“We don’t have to do this,” I said to Fletcher. “I would offer you something but I don’t understand what it is you want! Have you embraced Jabberwock or are you looking for a way to break free of it? Are you here because you fear what they can do or because you love it? Is this a nightmare for you or is it your nightmare, now, a way to exert your power?” I took a step forward, and her fingers tightened around the gun. I was daring her, but I was tired of this dance, of not even knowing the ways in which I should distrust her. “Why are you here?”
For a moment, I thought she would shoot me where I stood, that I’d judged it all wrong. We were enemies but, I hoped, by circumstance rather than outlook. Her loyalty to anyone was fraught, but she wasn’t sure enough of her position to sever those ties with something as final as a bullet. “Why are you here?” she managed, the chemicals coursing through her veins making her teeth grind against one another. “This is not the way out. You should have escaped and instead you trap yourself in this maze.”
“I’m tired, Fletcher. I’m tired of not knowing.”
“I know hardly more than you.”
“But don’t you want to?” I said. “I know. I know you can’t demand that of Jabberwock.” I took another step closer, holding the knife out to the side so that she could see it wasn’t meant for her. “But I can find out. I can go through that door and find out whatever it is Arcadia or her superior know, and then I can give it to you. And if I’m caught doing it…you’ve lost nothing.”
The gun trembled. One muscle spasm and I’d be dead. “They will skin me alive for losing you.”
“You’re too valuable to them.” I wasn’t sure of that, but I was so far out over this cliff that the only way out was forward. I thought I could see the other bank now—a crumbling, rocky, unstable place in its own rate, but much closer to solid ground than the abyss of a gun barrel. “Medical knowledge is more precious than banknotes. No,” I said, “I can’t protect you, but I can make it worth it.”
“I…and how will you ever tell me?” she asked. “I cannot risk meeting with you. Even a letter in your writing is incriminating enough. One hint of connection or collaboration between us will doom me.”
“Also, last time I went to you, you betrayed me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Philippa,” I said. “Philippa Mar Low, the informant. The one who seems to know everything and manages to stay atop the bloody wars happening beneath. She handles business from everyone: myself, Drakon, Jabberwock, the city. When I get out…if I do…I’ll go to her. She’ll fence the information between the two of us and she’s certainly reliable enough to do it.” I took the last step, so that we were face to face and barely a meter apart, and held out my empty hand. “What do you say, Fletcher? Do we have a deal?”
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Her eye twitched. She didn’t take my hand. She raised the gun and cracked off two shots, which shattered the mirrors behind me. The sound was deafening, and the ringing in my ears was accompanied by the crystalline tinkling of the glass. “Go.”
I didn’t stick around.
The door at the far end opened into a dark corridor, an almost claustrophobic mix of dark wood and iron strips. There were candleholders affixed to the walls at regular intervals, but none of them held anything. There were scorch marks along the ground in a jagged, lightning-bolt pattern, which I gingerly stepped around, and dark smears along the wall that I avoided even looking at. I kept my ears pricked for any sound or noise, and as I advanced I began to make out the sounds of conversation, three voices or more all overlapping. It wasn’t a happy conversation.
There was another doorway separating this hallway from the office behind, although it was flimsier and half-open. I slipped up to stand beside it, only a thin silver of light from where the hinges met the wood falling across my face, to listen. I didn’t recognize either of the voices, but the first one—deeper and more gravelly than the other—carried the bite of authority that I’d come to associate with Drakon. “…useless!” he was saying. “Absolutely useless. It is not good enough just to issue orders. They must be followed!”
“We are all doing our best, sir. But how-”
“And where-“
“Even to track it-”
“Shut up!” he roared. “Oh, I shouldn’t be surprised. When the rats flee the sinking ship, they all end up here. Arcadia is the only one of you worth anything. Half the time I have to keep her here just to keep you lot in line. But with word of this latest Dreamwalker attack I had to send her out to the Fishhook District to investigate it. Now, if none of you have anything interesting to contribute…” He let the silence hang in there, letting his underlings squirm.
I blinked. Another attack? A real one?
“Then,” he continued. “get out. Not you, doctor. We have issues to discuss.”
Fortunately, they were all too scared of him to slam the door open. None of them even looked back. Many of them were the same faceless nightmares that seemed to populate the building, but I saw one or two figures that I recognized from Drakon’s operation. Rats from a sinking ship, indeed. The clatter and commotion of their exit was still loud enough that I missed the start of what the ‘doctor’ had to say. “…difficult, difficult,” he was saying, with an unplaceable accent. “I cannot do the impossible for you, Valorian. It is out of our control.”
“Why?” he—Valorian—demanded. “Do not start. You will tell me that some techniques are lost to history, that the Outscape sees far too much knowledge fall away into the Abyss or into the sea. You think me ignorant of that? This is not the same.”
I leaned closer.
“We should know everything about the Dreamwalker,” Valorian seethed, “because we created the damn thing.”