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Esma Boyle is very drunk. Esma Boyle is very happy.
This is, Waverly gathers, the general state of all of Dunwall Tower. Public period of mourning be damned. It confirms all her suspicions. And so she ignores the fume of wine and makes her smile wide and her eyes bright and leans into her sister, all eagerness. Esma is far too drunk to notice the glint in Waverly’s eye, but this is ordinary; what’s not so ordinary is that Waverly is far too intent to truly worry about the dangerous tilt of Esma’s glass and the bother of getting winestains out of silken upholstery. As long as her older sister keeps talking, it will be worth it.
“I swear, Sis, you wouldn’t believe they were grieving.” Esma titters. It’s interrupted by a hiccup. She’s sprawled off-kilter on the couch, looking slightly rumpled, and Waverly is quick to note that her collar is askew and there’s a bite-mark there that wasn’t this morning. “It’s all so hilarious to catch them smiling when they think no one’s looking,” she goes on, voice thick with relish. “Campbell barely even tries to hide it. The toad. He must have truly hated her.”
“And Hiram?” Waverly presses. “How’s he taking it?”
Her sister lights up as if she’s turned into a star. There are only a few things that can transform Esma Boyle’s face like this, and most of them have to do with money or jewelry or liquor or the kisses of men. Waverly has learned to read the variations in her smiles. This one, she can tell, is the one that only comes after very good sex.
It turns out that Hiram Burrows is very happy.
Her suspicions are confirmed ten times over.
She turns the conversation (with careful suggestions, with time, with another glass of wine in her sister’s hand) towards Corvo Attano and the blood that stains the Tower’s stones. And this is when Esma begins to laugh. Little delicate things that have her covering her mouth and bending double. “He didn’t – Hiram says – oh, but I can’t say, I promised not to tell – ”
“You can tell me. Please? I always keep your secrets, don’t I?”
And so she tells her. Laughing all the while.
“Hiram planned it all,” Esma gushes. “That clever, wicked man. Isn’t it perfectly awful? I think I could love him, just for that.”
She tells.
That Corvo wasn’t the one to kill the Empress.
That the sword that stabbed straight through her was held by a hired man named Daud.
That Hiram is angry with this man, now. Something about conspirators and further targets. Something about payment, about guilt, about Daud backing out, about Daud losing his nerve. Daud, is the name Esma gives over and over. Such an odd name. Daud, Daud.
“Oops. I shouldn’t have told you all that, shouldn’t I –”
The rest ends in a shriek as Waverly leans forward, snatches the glass from her sister’s hand, and gives her a brisk, sharp slap across the face.
“No.” Waverly’s voice is perfectly level and perfectly cold. “You shouldn’t have. Outsider’s Eyes, Esma, how many times? You talk when you drink. This has got to stop. Come.”
“I –“ Her sister presses a hand to her cheek. Her eyes are unfocused and wide. “You – but you asked -!”
“Come.”
Waverly offers her arm, and Esma takes it after a moment’s hesitation, and she pulls her older sister to her feet. Esma’s heels clack, unsteady, all the way up the stairs as she leads her to her room. Waverly gets her water, smoothes her hair, tucks her in bed, snaps at the maids about cleaning the winestains from her clothing. Ties up loose ends, as ever.
Even though it is late, she orders one of the maids to bring her coffee. Black. Lots of sugar. She drinks it alone in her room, her door closed so that Esma will think she’s gone to bed. She does not turn on the lamps. She likes the shadow.
The sky viewed through Waverly’s bedroom windows is perfectly dark. No hint of color; certainly no hint of bloody sunset red. She cannot see Dunwall Tower at all, but that does not mean it is not there. It does not mean that the city’s plots cease turning.
There will be a long interregnum, Waverly knows. There will be noble blood on the streets before this is done. The fact that Burrows sits upon his victim’s throne in place of her missing daughter means that there are many men in many factions who are setting up the pieces for a dark and dangerous game. There will be coups and rebellions and careful assassinations. And when the game is done and the score is tallied, as ever, Waverly will ensure that the three Ladies Boyle come out on the winning side.
This is what she always does. It is expected of her. It is nothing new.
Waverly paces the floor of her room, back and forth, eyes flicking to the window as if she can see the Tower in the distance and see the way that all the cogs are turning. She tilts her cup to get at the last of the dregs, heavy with sugar. Black and potent as things pulled from the depths of the sea.
The men will lie and plot and scheme, and the women must do so as well. But Esma is too infatuated with the glitter of society and the glint of light on a crystal glass of champagne, the diamonds on an extended suitor’s hand. Lydia is too curled around her music, pouring herself into the ivory and wood of the harpsichord rather than things of material worth. They both cast their own light. They have no patience for the shadow, for the bitter in a cup as well as the sweet, for the breath before the pieces move into play.
Her sisters plan and plot and scheme, but their plans are petty and serve only themselves. And the black dregs of familial ambition that are left to Waverly contain no sugar at all.
That will change.
Waverly does not sleep that night. It’s nearly dawn when she hears the front door click open and closed, the clack of heels on the floor again, a woman singing under her breath. Lydia. Fresh from her tryst with that dashing ex-Overseer she’s so fascinated by – Martin, his name was. Waverly nods to herself in the dark.
The Ladies Boyle must play by the rules of the game if they wish to win; and these rules are rules of alliances. Of fawning and demurring and manipulating the wills of men. Esma has allied herself with the Lord Regent and the rising regime. Lydia, if Waverly has read her rumors right, has allied herself with a man who seeks to supplant it. This is well and good.
There is the possibility, of course, that Burrows and these new conspirators both will fail.
