Page 94 of A Steeping of Blood
Flick dropped to her knees beside the man, and after wriggling her throbbing fingers to will them back to their original selves, she riffled through his pockets until she found what she needed: a heavy iron key.
She shot back to her feet. It took several tries to slide the key into the lock. It felt silly, unlocking a door from the inside, but locking up one’s daughter ought to be silly too.
As she turned the key, an idea struck. There was an easy way to slip through this unfamiliar domain: by looking like the ones who were allowed to be here.
Flick unraveled the black cloth around the man’s head, peeling back the layers over his face to reveal a boy who couldn’t be much older than she was.Why?Flick wanted to ask him. Why did he work for the Ram to the point where he strung up a girl for no reason?
It had to be coin that forged such loyalty. Flick refused to believe they saw anything worthy in the Ram’s cause. She couldn’t see someone so young being so resolute and set in their ways. Jin snorted in her head.Have you met Arthie?
HowwouldArthie look at these men? She wouldn’t see them working for coin as a thing of disgust, no.
Arthie would see a benefit.
The men having no loyalty would be a benefit. Like the head of a snake, if the Ram was out of the picture, they would do nothing.
Still have to figure out how together out of the picture.
Flick draped the head wrapping over the chair to air out before pulling off the boy’s shirt. It was a struggle. An unconscious body was far heavier than she thought it could be. With a huff, she yanked the shirt free, wincing when his head thudded to the floorboards. She pulled it over her shirt that was now more grime than white, and knelt again to remove his trousers.
She unbuttoned them, thinking of Jin and the time she’d torn away his shirt to mend his wound. Heat flushed down her skin.Undressing someone else is not the time to be thinking of him, Flick, she chided, immediately relieved the boy was wearing drawers underneath.
She had to remove his shoes to get the trousers off him, but the job was done and she moved to winding his head wrap around her face, a job that was tedious with trembling hands and without a mirror. She straightened the shirt and adjusted her trousers before tucking that wicked knife into the sheath sewn on the side of the trousers’ leg. Had his shirt been tucked into the waist of his trousers? Flick folded the hem and unfolded it, trying to picture him and the countless black-clad men she’d evaded and fought against.
How could she not have noticed something so obvious?
Perhaps because you were focused on staying alive, she reminded herself.
Flick tugged on his large gloves, wriggling her fingers to fit as best as she could and pulled on Jin’s brass knuckles, immediately feeling a little stronger, a little less alone, then pulled her sleeve as low as she could to shield them from view.
Key in hand, heart in throat, Flick walked to the door. She still needed to find out why the Ram had referred to this place in her ledger with such importance, why it was so close to the palace where the tribute was to occur, and what those strange pill-shaped things were.
But she also needed to get to the docks. No, what she needed was a calendar to see what day it was and whether the Casimirs could evenbeback just yet. Her hands continued to quiver, throbbing no differently than when one was stung by an insect, only it spanned the entirety of her arms. They hurt so terribly that she barely felt the pain pulsing down the rest of her.
She opened the door, stepped through, closed it.One step at a time.She tucked the key into her pocket, stifling a sneeze when fuzz from the cloth around her face tickled her nose.
Though her room had been bare and cloistered, outside was far more spacious and furnished. Round lights hung from the ceiling at intervals, none too bright, casting the beige walls in an almost sinister glow. And it waslarge, halls running every which way, rooms spreading wide.
Flick took several steps from her door and recognized the large meeting chamber nearest her, the halls extending from either end in oddly placed positions. This was the place. The location sketched in her mother’s ledger. But why had Flick’s sleuthing taken her to an empty lawn? She hadn’t seen anything this large by the palace.
Someone bumped past her. Black-clad men were everywhere, some lugging boxes, others holding notes or reports or some such, while even more loitered in hushed conversation. The air thrummed with a sense of fear.
She saw a calendar tacked to the wall by a desk full of folders and documents organized into little bins. Much of the month had been crossed off, which meant… Flick blinked at it again. The tribute was in six days? That couldn’t be right.
“Oi, why are you standing there?” someone shouted, and then smacked her head with the flat of their hand.
Flick whirled around to face the man, schooling her eyes before her sudden spurt of anger could give her away.
“Well?” he asked.
“Thought the days weren’t rightly crossed off,” Flick said as gruffly as she could. She sounded like she had a cold and a sore throat.
He squinted at the calendar. “Oh, yeah. They aren’t.”
He snatched up a pen from a cup on the desk and crossed off a day.Five days until the tribute.Then he crossed off another.Four days.And another.
Three days.
Flick’s breath stuttered, but he dropped the pen at last.
