Chapter 11

The car screeched to a halt in front of Wolfhound, the scent of burning rubber thick on the air, and as soon as the car was in park, Daud was out. Callista followed, stumbling in her heels.

"Daud-"

"I need to talk to Martin," he snapped.

"Daud, what if Corvo-"

"He's busy, I'm sure," he snarled, head snapping around to look back at her. She stumbled again, legs leaden and unsteady. He grabbed her upper arm, tightly at first. Then the pressure eased, and he swallowed, schooling his expression into something more approachable. "Lose the mask, Callista. And get yourself a drink. I'll get you home soon, this just can't wait."

She nodded, and focused on walking alongside of him once her mask was off. She made it into the club, mask dangling from her hand, without tripping again. The music was loud and pounding, and it threatened to obliterate the last shreds of her focus and self-control.

They moved around the dancefloor - busy as always - and he settled her in a quieter booth near the bar. "I'll be right back," he murmured. "And I'll have them send you over something. What do you want?"

"I don't care," she said, tossing the mask onto the seat beside her and balancing her elbows against the tabletop, pressing her face into her hands.

Daud's touch lingered on her shoulder for a moment, and then he was gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

All she could see was the Boyle estate in flames, the rafters crashing down, the walls collapsing, Corvo stalking into the destruction with his knife drawn. Had he found each partygoer, checked their pulse, then slit their throat if they were still alive? How many had died? She tried to imagine him as somebody who could protect Emily, take care of her - but couldn't.

Her mouth filled with bile and she squeezed her eyes shut.

She didn't know if it was a minute or half an hour later when she heard the clunk of a glass set down on her table. She mumbled a thank you and groped for it, fingers finding it as the barstaff's footsteps retreated into the shuffling din.

She had it against her lips - whiskey from Morley, by the smell of it - when a hand slammed into the table. She jerked back, spilling droplets of whiskey across her lips and down the front of her dress, eyes shooting open even as she cringed. The hand was covered in heavy, glittering rings, and she slowly raised her eyes to its owner.

Treavor Pendleton stared back at her, expression an unreadable twist of high emotion. His fingers curled against the polished wood. Behind him, hand on his shoulder, was a concerned-looking woman with blonde hair pinned up in curls, red lipstick smeared just a touch at the corner of her mouth.

"What happened out there?" Pendleton demanded, eyes wild. "They're on the news saying there was some kind of explosion!"

She nodded, numbly.

"An explosion!"

Her throat worked. No answer came out.

"I'm sure they'll find them," the blonde woman said, hand now running down his skinny back. "Lord Treavor-"

"Get your hands off of me," he snarled, twitching away from her, and the woman winced, then wrinkled her nose.

"I'll wait for you at the bar, then?" she asked.

"... Have Wallace drive you home," Treavor muttered. His skin couldn't decide if it should be white with horror and shock, or purple with rage, and, as Callista watched, it grew splotchy in uneven, unflattering patterns. The wine on his breath probably wasn't helping. She curled her hands around her cup and fought the urge to draw her knees up to her chest.

The woman - very pretty and obviously very worried - grimaced, but Treavor wasn't looking back at her. She folded her hands together. And she left.

Callista watched her go, then glanced back at Treavor. "You probably shouldn't be alone," she said, softly. "If your brothers-"

"Who set that bomb?" Pendleton had finally straightened up from the table, and now fished a flask out of his jacket pocket, uncapping it and taking a long swig.

"Not us. Probably Corvo," she said, flinching at the memory of how white the sky had gone.

"I told Martin he was dangerous," Treavor hissed. "That he wouldn't do the job nicely. My brothers- I hated my brothers, but they deserved better than going up in flames. And with that company, no less! And the Boyle sisters- are they at least well? I bet they're not. He's a loose cannon." He paused, then narrowed his eyes. "And what were you doing there, anyway? Martin said you were supposed to stay here!"

"Daud asked me to go," she mumbled into her drink.

