The Wolf's Captive (25 page)

It seemed like the final insult.

Be practical
, she admonished herself, and silently begged her grandmother for guidance. This was no time to dwell on all the ways that she’d failed. There were very real, immediate concerns beyond Lucia’s wild and broken heart. Her father was being held for treason. He was going to be executed because they believed he’d poisoned the Duke’s Blend. And they believed that she’d helped.

That still didn’t seem quite real to her. But she had the image of Cesare striding toward her, scars blazing in the firelight, eyes deadly and full of rage, to remind her. It was real.

But they’d never found it, had they? They’d never actually found the Duke’s Blend. That’s what Remy had told her, what David had said. They’d never uncovered the secret storeroom that her father, in his infinite strangeness, had seen fit to build beneath the still. The only other bottle was the one that she’d stolen and hidden in that cavern after her father’s arrest. How could they
know
?

Inspiration gave her strength. She wasn’t far from her home; she’d run towards it without thinking, even though it was probably the stupidest place for her to go. Very likely there might be soldiers watching it. Or neighbors. It couldn’t possibly be safe.

So it was time to be brave.

Lucia stretched out her long limbs, still weak with fatigue. Gingerly she felt for the mask on her face. Her first instinct was to throw it away as just another remnant of Cesare’s hold on her. She did strip the red band of the Severille from her arm and throw it as far into the dirty street as she could, but the mask could protect her. The mask kept her from being Lucia Lyselle for just a little while longer.

She swallowed her pride and pushed off the bakery door, grasping at what remained of her momentum and forcing herself into a run. There was no way to know how much damage she’d done at the Player’s Feast, or how much time she would have before men came looking for her. She would need to hurry.

~  ~  ~

The thing about hot, humid spring nights in J’Amel, a city perched right on the edge of the sea, straddling the mouth of the great River Ebedi, was that the air could become its own sticky medium. A whispered word might swim on the gentle currents of a breeze and find itself still audible all the way on the other end of a long street. To a young woman, nearly naked, barefoot, and masked, creeping about alone in the darkened, empty streets of a residential district that had no Bacchanalian attractions to bring in revelers, the sounds of an abandoned night could pick away at one’s nerves one by one. First, the scuttling of something larger than a rat over there; the creaking of a shutter over here. Always the sense that someone might be near, but never a person in sight.

But worse even than the sounds were the smells.

Spilled amberwine, souring in the sticky heat, competed with the refuse that ran along the city’s gutters, overflowing at the end of another Bacchanal, the separate smells rising together in a chorus of scent that flowed easily, freely, and fully on the thick night air. Lucia braved it all, hurrying her way through the city, keeping hidden in the darkness of alleys and side streets whenever she could, sticking close to the hulking houses when she couldn’t. Everything glowed blue in the moonlight. She was almost there.

And it was the smell that first warned her.

Such a distinct smell: smoke, on a night when no one would build a fire, in a neighborhood where no one seemed to be home.

Lucia tried to tell herself that she was worrying needlessly, that there was no reason to think it had to be the worst case scenario; she was only anxious, only fretting because this was her only chance to save her father and herself. But her battered feet moved a little faster, and her lungs began to gasp at the air, tasting the burning, acrid smoke, gulping it down as if she required ever more proof, until she was close enough that it was certain: there was a fire.

Lucia stopped right at the edge of the narrow alley that opened at the end of her street. The smoke was thick now, chokingly thick, and oily, laden with chemicals. There was the flickering red glare, reflected back in an orange sheen on the glistening blue-black walls of the alley. And there was the frenzied, crackling roar of it.

She closed her eyes and stepped out from the alley.

It was her home, her house, her father’s still: on fire, blazing up to the moon in a column of flame and ash, destroying any and all hope that Lucia might have had left.

She stood dumbly, watching it, feeling her skin tighten from the heat, smelling her hair begin to singe. She no longer cared who saw her, even though there was no one,
no one
, out in the street, watching her life burn away. She knew that was not quite right, either, but there wasn’t energy left to devote to that. What little she had left was devoted to thinking about the bottles of the Duke’s Blend, hidden below the house, now surely exploding one by one in the heat of the fire.

