“Well, can you help?” Florette consciously bit her lip, hoping the mirroring of the gesture might help with persuasion. “All I need is a meeting, and I can bring the terms for negotiation.”

“Fuck me, Florette.” Camille sighed. “Can I get you a meeting with Perimont by talking to Simon? Of course. But think this through.”

“Not usually my strong point, that.”

Camille used her hand to try to cover a bout of laughter, but it was still rather obvious. “He knows you as a pirate kidnapper. If you dump him at the Governor’s mansion, the first thing he’s going to do after a hot bath is have his minions hunt you down and ready you for the gallows.”

“Eloise said—”

“Eloise the manipulative asshole? That Eloise? Did she say it would all be ok?” Camille’s tone was sweet to the point of being saccharine. “Understand, this affects me just as much. Everyone knows you as my guard, ‘Celine’. If word gets out that you’re a criminal, who do you think they’ll look to next?”

Florette sighed. “You, probably.”

“Precisely.” She spared a glance towards the rising sun cresting the castle ruins behind them. “Why do you care, anyway? Did you not assault and kidnap this person?”

“That’s the problem! I have to—” Florette pounded a fist against her leg. “I killed his cousin, on the boat. She was young, and I saw her jump out… I didn’t have time to think.”

“This will not make up for that. All you’ll do is upset the delicate preparations I’ve been making here.” She shook her head. “No, this won’t do at all. We have to get him out of here before he can tell anyone about you.”

“Eloise wouldn’t be able to get her ransom that way, she wouldn’t like that. And he said he wanted to be here! Apparently Daddy Grimoire sent him to Malin to clean up Perimont’s messes, and he was on the way here when we found him. Even if we send him back to Avalon, there’s a good chance he’ll be right on the next boat back.”

Camille bit her lip again. “There are… other ways to make sure he can’t tell anyone about you.”

“No!” She slammed her fist against the wall. “Not an option. I couldn’t do that.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have to be you. I could step in, or maybe one your criminal friends.”

“Remember what you said about killing Whitbey? This is the exact same thing, only a thousand times worse. We’re not considering it. End of discussion.”

“Fine!” Camille held up her hands. “Then get him back to Avalon and get out of here right after. I’ll say you’re returning to Guerron or something. Even if he does come back, all he’ll have to go on is a description. I don’t like it; we still run the risk of someone putting the pieces together, looking at the timing as too coincidental. Maybe it’s better if we fake your death.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“I don’t see how you could avoid it. The fact is, as long as this Prince resides in Malin, it puts both of us at enormous risk, but you especially. One way or another, you’re going to be on your way soon.” She sighed. “Why couldn’t Prince Grimoire have just stayed dead?”

“Why couldn’t you?”

Camille cracked a smile. “I see your point.”

“I’m not trying to mess up what you’re doing, but I have to do this.”

“You say that, but it’s more than a bit of a betrayal of what we were doing here. I understand your regret, I do, but it’s not worth throwing everything away just to save some Avalon prince, especially if he is more competent than Perimont, like the King clearly thought. That would only make things worse.”

Betrayal…

“Wait, I have an idea. Tell Simon to set up the meeting.”

≋

Murderer Duchess Escapes Justice, the journal read, thick black letters stretching across the page.

“In a stunning farce, Duchess Annette Debray was acquitted last week for the murder of her grandfather Duke Fouchand Debray. Her trial was conducted according to the traditional procedure of the Erstwhile Empire, a barbaric trial by battle where their practitioners of human sacrifice set aside all hope for truth and justice and instead fight each other to the death.”

“If you want to read that, you have to pay for it,” a gruff voice sounded from behind the news stand. “Twelve mandala for the issue.”

“Twelve?” Florette screwed up her face as she fished for the coins in her bag. “Yesterday it was eight!”

“Yesterday it wasn’t flying off the shelves. You’re lucky The Cambrian prints so many copies there’s even any left. I ran out of local editions hours ago.” The clerk shrugged. “Bad news is good for business. People are worried it’ll mean war.”