"Oh, yes, because Daud is so trustworthy, too. Where was he? He should have done something."

How much did Martin tell him? She sipped at her whiskey and didn't look at Pendleton, with his rumpled suit and grief-wracked face. He was the money, Daud had said, and the government influence in Parliament, no doubt. Would Martin have told him about Lydia Boyle's threat?

Probably not.

"I thought he was supposed to be keeping an eye on Attano," he said.

No, Martin hadn't.

"Well, at least that bastard Shaw is probably dead," Treavor mumbled as he tilted his flask up again. Then he snarled, his high, wheedling voice twisting with rage. "I was supposed to be happy they were dead! That was the idea! I get the money, I get a life without them, but instead of getting a knife in the back, they're blown to pieces at a costume party along with half the Dunwall elite!" He slumped into the seat across from her.

"It's not fair," he muttered.

She shook her head. "At least people might not guess they were the targets?" she offered.

He scowled.

"... I... suppose you have a point," he said, then rattled his flask. It was empty.

Callista set her glass down and nudged it across the table to him.

"Yes," he said as he took up the whiskey without even a half-mumbled thank you, "yes, I guess that's the best of it. There's likely to have been a good fifteen or twenty people that could've been the targets, if the masses don't think it was just symbolic. If... if when the news picks it up, I just... make it seem like I think it's a tragedy..." He pursed his lips. "I bet they'll all think the Boyles were the targets. Esma's sleeping with the Regent, anyway. Makes her a target."

It said something, she thought, that Treavor didn't consider setting his brothers up as ill-treated martyrs. Even he couldn't lie about his family like that.

"And it'll all be very sad and I guess I can... Wallace!" he shouted, lifting his head.

"You sent your date home with him," Callista reminded him, gently.

Treavor frowned. "Why'd I do that?"

"I think because she was trying to comfort you."

He finished off her whiskey and stood, unsteady. "Wallace!" When he got no response, he dug in his pocket for his phone. Callista looked at her empty glass as Treavor wandered away, rattling off orders. "Yes, bring the car back around. With Gigi, yes. We'll go to my townhouse. The cellars are fully stocked there, right? I want..."

His voice was swallowed up by the crowd.

With half the wealthy and powerful of Dunwall dead or dying in the wreckage of the Boyle estate, what would happen to Martin's grand conspiracy? Every piece she knew he held was threatening to unravel. Things were moving so quickly. Emily had the plague, even if she was slowly recovering from it. Scores of people were dead. The city was on high alert after Campbell's death, and there was rioting in the streets.

Corvo was uncontrollable - because Martin wouldn't have asked for such a devastating explosion.

... Would he?

She stood up and scanned the club for any sign of Daud. Craning her neck, she stared up at the second floor. There- a flash of moving shadow that she felt sure she only recognized from living with him for the last several weeks, from dancing alongside him twice now. He reached the stairs and descended at a clip. She went to meet him.

His jaw was tense, and he jerked his head towards the door. "Come on," he said.

"What is it?"

"Lydia Boyle is still alive."

Callista stood in a hospital hallway, outside the ICU room that held Lydia Boyle's body. She'd glanced in only once. The sight of her, small and pale, bandaged and bruised, hooked up to what seemed like a hundred different lines and tubes, had brought memories of every relative she'd ever held the hand of, waited for, pleaded for, crashing back over her until she'd barely been able to breathe.

Daud remained inside. He'd taken all of Esma's things and had shown them to Lydia, even though she was largely unresponsive and only nominally stable. Her eyes were closed. Her veins were flooded with morphine. She'd been moved from the ER three hours ago, and she'd only woken up twice. She'd lost her right arm in the blast, and it was incredible that the shock and the blood loss hadn't taken her.

What was even more amazing was that Corvo hadn't found her, either.

