Fifty Nine: Confrontation

Harkenn didn't call for him that evening. Yddris only dropped back in at the house to tell him as much and then vanished again, and Jordan hadn't asked about it. His tutor's grim voice had said enough.

As soon as the front door closed once more behind the Unspoken, Jordan sighed, got up from the chair by the window and dragged himself and his bag into his bedroom. Nika had already remade the bed with sheets and blankets, and a new set of clothes awaited him on it, lighter than those he had been wearing through the cold months. The quiet generosity only made him feel worse about what he had to do tonight. He set Ren down on the bed and then retrieved his Devil garb from the top of his wardrobe, where he'd concealed it under the otherworld clothes he'd been wearing on arrival in Nictaven. He shook the garments out to free them of dust, and then set his jaw and began to change into them.

He left through his bedroom window, not wanting to risk the busier streets or waking Nika. His strength had improved since his last botched escape, as he only stumbled a little while landing on the other side of the fence. He set off at a brisk walk. It felt strange not to have Ren with him still, after months of not having to leave her behind except for training, but Arlen had no patience for her and Jordan didn't want to risk them in the room together for too long. He left her on his pillow with a bowl full of scrapings from the bottom of the stew pot. She would find her way up to Nika's pallet in the attic if she wanted company.

When he reached the bridge into the dead quarter his legs ached and for the first time he felt he could have slept – just at the one point where he couldn't. He pressed on, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Traversing the city unobtrusively was already becoming more difficult, especially with the guard out in full force. After two weeks of hard walking, the constant crouching and hurrying was exceptionally taxing.

Arlen's rooms had a light in the window through the oilskin covering. Jordan hadn't realised how much he'd been hoping he'd find no one home until he was disappointed. With a sigh, he climbed the crates to the opening. Two of the crates had been replaced with new ones since he was last here, and someone had scored into the surfaces to give them more grip, presumably for Arlen's benefit.

"It's me," he said softly through the covering. Whoever was inside would already know he was there.

Heavy footsteps crossed to the window and Jordan found himself staring into Usk's searching yellow gaze. He met it for as long as he dared, allowing his aura to leak out a little further than he normally would.

The Varthian grinned in response. He probably hadn't registered anything off with Jordan's manner. "Here you go, Arl."

The oilskin came down entirely and Jordan climbed in to the dark space that was quickly becoming as familiar to him as Yddris's, with far less kindly associations. His Devil tutor was sharpening knives at the single table, and something was bubbling in the pot over the fire that Usk now tended to. At the thick smell of blackweed in the room Jordan felt the ghost of a pinching addiction headache begin again behind his eyes. Arlen Blackheart appeared to have at least taken a bath at some point during Jordan's absence.

Though he had intended to put his grievances on the table as soon as he arrived, Jordan sensed that Arlen wouldn't react kindly to it before he made his report. Angry as Jordan was, Arlen was still dangerous. It had always been hard to gage how likely it was that his teacher would hurt him if provoked – and how badly he would do it if he did. Caution was always the better policy. If Jordan played by the rules he was much more likely to get a reasonable, non-violent discussion out of the deal.

"Jordan," Arlen greeted, the first and probably the last time the assassin had greeted him by anything other than 'kid'. He gestured to the second chair at the table with the point of the knife he was polishing. "Got news?"

Jordan reported everything that he thought Arlen had any business knowing – which wasn't very much. The Guildtown was too personal to share details of, so he kept it spare and vague; that he had continued his training, that Unspoken murderers were still being sighted, that they had returned at Harkenn's behest to treat with the Caelumese delegation. Arlen looked like he was barely paying attention as he spoke, but when Jordan had finished his stare was sharp and suspicious. He knew Jordan was holding back details. Well, it was fair exchange for breaking his word on the most fundamental part of their agreement.

"With the letter from Harkenn," Jordan continued, when the assassin didn't say anything for a long while, "came a letter to me. From Grace."

Arlen's face remained neutral, and despite his determination not to lose his temper, Jordan felt it rising at the lack of reaction. What had he expected, really? An apology? Not from Arlen. He doubted Arlen had apologised for anything in a very long time.

"We had an agreement," Jordan said through gritted teeth. Behind him he sensed Usk watching the exchange very carefully.

