“What do you mean?” Roman asked.
He knew he sounded dense, but he was struggling to breathe. To think his way through this unforeseen encounter, one that could end either with him tortured and hung from his father’s gate or with him coming through the night with the most unlikely of allies.
Shane stepped closer, his boots crinkling the letters on the rug. Roman winced but didn’t break their stare. He didn’t move or cower when the lieutenant reached into his pocket, but it was only to procure another folded sheet of paper.
He held it out to Roman, daring him to take it.
Swallowing, Roman accepted.
This paper was crisp, fresh. But he could see the inked words within, and he unfolded it to read:
This is a test to see if the strike bars E & R are in working condition.
EREEERRRRR
E
“You find this incriminating?” Roman asked, but it felt like ice had lodged in his stomach. “I type these messages out occasionally before I start work, because the strike bars E and R often get stuck, and I don’t want to—”
“Don’t lie to me, correspondent,” Shane said in a clipped voice. “And don’t take me for a fool. I know you’ve been exchanging letters by way of enchanted typewriters and wardrobe doors. With someone you call E., who looks to be, in fact, Iris Elizabeth Winnow. A journalist championing Enva’s cause.”
The sound of Iris’s name broke through Roman’s fear like an axe in a frozen pond. Anger stirred his blood, making his skin flush hot. If Shane had all the old letters as well as the newer ones, then he had a good deal of knowledge that Roman would prefer he didn’t have. The main piece being that he had identified Iris, which meant Roman needed to play a different game.
He dropped his clueless guise.
“What do you want?” Roman asked.
“I want your confession, in writing.”
“What confession? That I fell in love with someone before Dacre found me?”
“I want to know everything you typed to Elizabeth … no wait, sorry. To Iris E. Winnow about the Hawk Shire assault.”
“You have no proof that I was the one who tipped them off.”
“So certain, are we?”
Roman was silent, wondering why Shane sounded so confident. He only had half of the puzzle. He only had Iris’s letters, and the one that Roman had typed with all the information on Hawk Shire? He had asked Iris to burn it.
Shane withdrew another letter from his pocket.
Roman braced himself as the lieutenant read, “‘I do agree to what you ask, but only because you seem to have stolen the words from my mouth. You are in a precarious position—far more than me—and giving up Dacre’s movements and tactics is something I dread to ask you to do, even as it feels inevitable.’” Shane paused, glancing at Roman with a cruel smile. “Is that enough to jog your memory?”
Cold sweat began to seep through Roman’s shirt.
It was his own fault that Shane had found such an incriminating letter. Roman was supposed to destroy them after reading, leaving no trace of his and Iris’s correspondence. He had tried, gods how he had tried. He had lit a match and held it to the edge of one of the letters, but he hadn’t been able to watch it catch flame. And so he had hidden them beneath a loose floorboard.
“You, correspondent,” Shane began with a shake of his head, “are admirably bold but remarkably foolish. You should have destroyed her letters, like she told you to do.”
“If I write this confession,” Roman said, ragged. “What then? You turn me over to Dacre?”
Shane was quiet, as if weighing his options. In that span of silence, the night seemed to tilt toward balance again, for reasons that Roman didn’t quite understand. But he waited, Iris’s letters still in his hands.
“No,” Shane replied. “Unless you do something that would warrant it.”
“Such as?”
“Betray me first.”
“And why would I betray you, Lieutenant?”
Shane reached into his pocket a third time. He took out another letter, but this one was unfamiliar to Roman. It was a proper envelope, sealed with wax. There was no name scrawled over the face of it, and it was light as a feather when Roman reluctantly accepted it.
“Tomorrow morning, the chancellor is going to announce an impromptu press conference,” Shane said in a low voice. “It will take place in the Green Quarter, a little courtyard in the Promontory Building. It will be by invitation only, and this is when the chancellor plans to give the stage to Dacre, to allow him to make a plea to the most influential people of Oath. To see if bloodshed can be averted in his plans to take the city. Dacre will ask you to accompany him, as you are his correspondent. Before he takes the stage, I need you to deliver this message to someone very important.”
“What is this message?” Roman asked.
“That isn’t your concern,” Shane countered. “But you will need to be quick about it, without Dacre or his other officers noticing. There will be a man wearing a red anemone pinned to his lapel in the crowd. This envelope needs to be handed directly to him. Once you do that … leave the courtyard immediately.”
“Why?”
“Trust me. You won’t want to be there.”
Roman was quiet. He didn’t trust Shane, but the warning sat like smoke in the air.
“Do you agree to do this?” the lieutenant asked, impatient. “Or should I present Iris’s letters to Dacre now?”
