Empress of Rogues

by Carrie Summers

  “At daybreak, we’ll make arrangements for honorable burials,” Meredith says in a voice loud enough to carry through the room. “For now, our task remains. We will continue to establish order in the city, moving out from Maire’s Quarter and pushing back on any Shields or unsavories who resist.”

  Climbing to her feet, Myrrh nods. “Thank you,” she says.

  Meredith turns to her, her face every inch the merciless commander of an unbeatable force of razor-honed fighters. Unbeatable unless the enemies move through shadows and strike unseen.

  Myrrh takes a shaky breath. The Nightblades are gone. Best to simply banish them from her memory.

  She stalks over to the group of councilmen who opposed Emmerst in the end. Her voice is flat when she speaks, and it it feels to her as if someone else inhabits her body, forcing the words from her throat. “For your decision at the end to break from Emmerst and for the faith you once put in Dominic Evenescuel, you will have a chance to redeem yourselves and find a place in Ostgard’s future. Go home now. Wait for a summons. When I’m ready, we will reconvene in the Maire’s Palace and begin laying plans for the restoration of order and restructuring of laws in our city.”

  Though every man before her is corrupt to some degree, they also have experience in Ostgard’s affairs, experience she will need if she is to find a way to put the city back on its feet. Afterward, their fate will depend on how they respond to her leadership. It’s not hard to guess what will happen. Most likely, they won’t adapt, especially when they have to knuckle under the authority of thieves and cutpurses. Because Myrrh already knows that’s how it’s going to be. If she’s going to lead the city, she won’t do it without Ivy and Warrell, Hawk, Resh, and maybe even Nyx. That should be interesting, a city run by its underworld bosses.

  Slowly, as if afraid that quick motions will bring blades to their throats, the councilmen climb to their feet. One step, another, and then they run like rodents fleeing the light. Myrrh lets out a sigh as she turns to the other group, some of whom have climbed to their feet already, as if hopeful they’ll receive the same offer.

  She shakes her head before anyone has a chance to speak. “You have two days to gather your households and leave Ostgard as traitors. For your crimes, any property you cannot take with you will be confiscated and sold at auction, the proceeds used for improvements in the lower districts, among other things.”

  The men blink and furrow their brows as if she’s speaking in a foreign tongue. When no one moves, the Scythe stalks forward, uncoils her whip, and cracks it just a finger’s width from the nearest councilman’s face. Shouting, they burst into motion and run for the door.

  Myrrh hurries forward and catches hold of Emmerst. “Not you,” she says, yanking so hard he falls backward, landing on his rear and sprawling. He blinks up at her, eyes wide, face chalky.

  Myrrh glances at Meredith. “We’ll need a secure cell until we can find a barge headed downriver. One that can weather the open sea. Emmerst here will be joining his former acquaintance, the elder Master Evenescuel, in exile on the island debtor’s colony. I’m sure the two of them will have much to discuss.”

  “Of course, Mistress,” Meredith says.

  “After he has finished tending to your wounded, will you please escort the shaman to Lower Fringe? My friend Sapphire needs him. We’ll meet you at Merchant Giller’s residence.”

  “As you say.” The Scythe nods at one of her Knives, who jumps forward and grabs Emmerst roughly by the arm.

