Mr. Starling quivered, setting his jowls a-jiggle. “Yes, yes, of course it is, and I would not want an amateur to tip them off by asking questions indiscriminately.”
Luke exhaled in relief. He’d managed to not reveal Karigan’s true identity. Let them believe Cade was the catalyst for the rebels, and that Karigan was really the professor’s frail, mad niece. This little he could do. So very little, but it was something.
“My family,” Luke said. “What of my family?”
“Your son still has his other fingers, if that is what worries you. No, I do not have any new ones to show you.” Mr. Starling paused thoughtfully. “Must be hard for a farrier to work without all his fingers. In any case, if you continue to cooperate, he’ll keep what’s left, and he and the rest of your family will remain safe. Can’t say the same for the rest of your associates in Mill City, however.”
Luke bowed his head. He didn’t want to know the particulars. He could guess.
“That’s right,” Mr. Starling continued. “Justice will be meted out. All have been caught, and the feeble rebellion squashed.”
Was it true? Luke wondered. Had everyone been caught?
“Carry on, Mr. Mayforte,” the Inquisitor said.
Luke hesitated. “You will go easy on them—Cade and Miss Goodgrave, won’t you?”
“Go easy on them?” Mr. Starling guffawed, his oversized belly heaving. “Harlowe has fomented rebellion. I can see you are fond of him, but he is a traitor to the empire. There is no way we can go easy on him. What a terribly funny notion.”
Mr. Starling’s laughter increased Luke’s misery, but back in Mill City, with the corpses of his lads at his feet, he’d been given an ultimatum: if he did not deliver Cade to Dr. Silk in Gossham, his wife, his daughters, his son, would all be imprisoned, and probably worse. Luke did not care what happened to himself, but when it came to preserving Cade or his family, his family came first. He’d been made to tell Starling about the planned rebellion, but so far his betrayal had kept his family safe. Under house arrest, yes, but safe.
“What about Miss Goodgrave?”
Mr. Starling shrugged. “None of my business. Dr. Silk is interested in her, that’s all I know. You are excused.”
As Luke left, the Inquisitor reached across the table for his cold, uneaten meal.
A PASSING STORM
Even though Karigan had to pretend that she was a boy and there was nothing between her and Cade, she enjoyed sitting beneath the maple with him, her back against the tree trunk. He lay on the shady grass with his hands behind his head, gazing at the interwoven branches above, or perhaps daydreaming, or maybe counting leaves. Their silence was comfortable, more comfortable, actually, than it had ever been before.
The stuttered call of a white-throated sparrow rang out from a grove of evergreens across the canal. Bees droned among the summer flowers in the meadow beside the tavern. It was all very pleasant in the Capital. Those who never left it would have a difficult time comprehending grim places like Mill City. Everything was much more vibrant here, perhaps because it wasn’t all paved over and built up with brick, with tall chimneys belching smoke into the sky. There was supposed to be etherea in the Capital, or Gossham, at least. Could that have anything to do with it? Karigan supposed another answer might be that the elite of the Capital did not wish to have to see, on a daily basis, the blight imposed on the lesser classes in other parts of the empire.
Luke stepped out of the doorway of the tavern. As he approached, she noticed his stride lacked some of its usual swagger. She nudged Cade with her foot.
“Luke’s coming.”
Cade sat up, brushing off stray bits of grass.
When Luke reached them, he said in a very low voice, “Tam needs to be sick. Do you understand? Play sick, and you’ll ride in the back of the wagon as before.”
Karigan wondered if Luke saw this as a more effective way of keeping people from speculating about the affection between the two “lads,” but Cade, his voice very low as well, asked, “Spies?”
“We must not forget the emperor’s eyes are everywhere,” Luke replied.
“Is there a specific threat?”
“Only if you do not do as I say.”
Cade nodded, and Karigan pretended weakness and allowed him to help her rise and make her way to the wagon. It was hard not to smile, and she was pleased by his touch, tense though it was in the wake of Luke’s warning. He lifted her into her old spot in the back of the wagon, and Raven whickered his approval. He nosed her over the tailgate.
Karigan settled into the straw as the mules hauled the wagon down the drive. She looked back at the tavern, where on the front step, watching after them, stood a portly gentleman in a dark suit. Eyes of the emperor? No wonder Luke had grown tense about their behavior and appearances earlier—he knew they were likely to be watched.
The villages they passed through remained pastoral, but grew in size and population as they traveled. Each, like the towns and cities outside the Capital, had a statue of Amberhill the emperor gazing over his realm. Often he was depicted in a heroic stance, but there were variations, such as the one the wagon now rolled beneath. It showed him standing tall with his hands placed on the shoulders of a boy and a girl. To show his compassion? Or his ownership of all the people? In the next village, his statue held a book. Whether to show he was a scholar, or holding the laws of the empire in his hands, she did not know. The facial expression on each statue, however, looked very much the same—a distant, stern version of the Amberhill she’d once known.