Seventeen: Influence

Nova's backside hurt.

So did her neck, her wing stumps and her head.

She thought wistfully of her spot by the hearth in the kitchens as she shifted in her chair to ease the numbness in her legs and feet. She had been sitting in it for hours, listening to the world slowly falling apart.

First had been the representative from the brewers' guild, who couldn't get the crops to keep making beer. Then had come a spokeswoman for the Medica, saying the rations given were too small for all of their patients. Then Lady Kerrin had arrived, an acolyte at her side who Nova was certain had been Varthian, though how she ended up in Kiel's temple was a mystery. Kerrin's news had hit like a hammer blow; up until then Faellian Harkenn had endured the complaints in tight-lipped neutrality, but the news of the plague in the districts had made the first cracks in his demeanour. He now looked deflated, exhausted. If Nova hadn't felt the same sinking despair she might have savoured it more.

What she really had not wanted to see, just as it looked like she was finally being dismissed, was Yddris with Thorne in tow, both auras the picture of impending bad news.

Grace, help, she thought. She wanted nothing more than to climb into the narrow maids' bunk with her, feel her hands in her hair, bury her face against her shoulder and forget everything for an hour. I don't want to hear this.

Faellian losing control of Shadow's Reach was only an appealing prospect when she wasn't still stuck in it – and she'd much rather it be a nice overthrow rather than plague and famine. She could starve as easily as the next person.

"I would hope you had something good to tell me," Harkenn drawled, as the Unspoken came to a stop in front of his desk. "But you don't, do you? Night take me, boy, I can see you shaking under all that cover. Put him in a chair before he folds, Yddris."

Yddris dragged over a chair that had been recently vacated by Lady Kerrin. Thorne all but collapsed into it, seeming to sag in on himself as he did so. Exhaustion warred with fear in his aura, though a thread of hope had appeared in it that Nova hadn't seen last time. The boy clung to it like he was drowning.

"The Devils are planning to burn the food stores."

A silence fell after Yddris spoke. Harkenn stopped idly spinning a glass in his hand and put it down with a noise that made Thorne jump.

"And why, pray tell, would they want to do that?" Though she was behind the lord, she could tell when his gaze turned on Thorne because the boy abruptly stiffened, knuckles tightening around the chair's arms.

"They've got a chip on their shoulder, my lord," Thorne mumbled. "Because the Unspoken don't patrol there and the timber stopped coming. They see it as taking what they're owed."

"The timber stocks aren't enough for half the city!" Harkenn exploded. "And they expect me to keep stocking a registered derelict quarter filled with scum who should all, by rights, be in. My. Jail." He punctuated the last three words with a fist on the desk. "They want rations? They want warmth? They should turn themselves in and save me a world of hassle! When are they going to try and do this?"

Thorne mumbled his answer so quietly that Nova didn't hear it, but Harkenn, with his strange heritage, heard it perfectly well.

"Tomorrow night?" he sputtered. "You're certain?"

"Yes, sir. Their leader is expecting me to help." Thorne glanced at Yddris. "He wants Yddris out of the way."

"At the risk of sounding far below my station, I say fuck. That." A glass decanter of apple wine sat on the desk, and after this pronouncement the lord plucked out the stopper and took a long draught.

"There is another factor, my lord," Yddris put in quickly, when it looked like Harkenn might actually throw the decanter against the wall. "Which can help us. Thorne's tutor among the Devils doesn't want the plan to go ahead, and there's dissent elsewhere in their guild, too, I believe. He sent Thorne here with the Devils' plan."

"I don't trust it."

Thorne finally spoke. "No one knows he sent me here with it. He's hired someone to pretend to be me while I tell you."

"And you can swear that that wasn't a part of the plan they didn't make you privy to?"

Thorne hesitated. "No, my lord. I don't believe it is, but I can't swear it."

"And what would be your tutor's motive? Because he has another thing coming if he thinks he's owed something from my vaults for this."

"I believe he...disagrees with the methods. Punishing the poor for something they had no say in."