And if that happens, Waverly must ally herself with the side who will survive them all.
*****
She does her research, and quizzes her maids (and fires the ones who look askance at too many questions), studies wanted posters and plumbs the rumors swirling around the bathhouses and concert halls and other watering holes of the wealthy. And just over a month later, nearly two after the Empress’s death, Waverly Boyle sets out for the Flooded District. She wears a suit of daring red under a nondescript coat, military cut and tailored to her curves. It suggests ambition. It suggests a lovely war. Her hat is angled to hide her face and she holds a pouch of sweet herbs to her nose. It is partially to hide her face from passers-by. It is mostly to hide the smell.
There are reasons that her ilk do not venture to this part of the city. Such a shame. It was a very respectable neighborhood before the river came rushing in.
She is stopped after only a moment. The men wear masks that hide their faces, and Waverly can study her reflection in the mirrored surfaces of their eyes and check one last time to make sure that everything is just right. “I need to speak to Daud,” she commands.
And she does not take no for an answer.
They take her in by boat. The masked man who pilots them keeps looking back at her, and she doesn’t need to see his face to see all the questions on his tongue. Waverly studies the oar that he uses to pole them through the water and the wreckage and considers making genteel jokes about its length.
She is led up sagging stairs and through dark wood-paneled halls to the threshold of an office that is richer than she would expect, and she is told to wait outside the door. The panels of glass in this door are flawed, warped, and so when she looks inside she can only see shapes. Smears of color. The man she has come to see is the only smear that is a vibrant red. Near the exact shade that she’s wearing. Waverly is not a woman to believe in omens; but she takes it as such.
“Lady Boyle has come to speak with you, Sir,” says the Whaler who brought her in. Muffled through mask and glass door.
“Which one?”
Waverly grins against her hand. Most men barely care.
They let her in.
Daud is not a tall man. Waverly finds herself looking up regardless. Her eyes find the scar on the side of his face, trace downwards, flick back up to observe the way his are doing the same. It puts her in mind of cats, circling. She lifts her chin and takes off her hat to free her golden hair, sets it on the corner of a desk with a motion that is deliberate and deliberately casual.
I mean to stay awhile.
Proper introductions are made, then. Pleasantries. And then all the masked men leave, and Waverly Boyle is alone with the Empress’s assassin.
She cannot help but grin.
“You’re amused.” Daud’s voice is flat. No polish. He goes to a cabinet and gets scotch and a pair of glasses, and the motions are efficient and sharp as the rest of him. “Why?”
“I’m only imagining what my sisters would say if they knew I was here.”
“You’re not sorry about going behind their backs? No. Of course not.” A bark of a laugh. “So. Say your piece.”
In answer, Waverly tilts her head. Daud follows her gaze to the map on the wall. It is a map of Dunwall tower. There are infiltration plans scrawled across it in an ugly hand. The Empress’s picture is pinned against it, and the word across her face is target.
Duad makes a small noise and hands Waverly her drink. His grip is tight. Leather gloves squeak on glass. She watches the muscles of his throat move as he downs half his own scotch in one swallow. “Don’t bother asking if I killed her.”
“I’m asking,” Waverly replies, “how much of this you drank afterwards.”
“Nothing.”
“No?”
“No. Not at all.” She can hear the gloves creak. “Assassins don’t feel guilt. You said you had a business proposal.”
“There is no point asking, of course, if I’ll be allowed to leave here alive if you don’t accept said proposal.”
“No.” Laugh that scrapes against the air like broken glass. “No.”
Waverly makes herself smile. She takes a rather large sip of the scotch, delighting in the heat all the way down. It is the taste of something delicately and sweetly burning. She may not know spirits as well as her sister, but she can tell it is very, very expensive. “It is so refreshing,” she says, words warmed by drink, “to find a man who is honest.”
And so, they speak.
The room around them is rich. The shelves sag with books. The air and the scotch on Waverly’s tongue both taste of a man who has more money and time than he wishes or knows what to do with. She watches the shifting evening light prism through her glass on the table as she lays out her plans in simple, direct language.
Daud paces behind his desk. He often stops to stare off into the middle distance; it is a pose that looks comfortable for him. He is a man who knows how to pause. This, too, is to her advantage.
“My sister,” she explains at length, “sits at the hand of the Lord Regent. It’s not so hard for me to learn exactly what he is doing. It won’t be so hard, either, to make him do what I tell him.”
“How convenient for you,” says Daud. He keeps her in the corner of his eye, always. “So make him do what you tell him, then. Leave me out of your little plans. I know enough about you Boyle bitches to know you never do a thing for free.”
Waverly nods, once. “Exactly.”
Daud snorts.
Waverly raises her glass in a small and wordless toast. “Have you ever seen a succession crisis before? They happen all the time in noble houses. Eldest son dies in a duel and the entire family turns on itself trying to devour the scraps that are left. It’s hilarious, really, unless you’re part of it. This entire damn Empire will be food for rats unless Burrows can put that little girl on the throne. And after the death of her mother, she must be so alone. Poor thing. So frightened. So impressionable.”
She sees Daud’s eyes flicker, raises an eyebrow. Waits; but the silence grows large, and Waverly sips her scotch with a shrug. “All right, so I won’t ask if you know where she is.”
“Good. I don’t.”
“Burrows clearly knows, though. He wouldn’t be so stupid to orchestrate this if he didn’t plan for that.”
“He’s screwing your sister. I wouldn’t call him smart.”
“I’ll tell her you said that,” she says mildly.
“No you won’t.”