"Before you set my house on fire," Arlen said, and Jordan realised that flames were dancing across his hands, "I had no idea that your sister was going to be there. I had no intention of seeing her. Night take me, kid, if I thought I would encounter anyone I would've sent someone who could get away quickly."

"If you weren't there to see her, what were you there for?" Jordan challenged. He had a feeling he was going to regret starting this argument, judging by the set of Arlen's jaw, but his anger was such that it didn't matter. "I can't think of any other reason you'd have for going there while I was away. I bet you knew she visited regularly. And don't think I don't know that that note was sent by you."

"We agreed that I wouldn't seek her out," his tutor said blandly. "I didn't go. I sent Ashe to wait at the tavern for her. Either way, no harm would've come to her."

Jordan thought of the impish girl obsessed with explosives he'd glimpsed around the beer hall. The temptation to lunge across the table almost unbalanced him. "Leave her the fuck alone."

"Are you telling me what to do, Haverford?" Arlen's voice dropped to a silky drawl that promised pain.

"I'm begging you, if that's how you want to see it," Jordan replied. "I'll get on my knees for it if that'll satisfy you. Leave her out of it. Please."

"Arl." Usk's low voice broke the silence as tutor and apprentice glowered at each other across the table. Something passed between the two men. Arlen curled his lip.

"You can keep your grovelling," he said. "I'll leave her be. In return, I'd like an explanation for this."

From one of the pockets in his clothing, Arlen pulled out a familiar journal and set it on the table, beginning to flip through it.

Jordan blinked. "You...just wanted to steal my journals?"

Arlen didn't reply, only held up the book, open on a double spread. On both sides Jordan had sketched quick impressions of Arlen's group – one of his fruitless attempts at banishing nightmares, he seemed to remember – vague enough to perhaps be mistaken for strangers except for the one detailed sketch of Arlen's nose and eyes that he had started before realising what he was doing.

"I draw," he said, unable to see what angle Arlen was coming from. To anyone else, even the detailed sketch wouldn't be a dead giveaway – he could pass it off as simply unfinished to account for the blank eye. "And I draw stuff that's in my life. You'll find way more drawings of the Unspoken in there than you."

Arlen's mouth pinched into a flat line. "You're not passing these off to anyone?"

"Who would want them?" Jordan asked. His frank bafflement seemed to convince Arlen of something.

"Anyone who wants clues to where my connections lie, perhaps. A more accurate representation for my wanted posters. You might have made notes and I wouldn't know." The admission seemed to grate on him. "Have you made notes?"

"You're severely overestimating how much time in the day I spend thinking about you," Jordan snapped. "I don't think in terms of how much I could fuck someone over if I wanted. Why would I sell you out when the Devils could have my sister killed before I could get to her? I've been told enough times what's on the line here."

"Would you leave, if you had a guarantee that that wouldn't happen?"

Arlen's tone contained some emotion Jordan couldn't read. Both assassins were watching him like they thought he might explode, even though he'd already reined his magic back in. He could only conclude that the question was weighted, and he could only honestly answer one way.

"If it also included not killing me or otherwise making my life unbearable, then yes." He scowled. "But I strongly suspect that it would."

Arlen nodded slowly. He pushed the journal back across the table. "That's all. I won't bother her again. In return, you'll refrain from recording anything about us in your journals. If Marick knew, he'd have them burned. Nict knows what he'd do to you."

Jordan blinked and shuddered. Arlen returned to polishing his knife. Usk watched him from beside the fire, all the humour gone from his eyes. Jordan couldn't help but feel like he'd been tested somehow and found wanting. He slowly got up, and dug in his pocket. He placed two small Guild-forged blades on the table and stepped back.

He had a feeling that Yddris noticed him taking them, but the unsaid understanding between them held firm. It made Jordan feel a little less like a charlatan to steal something that wasn't important enough for Yddris to outwardly notice, but Arlen had no way of knowing that. He felt he had to hold out an olive branch of some kind in case the test he had somehow failed made his time with the Devils worse. Whichever way he looked at it, he was stuck with them for a few years. Railing against it, as he had with the Gift, was only making him more miserable than he needed to be.

"No one noticed," he said. Arlen stared at the blades and then up at Jordan as if suspecting a trick, but Usk was smiling again.