Harkenn barked a bitter laugh. "Night take me, a Devil with a conscience. Next you'll tell me you found a Firebull that'll read you a bedtime story if you ask nicely." He got up and went to a set of drawers at the back of the room, pulling something out with a flourish. He put it down on the desk, revealing it as a plan of the castle and grounds. "But if that's what we've got to go on, then you'd better start explaining."

To her relief, Nova was allowed out of the chair for the planning. With a shaky hand, Thorne marked the planned positions of the main players in the scheme on the map, putting dots next to those in the dissenting group. By the time he was done, arrows crisscrossed the map like a web.

"Well, he has planned this thoroughly," Faellian muttered, and then turned to Nova. "Go and fetch the captain of the guard."

It was taking a while to get used to being a run-around in Brillan's place. Nova wondered why he didn't just hire another butler, but asking would just earn her a thrashing for impertinence. She gathered up her chain and padded to the door, feeling Thorne's nervous gaze on her as she passed. He probably worried that she would tell Grace what he was up to, but there were a few things she would never tell Grace, and that was one of them. It was Thorne's job to come clean, and in the meantime what she didn't know couldn't hurt her. Nova wasn't going to be the one to inflict that pain and worry on her.

Whenever she was thinking about Grace, the girl had a knack for showing up. She was mopping a stain on the foyer floor, face pink with exertion. Fading patches of wet on the stone stairs suggested she had been at it for a while.

"Well met," Nova said. Grace jumped and washing water slopped out of her bucket.

"Jesus Christ, Nova," she said. "You're always sneaking up on me."

"Not my fault your hearing sucks." Saying something sucked was an otherworld term she had picked up from Grace. She quite liked it, though it had taken a while to get the context right.

"My hearing does not suck."

"I wear a big rattling chain and you still don't hear me coming. It sucks."

Grace put her mop down and folded her arms, a stern frown on her face, though her eyes had a mischievous glint to them. "Where are you off to, then?"

"Find the captain of the guard. Any ideas?"

"He came through the kitchens to ask for the barracks rations," Grace said. "Wasn't that long ago, he might still be in the mess."

"I'll check there first, then. Thank you."

She made to walk past, but the mischievous glint had leaked into a smile, and as she did so she felt the patter of water landing on her back. She turned just as Grace dropped the mop back in the bucket and bit her lip hard to keep from laughing.

"I'm getting you back for that," Nova muttered, unable to help smiling herself.

"I'll look forward to it." Grace hefted the mop back to the flagstones and began to scrub. "Oh. Nova? Have you heard from Jordan recently?"

Yes, he's upstairs. Also, he changed his name. And just in case he hadn't told you, he's currently two-timing with an assassins' guild and plans to leave the city within weeks.

"Now and then. Only briefly, and not to talk to me. Why?"

"I haven't heard from him in ages. I saw him a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't been able to catch either him or Yddris since then."

Nova would have bet money that Yddris was avoiding that very thing. Grace's interrogations were intense and persistent, and that was when she didn't care deeply about whatever or whoever she was asking about.

But Grace looked so hopeful that Nova couldn't quite bring herself to lie outright.

"He's in a meeting," she said reluctantly.

"What, right now?"

"I think the next couple of days will be hectic for him. I wouldn't read too much into it."

"What's going on?"

Despite Nova's careful wording, Grace could tell immediately that 'hectic' was code for 'bad'. For a long moment she struggled and hated herself for it; she had neither the wherewithal to easily dismiss Grace's questions, nor the courage to answer them anyway. She looked at the thunder building behind Grace's eyes and sighed.

"Ask him. It's not my place to tell you."

Grace's face fell. "But I can't get hold of him, Nova. Even when I do it's like he's keeping me out of the loop deliberately. What am I supposed to do?"

She heard Harkenn's voice rise on the upper floor and felt a flutter of panic. The last thing she needed was for the lord to come storming out to see where she'd got to, only to find her nattering in the foyer. Feeling like a coward, she said, "If I can get away, I'll come and see you tonight and we'll talk. I've got to find the captain of the guard before I get a belting."

