The Thief’s Return
Sorrow screamed.
The glove pressed over her mouth absorbed the sound, so she tried to pull free, wriggling and writhing in his grasp. How could this be happening again? Furious, she kicked him in the shin, causing him to yelp.
“Sorrow! Stop it. I’m not here to hurt you.”
To hell with that, she decided. She planted her feet into the ground and shoved backwards, driving them both into the wall with a muted thud. Damn, she’d hoped to hit the door, hoped the noise would bring guards running. His grip loosened for a moment, then tightened, as he swung them around and pressed her into the wall, trapping her against it. She was surprised by his strength, realizing too late that his carefully tailored clothes hid lithe, disciplined muscle. The understanding needled her, another trick, and she jerked her head back, trying to headbutt him as she’d done to her last assailant.
She missed.
“Seriously, stop it,” Luvian hissed in her ear. “Listen to me—”
She screamed into the glove again, tried to bite at it. She lifted her feet to stamp on his, making contact and wincing as he cursed loudly in her ear.
“Damn it, Sorrow, I found Beliss.”
She went still in his grip.
“It’s not a trick,” he said quietly, still holding her tightly. “I’ve been in Rhylla searching for her. I found her. I found lots of things. I came here to tell you them. If I let you go, do you promise not to scream, or hit me?”
Sorrow paused, then nodded. If he’d wanted to really hurt her he could have done it already. He released her, and stepped back as she spun around to face him, hands raised in fists.
“Easy,” he said. “I meant it. I’m not here for trouble.”
She barely recognized him. He was wearing the pale green livery of the servants, hair shorn all over, scruff darkening his chin and upper lip. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his eyes were slightly unfocused. He held up his own hands slowly to show her he wasn’t armed.
Even so, Sorrow wasn’t about to open her arms to him, metaphorically or otherwise. He was connected to the Sons of Rhannon, and they’d killed Dain, and almost killed her. “There’s a soldier outside,” she lied. “There are soldiers everywhere, so if you try anything…”
“I won’t hurt you. I never would. I swear it.”
She edged away from him, and he turned on the spot, tracking her path, though he made no attempt to follow her. She moved behind a desk and picked up a letter opener with a bone handle, holding it up so he could see it. “Try anything and I’ll use it. How did you get into the palace?”
He lowered his hands. “I stole a uniform from a man returning from his afternoon off, and came in through the main gates behind two others.”
Sorrow made a note to have a word with Charon about the security. “Stole it from where?”
For the first time – ever, Sorrow realized – he looked contrite. “I might have had to hit someone. And tie him up. And leave him in an alley.”
“Luvian!”
He had the nerve to smile. “I missed that. Sorry,” he added hastily when she glared at him, one hand on her hip, her eyes narrowed. “He’s fine,” he assured her. “He’ll be fine. Besides, I had very little choice. It’s not like I could have made an appointment to see you. Most of Rhannon is on the hunt for me.”
“What did you expect after what you did?”
He frowned, and his hand moved to his pocket. Sorrow gripped the letter opener tighter, but all Luvian did was pull his glasses out, sliding them on and blinking until he focused on her. “I didn’t do anything. In fact, it’s what I didn’t do that’s the problem. But let me tell you about Beliss first, that’s more important.” He paused, waiting for her to nod her agreement, before continuing.
“After I ran, I disappeared into Rhylla. I went to Beliss’s house, like we planned. I … I thought if I could get her to admit Mael was an imposter, you’d forgive me.”
“Did you get her to admit it?”
“She’s dead.”
Sorrow hadn’t expected that. She leant on the desk, her mouth open. “Her too?”
“Quite,” Luvian said. “That makes Corius, Gralys and Beliss. The only three people, besides Vespus, and Mael himself, who might possibly have proven it was a lie, are dead, all within the last few months. Coincidence, no?”
Sorrow shook her head. Of course it wasn’t a coincidence. Vespus. He had to be behind it, tidying up loose ends, in case anyone went looking.
“So there’s no one, save Vespus, who knows the truth? We can’t prove it. He’s got away with it.”
“Yes… But I think I’ve answered another question. It concerns him. And I do have proof. Or at least, evidence that can’t be ignored.”
Sorrow raised her brows.
He took a step towards her, pausing when she brandished the letter opener in warning. Moving slowly, he crossed to one of the tall-backed chairs and sat on the arm. “I met some Rhyllians, in the woods, while I was trying to decide whether to come back to tell you about Beliss. Youngish nobles, on some kind of camping-cum-hunting trip. They either didn’t know who I was, or didn’t care, and to be honest, I didn’t care either, so when they invited me to join them around their campfire, I did. We ate, and then someone got a bottle out. Starwater. And … I tried it. I’m not proud,” he said quickly. “But things were a bit bleak. You hated me; my glorious plan to win you back was in tatters. So I had some. And I promptly passed out, and woke up about four hours later to find I’d had a nosebleed in my sleep, and everyone else was unconscious too.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a glass bottle, standing and crossing to the desk, placing it between them. It was small, the base round, and there was a white powdery substance crusting the bottom, and marking a tideline around the long neck.
