Thirteen Stitches

Chapter Ten: Nine O'clock, Again

Two days later, Abel was breathing on his own.

The ventilator was gone. A small tracheal tube sat in the hollow of his throat and kept him silent, but his lungs were working and his heart was holding. Twice that afternoon his eyes had opened and found Ezra's face.

When the trooper outside changed shifts at eight, Ezra finally let his own eyes close. For the first time since the raid, he fell asleep in the bedside chair, the gray coat over his knees and his hand resting on the edge of the mattress.

He woke to a touch on his palm.

The room was dark except for the green glow of the monitors. Abel's hand had found his, and one bony finger was tapping against the center of his palm. Light taps, then a firm press, then light again.

Ezra came awake all at once.

It was their old cutting-room code. When he was a boy, Abel had taught him to pass measurements across a fitting room without a word, so clients never heard their own numbers. A firm press for every ten, a light tap for every one. Letters were numbers too, counted by their place in the alphabet. At eight, Ezra had used it to spell rude words behind a banker's back while Abel pretended not to notice.

"I'm here," he whispered. "Go slow. I'm listening."

Abel's finger moved, painfully slow. Six taps. Nine. A firm press and eight. Then five.

F-I-R-E.

Ezra's skin went cold. He saw Augustin on the marble, hooking his collar with a bloody hand. Ask who paid for the fire.

"The fire," he breathed. "Granddad, what about the fire?"

One firm press, then three light taps.

Thirteen.

"Someone cut the panel out," Ezra said. "I'm sorry, I couldn't stop it..."

Abel's hand closed around his wrist, so hard that his knuckles turned white in the green light. His eyes were open and fixed on Ezra's face, wide and wet and urgent. His finger pressed into the soft inside of Ezra's wrist and tapped one last word.

R-U-N.

"Run from what?" Ezra leaned close. "Granddad, from who?"

The door opened, and the overhead light flicked on. A night nurse came in with a clipboard and a cheerful voice.

"Sorry, gentlemen. We need him for scans before the morning rush." She was already unlocking the wheels. "You can wait outside, Mr. Lockwood. Thirty minutes."

Abel's grip loosened, but his eyes never left Ezra's face until the elevator doors closed.

Ezra stood in the empty room with his wrist still aching. Then he picked up the coat and stepped into the corridor.

Odile Fenn was waiting there.

She sat on a plastic chair across from the door with both hands folded on her ivory cane. Under the harsh corridor light she looked older than she had at the precinct, and smaller, and her face held something he had never expected to see there. She was afraid.

"I heard about the panel," she said. "Show me."

He turned back the new lining and showed her the old square he had kept. She looked at it for a long time without touching it.

"He just spoke to me with his hands," Ezra said. "He said fire, and thirteen. Then he said run."

Odile closed her eyes.

"The thirteenth panel was never meant to be cut," she said quietly. "Not by you, not by anyone. Abel sewed it in so that it would stay exactly where it was." She opened her eyes. "Whoever holds it now holds a debt no one in this city knows the price of. Not me, not the families. Perhaps not even the one who took it."

"Then tell me what it is." Ezra stepped closer. "Augustin told me to ask who paid for the fire. Abel told me to run. My parents died that night, Mrs. Fenn. What was he hiding?"

For a moment she looked as if she might answer. Then she rose, leaning heavily on the cane, and her face set back into its stern lines.

"Sit with your grandfather," she said. "Stay where people can see you."

She walked away down the corridor, her cane clicking on the tile, and she didn't look back.

At midnight, Isolde came.

Ezra was in the family room at the end of the ICU wing, a cramped space with a humming vending machine, a sagging couch and a scratched wooden table. He heard her heels in the corridor before she appeared in the doorway, her coat dark with rain and her hair falling loose from its pins. He had seen her in an interrogation room, a courtroom and a ballroom with a gun drawn. He had never seen her like this.

"Rupert has the votes," she said, and she didn't sit. "Six of the nine elders. I've spent two days calling every one of them, and he got there first with money or threats or both. The council meets at nine this morning. By nine-fifteen, I won't be head of this family."

"Isolde..."

"One clause can stop him." She drew a heavy book from inside her coat, bound in dark green leather with the pair of scales stamped in gold, and set it on the table between them. "The charter says a married head of House Varne can't be removed. Not by the council, not by anyone. This is the Varne marriage register."

Ezra stared at the book, then at her.

"As my husband, you'd stand under the Varne name, and every family in this city would know it," she said. "Anyone who touched you would answer to the whole house. You'd be much harder to kill, and the courts would stay out of Rupert's hands."

The vending machine hummed in the silence.

"Marry me before nine," she said. "I don't ask twice."

Ezra looked at her for a long moment, at the rain on her face and the fierce, exhausted steadiness in her eyes, and he knew she wasn't finished.

"What's the catch?"

Isolde held his gaze.

"Lucian Draycott proposed to me an hour ago," she said. "He's waiting downstairs for my answer."