“Michal was a poison runner. He knows.” Gabe thought about asking why Malcolm would feel the need to assuage the other man’s feelings, but he bit down on the question. He’d seen the sidelong looks they gave each other, how they always wanted to be within touching distance. He was happy for his friend, though the circumstances were far from ideal. But jealousy was a thorn in his side: That the person Malcolm cared for was with him. That he could at least attempt to keep Michal safe.
“If he tries anything,” Gabe said quietly, giving words to what they both knew, “we kill him.”
Slowly, Malcolm’s chair balanced on all four legs again. He knit his fingers on the table, addressed them instead of Gabe. “Is it hard?”
Gabe had killed before. Malcolm hadn’t. His position as the head librarian kept him from the usual violence of the Presque Mort, from the arrests gone wrong and the revenants put out of their misery.
“No,” Gabe said, standing. “It’s not hard at all.”
The day passed, finally. He managed to sleep a little, but by the time night fell, Gabe and Malcolm both loitered by the door, their nervous energy cracking like sparks in the small room. Val and Mari had gone to bed, but Michal lingered in the office, pickingup papers and putting them down again just for something to do with his hands. “Did he give a time?”
“Night.” Malcolm shifted on his feet, wearing a long, dark cloak. He kept fiddling with the hem. “Just night.”
And then—four knocks on the door.
Gabe strode toward it, ready to wrench it open, but Michal stopped him. “Wait.” He walked over to Malcolm and took his hand. “Please, please be careful.”
Malcolm just nodded. He laced his fingers with the other man’s, squeezed.
Gabe looked away.
After a moment, giving Michal time to let go, he opened the door.
Finn stood on the other side, hands in his pockets and a small smile on his face. “Ready to plead for asylum?”
Gabe didn’t respond, pushing past the pirate and into the night. He didn’t wait for Finn or Malcolm, striding purposefully down the street, his hood up over his face.
So when the blow came to the side of his head, he didn’t even see who struck it.
Stupid.
He wasn’t sure if the voice was Hestraon’s or his own. Both, maybe.
So fucking stupid.
He should have known this was a trap. Nothing had ever been easy, and everything that was only led them deeper into the tangled web of the gods—of course this wouldn’t be any different. He should have shot Finn the moment he appeared in Malcolm’s slum office. Desperation made him blind, grasping at increasingly thin straws.
There hadn’t even been a chance for him to fight back, to kill Finn or his accomplices like he and Malcolm had planned. Ithappened too quickly. For a moment, he entertained the possibility that Malcolm had escaped, but when he opened his aching eye, the former head librarian was right beside him, shackles around his wrists.
Surrounded by bloodcoats.
Gabe blinked, trying to orient himself. His head still smarted from the blow, his vision swimmy, but it appeared they stood on a dais at the bottom of an amphitheater, rings of seats working their way down, a square of light from a door at the top of the stairs. A lectern stood before them, empty.
He turned his head slightly. Behind the stone-faced bloodcoats, a statue stood, one that looked familiar. Apollius Avenging, one hand stretched out to the side holding a moon-marked rock, the other over His head. But the rock He held in that hand was different, not the sun-carved piece like in the same statue back at the Church. The stone here had other markings—a wave, a wind gust, a leaf.
No flame.
In his head, a sense of something turning away, as if ashamed.
Gods dead and dying. Well, they’d found a Fount piece.
Figured it would be right before they were shipped back to Apollius to die.
“Gentlemen.” A new voice, crisp and polite, its owner coming into Gabe’s still-blurred vision. “What brings you here at this hour?”
The bloodcoat behind Gabe jerked at his shackles, pulling him upright. “We found who the Sainted King is looking for, but since they were in Caldien, we need dispensation for them to be extradited. It’s simple paperwork; once we have your signature, we can be on our way.”
Slowly, Gabe’s vision cleared as the man before them dipped his chin. Tall but spare, with salt-and-pepper hair and a short beard just showing the first laces of gray. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “And how did you come to find your fugitives so quickly?”
