Eighty Nine: Evidence

"Are you sure I can't come?" Grace asked. She took hold of Nova's fingers. "No, no, it goes over that way..."

Nova bared her teeth in frustration. She hadn't thought having her own boots would be this complicated, but Caelumese styles had always been buckled and she'd never needed to learn how to tie laces. For the past ten years she hadn't had any shoes at all. "Harkenn said no. I did ask." She scowled as Grace finished tying the shoe with a flourish. "When I did that it just unravelled."

"You pulled it out too far." Grace straightened up with a sigh. "We'll try again tomorrow. You need to get going."

Nova didn't move towards the door. She peered at Grace instead, at the pinch of stress in one corner of her mouth and the worry line between her brows. She hadn't lost that worry line since her brother came home the evening before, and for ample reason; Thorne had been completely out of sorts and uncommunicative, and had gone straight to bed. Nova could tell from his aura that something was wrong, and she suspected Cael had something to do with it, but if Grace couldn't get him to talk about it then Nova wasn't about to go stirring that pot herself.

"What?" Grace asked, immediately irritable, but she softened as Nova kissed her gently on the mouth. She stepped back, marvelling at her nerve, marvelling that she could do this now. Not that she was going to rub Harkenn's face in it – that was one way to get it rescinded – but if she just allowed him to forget about it, perhaps she'd have it for longer. If she believed it would last forever then it would just crush her when it didn't.

But they had now, and now was good enough.

"I love you," she said.

Grace's eyes welled with tears. Nova watched, alarmed, as two escaped and splashed down her cheeks. At the same time, the girl was smiling. "I love you."

A soft throat clearance from the door drew their attention. Nova flinched. It was so unlike her not to notice anyone approaching. Nika's aura was warm and slightly embarrassed as he shifted position against the doorframe, and she could tell how much pain it caused him just to be standing. Grace's efforts to get the Unspoken to rest still hadn't been fruitful. "Your escort is waiting outside, Anarabelle."

Grace grabbed her fingers and squeezed, then turned to Nika. "How's Jordan?"

"Still asleep," Nika replied. "I've given him a mild sedative so it can be more restful."

"Is he still having tremors?"

"Not as badly." Nika sighed. "As far as I can tell he's not suffered any physical harm that should produce these effects. He's had cracked ribs before and bounced right back."

"Cael, probably," Nova said. "I wouldn't have put anything past him. It's a favour to us all that he's dead."

She grimaced at the memory. That had been the deciding moment of the battle; the moment two Devils had dragged Cael's corpse to Harkenn's gates and dropped it at the feet of his soldiers. For a moment, the two of them had stood in the eerie silence and stillness, staring at them all – one slender woman with spiky hair and a tall, lanky man rattling with knives. Behind them, much more slowly, had come a man with a blind eye and half of one leg replaced with metal.

Nova had seen it from Harkenn's side as he came to the gate, tightly guarded by a group of soldiers and dragging Varron by his chained wrists. She had looked upon a scene of utter carnage. Bodies littered the causeway into the city. The air was rank with blood and sweat.

"Go," the Angel commander had said, with a sword pressed hard into the small of his back.

And the Caelumese had gone with surprisingly little protest. They hadn't tried to regain their general. They had fled, those few that hadn't already at the sight of the Unspoken fighting in the melee. Harkenn had sent soldiers after them like a pack of hunting dogs, without breaking his gaze from the Devil's.

"Is that...?" Grace had whispered behind her. Yddris had shushed her, but Nova glanced over her shoulder in time to witness his curt nod and Grace's look of horror.

Nova had examined Thorne's Devil tutor from head to toe. Arlen certainly had a face to match his reputation, and the hard expression to go with it. He and Harkenn had stared each other out from across the gap, both ignoring the fidgeting of their companions.

"I were you, my lordship," Arlen had finally said, in a voice that Nova would have trembled to hear in a darkened street at night, "I'd execute the lot. But that's just me."

He had turned and left then, without looking back. His two companions did, but Harkenn made no move to send men after them.

"Are we not arresting them, my lord?" Devon had said in a harsh whisper from Harkenn's side, where he was subtly assisting the lord in standing.

"Bring in that body," Harkenn had said simply, finally turning away from Arlen's retreating back. "And someone get me a stiff fucking drink."