There were half a dozen other partygoers in the ward, and a few others transported to different hospitals. She could hear the nurses talking with the police officers who had been involved in the salvage and rescue. Not all of the casualties had been from the explosion, or the subsequent fire and collapse. At least seven were definitely caused by a knife to the throat or, in one case, the femoral artery, as the victim's throat was covered by rubble. Waverly Boyle had been among them.

Lydia was relatively untouched.

Callista worried at her fingers and the hem of her dress. She'd forgotten the mask back at Wolfhound. Daud had called back on the drive over to have Havelock destroy it before Corvo returned. He'd gotten two other calls on the way, both from Martin, both demanding updates.

"He's angry," Daud had told her. "He's raging, because he's stuck at his bloody Feast, and I think he's scared this will push their reactionary fear swing too far and make them pass over him, despite the safeguards he's put in place." His lips had curled and twisted.

"Is that a good thing?" she'd asked.

"It's hard to predict the actions of a desperate man," Daud had said.

She should have demanded he leave her behind, let her go home. She wasn't good at hospitals. She wasn't good at injury, at death - except she supposed she had a lot of experience in enduring it all. Still, the smell of antiseptic, the beeping of monitors, all of it brought back too many memories of days and weeks spent in waiting rooms, at bedsides.

She'd been too young and too scared to go into her father's hospital room to tell his unresponsive but still barely-alive body goodbye, that she loved him, that she would miss him. She hadn't made the same mistake again. The regret had torn at her, and she had learned to brave closure, because it was necessary.

But right now, the thought of going into Lydia Boyle's room made her gut twist and turn.

There was nothing we could do, she told herself again. If they'd come back sooner, they would have been caught in the blast. If they'd never left at all, Esma would have died with them. And if they'd come back later - the only difference would've been where they were when they saw the sky turn white.

Callista was very, very tired of there being nothing she could do. She leaned heavily against the wall and thanked everything she knew that she was too tired and too well-practiced to cry.

The door opened. Daud stepped out into the hallway. The nurses had made him switch out his leather gloves to purple latex, and they looked absurd against his suit. She looked up at his face.

"She's awake," he said, and nodded his head toward the door. "And she wants company. Can you..."

She shook her head.

"You're better at this than I am," he said, lowly. "And I need to go see if Martin's called again." He'd had to leave his phone out at the reception desk.

"I can't go in there," she said, and took a deep breath as she felt her voice threaten to crack. "I did this to her."

He sighed. "And what pointless logic is getting you to that conclusion?"

"I brought Corvo into Martin's path," she said, softly.

"Yes, and I'm the one who put you into Corvo's path. Do you want me out of that room for good?"

She bit her lip, unable to decide.

He reached out and took her shoulder, bare and chilled in the dry hospital air. "Just sit with her for ten minutes. She wants to know Esma's safe. Show her what you brought for her."

"I can't," she said, looking down at her feet, now red and sore around the edges of her shoes.

"You can," he said. "You will. Don't leave her alone."

And then he left her alone, in the midnight hum of the hospital. In another room, halfway down the hall in the opposite direction, an alarm sounded. There was shouting. Rushing. Callista swallowed and stepped into Lydia's room, shutting the door behind her.

Lydia turned her head towards the door.

She'd still been wearing her mask when the bombs went off, and though the ER team had managed to pull the shattered fragments from her face, Callista could still see the pockmarked cuts across her right cheek and jaw. Her nose was broken, and one eye was swollen shut. The last time she'd woken up, the nurses had removed her tracheal tube, but the oxygen mask she wore now chafed at her burned skin.

Callista settled into the chair next to the bed, pumping antibacterial soap into her hands and scrubbing down, trying not to look at Lydia.

She made a rough, hoarse noise. Callista looked up. "Daud will just be a minute," she said, trying not to stare at the monitors behind her - or flinch away from them. "He said you wanted company?"

Lydia nodded, weakly. Through the window, Callista could see the dim, watery dawn. It felt wrong, that the night was over but Lydia was still stretched out in a hospital bed.

