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Nadia and Victoria slipped past them, hardly unnoticed, despite not making any noise, and went into the living room which was full of Ghosts, papers, weapons, and civilians helping. A few of the courtiers who’d come to Fallen Oaks now served their queen by assisting the Ghosts in their mission to gather intelligence, and to build the new bomb. Victoria was one of them, functioning as an all-round assistant. Turned out, her knack for knowing everything that went on at court made her useful in keeping related information together and updating people who came and went.
“He’s right in here,” she told Nadia and walked through the busy living room and into the other bedroom in that apartment.
“I didn’t expect anything else,” Nadia said. “He was there when I left hours ago.”
Victoria smiled. “Well, I forced him to drink some coffee at least.”
The bedroom was not as crowded as the living room. Only one person, besides the chronicler, was in there, a young courtier scuttling about, trying his best to tidy up the mess Harmiston had made since Nadia saw him last.
Harmiston was hunkered down next to the magical bomb he’d spent nearly all his time awake building over the last few weeks. He wore his usual grays and greens, pants and shirt, his short blond hair standing on end due to him running his hands through it in frustration, his trimmed beard oddly tidy in comparison.
The bomb looked much like the ones Kassemyr and his followers had used to attack both the Cube and the Royal Palace, but it was bigger. So far, the large tank on top was empty of both liquid and magic. The tubes and measuring instruments that were connected to its sides went down into the pedestal it rested upon, which was now also open via a hatch in the side. Harmiston was working on something inside it, tightening something with a screwdriver from what Nadia could see.
“Victoria, when Nadia gets here with the stabilizer, could you send her in?” he said without turning around to see who’d walked into the room.
“You have that much confidence in me you simply assume I got it?” Nadia said.
Harmiston withdrew his hands from inside the pedestal and turned his head. “Yes,” he said, rewarding her with a wide smile.
“It’s a good thing I got two then,” she said and retrieved them from her pocket. That smile of his made her efforts worth it. She handed them to him, their fingers brushing at the handover. With all the people in the apartments these days, they had little privacy, and small stolen touches and the odd kiss would have to suffice.
Harmiston raised his eyebrows at the sight of the two small and glowing orbs in his hand. “Two? What did you have to do to achieve that?” He looked at her and then noticed her appearance. “I’m suddenly not sure I want to know,” he added.
“Makes two of us,” Victoria chimed in.
“I figured a spare one is always good,” Nadia said, and gave a slight shrug. “But I left the rest behind. The whole setup was fairly disorganized. I doubt they keep stock of what they have.”
“Good,” Harmiston said, carefully carrying the orbs over to the nearest table, which had been brought in to replace the bed that had been in there. This wasn’t truly a bedroom anymore, but a makeshift lab.
“They know we stole the specs for the bomb,” Harmiston added, “so I’m sure they know we’re trying. They don’t have to know how far we’ve come.”
“How far, exactly, have we come?” Nadia asked and noticed a frown on Harmiston’s usually chipper face. Before he could respond, footsteps grabbed Nadia’s attention, and she turned around just as Marika, Phantom Ghost and therefore the only leader they had, walked in.
“I heard you’d returned,” she said to Nadia. “I see it got bloody.”
“Had to cut a were’s throat.”
“Always messy business, that,” she commented with a quick nod. Victoria and Harmiston shared glances of shock that they weren’t aware were seen.
“The sentinels I sent out yesterday have combed through the farmlands,” Marika went on, ignoring this. “There was no sign of the Wraiths this time either.”
“That’s the third time,” Nadia said, feeling depleted. “If they were free, I would expect them to move around, but they should have made contact with Ghosts if they saw them.”
She’d been tasked by the Queen to locate the Wraiths and bring them back. If they were going to stand a chance against Kassemyr’s hybrids, they needed more manpower. The Ghosts had already proven that the hybrids could be killed, but the price had been high. For every hybrid they had ended during their escape from the Palace on the day of the attack, more Ghosts had died. They desperately needed the Wraiths who were equally well trained, more used to combat situations, and more in numbers too. The problem was that they hadn’t been seen since they’d all fallen victims to the magical bombs like the one Nadia and the others were now standing next to. They had all been removed from the Cube, but to where?
Marika reached back and pulled the elastic band out of her dark hair, freeing it from the tight ponytail. “It’s looking more and more like they are held against their wills. Which means that we might be looking at the dungeons under the Palace as the most likely place.”
“Yes.” Nadia kept her expression neutral, despite the feeling of unease this thought always caused her. She might have been kicked out of the Queen’s Wraiths because of her lies. They considered her a betrayer, but that didn’t mean she’d stopped caring about them. She’d grown up with many of them, fought with them, shared most of her life with them. They still mattered to her. Even if the worst had happened, and Kassemyr’d had them executed, she wanted to know. She was grateful to the Queen for giving her the job of finding them. She was also grateful for the Ghosts’ resources in that regard.
“You’re not going to go in there, are you?” Victoria asked, looking horrified at the thought.
Nadia turned and peered at the bomb. “We’ll have to go in there at some point, anyway.”
“We need to get this thing working first,” Harmiston said. He’d put both orbs into a small red container. “With these, we should be able to control how the poison is spread. I think that’s how they did it when they attacked the Cube and the Palace. The witch, Lerah, used the stabilizer to spread the poison throughout the buildings, which was why open windows and doors made no difference.”
“You’re sure of this?” Marika asked him.
“Almost completely.”
