The Unwilling--A Novel by Kelly Braffet

Author:Kelly Braffet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2021-11-10T19:22:26+00:00

Chapter Nine

There were more guards on the streets of Highfall than Nate had ever seen before. Bindy said they were just City Guards, not the Lord’s Guard; the Lord’s Guard, she said, would have marched with the army. Nate asked what the difference was. “The City Guards have a white thing on their uniform. The Lord’s Guard has red,” she said, so he knew that what she called the City Guard was what he thought of as the House Guard. “None of them are what you’d want to meet on a dark street, but the Lord’s Guard is the worst.”

“Why?”

“City Guards take people all the time. Beat them up a bit, throw them in the cells for a while, then let them go. The Lord’s Guard hardly ever takes people, but when they do, nobody ever sees them again. It’s bad luck to talk about them,” she said with an air of finality. “Where am I off to today?”

Nate sent her to Lady Maryle’s with a health tonic and his compliments—exactly the sort of thing Arkady had encouraged him to do, before the old man died. It was one of the few situations when Nate had come to agree with Arkady; the deliveries kept him on the courtiers’ minds, and the bit of opium syrup Nate slipped into his tonics ensured that at least some of them would seek him out again. They paid him in coins, which were nice to have, and—unknowingly—in gossip, which he filed away carefully in his memory. Sometimes he thought he was stepping into Arkady’s shoes in more ways than one. Sometimes it worried him.

But the tonic for Lady Maryle was less about money and more about finding out if Charles was still at her manor, glomming onto her youngest daughter and taking those vile drops. He sent Bindy over once a week or so to check. Lady Maryle, whose fortune was waning, was flattered by the attention, and Bindy—as always—managed to come home with exactly the information Nate needed. In her new clothes, with her hair neatly braided and a little coaching from Nate to smooth out the Marketside edges in her speech, she’d become a bit of a pet to some of the courtiers. More of a pet than she liked, sometimes, and he quickly learned to tell from her bearing which courtiers he should keep her away from.

The tonic for Lady Maryle had used the last of his opium syrup, so he was in the lab preparing more when someone pounded on the front door. It was the House messenger. His face was grim. “Nathaniel Magus,” he said. “You’re needed. The phaeton is coming.”

And come it did, bare seconds after Nate had managed to grab his coat and satchel. The usual driver was at the reins, but his forehead was damp with sweat and he, too, looked unhappy. “What’s happened?” Nate said, climbing in.

“Lord Gavin is unconscious,” the driver said, and then they were rattling over the cobbles and it was too loud to speak.

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