“Mm. Unless it was a comment on all of us?” Waverly does not wait for a reply. “How would you like,” she presses, “to be allowed into the tower? To learn all the Regent’s plans before he knows himself?” She pushes off from the wall where she’s been leaning, walks a few careful steps up to Daud’s desk and rests her hands against the wood. There are papers under her fingers, plans, and Waverly has the distinct impression that if she looks down and begins to read them upside-down she will not be permitted to leave here alive. She does not look down. She keeps her gaze trained on Daud’s. His eyes are studiously, carefully blank, and there must be a reason he’s made them that way. There must.
“Would you like,” she goes on, “to know what the man who hired you is doing?” It is such a little change of words, to man who hired from Regent; such a small thing, and she watches Daud laugh to himself and look away and down. She goes on as if she has not noticed. “You can be privy to all his little plots. Manipulate him to make things better for your little gang. You can –” And she catches herself.
Leans forward across the rich ocean of the desk.
“Would you like,” Waverly asks him, quiet, “to have a say in all the consequences for what you did?”
Daud turns away. The lines of his body are stiff. She watches him go to the bottle of scotch, lift it, hesitate, set it down again with a short and solid thud against the wood. His jaw works. “As I said. What would you get out of this?”
Waverly tries not to smile too much. She has won. “You’re a very dangerous man. In many ways.”
“Don’t flatter me.”
“If I cared to flatter you, you’d know it. I only mean that if Burrows comes tumbling down and if we are all food for rats, you seem a useful one to have on my side.”
“A wildcard up your sleeve.”
“Exactly.”
She can hear the leather of his glove creak as his hand curls into a fist. Waverly tenses, slightly. Fear beats in her throat for the first time; she is very much alone, here, and this is a very dangerous man. Not in the way she’s used to, either, because the fear she tastes is fear for her life. It is a new sensation. She will probably think later (removed from danger) that it was thrilling and lovely.
Her throat works as she watches him turn. Waverly is careful to make sure he can see the way her gaze follows the line of his scar down the line of his body, because there can be no confusion between them about exactly what she wants and what she is proposing. When she looks back up she finds that his eyes are carefully flat and unreadable once again.
“Get out,” says Daud.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, thank you.” She keeps from either sagging or singing in relief, somehow, as she reaches for her hat. Catches his eye once more. “So is that a yes?”
“Out.”
“It’s not a no, though.”
Daud makes a small hiss of a sound and Waverly steps back against the bookcase, startled, because he is suddenly right before her. The man must move incredibly fast; she supposes that she should not be surprised, but that is not important because she has nowhere to go. Daud reaches forward and then catches himself halfway, sharp, dark-gloved hand a few breaths away from the side of her face. There is nothing gentle in the motion. “You,” he murmurs, “are playing a stupidly dangerous game.”
Waverly smirks up at him. Yes, she thinks, even as her heart hammers hard in her throat with the lovely taste of fear. Of course, yes.
“That is,” she tells him, “the only sort of game worth playing.”
She leaves the Flooded District a moment later to the sound of a slamming glass door still echoing in the air. The Whaler who poles their boat through the wreckage keeps looking at her as if he can will her to tell everything by his gaze alone; Waverly has to dig her nails into her palm and bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud in joy.
*****
There comes no word from him for months. This is, Waverly thinks, to be expected. Daud is clearly like her and knows how to plan, to linger, to stay in the shadows until the moment is right. The silence is disappointing all the same.
She plays her games. She spins her lesser plots. She keeps her ears pricked for rumors as she calls on all the appropriate families. When she visits them, sometimes, she has her carriage stop by the walls that are papered with wanted posters of Daud’s face. She pauses to read these posters, noting the way that the wording changes after a month or so as the Regent’s frustration with the man grows. Sometimes she tears the posters down.
Sometimes she does not.
She orchestrates the schedules of her sisters, as well, so that Esma keeps an ear pricked for any movements in the Tower and Lydia spends her days at the Abbey listening to Campbell even as she spends her nights with that heretical rebel Martin. Neither one complains at all. Esma is only too happy to spend more time with Burrows and Sokolov’s wondrous ideas and the spotlight she craves. Lydia, too, is only too happy to spend time with men who know music. She lectures her sisters at night on the glories of a seventeen-point scale.
Waverly, for her part, calls on the Pendletons. The twins are off whoring somewhere and so it is Treavor who receives her. He is looking more pale and nervous and twitchy than ever, and Waverly does her best not to wince. “Don’t tell me,” she insists before she even sits down, “that you’re still spreading that dreadful rumor that I slept with you.”
It is like kicking a puppy. She supposes she should feel sorry. She doesn’t.
She keeps Treavor cringing and defensive throughout the visit by asking him about his brothers rather than himself, keeping her talk casual and noting the scorn he heaps upon them. Her suspicions are, of course, confirmed once again; and she gives him a smile and a sudden and slightly suggestive kiss on the hand before she leaves. In the carriage, she carefully blots her lips.
She knows where he stands, then.
She knows where everyone in this city stands – except a man in the Flooded District who is pointedly and maddeningly not taking a stance at all.
*****
Everyone agrees that Corvo Attano’s execution is horrible. The man looks far too much like a filthy vagrant, not the dashing devious monster they are expecting. It’s a point against Burrows. If the Regent had really wanted the proper image (Waverly sniffs, crossing her arms and whispering in another lady’s ear just loud enough to be heard over the pealing of bells), he should have at least thought to give Corvo a bath.