Jordan turned and levered himself back out of the window, leaving Arlen to make of it what he would. He would show willing, even if it made him feel as though he shrivelled from the inside out. At the end of his apprenticeship with the Unspoken he would be out for good, able to look after Grace and show her the Guildtown. Thirris would love her, he was certain. He clutched that thought to him like a talisman as he hurried home. He didn't remember consciously making the resolution; it seemed to have formed over his time away, not fully realised until that point. Once it had been, he felt a strange sense of relief in it. None of this was permanent.

The house was still quiet when he returned. Ren wasn't in his bedroom, which meant she was probably upstairs. He just about gathered the energy to change back into his normal clothes, forgoing the cloak, and collapsed on top of the covers. He was asleep within moments.

It seemed far too short a time later that Nika shook him awake again. At first Jordan mistook him for Yddris, angrily launching cuss-words from the depths of his pillow until he came to a little more.

"Some of those curses sound familiar." Nika looked down at him disapprovingly, and Jordan felt his neck and ears heating.

"Yddris got into the habit of rolling me onto the floor," Jordan replied, unable to help the plaintive note in his voice. "I thought...ugh, sorry." He lowered his face into his hands and tried to wake himself with the pressure. "My whole body...is made of putty."

Sheer adrenaline had kept him moving last night; after several hours of rest his limbs felt sodden with exhaustion. He could only be grateful that he didn't have a fever this time.

"I know you're exhausted." Nika set a tray down on his lap when he lifted his head. Thick porridge with some sort of sliced fruit and a cup of herb tea awaited him on it, awakening a ravenous hunger. Ren hopped down next to him from Nika's shoulder. "Harkenn wants to see you today, but when you get back Yddris has asked me to let you sleep for the rest of the afternoon if you want."

"I don't want to see Harkenn." He knew he sounded petulant.

"It's not really a case of want," Nika said, chuckling. "But Grace will be there. As you know, she's being kept out of the way of the delegation, so you'll have as long as you want with her."

Considering what they'd probably end up talking about, Jordan wasn't so sure that was a good thing, but despite himself he was anticipating the visit. He had never been apart from Grace for so long; even when she was at university they visited each other regularly. He had missed her more than he'd been willing to think about.

He somehow found the energy to eat his breakfast and dress himself. It felt strange not to hear and smell the forest around the house as he coaxed himself to wakefulness – there was no birdsong, no rustling leaves. Instead he heard wagon wheels and loud talk, the clack of hooves on cobbles. Smoke drifted under the shutters instead of the gentle richness of leaf mulch. Aside from the changing light levels, there were no signs of the burgeoning new season in the streets as he and Nika stepped out. He sighed.

"I know," Nika said as he closed the door behind them both. "It's always hard coming back."

"Are you never tempted to stay there?"

"Of course." The Unspoken led the way up the hill towards the castle. A steady stream of guards and staff passed them on their way to and from the gates. It was the busiest Jordan had seen it in a long time. "But that's not where we're needed most. If we all decided we'd much rather stop there, who would do our job? I'm quite content to wait for retirement to make that choice."

Jordan wasn't so sure he was; retirement felt so far off it might as well have been the other side of another portal. He trudged on, mood grim. It was strange to feel cobbles underfoot instead of soft soil or hard-packed earth.

"I didn't appreciate how weird it was not to see any faces for weeks until I got back here."

Nika nodded. "No matter how long you wear the cloak, it will always be strange. However, by the time you are well into your working years there is often at least one other person in the Guild you trust enough to show your face. You never know, you may find out what Koen looks like one day."

Jordan tried to fathom it and couldn't. "Does anyone know what you look like?"

"Yddris does, obviously," Nika said. "And Thirris as well. Aside from that, no, I don't believe so."

"Have you seen Yddris's?"

Nika glanced at him. "And if I have?"

Jordan shrugged, trying to read the man's tone and failing. But he could hardly claim the high ground with Nika over being evasive. "I just can't imagine it, that's all."

"Perhaps someday," Nika said. "It took him a very long time to trust me with it, so I wouldn't anticipate that any time soon."

"I wasn't. I think my brain would explode."

They entered the bustle of the castle courtyard and Jordan was silenced by the assault of all his associations with this place. The repairs to the rune wall still stuck out, pale and stark. The doors were flung wide to allow people to flow in and out like a drab tide. A servant leaving as they approached caught Jordan's eye; clothed in deep blue, the man hurried along with an armful of gleaming tack, and behind him – a pair of huge ash-grey wings, fluttering slightly to propel people out of his path. Jordan watched the Angel go with his mouth open.

