered a bit too honestly, “I didn’t think of it.”
My lips parted, a tremble passing through me. I had to wonder how often—if ever—that had ever happened to him. That he’d reached for physical violence over magical combat. From the look on his face, I was willing to bet almost never.
“I wish I could say that was illuminating, but now I have more questions than we entered with,” I said before I could let myself wander too far down the path of questions.
Scion grunted in agreement. “Of all the wild and incomprehensible things my brother has ever done, I think I find this the hardest to believe. I might go so far as to say I don’t believe it, except that the evidence is all there.”
“Ambrose—er, Dullahan wouldn’t use the dust?”
Scion looked uncertain and a bit lost. “I cannot say, but I would not have believed so. Not after knowing what it did to Penvalle, but can we really ever know anyone?”
My eyes widened. “What did it do to King Penvalle?”
“You have a way of making me blurt out things I did not mean to tell you.”
Him and me both.
He swallowed thickly. “Over time, the dust turns lust to aggression, obsession to madness. Penvalle was something of an addict.”
My stomach turned over, remembering the gruesome scene at last year’s hunts. “So would the end goal of buying something like this in large amounts be to cause people to riot or slaughter each other?”
Scion’s face was blank, impassive, like a mask. “That is certainly one possibility, but one must assume that there would be simpler and faster ways to cause violence. Harnessing the afflicted, for example, would be far more efficient.”
Unless the rebellion was not truly able to harness the afflicted,I thought nervously.Unless we were chasing after Dullahan for entirely the wrong reason.
“So, if not for the violence, then why would they want it? And in Underneath of all places.”
Scion stared at me with slightly haunted eyes, and I had the strongest urge to reach out and touch his face.“I don’t know, rebel, and that is what worries me.”
36
LONNIE
THE CUTTHROAT DISTRICT, INBETWIXT
That evening was torture…andnot.
We’d be returning to the capital in the morning, regardless of any further investigation on the pleasure guild or signs of Ambrose Dullahan. To no one’s surprise, Scion seemed to believe that meant we should spend the night trying harder to force the arrival of the rebel leader. The thieves, however, had something else in mind.
I might have guessed that the guild threw even wilder parties than the royal court, what with the fact that they had a bar on every floor, but I would not have been able to picture the sheer revelry until I saw it for myself.
I stood near the wall of the guild den, nursing the same drink I’d had for the last hour and watching the thieves who danced and twirled in a coordinated line, made all the more different from the royal court by the bright, contrasting clothing of Inbetwixt. There was no black training leather in the room tonight, and neither was there any tinkling fairy music, no bewitched wine, or writhing mass of too-beautiful naked bodies.
Somehow, the feeling of camaraderie when the fiddlers played a well-known shanty and voices rose in unison had its own kind of magic, affecting even me.
“What do you think of Cutthroat?”
