John blinked. “If you say so?”
“I do. Aloras should be in the back.”
John nodded and headed toward a back room.
Vera folded her arms once John was out of sight. “Look, I’m sorry for how things ended, but I needed to make sure I got Echion out of there in one piece. You seemed nice, but I didn’t know you or your motives. I still don’t.”
She probably left me behind as a distraction for Katashi. And maybe to buy more time to get further into the city without being reported to the authorities. I wouldn’t have done the same, but she didn’t actually hurt me. And I can’t blame her for distrusting a stranger.
I shrugged in response to her half-hearted apology. “I’m not here about that. We’ve got bigger things to worry about. Give me a second.”
I removed my etching rod and began carving a rune in her door.
“What are you doing? You’re ruining the wood!”
Oh, maybe I should have explained first.
I finished carving the rune, noticing Jin nod out of the corner of my eye, then turned back to Vera.
“Noise-dampening rune. We really don’t want people to hear us. Uh, aside from Jin here. Jin, this is Vera. Vera, Jin.”
Vera sighed. “Fine, fine. Nice to meet you, Jin. What’s this all about?”
I put my rod away, and then slipped off my glove to show her the sigil of Katashi on my right hand. “Katashi has charged me with bringing you to him within the next week, otherwise he’s going to wreck the city.”
Vera reached down for something.
Jin moved faster, a pistol appearing in his hand and pressed up against her chest before I could react. “Don’t even think about it.”
Vera sucked in a sharp breath, putting up her hands in surrender. “I… I can’t go back there. You don’t understand. It’s not just about me.”
I took a moment to process what had just happened, then moved behind Vera and removed the dueling cane from her belt.
My old dueling cane, in fact. I looped it onto my own belt.
“You can lower the gun, Jin. Thank you.”
He lowered the weapon. “If you are certain.”
I turned back to Vera. “I don’t want this to end in bloodshed, Vera. If there’s something I don’t understand, make me understand. I’m willing to listen to your side of things, but one way or another, we need Katashi to be satisfied or he’s going burn this place to the ground.”
She sighed again. “Can I put my hands down?”
Jin stepped forward, nearly eye-to-eye with her. “Reach for another weapon and you lose a hand.”
Vera glowered at him. “I don’t have any other weapons.”
“Good,” Jin replied simply.
Vera lowered her arms and leaned up against a nearby wall. “How much do you know?”
I rolled my eyes. “About seventeen years’ worth, aside from what I’ve forgotten. Can you be more specific?”
“About what really happened in the tower.”
I scratched my chin. “I’ve pieced together a fair bit. You went in the tower with a mixed group. Some people from Caelford, some locals. Something bad obviously happened, and you ended up in that prison with the kid.”
“Echion,” she replied. “He’s… more than just a child.”
I folded my arms. “When you were in the jail cells, you acted like you didn’t even know him.”
She frowned. “Sorry about that. I couldn’t let anyone — especially Keras — realize how important he is to me. And in general.”
“What if that deception had caused me to leave the two of you in there? Or if Keras got impatient and triggered the traps?”
Vera shook her head. “Had to take my chances. There was too much of a chance Keras would have killed Echion outright if he’d known what he was dealing with. Echion wouldn’t have starved, and I doubt the traps would have done much to him.”
She paused for a breath. “Believe me, I thought long and hard about how I was going to behave in order to find the best chance of getting us both out. And that meant trying to get myself out, so I could find a way to free him. You having a second key just made it easier. If you’d just freed Echion and tried to walk out, I suspect Katashi would have just killed you both.”
I nodded. “Why’d Katashi attack him? Was this some kind of coup? Is Echion actually Tenjin?”
Vera shook her head. “No, but it’s not a bad guess.” She took in a deep breath. “Let me start from the beginning. Caelford and Valia have been allies since the Six Year War.”
I remembered the class about that. About eighty years ago, Edria’s army had swept east and conquered the kingdom of Kelridge — now known as “East Edria” — which sat along Valia’s border. They’d continued to push toward Valia, but we put up a better fight.
Caelford was on the opposite side of the continent — the far west side — and bordered West Edria. They were concerned about being Edria’s next target after Valia fell, and had some border skirmishes on their own, so they provided us with advanced weapons during the war. Caelford’s powerful cannons had been a key part of how we were able to hold the numerically superior Edrian army at bay.
I waved a hand. “Sure. And I take it this had something to do with the Edrian forces massing at our borders?”
Vera nodded. “More than you realize. Caelford and Valia have been bracing for another Edrian push for decades. Our spies told us that the time for that assault is finally on the horizon, so we decided to accelerate the timeline on one of our most important research projects.”
Some sort of joint military research between our nations made sense. I nodded for her to continue.
“Our team was put together from some of the best each nation could offer. I was the least experienced, but I had a strong connection with the research subject.”
“The research subject was a person?” I frowned. “Echion, I suppose?”
Jin raised a hand to his temple, looking introspective.
Vera continued. “Yeah. I’m sure you saw the marks on his forehead. We were doing some… unusual research with him. We had a powerful enough group that we assumed we could keep him safe regardless of what we ran into. We weren’t expecting a visage.”
I folded my arms, considering. “Katashi or Tenjin?”
“Tenjin. One of the members of our group cast what sounded like an ordinary summoning spell, but Tenjin arrived instead of the summoned monster. Showed up with an entourage. Told us that what we were doing was extraordinarily dangerous, that we were dabbling with powers beyond our comprehension… that sort of thing. Commanded us to stand down and surrender. And, you know, I think we would have. Probably.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“His entourage stabbed him in the back — almost literally. One of ‘em put a hand on his back. Blasted a hole in his chest. Didn’t kill Tenjin, but it certainly startled him. I guess the traitor realized that a shroud doesn’t protect someone from attacks that come from inside the shroud.”
Jin bristled. “A visage could not be harmed so easily.”
Vera shrugged. “Just telling you what I saw. Anyway, that traitor — woman in a dark mask — kept pummeling Tenjin. The other member of the entourage went for us. Tall bastard, crazy good with a sword. Echion probably could have handled him, but our Summoner hit Echion with some kind of binding spell. Pinned him to the ground.”
I sighed. “This Summoner. Was that Elora Theas, by any chance?”
She tightened her jaw. “Yeah, that’s the bitch’s name. You know her?”
I thought back to the fight between Keras and the Council of Lords. Elora had tried to chain Keras down, probably with the same spell she’d used on Tenjin. Keras had broken out almost instantly.