Nightmaster (Nightsiders) by Susan Krinard

Author:Susan Krinard [Krinard, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

It was freezing inside the room, and very dark. That presented no problem for Trinity, though of course no one in the Household knew she didn’t need light to see. She wove a path among the hanging carcasses and shelves of frozen food toward the back of the room.

Someone was waiting for her, his or her head and body covered with black fabric. The person’s scent, which ordinarily Trinity would have been able to identify, was masked by the smell of meat and the icy cold.

“I’m sorry it has to be this way,” the figure said. “But I have to stay hidden.”

It was definitely a woman’s voice, though she’d lowered the pitch to the point where Trinity didn’t recognize it.

“I’m glad you agreed to see me,” Trinity said, taking a seat on a crate a half-dozen feet away. “You know why I’m here.”

“Yes,” the woman said. “All of us have been hoping that someone from outside would get in after you began picking up the messages our field serf left outside the Citadel.”

“They stopped not long before I was sent here.”

“Our agent was killed for straying too far outside the boundaries of the fields. The bloodsuckers never suspected anything, but we couldn’t risk more messages.”

Trinity knew how painful it was to lose a comrade in a dangerous fight. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“We all know what we’re getting into when we join the Underground. We risk our lives whenever we communicate. We do it for ourselves and for the Enclave, even though they sent us here.” She laughed bitterly. “Even though most of us have done things that would have gotten us little more than a slap on the wrist five years ago.”

“I know,” Trinity said softly. “Don’t think the Enclave isn’t grateful for your loyalty under these extraordinary circumstances.”

“We don’t want gratitude. We want freedom, and we have no chance of that—ever—if the Nightsiders win the next war.”

“And you believe that war is coming.”

“We’ve heard bits and pieces of information that indicate it, but we have no details. That’s why we needed someone trained by Aegis to help us.”

“Understood,” Trinity said. “It was my intention to make contact with members of the Underground—presuming they existed within whatever Household I joined—and then find a way to use my assets as a means of gaining additional information from my new master. But as you must know, Ares doesn’t have much to do with his peers or the government. Yet.”

“We know that Lady Roxana’s been urging him to join the Assembly,” the woman said. “You may already be having some influence on Ares’s decisions, which means you’re doing something right.”

Ares seems to think so, Trinity thought, distracted by the flood of warmth rushing through her body.

“It’s not enough yet,” she said. “Fortunately, he’s interested in my opinion of the Citadel and Opir society. Of course, I have to be careful about what I tell him. Gaining some measure of his trust is one thing, but I’ll need access to what he learns if he becomes more active in the government.

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