"Esma's safe," Callista said, looking down to rummage in the bag Daud had put Esma's things into. It defeated the purpose of the hand sanitizer, she knew, but she didn't care. Her fingers closed around Esma's brooch. "Do you want to see her things again? Would that- help?"

She glanced up. Lydia shook her head.

Callista set the bag down and straightened up. "We didn't know," she said, softly. "We didn't know. Maybe Martin did, but..." Her voice cracked and she tilted her head back, took a deep breath. "I don't think... he'd be that foolish. I'm sorry."

Something scraped against fabric. Callista looked down. Lydia's remaining hand curled against the sheets. She moved it awkwardly, but soon she was pointing towards her stump of a shoulder.

"... They had to remove your arm," Callista said, softly. The weight of it was crushing, even on her own tongue, but Callista reminded herself that she'd have only found out on her own given another minute. "We weren't here then, but the nurse said it was necessary."

Pain flashed across Lydia's face, and she closed her eyes. Her heart rate spiked, the monitors beeping faster. Beneath her oxygen mask, she wet her cracked and scabbed lips.

Leaning close, Callista made out her whisper of, "Piano."

Callista closed her eyes and shook her head. Lydia let out a brief, hitched sob.

The door opened, and Callista turned to see Daud. His expression was stony. Callista got to her feet and caught him by the door.

Daud looked past her. "Arnold Timsh," he said, "was confirmed dead half an hour ago. He was an unlisted guest at the party, apparently. Lydia Boyle's threat holds no more weight." His hands squeaked in their fresh latex gloves as he curled them into fists. "Lydia Boyle is a liability."

Panic shot through her, and she shook her head, sharply.

"No." She stared up at him, what was left of her spirit crumpling. The metal of it creaked and groaned and protested, and she felt it grow close to snapping.

"I don't make the rules," Daud said, staring at the woman in the bed who cradled the stump where her arm should've been.

Callista didn't care what that woman had or hadn't done. She didn't care if her house was built on bones and blood and shit. She was a woman who would never play the piano again, whose sisters were gone, and all Daud had to offer was a waiver of responsibility before- what? How would he do it? Drive a knife through her chest? Inject air into her IV line?

"No," she said again, and tried to stand between them.

Daud finally looked down at her. "Go out to the car, Miss Curnow," he said, softly.

"No."

He grimaced. "Please. Trust me on this. Go out to the car."

"Let him send Corvo to finish the job," Callista hissed.

Daud shook his head. "Trust me, Callista," he said. "Wait in the car. I'm doing this for your sake."

"I'll call for the nurses," she said.

"That will only make things worse for everybody. Including Lydia." He reached for her hand; she jerked back from him. "Step aside, and trust me. Let me work."

"You're going to kill her," she whispered, trembling, eyes burning with rage and tears.

"... In a manner of speaking," he said.

Her brow furrowed in confusion.

"Trust me," he said again. "Trust me, or hate me, but let me do my work."

Callista looked over her shoulder at the woman who was so wholly oblivious to them debating her fate. "Promise me it won't hurt."

"I can't."

"Promise me she'll be okay."

"I am no sister of the Oracular Order, Callista. I can't promise the future like that."

She turned back to him and ducked her head. "Promise me something."

He didn't respond for a long moment. Then he shook his head. "I promise that... I will choose the best path available, and that you'll understand when it's done. Is that enough, Callista?"

She nodded.

In a manner of speaking.

Holding her breath, she left the room.

She made her way out of the hospital on leaden legs and blistered feet. How easy would it be to turn to a nurse, a security guard, a janitor, and tell them that she was being held captive, though not strictly against her will? She could just tell a police officer that she'd been present at the party, that she'd seen the explosion. She could confess that she had seen Corvo Attano at the scene. She could confess that there was a conspiracy.

Burrows would remain in power. He would take control of Emily, if she survived the chaos. Nothing would be gained. But she would have undone Martin's work and taken back some measure of control.

It wasn't worth it.