“Hmm.” Florette dropped the coins on the counter with one hand and grabbed the journal with the other, stepping back out onto the street.

“Despite the best efforts of Lord Aurelian Lumière, friend of Avalon, the trial was disrupted by a savage sorcerer known as Fernan Montaigne, who acted in the murderer’s defense.”

Florette choked, tracing her eyes over the words once more. Fernan? “Looks like you managed to get caught up in something even without me,” she muttered, words dissipating into the hot, humid air. Why are they calling him Montaigne, anyway? All it meant was ‘mountain’, and it wasn’t as if it were his surname, either.

“A brute more comfortable with sacrifice than the law, he soundly defeated Lord Lumière’s representative. Then, unsatisfied with merely that brutality, he callously pinned the crime on an innocent bard known as Magnifico, a talented musician sent to play for the Duke by His Highness, King Harold. Details are scarce, but witnesses of the duel say that Montaigne was so possessed by fell magic that it burst forth from his eyes with the fire fueled by human lives.

Lord Lumière may have tried his best, but ultimately he failed to enforce justice and protect the innocent. Can we truly say that his stewardship is sufficient to maintain friendly relations with Avalon anymore? How can he be trusted after so stunning a failure?”

Alright, that’s enough of that. She tucked the journal into her bag, walking the rest of the way with her eyes pointed clear ahead. It wasn’t long before she arrived at her destination.

The governor’s mansion hardly looked like a palace of tyranny. The squat, boxy rooms and square, clear windows barely broke up the monotony of the façade. Even inside, only a few tapestries lining the hallway provided any sense of personality, mostly showing people with axes cutting down a forest. The waiting room outside the Governor’s office was hardly any better.

“Lord Perimont will see you now,” his assistant told her after what felt like an eternity.

If the rest of the building had been boring, the office was downright bizarre.

A crowded table sat in the center of the room, positioned at the same height as a bar, but with no chair or stool in sight. An enormous painting filled most of the back wall, showing the Governor with his children, who looked around ten or eleven, and a woman that was presumably his wife.

Unnervingly, Perimont didn’t seem to have aged a day since the portrait had been painted.

“What is it you want?” he asked, eyes not looking up from his papers. “My son insisted it was important, and yet somehow he couldn’t give me any details. I trust Malin’s hospitality is treating your lady well?”

“It is, thank you.” You child-killing fucker. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more forthright faster, but I was instructed to speak to you and only you.”

“Instructed?” He lifted his head from the papers.

“It’s Prince Luce Grimoire. He’s alive.”

Perimont blinked. “Impossible. He’s been missing for months, and we caught the pirates that took him. Loath as I am to admit it, the Prince is dead.” He did not, in fact, look particularly loath to admit it.

Florette shook her head. “Some of the pirates disembarked with him before the rest were caught, they said. They ambushed me in an alley, told me I needed to speak to you. They still have him, and they’re demanding a ransom from you in exchange for his safe return.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“An obvious ploy.”

“I’m sure it was him! He had the dark hair, the cheekbones… He looked exactly like the engravings of King Harold in the journal.”

“You had met Prince Luce before, had you?”

“No..” Not in any way I can admit to. “But… you’ve met him, haven’t you? And Simon and Mary? It would be easy to confirm that it’s him.”

Perimont stared coldly. “You would ask me to risk my life, and the life of my children, meeting vicious criminals in person just to see their feigned imposter? Out of the question.”

You cannot possibly be this thick. “You could set the terms, send out anyone else who might know him… Once you see him I’m sure you’ll realize—”

“Are you deaf? There is not a person alive who has seen his face that I would throw away on such an obvious trick. I will not negotiate with criminals. Prince Luce is dead. There’s nothing else to say.”

