My Sister Is The Villainess

The balcony was on the fourth side of the palace, the one nobody liked, because it faced the swamp and the wind carried the smell of rot straight into your face. That was exactly why I liked it.

It was late, somewhere between the last bell and the first, and the torches below had burned down to coals. I leaned on the stone railing as if I were only looking at the view, a one-star soldier who had come out for air. Then I slid my hand into the gap between two of the balusters, where a crack ran deep into the stone, and felt my fingers touch paper.

I pulled out a small, folded note:

??0 ?oin?

It was written backward. That was part of the system. Nobody who found it by accident would be able to read it without a mirror, and anyone who could read it would still have no idea who had written it or why. I took a small round glass from my pocket and held it up in front of the note.

660 Coins.

I stared at the number for a moment. Then I smiled.

It was done. It was all done.

Twenty disciples, twenty obedient, honest-to-god followers who had once been trading with Quinn, I just threatened them that I would have them either executed or they can work for me and earn part of the money. They happened to choose the latter, which was the only logical option if they liked living. Also, they had made me 660 coins in less than a week. Also this one was far more legal than Quinn’s one, they could just exchange gifts with the official shop keepers.

And the best part was nobody would ever think of me.

Why would they? Everyone in the palace already knew that Quinn had been hiding a huge part of the money. He had been caught selling Gifts. He had confessed to trying to control the economy.

Half the soldiers were quietly convinced that his money was buried somewhere in the walls, and a few of them were already hunting for it at night. Any coin that appeared in the wrong place now had a ready-made explanation, and the explanation was dead.

’This,’ I thought, ’is one of the benefits of getting Quinn done.’

It was strange.

The word benefit fit well in my mouth. I turned it around a few times, testing it, and noticed that I felt no shame. I felt the clean, bright satisfaction of a locked puzzle turning in my hand.

I folded the note and tucked it into my sleeve. Then I rested my elbows on the railing and let the wind play with my hair.

I was enjoying life, I realized.

That was the thing nobody would believe. The soldier’s bed was soft. The food was good. The coins were piling up in places I alone knew. People feared Culex, feared Quinn’s memory and feared the Order, and I was the only person in the whole palace who understood the shape of all three fears. I was moving through them like a man walking through his own house at night.

And I was helping, too. That was the part that made it perfect. Every coin I earned could be turned into food or clothes or silence for someone who needed it, and the bigger my web grew, the more of these people I could eventually protect. I was the secret savior of a hundred and fifty frightened souls who did not even know my name.

’The savior,’ I thought. ’Of these people.’

It sounded good. It sounded very good.

I let the thought sit there, warm and bright, and did not ask myself why it fit so comfortably.

It had been more than fifteen days since I joined the soldiers.

That was only a number here. In the real world, the number was bigger. The realm’s time ran differently, and my calculations said that fifteen days in this palace were about two months back home. I tried to picture it. If that was right, it would be the middle of June there, and the sun would be climbing high over Valemont, and the heat would be pressing down on the foundry chimneys.

’Father would be selling a lot of cloth by now,’ I thought. ’The Summer shipments would have started. Every noble wants new clothes in June.’

I could almost see him, having dinner and grumbling about the price of thread and secretly proud of every sale. He would be wondering where his children were. Mother would be pretending she was not worried and failing at it. They would have a letter ready, maybe, in a drawer, written and rewritten a dozen times, in case we ever came home.

A small ache moved through my chest.

I missed them. That much was simple. I had not let myself say it in days, because a man who is busy has no room for missing.

’I will go back,’ I told myself. ’All of us. Whole. That is the goal. That is the only goal.’

It was the justification I had repeated since the first night, and it still felt true.

I straightened and rolled my shoulders. The ache was putting me off my guard, and the balcony was no place for homesickness. I turned my gaze back to the swamp, the long dark stretch of reeds and black water below the mountain, and let my eyes drift along the road that led toward the palace gate.

Something moved.

I almost missed it.

Two shapes, small and dark against the pale of the road, creeping out of the mist beneath the palace.

They were about forty-five feet away, close to the foot of the wall, where the road bent around a stand of dead trees. I narrowed my eyes and focused, the way Lee had taught me, drawing a thread of spiritual power into my sight.

The two silhouettes sharpened.

One was a tall man in a green uniform with a black blade at his hip, and a captain’s collar. He walked with long, unhurried strides, one hand clamped around the arm of the other shape, who was dragging his feet.

My breath stopped.

It was Captain Rashford. I had seen him a dozen times in the great hall, always standing a little behind Culex’s shoulder, a heavy man with a heavy face. He was the one who had just lost his second-in-command. The one Culex had looked at for a beat too long.

And the person he was hauling toward the palace was blond.

I did not need to see his face. I knew the messy yellow hair, the loose shoulders, the way he tilted his head even when he was frightened, as if the fear were a joke he had not quite understood yet.

It was Arthur.

Rashford had Arthur.