"How many are here?" he asked Nika.

"Two dozen," the Unspoken replied, uncharacteristically morose.

When they entered the foyer, Jeorge Nerahardt was waiting for them at the bottom of the grand staircase, and beside him...

"Grace," Jordan breathed. All his reservations vanished as he rushed forwards and caught her up mid-lunge. Her arms wrapped around his neck and squeezed, but just as quickly he pulled back as his brain made sense of what he'd just seen. "You dyed your hair?"

She blushed. Her blonde hair was now dark and cut back to a manageable length. If anyone was paying attention the warmth of her eye colour might still have given her away, but without the blonde she looked strangely alien. Had he looked that alien to her, after his turned white?

"It was getting tiring," she said, and he didn't have to ask what she meant. They let go of each other, but she held onto his shoulders, squeezing experimentally. "Jesus, Joe, you're getting some muscle."

"I am? I didn't notice." He shrugged, and then squeezed her close again. "How have you been?"

"A reminder that she's not technically supposed to be out here." Nerahardt's snide voice inserted itself into their conversation. Jordan scowled at him over Grace's head.

"He's right, it's best if Grace goes back to her room," Nika added, before Jordan could snap a retort. "You can talk properly as soon as you're out of this meeting, Thorne."

Grace sighed a long-suffering sigh. "I really should get back before Nova wets herself worrying about me."

"Catch you in a minute, then," he said, as his sister separated from him and sneaked back off towards the servants' corridor with a furtive glance up the stairs. She smiled and gave him a double thumbs-up, and disappeared along with the other maids heading towards the kitchens. That she hadn't immediately launched accusations at him over Arlen's break-in was an encouraging sign, but it could also have meant that her temper was running cool again, and instead she had a very thorough and well thought-out line of questioning to bombard him with once she had him alone.

That prospect wasn't appealing, either.

Jeorge led the way up the stairs. Jordan and Nika climbed side by side behind him, and the servants they passed were a mixture of Angel and human – a mixture, that was, in the loosest sense of the word, as the two groups didn't appear to want any less than several feet of space between them at any one time. Nika's glum explanation of their suspicions about the lord ran through his head again as they approached the study and infected him with misgivings, but the orange glare that settled on him the second he stepped through the door looked as sharp as ever at first glance.

Yddris also awaited them, but there was an odd tension in the room. It took Jordan a second to notice the other man in the room, watching him even more closely than Harkenn. He was an Angel, tall and narrow-featured, and almost immediately upon meeting his cold gaze Jordan felt someone poking at the edges of his awareness, as if invisible fingers plucked out of tune with the current in his head. As abruptly as he was aware of the presence it vanished, and he found the Angel and Yddris locked in a silent staring contest.

"My lord," he echoed Nika faintly, and bowed.

"Well?" the lord said, after a pause. Jordan stared, unsure what the man wanted from him. Harkenn rolled his eyes. "Report to me, man. We've done this before, don't tell me it's been too long."

Jordan hesitantly gave a brief account of his trip to the Guildtown. He didn't like the way the Angel was watching him, didn't like that Yddris felt the need to nudge him when he faltered. After a while, he cottoned on that his tutor was just trying to keep him in safe waters with their witness present, disguising it as encouragement. If the Angel saw through the ruse, it was impossible to tell from his face.

When he trailed off, Harkenn dropped his feet from the desk. "And has it helped you in the way we had hoped?"

"Yes, my lord, I think so." It was too early to tell, as far as Jordan was concerned – his encounter with Arlen last night hadn't left him well-disposed towards the topic.

"Excellent." Was it Jordan's imagination, or was the lord looking a little unfocused now? "This is Sir Cael. You'll be seeing him around."

The Angel advanced from his corner, and Jordan had to suppress a shudder. The man was uncompromisingly neat, with cool grey eyes and immaculate dark hair – his wings were dove grey and just as well-groomed as the rest of him. Jordan disliked him on sight.

"A pleasure," the man said, sounding like he expected the pleasure to be Jordan's. It wasn't; his shake was cool and unfriendly, and again Jordan felt someone plucking at the edges of his awareness.

"All mine," Jordan replied stiffly, letting go as soon as manners allowed it.

Cael only smiled, and that smile hid daggers.

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Regards,

Elinor (S E Harrison)