Broken Veil (Harbinger #5)(59)

Joanna was staring at her. Something was changing in her face. Was her resolve weakening?

“Show me who you really are,” Sera said. “Show me your real face.”

Silence.

Joanna’s voice was just a whisper. “I don’t want to be her anymore.”

“Show me,” Sera asked.

She watched as the illusion melted away. Standing in the fashionable Joanna’s stead was an average woman with a round face, a slightly pointed nose, and brownish-blond hair. Ordinary. Simple. And then Sera understood, and her heart ached. Joanna’s glamorous life was everything she’d dreamed of—only it wasn’t real. Reality would always be preferable to a pretty dream.

“Help me,” Sera pleaded. “Help me get back home.”

“If I do, they will kill me,” the woman said, her voice trembling. “I swore an oath that I would suffer myself to die before betraying them.”

“I absolve you of that oath,” Sera said.

The woman pretending to be Joanna frowned.

“Can you unlock the chain?” Sera asked, holding out her leg.

“I can,” came the reply. There was a look of hesitation. Of distrust. Then the woman nodded and started forward.

That was when Christina appeared. How long had she lingered there, invisible and ready to strike? Long enough to witness the conversation. Long enough to see the betrayal.

“Look out!” Sera warned.

Joanna turned, and the two poisoners faced each other. A knife appeared in Joanna’s hand, the silver blade gleaming in the lantern light. The pallor on her cheeks showed that she knew she’d been compromised. There would be no arguing, no pleading. One would have to kill the other.

Joanna flung her blade at Christina’s head, just as the other woman raised a pistol. Christina dodged at the last instant, and the blade arced past her face.

An explosion sounded in the lockroom, so loud it deafened Sera. She clamped her hands over her ears, but they were already ringing painfully. Hazy smoke filled the room along with the pungent odor of sulfur and powder.

Joanna sank to her knees, her mouth gaping in shock. She was fumbling for something in her dress, and Sera watched in horror as the girl’s skin began to blacken and shrivel. She gaped, trying to speak, her mouth working until her skin began to come off in flakes. Before Sera’s eyes, Joanna’s limbs and body desiccated until she slumped onto the floor, nothing but dust and a heap of clothes.

Christina lowered the smoking pistol.

“What-what was that?” Sera stammered, shuddering, her ears squealing with pain but hearing again.

Christina walked forward and revealed the Tay al-Ard strapped to her arm. “A special poison,” she said, her eyes hard and angry. “A rare poison. Deathbane.”





I am writing this note from Lockhaven, where I delivered the man who was sent to kill me. He had a kystrel around his neck, which I removed after he fell unconscious at the hospital. Prime Minister Durrant informed me, after the man was interrogated, that he was a former Ministry of War dragoon who’d been presumed dead. His death, it seems, was staged, and he was instead shuttled off to Kingfountain to be trained in the art of subterfuge.

His true name is Will Russell. Yes, the very one who was involved in the disgrace of Her Majesty. He is in chains and under guard. I have asked to see him, to learn what I can of Cettie’s whereabouts. He seemed to know quite a bit about her. But my petitions have been in vain. I cannot sleep. I can find no rest. Did she truly send him to kill me? I don’t want to believe it.

I don’t know what to believe anymore. There’s a knock at the door. I must go.

—Adam Creigh, writing from Lockhaven





CETTIE





CHAPTER TWENTY?ONE

LURKING BENEATH



It started as her visions always did, with a strange feeling of aloofness, a drifting away from consciousness, and the tingling power of the Mysteries coursing through her body. Cettie forgot where her physical body was as the vision subsumed her, wrapping her up and lifting her away. She found herself gliding over the foam-tipped waves as if she were a gull, the rustle of the sea and the wind filling her ears.

Then she noticed the shadow beneath the water, staining the sea like a drab of ink. The vision sucked her below the surface. She involuntarily flinched, even though they could not harm her—her spirit self wasn’t drenched after all, nor did she need to breathe. The colors beneath the waves shifted as the brilliant light of sunrise stabbed through the water. She’d barely noticed the position of the sun, but the knowledge of its timing came, supplied by the magic that had brought her there. She was a harbinger—a seer of things to be.

Below the waves she saw an enormous ship, one that dwarfed any she had seen before. It was one of Kingfountain’s special seacrafts, the type that could disappear entirely beneath the water, but the size rivaled that of a hurricane sky ship. There were over a hundred smaller vessels trailing in its wake. The surface was polished like pearl, with little sigils and carvings in the hull. Whether it was made of wood or stone, she didn’t know, but it glided through the water at great speed.

In a blink, her vision brought her on board the massive ship, where she saw military officers and sailors walking around with purpose and responding to orders. Her consciousness was whisked to the command area, where a man with a brooding face and a haughty expression stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He wore a saber and a brace of pistols at his belt. His military jacket was adorned with medals. She’d never met this man in person before, but she’d seen him in her other visions, heard about him from Sera and Fitzroy.