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Nadia turned her head and looked at him. His handsome face was relaxed, his eyelids fluttering while he dreamed. She brushed her fingers back and forth along his forearm and turned her focus on the door when a knock came and it opened.
“Nadia? Are you awake? Oh, good,” Victoria almost whispered and came into the room before she closed the door behind her and leaned against it. With simple dark pants and a gray shirt, she didn’t stand out as a member of the court and would be less likely to draw attention from any of Kassemyr’s guards out in the streets.
“There’s a problem with the Ghosts and the Wraiths.”
Harmiston stirred next to Nadia and there came another knock on the door.
“What’s happening?” he mumbled, drunk with sleep.
Victoria stepped aside as Kary peeked inside and then did like her and came all the way in. “Hope you’re rested from your trip, Sentinel.”
“Why?”
“No-no,” Harmiston protested, shaking the sleep off. “That’s not the correctwhyin this situation. It’s why are there so many people in my bedroom?”
“We’re planning to act in two days, but the Wraiths want at least four to do their own reconnaissance and regroup. They wish to find a new hideout. It’s a little cramped, sure,” Kary looked around the bedroom, “but that’s the case for us all. Some of us sleep under the open sky.”
“What?” Harmiston blurted. “Why?”
Kary stopped himself from saying something else. “To keep guard,” he said, like that should be obvious to an outsider.
“You too?” Harmiston asked Nadia.
“When I’m on guard duty, yes.” The Ghosts had many places to sleep these days, most of them small and dingy, but fairly safe at least.
“I don’t see what I can do with your issue here, Kary. I was tasked with finding them, not controlling them. Where’s Marika? Shouldn’t she handle this?”
“She’s out on a special mission. Which means I’m on this. And I’m delegating.”
Nadia sighed and sat up. “Fine. Give me five minutes.”
* * *
“I’m warning you,” Nadia told Kary while they snuck up to the back entrance of Stonewater Mansion. They had already been spotted by Wraith guards who were hidden from view. She knew that well enough and assumed Kary to as well. But their blue clothes and familiar faces, at least hers, meant they met no resistance when entering the house.
The moment they walked inside, a murmur of voices met them, as well as the soft rustle of clothes and feet on the floor. With hundreds of Wraiths in the house, all of them minding to not be seen from the windows, it had become crowded in Count Elasatra’s home.
“Nadia,” a familiar voice sounded, and she knew it was Atherton before he appeared among the Wraiths swarming the back of the house. They went back and forth with food or talked to each other in groups. Atherton reached her, looking better than he must have yesterday. Like most of the Wraiths around, he’d gotten a shower and had scraped most of the grime off his clothes. Nadia had been lucky enough to use the washing machine at Harmiston’s and by the time she woke up, her clothes had been dry. This meant that she and Kary were cleaner and crisper than anyone around them, and they stuck out like sore thumbs in their non-wraith attire.
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to you yesterday,” Atherton said. “I made up the rear guard when we went back.”
Nadia nodded. “It’s good to see you alive and well, Atherton,” she said and meant it. He might have had a hand in her dismissal from the Wraiths, but she held no hard feelings now. Her life had changed so much in the intervening time, and though she wasn’t sure it was for the best, it hadn’t gotten worse. Except for the loss of Neelofar.
“This is Sentinel Kary,” she said, indicating her fellow Ghost. “Kary, meet Shadow Atherton.”
They greeted each other with quick nods.
“We need to talk to Specter—I mean the Blade.”
“Last I saw him, he was in the foyer,” Atherton said. Nadia turned to leave, but he stopped her. “Hey. I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t know they would kick you out for that. Holding back information shouldn’t have caused such repercussions.”
She could see genuine regret in his eyes, which he was trying to hide. Like a true Wraith.
“Depends on what information one hides,” Nadia said and found her way to the overcrowded foyer, which now seemed to function as a substitute for the common rooms in the Cube. Wraiths stood and mingled everywhere and there was only a narrow pathway up the stairs past seated people.
Terys was busy taking stock of the situation with his Specters when Nadia and Kary approached, and from what Kary had told her earlier, she wasn’t surprised at his reaction.
“I don’t see why you bringing a former Wraith is supposed to change our minds, Sentinel,” he told Kary.
