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She stiffened. Heard him inhale sharply, and then he was gone, whirling away from her. She stayed braced against the table as the door slammed shut behind him.
Lin closed her eyes. She could hear the commotion outside as he exited her house; presumably everyone who’d just heard that the Prince of Castellanehad come to visit Lin Casterwas now lining the street, satisfying their curiosity. She wondered what would happen if she told them that he had simply come to settle a debt. She rather doubted they would believe her.
—
Kel turned through the crumbling stone arch and made his way down Arsenal Road. He had never been in the Maze during the day before. Like the flowers in the Night Garden, it came awake only after sunset.
Most sights were improved by bright sunlight and a blue sky overhead, but the Maze was not among them. The harsh illumination showed all its ragged edges and filthy corners, without the shadows of night to blue them to softness. Drunken nobles stumbled home after a night of carousing, stopping to vomit against the walls of abandoned shophouses. The doors of poppy-houses stood open, revealing bare wooden floors on which addicts twitched, the morning light stirring them out of dreams and into painful consciousness. While the brothels that lined the road were still open, there were few customers trickling in and out of the doors. The doxies who worked through the nights sprawled comfortably on the balconies in tunics and knickers, drinkingkarakand smoking hand-rolled cheroots from Hind. Food stalls set up in between the buildings served bowls of Shenzan rice porridge topped with fish or fruit to sailors who lined up, carrying the dented metal serving bowlsthey kept in their packs; they were often to be seen cleaning them conscientiously at various public cisterns.
He nearly passed it without recognizing his goal: the warehouse with the blacked-out windows where Jerrod had brought him the other night.
It was hard to believe that the cracked façade hid a lively cabaret within, at least during nighttime hours. The place seemed utterly silent and deserted. Kel was aware of curious eyes on him as he knocked on the front door. There was no answer, so he tried the handle and found it unlocked, but stuck in its frame; wood warped often here, so close to the sea and the humid air. Kel shouldered it open and stepped inside.
The long corridor he remembered was nearly lightless, illuminated only by window spots where the black paint had chipped away. Kel made his way silently to the enormous main room. It was empty, the glass lanterns, nearly all unlit, swaying over a floor scattered with overturned tables and broken bits of furniture. Abandoned mother-of-pearl gaming chips gleamed like sequins against the dusty floor surrounding the upturned crow’s nest.
Kel ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He found, as he had expected, nothing at all. The warehouse seemed as if it had been deserted for years; the room in which he had met Prosper Beck was entirely emptied, even the boxes of Singing Monkey Wine gone.
He made his way back downstairs, trailing a hand along the wall to keep himself oriented in the gloom. Prosper Beck moved his headquarters from place to place often, he knew, but this was more than that. This place had been looted of its decorations, abandoned utterly. Something had happened.
He paused in the main room, where a single velvet cushion lay on the floor, a rip along the side releasing a small gust of white feathers. He thought of Antonetta’s gold locket, shining empty in her hand, and a wave of rage went through him, mixed with a frustration so intense it felt almost like despair.
Putting a booted foot against the pole of the crow’s nest, heshoved as hard as he could. He’d half expected it to wobble, but instead it went over so quickly that Kel had to jump back to avoid being hit as it toppled, slamming into the warehouse floor with a force that sent dust and splinters into the air like a sandstorm.
“Beck!” Kel looked up, at the empty hanging hooks, at the lightless interior windows of the second floor. “Where the fuck are you, Prosper Beck?”
“Kel.”
Kel turned. Standing in the stairwell was a familiar figure in black Crawler’s gear. His silver quarter-mask gleamed, as did his boots. His hood was up, drawn close about his face, but Kel could see that he was frowning.
“Jerrod,” Kel said.
“I thought they taught you better manners than that,” Jerrod said, “up at the Palace.”
“Manners don’t interest me at the moment,” said Kel. “I want to see Beck.”
Jerrod came into the room a little more, glancing with interest at the wreckage of the crow’s nest. “Haven’t we been through this once? Beck has expressed no desire to see you a second time. You aren’t that charming.”
“I want to know why he’s been wasting my time.”
Jerrod hopped up onto an overturned table, his legs swinging over the side. “Couldn’t get the locket from the girl, could you?”
“I got it,” Kel said shortly. “But it was empty.”
Jerrod glanced up at the ceiling. “So you snuck a peek inside? Beck won’t be pleased.”
Kel hesitated. He could mention the grass ring, the false bottom of the locket. But it seemed a betrayal of Antonetta, as well as a piece of strategic information he did not yet wish to share. If Beck did not know about the ring, there was no reason to be the one who told him. And if he did, then what had been the point of all of this? What was he after?
“You care about his opinion. I don’t,” said Kel. “Antonettaopened it herself. And it’s been driving me mad since. Why would Beck send me to retrieve an empty necklace for him? He told me there was information inside, but that’s hardly Antonetta’s way of doing things. What sort of information? Is this something to do with her mother—” Kel cut himself off impatiently. “And then it occurred to me. Beckwantsme to be driven mad with pointless questions. He wants me to be gazing over at the locket and the Alleynes, so I won’t be looking somewhere else, somewhere he doesn’t want me to look. All of which had led me to come here and ask: What does hereallywant?”
Jerrod kicked his heels like a small boy sitting along the harbor seawall. “Well. You aren’t going to find out.”
“Iwillsee him. You cannot stop me.”
“You are welcome to see him, if you can find him. Because I cannot.”
Kel went still. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s gone. He’s left Castellane.”
