Jean-Paul was still chained to the same line as the other newbies—they kept you on it for three days, usually, to make sure you knew your place. The days were up, and a guard marched down the line, freeing the new prisoners from their shackles. Jean-Paul had been arrested the day she raised Horse in the Ward market, but apparently he’d managed to escape then. For a while, at least.
She cleared her throat to say something as she passed, but the words died prematurely. Lore lingered behind the line for the lift, blinking ridiculous tears from her eyes. Dammit. She hated crying, always pushed it down when she felt it coming on, but that usually just meant it would come out unexpectedly.
It’d come easier since that day at Courdigne, when she broke down in the hall. Good for her, probably, but extremely inconvenient when one had so much to cry over.
“Taking a break, Your Majesty?” Fulbert stopped too close behind her, his humid breath on the back of her neck. “Expecting someone to bring you tea?”
It wasn’t worth the fight. Lore moved forward, pickax held in her limp hand.
“I’m talking to you, Queenie.” A sharp shove between her shoulder blades. Lore lost her balance, her knee hitting the sand. Golden lines wavered in her vision. “Maybe you could have ignored me in the Citadel, but here, I’m your better—”
“Lore?”
Jean-Paul. He’d come up close, his bulk crowding out Fulbert, whose small eyes swung from one of them to the other, clearly assessing his chances in a brawl. One hand gripped his pistol, so even if it did come down to a brawl, he clearly had no intentions of playing fair.
“A new one,” Fulbert sneered, even as he stepped back from Jean-Paul. “Too new to know that you shouldn’t get mixed up into things that don’t concern you.” A split-second decision, his pistol coming free of the holster.
Lore grabbed his Spiritum and tugged.
Not enough to kill him. Just enough to speed his heart, like she’d done to Martin, sending him stumbling back.
The momentary brush with mortality was enough to convince Fulbert that this wasn’t worth it. With one more halfhearted kick at Lore, he wandered away, rubbing at his chest.
Jean-Paul offered his hand. Lore took it, let him pull her up. When she was upright, she threw herself at him.
He let her hug him, though the baffled way he returned the embrace only reminded her of how she’d kept her distance during her time as a poison runner, how aloof she’d been all those years she hid from what she was.
“You’re all right,” Jean-Paul rumbled. “You’re all right.”
Those damn tears threatening again. She was the furthest thing from all right.
She let go, gave him a weak smile. “I would ask how you’re doing, but I’d wager the answer is bad.”
“Spot on.” Jean-Paul snorted. “I assume the same could be said for you?”
“You assume correctly.” She steeled herself for questions, a barrage of curiosities about her life in the Citadel and how it had ended here, but Jean-Paul just nodded. That was one of the things she’d always liked about him. He had a calm, easy manner, going his own way and letting others go theirs.
Another guard walked past, looking too harried to harass them, headed toward the beach. Two ships were being repaired, Lore knew. The arriving prison barges were overfull, necessitating all hands on the proverbial deck.
So far, Dani’s plan was going seamlessly.
Jean-Paul looked slightly dazed, taking in the crowd and the mine. All jewelry was confiscated when you reached the Isles, but his thumb kept tapping against his ring finger, as if he was looking for something.
“Is Henri all right?” Lore asked, remembering his husband’s name. “Etienne?”
“They’re safe,” Jean-Paul said quietly. “When the Sainted King started going after everyone who’d ever run poisons for Val, I sent them both to Henri’s mother, over in Ratharc. It was too risky for me to travel with them.”
Ice prickled down Lore’s spine, followed by intense gratitude that Val and Mari had been on that ship to Caldien. Part of her had anticipated Apollius taking some sort of revenge—something more than sending her here—but going after everyone who’d known her, everyone who’d ever had the opportunity to show her kindness, was a level of cruelty she hadn’t anticipated.
Stupid of her. Apollius loved being cruel.
She couldn’t think too hard about how he was using Bastian’s body to enact those cruelties, or she would lose it.
“How’d you escape the first time?” she asked.
“Slipped from the bloodcoats’ hold while they were preoccupied with looking for you,” he said. “You offered a hell of a distraction. Laid low for a bit afterward. Mari had me doing paperwork.”
“She always hated that,” Lore murmured, thinking of her mother. “But she had a better head for numbers than Val.”