That had been her one hope, her one idea: to get a bottle of the Duke’s Blend. Show it to them. Drink it in front of anyone who would watch, in front of Captain Rickle, in front of the Duke, especially in front of Cesare—lying,
lying
Cesare. She would drink it and sacrifice herself to show that it was not poisoned. The Basiglia didn’t frighten her now. It didn’t seem like she had anything left to lose. She would gladly go to prison for violating the Duke’s contract if it meant she could keep her pride and win her father’s freedom.

But all of that required a bottle of this year’s Blend. And all the bottles of the Duke’s Blend were currently beneath a towering wall of flame.

In a strange way, it was almost beautiful. A hauntingly eerie sight: one single house, burning alone in the night with no one to watch it. Set apart from all the others, just as Lucia had always felt set apart, just as her father was certainly always set apart, always strange and alone, just as she felt now. Truthfully, though, this was incredible: no one came out to gawk? No one was a witness? As though her small neighborhood was just a hollow husk of a community.

Or as though the community somehow knew better…

The hissing
pop
of an exploding bottle jerked Lucia back to reality. This was a
problem
. Without a bottle of the Duke’s Blend, she had no way of proving her father’s innocence. No one would have any proof one way or the other, and all of those bottles…

Another bottle exploded. This time shards of glass grazed her arm, leaving a trail of warm blood. Lucia wiped at it, thinking,
I went through all the trouble of throwing away the Severille band…

The Severille! The
cavern
! How stupid she’d been; of course there was one more bottle, hidden away in that little hole in the wall in the cavern where she’d first truly met Cesare, behind several ancient locked doors and underneath a rotting old crypt. Lucia had no idea how she would find her way, but she
would
. She had to. She turned, invigorated, and ran back toward the alley.

Where a pair of cold, rough hands grabbed her and threw her against the wall.

“You,” a male voice sneered. Lucia kicked off from the wall, but iron fingers dug into her arms and forced her back. Her attacker leaned his weight against her body, bringing his face into the reflected firelight.

It was Gaston Grimaldi.

“I’d recognize that mask anywhere,” he sneered, his eyes traversing her body. “You’re the Wolf’s whore.”

“I’m
no one’s
whore,” Lucia snapped back.

Grimaldi gathered her wrists in one wiry hand and held them above her head. “Let’s see what you look like under there,” he said, and ripped her mask away.

Lucia spat at him. Grimaldi only smiled. It was a thin, cold smile.

“Let me guess at what you were doing here, whore,” he said, his tone calm, almost conversational. There were the
pop
s of more bottles exploding around the corner; they were coming faster now, the heat was more intense. Grimaldi looked her in the eye and said, “You were setting fire to this house. You were destroying the only evidence that might clear me of these rumored charges. And you were doing it at the Wolf’s bidding.”

“What?” Lucia sputtered.

“
Don’t
lie to me,” Grimaldi hissed, and kicked her legs apart, grabbing her chin in his free hand. “I know what that farce with the fake wine was about. He expected me to refuse it? He’s an idiot. I have my own spies. You set this fire, didn’t you? You are helping him set me up for treason. Confess, and I promise,” he said, his breath coming hot on her cheek, “I promise it will go easier for you.”

Lucia winced as his manicured fingernails dug into her chin. “You’re the idiot if you think I’d set fire to my own house,” she said.

Grimaldi’s flat snake eyes flashed in the firelight. He tilted his head, first to one side, then the other, studying her face while her home burned just around the corner. There was a great crash, what could only be the roof caving in. Grimaldi didn’t flinch.

“You’re the Lyselle girl,” he said at last. “The one no one could find. The other conspirator. You’ve been the Wolf’s whore all along.” His voice sounded distant, as if he were working out some complex problem, unperturbed by the chaos behind him or the girl struggling in his grip.

“I told you,” Lucia said, getting angry, “I’m
no one’s
whore. Let me go!”

“Shut up,” he said absently, and smacked her across the mouth. Lucia tasted blood. “You’ve helped him—that’s obvious. And now you’re going to help me clear the Grimaldi name.”

