Page 7 of A Thief to Die For

Saints, not this again. ‘Being a victim doesn’t justify anything he’s done.’

‘I think he hates that he can’t control me,’ she continues. ‘Which is what he likes so much about you – you don’t resist. You’re so compliant. Predictable.’

I stare at her, frustration bubbling so far up my throat I could choke on it. There was a time I was compliant, yes. When we were children. When he’d tie a five-year-old Agatha to a tree for not being quiet enough. When he left her there, crying all night. But then I grew older and found my voice, and we took our punishments together, our skin blistering as we spent entire days in the hot sun. That’s when he figured out that Agatha was my weakness, and he could control me by hurting her. By hurting anyone.

Collective punishments began after that. For the guards. The Dresden. Whoever he needs to control. And with his enforcers, loyal guards ruled by Coatl, and no other options for people, his grip on Notting has never been more ironclad.

But me, compliant? No. My resistance began two years ago, the night he handed Agatha over to Coatl to be beaten with a stick.

I bite my tongue and painstakingly wait for the blood to slow in my veins. ‘I’m glad you don’t want to be me. I don’t want you to be me. Be you.’

Agatha’s eyes grow glassy.

‘But at least let me train you, so we can avoid –’

She pulls back, vigorously shaking her head.

A sound of exasperation leaks from my throat. ‘If you want to do your experiments, this is how you get there. You have to beat him at his own game. Ag, please. Pick any weapon, and I’ll train you. With a little practice you could learn.’

‘I don’t want your help. Stop acting like him.’

Her hand slaps the table, but I feel it as if she hit my face. ‘That’s not funny.’

‘I’m not joking,’ she quips. ‘Stop trying to control me. I don’t want to be a guard. I want to study alchemy.’ With lips tight, she returns to her experiments, reaching past her magnifying scope to draw her candle closer in the dimming light.

I wait, but I’ve been dismissed. Fine. I let the hairpin fall from my hand on to her desk, and leave.

After filling my bowl with stew from the outdoor kitchen, I set my tray on the dining hall table and sit across from Dezzy, who’s reading something academic. The title – from what I can tell from that summer she tried (and failed) to make me bilingual – is written in her mother tongue, Gergan.

The only other people seated near us are our medic, Grendle, and her farmer husband.

‘Well …’ Dezzy says, stern eyes peering up at me, ‘I see you’re wearing black again. Black, black, always black. I did not know I raised a coal miner.’

I lift an amused brow at my former nanny. ‘This is my militia uniform. What else am I supposed to wear?’

Her disappointed tsks come in rapid fire, flashing me back to my education purgatory with her as my tutor. ‘But now you are not on duty, are you? Or maybe you forgot to remember that? You know it would not hurt you to try some colour in your shirts.’ She plucks the faded yellow fabric of her own blouse, tempting the overwhelmed buttons to burst off her shirt.

‘I always wear this. Why does it matter?’

She balks, jerking forward. ‘Did you know that by the time I was your age, I was already married? You must marry soon, Marian. You and your sister. Nobody lives very long in these times. And then there’s your fa–’ she cuts herself off.

My father. Bold of her to go there. Talking like that could get her exiled. Although, any guard kicking her out would have to go through me first.

‘But you’ – she scoffs – ‘how are you supposed to attract a man wearing that all the time?’

‘How indeed,’ I mutter dryly. I stuff my mouth with stew and briefly regret sitting with the three oldest people in the militia. I guarantee the table of laughing guards across from us is not discussing marriage.

‘I’ve held my tongue too long,’ Dezzy says.

‘You really haven’t,’ I mumble.

‘Time is running out for you.’

‘For me? What about you? What are you – thirty-nine? You’ve practically got one foot in the grave.’ I smirk so she knows I’m joking, since she has the sense of humour of a canker sore. But my words aren’t without a kernel of truth. Dying tragically young is our reality here. Only the strongest, the best fighters, and those who don’t lose their health to infection or disease are the ones who make it past their fifties. And even then, it seems to be a lottery – one Atlas somehow keeps winning.

‘So why not spend your limited time left falling in love?’

My lip curls. Because look at my choices. Half of these guards are starving wolves who would skin me alive for a promotion. The other half are more like eagles – unassuming, but still capable of dropping their prey on the rocks when it serves them. No one here can be trusted to know about my after-hours activities.