There is a celebratory party at Dunwall Tower afterwards. The tone is slightly desperate. The streamers are slightly too bright and the band plays with far too much enthusiasm for anyone to mistake it for joy. Esma, of course, is blazing on the Regent’s arm and does not seem to care. Lydia cares too much; her melancholy is obvious. Waverly has half a mind to slap her in full view of all the guests. She suspects that Corvo was somehow vital to that man Martin’s plans – whatever they were – but it does not do very well for Lydia to show it.
Waverly restrains herself from slapping her sister. She drinks rather too much. It is not her fault that Burrows, for all his failings, has excellent taste in wine (she begins to understand Esma’s position a bit better). She keeps a glass of wine in her hand and she smiles all the proper smiles, and during the dinner she drives a fork into her leg under the table to keep from screaming at the entire court that they’re all miserable basckstabbing snakes and doesn’t it ever get tiresome. The glass empties. The glass fills. The room is a pleasant blur around her by the time she realizes that the expression on her face is half a sneer; that Lydia is shooting her significant looks across the room.
Ah.
She’s being scornful again. Publicly. It won’t do.
Waverly charms her way past a guard and shuts the door behind her. Leans against a wall. She is surprisingly grateful for its solidity. The noise from the party goes on outside, muffled and jarringly bright.
Lying, scheming snakes, all of them.
She’s grateful for it, though. She would never be able to manipulate anything less.
This would be a perfect opportunity to snoop, normally, to see where Burrows keeps all his dirty secrets. But she’s had a bit too much to drink for that (and she lives with one of his dirty secrets, and she does not wish to know that much about her sister). Waverly wanders, away from the noise, smiling at the guards she passes. She has received at least ten different directions toward the washroom by the time she’s high enough in the tower to shake them off.
The door high at the top of a staircase is ajar.
She creeps up and pushes it open.
Waverly never had occasion to be inside the room that used to be Jessamine’s and now belongs to Burrows; but Esma has told her of it often enough. This one, she suspects, is smaller. There is no question who it belongs to, not with the drawings on the walls and the cluster of dusty stuffed animals on the bed. It has been six months since the little lady disappeared, and nothing has been changed.
“Poor girl,” she mutters to herself.
There comes a noise from the corner behind the door and Waverly presses a hand to her mouth to keep from shrieking as she grabs at the wall for balance.
Daud’s red coat is very out of place in the soft light of the room. He’s got a rat cupped in his left hand, white against black glove, and he strokes a fingertip along its back to keep it calm. Waverly recoils, shock giving way to disgust. Daud doesn’t seem to care. “Why poor girl?” he asks. It’s harsh. “Because she probably misses her mother? Or because she has no idea that people like you want to use her as a puppet?”
Waverly gapes at him. Searches for words, falls back on the simple ideas and waspish tone she uses with her sisters. “Not puppetry,” she retorts. Still leaning hard against the wall. “That little girl is the Empire, and the men and women who influence her will come out on the winning side.”
“Women, hm. Yes.” He laughs. The rat gives a startled squeak and tries to run up his arm. “And you will win.”
“I always do.” Waverly swallows hard. She’s not swaying. She’s not. It’s pride on her voice, not bitterness, it’s not, it’s not. “Always.”
Daud nods, once. Does not respond. The silence is very heavy and very loud, and Waverly is horrified by the way she can’t think of anything to say. It’s the rat in his hand, she decides. Awful creature. She can’t believe he dares hold it, can’t believe it’s not biting him. It’s the awful rat and the fact that the man is radiating such tension. She fears that the wrong word will snap something in the room. Probably her.
“Did you know,” he says at last, “Corvo wasn’t supposed to take the fall for me? He got back two days early. Burrows gave me a bonus for ‘quick thinking’ and ‘added danger.’ Said something about Corvo just being the right man at the wrong time.”
Waverly casts about for a reply. She can’t find one that doesn’t sound stupid. The wine and the sight of that rat are making her tongue clumsy. “You were at the execution?”
“Yes. Foolishly. I can get in to wherever I want.”
“Cleary.” She tries to collect herself, tries to keep the room from tilting too much. There is a sinking, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach that has absolutely nothing to do with the wine and more with seeing one of her precious aces in the hole turn out to be nothing. “I didn’t know you could get back inside the Tower.”
Daud laughs. “Go back downstairs, Miss Boyle. One of your little noble lapdogs is probably missing you.”
“You’re drunk.”
“No. I should be.” A smile curves at the corner of his mouth as he looks down to scratch the white rat behind the ears. It holds nothing of humor. “You are, though. We can rediscuss the terms of your proposal when you are sober.”
And Waverly suddenly finds herself alone in the room. Just her, and a white rat that scuttles its way across the floor and into a vent and out of sight.
*****
“Have you thought about tutors?” she asks.
Burrows puts the saucer down with a loud clink and raises an eyebrow at her. “I’ve thought about finding her,” he complains. “Lady Emily must be returned to the throne safely. The rest is immaterial.”
“Oh, don’t insult me, Hiram.” Waverly tucks her hair behind her ear and laces her fingers together again. “At least not anymore than you already have, choosing my sister over me. I’m not sure what you see in her. But each to his own. No, you wouldn’t be comfortable throwing balls for Corvo’s execution if you didn’t know where she was.”
She watches the Lord Regent’s nostrils flare.
“You’re a very excellent liar,” Waverly assures him gently. “It’s just that my sister likes to talk.”
“What do you want?”
“Allow Esma to tutor the girl in courtly etiquette. She’s at the Tower often enough already, it’ll be a convenient excuse to keep her even closer.” Waverly shrugs. “I can probably convince Lydia to teach her the harpsichord, if you want. Might as well.”
“And you?”