  Myrrh gathers herself, takes a breath, and turns toward her friends. “We’re done here, I believe.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  EVENTUALLY, SHE WILL have to get some rest. The sun is rising outside Glint’s Lower Fringe residence, streaking the walls of the room in red, as Myrrh stands over the bed she slept in so many times. First while she was Glint’s prisoner—though he was certainly too polite to define their relationship in that way—and later when they were working together as colleagues, then friends, then something more. Now the master suite at the end of the hall is empty. The corridors are silent. Somewhere down below, the shaman works over Sapphire’s arm. Already, they’ve learned that the bones will never be straight and strong. She won’t deal cards like she once did. But she won’t lose the limb.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Myrrh drops her head into her hands. Ostgard is hers. The whole sixing city. She can build it into whatever she might dream, a place where kids from Rat Town aren’t faced with the choice of begging or picking pockets. Where there’s more honest work to be had, work that pays enough for a person to have both a roof overhead and a belly full of food. Somewhere that tradespeople don’t have to go to criminal syndicates for protection from the city’s own guard force. As for what to do about the syndicates, she can’t even begin to decide. For as long as she’s been alive, the underworld was Ostgard’s answer to the corruption in the merchant class. If that corruption is gone, should the syndicates be forced to disband? Myrrh knows enough to crack down on most of them, but that would be like turning traitor on her own people.

  Anyway, they’re decisions for another day.

  Crawling onto the bed, she curls on her side atop the covers and stares out the window, waiting for her eyes to close and sleep to finally take her.

  A knock on the door banishes any hope of that.

  “Come in,” she says, forcing herself upright.

  The well-oiled hinges open silently, and Resh sticks his head in the door. His face looks as drawn and weary as she feels.

  “Your gambler friend is awake. Says she wants to see you.”

  “Her arm?”

  Resh shrugs. “Still attached anyway.”

  Myrrh shakes her head. She’ll never make it up to Sapphire, the woman having lost the use of her arm because Toad, a man she handpicked to help guide Ghost Syndicate, betrayed them all. Toad might be first to blame for the injury, but Myrrh is right behind him. As much as she wants just to curl up and forget the world exists, Myrrh owes it to Sapphire to come now.

  She heads for the wardrobe opposite the bed, opens it, and pulls out a set of fresh thief’s woolens. “Tell her I’ll be right there.”

  ***

  Myrrh doesn’t know what to say as she steps through the door into Sapphire’s bedchamber. The proprietor of The Queen’s Dice is propped against the headboard, enthroned by pillows. Though her face is still swollen, the bruises livid, her eyelids are open now. She tracks Myrrh’s movement into the room.

  “It’s not your fault,” Sapphire says, rescuing Myrrh from speaking first.

  “It is. Absolutely.”

  “How could you know?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I should have known.”

  Sapphire takes a deep breath, then winces as the movement shifts her arm. “Sixing Toad. Sixing Shields.”

  “Will you be able to use your hand at all?” Myrrh asks, stepping closer to the bed. Unlike in her upstairs chamber, the blinds are drawn here, and only a pair of wall lamps light the chamber. They burn scented oil, filling the room with the rich smell of cloves and cinnamon, perhaps chosen to ease Sapphire’s body toward sleep.

  “The wrinkled fellow couldn’t say for certain. Maybe some. I hope I’ll use it some anyway. Enough to work the keg taps and smack lazy dealers on the back of the head.”

  Myrrh swallows. “We got revenge at least. Emmerst is ruined, and the Scythe’s fighters are bringing the Shields under our control. We’ll cull any with a cruel streak, even if it means getting rid of them altogether.” She pauses, glances at the bandaged limb. “But it won’t bring your arm back.”

  “No, I guess it won’t. You’re going to hunt down Toad, I suppose.”

  Myrrh nods. “He’ll regret his birth when I’m finished with him.”

  She feels a presence behind her, then hears the soft hiss of boots over the deep carpet in the bedchamber. Hawk steps up beside her and lays a hand on her shoulder.

  “This Nightblade w
oman,” Sapphire says, her voice getting weaker with the effort of the lengthening conversation.

  It’s a struggle for Myrrh not to let her anger take hold again. To stay upright even though there’s a pit where her heart used to be. Myrrh clenches her jaw for a moment, then speaks, “She took Glint. But Nab went willingly.”

  Hawk makes a low sound in his throat while walking to the window. He cracks the drapes and peers out, admitting a beam of brilliant sunshine. Myrrh squints and grimaces.