Roman studied the envelope in his hand. He didn’t know what to think of this situation; he could be delivering a message far worse than the ones he had been dutifully typing up for Dacre. But after so many weeks living in fear and ignorance, the truth was coming to light. Shane was not devoted to Dacre any more than Roman was. And Roman was not the mole; Shane truly was, if he had worked his way up in rank with the sole purpose of betraying the god he claimed to serve.
What does he want? Roman wondered, but then realized Shane might be involved with the Graveyard.
“I’ll do it,” Roman said. “But I would like Iris’s letters back.”
“You can keep the letters on the floor.”
The old letters. The ones she wrote before Roman was torn away from her. The ones that Shane couldn’t use as leverage over him.
“Where did you find them?” he couldn’t resist asking.
“At the B and B, just after we took Avalon Bluff. I was clearing the space for Dacre’s arrival and found them in an upstairs room. I read them and thought they were … quite moving, you could say. So I decided to keep them for a rainy day.”
Roman couldn’t tell if Shane was being honest or mocking him.
In the end, it didn’t really matter. They were both holding something over the other, and Roman needed to adapt. He needed to learn the steps to this new waltz.
“My typewriter,” he said, slowly rising. His feet throbbed with pins and needles. “I need it to type the confession.”
“You can write with a pen,” Shane said. “And I’d avoid making a claim on that typewriter. He’s growing more suspicious by the hour. Don’t make him doubt you. Don’t give him any reason to start you at square one again.”
Roman had no reply to that. He walked to sit at his desk, a motion he had done a hundred times before, but this time it felt different. His hands felt weathered as he found a sheet of paper and a fountain pen from the drawer.
His heart was pounding. Worry and disgust shot through his veins, made his mouth dry.
Soon, he had promised Iris. This would all be over soon, and he would take her to the places she longed to go, as if life had never been interrupted.
Soon.
That promise was beginning to feel fragile, unattainable. A ship that was gliding farther and farther out to open sea.
But Roman wrote his confession.
Silent and grim, he surrendered it to Shane.
Iris stared at her typewriter through the curling drift of cigarette smoke. It was half past nine in the morning, and she was at the Inkridden Tribune, trying to write her next article.
But the words wouldn’t come.
She was thinking of the fact that she still hadn’t heard from Roman when Helena arrived at the table.
“Attie gone for the day?” Helena asked, noticing Attie’s chair was empty.
“She’s meeting with a former professor,” Iris replied. “But she’ll be back before lunch. Why? Did you need something?”
“No,” Helena said. There was an unlit cigarette in her mouth, but her eyes looked brighter, as if she had been finally getting some good rest. “A letter came for you in today’s post.”
Iris accepted it, surprised by how the envelope felt like velvet. Her name was written in bold handwriting, and there was purple wax on the back, pressed with the city seal.
“What is this?” she asked, hesitant.
“Not sure,” Helena said. “But I’d like to see for myself, since it was delivered to the office.”
Iris opened it, wincing when the edge of the envelope cut her fingertip. She withdrew a deckle-edged piece of paper and read:
Miss Iris Winnow,
You are cordially invited by the chancellor himself to a press conference, to take place today, at half past five in the evening in the Green Quarter, located in the prestigious Promontory Building. As this is an exclusive invitation, it also serves as your pass for entrance. Please come dressed in your finest, for this will be a cause for celebration. As always, thank you for your devotion to the good of this city, and for being one of Oath’s leading minds and innovators.
Sincerely,
Edward L. Verlice
Chancellor Fifty-Three of Eastern Borough and Protector of Oath
Iris handed the invite to Helena, who scowled the entire time she read it.
“Do you want to go, kid?” Helena asked.
“Shouldn’t I?” Iris pressed against the sting of her paper cut. “It sounds important, although I don’t know why they invited me, of all people.”
“Because you’re writing about the war. And this”—Helena stabbed the invitation—“most likely will have something to do with Dacre’s imminent approach.”
Iris bit her lip and reread the chancellor’s letter. But then she thought of another string of words that had been written to her. Ones she still mulled over when she had a quiet, dark moment.
Think on my offer. You will know when to give me your answer.
Was this it, then? Was this the moment she was to give Dacre her reply?
“Iris?” Helena said.
“I’m going,” Iris replied. “But I don’t have anything fancy to wear.”
“Then take the rest of the day off to prepare.” Helena began to walk away, then turned back around, removing the cigarette from her mouth. “But be careful, Iris. The meeting is at half past five. Almost dark, and a vulnerable time these days. Don’t forget curfew, and call me here at the Tribune if you need anything.”
Iris nodded, watching Helena return to her office.
She flicked off her desk lamp and picked up the invitation again, ignoring the inquisitive glances from the other editors and assistants.
It’s time, she thought with a shiver.
She was ready to give Dacre her answer.