“Me?” She gives a soft laugh. Hopefully it will mask how bitter the next words taste. “I have nothing worth teaching. My business is all accounting and bookkeeping and…” Her nose wrinkles. Bitter, bitter, bitter. “Keeping things afloat. Not something a poor young girl will ever need.”
“No,” agrees Burrrows with a shake of his head, “it isn’t.”
Ah.
*****
Waverly returns home to find Lydia crumpled in a helpless heap just inside the great front doors of the manor, the maids all clustered around her in a startled circle. She shuts the door behind her with a click and stands there for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose. This is not what she needs right now. “Oh, for the love of…”
Lydia gives a great sob that shakes her frame.
“Out.” Waverly snaps her fingers and glares at the maids. “Get out. All of you, out!” She watches them scatter, memorizing faces. She will need to fire them later tonight. All of them. This is not something that should be seen. As soon as they are gone she drops to the floor next to her sister, touches two fingers under her chin to get her to lift her head. Lydia’s makeup is an utter loss and Waverly gives a long sigh as she begins to dab at it with a handkerchief, wiping away tears and smeared rouge both. She makes her voice soft. “What happened?”
“Martin,” her older sister manages.
“Ah.” Waverly nods, once. Briskly wipes her cheek. “Dead?”
Lydia shakes her head and explains, in between shaky gasps for breath. Captured, not dead. Captured by his fellow Overseers and horribly wounded in his escape and likely bleeding out somewhere, being fitted for canes and eyepatches, but not dead. Not quite. Waverly strokes her sister’s hair. “It was always a possibility,” she murmurs. Her voice is reasonable. “With what he was involved in –”
“Is!”
“Is,” she agrees. “It’s always a possibility.” A sigh. “I should smack you for being so emotional about it. I swear I’m the only one with sense in this family, sometimes.”
Lydia winces, closes her eyes. “Bitch.”
“Yes. Come on, get up.” Waverly pulls her sister to her feet. “Honestly. Both of you. Always getting so attached to men. It should be the other way around.”
“Heartless little bitch,” Lydia mutters weakly as she’s led up the stairs.
The insult is so common that it doesn’t even hurt anymore.
*****
Waverly can see that Lydia is holding a thank you on the tip of her tongue all through breakfast. It never quite makes it out of her mouth. And then the rest of the day is spent in a flurry of preparations for the party that night, and the moment is long since gone.
It is not (Waverly tells herself, fiercely, fitting a black mask over her face in the mirror so that she is indistinguishable from the two women who are in reality so different) a party to cheer up her sister. It is a party to cheer up the entire nobility. Defiance in the face of the plague. A spit in the eye of the long interregnum. Things like that. No. Nothing so personal as cheering up her sister.
It never is.
It is also – by all measures – a roaring success.
The manor is utterly resplendent. Her sisters are even more so. Waverly moves through a swirl of confetti and laughter and light, listening to Esma hold court in a circle of admirers and Lydia hang on the words of a young Overseer with handheld organ in his arms. There are even some admirers for Waverly – men and women who follow in her wake, who do not realize she is not one of her more radiant sisters. She greets all the guests warmly, takes their hands, thanks them for coming. When she nods her head, they doubtless think she is smiling behind the mask. It is all so very lovely.
Elaborate masks mean that it is difficult for the guests to get even half as drunk as normal. The conversation remains sober. Sometimes even intelligent. This is lovely, too.
Waverly amuses herself by taking inventory of the masks on her fellow liars’ faces, taking note of which monstrous beasts are accurate and which ones are not. The whale, she finds, is quite amusing. The giant baby, quite disturbing. The wolf-head mask on Lord Shaw is probably the most eerily appropriate of the night.
(In truth, that title would go to Brisby, but Waverly endeavors not to notice him at all; she keeps walking at a brisk pace throughout the manor so that he will never catch her in a corner and lean his empty-eyed mask too close to her face)
The night moves on. The guests swirl throughout the mansion. She finds herself alone for a moment in an empty room, the party having moved beyond her – not even Brisby is around, having latched onto one of her sisters. It is just her. A white rat darts across the floor and vanishes into the vent that leads into the storage closet that houses the mechanism for the new Wall of Light.
She half-imagines, just under the cheerful din of revelry, that she hears a puff of air displacing. Waverly’s eyes narrow behind her mask.
She is hardly surprised when she shuts the closet door behind her and turns to find Daud leaning against the wall.
“You’re not wearing a mask,” she accuses, arms crossed. “Shame on you. Spoiling my party.”
“I can’t spoil it if I’m not seen.” His eyes narrow. “Why are you in black?”
“Lydia insisted on passionate red and Esma thought it would be dreadfully ironic to wear white. Why?”
“You shouldn’t be wearing black.”
There is such an odd note to his voice.
Waverly cocks her head. The light from the buzzing whale-oil tank on the wall is blue and throws shadows into sharp relief. It doesn’t seem to work the way proper light does; it swirls like water-ripples, does funny things to Daud’s face, makes him look skeletal, ghoulish. It’s fitting for the Empress’s assassin. He wouldn’t look out of place in a skull-mask, Waverly thinks, though it would be exceptionally bad taste.
She can hear music from outside. Applause. Evidently Lydia has tired of the charade long enough to put on a performance. The guests will know who all the Boyle sisters are, soon enough.
“I spoke to Burrows,” says Waverly quietly. “It’s quite obvious that he knows where Emily is. He’s just waiting to trot her out at the right moment.”
Daud shrugs. “I know where she is.”
“Oh? What changed?”
Another, larger, loose shrug. “Some superstitious ladies at the Golden Cat can be made to talk. When you show the right –” A glance down at a black glove. “Hand.”
