Chapter 119: Scapegoat

Quinn was a member of Captain Rashford’s faction, and his faction’s duty was to keep the palace’s money stable and its shops safe. It was the most coveted post in the army.

He had held that post for more than half a year. He was an Inferior Awakened, and the five stars on his chest made him second only to Rashford himself.

He came from Euniscope, and his parents had never carried a title, but everyone agreed that their blood was noble. The academy had sent him into this realm after a performance that people still talked about.

His affinity was shadows, and it had given the palace a saying that every soldier knew by heart: Look at the shadows before talking.

It was a warning and a compliment at once. Wherever Quinn stood, the darkness around him had ears.

In public he was glamorous. He smiled with perfect teeth, bowed to Culex with perfect timing and spoke of the King’s wisdom like a man reciting scripture. He was so loyal that people half envied him.

None of it was real.

Quinn was neither loyal nor charming.

He used his rank to squeeze coins out of anyone who could not say no, and he spent them with the appetite of a man who had never been refused, mostly at the women’s club, where he was seen more often than the bartender.

He had once taken coins from me too. A few shoves and a cold look were all it took. To him, I was a Fighter with a single star, a sheep who had wandered into the wrong field.

He also sold Gifts and now and then and Beast meat on the side. That was his real business, and it was illegal. According to the King’s own rules, it was punishable.

How did I know? I stole his thoughts during dinner, because his smile had been too smooth and the way he touched his belt had been too careful.

It was a small act, a few seconds of his mind borrowed while he laughed at someone else’s joke.

What I found there was a time, a room and a buyer.

So I had my scapegoat. He was the one I was supposed to feel nothing for. I felt very little, which worried me a little.

That night I stood beside pillar on the second floor and watched him walk.

The west corridor was dim and long, with the torches burned down to red coals.

Quinn moved without hurry, one hand resting on his belt, his steps as soft as a cat that has learned to wear boots. He stopped before a door near the end.

For a heartbeat he held his breath, glanced behind him, and knocked.

The door opened. A hand waved him in, and he slipped inside, and the shadows in the corridor seemed to close behind him like a curtain.

I watched the door for several seconds. Somewhere in my chest, the little pinch of guilt tried to speak. I let it. Then I swallowed it.

I raised my wrist. The bracelet warmed, and the Moon’s Door unfolded in the air, a pale arch of light that cut the corridor in two. I stepped through without looking back, and the weakness hit me on the far side like a wall. My spiritual power fell to almost nothing, and for a moment my knees threatened to quit. I locked them.

I was standing in the fourth floor corridor, outside a plain wooden door.

Knock! Knock!

It opened almost at once. Captain Daniel stood there with sleep in his eyes, his long red hair loose over his shoulders and a rough blanket thrown over one arm.

"Peter?" His voice was a low rasp. "What time is it?"

"Captain, I’m sorry. I have something important."

He blinked and shook his head, then stepped aside. "Then come in..."

"No, sir." I made my voice smaller. "It’s important, and it can’t wait. I think Quinn, from Captain Rashford’s faction, is a spy of the Twilight Order."

The sleep fell off his face as if I had thrown cold water on it.

"W-wait," he said. "Quinn? He’s... but..."

"I’ll show you, sir. Please."

Peter’s voice shook just enough.

It was the voice of a boy who was terrified of being wrong and more terrified of being right.

I had practiced it in my room with the mirror, and it was the best performance of my short career.

Daniel looked at me for a long moment, then pulled the blanket off his arm, tossed it onto his bed and grabbed his belt.

"Lead the way."

We went down the spiral stair together. His boots were heavy and mine were light, and neither of us spoke. I kept half a step ahead, and I could feel him thinking. A priest who had become a captain to keep the palace from spiraling would not take a spy lightly. He would take it personally.

The west corridor was exactly as I had left it. The torches were nearly out. The door at the end was shut.

I pointed.

Daniel did not knock.

The door swung open.

The room beyond was small and warm, lit by a single lamp.

A guest was standing near the table, a thin, nervous man with a pouch of coins already open in his hands.

Across from him stood Quinn, one hand held out, and in that hand sat a piece of silver tableware, a plate so polished that the lamplight crawled across it. It was a Gift. I could feel the pulse of power from where I stood. An Awakened rank at the least.

All the color drained out of Quinn’s face.

I had never seen a man’s expression collapse so quickly.

His eyes flicked to the plate, to the guest, to Daniel’s face, and then to me.

They stayed on me for half a breath, with no suspicion in them at all. Only the dull wonder of a man who has just realized that the one-star kid was standing beside the captain.

Daniel clicked his tongue. "Mr. Quinn of Rashford’s faction," he said, in a voice that was too gentle to be anything but terrifying. "For breaking the rules of King Culex, I order, in the name of the King, that you be imprisoned."

Quinn’s lips parted. A pleading, apologetic face took over his features, the face of a man who suddenly found regret very easy to wear.

I reached out with the part of me that was already hungry. The last second of his thoughts came to me like a splash of cold water: Should I bribe him?

That was all. No fury. No fear. Just a calculation, one more transaction in a life made of them.

I kept my face blank.

Daniel’s hand slid into his sleeve and came out with a coil of dark chain, which he flung at Quinn. It wrapped around the man’s arms and chest in a single motion and pulled tight. The shadows around Quinn flickered once and went out like blown candles.

The guest dropped his pouch and began to cry.

Daniel jerked his chin toward the door. Quinn walked, bound and stumbling, toward the stairs that led to the throne room.

I stood in the corridor and listened to his steps fade into the stone.

’Sorry,’ I thought.

But what did sorry matter, once the thing was done? It was a word for the living. It could not take back a single link of that chain.

I had just done something I had never imagined I would do. And the strangest part, the part that kept me standing very still in the dark, was how little I wanted to take it back.