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Merren nodded.
Kel lowered the vessel to his side. He watched as Merren went over to the bookcase and knelt, pushing some of the tattered volumes aside. When he returned to Kel, he was carrying four phials: two containing a gray powder, and two containing white.
“The gray is the poison, the white the antidote,” said Merren. “Both are tasteless. Give a full phial of antidote to anyone who’s ingestedcantarella;it doesn’t matter how much.” He handed over thephials, which Kel tucked into his jacket, and proceeded to remain where he was, his hand outstretched. It took a moment for Kel to realize what he wanted. Kel handed over the vessel of blue liquid with a mild pang; he would always, he suspected, wonder what it had been.
He’d half expected Merren to seize the vessel and bolt, but he didn’t. He took it gingerly and went to set it on a nearby shelf, between a distressingly human-looking skull and a bottle that looked as if it had washed up in the harbor, its label faded and torn. Meanwhile, Kel set a five-crown coin down on the table between them. He saw Merren glance at it when he turned back around, but he didn’t reach for the money, only left it lying there.
“Is the Ragpicker King going to continue to bother me,” Kel said, “now that I’ve turned him down? I didn’t think one became a well-known crime lord by taking no for an answer.”
“He won’t bother you again,” Merren said. “He needs someone to report on the Aurelians and doings on the Hill, but if it’s not you, he’ll find someone else. Though no one else has your access.”
Kel raised his eyebrows. “Because?”
“Because you’re the Sword Catcher,” Merren said plainly, and Kel felt his stomach lurch.Of course he knows,he thought savagely. Merren was clearly in the Ragpicker King’s confidence. But Kel had lived more than half his life jealously guarding the secret of who he really was. He could not help the feeling that things were spinning out of control, the world tilting sickeningly on its axis.
“How many people know?” he snapped. “How many of those who work for the Ragpicker King? Does your sister know that there is no Kel Anjuman?”
Merren shook his head, his eyes worried. “No. Only myself, Andreyen, and Ji-An. And it will stay that way. It does Andreyen no good for you to be exposed.”
“Because he still hopes I’ll spy for him.”
“You should,” Merren said, with an unexpected intensity. “He’ll treat you fairly.”
“The Aurelians treat me fairly.”
“I don’t know you that well. At all, really. But I can tell that you deserve better than them,” Merren said. “No matter how safe you may feel now, the nobles and the royal family will turn on you in the end.”
“That the nobles of the Hill are untrustworthy is hardly news to me.”
“But you trust the Prince—”
“Of course I trust him.” Kel could hear the dangerous note in his own voice, but Merren seemed unaware of it. He plunged on.
“My father was a guildmaster. He was always loyal to the crown. To the Charter Families. But when he needed the Aurelians, they abandoned him.”
“Your father?” Kel felt dazed; the conversation had taken a turn he did not expect. “Who was your father?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Merren said stiffly. “He’s dead now.”
He walked away from Kel, toward the table, and leaned on it with both hands. Kel half wondered if he should simply leave; their business was concluded, after all. He had the answers he wanted, and the antidote he’d aimed to get.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Something kept him where he was—not reaching out to Merren, but not leaving, either. He glanced around the flat again. It was true that the space was small and cluttered, but it was also rather cozy. Soft night air spilled through the balcony shutters. Kel could imagine curling up on the mattress under the eaves and reading a book. When it rained, the sound would be close, as if one slept among the storm clouds.
I have never had my own room,Kel thought in that moment. At the Orfelinat, he had slept in a dormitory. At the Palace, his rooms were Conor’s. In that moment, Merren’s tiny flat seemed like something from a dream.
It still felt like a dream when he crossed the creaking floorboards and put a hand on Merren’s shoulder. Merren twisted around tolook up at him, clearly surprised. Whatever he had expected from Kel, it was clearly not kindness.
“I won’t say the Ragpicker King doesn’t lie,” Merren said, in a low voice. “But if he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it. That’s a sort of honor that those on the Hill don’t have.”
I do,Kel wanted to say, but was it true? He kept his promises to Conor, but he would break a promise to anyone else for Conor’s sake, in a heartbeat.
Merren was still looking up at him. The firelight burnished his hair to gold, outlined the curves of his mouth, his collarbone. In that moment, Kel knew he could kiss Merren, and Merren would let him. He’d kissed both boys and girls before, though never anyone whose time he hadn’t paid for. He could still find oblivion in it, he guessed, and perhaps even a new sort of oblivion: For the first time in his life, he would be kissing someone without Conor’s knowledge, in a place Conor did not know he had gone.
And yet.
“I should leave,” Kel said abruptly, and half flung himself away from Merren and toward the door. He heard Merren call after him, but he was already out of the flat, racing down the stairs into the darkness of the unlit street. He glanced back as he turned the corner, but could see nothing, only a square of light where Merren’s balcony was.
What the hell was I thinking?Kel wondered. His encounter with Merren had not gone at all as he had planned it. He had meant to blast him with righteous indignation, but instead he had felt a painful longing—for Merren’s flat, his life, his surprising lack of guile.
