Rexei did not want to go anywhere with the leftenant. She stayed where she was, silently amazed at her courage, and asked, “Why should I?”
Surprised, he turned to face her from a few paces away, brows raising. She lifted her chin, fingers balled into fists to keep them warm. It wasn’t working.
“I’ve done nothin’ wrong . . . and if you know my name, then you know I’m a Gearman. Sub-C-Consul.” She folded her arms quickly, trying to stave off more shivering. “I’d n-no more c-c-cause a problem than c-cut off my own arm. You got no c-cause t’ arrest me.”
Returning to her, the leftenant leaned in close. “I’m not arresting you. I’m asking you questions. If you want to stay here and freeze, be my guest, Sub-Consul. If you want to be warm, I’d suggest walking and talking. Though I doubt your intelligence, standing here without coat or cap in the dead of winter.”
“’S in the bloody t-t-temple,” she muttered, shivering. “They sh-shoved us out th’ d-d-doors before I c-could g-g-get it.”
“Then start walking home. Or better yet, get on the motorhorse. We’ll give you a ride there.” He stared at her, then flicked his gloved hand impatiently. “The sooner you get home and get warmed up again, the sooner I’ll have my questions answered and go.”
He was being entirely too reasonable. Too polite for her to protest. Tucking her hands under her armpits, Rexei started walking. Behind her, she heard the leftenant give an order that sent most of the others off. She heard the creak of his leathers as he remounted behind his motorhorse operator, and the gruff rumble as the engine was restarted.
There was no way she was going to be sandwiched between two militiamen, where she could be all too easily subdued and hauled off for unwilling service. Or incarcerated for doing nothing wrong but catching the leftenant’s eye at the wrong moment in time. That and her bolt-hole was only a few blocks away.
As a member of the Messengers Guild—the longest guild she had spent time in so far, almost two full years—she had learned how to walk at a tireless, long-legged pace. It helped that the melodies constantly playing in the back of her mind, hiding all traces of her magical abilities, were usually set at a tempo well suited for walking.
For messages delivered between towns or to a recipient more than a couple miles away, she had learned how to ride a motorhorse, but those were loaned out by the Guild and had to be returned at the end of each ride. Unless it was an emergency, any messages delivered within a town were delivered on foot. The pace she set was brisk enough that some of her chattering eased, though her muscles were still tight from the aching cold.
Within a matter of minutes, she reached the wood and stone tenement building which was her home while in Heiastowne. This one was occupied by tenants from various guilds. Though some apprenticeships came with lodgings, usually in the home of whatever master had been assigned to teach said apprentices, not all of them did. The Servers Guild was one of those that didn’t.
It had been decided long ago that no member of that guild would stay overnight in any temple or priest’s home, just to be safe. The guild had also raised its members’ wages so that they could afford to rent rooms . . . and had withheld all services from all priests when some of those priests had tried to incarcerate their servants on their properties to keep them past their service hours. Peer pressure had forced the release of the maidservants, footmen, housekeepers, and butlers. But while the wages had been raised to pay for lodgings elsewhere, that raise hadn’t been much, and her tenement reflected it.
The leftenant dismounted when she started up the external stairs. The operator didn’t come with them, though he did shut off his engine. A glance behind showed the leather-armored man settling into the saddle to wait the leftenant’s return. It also showed the leftenant moving up behind her, clearly determined to follow her all the way home. Wincing, she moved up the steps. At the fourth floor, she strode along the open balcony. Their boots clomped on the wood, both hers and his.
The only thing that showed almost a dozen Servers lived here was how well the snow had been scraped off the balconies and steps of the whole building compared to the one directly across from it. All of them got together in the mornings and the evenings after a snowfall to keep the balcony and steps clear, since living on the fourth floor meant a very dangerous fall should they slip on an icy surface. It also meant a slight break for them in the cost of living here in winter, if they swept and shoveled.
Fourth floor rooms in winter were usually a bit warmer than ground or first floor ones, and thus were more expensive. Size was another factor. When she unlocked her tenement, there was only one room to it; that was another cost kept down. The right-hand wall was a mass of brick, since every room above and below hers had its own hearth, and they all shared a wall for the chimney spaces. Midday in winter, it could be quite cold if the others were out and about when their hearth fires were either banked or gone out. At midnight, it could be cold, too, but it was now close to supper, and that meant people were coming home and lighting fires, preparing food.
Her breath didn’t frost inside her tenement, but it wasn’t exactly warm, either. Grabbing her spare coat off one of the pegs by the door, she shrugged quickly into the felted wool and picked up the sparker and oil lamp from the shelf above it. Light came in from the narrow window by her door and the slightly broader window at the back of the somewhat narrow, rectangular room, but she carried the lamp to the table and lit it with a squeeze of the spring-loaded arm that scraped a bit of flint over a coil of steel.
Her teeth still threatened to chatter, though the coat helped somewhat. Unfortunately, it was a summer-weight coat, not winter weight. More heat would be needed. Ignoring the leftenant, she crouched by the hearth in the middle of the wall and used the fire tongs that came with the room to scrape back the ashes, hoping for a couple live coals. Grateful there were a few, she reached for the coal bucket, not the kindling box, and laid sooty black lumps on the glowing orange ones. It would take a while for the room to heat up, but at least she had started the process.
Only after she had washed her hands in the bowl of water by the front door did the leftenant speak. He didn’t seat himself on the sole chair in the room nor on the edge of her bed—not that she had invited him to make himself comfortable, but he didn’t seem upset at the lack of courtesy. Instead, he got straight to the point.
“I know you were assigned to be a Server in the temple, Longshanks,” the older man stated without preamble, making her heart skip a beat. She turned to stare at him, absently wiping her hands on the cloth hung on the rod along the side of the washstand, and watched him dip his head to her. “And I know who assigned you to watch the priests as well as serve them.”
He . . . he works with the mages? She stared at him, wide-eyed and unsure whether to be relieved or afraid.
Taking off his leather helmet, he set it on the table with a sigh, then scrubbed a gloved hand over his short-cropped hair, as if relieving a full-scalp itch. Smoothing the ginger-brown locks back from his face, he wrinkled his nose. “I need to know what happened in there, Longshanks. I need to know if . . . He . . . is actually gone. The only thing keeping this town from going mad is the bitter cold and the shock of disbelief, and I will not have Heiastowne overrun and burned down by rioting. So tell me, what did you see in the temple?”
THREE
She honestly did not know if she could trust the man. He was militia, and the militia had special squads sent out by the officers—at the prodding of the priesthood, admittedly—to hunt down and capture mages. But . . . the purpose for the Hunter Squads no longer existed, as far as she knew. If she could convince this man of that, then maybe word would spread, and the Hunter Squads could be disbanded. That would save a lot of mages’ lives.