“Ah.” Waverly considers. It is not that this news bothers her in the slightest, though of course she must pretend that it does. She takes a sharp breath through her nose. “And how do you find the…ladies…at the Golden Cat?”
“Satisfactory.”
“Do you.”
“Take off your mask.”
“What, and spoil the game?”
The door rattles against her back. She hopes that no outside notices. Waverly tilts up her head and keeps quite still as Daud works his fingers under the chin of her mask and carefully prizes it up, divests her of mask and ridiculous hat in one motion. “There,” he mutters. His eyes are very dark. She watches them sweep over her face, her golden hair, as if assuring himself of something. “Of all the colors you could wear.”
“That truly bothered you.”
“The last time I was this close to a woman in a black suit –” He breaks off, glances down. The music outside swells, lessens. “You were saying.”
There is fear in Waverly’s throat, again, and her body wants to press itself against the body of the man who is pressing her so chastely to the wall, and so she does not move. “Burrows never intends for Emily to rule,” she murmurs. Draws a thin breath. “He hinted as much. He’ll trot her out and then keep the throne for himself.”
“He’ll lose it in a year.” Daud makes a small annoyed sound and releases her. “Might as well throw the entire Empire to the rats now and be done with it. You haven’t heard what the poor are saying.”
“No, I haven’t.” She can guess well enough, though. Contempt breeds contempt. Walls of Light must one day be met with torches and pitchforks. Such are the rules of the game. Waverly straightens her hair, eyes glittering and hard. “The only thing that can keep them in check for Burrows,” she says, “is fear of something more dangerous.”
Daud looks up.
“You are,” adds Waverly, “a very dangerous man.”
“I would need to know what Burrows is doing,” he says flatly. “I would need new policies on the City Watch. Limits set on Overseers. That sort of thing.”
“What do you think I’ve been offering you?” It is Waverly’s turn to back him against the wall. Carefully, carefully, using only the potential of her body rather than the press of it, her smile small and careful and slow. “The city can’t survive another succession crisis. Let Burrows rule behind his Empress. He’ll need help. We’ll give it to him. Secretly, of course. I pull the strings up high. I give your little gang control over whatever districts you want, lax laws, whatever it is you need. You give me peaceful streets and years of Burrows in power. The man can bumble along as he likes. He’s very predictable, it shouldn’t be too hard.”
“You’re forgetting about the plague.”
“Everyone’s forgetting about the plague. We’re not at a disadvantage.” Her smile widens. “As I said – you just give me peaceful streets. Keep the riots down. Terrify the populace, murder them all, I don’t care how you do it.”
Amusement flickers in Daud’s dark eyes. “I’m no sorcerer. You’re expecting magic.”
“You assassinated the Empress at her home under the nose of her Lord Protector,” says Waverly quietly. It’s almost inaudible over the music outside. “I’d expect nothing less. It’s fine if there’s some unrest, of course. We can’t have Burrows in power forever.”
Waverly doesn’t realize she’s grinning until she feels the brush of Daud’s thumb on her cheek. The leather is quite cool. Gone almost as quick as her intake of breath. “And?”
“And.” She tries to gather herself. Can’t, not quite. “Well.”
“Listen to you.” His voice is a rasp. “You’re just like the rest of them. You’re still a child. All you want is power.”
Her lip curls. She draws back. “I am nothing like –”
She is not sure if she means to catch his face with her hand or to strike him. She supposes it makes no difference. He catches her wrist in a bruising grip, and Waverly is not surprised to find that this man is incredibly strong. She couldn’t free her hand if she tried. He freezes her there, hand level with their eyes, and Waverly’s breath hisses out over her lips. Chills prickle all over her skin.
The music outside thunders on.
“Fine then,” says Daud quietly. “Keep your illusions. Outsider knows I have mine.”
He releases her.
And he has not allowed her to follow the line of his scar with her fingertips. So she follows it with her lips.
Daud lets out all his breath in a warm rush as her lips find his temple and trace down. She takes her time. Skips over his eye and brushes her mouth over the skin underneath, not quite a kiss. She wonders if lightly and delicately licking the rest of the way down would be obvious, vulgar.
She does it anyway.
They are, both of them, very honest men.
Women.
Damn it all.
“If I were a romantic sort of woman,” she murmurs against the line of his jaw, “I would ask if you got this in a duel for another.”
His hand is curled tight around her collar, her hair that’s falling loose tangling and catching on his gloves. “Lucky for me that you’re not.”
“No. I’m not my sisters. Most men don’t realize that.” Which one? he’d asked when they’d first announced her. Waverly hides her smile with a nip at his skin. “I’m not jealous, either.”
“But you are possessive.”
“Hm, yes.” She wonders if she will leave marks. The grip around her collar tightens.
“And stupidly ambitious.”
“Yes.”
She tries a bite, and Daud’s breath catches and he drags her away. His eyes are dilated. Dark. “And cruel.”
“That,” she purrs, “is the only sort of game worth playing.”
She is not sure which of them moves. She only knows that she gives a laugh against his mouth that turns into a rough pleased sort of whine as he grabs both her wrists in cool-gloved hands to keep her from pulling him too close; that if he is boorish enough to actually say ‘shut up’ she will slap him, she truly will. That his mouth, for some reason that her fogged mind can’t understand, tastes like smoke. Entirely too hot. Blazing. That this is a battle, too. This is her favorite kind of game. She catches Daud’s lower lip between and rolls it, lightly, delighting in the sound he makes, in the way he kisses her mouth open and drags her forward by the wrists until it is both of them pressing him to the wall. Their bodies are held stiff and the points at which they meet are all fire; and this is not so much a kiss at all, no, it is more a frighteningly savage sort of seal –
Daud breaks away. Shoves her off. Lydia’s music is pounding outside, flurries of notes crashing into each other. Muffled through the door, but still loud. Daud presses both hands to his temples and ignores Waverly’s small indignant sound. “Overseers,” he hisses. It’s a curse.