Her hand darted out for it, snatching it back. Careful not to look away from him, she pulled the cork from the top. The smell hit her at once, that acrid, sweet burn that caused pain to lance through her skull, making her eyes water. Lamentia.
She held the bottle at arm’s length and he took it back, replacing the cork she’d dropped on to the desk. Her headache began to ebb, and she stared at Luvian.
“This was what the Starwater was in. I drank from this very bottle. But when I woke up, it looked like this.” He held it up so she could see the white powder residue. “My guess would be that the alcohol in Starwater evaporates over time, when it’s exposed to air, and this is what’s left. It’s Lamentia, isn’t it?”
Sorrow nodded, unable to take her eyes from the bottle.
“Which means Vespus, as the only farmer of the Alvus tree, is the person behind Lamentia and introducing it to Rhannon. It can be no one else. He’s behind Lamentia. Technically, he killed your father.”
She’d forgotten about Lamentia since Harun had died. It seemed it had vanished from Rhannon. She blinked, his words ringing in her ears as her brain caught up with them. Vespus had given Harun Lamentia. Vespus had made him an addict. Vespus, Vespus, always Vespus, making the world into a circle so it didn’t matter where you turned, there he was, always ahead, always following. Sorrow wasn’t naive enough to pretend Harun was much of a father, or chancellor, before Lamentia, but after…
She’d been right, back at the Summer Palace. He’d brought Mael back, and then killed Harun so he could move him into place.
Luvian was watching her with wide, hopeful eyes.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Sorrow looked up at him. “How can I trust you, after what happened? For all I know you’ve added Lamentia to some old bottle and you’re saying it’s Starwater to – wait—” She stopped as she remembered something. “Come with me,” she said hurriedly. “Don’t try anything stupid, just walk with me.”
Luvian gulped, but nodded, putting the bottle back in his pocket as Sorrow palmed the letter opener, so the blade lay flat against her wrist.
Sorrow gave him a searching look and then made her way to the library door, opening it. Luvian followed her, back along the corridor, into the main hall, and up the staircase. He kept his head down, trying to keep up with Sorrow, who’d practically broken into a run.
“Walk in front of me,” she ordered, and he did, listening to her whispered instructions of where to go.
She guided him into the east wing, along to her suite of rooms, through her parlour, her private dining room, and into her bedroom.
“Get over there.” She pointed to a corner. “Stay there.”
Reluctant to turn her back to him, she crossed to her travel case and dragged it around so she could still see him as she threw it open and began to ransack it.
Dresses she’d packed but had no plans to wear, laundry from their time travelling Rhannon that there had been no time to do, books, cosmetics, shoes, papers, all became an untidy mound on the floor as she tore through the trunk.
She pulled a small bag from the bottom, and Luvian recognized it. It was the one she’d had with her the night she fought with Rasmus in Rhylla.
“I never unpacked,” Sorrow said. “After we got back I just … I left it. When we started visiting the towns, I threw what I needed in on top.” She opened the bag and pulled out the flask of Starwater Rasmus had left with her. The contents were still liquid, protected by the darkness, and by the cork she hadn’t removed, clear, oily-looking, when she held it up to the light. Sorrow carried it to her dressing table, taking the lid off a powder compact and pouring in enough to coat the bottom.
“We’ll see what happens when it starts to evaporate,” she said. “And in the meantime, you can tell me exactly who you are, who the man who tried to kill me was, and how you know the Sons of Rhannon.”
“I don’t want you to hate me,” he said.
Sorrow said nothing, ignoring the flare of guilt as his face fell, reading from her silence that it might be too late for that. She didn’t know how she felt about him. A little scared at that moment, and a lot betrayed. But hate? No. She didn’t hate him.
“Just tell me,” she said, though her voice softened a fraction. “We can deal with how I feel afterwards.”
He nodded, his expression still crestfallen, as he sat on her bed without asking. “Well, to begin, my name is Luvian, but it’s not Luvian Fen.” He paused, taking a deep breath before he said, “It’s Luvian Rathbone. And the man who tried to kill you is my brother, Arkady.”
Sorrow stared at Luvian. Rathbone. The family in Prekara who gave Kaspira so much trouble. Who’d given all of Rhannon some trouble or other for at least the last century.
