Maybe his life had been worth less than Harte’s. But watching these newly woken Mageus struggle and seeing the fear in their eyes every time their affinities burst forth uncontrolled, she wasn’t sure that she’d had any right to make that decision.
Taking a deep breath, Esta shoved away her doubts. “Did you want something?”
“You’ve acquitted yourself admirably this past night,” Ruth said. “What you did for Maggie and the children during the fire, and here, with the newly woken.”
“We told you that we weren’t your enemy,” Esta pointed out, trying to keep any trace of smugness from her voice.
“Yes, well . . .” Ruth paused, her nostrils flaring slightly, as though admitting as much had been an effort. “With all that’s happened, it seems that I must count you as an ally after all,” she said, not sounding all that happy about the situation. “With the damage to the brewery and the responsibility here with the newly woken, I need your help.”
The words settled something inside of her. This is it. “What’s your plan?”
“The Society,” Ruth said. “I want to make them pay for what they’ve done to us. I want them to crawl.”
“The feeling is definitely mutual,” Esta told her. Whatever her doubts, that was one sentiment she could get behind one hundred percent.
“But crawling isn’t enough. We need to be sure that they have no recourse left,” Ruth said, glancing at Esta from the side of her eye. “The Society cannot be allowed to keep the necklace. I need a thief.”
“Then you’re in luck. Because I happen to be a damn good one.” She gave a little bow. “But I have one condition. If I help you with this, I want what you took from me. I want my cuff.”
Ruth was silent for a long moment. “If I don’t agree?”
“I’ll take it anyway,” she said. “I could take the necklace too, before you even get close to touching it. But I’d prefer to work with you. I hope that the fact that I’ve stayed this long shows you that I’d rather help you than fight you.” As she spoke, she realized that she wasn’t sure how much of what she said was a lie—and how much was the truth.
“Fine,” Ruth said, her jaw tight. “You help us destroy the Society and get me the necklace and the cuff is yours.”
But then what? Would she simply steal the necklace too and leave Ruth and the Antistasi behind, as though she hadn’t been part of this at all? Or was there a different way forward, a way where she and Harte didn’t have to fight alone? The more Ruth talked and explained the Antistasi’s plan, the more Esta wondered.
UNTIL THE END
1904—St. Louis
Harte saw Esta coming toward him too late to avoid her. It had been the better part of a day, and as far as he could tell, the power inside of him had settled itself down to a low rumble of discontent, but he didn’t trust it. He’d kept his distance, all while keeping her in sight, because he didn’t trust the Antistasi, either.
There was no doubt that Ruth was charismatic. She believed in the righteousness of what she was doing. But in Harte’s experience, the line between belief and zealotry was often a fragile one, indistinct and prone to crumble when examined too closely. Her idea to give Sundren magic might have been noble had her victims been given any choice in the matter. But Ruth had forced it upon them, had infected them with a power that they neither wanted nor had any ability to control.
He couldn’t quite see how that was much different from what the Sundren did by forcing Mageus to hide their affinities. Both sides were driven by desperation and fear, and they seemed to him two halves of the same coin.
As Esta sat next to him, he made sure to focus on locking down the power and was ready in case it decided to lurch toward the surface. It seemed quiet, but that could be just another of its tricks.
She didn’t speak to him at first. Instead, Esta picked up a rock and lobbed it into the murky water beyond. The sun glinted off the surface, illuminating the ripples as they grew. For a second he could almost imagine that they were in another place, another situation. His whole life, he’d wanted only to be free from the city. But now that he was, he’d been so consumed with everything else, he’d barely had time to breathe.
“It’s bigger than I imagined it would be,” he said softly.
He felt her eyes on him. “The river?”
“All of it.” He turned to her. “I knew it would be big, but I didn’t realize.”
She worried her lip with her teeth as she let out a tired breath. “I know what you mean. Bigger and . . . different than I thought.” She paused, letting their mutual appreciation for the place they’d found themselves in stretch between them. “I’m sorry about flattening you,” she told him. “I was just desperate to find the—”
“It’s fine,” he said, meaning it.
Esta gave him a small nod and turned to look back at the river.
“Ruth asked for our help,” she said, finally breaking the heavy silence between them. “She wants to destroy the Society, and to do that, she needs to make sure they don’t have the necklace.”
Her voice was so hopeful, so determined, but something about it made the power inside of him feel like it was starting to wake again.
“We’re not here to destroy the Society, Esta,” he told her, his voice coming out more clipped than he’d intended because his attention was focused on Seshat, in case the demon decided to make another play for Esta. “We’re here to get the necklace and get out, remember? The rest of this isn’t our fight.”
“Why isn’t it?” she pressed. “We can do something here to help people.”
“Or we could just make everything worse,” he told her. At her agitation, the power seemed to pulse with excitement, swelling and growing. “Look what happened after Ruth attacked that meeting. Look at the people we rescued from the hospital.”
“She gave them their power back,” Esta said, remembering what Ruth had told her. “She helped them.”
“She attacked them. Look at them,” he said, turning her back to face the group of ragged-looking victims from the Antistasi’s attack. Half were still dressed only in what they’d worn in the hospital. “Really look at them. Do any of those people look happy right now?”
She shrugged away from him. “They will be. Aren’t you?”
He laughed. “Happy?” Shaking his head, he tried to figure out how to make her understand. His affinity had driven his father away and destroyed his mother. It gave him power over people, true, but it had also kept him apart. He was always wary, always afraid of getting too close or letting anyone know too much about him. “Nothing about my affinity has made me happy, Esta.”
She frowned at him. “That can’t be true.”
“Let’s just go,” he said. “Please. We still have Julien. He can help us figure out where the necklace is, and then we can get it and get out of this town. We don’t need the Antistasi or their grand schemes.”
Esta gestured to her arm. “Ruth still has Ishtar’s Key, remember? We can’t leave without it.”