“What if she’s gone into the river?” Seb asked. “That’s what I would have done.”
Celeste stood up and moved out of view. After a moment, Seb rose to join her. Sin heard Celeste’s voice, clear and cold, as their footsteps echoed down the corridor.
“Then you will have to think of another way to make up for your failure.”
Sin did not dare move while the magicians searched the ship for her. If she ventured out, she was bound to betray herself.
Of course, staying where she was, she had plenty of time to think about how Seb might betray her.
She stayed put despite her doubts about how long his courage would last and despite her longing to act. This was her best chance, and that meant it was Lydie’s best chance as well.
She counted the seconds as if she was doing exercises and had to hold herself in position, so her mind would not play tricks with time. She lost count a few times, but she knew she waited in the dark for well over an hour before the noises outside dulled and centralized, concentrated at a spot a little way away.
Sin assumed they were getting ready for their party. The question was, would they want Lydie there or not? Would a scared child be a trophy or an embarrassment?
She wished Alan were here, or Mae, someone who could make a plan.
The only thing Sin could think to do was go look.
So she pushed the door cautiously open with her foot, gradually so it did not creak, listening for every sound. She slid out of the wardrobe like an eel, magic knife at the ready.
She missed her throwing knives so much.
The corridor was empty. Sin slipped along it and down the stairs, then waited with her hand hovering over the door, her other hand clasping the knife, and her breath snared painfully in her throat.
There was no sound directly beyond the door. Sin just touched it with her palm, and the door slid open a little, then a little more.
Beyond the door was the dining room with no lights on, the dimness illuminated only by the glow of lights at the top of the far wall.
The ballroom and the dining room had obviously been one vast room recently transformed into two. The wall that divided them was built only so far. The large wooden rafters ran along the vaulted ceilings of both rooms without a break.
There was a supper laid out on the table now, tiny sandwiches in rows like soldiers and jellies gleaming like jewels. Sin eyed the chairs pushed neatly in under the table; their carved wooden backs looked sturdy enough.
Sin closed the blade on her knife and tucked it securely under the wire of her bra. She could not risk it falling out of a pocket.
She charged forward, taking a running leap at the chair and then launching herself from the top of the chair back, somersaulting into the air. Behind her the chair rocked on two legs before falling back on all four.
Her hair flipped into her face, air rushing around her but none in her lungs, every burning molecule of her aware that if she fell, the crash would bring the magicians in the next room running.
The backs of her knees hit the rafter. She latched on and swung like a pendulum until she could get a grip on it with her hands, then grasped the wood and pulled her weight up until she was lying flat against the rafter. She found herself breathing a little hard.
There was no time to be lying around, though. She turned, her body almost tipping off the slender beam and the world swimming crazily in her vision for a minute, until she was on her front. Then, facedown, nose pressed hard against the wood and her fingertips lightly curved around the edges, she began to wriggle her way down the rafter into the other room.
Chandelier lights refracted in her vision, brilliant and blinding for a moment. Heat and noise rushed up toward her like a blow. Sin swallowed, closed her eyes, and held on for a moment.
When she opened her eyes she could see, though blurry yellow afterimages danced in front of her, like the mocking stars around a concussed cartoon character’s head. She began to slide slowly along the banister again.
The scene below her was like a play seen from terrible seats, with hot, glaring spotlights in Sin’s eyes and a riot of color and activity below. For a moment the people below her looked like splashes of paint on a palette, all mingling together in a vivid blur.
Then the colors coalesced into shapes. She could make out the magicians of the Aventurine Circle. They were all, as far as she could see, wearing white. There was Helen, bright and straight as a blade in a white silk suit, and the woman called Laura in a simple white dress.
Celeste Drake, wrapped around and around in ivory gauze, was making the rounds with Gerald behind her. They nodded at and shook hands with everyone they saw, engaging them in brief rounds of conversation. They did it very well, Sin thought. One of them always managed to make the magician they were talking to laugh.
At no point did Celeste and Gerald ever touch. The first Market after Mama was dead and Sin was back from Mezentius House, Merris had taken her around and showed her to everyone as the heir apparent. Sin hadn’t done half as well as Gerald was doing now, but the whole time Merris had kept her hand on Sin’s arm, steady and sure, anchoring her.
Seb was leaning against a wall, shoulders hunched beneath his white T-shirt. He looked ready to run if someone spoke to him.
Sitting on one of the fragile chairs as if it was a throne was Jamie, surveying the company with the scorn of a spoiled young prince and the eyes of a mad soothsayer. His gleaming white clothes matched that bright opaline gaze. The only dark things about him were the demon’s mark crawling on his jaw and the demon crouching at his feet.
Nick was in position to spring for throats, and looked as if he would have liked to. He was wearing the battered black clothes he’d been wearing earlier, but the effect was good, like the black pearl at Celeste’s white throat.