Grace looked very much like she wanted to pursue the topic anyway, but then she glanced nervously at the stairs and nodded, shoulders slumping. "Thanks, Nova."

Nova felt a flash of resentment for Thorne as she hurried away. It was unsurprising he hadn't told his sister about the Devils, and Nova wouldn't blame him for never getting around to it. The name change, however, and the imminent departure – she had a right to know, and his avoidance tactics were making his sister miserable.

Pushing the image of Grace's disappointment from her mind, Nova pressed on. She left the castle through the back door of the kitchen, gasping quietly in the freezing night air. Her wing stumps smarted as a bitter wind caught at her shift, biting at her exposed skin and whipping her hair around her face. Frost numbed her feet as she crossed the castle lawns to barracks, a squat building that loomed out of the dark at her suddenly, picked out only by the torch burning at the door.

"Business?" said a soldier sitting near the doorway, feet up on a table, lazily stuffing a pipe.

"I'm looking for the captain," Nova said. The soldier looked up, balked, and scrambled to his feet. He stared at her wide-eyed, his pipe forgotten. She resisted rolling her eyes. "Am I finding him myself? This is the lord's request, so either you're moving or I'm moving."

"Yes, m... Yes." The soldier turned and scurried further into the warren of corridors before disappearing. Somewhere inside she could hear the chatter of dozens of voices, one or two shouting and accompanied by breaking glass. She wondered if Harkenn knew that brawls broke out in his barracks.

The soldier returned a few minutes later, just when Nova was becoming convinced that she wouldn't be able to walk on her numb feet by the time it came to moving again. The captain of the guard was a burly man with the kind of face that was chronically disapproving. He wasn't old, but grey threads in his black hair were visible at his temples. He didn't seem ruffled that Nova was there, even though the soldier beside him still looked like he thought she might eat him.

"His Lordship's summons?" the captain rumbled. Nova nodded.

"He might also be grateful if the men weren't hungover or still drunk over the next day or two." Harkenn hadn't exactly given her leave to make these kinds of suggestions, but over the years Nova had discovered that people wouldn't tell if her advice pertained to not bringing Harkenn's wrath down on their heads.

The captain eyed her, shoulders straightening. "Ah. That kind of summons. Wait there."

Not going anywhere, Nova thought sourly, and wrapped her arms around her torso in a vain attempt to keep warm. She missed her wings with a pang, and counted her blessings that Jeorge had gone off someplace else for a few days so he wasn't rubbing it in her face. His part of Harkenn's plans was still a mystery to her, but she found it hard to mind when it meant the Angel was out of her face for days at a time.

The barracks went quiet, the raucousness lowering to a disgruntled murmur. The captain reappeared, boots echoing in the sudden silence, and gestured. "After you."

Getting moving was almost as hard as she had anticipated. Her steps were clumsy, her skin a map of goose-bumps and livid scars.

"I feel I ought to offer you my jacket." The captain looked down at her, only the edge of a deep frown picked out by the barracks' light. Nova fixed her gaze ahead, concentrating only on reaching the kitchen and its warmth.

"Don't," she muttered, if only because she knew she'd take him up on it and Harkenn would somehow find out.

Grace was dragging her bucket back into the kitchen as Nova passed through. She opened her mouth to say something, eyes on Nova's blue feet, but shut it again when Nova glared and shook her head.

They found Harkenn and the Unspoken in much the same way she'd left them; Yddris and Harkenn bent over the annotated map and Thorne standing slightly apart, aura boiling with anxiety. Nova limped back to her chair and clambered on to settle her feet under her thighs, wincing at their coldness. She shook uncontrollably in the diffused warmth from Harkenn's fire, clenching her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering.

"You called, my lord?" the captain said, striding forward to join them at the map and angling himself subtly to stand closer to Harkenn than Yddris. Thorne backed up entirely, almost bringing him within her reaching distance. He glanced around, seeming to realise this when she did. To her surprise, he shuffled back another step, put his hands behind his back and set them ablaze. Warmth buffeted her, countering the cold draught from the stone walls behind her. Almost straight away her face and hands tingled with returning sensation. It wasn't the same as sitting by the hearth – the heat had a biting crackle to it that made her hair stand on end – but it was a deal faster at warming her up. It was hard to maintain her resentment through sheer relief.