The pain in his voice is all the explanation she’s getting. Waverly’s throat works and she bites down whatever she was going to say.
He rubs a hand over his mouth, inspects his hand for blood from his lip. Catches her eye. She is mollified, somewhat, by the way his lip curves up in a faint grin; by the way the eerie blue light catches in his eyes and makes them gleam. “Don’t you dare,” he says (before he vanishes with a wince, before a white rat winds around her feet and is gone), “wear black.”
*****
It all goes to the Void after that.
Waverly returns from a social call to find distant smoke in the air from the distant burning Golden Cat, Lydia weeping over her beloved Martin, Esma all aflutter, and the maids – of course – in chaos. It takes a chorus of shouting and consoling, lecturing, cajoling, and screaming to unravel the story. For one word to finally float to the surface: coronation.
Burrows has finally ‘found’ his Empress. It apparently took someone quite literally lighting a fire underneath him for him to do so.
It is about time.
The next three or four days pass in an utter whirl (of shouting and consoling, lecturing and cajoling and screaming). Waverly barely has time to catch her breath. She supposes, for the poor little almost-Empress up in the tower, that it will feel like no time at all; that she will feel as if she’s been rushed from brothel to throne in a matter of mere hours.
Poor thing. Poor innocent, impressionable thing.
It is just that there is so much to be done. So many pieces that must suddenly be put into play.
She finds time, of course, to play her master piece. Waverly shakes Lydia by the shoulder one morning and gently talks her through breakfast. Gently paints her face to mask the signs of grief. Gently and patiently talks her into a carriage on the way to an upstart noblewoman’s house. Lydia returns that night, as Waverly had hoped, with a spot of honest color in her cheeks (it is a tried and tested rule that the Ladies Boyle can always be invigorated by the ruin of another) and a stolen invitation carefully tucked in an inside pocket.
It seems that the upstart noblewoman will not be attending Empress Emily’s coronation.
It seems that someone else will.
Waverly stays up late. She empties a bottle of good Tyvian red, gifts half to Esma, and drinks the rest alone while she writes a note on the back of the invitation. Her handwriting is firm, precise. When she is done she rinses the bottle and rolls the note inside, carefully corks it, and sets out. She gets out of her carriage on the border of the Flooded District and walks until the water laps against her shoes and until she see can see the glitter of gas-masked eyes in the dark, watching. She waves to them. A small gesture. Bends down and releases the bottle, watches it drift away in the dark.
In the interest of honesty and clarity, she had written, I wish to emphasize that both this invitation as well as my previous one are still open.
Signed, your Empress in Black.
*****
The sky viewed through her bedroom window is perfectly dark. No hint of color. It is the night before Emily’s coronation. And just because Waverly cannot see the tower in the distance, that does not mean it is not there and that the wheels and plots cease turning. As ever.
The interregnum is over. The game has just begun.
She sits at her desk and drafts a letter to Burrows, fussing over phrasing, until the whale-oil lamp burns low. The light is blue. Eerie. Waverly knows that the blue is only an illusion and that this light is just as warm as normal light and should not chill her; but she draws her dressing gown close around her all the same.
The gown is silk, jet black, delicately beaded. It is not warm. But nothing of this time is warm.
It is not until she hears footsteps just behind that she realizes that the chill was real. That her window is open, and the wind flows through the room.
She does not turn.
Daud’s footsteps are very light, and his fingers are lighter still. They tuck a lock of golden hair behind her ear before landing on the dark collar of her gown. They stay there. Harsh against the fabric. “What did I tell you about the black?”
Waverly pauses. Takes a slow breath. Dips her pen in in the pot of ink and calmly taps it against the side. “So take it off.”
He does not. His hands land on either arm of her chair as he leans forward. She can see the gloves out of the corner of her eye. “What are you writing?”
“A formal proposal to Burrows and hopefully Parliament.” She carefully scratches out a line, amends it in the margin. “Just a draft. Putting forth the notion that he relax the City Watch patrols after the coronation. I believe the money can be better spent elsewhere. If there’s one thing I’m good at and that the man respects me for, it’s money.”
“More than one thing. I hope.”
Waverly grins in the dark. “Oh, you have no idea. Thankfully, neither does he.”
She can feel the heat of him bent over and behind her even through the back of her chair, and the urge to turn or lean back is strong. She does not. She keeps writing. She feels, rather than hears, Daud shift. He bends to read over her shoulder. Breath stirs her hair. When he speaks, the rough note in his voice seems to hit her somewhere inside the ribs, rasp sweetly down her spine. “Have you mentioned any specific districts?”
“I hadn’t thought.”
He reaches over, taps a spot on the paper. “Here. There’s a gang that controls the Elixir black market. If you can shuffle things enough to give me the Distillery District...”
“I will give you,” says Waverly quietly, “the entire city.”
His mouth finds the bare top of one shoulder where her gown has slid away and stays there, ungentle, stubble scraping over her skin. “That’s not what I want.”
She smiles. Scratches a line of text. Handwriting only slightly shaky. “Half the city.”
“That is not,” Daud repeats, voice low, “what I want.” She can feel each word, and when he sets his mouth against the seam where her shoulder meets her neck Waverly closes her eyes and moans.
