A horn honked behind her, and the boy bowed. “See you on the way out, chief.”
Lila pulled past the gate, sliding down the streets of Bullstow. Much like the Randolph estate, the compound had been sectioned off for different purposes. State government buildings clustered around the north gate, while the east held the city government. The boys’ schools, university, and dorms clustered together in the south. The west part of the complex held everything else: cafes, restaurants, a hotel, even a grand ballroom for parties. In the center, Falcon Home stood tall and proud. On the outside, it appeared as a sprawling mansion, but it had been cut into suites inside. It housed Governor Lecomte, the men of Saxony’s High Senate, and the prime minister whenever he stayed in New Bristol.
Her father almost always returned during Father’s Week, that week each month when every senator in the Allied Lands turned away from government and spent time with his brood. Meetings still occurred, they just had to be important enough to warrant the interruption.
Few things were more important to senators than their families.
Lila pulled outside the senate’s garage. As she disembarked from the car, she spied two familiar faces marching past, people she never thought she’d see again on the streets of Bullstow, much less in blackcoats. Sergeant Muller and Sergeant Davies shared a laugh, then passed into the security office behind Falcon Home, a plain, brown-bricked building with no frills and only eight stories.
Surely Chief Shaw’s investigation had been completed? Surely their termination papers had already been signed? The men were dirty. Both she and Chief Shaw knew it.
Lila gave her keys to the mechanic outside the garage. He grinned immediately at the chance to play valet. He’d sheepishly asked the first time, and it had become a ritual over time, a ritual she didn’t mind because the gifted man sometimes found problems with her roadster that her own mechanics hadn’t. Sometimes, he’d even fixed them before she left the compound.
Besides, she hated parking next to the more practical sedans favored by the senators. She might have hated it more if her father didn’t enjoy taking the roadster out for a joyride whenever she gave him the chance. He was like Senator Dubois, giddily riding Jewel’s red Firefly whenever her sister gave him the opportunity.
Lila tugged her gloves and jogged up the stone steps of Falcon Home, shaking her head as a stiff footman extended a hand to take them. Turning, he led her toward the central staircase, a creaking oaken beauty stained in dark cherry, the newel posts carved into rosebuds. She’d given up brushing the servants off inside the mansion, for she’d gained quite the reputation as a child for mischief, and this particular gray-haired footman had been put through most of it.
At least until she’d stopped getting caught. The staff didn’t know half of what she’d done or half of the places she’d been on the compound.
Especially as an adult.
Lila followed him to the top floor, past priceless oils and watercolors, past two-hundred-year-old vases filled with bouquets of hydrangeas and tulips, past rugs woven in countries Lila had never seen.
He finally stopped before a gilded rose knocker and rapped upon the door with three brief taps. “Chief Randolph has arrived, sir,” the footman announced when her father opened the door. He gave another stiff bow and scurried away.
“Lila girl.” Her father grinned, embracing her in a warm hug. He led her through his parlor, decorated with even more care than the rest of Falcon Home, a priceless painting of the great oracle battle queen Mildthrylth hanging in the room. The dark-haired, fur-clad woman had impaled a Roman general with a spear, a bloody, knowing smile on her lips. Her people slaughtered his men in the background.
Lila remembered staring at it for hours as a child. She and Alex had even taken turns as the oracle queen and as t
he fallen Roman general. Sometimes they fought as Mildthrylth. Other times they chose the moniker of a different oracle queen who had done the same, cutting down the Romans as they liberated their queendoms a millennia and a half ago. The oracles had attacked on the same hour of the same day, though no one claimed to have planned it, driven by the strength and whim of their gods. They’d left only one soldier alive in each city, bidding him to run home and tell their masters not to try again.
They hadn’t, not until centuries later.
The Romans and the Allied Lands were still fighting the same damn war, although the Allied Lands had come together centuries ago with the Declaration of Peace. They were so enmeshed now that they’d become one, with pockets of languages and cultural quirks that merely triggered eye rolls rather than duels and confusion. It was a swirling mix of languages as well as shared history, enemies, gods, and oracles.
Not that Lila believed in that oracle crap, regardless of her recent dreams.
Her father led her into his dining room, and she raised a brow at Chief Shaw, sipping coffee at her father’s table. The militia chief rubbed his moustache and folded his arms over his potbelly, his stern face seeming unfamiliar this morning without his sentry cap perched on his head. If Shaw had been summoned, it meant that she wasn’t having breakfast, but an official meeting about a job.
She’d been right to suspect as much.
Sighing, she plopped in a padded chair across from Shaw, staring at an empty china plate with roses scrawled around the edges. She had no intention of rescuing Oskar just to give him to her father. Besides, as much as she usually enjoyed her father’s jobs, the last one had worn her out. Not only was she still tired, but she still bore the marks from it, not to mention she still had to track down the person sending her cryptic messages from its aftermath.
Lila drummed her fingers on the table. There was another reason why she hoped they hadn’t called her in for help with Oskar. Stealing a slave from a highborn family crossed a line, a line he’d slipped a foot over last night with her mother.
“Father, Chief Shaw,” she said, inclining her head. The staff at Falcon Home had piled the table high with pancakes, eggs, bacon, blueberries, yogurt, maple syrup, and orange juice. A bottle of Sangre had been added in the middle.
All her favorite breakfast accoutrements.
It wasn’t a good sign.
“Chief Randolph,” Shaw echoed, nodding.
Her father looked back and forth between them. A guilty expression crossed his face as he sat beside her. “I thought Chief Shaw might have breakfast with us.”
“A working breakfast, I take it? Usually you warn me first.”
“I didn’t know myself until last night. I should have sent you a message this morning, but I didn’t want to wake you early.”