"What are you all the way over there for?" Harkenn snapped, looking up and spotting Thorne standing several feet away. "You're as involved in this as any of us."

Thorne stiffened, his magic doused. "Sorry, my lord."

He returned to the map with one last acknowledging glance to Nova. As he did so she caught a second pair of eyes glinting inside the hood with him, and had to stifle a snort. She wondered if Harkenn knew that deep cowl had an extra occupant and hoped that Ren jumped out at the captain at some point, just to wipe that intense, serious look off his face.

"So," Harkenn said, "here's what's going to happen..."

Even though she got what she'd been hoping for all day, Nova didn't sleep well that night. She lay awake and stared at the ceiling of Grace's room, trying to picture how the following night would turn out. The plan was a risky one, made at the last minute – Thorne had had to run off as soon as he had it clear, which had not gone down well with Grace when Nova told her he'd left without saying anything. The girl had cried about it, even though she'd pretended she only needed the privy, returning to her room puffy-eyed and pink-faced. She hadn't had the heart to do anything more than lie in the bunk, forehead to forehead, her hand on Nova's hip.

In the dark, Grace's eyes glittered. She hadn't slept, either.

"Can't you tell me what he was in the meeting for?" she mumbled.

"Harkenn's expecting a raid on the food-stores," Nova said. "He had intelligence. And Yddris is involved, so Jordan is too."

She carefully skirted around the fact that Thorne was the intelligence, and that if Yddris had been the only factor he had to deal with, he wouldn't be anywhere near the castle tomorrow night. Yddris wouldn't be an easy teacher, she was willing to bet, but he wasn't the kind to drag his apprentice into things he wasn't ready for – especially since the stores were a castle issue, and not Unspoken. Yddris joined in because he fought like a whirlwind. In the study, Thorne had barely kept his feet. Not for the first time she wondered who exactly in the Devils was teaching him, and decided that she probably wouldn't want to meet them in person – no doubt she'd already seen their face on a wanted poster at some time.

"Do you think he knows?"

"About what?"

"That I killed that angel spy during the siege."

Nova shifted back to look at Grace properly. A sliver of light from a torch outside poked through the window shutters and outlined her jaw, picking out metallic flecks in her hair.

"That's still bothering you?"

She knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say. Grace's aura shifted, anger blooming in it. "Bothering me? Nova, I killed someone!"

"And if you hadn't, he would have killed us!" Nova replied, firing up as well. "Or, at best, we would have made it to a guard in time and then Harkenn would have had him executed!" She took a deep breath. "No, I don't think he knows. And even if he did, I doubt he'd hold it against you if it meant you lived. Elandriel's balls, he would've done it himself if it meant you lived!"

"You don't know that."

"I have a dark-damned good idea." She was going too far, she could sense it. Grace was sharp; if she came too close to the truth, the girl would pick up on it in an instant. "He signed a contract with Harkenn to save your life." Two, actually. "No one does that unless they mean business."

She'd meant it as a joke, but Grace stiffened under her touch. She supposed that ten years of being Harkenn's slave had left her somewhat out of touch with what most would consider a joke.

"I'll try and collar Yddris," she said, after a taut silence. "He can't get away from me as easily. I'll ask him to talk to Th- Jordan."

Grace's cheeks were damp as she pressed them into the hollow of Nova's neck. "Would you?"

Nova had made a principle of not doing favours like that over her ten years in the castle; it was always a stupid idea to get involved.

"I'll make exception for you," she mumbled, her lips on Grace's head.

"Thank you, Nova." Grace's hand slid over Nova's thigh, and a shuddering breath left her as it crept under her shift. Warmth shared, in the dark. A beating heart next to hers for the first time in years.

A reason to hope for something.

You're a bad influence, Grace Haverford.

Promise me you'll never stop.