Bring Me Their Hearts(87)

When they approach close enough, I ask, “Do you enjoy staring at people for extended periods of time without their knowledge, Your Highness?”

“I’m no decorum expert,” Malachite retorts. “But shouldn’t you at least curtsy before you start throwing around accusations?”

Fione bobs into a curtsy, and I begrudgingly do the same. Lucien bows ever so slightly to us, as befitting a Firstblood to two others. Malachite watches it all, highly amused. Lucien’s dark-iron eyes fix on me as he straightens.

“Surely your wounds haven’t healed yet. Are you in pain?”

CoNsTantLy, the hunger snarls.

His concern is too soft. Too unguarded. Seeing it is like a starving wolf watching a lamb struggle. Tempting, and borderline pathetic. I counted him warier than this. I counted him smart. Maybe I misjudged him. Or maybe, despite his scars, his heart hasn’t learned to stop yearning. I’ve warned him again and again. And still he worries for me. Still he looks at me gently.

WhAt a fOoL.

“It’s nothing a little polymath medicine can’t fix,” I assure him. Malachite laughs.

“It was all I could do to keep him from rushing to you the second he saw you. But when he realized you could stand and breathe as well as the rest of us, he evened out.”

“Mal,” Lucien warns, a flush working up his neck. “Silence.”

Malachite waves a hand at him. “Fine, fine. The usual then—I’ll just shut up and watch.”

Fione chimes in. “If the prince agrees to my proposition, you’ll be doing much more than that, Sir Malachite.”

This captures all of our attentions, our eyes riveting to her apple-cheeked smile. Sensing she has the floor, she places two bolts carefully on the nearby railing, standing them up to point at the sky. She touches the tip of one.

“This is the Crimson Lady, at the edge of the common district.” She touches the other. “This is the East River Tower, on the edge of the noble district.”

“Just the geography lesson I needed,” I drawl. Fione smiles at me, forced.

“I’ve learned that the East River Tower holds the evidence I’ve previously spoken to you all about.”

“The East River Tower is a granary storage,” Malachite says. “It has no exits or entrances.”

“No windows, either,” Lucien agrees. “If Gavik buried that evidence in ten tons of grain somehow, you’ll have to blow through the stone to get it.” He looks to me. “Do you know how to make a bomb by any chance, Lady Zera?”

“Why ask me, Your Highness?” I quirk a brow.

“You know how to duel, how to thieve, and how to sniff me out despite every hiding place I can think of,” he says. “I thought you might have an explosive trick up your sleeve as well.”

“If only.” I sigh. “Maybe then those banquets wouldn’t be so boring.”

Malachite lets out a horrified gasp. “Don’t you even think of detonating my favorite salmon cream puffs!”

Fione clears her throat. “All of you are terrible at staying on track.”

“I’d try to stay on track if you weren’t talking nonsense,” Lucien grumbles. “Your evidence is in the East River Tower—and what? It’s a sealed tower. No one can get in there.”

“I don’t want to get in there,” she asserts. “I want to get below there.”

Lucien and I exchange a look. Fione taps her nails on the railing connecting the two upright crossbow bolts.

“I think my uncle cleared out an old watertell pipe and is using it as a tunnel between the Crimson Lady, where he does most of his work with the polymaths, and the East River Tower, where I believe he keeps his sensitive research material.”

“A watertell pipe?” Lucien wrinkles his nose. “I have a hard time imagining Gavik squeezing himself down such a tiny thing every time he wants to access research.”

“You’re right, Your Highness,” Fione says cheerily. “The new ones, installed in the last decade, are very small. But the old ones—the prototype builds? They’re huge, and they remain beneath the city.”

“How can you be so sure?” I ask.

“I’ve seen the old maps—one of them goes directly from the Crimson Lady to the East River Tower.”

“And you think he keeps the information lying around in the pipe below it?” I cock my head.

“I don’t know, but all the evidence points below that tower. If we can get beneath it, I’m certain we’ll find enough to incriminate him to the king.”

Malachite holds up a hand like a patient schoolchild, and Fione nods to him.

“So you want the four of us to infiltrate the most powerful anti-witch weapon in the country—in the world—to find this pipe?”

There’s a silence even Fione doesn’t have an answer for. Malachite presses on.

“The Crimson Lady is guarded around the sandclock, in eight shifts of ten men apiece. The pipe’s probably in the basement levels, where all the delicate water pumps are that keep the damned thing running. Which, of course, is guarded by two independent patrols made up of the largest and strongest celeon guards Vetris has to offer. And you want us to get in there without being seen.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy,” Fione says slowly.