He grabbed her chin again, forcing her to look into his soulless eyes, and he smiled as he raised his knee between her legs, spreading them farther apart. “I’ll interrogate you myself before I hand you over to Rickle,” he murmured. “We’ll have a very good time.”

The horror of his promise fell down around her like a heavy cloak, covering the world with dread. Lucia fought back a scream.

“You’ll regret this,” she said. “I promise you.”

“I very much doubt that, Miss Lyselle.” Grimaldi grinned at her. His hand left her face and traveled down her neck to grab a handful of her breast. “Will you come for me the way you came for him?” he murmured. “Will you scream so prettily if I make you bleed?”

Lucia closed her eyes. It was all she could do, as she was locked in his grip, unable to move, with no one to help her. All she had was the ability to fold in upon herself, to hide herself deep inside, where no one could reach her. Silently she thanked her grandmother for this skill, thanked even Cesare for showing her how dangerous it was to let people in. And so Lucia closed her eyes.

Which is why she didn’t see what took Grimaldi.

There was a rush of air, a snarl, the crunch of crushed bone, Grimaldi’s fine fingernails dragging across her chin, and suddenly no oppressive weight leaning against her, no heat from another body, no hands on her wrists. It was like he’d simply disappeared. She was free.

There was another explosion.

Lucia opened her eyes, stunned, more disoriented now than ever. Even amidst the great hiss of the burning, bubbling, exploding amberwine still, she heard the sounds curling out of the blackness at the other end of the alley: animal growling over the wet smack of tearing flesh, Grimaldi’s panicked cries, the clang of metal on stone. She looked, almost incredulous, not quite believing this turn of events, but couldn’t quite make out whatever it was that churned in the blackness. She had the overall impression of something spinning violently, of some sort of whirlwind of teeth and claws, and at its center, the occasional glint of metal in the thin moonlight, already darkened with blood.

“Who’s there?” she said, feeling incredibly stupid. Nothing answered. Just the grunting snorts of a struggle, moving farther and farther away from her, down the other end of the alley, and around the corner.

She chased it.

Even later, she wouldn’t know precisely why she had done it. She should have fled. Any sane person would have fled, would have taken the opportunity to escape and retrieve the one remaining bottle of the Duke’s Blend. But instead, Lucia Lyselle followed the cyclone of violence and blood that spun ceaselessly away from her, as though she were drawn by some invisible thread, slowly picking up speed until she burst forth from the other side of the alley onto Nuelle Avenue at a full run, and ran right into the wide, round body of Captain Rickle.

“Who’s this?” Rickle said, managing to get one meaty paw around Lucia’s elbow, yanking her back to his side.

Lucia glared down the street in furious silence. The tether pulled on her, but she couldn’t see beyond the torchlight of Rickle’s men.

“You two,” Rickle said, pointing to a pair of soldiers, “go down the avenue, find out what that racket was about. The rest of you go on to the fire, see what you can see.”

Lucia twisted and turned, hating Rickle for chuckling at her, but afraid to be alone with him. She couldn’t afford to be discovered.

“And who are you, poppet?” Rickle said as the last of his men clattered down the alley toward Lucia’s burning house. He brought her face close to his swollen, red nose and squinted. “Who are you, to be running away from the Lyselle house while it burns to the ground, hmm?”

“I don’t know about the fire, sir,” Lucia improvised, surprised to hear the words coming from her in a remembered imitation of Remy’s speech. “I swear. I was with a customer down the alley when something attacked. I don’t know about a fire, I promise.”

She looked up at him with what she hoped passed for fearful innocence, or as innocent as a prostitute could be. The fear was real.

Rickle looked down at her transparent, ruined dress. “That’s a fine getup for a common whore,” he finally said. “And I’ve never known any sane man to pay during Bacchanal.”

“I don’t know if he was sane, sir,” she said. “But I couldn’t turn down business during Bacchanal. Please, you’re hurting me.” Lucia’s arm had begun to throb where Rickle’s fat fingers dug into her flesh.

“What attacked you?”