by M. J. Kuhn
“What makes you think I’ll tell you?”
“Because you’re here, Captain,” he said. “And because if I don’t get my prize, you don’t get yours.”
Tristan looked between them, but of course Clem did not elaborate. He fixed Evelyn with his most paralyzing stare. A snake about to strike.
She hesitated for a long moment, evidently wrestling with herself, then set her jaw. “Fine.”
Clem leaned back, dusting an imaginary flake of dirt from his trousers. “Excellent.”
Across the room, Nash gave a cough of irritation. “The redhead might know what you’re talking about, but the rest of us sure as hell don’t. Where are we going?”
“Needle Guard barracks,” Clem said, his eyes never leaving Evelyn’s souring face. “Captain—or, excuse me, Miss Linley can get inside, I am sure.”
“I’ll get your ruddy maps. As long as you use them to commit your crimes outside Dresdell.”
Tristan noticed Clem made no such promise. The Snake simply said, “Once those are in hand, we can truly begin. But you are all here because I will need your skills for what I have in mind.”
“Can’t you tell us now?” Tristan blurted out. His stomach dropped to his knees as Clem’s eyes bored into his. What plan could possibly include me? was the real question he wanted to ask.
“All in good time, Beckett. But I daresay we will have use for those quick fingers of yours. And before you ask, if you are not willing to use them for this job… Well, perhaps you will need to say goodbye to them altogether. That goes for all of you.”
“Yeah, yeah, we hear you. Help or be maimed,” Ryia interjected. “We should really look into formalizing that as our motto.”
There was a tense silence where Clem and the Butcher glared at each other Finally, the Snake broke eye contact and said, “Nash, if you wouldn’t mind? A few details.”
Tristan let out a long breath as Clem’s shadow disappeared from the room, Nash close behind him. The meeting was over, then. And Tristan felt as though he had learned… nearly nothing. Except that Clem was getting more insane by the minute. He had survived the Lottery for so long by being smart—cautious. That was his reputation. How in Adalina’s name was gallivanting off to the auction to steal from the most powerful man in Thamorr either of those things? Clem had finally cracked.
Ryia suddenly clapped her hands, and Tristan jumped half a foot in the air.
“All right then.” She looked innocently to Evelyn. “When are we going?”
Tristan half expected the entire Temple to burst into flames from the force of Evelyn’s glare.
“We?”
Tristan didn’t recall ever meeting this Evelyn woman before, but as straitlaced as she seemed, she certainly carried that sword like she knew how to use it. And Ryia… he’d seen her in action plenty of times. If blades were about to be drawn, he wanted no part of it. He closed the door behind him, leaning against it as Ryia’s rasping laugh echoed from the far side of the splintered wood. Maybe it was finally time to run. Steal one of Ivan’s costumes and make for the southern border, lose himself in the forests of Gildemar.
As Clem had hinted earlier, Tristan had initially stayed in Carrowwick because he felt strongly about keeping all his limbs attached. Since then, he may have found another reason to remain with the Saints… a sharp-tongued, hopelessly beautiful reason.
Leaving Carrowwick would mean leaving Ryia.
He clenched his fists, shoving his way through the Temple. Even putting his feelings aside, as much as he hated to admit it, he needed Clem. Needed the Saints’ reputation. Otherwise a scrawny thing like him wouldn’t have lasted a fortnight in a place like this. And without so much as a handful of coppers to his name, places like the Lottery were all he was likely to find. His vision flickered, his breaths rapid. He just needed some air.
The back door to the Miscreants’ Temple snapped shut behind him as the thick, humid air of the alley washed over him. His step off the stoop was cut short as a bulky, hooded man crashed into him, knocking him into the gutter.
Tristan sputtered, but before he could push himself to his feet, he felt a hand on his shoulder. A silent threat. Stay down. Tristan shivered despite the heat as he felt the tickle of breath on his ear.
“Tired of working for the Snake yet?” the man asked, his voice a buzzing fly in the wind.
Tristan opened his mouth, then shut it again stupidly.
The man gave a knowing laugh, then slipped a folded letter into Tristan’s muddied fingers. “A better offer for someone with your background.”
In the instant before the man pulled his hand away, Tristan caught sight of the small tattoo marking his left thumb. A kestrel skull. The Crowns had a better offer? Why?
Then his eyes fell on the letter itself, and the world faded into a senseless blur. There, inked neatly onto the crisp parchment, was a name Tristan hadn’t seen in months—had tried his best not to even think since slipping aboard that pirate skiff on the Rowan River.
His head spun like he’d had one too many cups of wine. By the time he looked up, the hooded man was already gone. Tristan’s mouth grew steadily drier as he flipped through the possibilities, each one flashing before his eyes like the pages of a book.