Nika and Grace both fidgeted, back in the present. Grace turned her questioning on Nova. "But he'll recover, right?"

"Cael's dead," Nova repeated. "The physical effects won't outlast that by long."

Grace's eyes narrowed. "But?"

"I don't know the extent of Cael's abilities, but they were prolific," Nova said. She readjusted her cloak. Even in such tense circumstances it gave her a little shiver of pleasure. She owned a cloak. "And there are some kinds of violation that you never quite escape from."

She didn't tell Grace the whole truth; that she could tell very well from Thorne's aura that Cael had tortured him. That parts of his aura, his essence, didn't align the way they used to. If pressed, she wouldn't be able to explain what that meant in terms that could be understood by a human, and so she didn't broach it.

She couldn't break Grace's heart like that.

"I've got to go," she said suddenly, unable to bear the fog of worry anymore. She nodded at Nika as she passed. He returned it.

Harkenn's soldiers waited in a slightly nervous cluster at Yddris's front door. They didn't look any less nervous at the sight of her, but seemed relieved at least to get out from under the stern gaze of Yddris, standing sentinel at the door. Despite all the work that had to be done, all the reparations to Harkenn's rule that were needed as he recovered, the Unspoken had refused to leave his two apprentices alone – the apprentice from his past, injured and near-immobilised with it, and the apprentice of the present, who may or may not have finally cracked. Only Nova could see the fear and worry in the air around him, tightly leashed but so potent it leaked out anyway. She suspected that was making the soldiers nervous, even if they would never be able to say why.

"Will you talk to Thorne?" she asked in a murmur as she stepped out.

"I'll try," Yddris muttered back, through a cloud of blackweed smoke. "Not sure how much I'll be able to do."

"I hope it goes well."

Yddris nodded. "So do I."

She joined the leader of the escort, and he nodded curtly at her before leading the group away down the road. She walked in the centre of a cluster of guards – Harkenn was being more generous than usual, but he wasn't an idiot, more was the pity – and couldn't see much beyond them, though the clatter and voices around them was encouraging. She wasn't sure what it was about the events of the previous day that had brought everyone back out. Perhaps having Harkenn's forces seeing off a Caelumese invasion had restored some of the Nictavians' shattered morale after a ghastly season. Perhaps it was just because the clouds had cleared for the first time in months, showing a watery pale sky and the glistening green peaks of the distant mountains.

She didn't know, and she didn't much care. The thick soles of her new boots thudded and crunched pleasingly on the ground that had once been littered with so many hazards for her bare soles. It felt better because she owned them, she decided. If she hadn't been in company, she might have let out a giddy little laugh when she stepped on a glass shard lying in the path and it cracked without effort or pain.

The group stopped after a brisk march of nearly half an hour. They were in a quieter area of the merchants' quarter now, in a residential street that was nearly empty, with the market setting up for the first time of the season today. The building they had halted in front of had a large black X splashed across the front door and the windows boarded. In one board had been pinned an official notice from the castle that any infringement on the property by a member of the public would result in a fine. The soldiers at the front parted to let her through.

"This is it," the leader said needlessly. Nova already knew that this was a bolthole. She didn't even need all her senses to work this out; as soon as the door swung open the light fell on a litter of shed feathers.

Whether it was a bolthole wasn't the reason she was here, though; she was here because the merchant who lived across the way had witnessed an impossible number of Angels pouring out of this door hours before the battle, and Harkenn had wanted someone to investigate the portal that must have opened on the site. She could already tell that it wasn't open at that moment. There was no buzz in the air, no heightened atmosphere that suggested magical activity. A sweep of the empty ground floor revealed nothing except more feathers and an abandoned sword.

"It'll be upstairs," she murmured. Two soldiers peeled off from the group and shadowed her to the next floor.

A large chalk circle took up most of the floorspace up here. It was badly smudged, as if someone had hoped to conceal it in a hurry. She wondered if Jeorge also found chalk circles in the buildings he had been sent to search in another quarter, most identified from eye witness accounts. Varron had not revealed much in initial interrogations.

