around me. I tried again.
'Last night was Richard's birthday, right?'
She shrugged. 'I guess. That's the sort of thing the secretary keeps track of. I'm sure we sent something very nice.'
'It was his majority birthday. That's what they both said. He was officially an heir at that point. And that's why Jeremy snatched him. His words. Bad night to be an heir.'
She stopped smiling, or at least stopped regarding me with cold amusement, for the briefest instant. When the smile snapped back in place, she was clearly unsettled.
'Strange thing to say. I've always found it good to be an heir.'
'From what I understand, your father doesn't count his daughters, does he? Your brother is the heir. You're just his helper,' I said. Because, let's be honest, I know how to be a dick. I know how to get to someone. And I got to her. She stiffened up, crossed her arms across what I was beginning to realize was a marvelous chest, and frowned. Good start, Jacob. Way to get the girl talking.
'What I mean is, shouldn't he be here? What we're talking about is Council business. Isn't that his department?'
'He's busy. You'll have to do with his helper girl.' She walked to the drink cabinet and efficiently went about the business of putting the glasses and whiskey away. She talked to me over her shoulder. 'What was your plan here, Jacob? Come in, insult the host, hope she shoots you before the really dangerous people show up?'
'Look, that was a misstep. Okay?' I started to walk toward her, but thought better of it. I ended up hovering in the middle of the room. 'What's going on out there isn't natural. It isn't normal. And I haven't yet heard anyone give me a good reason why the whole city is under curfew, much less blockade.'
Veronica put the last glass away and turned to me.
'Blockade? They've shut the port, that's all.'
'They've done more than that, whoever they are. This whole town is cut off from the rest of the world. No one's getting out of here.'
'I assure you, the Council order was for a curfew. Nothing more.'
'Well,' I said, folding my arms. 'You may be in for a surprise. There might be more going on at the Council than you know.'
She scowled again, but didn't look me in the eye.
'I suppose we're going to find out, aren't we?'
'We are?' I asked.
'Councilor Tomb has called an emergency session. The martial law has been extended. She's opening a vote to have the whole city militarized.'
'Martial law? Is that what this is about?'
'Mostly. The little horror-show she took you to.' Her eyes flitted up to mine, just briefly. 'That's barely the beginning of it. The Council has been bickering about it for months. And now that action is being taken, well' — she threw her arms up — 'they're overreacting. They're scared.'
'I've asked this a thousand times, Ms. Bright, and I'll ask it a thousand more unless someone answers me. What the hell is going on?'
She sighed and looked me over. Made up her mind.
'A Council meeting. You can come with me.'
'Are we going to accompany your brother?' I asked, then kicked myself as her face hardened.
'Yes. Let's go get him, shall we?'
She marched out of the room. I followed. We took a turn, then another, and finally walked into what must have once been a grand dining room. It was a butchery. The food was still on the table, eggs and ham and coffee had gone cold. The bodies had been moved, but not far. They lay on the floor, side by side, covered in spotted sheets. Mother stood near the head of the table, her face a mask of tragedy.
Veronica walked to the table and flicked a sheet aside. A young man, a masculine version of her, his face white and empty. She looked down at him softly, then up at me. Not as softly.
'Maybe he won't be able to make it today. I suppose I'll have to stand in his place.'
'Veronica, I'm sorry. I had no idea. You can't go to a Council meeting when your family has just been… when they're all…'
'That's all I can do, actually. Staying here isn't going to make it any better.' She walked up to me, her cold eyes burning into my face. 'Besides, I want to take my new friend Jacob Burn with me. Introduce him to all my old friends.'
I felt the iron on my wrists and looked down. Realized I was blinking away tears as the cuffs clicked into place.
'There's a warrant for you, Mr. Burn. We can talk about it on the way. And you better talk well, because I'm not really in the mood for clever boys.'
Chapter Twelve
The rain began to come down in earnest, long before we got to the Council Chamber. Veronica and I sat in opposite corners of her carriage, looking out the windows. She spent a lot of time folding and then refolding a pair of long, satin gloves in her lap. There was a box on the floor between her feet, and she kept moving her leg to check it was still there, like a child looking for comfort from some icon. We had guards, lots of them, running alongside us in the rain. It slowed us down, but the Lady Bright was clearly in no hurry to get to the Council.
'How many have there been?' I asked.
'Dead brothers? Just the one.'
'You're awfully flip about this,' I said, shifting in my seat to face her. 'There were a lot of bodies in there. How many of them were family?'
'Everyone under my roof is my family, one way or another.' She put her hands on top of the gloves and sighed. 'Should I mourn them less if they were only a friend, or a servant? Should my father's brother's third daughter mean more to me than the man who poured my wine every night for the last eight years?' She looked at me and shrugged. 'People die, Jacob. These people just died quite suddenly, over breakfast.'
'You're out of your fucking mind.'
'Oh, love. You have no idea.'
I squeezed against the side of the carriage, trying to put as much space between us as I could. She sat as comfortable as you please, looking out the window, her hands folded demurely in her lap. Her toe tap-tap-tapped against the box.
'I meant, how many attacks have there been? I know the Council is hiding them from the public. I don't know exactly what happened at the docks, but what happened and what the Badge says happened are two very different things.'
'Six,' she said, finally, as we came around the last bend before our stop. 'Six attacks. Most of them very isolated events. Isolated is the wrong word. Very precise events.'
'They were targeted,' I said.
'Yes. Targeted.' She cocked her head like an animal. 'But not logically. No real pattern. It was like the murderer is singing a song in a language none of us know. The pattern is lost on us. What you said about the docks.' She paused and then turned her head to me. 'What happened there?'
'You're kidding, right?'
She shook her head. 'I felt there might be some connection. It seems unlikely that a fire could cause so many deaths. So many, in fact, that no one who survived has reported a fire at all.'
I settled myself against the seat. What to tell her? What to be honest about, and what to hide?
'The Badge says they have witnesses who will swear that I set off a device, and that device started the fire.' I gave her a hard eye, trying to weight her reaction. 'There was a device, but not a fire. And I didn't set it
