Page 54 of Cage of Starlight
“Was it not obvious?” With a tug, Sena removes the sheet from the cage and Tory gapes at the sight of something inside, delicate and yellow and—
“Is that abird?”
A knock on the door grinds Tory’s sputtering thoughts to a halt.
Just the one knock, like a gunshot.
Vantaras goes still, spine taut and expression carefully blank. “The colonel,” he whispers. He bursts into motion, pulling his jacket back on and buttoning it with unsteady fingers.
Another knock, loud enough that it bounces in Tory’s skull.
“I can get that . . .?”
“Don’t!” Vantaras skids across the stone floor toward his boots while buttoning the last button on his jacket and stops, clearly distraught, staring at the complex laces on the nearly knee-high boots. There’s no way he’s getting those on again in any reasonable amount of time.
He wrenches open the door in the corner (a full closet, as Tory thought) and pulls a pair of offensively fancy shined dress shoes off a rack, shoving his feet into them with desperation a hair short of violence.
In the breath before the third knock lands—two knocks, this time, and if knocking can be a threat then this third knock is the most bone-chilling threat Tory has ever heard—Sena looks toward Tory, hair in slight disarray, eyes wide like Tory’s must have been when that carriage was bearing down on him.
He pats his hair, strides toward the door, and stands at perfect attention in front of it.
“Sorry—” He pulls the door open. “—Sir.”
Kirlov, unbreathing-still, waits on the other side. “What have I said about apologies, Lieutenant?” He doesn’t wait for Sena’s answer. “You didn’t respond.”
“Sir?”
“The alarms. I expected an immediate report, but I had to hear about the incident fromDr. Helner.”
Sena was in no position to give a report, the way Tory found him, but Sena says nothing to defend himself. “It won’t happen again, Sir.”
“See that it doesn’t.”
Tory has no reason not to be loving this. Vantaras is off-kilter, and Tory still quite likes the idea of that, but he really shouldn’t have followed him here, to hisroom.
Now he knows that Sena off-kilter can look like he did in the lab—on the ground, rocking toward his knees with ashy roots falling to dust all around. It can look like he looked in here, like he was a bare inch from shaking apart. Sena is a jerk with a stick up his ass, but he handles pressed flowers so gently he didn’t break a single one picking them up from the ground.
Enjoying this would feel too much like kicking a wet, wounded dog.
He hates Sena for that.
Kirlov’s expression twitches as he peers into Sena’s room—from the boot knocked on its side halfway across the floor to the still-swinging light show from the stellite and the sheet discarded on stone and the twittering, awakenedbird,and then to Tory in the midst of it all—and says, “Non-officers are forbidden from entering this area.”
Vantaras adjusts his stance and doesn’t tell Kirlov how adamant he was about Tory leaving. He just looks at the floor like the world’s wettest noodle of a person. “Yes, Sir.”
“We will discuss that later. For now, come.Bothof you. The Grand General has arrived, and he wishes to see you.”
Kirlov strides away, forcing them to lurch into motion to follow him. Vantaras’ always blistering pace makes more sense, if he has to keep up with Kirlov’s.
They pass Helner in the hallway and she hurries to catch up with them, pointing a finger like a knife at Kirlov. “You’re a bastard,” she says, half-running in heels to keep pace.
Tory’s eyebrows rise.
“Just heard the news. You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”
Kirlov’s shoulders draw up. He stares ahead, like ignoring her might make her disappear. “It wasn’t relevant to you.”
“Wasn’t relevant! Did you hear nothing I said about the incident in the lab?”