≋

“Have you told Luce yet?” Florette looked up from the papers in front of her, lit by candles in the dim blue tunnels. “If you can trust him to stay put while we have a private conversation, surely you can trust him with—”

“Not yet.” Eloise folded her arms, leaning back against the opposite wall. The poor lighting hid her features, but Florette could still tell how much the trip had transformed her. She looked even thinner now, and her hair had grown out enough that it looked off, like it was matte instead of glossy. “He’s had a lot of chances to screw me, and obviously since I’m standing here he took them, but this… This fucks up the whole thing.”

“Perimont just needs to see him,” Florette assured her. “Once he recognizes—”

“Once anyone recognizes the Prince openly, he loses his best excuse to take up arms. The other prince too, the brother. Even Avalon likes a pretext, however thin. It’s not worth it to Perimont to fuck it up.”

“Shit. I knew he was being stubborn, but…”

“Yeah. Brings up a whole new set of problems, complicates this shit even further. I’ll get to it, but…”

“Yeah. I get it.” She reached into the wall beside her, lifting the stone to reveal a bag she’d kept hidden there. And now I’ll need to hide it somewhere else, to be safe. She pulled a roll of paper from the bag and unfurled it. “I’m dealing with a complicated mess myself.”

“If that’s a crack about me, you should know you live in a glass house. I’m always down for a bit of rock-throwing, myself, but—”

Florette shook her head. “Messy situation. Have to deal with Carrine, and the train. They’re going to start conscripting people into Avalon’s forces… And now this. It’s such a fucking mess.”

“Most things are. What do you mean the train though? Your railyard heist?”

“Nope. Something new.” She traced her eyes over the diagram once more, committing the layout of the strange machine firmly to memory: the combustion engine to the front, its fuel one coach behind, storage and supplies down to the back, then an officer’s quarters at the rear. “It’s like it was fucking designed for us.”

Eloise raised an eyebrow. “Us?”

“Me, then, I guess.” Florette shrugged. “The point is, the operations manual says that if any obstruction of a certain size is visible on the tracks, the train’s engineer has to stop and clear it before proceeding.”

“Like wagon wheel tracks in the dirt? Why would they care?” Eloise grabbed a corner of the paper, orienting it to face her.

“They’re very obsessed with cleanliness.” Florette cracked a smile. “More to the point, all we need to do is keep the crew at the front distracted enough that they don’t call for the soldiers, and the cargo’s basically ours.”

“Military cargo,” Eloise said slowly, squinting at the paper with an irritated look on her face. “A few pikes and some shitty rations sure seem like an invaluable haul worth risking life and limb to get. Maybe we’ll even get a threadbare raincoat!”

“Then don’t come. Fuck off and leave me here again, to wait for you like a stupid dog awaiting its master’s voice.”

She snorted. “Are you seriously mad at me? You agreed to stay.”

“When I thought you were coming back!”

Eloise laughed, gesturing to herself. “Voilà. I’m back.”

“So you are.” Florette narrowed her eyes. “After your new ship blew up, along with all of your plans. Be honest with me, were you planning to return, before everything went wrong?”

“Eventually, I’m sure. As long as stuff’s banned here, there’ll always be a market for my services.”

“But back to me? Back to us?”

Eloise stared back silently.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Florette pushed the papers back into her bag, ready to be dropped back between the stones when she was alone again.

“It was for your own good, alright? I saw how you acted after that raid. You’re not cut out for this life.”

“So why couldn't you be honest with me?”

Eloise frowned. “More trouble than it’s worth. Dropping you here let you keep your dignity and go be a farmer or a clerk or something. You figured it out eventually, right? Less pain for everyone this way.”

“Less pain for you, maybe,” Florette scoffed. “While you were inciting a mutiny against yourself, I robbed the railyard from right under the Governor's nose. Without killing anyone.”

“Yeah, brilliant job you did there, getting Claude arrested, nearly getting him killed.”

“Oh please, that’s on your beloved Jacques and you know it.”

“Jacques is a prick, but he wouldn’t have been put in that position if you hadn’t—”

“If I hadn’t what, Eloise? Done the exact same shit you and Verrou do all the time?”