  “Hard to believe,” Hawk says. “I can’t help but keep hoping there’s another explanation. After all we did for him. You don’t think there’s a chance, do you?”

  “You saw. He turned to shadow.” Myrrh shakes her head. “Some kind of prodigy, he said. How could we compete with a group and god that gives him that kind of power?”

  Hawk’s shoulders slump as he drops the curtain back into place. “Maybe we held him back.”

  “We only wanted to protect him.”

  “I know.”

  “I was wondering, Hawk, when the Nightblades were in the room, did you feel the same sort of sensation as when I worked the cantrip?”

  Hawk nods, but then his eyebrows draw together. “From the others, yes. It was nearly overwhelming, to tell the truth. But now that you mention it…there was nothing of the sort from Nab. When he passed me on their way out, it was almost like the oppression lifted for a moment.”

  Sapphire shifts her legs, then grimaces. “Sixing pox, this arm hurts,” she says. “But what you and the others have said about these Nightblades reminds me. A few months back a pair of foreign gamblers wanted one of my girls to deal them some strange game out of the Port Cities, which of course I didn’t allow because I didn’t know the odds. Anyway, they were talking…” She chews her bottom lip for a moment. “Said something about a darkness that had taken their friends. Too many times using the gifts is what they said. But then one guy talked about how he’d been using them all along to shift things in his favor…persuade people to see his point of view, and he’d never felt any different. He watched his friends turn cruel, though, and I guess he had to leave Tangesh when he started to worry for his safety among people that were once his friends.”

  “You think these gifts could be the cantrips?” Myrrh asks.

  Sapphire shrugs her good shoulder.

  “Actually…what if…?” Hawk grips the back of his neck. “Naw. It’s foolish. Grasping at something that’s not likely true.”

  Myrrh’s toes curl. “Right now we’ve got nothing to hope for, so it can’t get much worse, right? What are you thinking, Hawk?”

  “I was just thinking…what if we’re not giving Nab enough credit? What if, yeah, he went back to the Mouth and Silver to get some training, but then he caught wind of their plans. What if he realized that none of us could stand against Silver and her Nightblades when they can turn to shadow and strike, so maybe he figured that infiltrating was his only chance of helping. Especially given how quick he picked up the tricks.”

  Myrrh blinks. It’s a thin hope really. But it’s a hope. “If that’s true, where does it leave us? What do we do?”

  “Trust him maybe?” Hawk says.

  “But what if he needs our help? How would we know?”

  “Think. Did he say anything?”

  Myrrh taps her fingers against her thighs, the thief’s woolens soft against her skin. “Just that I needed to let him go. And…” She cocks her head, then turns toward Sapphire’s bed. “He said I needed to go take care of Sapphire. Look after the people I have left.”

  “You think there’s any meaning in that?”

  “Hmm,” Sapphire says. “You know…the last time you left him in my care, we worked a little something out. You were so insistent that I keep practicing with him on those sixing reading primers.”

  Myrrh shrugs and nods, feeling a little defensive. “Sure. If he were ever going to make something of himself, I knew he had to know how to read. It’s the same thing Hawk forced on me.” She glances at her mentor to spread the blame around a little bit.

  Sapphire smirks. “Yes, I know. I get it. But those primers…they’re torturous. So I worked out a deal with him. We’d play a game. I’d leave him written instructions for missions, hide the notes in a particular little niche behind some loose bricks on the oven in the Dice’s kitchens. If he could puzzle out the mission, execute it, and leave a written report in the same spot, I’d give him a couple of coppers to spend on sweet buns.”

  “You think he might have left a note,” Myrrh says.

  “I think you better hurry over and check because I wouldn’t put it past the little flea.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Myrrh,

  Downriver. First inn in Elomstead. They plan to rest there until Glint can travel more easily.

  Don’t be an idiot. If you blow my cover, I’m sixed. Don’t make a move until you hear from me.