She felt sick looking at it. Her uncle had found a way of transporting his soldiers here in numbers, which meant that at any moment her family could be but a short jump and a few streets away and she wouldn't know they were coming. She didn't think they were stupid enough to do so right after a failed coup, but the idea was discomfiting. She had never felt safe from her sister or her uncle, but there had been some solace in the distance between them. This eliminated even that small safety.

"Miss Anarabelle?" one of the soldiers said hesitantly, blanching when she stared at him. Miss? That was a new one. She wasn't sure she disliked it, though. "There's this."

He held up a bronze coin. Nova held a hand out to him, and marvelled when he brought it to her. The coin was large, thick and heavy, and one side was embossed with the symbol of the crescent moon and dagger. She frowned at it, rubbing her thumb over the design. It had to be something to do with the Barrow Kings – the symbol had been on the wall in their tomb. The Caelumese had been storing their undead killers down there. Something – but what? She hadn't a clue where to start with that.

She looked down at the smudge on the ground. Nothing lingered in the air to give hint that it had been used recently, and the job had been too thorough to make out the symbols they'd used. A pity.

One of the soldiers gave a cry. Nova whirled, and saw that an Angel had dropped from the rafters onto his head. The others below stirred and came running as the second soldier levelled his sword and charged.

It was a quick battle; skilled as the soldier might have been, five against one was a lost cause. He hadn't even managed to kill the soldier he'd landed on before he was pulled down, and soon he was spitting and struggling with his hands bound behind him. Nova watched from a safe distance. Her throat was still sore from her fight with Evangeline, and she'd been left with no illusions about how much skill she had left. In all ten years of her slavery nothing had made her feel more vulnerable than being unable to defend herself against people and techniques she used to know. When she had first left Caelum, she'd killed all her pursuers, from both sides of the Barrens. She would die out there now. Harkenn would never allow her to sharpen those skills up again, not while she was under his roof, and so her main strategy would have to be avoidance.

"Get stuck?" she asked, when she was certain the Angel couldn't get free. She held up the coin when he glanced at her with bared teeth. He did a double take.

"You."

"That's getting really boring now," she muttered, pocketing the coin. She turned to the leader of their group. "It was definitely a portal site, but there's nothing left for me to determine how they used it. We'll have to report back to the castle before checking any more."

The soldier nodded. "Lead on."

She wasn't looking forward to the walk back. She'd rested for all of ten minutes, and for most of the last decade she had been limited to wandering the castle. When she did come out, it was on the back of Harkenn's horse. Walking long distances exhausted her.

She turned the coin over in her hands as she walked, lost in thought. She could make another search of the tomb, if the soldiers had been successful at flushing out its occupants. Two had got out before the crypt was sealed off during the battle, but where they had gone no one could say. They had effectively vanished as quickly as the vast majority of the Caelumese forces. Another had been clubbed into inanimateness and returned to the Kiel temple it had been stolen from.

She was not all that surprised to find Jeorge in the foyer when she entered. His group hadn't found prisoners, but Jeorge clutched a sheaf of badly scorched pages under one arm. He had been heading for the stairs, but turned at her entrance.

"Ah. You got lucky, too?" He smiled at her. She didn't return it. Just because he'd hung around like a bad smell for the whole season didn't mean she felt any more comfortable with him.

"Somewhat. Still no idea how they managed it." She glanced at the pages. "You?"

"Someone tried to burn them and left in a hurry just before we got in," Jeorge said. "Stamped it out, but half of this is useless and the other half is coded. So as yet, no idea how useful it will be."

He insisted on climbing the stairs with her. Her weariness kept her at a similar pace to his game leg, and she couldn't find the resources to speed up. "It must be nice that he's finally allowing you to see her."

"I'm not discussing that with you," she retorted. "Not now, and not ever."

His silence was faintly affronted. "If I hadn't done what I did, we'd both still be stuck there. And you'd never have met her."

Nova stalled and glared at him. "Don't you dare try and take credit for that. You're not that fucking important, Nerahardt."

He held his hands up. "I wasn't saying that." He shrugged. "I'm sure you know, it's not easy being Caelumese in this place. I suspect it's about to get more unpleasant. Can't blame me for at least trying to make amends."

"Make amends?" she spluttered. "You haven't even apologised, let alone..."

