it?”
Was she going to stage some sort of coup? Maybe, if she had had a plan of her own, if she had not promised a demon she would deliver herself into his hands and promised her father she would come home safe.
“Sure I’m going to do something,” Sin answered. “I’m going to go with both of you tonight. And I’m going to ask if you’ll send some Market people along ahead of us. We could use the backup.”
Mae’s eyes shone. “I was already planning on it.”
“Good,” Sin said. “Because the asking was going to be pretty much a formality.”
They both laughed a little, and then stood silently together for a little while more, watching the new Market rise around them.
The Monument to the Great Fire of London was a looming shape against the evening sky, looking like a tower for the villain of a story. The lights of London touched on the golden urn high at the top of the column, making it shimmer and then dim.
They had to walk a few steps down the incline to get there from the Monument Tube station.
“You know, we could’ve driven here,” Sin remarked. “If you hadn’t insisted on driving into London Bridge.”
“It’s true what you see on the news,” Nick said. “Teenage guys are a menace on the roads. Reckless drivers. Speed demons.”
Sin noted the glints on top of a gray office building, on the roof of another building with a glass front. The archers were in place.
She looked back to Nick, who was walking in the middle, between her and Mae. The line of his shoulders made her think of a high stone wall, a scribble of wire mesh at the top, surrounding a prison nobody could ever escape. He looked like he wanted to kill someone.
They went around the pedestal bearing its sculpture of angels watching human misery, to the other side.
The Aventurine Circle stood in a group at the foot of the Monument.
Sizing up the enemy, Sin saw signs of dissension in the ranks. About half the Circle was there, and about half of those present were wearing the Aventurine Circle’s usual pale clothes. The other half were wearing ordinary dark or colorful clothes, and nobody was standing very close to one another, shoulder to shoulder as they should have with companions they trusted.
Helen the swordswoman was wearing white and had an air very similar to Nick’s about her.
Gerald was wearing clothes that were a combination of both light and dark, and his mood seemed to be shifting even as he stood there. Looking at him made Sin think of Matthias the piper: It came as another shock to realize that Gerald was very young as well.
Celeste had threatened him into joining her Circle, and now she was dead and he was leader of a Circle that barely knew him, that could hardly be expected to respect him. And he had lost Celeste’s pearl, not only a powerful magical object but the leader’s token of power in the Circle.
As they drew closer, Sin saw that Gerald was toying with the ring on his left hand, an obvious tell of discomfort.
An uncertain leader could be unpredictable. Gerald had invented the mark that delivered Alan into his hands. He was too clever and he had too much power over Nick: If he was feeling backed into a corner, he could be even more dangerous.
Sin noticed where Nick’s attention was fixed. He did not even seem aware Gerald existed. He was staring, murderous intent clear in every line of his body, at Seb.
His look seemed to clear a space around Seb, the other magicians unobtrusively drawing away. Seb stood on the gray cobbles, looking very alone.
He’d been looking as unsettled as Gerald, but strangely, Nick’s cold stare seemed to calm him. He squared his shoulders and glared back at Nick as if he would have a chance fighting him. There was hectic color in his face now, as if he had a fever, and a reckless glint in his green eyes.
The glint died and his eyes went flat as Gerald said, “Mae, always a pleasure. Come to make a trade?”
“That depends,” Mae said. “I’d like to know what this thing I’m trading the pearl for is. The one I’m supposed to find so interesting.”
Gerald smiled at her, though the smile was strained at the edges. “Well, here’s the thing,” he said. “If I thought Nick had the pearl, I would have just ordered him to hand it over. I thought it might be Seb, who is coward enough to grab at anything that looks like leverage, but I offered Seb the same trade as I’m going to offer you. I really think he would have taken it, if he’d had the pearl.”
The glance he cast Seb was dismissive. Seb shot back a look of such open loathing Sin was shocked: No magician was going to survive who displayed such hostility to his leader.
“I don’t have it,” Seb ground out.
“I believe you, Sebastian,” Gerald replied lightly. “I think Mae here has it. And she has a weakness.”
Gerald gave a smile: The corner of his mouth twisted as if he wanted to rip the smile off his own face.
“Everyone has a weakness,” he continued. “Either you destroy your own weakness, or people use it against you. I think this qualifies as me doing both.”
Gerald turned abruptly away from them, bowing his head, and made a swift gesture.
Laura and another magician, both in dark clothes, stepped apart.
Jamie was crouching at the base of the Monument, back to the white fence surrounding it. He was in chains.
Sin had known he would pay for defending Nick. She had not dreamed he would pay as much as this.
For a moment Sin could not even feel sorry for Jamie. She just felt stunned.
