"Believe in the plan from a distance. After tonight, you'll be reassigned."
I'd known this was coming, but hadn't decided what to do about it. Disobedi
ence meant expulsion from the Coracks. But if I left Kestra now, they'd swallow her whole.
My only choice was to make her tell Tenger where she had hidden the dagger. And then maybe, if I was lucky, I could persuade Tenger to let me find Gerald and retrieve it. Hopefully, before Endrick got to him.
Once it became clear that Kestra wasn't going to harm Celia, Tenger muttered that Celia had probably deserved worse and told me to bring Kestra to meet with him under the bookshop.
I wasn't sure what Kestra had said, but Celia was still standing when Kestra and Gabe walked away, so I took that as a good sign. Celia remained exactly where Kestra had left her, ashen-faced and frozen in place, which Kestra couldn't have seen, but I was sure she could sense it.
She reached my side and smiled. "I feel better."
"We need to talk, alone."
Her smile fell, and she cast a cautious eye at Gabe. He'd obviously been assigned to monitor us because he stayed on our heels, entering the same bookshop where Tenger had gone. The owner wasn't Corack, but he was sympathetic to our cause and could be trusted.
"Corack tunnels run beneath most of Silven," I explained to Kestra. "This bookshop accesses a secret room downstairs."
"Below a bookshop?" she coolly replied. "I didn't know Coracks could read."
"We can read. Or ... most of us can. Careful with the insults, Kes, I'm a Corack too."
"Yes, you are." She stopped and this time her eyes turned on me like a whip. "And I am not."
Maybe she could be, if she'd just tell the truth about the dagger. It was a secret she was willfully keeping because no matter what her feelings were for Simon Hatch, the boy, she still did not trust Simon, the Corack.
I glanced at Gabe, who was standing closer to us than he needed to be. "Give us a minute alone."
"I'm supposed to bring you directly to Tenger."
I cocked my head. "Tell him I overpowered you on the way inside. There was nothing you could do to stop me."
Gabe chuckled. "Not even on your best day, Hatch." But he did leave.
When he'd gone, I led Kestra down a row of thick books that reminded me of the hedge path where Basil had spoken to her last night. From the spark in Kestra's eyes, she might've been drawing the same comparison. I wondered again what had happened between her and Basil. Was that something else standing between us?
She folded her arms against a rigid body, displaying stubbornness at the worst possible time. Tenger had led the Coracks for the seven years of our existence. Time after time, we had outsmarted the Dominion, outmatched forces with twenty times our numbers, and survived despite being targeted for annihilation. Credit for all of that went to the captain. Kestra would not win at this meeting.
"We don't have much time," I began. "You said you have a plan for the Olden Blade. I want to hear it."
"What I said is that the plan is my secret, and it will stay that way until Darrow is returned to me."
She was maddening, deliberately so. "You trusted Gerald with the plan, but not me?"
"Gerald only knows what little I had to tell him."
"Such as where to hide the most valuable weapon in Antora?"
"Hush!" She shifted her weight to the other foot, clearly irritated. "If you knew my plan, what would you do?"
"I would tell Tenger, so we could find Gerald and get that dagger back." Before she could object, I added, "The Dominion will already be after Gerald for escaping the dungeons. And now he's carrying the one object Endrick desires most. That's your doing, Kes."
She licked her lips and looked away. This was clearly something she had not considered.
"Talk to me." I was almost begging now. "Any Infidante is better than losing the dagger again."
"Now who's naive?" she asked. "Do you think everyone who might claim the Blade is the same quality warrior? If we want to see Endrick defeated, the Infidante must be the strongest possible choice!"