  - Nab

  Myrrh sinks to a seat against the kitchen wall in the Queen’s Dice, gripping the piece of paper tight in her fists. Her vision swims for a moment, but she blinks away the wet.

  “Good for nothing urchin called me an idiot,” she says with a faint smile.

  The others, Resh and Ivy, Warrell, Nyx, and Hawk, laugh. Myrrh takes a shaky breath.

  “We need to go downriver,” she says. “But we should expect that Silver has left scouts and sentries behind. They’ll be watching for us to follow.” As she speaks, she remembers Glint’s words. He ordered her not to follow, told her to forget him. Surely, there was reason behind the warning. Silver must have threatened some sort of consequence, probably against people left behind in Ostgard. A small part of her wants to respect that wish, to stay here like he asked and rebuild the city.

  But it’s a very, very small part, and anyway, Glint had no idea that Nab was on their side. He might be furious with her for disobeying his request, but if they are ever going to make something work between them, he’d have to get used to it.

  “Well, the river is out, I think,” Resh says. “If she’s got spies watching it.”

  “Yeah,” Myrrh says, “We need to figure out how to move in a way she’ll never expect. And I think I have an idea. Could you kindly contact someone in Maire’s Quarter to have word brought to the remaining councilmen? I’ll speak with them eventually, but right now I have much more pressing business with the Nightblades.”

  ***

  The raftman shakes his head in astonishment when Myrrh’s group arrives at the muddy bank where the bog laps up against the Spills, tendrils of night mist still clinging to the surface of the stinking water. It’s nearly the same time of day as the last time Myrrh made this journey, midmorning after an eventful night with little sleep.

  “Dunno if you’re insane or stupid,” the man says, moving a wad of chewed leaf around in his lower lip.

  “Perhaps both,” Myrrh says. “But the story most people in Carp’s Refuge have heard is wrong.” She glances over her shoulder at the small squad of elite Knives that Meredith insisted she bring with her to the Refuge. They each wear the Scythe’s dark-red insignia sewn to the shoulder of their leather tunics, clearly marking their station. “And I hope the presence of my friends here will cause the smugglers to hesitate before attacking. I’d like to have a chance to explain because I think they’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

  The man spits a stream of saliva off the edge of the raft. “You seem awfully confident in that. Not sure I want to be standing on the raft’s deck when the crossbowmen catch sight of you.”

  “But since you need to earn a living just like everyone else in this city, you’ll take me and my friends out to the Refuge anyway, right?”

  He squints at her satchel. “For a couple of them rubies I hear you like to carry around, I suppose I will.”

  One of the Knives growls a warning, but Myrrh holds up a hand. If she were in the raftman’s position, she wouldn’t be eager to ferry the newest e
nemy of Carp’s Refuge to the smugglers’ hideout either. The fact that he’s agreed to do it at all means there’s a chance she’ll succeed with the morning’s plan.

  “One gem now, one after we arrive at the Refuge,” she says.

  The man squints one eye shut, looking at her crooked. “And if they shoot you before we arrive, that mean I don’t get paid?”

  “If they shoot me before we arrive, you’ll be able to take all the rubies you want off my dead body.”

  “Huh,” he says, sucking his teeth. “Good point. Okay, climb aboard. But your pet Knives gotta stay back.”

  Myrrh shakes her head. “Not part of the deal.”

  “Carp’s Refuge moved in the night yesterday, out of consideration for the events ongoing in Ostgard. You’ll never find it without me.”

  She hesitates. At first, Myrrh hadn’t planned to bring the Knives, but it made a lot of sense once Meredith suggested—or rather demanded—that a squad accompany her. The added protection is nice, but more importantly, it shows how greatly things have changed in the city.

  “Four rubies, and they come.”

  The man cocks his head and spits again. “Unarmed.”

  She glances back at the Knives—the leader shrugs.

  “Okay. Unarmed.”

  “Then, welcome aboard, and I’ll take two of them rubies now,” the man says with an extravagant bow.