Hands dry, she slipped on a spare pair of leather gloves, pulled a knitted cap over her head for warmth while the fresh coals slowly caught, and folded her arms across her chest. “I saw two mages brought in . . . and midway through interrogating them, before the priests could bind either one . . . every last cog and gear of Mekha’s decorations vanished from the walls and from the priests’ embroidered robes. The outlander mage they were interrogating, he claimed it meant that Mekha had been dissolved. And then, later . . . they were making us haul all the prisoners up out of the basement rooms, where we weren’t supposed to go, before.
“While I was down there . . . I saw Mekha’s power room.” She shivered, more from the memory than from the cold. Then she shivered again from the chill in the air. What she wanted to do was crawl under the felted-wool blankets on her bed and huddle there until she and her room were both truly warm, but she couldn’t.
“And?” Surprisingly, he didn’t ask her what the chamber looked like. Nor did he ask her where her accent had gone. If he knew she was Rexei Longshanks, if he knew she was a journeyman of the Actors Guild, then he’d know she could don and doff an accent at will.
“And it was crumbling. Pillars with crystals disintegrating. Some sort of chair-thing at the heart of it, cracking and sloughing off in clumps, like you’d let garden dirt fall from your hands.”
“And?” he prompted when she fell silent. “I know you’re bright enough to have observed far more than that, Longshanks. Give me the details.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “That’s for my unnamed client to know, and it’s time for you to get out of my tenement. I’ve answered your questions. Now, go.”
He stepped close to her. She didn’t have anywhere to retreat, since next to the washstand was the table and cupboards where she kept what little food she cooked. Lifting her chin, Rexei tried to stare down the taller man.
“You’re brave, I’ll give you that. But these are priests, lad,” he warned her, fooled by her slim frame and ambiguous, youthful face, as everyone had been. “And they now have your cap and your coat. All they need to track you down is a hair plucked from either. They can tuck that into a tracking amulet and find you . . . save for one location. If they realize you saw or heard anything you weren’t supposed to—if they now know, after watching that blowhard’s ploy at making trouble for you, that you aren’t just a mere Servers apprentice—then they will come for you. And they will try to demand the Precinct’s help.
“I am trying to find out if that will happen or not . . . because if Mekha is truly gone, the captain and I are not giving anyone else to the priests ever again,” he finished grimly, moving close enough that she could feel the heat of his breath on her face. “But we don’t have any magic to counteract their abilities. And I know you don’t have full access to the one place where they cannot find you. Yet. So give me a reason to help you.”
She didn’t know what to make of him. It was clear he knew things . . . and that implied he was one of them, too . . . but neither of them could ask each other outright questions. Not here. The sanctuary he alluded to was not in Heiastowne, though it wasn’t far by motorhorse. But mentionable or not, he knew who Rexei Longshanks was—as much as she had let anyone know—and he was the Precinct leftenant.
One thing he was not was slimy feeling. Nor brittle and harsh like a cracker, like the man who had bruised her shoulder and hauled her to the leftenant’s side. Instead, the leftenant reminded her more of a fine leather coat. Precise, tailored—a finished product, not rawhide. He was also not a bully like so many other officers she had warily watched in other Precincts, men who would not have hesitated to beat an answer out of her with the back of a hand. This leftenant seemed to actually care about his city. Ambivalence warred within her, between the need to flee far away and establish a new identity elsewhere, and the stacking of subtle facts that said he might be semi-trustworthy.
Mekha is gone, Rexei reminded herself, and shrugged defensively. “I overheard the foreign man—not an Arbran but from somewhere else—telling the priests of . . . an alternate power source. Other than draining you-know-whats dry.”
One thought of the word mage in the kingdom of Mekhana, but one rarely ever said it aloud. It was whispered that priests had ways of tracking the word, spells that could pluck it out of the wind and backtrack it to its source. No one had a spell that could penetrate and reveal the privacy of a person’s very thoughts. So while her claim made the leftenant narrow his eyes in wary puzzlement, he only mouthed the forbidden word; he did not say it aloud.
Instead, he said, “What alternate power source?”
Hoping she wasn’t making a mistake, Rexei murmured one word, “Demons.”
He stumbled back from her, shock widening his light brown eyes. Rexei felt unsettled herself; she had never seen any militia officer so quickly discomposed. They were bastions of power, authority, and in many cases cruelty. This man’s composure had been shattered, though. He stared at her, clutched at his head, stared, and turned first toward the door, then back to the rest of the room, then toward the door again, as if unable to decide what to do or where to go.
“Demons,” he whispered, no longer even looking at her. “It starts here . . . This is where it starts!”
It was her turn to frown at him. Eyes narrowed, she opened her mouth to ask—but he interrupted her, snapping his fingers and pointing at the majority of her tenement.
“Start packing!”
“What? I’m not packing!” Rexei argued, though her heart pounded with fear. She was going to pack. Her assignment from the Mages Guild be damned; she would only pack as soon as he was gone, make her report, and head for the northern hills—or maybe the southern, head to Sundara in the hopes of escaping everything. But she wasn’t about to let him know that. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I’ve done nothing wrong!”
He swung back to face her, ending his awkward pacing. “Oh, you’ve done nothing wrong, I’ll agree. But the moment the priests find out you know that, your life will be worth nothing, lad. There is only one place in this whole kingdom, or what’s left of it, where you will be safe. Trust me, their ambitions did not end with Mekha,” the leftenant warned her, pointing at her face. “And your knowledge is needed to save the whole world. Start packing.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“I’m taking you to the one place where both of us know you’ll be safe . . . though neither of us dares say why. It’s not like you have that much to pack,” he added gruffly, looking at the stark contents of her tenement room. “Now, be quick about it. The faster we get you out of here, the faster we’ll have you in the one place where they cannot get a hold of you.”
She only had the bits of furniture, such as the table, chair, cupboards, and bed, simply because they came with the room. Most tenements had at least a few basic amenities, thanks to the efforts of the Consulates representing the many, many lessees across Mekhana in negotiations with the Lessors Guild. Even the lamp, the sparker, the coal bucket, and the wood bin were borrowed, but then Rexei didn’t own a clothes chest, either; what she owned, minus two of the blankets on her bed, could fit into a single large pack that could be hefted onto her back. With her other coat missing, she could add in one of those blankets.