"We volunteered for one of the search parties and broke away as soon as we could," Pyke chimed in, as they stopped at the hack station. "We knew from your note that you'd gone to the Tower, so we searched it and found the tunnel to the Engine."
"We knew you weren't a terrorist," Cassi said. "Pyke, will you get us a coach?"
"Sure."
"Ask for Gregor," Taya said, sitting on a bench and setting her crutches next to her. She felt exhausted, emotionally and physically. Pyke nodded and turned to talk to the hackmaster.
"I wish we'd gotten there faster," Cassi said, looking at Taya's torn and bloodstained flight suit. "Did that decatur shoot you?"
"No. It was one of the lictors. It was a mistake. He didn't know who I was." Taya shivered, her guilt over the senseless deaths returning. "He's dead now. Cristof and I killed them both. They were innocent. They didn't know Alister was a criminal."
Cassi put an arm over her shoulders. "It's okay."
"It's not okay."
"You didn't have any choice."
Taya shrugged despondently. Wasn't there always a choice? Maybe she could have put herself between the lictor and Cristof, or —
"Taya, don't eat yourself up over it. You were in danger and you did what you had to do. Nobody's going to blame you for it."
"Their families will."
Cassi hugged her, not answering. After a moment, Taya sighed.
"Do you know if Alister and Cristof are under arrest?"
"Nobody is telling us anything. We want the whole story from you as soon as we get home."
"Deal," Taya agreed, closing her eyes.
When they got back to the Eyrie, Taya assured the rest of the tenants that she wasn't a terrorist and then headed straight to her room. Cassi and Pyke spent the afternoon with her, bringing up food and talking about what had happened. Pyke left a few times to pick up the broadsheets that were starting to hit the streets, their ink wet and their type poorly set. Large headlines marched across the page, comprised of equal amounts of rumor and guesswork. Taya's father, her sister Katerin, and her new brother-in-law Tomas all came to visit toward nightfall, looking concerned and bringing her the best wishes of her childhood friends on Tertius. She hugged them, grateful for her family's support.
Cristof never showed up.
At last Gwen chased all the visitors away and locked the eyrie up for the night.
Taya fell into a restless sleep, awakening throughout the night to the sound of Cristof's watch steadily ticking on her bed stand.
She felt calmer the next morning, sitting at a breakfast table with her second cup of black tea and a stack of newspapers. The rest of the eyrie had gone to work, and only the famulate staff was left, washing dishes and chattering in the kitchen. Taya had been reading for hours.
The printers must have been up all night. The stories were closer to the truth this morning, and Taya read them all. Nobody had fabricated quotes for her this time. In fact, only the
Courier Regnant bothered to mention her name. The rest of the papers referred to her as only as "an icarus."
Alister and Cristof received the bulk of the coverage. Alister's educational and political background was covered at length, and any hope Cristof might have had of continuing to work undercover was dashed by the papers’ scandalized accounts of the exalted who'd scorned his caste to serve the military.
She also read the names and descriptions of the two lictors who'd died. The papers were fair, at least, describing them as dupes who'd become unwitting casualties during the fight. After a moment, Taya tore out the article and put it into her pants pocket. She wasn't sure how she could atone for killing a man, but she was determined to do something. She'd apologize to his family in person, at the very least, and she'd do more if she could.
Making that decision made her feel better, and she was finally able to set her guilt aside for a while as she read.
A small item in the back of one of the less reputable papers made her stop dead. Taya folded the page over and leaned back in her chair to focus on the story.
One of the journalists had managed to dig up the details of the Forlore murder/suicide, and for the first time Taya had access to a full account. She read it with horrified fascination. The article described the elder Forlore's violent madness and his brutal attacks on his wife and children; attacks that had culminated in the argument that had left his wife dead. He'd killed himself immediately afterward.
The two boys, Alister and Cristof, had been found hiding in the cellar, bruised but alive. They'd been put in a hospital for a while to recover and had then been taken in by their aunt and her husband. The names weren't published, but Taya knew who they were. Viera's family.
She lowered the paper and stared into space, thinking about the different ways the two boys had dealt with their father's abuse.
A familiar voice startled her from her absorption.
"Taya?"
She looked up, her heart leaping. Cristof stood in the dining room doorway, holding a black leather bag.
"Cris!" Taya set the paper face-down and reached for her crutches.
"Wait. Don't get up." He started across the room.
"Now, don't you plan to sit there and talk all day," Gwen said tartly, appearing behind him in the doorway. "I'm paying you to fix my clock, not bother my tenants."
"You won't have to pay me anything, if you'll just leave me alone for a while," Cristof shot back over his shoulder.
"Hmph." Gwen gave Taya a long look, her eyebrows rising. Taya nodded. "All right, clockwright, but you two stay downstairs. I don't allow tenants to bring outsiders to their rooms. This is a boardinghouse, not a brothel."
"Don't be ridiculous." Cristof said over his shoulder, then stopped by the table and looked down at Taya. She was smiling. "What's so amusing?"
"Did you really come here to fix the clock?"
"I found your landlady's service request in my mail last night." He set the bag down. "How are you?"
"Bandaged and grounded. The physicians gave me these awful crutches and some medicine to dull the pain and told me no more crash landings for a month or two."
"But you're going to be well?"
"They said they wouldn't need to amputate."
"That's good. May I join you?"
"Of course. I was hoping you'd come by yesterday. I was worried about you."
He pulled out a chair and sat, giving her a searching look. Taya met it, assessing him in turn.
He'd replaced his lost glasses with an older pair, judging from their battered wire arms. The cut across his jaw had become a narrow, scabbing red line. Other than that, he looked the same as ever, his angular body enclosed once more in a crow-black suit, his ragged hair in disarray from the long walk up to the eyrie.
"They kept me for questioning until midnight," he said, at last. "Alister's in jail. He didn't say anything for hours, and then he began to confess everything."
"I read a little about it."
"He admitted to killing Pins and Caster. He also took the blame for the two lictors. He said they wouldn't have attacked us if he hadn't misled them." Cristof's expression tightened. "There's going to be an inquiry into their deaths."
Taya met his eyes and saw her guilt reflected there. It wasn't reassuring, but she felt better knowing that she wasn't alone.
"What about Viera's wireferry? Did he do that?"
"No. He said it was a coincidence. I have to believe him. It doesn't make any sense for him to work with the Cards."
"Are you sure it was sabotaged by the Cards?"
"They left their usual torn copper punch card close to the vandalized girders."
"What about the bombing that night? The refinery fire?"
"Alister says he didn't have anything to do with that, either." Frustration passed over Cristof's sharp features. "I hate coincidences. Still, it could have been the Torn Cards again. We didn't find a card in the initial search, but it might show up during repairs."