jammed tightly in the pockets of his coat, he stood and watched Vertus kill the old man, and was he glad? Was he relieved not to have the death completely on his own conscience? Was he, as Vertus had suggested, a coward?
He made himself watch every moment, every kick and every flail, until they slowed, and finally stopped.
Vertus stayed where he was, bent over the bed, his full weight on the pillow.
Nate leaned against the wall, his knees weak. “Is he gone?”
“Not yet. It takes longer than you’d think.”
They waited. This silence, too, was all-consuming; but it was companionable, shared between them.
Finally, Vertus stood up and tossed the pillow aside. “He’ll have fouled himself. They always do,” he said. Then he went downstairs. Arkady’s open eyes were fixed on the ceiling. His face was slack, as if he were asleep, except that he was very clearly dead. Nate drew down the eyelids and pushed the old man’s jaw up to close his mouth; it instantly fell open again. A moment later Vertus returned with a small prybar. Nate watched as the servingman—former servingman, he corrected—broke open the chest in the corner. Inside were half a dozen or so small bags, sewn out of thick dun-colored cloth. Nate knew each one was full of gold. They vanished into Vertus’s pockets, one by one. The last one wouldn’t fit so Vertus tied it onto his belt.
“Would you have done it anyway?” Nate said.
Vertus shrugged. “I’m not a murderer, but I’m not a fool, either. I know an opportunity when it comes knocking. This way, I get my share.”
“I didn’t do it for the money.”
Vertus took Arkady’s watch from the nightstand and slipped it into his pocket. “Not my business what you did it for. I’m glad to have known you these past few months, magus.” There was an unpleasant stress on the title that Nate didn’t like. “Seems to me we’ll keep friendly in the future. A thing like this—it binds men together, doesn’t it?” He glanced at the dead man on the bed and left.
So that would be the way of it. Well, it couldn’t be helped. Nate left the dead man gaping at the ceiling and went downstairs to the parlor. Vertus had taken Arkady’s brandy, but left the goblets and the silver tray that sat underneath—valuable, doubtless, but also bulky. Nate brought the tray and his satchel out into the garden. He took a small knife out of the satchel; the springknife was for stabbing and slashing, not the delicate cuts of the Work. The night was clear and moonless. In the spectral light from the stars he could barely see the knife’s edge. He reopened the wound Derie had left on his arm by feel and collected the blood in a black pool on the tray. He didn’t need much, just enough to spread into a thin layer with the heel of his good hand. Quickly, before it got sticky, he drew Derie’s sigil; hesitated a moment, then added Charles’s.
The Work would have been easier in moonlight. Something about the moon and blood and the ocean: if a full moon shone on the blood, the Work was clearer, just as the rest of the world was. Everybody Nate had ever known described the Work in a different way—although these were uncomfortable conversations, never easy, like talking about sex; despite its communal nature the Work felt very private—and to Nate it felt like moving stacks of books to find the one he wanted. He even got a dull ache at the base of his spine sometimes, the way he had when he’d helped Caterina empty out their wagon for cleaning. He found Derie instantly; Charles came more slowly, as if he’d been asleep. Derie was rustling around in his head, as crude as Vertus in Arkady’s wardrobe. Bringing out Arkady’s graying face, his blueish lips.
Then the blood was dry, and they were gone. Nate was alone in the garden. In the manor. He was alone.
* * *
Derie came so quickly that at first Nate thought the slow, steady drag of her cane on the Porterfield cobbles was just an afterimage of the Work. Then she rapped on the back gate. He let her in, leaving the gate unbolted for Charles. He’d been sitting in Arkady’s chair in the parlor (nobody’s chair, now), feeling increasingly clammy despite the roaring fire, and with some reluctance asked her if she wanted to go upstairs.