Yes. Oh, yes.
She takes a deep breath and forces her eyes open. “A moment.” Her hand shakes on the pen. There’s still a conclusion to write, flourishes, insinuations, formalities. “One moment, I need to…” Another breath. “What, then?”
“Don’t lie.” Words hot against her skin. “You won’t give me the city. I will give it to you, keep it from eating itself. Keep that miserable vulture on the throne while you all scheme. And in return…”
“Yes?”
Her handwriting is a wet scrawl across the page. Shining in the pale blue light.
“That little girl. Her daughter. She’ll be the only thing keeping this entire Empire from going under.” There’s a note in his voice that she could easily read, if only he wasn’t pressed so close against the thin back of her chair. “I want you to teach her. Guide her. Keep her from being as stupidly naïve and good as her mother. She’s everything.” Teeth on her skin. “I want you to…”
He trails off and the rest of the words are silent, pressed against her throat and her hair and the skin just above the black collar of her dressing gown. Waverly’s signature is a wide unsteady flourish. She draws a thin breath and gathers herself, calms the fog in her brain enough to recognize the harsh note in his voice, and she smiles a small and secret smile. Begins to stand. “I thought you said that assassins didn’t feel guil-”
Daud’s hands slam down on hers and force them flat and splayed against the desk, sharp and violent, and he kicks the chair away and forces her down and bent over the desk with his body all curved over hers – and if there was any doubt that she’d affected him, with her words and her schemes and the taste of her skin, there isn’t now. Waverly’s breath leaves her in a half-voiced gasp. Her hair falls over her face and his fingers curl around hers. Leather against skin.
The fear in her throat is lovely; and this is such a dangerous, dangerous man.
“Wait,” she gasps. Even as her hips press back and she arches as his hands find her breasts along with the ties of her dressing gown. He bears her down, bent over the ink of the proposal they’ve written, so freshly shining. It is hard to remember how to get the words out. “Wait – the letter – ”
Ink smeared all over the silk of her gown. Ink all over her skin. Their skin. Staining. Black. He’d told her not to wear black.
Daud mutters a curse into her hair and Waverly bites down the whine that wants to form in her throat. No. She sets her jaw. “Not here, damn you –”
He is a killer. She is noble. She is a lady, and he is nothing. He is a thug from the Flooded District, and she cannot have inkstains on her pale and precious skin.
He lets her up.
Waverly turns and shoves him back against the nearby wall. Fits her mouth over his and kisses that damnable grin away from him. The only space between them, now, is the space for her clever, clever fingers as they work at the buttons of his clothing. She finds herself pressing into him and making it difficult just the same. He laughs into her mouth, damn him, damn him. “Wh-what’s that? Too good to be bent over your desk like a common –”
It ends in a groan.
“Yes,” says Waverly, “exactly.”
Daud hisses between his teeth. She takes him in hand, slides a hand down his length just to hear him moan. He winds his fingers in her hair – it catches against his gloves, it hurts – and tries to drag her mouth to his to muffle the sound but Waverly will not let him. Let everyone hear.
Yes, let her sisters hear. They have their lovers, their trysts, their ambitions and schemes. And she has hers. But hers are so much grander and darker and dangerous, so much better.
(It is likely that they will just think it is one of her servant boys, and not the Empress’s assassin)
(Waverly likes her servant boys. She likes that they are so rough and raw and eager to please)
Daud is eager to please, as well – on both counts. His and hers. She does not even realize they’ve been turned until she finds herself with the wall flat against her bare back, cold on heated skin, dressing gown long since fallen away and she swears as his hand works between her legs – he hasn’t taken off the gloves, damn that man, why - ? And he knows exactly where to touch. Her breath is a high and cracked whimper in her throat.
“I’m guessing,” he says (and Waverly has to dig her nails into his hips because her knees suddenly don’t work anymore because he’s got two fingers curled inside her, yes, why hasn’t he taken off the gloves?), “that you’re not too good for this?” He echoes each word with the drag of his fingers. “Was it part of your plan that we don’t make it to your bed?”
No. Yes. Damn this stupid man. “This is not part of the plan,” she manages. “This is – fuck –”
“Sealing the deal?”
“Y-yes. Preliminaries.” His hand is gone. Damp leather curved to cradle her hip, hands surprisingly tender. Slow press of his cock into her. Heat blazing through them both. She pants for breath. “This is a means to an end.”
Daud makes a low growl of a noise and thrusts into her hard. She imagines that it rattles the painting on the wall. “So is this only a one-time –”
“No.”
A laugh. A bite at her shoulder. Words that burn into the bruise he’s making on her skin and mark her like a signature, like sealing, wax, a brand. “A-any –” His breath hitches and she grins. “Any other demands, Miss Boyle?”
Waverly closes her eyes and curses as she claws her fingers through his short hair and drags her mouth back to hers. “Waverly,” she snarls. “Use my name, damn you.”
He does. He laughs into her mouth, but it is Waverly that follows on his tongue in something like agreement. He catches her lip between his teeth like she had his, and she strains for balance and for breath. There is nothing sentimental about the snap of his hips against hers. Nothing sweet. It is business, only.
Or this is what they tell themselves.
The blue light of the lamp on the desk colors them all with strange shadows, gives them new faces, hungry, ghoulish, jubilant – and before they are done it burns out all together and leaves them in the dark. But just because no one can see, it does not mean they are not there. It is only the sound of them: breath, raw, the slick sound of flesh, a cry that slips out and hangs upon the air, and above it all the soft incessant sound of something rattling on the wall – a painting perhaps, jarred out of place, the sound of a new Empire.