dog that gets in my way. And when I find my way to your bitch-Councilor’s side, I will wrap her in gum and vomit fly eggs down her throat.”
When he was done he leaned away from me again, slowly, keeping his eyes on mine but smiling all the while. I turned to the guards.
“It’s best if he comes with me.”
“Lady said-”
“Angela will understand. Honestly, everyone will be a lot better off if he comes with me.”
They inched back a little. The messenger shrugged, and the watch captain nodded.
“It’s on your head if he causes any trouble,” the captain said to me.
“Sure, sure.”
The other guard unlocked the gate and let me in, then locked it again from the inside. The guys outside showed no sign of having keys.
“They leaving you out in the cold?” I asked the OverGuard. He shrugged, then put his back to the gate and stared out into the stables.
“Come on,” the new guard said. He was a lot cleaner, his uniform fit too well. He probably didn’t like being near the gates at all. I nodded and followed him into the manor. Once we were away from the gate I shot Wilson a look. He shrugged and stopped smiling.
“You aren’t leaving me behind in this, Jacob.”
“I see that. But there’s no need to threaten.”
“Threat is a language you seem to understand.” He shot his cuffs and rearranged the knives hidden in his coat. “But there’s no reason we can’t work together in this.”
“If you say.”
There were a lot more Housies inside, more than I expected. Maybe that riot story was true. They hadn’t even bothered to disarm me when I came through, either. I fingered the revolver at my belt and looked around. The house was quiet.
She met us in the dining room. The long table was clear, the phalanx of chairs tipped against it. The only other furniture was an empty china cabinet.
Angela was standing by the window, looking out over one of the pocket gardens that spotted the grounds. She wore a riding jacket and pants in deep maroon. The guard left us and closed the door. I motioned Wilson to one side, a step behind me. Maybe if Angela thought he was some sort of servant she would ignore him.
“Angela,” I said.
“I thought it might be you.” She had her arms crossed, and didn’t turn. “When Harold said it was someone with news from the Heights. I thought it must be you.”
“I was hoping we could talk about that,” I said. I crossed to the table. “There are a lot of strange things going on. Maybe we can, I don’t know, clarify some things.”
She nodded, almost absentmindedly.
“You were able to get through the Badge?” she asked.
“Yeah. Came around the back.”
“No officers that way?”
“Some. They’re hiding, but they’re there.”
She nodded again, then scratched at her cheek and looked at me. She paused when she saw Wilson, raised her eyebrows and looked at me questioningly.
“A friend,” I said.
“Well. Friends are good,” she said. She sighed, and it sounded like she was enormously tired, like a child about to fall asleep after a long summer day. It reminded me of the younger Angela, the girl I’d known. It was hard to see, in these clothes, in this place. Hard to remember we’d been children together.
“What about the Heights?” she asked. She motioned to the empty table, then walked over and tipped a chair onto its legs. She sat. “What did you want to talk about?”
I took a chair across from her, keeping my hands on the table. Wilson went to the window and pretended to ignore us. “I’ve had a pretty active couple of days, Angela.”
She smiled. “I’m sure. But I thought you were used to that. The stories I’ve heard, you lead a pretty active life.”
“Stories.” I shrugged. “It’s been more interesting than usual. A lot of the things that I know about how this city works,” I spread my hands, palms up. “Haven’t been working. The Badge has been very… persistent.”
“That’s unusual? The Badge enforcing the law?”
“One of Valentine’s men was rolling my room when I got back from your little party. Insisted it wasn’t at the boss’s behest, and later that day the old clockwork told me he couldn’t get involved. Didn’t want me in his gang until this was all straightened out.”
“Until what was all straightened out?” She leaned forward, touched the table with her elbows. She seemed to be hovering, just off the wood.
“There are some names I want to ask you about, Angela. Some people I’ve met, if briefly. Tell me if they’re familiar to you.”
She was very still, watching me. She didn’t say anything. I took the paper I had gotten from Calvin out of my pocket and lay it on the table between us. She took it, unfolded it, looked at it for a solid minute without speaking. Then she folded it back up and set it on the table again. She sighed.
“Where did you find that?” she asked.
“Friends. Part of my interesting life. Now, I know some of those people. I killed at least one of them, and I’ve seen the body of another. And a third I met at your party. Who are these people, Angela?”
“Wellons,” she said. “Is he the one you killed?”
“No. But I saw him, sure enough. In your house. Sloane, too. But it’s Marcus I killed, on the Glory of Day. And he gave me something.”
“A dirty conscience?”
I smiled. “You know what he gave me, Angela.”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She stood and crossed to the china cabinet, ran a finger down across the wood inlay.
“Let’s say that I do,” she finally relented. “What does it have to do with what happened up on the Heights?”
“You saw that thing, Angela. Everyone there did. What are they paying those officers to keep quiet? An Angel, ransacking the Manor Tomb? That can’t be good for your reputation.”
“They’re all good boys, Jacob. Good citizens. They know what to keep quiet.”
“But someone will talk. They’ll get drunk, and they’ll talk. And what are they going to say? They saw an Angel. The myths are real. There’s an Angel in Veridon, Angela.”
“What are you doing here, Jacob? There are people trying to pin you for the death of those Guildsmen, you know. And the Summer Girl. And Register Prescott.”
“You know I didn’t kill them.”
“I know you didn’t kill all of them,” she said quietly. She turned to me. Her eyes were worried. “What’s the Angel doing, Jacob. What did it say to you?”
“It was after something, Angela. Something it thought I had. And so was Pedr, and so is the Badge. Something they all think I have. And I’m hoping you can help me with that, Angela, because we both know I don’t have it.”
“Say we do, whatever it is.” She turned again, refused to look at me. “What’s that matter to me?”
“You know I don’t have it. You’re on the Council. Council holds the reins of the Badge. Call them off.”
She leaned against the cabinet and crossed her arms thoughtfully.
“The Council is a complicated place. Maybe the seats pushing the Badge around right now don’t have the whole picture.”
“You’re saying you don’t have a handle on the army outside your door?”
“It’s an interesting question,” she said. She crossed over to the window, looked out over the grounds. You could see the rooftops of the surrounding district, poking out over the wall like distant mountaintops made of shingle and soot. “What they think they know and what they actually know. An interesting question. But let’s crack