The early morning was quiet and empty, and she made her way towards the visitor lots. What would Daud do? Would he kill Lydia gently? She hoped so. She hoped, too, that he had some kind of plan that would let him save her, instead. Would he somehow switch the records, leave the world to think that Lydia was Waverly, and that it was the middle Boyle sister who would burn to ash within a fortnight?

Callista found Daud's car and leaned against it. After a moment, she toed off her shoes. She watched the sun rise over the river, and she tried to tell herself that she had done all she could.

Esma Boyle was alive. That was enough.

What would it have been like, to leave with her and Lizzy Stride? To go to Whitecliff? Maybe she could have gone further. Maybe she could have gone to Tyvia, or even to Serkonos, hoping that some last trace of her blood still lived there in the warm sun.

If she'd refused to come with Daud...

She was fading fast by the time Daud appeared from between the rows of cars and the pillars of concrete. He wore his leather gloves again. His hair had come down from its pomade and he looked as tired as she felt. She watched him approach.

He stopped a few inches short of her.

"It's done," he said.

She swallowed around the twisted lump in her chest. "She's dead, then?"

He took a deep breath. "I can't tell you. For your own safety."

"What do you mean?"

"If Martin ever doubts me, he could come to you. Hurt you. I don't want you to... have anything to give him."

Callista stared at him, then laughed, ducking her head. "He wouldn't torture me, Daud," she said, softly. "We both know he'd just kill me. He'd never think I was actually worth anything."

Daud made a strangled sort of sound in his throat, and she looked up, expecting to see him shaking his head in denial. Instead, he only stared at her, the same way he had when the music had stopped and they'd been left gasping for breath in each other's arms.

He licked his lips. "I... she's dead on all the paperwork that matters. I called in some favors. She's under the care of a Dr. Galvani, who will make sure she survives the next week or two, and then will find a way to get her either into the Academy for further care, or out of the city, if it comes to that."

She's alive.

Her eyes widened. The creaking, groaning scaffolding of her spirit stabilized, and the rush of it left her dizzy. Lydia was alive. Daud had gone beyond himself. The whole world was a spinning mess, but he had never lied to her, and he had brought them through the night to something far less wretched than she could have hoped for. She smiled. And then she reached forward, grabbing hold of Daud's lapels, and kissed him.

Daud exhaled sharply in surprise against her lips, and she would have pulled away, except that his arms closed around her and he pulled her close, cradled her against him as his lips parted for her. His tongue trailed along the seam of her mouth and she opened her eyes to find his closed tight.

He trembled, and she leaned into him, catching his lower lip between hers. Her hands tightened on his suit, and he pressed her back against the car, exploring in hesitating, hungry strokes. Esma had been right- he kissed like he wanted to devour her, to mark her. The wolf who had hunted her at the party was back, and she thrilled to it at the same time as she hesitated, nervous, wary.

She pulled back for air, and then slumped against him, head on his shoulder. He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head.

"This isn't," he rasped, "how I expected the night to go."

"No," she said into the fine wool of his suit. Exhaustion and panic crept in to sour her relief.

What was she doing? She let go of him, but she couldn't step away. It wasn't just how he had her pinned; she didn't want to, not yet. She wanted the madness to last another few seconds, another minute. Mr. Wolf, being hunted by his own prey.

She shut her eyes tight.

Daud let go of her, hands pressing instead against the car for a moment before he pulled back entirely, running a hand through his mussed hair. He cleared his throat. "I think things have gotten- enough out of hand for one day," he muttered.

She nodded, and stood, wrapping her arms around herself. When she opened her eyes, she found him watching her. She saw the hunger still lurking, but overlaying it was a close, tight control. He was mastering himself, and she could see it in the tension tightening his posture.

A part of her wanted to touch his hand, his shoulder, his jaw; to return to the tower and collapse beside him in his narrow bed; to be reminded that they were both living, breathing people, fallible and enduring. A part of her just wanted to touch him.

The rest of her walked herself around to the passenger side door.