“You shouldn’t have involved Claude!” she growled. “He’s one of the good ones. And he’s not cut out for it.” She sighed. “Being on the run is going to be rough for a guy like that.”

“He knew the risks. Stood tall in jail, not saying a word to anyone. He even helped get a friend of mine out while he was in there.” Or an ally, at least. “He’ll be happier outside this awful city. Who wouldn’t be?”

Eloise sighed. “I could have really used a friend here. For longer than the two hours it took to load Claude onto the boat, I mean.”

Florette narrowed her eyes. “Maybe if you treated people better, you’d have one. Maybe you’d have many!”

She folded her arms. “You know, we met the spirit of the woods in Refuge. Cya.”

“And you’re still alive and unharmed?” Her mind flashed to Gézarde, and the unbalanced proposition he’d forced Fernan into. “Did she make you do anything?”

“Fed us mushrooms, to give us spiritual visions. What a great fucking favor, right?”

“I—What?”

“It was really great. I saw my dad… he looked clearer-headed, more like his old self, drinking tea with a one-eyed wolf.”

Is she messing with me? Florette crept closer.

“The best part was, I got to see my mom die again, her face going blue as she clawed at her neck. Her hands were supposed to be bound, but she slipped out somehow. Didn’t help, obviously.”

“Do they even mean anything if you aren’t a sage? It might just be your mind, messing with you because of the—”

“I’ve had psyben before. It was nothing like this. There was some spiritual… something. I don’t know. Luce had them too, though. He looked really freaked out, after.”

“I’m sorry,” Florette said, not knowing what else to say. “I can’t even remember my parents. They went off to war when I was two, and didn’t come back.”

Eloise frowned, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Was there anything else you saw?” Why bring it up now, out of nowhere?

“A few things, none of them as bad as… Captain Verrou was there for a bit with tears in his eyes, talking to someone who looked a lot like Luce. And I saw a woman fighting, mowing through people faster than it took their blood to hit the ground. But then she was old, that same sword at her hip, but dying. She was completely alone, Florette.”

Oh.

“I can see why that shook you.” She pulled her into a hug. “I understand.”

“It didn’t shake me. I’m fine.” She turned up her nose. “I’ve had to deal with a lot worse than a bad trip through the wilderness. Just made me think, that’s all. Cya laid out my whole life like it was nothing, just some list of everything I’d done, everyone I’d been.”

Florette wrapped an arm around her. “You won’t die alone, Eloise.”

“Thank you,” she muttered, so quiet it was almost inaudible. “I suppose when I die, at least one other person will be there. Someone’s got to do the killing after all.”

I guess most people in this business don’t exactly pass in their sleep.

“You know, I’m probably going to have to leave town after this. Luce has seen my face.”

“Can’t imagine what that’s like.”

Florette flicked her on the nose. “Exactly, you’ve got the same problem.”

“Eh… I don’t think Luce is like that. He had a thousand chances to screw me in the wasteland, or after. Shit, he could be running away right now, it’s not like we can see the spot we left him in from here. But I doubt it. I’m pretty sure if I leave him alone he’ll do the same for me.”

“Do you really believe that?” Do you of all people really trust someone that much? “You think we’ll be alright staying? Like he won’t tell anyone?”

“You? I don’t know. You did kill his cousin.”

“Prick.” Florette gave her a slight shove from the side. “Anyway, it couldn’t hurt. Get back out there, see the world a bit once all this shit is behind us.”

Eloise turned to face her, mere inches separating their faces. “Are you asking me if I want to skip town with you?”

“I guess I am. Further from Avalon’s reach the better, right? I’ve always wanted to see Paix Lake.”

She took a deep breath. “Sure. Why not? I could certainly use a fucking break.”

“Good.” Florette leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Now let me show you what I’ve been planning with this train robbery. I think it’s going to be my best yet.”

“Wait, hold on.” Eloise stood up abruptly. “I have to talk to Luce. He needs to know. And…”

“I get it.”

“I’ll be right back!” she called as she ran down the tunnel, the words echoing across the stone.

I’ve heard that one before.