They fell silent as Devon rounded the corner. He nodded at them both, but didn't linger. The grim set of his face told of an unpleasant meeting inside Harkenn's study. Nova hoped that didn't mean he was already in a worse mood than normal.

She knocked before Jeorge had another chance to get a word in.

"Come in."

Harkenn sat at his desk, a piece of paper in his bony fingers. His other hand was busy rubbing his eyes so hard it was as if he hoped to see something different when he opened them again. He glanced up at their entrance, his orange gaze returned to some semblance of his former self. He was still skeletal, and his hands still shook, and Nova suspected he was reaching his limit for the day. Perhaps he'd let her off the hook so she could get back to Grace early.

"Anara. Nerahardt. Close the door behind you."

Jeorge obliged. Nova took a tentative step closer to the desk, glancing at her habitual chair in the corner and wondering if he was about to order her over there. It felt strange to stand in front of him, booted and warmly clothed. Almost unnerving, in a good way. At least, she thought it was good.

"Report."

Nova let Jeorge do most of the talking. What he had found corresponded with her own findings, and she only had to explain that there was a new prisoner and offer the coin. If she thought about how strange this new arrangement was, she would start worrying that she hallucinated. She kept reaching up to fiddle with a chain that was no longer there. Grace had already told her off twice for picking at scabs in place of that nervous habit.

"Cael had one of these in his chambers," Harkenn said, turning the coin in his hands and frowning. "They must have something to do with using the portals. They must do." He put it down with a sigh. "Whether we'll ever work out how is another matter. Now." He settled back in his chair and looked at them both. Nova immediately felt a stirring of unease. She'd seen that look on his face before. It always preceded his suggestion of something he knew wouldn't get a good reception. "I fully anticipate that Lucifer will not stop with this attempt. If I was not in the state that I am, if my people were not in the state they were after the last season, I would declare war on that basis alone."

Nova heard Jeorge swallow beside her. She felt rooted to the spot. She had been right; she didn't want to hear where this was going.

"However, we are all in the situation we are in, and we need time to recover." He rearranged some papers on his desk, likely arbitrary. "And I need to know the extent of his use of magic. I need to know what he can do before I commit any men to a cause like that, before myself and the Guildmaster of the Unspoken Guild can make any other plans." A pause. "Cara believes the Caelumese have something to do with the fault in the Whispering Wall, but her belief is also that it would require far more magical disturbance to cause that kind of damage than we have seen. He may have weapons he hasn't deployed yet. He may have methods he is still investigating. I would like to know what they are."

"They would kill me," Nova said, blurting it out before she could think. "There's no way I wouldn't be recognised, my lord, my sister is identical to me."

"With all due respect, my lord, I have also spent a little too much time in the courts to pass unremarked," Jeorge added.

Harkenn looked at them both. Nova met his gaze defiantly. For years, she had been forced to do whatever he said. For years, the cost of defying him had always been higher than compliance. Not on this. She hadn't saved his life to keep herself out of her uncle's reach only to have him do this.

"I didn't say I would ask you to go." A glint of amusement showed in the lord's eyes. He knew he didn't fool them. Yet still rang in the silence. "But if you are so adamant, then I shall have to think of other plans. Or find some way to convince you."

The last addition made Nova far too nervous to be surprised that he hadn't forced her hand. He couldn't, she supposed – physically speaking. The only way he could prevent her escaping was to send guards with her, and that would defeat the whole point – but he knew about Grace. He knew how much Grace meant to her and how badly she wanted a free future. If he threatened Grace, or offered her freedom, could she refuse? Even at that price?

"Cara is on her way here," Harkenn continued, as if he hadn't just rocked her whole life in its foundations. "We will discuss it further when she arrives."

"Yes, my lord," Nova said faintly.

Later, lying in bed with Grace, limbs tangled with each other, the air heated with their lovemaking and heavy with sweet words, with the feel of Grace's skin under her hands and her heartbeat against her ear, she imagined that free future with Grace.

And she wondered if, when pushed, she would find herself making that crossing once more to face her past in order to protect a better future than she had ever imagined.

"Are you still awake?" Grace whispered, voice drowsy and muffled against Nova's hair.

"Mm."

"I'm glad I met you, Nova."

Nova's eyes prickled.

And 'no' didn't come as easily as it once had.

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Regards,

Elinor (S E Harrison)