Her grandmother had told her tales of the Rathbones, from when she was a young woman. Stories of smuggling and black markets, knives in backs, and high-stakes gambling behind closed doors. How Andearly Rathbone had broken into a museum in the East Marches and, over the course of two years, had stolen over three million rals’ worth of artwork from storage. At his trial he’d lamented the fact he wouldn’t have been caught at all, had he not gone back to swap a portrait of a young woman for one his new wife had requested instead. He’d made the court laugh when he’d told them he didn’t see the problem, given they were only taking up space in a warehouse, and that he’d installed a whole bunch of new gaslights in his home to best showcase them. The dowager had smiled faintly as she’d told the story, and Sorrow had suspected her grandmother had more than a small crush on Andearly Rathbone.
He’d said in Ceridog that his grandfather had been a lover of art. He hadn’t lied about that, then.
But they weren’t all charming rogues. Jeraphim Rathbone – who Sorrow realized must be Luvian’s father – had been sentenced to his second term in prison six months ago, for almost beating to death two members of the Decorum Ward. Sorrow remembered because Kaspira had mentioned it at the first Jedenvat meeting Sorrow had attended, Meeren Vine waiting outside, calling for the blood of all the Rathbones. Sorrow had privately thought it was about time the Ward had a taste of their own medicine, but was wise enough to keep her mouth shut.
Sorrow shook her head. “You’re a Rathbone?”
He looked a little cross. “Yes, all right. I know I don’t fit the profile.”
He really didn’t. Nothing about her articulate, urbane advisor suggested it. The Rathbones were muscled brutes, by all accounts, with a punch-now-ask-questions-later approach to problem-solving. No one could ever accuse Luvian, who was never happier than when verbally sparring, of being that. Thugs, liars, thieves, pickpockets and fences, an entire family of criminals, who, with Jeraphim indefinitely jailed, were headed by…
“Your mother is Beata Rathbone,” Sorrow said. Rumour had it Jeraphim was not the one to administer the beatings, but had taken the fall for his wife, who wasn’t born a Rathbone, but embraced her new name vigorously. The whispers Sorrow had heard from Irris were that Jeraphim offered to take the fall, for the respite a spell in prison would offer him from the formidable matriarch.
“Yes. That’s Mummy.”
“And your brothers are—”
“Lawton, Sumner, Arkady. Then me.”
“Arkady tried to kill me?”
Luvian’s cheeks darkened, and he nodded. “I expect it was him who broke into your room in the North Marches too.”
Sorrow swallowed, her fists clenching, before she continued. “Were Lawton and Sumner with him that day in Prekara?”
“Sumner is in prison. Murder. But Lawton was probably there. He usually does what Arkady tells him to. Most people do; he’s very, ah … persuasive.”
“Did you know they were going to be there?”
“No.” His eyes locked on to hers. “If I had, I would have stopped them, or I would have stopped you from going out there. I swear to you. The first I knew of their being part of it was that night. And if I’d known they were going to try to hurt you, I would have reported them myself.”
He didn’t break eye contact with her at all while he spoke. He didn’t fidget or shift or blink. There were no tells to say he was lying. But he was a Rathbone. Beata probably trained them to suppress their tells from birth.
“You didn’t know they were part of the Sons of Rhannon?”
“We’re not exactly on speaking terms right now,” he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
“Why not?”
Luvian sighed. “My nickname, coined by my charming mother, is ‘runt’. A bit because I’m the youngest, and the smallest, and probably the weakest, at least physically. You saw Arkady; there are mountains in Asha that aspire to be as big as him. He ought to have his own moon. And I’ve always been a bit – no, I’ll be honest – a lot smarter than most of them. But not in a way that counted. So, as a last resort, my mother allowed me to apply for a scholarship, under her grandmother’s maiden name. I was supposed to study law, so when one of my idiot siblings or cousins got caught in the act, I could get them off the hook. Doing my bit for the family. But in my second year I switched to politics and didn’t tell them until I graduated. Then I applied for a job working for you. It didn’t go down well. You being the enemy, and all.”
“Is that why they came after me, more than Mael? Because of you?”
“Probably. But they’d have gone after him, eventually, once you’d been … erm, eliminated.” His cheeks darkened with embarrassment. “My family never liked your grandfather, or father. Reuben tried his best to crack down on them, and things got a lot harder for us – them – after the Decorum Ward were introduced. Father used to be able to grease the palms of the old police force to look away. But it didn’t work with the Decorum Ward. They wanted too much up front, then wanted a cut, wanted to be part of it. They wanted to run things, and didn’t like being told no. Mother wouldn’t stand for it. Father tried to smooth things over, but not Mother.”
“So she, what? Convinced Arkady to form a gang of vigilantes to attack the Decorum Ward?”
