“They do not stand to win.”
“They might, if Arnes goes to battle with them first.”
Alucard sacrificed his pieces one by one as she spoke.
“You’re not even trying,” she hissed, but he was. Just not trying to win.
Sadly, Ciara could not seem to play for pretense, cutting a swathe through his pieces. In three more moves, it was done. She flicked her fingers, and a tiny gust of air swept through, tipping over the last of his pieces.
“Again?” she asked, and he nodded.
As she reset the board, he refilled their glasses.
“Well then?” he said. “What about the Hand?”
At the mention of the rebels, Ciara leaned back in her chair. “You pay me to listen for valid threats. The Hand are nothing but a petty nuisance.”
“So are moths,” he said. “Until they eat your finest coat.”
Ciara drew out a pipe and lit it with her fingers. A thin tendril of blue-grey smoke curled around her. “The crown is truly worried, then?”
“The crown is watchful. Especially when a group roams the city, calling for its head.”
Ciara hummed, running a finger around her glass. “Well, either its members are very chaste, or very good at holding their tongues. As far as I know, I’ve never had one in my bed.”
“You’re sure?”
“Is it true they all bear the mark somewhere on their skin?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Then I’m quite sure,” she said with a small, wicked grin. Alucard rose, suddenly restless. It had been several years since the first appearance of the Hand, and at the time, the sect had seemed merely an annoyance, a pebble in the kingdom’s shoe. But over the course of the past year, they’d grown into something more. There was no obvious leader, no mouthpiece, no face to the movement, nothing but a symbol, and a message: magic was failing, and it was Rhy Maresh’s fault.
It was ridiculous. Unfounded. A battle cry for the discontent, an excuse to cause chaos and call it change. But there were people—bitter, angry, powerless people—who were beginning to listen.
Alucard stretched, and went to the windowsill. The Silken Thread sat on the northern bank of the city. Beyond the glass, he could see the crimson glow of the Isle, and the vaulting palace, doubled gold against the river’s surface in the dark.
He didn’t hear Ciara stand, but he saw her in the glass, felt her arms drape lazily around him.
“I should go,” he said, weariness leaking into his voice.
“So soon?” she asked. “We haven’t finished playing.”
“You’ve already won.”
“Perhaps. But still, I wouldn’t want anyone to doubt your … capacity.”
He turned in her embrace. “Is it my reputation you’re worried about, or your own?”
She laughed, and he plucked the pipe from her fingers, and inhaled, letting the heady smoke coil in his chest. Then he leaned in and kissed her lightly, sighing the smoke into her lungs.
“Goodnight, Ciara,” he said, smiling against her lips.
Her eyelids fluttered, and drifted open. “Tease,” she said, blowing out the word in a puff of smoke.
Alucard only laughed, and slipped past her, shrugging on his coat.
* * *
He stepped out into the dark and started down the street.
Only the roads nearest the river were lined with pubs and gaming halls and inns. Beyond those, the northern bank gave way to pleasure gardens and galleries, and then to walled estates with well-groomed land, where most of the city’s nobles made their homes.
It had been a fair and sun-warm day, but now, as he left the Silken Thread, the night hovered on a knife’s edge between cool and cold. Winter was on its way. Alucard had always been partial to the winter months, with their hearth fires and spiced wines and endless parties meant to rage against the chill and lack of light.
But tonight, he found the sudden cold disconcerting.
As he walked, he turned over Ciara’s words, wearing them smooth.
The rumors of Faro and Vesk were disturbing, but not unexpected. It was the lack of intel on the rebels he found maddening. He had been counting on the White Rose’s intelligence, her capacity to gather threads of gossip and spin them into more. She was a popular and beautiful host, with the kind of liquid grace that loosened tongues. It wasn’t only the patrons who spoke to her. The other hosts did, too, carrying her secrets and confidences the way a blackbird carried offerings, unable to tell the difference between crystal and glass.
A cold rain started to fall. Alucard turned one hand palm up, the air over his head arcing into a canopy, sheltering him from the downpour. It would be a bad look, he reasoned, the victor of the final Essen Tasch, trudging through London like a sodden cat. Around him, people rushed through the bad weather, heads down as they hurried for the nearest awning.