Chapter 124: Discussion

"Now do you want to tell me what the hell you were doing?!"

My voice cracked across the empty road, much louder than a man should be after killing a captain. I was shouting at Arthur.

I knew it was unfair.

I knew he had not asked to be dragged through the dark by a man who breathed fire. But the fear had to go somewhere, and he was the only target in range.

Arthur sat in the dust with his knees pulled up, rubbing his wrists where the ropes had cut in. He looked terrible.

His shirt was torn at the collar, his blond hair was matted with dirt and dried blood, and a deep, ragged scar ran down across his left eye, from the brow to the cheekbone. It was a fresh one. The eye beneath it was swollen shut, and the skin around it had already turned a dark, angry purple.

I looked at it for a moment longer than I meant to.

’He might never open that eye again,’ I thought.

Arthur squinted up at me with the one eye that still worked. His expression was blank, then wary. "Who the hell are you?"

I blinked. Then I remembered the beard, the thick nose, the long pointed ears and the thin, elegant eyebrows. A bearded stranger had just butchered a captain in front of him and was now standing over him with a bloody dagger.

"Pfft." The laugh escaped before I could stop it. "I’m Edmund, you idiot."

"Edmund?"

"I used one of Lee’s Gifts. It splits my consciousness into two halves, and it lets one of them change face." I tapped the ear. "The other half is up on the balcony, being Peter, and being innocent."

"Hmm."

Arthur let out a long breath and shook his head, the kind of sigh that came from somewhere deep and tired. I recognized it.

"I was only out to find some food," he said. "I was careful. I swear, I was careful. But he was already waiting. It was an ambush, and it was ready for me." He frowned at the dirt. "He looked like he already knew. Like he had been told I would be there."

My stomach tightened.

’Like he already knew.’

I did not say anything.The ropes around his chest were not ordinary rope.

They shimmered faintly, a thin, bluish glow that pulsed in time with Rashford’s fading Core.

Spiritual ropes.

They would have held a Fighter for hours. I slid Fury’s black edge under the first loop and it parted like wet paper, then the second, then the third, and the glow died as each one fell.

Arthur flexed his shoulders and winced. He pushed himself to his feet with a grunt, swaying a little, then straightened.

"So," he said. "What’s happening now?"

It was such an Arthur question. The man had nearly been killed, he had a ruined eye and a blood-soaked collar, and he was already looking forward.

I wiped Fury on my sleeve. "I have some control over the economy now. I’ve made more than six hundred coins."

"Six hundred?" His good eye widened. "Already?"

"Already."

"So stage two is almost completed." He rubbed his chin, thinking. "What about stage three?"

I nodded at the question. Stage three was the part I had been turning over in my mind every night for the past week. It was the part I had not told anyone yet, because it only made sense if everything before it had worked.

"Stage three," I said, "is causing rivalry between Culex’s captains."

"Rivalry."

I looked toward the palace. "Culex will need to name a new captain now. If I have a connection to whoever he picks, that is where it begins. It could be easy. Or it could be impossible. I don’t know yet."

"A new captain." Arthur said the words slowly, tasting them. His brow furrowed, then he paused. "Wh... wait. Don’t tell me."

He turned his head and stared at the shape lying in the dust a few feet away.

"This guy was a captain?"

"Yes."

"A captain. Of Culex’s army."

"Yes."

"And you killed him. With a dagger and a sword. In forty seconds."

"It was a little longer than that."

Arthur opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again.

No sound came out.

I looked away.

"Stage three will take time," I said, more gently than before. "A lot of it. In the meantime, you all need to train. I mean it. Look at you. You got caught and tied up by one of these guys."

"Hey," Arthur said, and some of his old color returned. "I was caught by surprise, man. There was nothing I could do."

"Then you should be stronger than surprise." I did not mean it harshly. "Train. Hunt beasts every day, even small ones. Learn skills. Get Gifts. Anything that makes you less easy to carry."

He stared at me. Then, slowly, he nodded. His jaw set, and for the first time that night I saw something in his face that was not shock. It was resolve.

"Alright," he said. "I’ll tell the others."

"Good."

I turned toward the body. It lay on its back in the dust, one arm spread wide and the other still pinned by a wound that had stopped bleeding.

A captain’s body, forty-five feet from the palace wall. Someone on a patrol would find it in sometime, and I was already trying to decide how to move it without being seen, how far I could drag it with my power nearly spent, and whether the swamp would keep a secret long enough.

"I’ll take care of it," Arthur said.

I looked at him.

"The body." He was not looking at me. He was looking at Rashford, with his one good eye, and his face had gone very still. "I’ll take care of it. You can’t be seen out here, and you can’t carry him. Your other half is up there, right? Let him be asleep."

"Arthur, you’re hurt."

"I am." He shrugged, and winced, and did it anyway. "But I have vines. The swamp is right there, and it is deep. Nobody is going to look for him in it." He finally met my gaze. "You came all the way down here for me, Edmund. You turned into a stranger and set yourself on fire for me. Let me do one thing."

I opened my mouth to refuse.

I did not.

There was no clean argument against it. It was the best idea in the world, and it was also a terrible one, because it meant that someone else’s hands would be dirty for my plan.

It meant that Arthur, the cheerful one, the one I had promised myself I would keep out of this, was about to step across a line I had drawn.

And I was going to let him.

’Remember this,’ a small voice said in the back of my head. ’You let him.’

"Alright," I said quietly. "Thank you."

"Don’t mention it." He gave me a crooked grin, lopsided on the ruined side of his face. "Be careful. Go be Peter."

He raised his hand, and green light bled out of his palm. Vines unfurled from the dead grass, thick and dark and wet, creeping across the road like slow snakes.

They wrapped around Rashford’s wrists and his ankles and the black hilt in his arm. They tugged, and he began to slide across the dust toward the swamp.

I turned away.

I held up my wrist. The bracelet warmed, and the Moon’s Door opened in front of me.

I stepped through.

The cold of the road vanished. The wind on my face changed. For one dizzy heartbeat I was in two places, standing in the dust and standing on the balcony, a thin, silver thread pulling the two of me together. Then the thread snapped tight.

Memories rushed in from both sides. The fire and the fear. The sound of fists against bone. The look in Rashford’s eyes. The weight of Arthur’s wrists. The sight of green vines crawling over a dead man’s boots.

They slid into place beside Peter’s quiet night on the balcony, the damp stone under his elbows and the wind in his hair, and the two lives settled into one like two coins dropped in the same pocket.

I opened my eyes.

I was alone on the balcony, with the railing under my palms, my face smooth and my single star gleaming on my chest. The torches below were still burning low. Nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

’Two,’ I thought. ’Quinn and Rashford.’

I did not have to count. I counted anyway. It made me feel a little better, and then it made me feel a little worse.