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This was a street she recognized. She’d run belladonna here once, sewn into the pockets of an old jacket of Mari’s, one of the first times she was trusted to undertake a mission on her own.
But you know that.
Her stomach twisted and roiled like an underwater current.
Behind her, Bastian emerged from the culvert, looking hardly worse for wear. He pulled three black domino masks from his pocket, and then a length of white linen. “Here, you’ll both need these.”
“Another masquerade?” Gabe sounded like the prospect was almost as appealing as gnawing off a finger.
“Hardly,” Bastian scoffed. “Everyone wears them at the ring. These fights are illegal, technically, and no one wants their identity revealed.” He flashed a grin. “Be thankful I’m not making you wear a sack over your head. Half the nobles do.”
Scowling at Bastian, Lore tied the mask over her eyes as the Sun Prince did the same. Then he took the length of white linen he’d pulled out along with the masks and began wrapping it around his hands.
Like a boxer.
Bleeding God in a bandage.
Gabe’s face was a thundercloud as Bastian handed him his own mask, but he didn’t say anything. He just tied it on, and loomed, and glared. The mask softened him, almost, hiding the eye patch from view. Made him look less like someone whose life was indelibly marked by violence.
Bastian clapped his wrapped hands together. “Now then. Nothing like a refreshing trip through a storm drain. Onward.” He started down the alleyway. Sharing a pointed look through their masks, Lore and Gabe followed.
“You saw his hands, right?” Lore pitched her voice so it wouldn’t carry. “Wrapped. He’s taking us to the fighting rings, and it looks like he’s participating.”
“Splendid. The very last thing I want to do this evening is save the Sun Prince’s ass.”
“You seem certain he’ll lose.” Lore shrugged. “He looks like he could be a good boxer.”
“Oh, does he?” Gabe’s voice was low and pointed.
Lore scowled at him.
“Hopefully you’re wrong,” Gabe muttered. “If he gets knocked out in a boxing match, maybe he’ll forget the last hour.”
“He also won’t be able to get us into the vaults.”
“We could ask Anton—”
“No.” The very thought made her fingers curl to fists, some cell-deep instinct recoiling. “If something went wrong with that body, I don’t want them to know.”
If something went wrong, Anton and August might stop thinking of her power as an asset. They might start thinking of it as something too dangerous to keep outside a cell.
Maybe too dangerous to keep alive at all.
Gabe’s lips pressed together, his blue eye assessing. Then he nodded.
Bastian ambled easily down the street ahead of them, showing no sign of apprehension. Clearly, this was a regular activity for him. Lore wondered whether he really was a good fighter—people who lost boxing matches on the docks weren’t generally eager to return, and tended to carry physical proof of their failure.
And what if she saw someone she recognized? What if her very fine, albeit out-of-fashion, dressing gown, scrubbed face, and clean, brushed hair weren’t enough to hide who she was? She didn’t look that different, even in an aristocrat’s nightclothes, and more than one acquaintance of hers spent time at the fighting rings.
She’d just have to lie low. Keep close to Gabriel and Bastian, not make eye contact, hope she didn’t attract too much attention.
They exited the mouth of the alley like a reluctant parade, Bastian jaunty in front, Gabe glowering in the back, Lore listlessly caught in the middle. The alley spit them out between two derelict buildings near the harbor front, gas lamps slicking orange light on dark water. A collection of lamps illuminated a shipless dock, the gathering crowd already smelling of beer and sweat. Every one of them wore a mask, some more comprehensive than others. Lore found herself looking at them closely, wondering if she’d passed them in the North Sanctuary.
“Stay close,” Gabe muttered, coming up behind her as Bastian went ahead.
She did. The mass of the Mort next to her was comforting.
The crowd parted for Bastian as he approached the hay-bale-lined ring, but not with any reverence that suggested they knew who he was. They wouldn’t—beyond the walls, the royal family was an abstraction, something that existed but had little day-to-day bearing, regarded with ambivalence bordering on lazy hostility. There was no reason for them to know what Bastian looked like, and in his simple clothes and wrapped fists, stubble on his jaw beneath his simple black mask, he looked just like them.
