Page 18 of The Dawn Chorus

‘Very good.’

I raised my eyebrows and walked on.

‘I meant to say,’ he called after me, ‘that I saw your friend. In the House. What was he trying to steal?’

Any warmth left in my body flickered out. I cleared my expression before I faced him again.

‘Friend,’ I repeated, trying to sound impatient. ‘Who?’

‘The rottie who dusts for the Warden. Michael, isn’t it?’ David let a creamy plume of smoke decant from between his lips. ‘I can only assume he was after provisions. But for what?’

‘He was probably after food. There isn’t much to go around,’ I said. ‘Not that you’ll have noticed.’

‘See, I don’t think he was after food. Because considering he’s a rottie and you’re a yellow-jacket, you both look remarkably well-fed. At least compared to the others.’ He cocked his head. ‘The Wardenistaking care of you both. He’s doing you a favour. That makes me wonder if you’re doing him favours in return. Favours that might involve the scarred ones.’

‘All I know about the scarred ones is what you told me.’

‘Maybe your rottie friend knows more.’ He gave his cigarette a tap. ‘There was a crime in the House. They found the blood-heir with a bullet in his skull, looking a little less divine. Clearly the work of a human.’ I kept my face blank. ‘I wonder what would happen … if I told Nashira her concubine has been sending his tenants there. To you. And to him.’

That word,concubine, needled me in a way it never had. I pictured Warden in the tower, kneeling while a tyrant struck him. For the first time, my instinct was to spring to his defence.

An instinct like that could get us both killed.

‘I imagine she’d haul us in for interrogation,’ was all I said to David. ‘Me. And Michael. And the Warden.’

‘I’m a red-jacket. My word could hold some weight with the Suzerain,’ he remarked. ‘I could pin it on the rottie. You could get a new keeper instead of the one everyone laughs at.’

‘Fuck you.’

The words snapped between us. David looked me up and down before he let out a huff through his nose.

‘Don’t lose sleep, 40. I have no proof. And I really don’t want to see you butchered.’ He lifted the cigarette back to his lips, never taking his eyes off me. ‘Still, I do wonder what you’re all up to in that tower. Perhaps a humble bone-grubber could help.’

‘You can’t help, because none of us are up to anything. I just want to spend what little I have left of my life as painlessly as possible.’

‘You, give up without a fight?’ A small laugh. ‘I don’t believe it, dreamwalker.’

‘I’m not giving up. Just meeting the æther gracefully.’ I continued on my way. ‘Goodbye, David.’

I felt his piercing eyes on me until I turned the corner.

Even if I had called his bluff, David might report what he had seen. I could almost smell the survival instinct on him, strong enough to rival mine. Maybe he had sniffed out the possibility of escape, like the first traitor had.

I shook myself. He would need proof, given the timing, and he didn’t have a scrap of it.

Did he?

Nashira had emptied the colony once before. She wouldn’t do it again, not before the Bicentenary. If the emissaries arrived and found themselves ankle-deep in a bloodbath, there would be no treaty.

Surely.

The sky began to spit as I walked past the ruined church. Raindrops opened rings in every puddle, polished the cobblestones, glistened in my hair. I entered the Residence of Magdalen just as the night-bell rang. The porter spared me a fleeting glance.

There were always some Rephaite guards in the cloisters. I avoided them and half-ran up the steps in the Founders Tower, throwing down my hood as I went. I pushed open the door, only to find his chamber deserted, the gramophone wordless for once. On his desk lay a gilded vial – the vial that had contained his final dose of amaranth, not a drop left in it.

He was close. Inexplicably, I knew it.

I returned to the cloisters and listened. There was one place where he often went for solace now. When I heard faint strains of music, I followed them to the chapel doors and cracked them open.