Chapter 9
"You wrote those manifests, Lucian," he said softly.
"To save us!" I shouted, the memory tearing out of me like venom. "My father was suspected of sheltering the Northmen refugees! The Purge was coming for House Vance! I forged the manifests to give my family safe passage papers to the western coast! I used the high-registry seals because it was the only way to get them past the city gates!"
"I know," Silas whispered, his thumb lightly stroking the high ridge of my cheekbone, wiping away a drop of sweat—or a tear, I couldn't tell. "You brought the papers to my quarters that night. You were shaking so hard you couldn't even fold the parchment. You told me to run with them. You told me to take your parents and leave you behind to face the registry inspection."
"And then you disappeared!" I cried. "And the next morning, my parents were found slaughtered in their beds! And the manifest had been altered—it wasn't a safe-conduct pass anymore! It was a confession! A confession naming me as the head of the Northern Conspiracy!"
Silas closed his eyes for a long moment, a tear cutting a clean path through the soot on his temple.
"Someone followed you to my room that night, Lucian," he murmured. "Someone in the High Tribunal knew you had access to the master seals. When you left to return to the archives, they came through the door."
"Who?" I demanded, my heart freezing in my chest. "Who came through the door?"
Before Silas could speak, a massive explosion rocked the chamber.
The heavy iron door buckled inward with a deafening roar of splintering stone and screaming metal. Dust, pulverized mortar, and caustic grey smoke billowed into the room, blinding us.
"Breach! Breach!" a voice bellowed from the haze.
Commander Vane’s voice.
Silas surged upward with a feral snarl, throwing himself across my body to shield me from the shower of falling masonry. A chunk of granite struck his back with a sickening thud, but he didn't even grunt. He locked his arms around me, pressing me flat against the flagstones, his fevered body an unyielding wall of flesh and bone.
"Go," he wheezed directly into my ear, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. "Down the bypass shaft. Now."
"I am not leaving you," I snarled, trying to shove him off, but he held me down with desperate, dying strength.
"They don't want me, Lucian!" Silas shouted over the ringing in our ears, his eyes blazing through the smoke. "They never wanted me! They wanted the man who carved those seals!"
Through the blasted doorway, through the swirling clouds of dust, the silhouettes of four armored inquisitorial shock-troopers emerged, their repeating crossbows raised.
Behind them stood Commander Vane, tall, immaculate, his silver breastplate untouched by the grime of the sewers, a cold, predatory smile playing on his thin lips.
"Well, well," Vane drawled, stepping over the shattered iron bar of the door, his longsword drawn and gleaming in the chemical flarelight. "The loyal hound and his quarry. Curiously domestic for two sworn enemies."
Silas pulled himself off me, staggering to his feet, shielding me from Vane’s line of sight with his own ruined body. He raised my parrying blade with a hand that shook violently with blood-fever.
"Vane," Silas rasped, his voice dripping with ten years of venom.
Vane didn't even look at Silas's face. His gaze swept over the fugitive’s posture, the way he held the blade, the line of his shoulders.
"Still breathing, hound?" Vane chuckled, turning his cold, reptilian eyes directly onto me. "Ten years of chasing shadows, Lucian. I must admit, I wondered if you’d ever realize whose leash you were really wearing."
I stood up slowly, stepping out from behind Silas, my falchion held low at my side. The dust was clearing, but the world around me had suddenly turned upside down, tilting on a terrifying axis.
"Commander," I said, my voice eerily calm, though every nerve ending in my body was screaming. "You told me the butcher stole the forged manifests from the registry vault."
"He did," Vane smiled, stepping forward, his boots crunching on the rubble. "Except it wasn't a theft, my dear boy. It was a transaction. Silas came to me on the night of the Purge, begging for your life. Offering anything. Any price. Any service."
Vane raised his sword, pointing the tip directly at Silas's chest.
"And I told him," Vane continued, his voice silky and cruel, "that the Tribunal needed a culprit for the Northern Conspiracy. We needed a blood sacrifice to satisfy the Emperor. We needed the name *Lucian Vance* on the execution block."
My blood turned to liquid ice. I looked at Silas's back.
"What did you do?" I whispered, the words choking in my throat.
Silas didn't turn around. He didn't look at me. His broad shoulders tightened, bracing for the impact of the crossbow bolts aimed at his heart.
"He made a bargain, Lucian," Vane whispered, his eyes gleaming with triumphant malice. "The most pathetic, romantic little bargain I have ever witnessed in thirty years of inquisitorial service."
Vane leveled his gaze at me, the corners of his mouth curling upward into a vicious, triumphant smirk.
"Tell him, dog," Vane commanded, gesturing at Silas with his blade. "Tell your Little Scribe why you spent the last ten years running across the empire with his name branded into your flesh. Tell him who took the butcher's knife to your face."
Silas didn't answer with words.
With a roar of pure, unadulterated defiance, Silas lunged straight at Vane’s throat.
"Silas, no!" I screamed.
The crossbows fired.
Four iron bolts ripped through the smoke-filled air. Two struck Silas in the left shoulder and chest, spinning him backward with sickening force. He crashed into me, the impact knocking both of us backward toward the open bypass shaft.
"Take them alive!" Vane shouted. "The hound knows too much!"
Silas was heavy, slick with blood, his head slumping against my chest. As we teetered on the brink of the dark chute descending into the rushing waters of the subterranean deeps, his bloody hand reached up, curling around my neck, pulling my face down to his.
His lips brushed mine—brief, desperate, tasting of copper and salt and ten years of unspeakable agony.
"Forgive me," he choked against my mouth.
And then he threw his weight backward, dragging us both into the black abyss.
The fall was a roar of deafening black.
The subterranean canal caught us like an iron fist, ripping the breath from my lungs. Freezing, mineral-choked water surged into my mouth and ears, dragging us beneath a surging, ink-black current.
I lost my grip on Silas’s cloak the second we struck the surface. Panic, sharp and primal, pierced the cold shock.
*Where is he?*
I kicked frantically, fighting the churning drag of the runoff flume. My hand scraped rough, slime-slick stone, skin tearing against ancient masonry. My head broke into freezing air. I gasped, coughing up bile and silt, swinging my head around in the pitch.
"Silas!"
No answer. Only the roar of tons of water violently funneling through the Roman-arched sluice gates. Crossbow bolts had pierced his chest and shoulder before the plunge; dead weight in plate and boiled leather would sink like an anvil.