“Knowing her – knowing them – yes. With Father imprisoned for attacking them, it seems likely. She’d want to retaliate. Not a lot of people would choose to ally with a Rathbone, even against the Decorum Ward. But the Sons of Rhannon … a mysterious, anonymous group who fight the bullies… That’s a little more appealing. And forming a secret society he can be the head of is a very Arkady thing to do.” He looked for a moment as though he might spit on the floor, his lips pursing, his tongue running over his teeth beneath them.
“You don’t much like your brother, do you?”
Luvian looked at her. “Let’s say you’re not the first person whose head he’s held underwater.”
“Wow,” Sorrow said softly. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. He was good enough to only ever do it in clean toilets.”
It was supposed to be a joke, a classic Luvian quip, but it fell flat because of the way his shoulders hunched as he spoke. Sorrow didn’t like it, it wasn’t the Luvian she knew, and a new burst of anger at Arkady Rathbone surged through her, not only because he’d hurt her but because he’d hurt Luvian too.
“He loves me, in his own way,” Luvian said softly, breaking into her thoughts. “If he didn’t, he could have easily overpowered me in Rhylla. He didn’t have to run. I think we all know it’s a fight I wouldn’t have won.”
“They haven’t bothered me since,” Sorrow said. “I thought it was your doing.”
Luvian shook his head. “They’re probably waiting to see if I’m going to hand them in.”
“But you’re not?”
He swallowed. “Do you want me to?”
He was offering her the choice. If she said yes, he would. She could see that. Because he wanted her to trust him, because he felt guilty for what had happened.
“No,” Sorrow said finally. “But if you could somehow ask them to stop trying to murder me, I’d like it.”
“Done.”
Sorrow closed her trunk and sat on it, looking at Luvian, who looked right back. He could be lying. He was bred to lie. And to cheat, and to trick. He’d probably learned to pick locks before he learned to pick his nose. She knew he had no problem committing crimes, despite distancing himself from his family. He’d broken into the registry in Rhannon, and he’d stolen Mael’s portrait from the Summer Palace – despite only ever going there once for his interview.
“Why didn’t you tell me on the night?” Sorrow asked. “When Arkady attacked me. Why didn’t you say then who he was? Who you are?”
“Because I didn’t want you to look at me the way you’re looking at me now,” he said. “I liked it when you looked at me like a person. A friend. I liked…” He fell silent and shook his head. “I thought if I could help you win, then it would mean something. It would prove I was more than my blood. And it’s what you wanted too – to be more than just another Ventaxis. It felt like fate. Like I was supposed to do it. I didn’t want my family messing things up. But they did anyway. They always do.”
His words were so close to her thoughts about herself that she had to stop herself throwing her arms around him and telling him everything was fine. It was only remembering Dain that kept her from doing it. If he’d been honest from the start, Dain might still be alive. No matter how much Sorrow wanted to put the last few horrible weeks behind them, she couldn’t keep from seeing Dain’s hopeful expression as she’d offered her a new life. Dain had trusted her. And Luvian, and it had got her killed.
As though he could sense her thoughts, he stood slowly and walked over to her, kneeling in front of her.
“I shouldn’t have lied to you. It’s the thing I regret most in the world, and I will carry that guilt for ever. My only defence is that you wouldn’t have hired me if you’d known who I was. But –” the ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth, and something inside Sorrow loosened at the sight of it “– you can’t deny I was a good advisor. And great company.” His expression became solemn once more. “I won’t lie to you ever again. I won’t keep anything from you. I’m on your side, until the end. No more secrets.”
It was Sorrow’s turn to look away, scared he was going to ask her to promise, and knowing if she did it would be a lie, because she had a secret, something much bigger than his confession. It was that knowledge – that she too was lying about who she was in the hopes it would help her change things for the better – that made answering his next question easy.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked, hope scored across his features.
She nodded, and his face broke into a wide, beaming smile that made her heart flutter as her own mouth curved.
He reached for her hands. “Thank you.”
She squeezed them lightly, and then, strangely embarrassed by his sincerity, stood, returning to her dressing table.
The liquid had almost gone, only the smallest drop remaining. But crusting the glass was a powder, one that Sorrow knew without smelling it, though she did, flinching at the familiar pain in her head. Lamentia.
Luvian joined her, saying nothing as they both looked at the powder.
“You should tell Lord Day,” Luvian said. “This is enough to arrest Vespus, at least. The drug that killed the chancellor is the by-product of something only Vespus Corrigan can create. And he had almost unlimited access to your father. It’s enough.”
Sorrow shook her head. She’d had a better idea. “I want to know for sure whether Mael is or isn’t a Ventaxis. With everyone else dead, Vespus is the only person who can answer. So I’ll use this knowledge against him. Unless he tells me the truth about Mael, I’ll tell Charon. And Queen Melisia.”
“It’s not worth the gamble,” Luvian said. “Take it from me. Tell Lord Day.”
Sorrow looked down at the powder and ran her finger through it.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”