The Crowns knew who he really was. Which meant they knew who was after him. He unfolded the letter with shaking hands. There it was, spelled out in fresh ink. They knew his secret—and they wouldn’t keep it quiet for free. Tristan owed the Crowns a favor. He crumpled the letter, shoving it into his breast pocket.
Tristan didn’t know what they would ask him for, or when they would ask for it, but he did know one thing—there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep Wyatt Asher from spilling his secret.
11
RYIA
“Is that really necessary?”
Ryia peered over her shoulder at the disgruntled former captain as the pair stalked through streets filled with the gray, hazy light that came just before dawn. “Is what really necessary?”
“That strut?” Evelyn tossed back her fiery hair, thrusting her chest up and stepping in a terrible imitation. “For Adalina’s sake, you look like a Gildesh show horse.”
Ryia waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Might ride like one too—care to find out?”
“Ugh” was all Evelyn managed to articulate. A vein in her long, pale neck twitched as she balled her fists.
Ryia grinned. It was too easy to rile this one—almost no sport in it at all. She cracked a knuckle. “So, are you going to tell me where I can find these maps, or am I just making this up as I go along?”
The captain’s jaw twitched, but she still kept herself in check. “I’m not letting you within a block of the Guard’s base if I can bloody help it.”
“Well, you can’t bloody help it,” Ryia said, mimicking her strong Dresdellan accent. “Not if you want whatever Clem promised you.” She laughed as Evelyn ground her teeth to stubs. “If you want something from the Snake of the Southern Dock, you have to play by his rules. Ask Tristan what happens if you don’t.”
Ryia pulled one of her throwing axes from her belt, miming a quick slice across her own throat. Evelyn’s hand twitched toward the needle-thin sword at her waist.
“Bit jumpy for a guard, aren’t you?”
Evelyn pursed her lips. “From what I’ve heard, relaxing around you means losing a finger or two. You’re very dangerous to defenseless, sleeping sods, aren’t you?”
“If my marks happen to be sleeping when I stop by, that’s their problem, not mine.”
“Spoken like a true, honorless thug.”
Ryia’s eyes suddenly lit with recognition as she looked the ex-captain over. She threaded the axe back into its leather sheath mid-step. The crabby, redheaded guard from the fort—the one she’d easily given the slip in the courtyard. “Were you sweet on him, Evelyn? Old Efrain Althea? Pay him a few nighttime visits on your rounds?” She winked, indicating the elaborate ring circling Evelyn’s middle finger, bearing a crest of
a crescent and quill. “Did he give you that, there?”
“Even if I had an ounce of attraction to the Prince of Nothing, I would never sully the integrity of my station like that.” The captain glowered at her, stuffing her ringed finger into her pocket and picking up her pace. “If you had even a shred of morality, you would understand that.”
“Oh come on, don’t you ever have any fun, Captain?”
“Don’t you ever shut up?”
The exasperated look on Evelyn’s face when Ryia said nothing in response was priceless.
The silence between them stretched until they could see the Needle Guard barracks silhouetted against the thick clouds to the east, just outside the southwestern wall of the Bobbin Fort. Ryia appraised the sprawling structure. Crawling with guards and guards-in-training, but not a single Adept within an axe throw, from the smell of it. Why did Clem think they needed the captain? Ryia could have pilfered these maps single-handedly, even if she had no idea where they were.
Though already she had to admit Evelyn’s advice on the timing had been helpful. The hour just before dawn—the overnight watch was tired, some drunk. As long as they could get in and out before the bells rang and the morning watch took over, there would be no need to silence anyone. She snuck a look at Evelyn out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t know what Clem had offered the captain to make her turn her cloak, but Ryia doubted she’d turned far enough to run a sword through her fellow guardsmen just yet.
“All right, Captain,” Ryia said, “which way in?”
Evelyn rolled her eyes, looking pointedly toward the open archway to the training yard. “Exactly how many options do you see?”
Ryia eyed the flat stone wall rising like a crashing wave in front of them. “Thousands.”
“You expect me to believe you can climb that?” the captain said stiffly. “How?”
“Maybe I’m half-squirrel,” Ryia said mysteriously.
“Slow the jokes, Butcher.”
“For all I know, I’m not joking.”
Evelyn glared at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Ryia lifted her namestone, letting it spin on its leather strap. One side was blank, the other engraved with a series of complex symbols. In Briel, everyone wore a stone like this; one side carved with the names of the mother’s lineage, the other side with the father’s, written in Old Brillish. If Ryia’s namestone were real, the blank side would mark her a bastard.
“Well, I’m all human,” Evelyn said. “So we’ll be using the doorway. They won’t expect it. Your everyday idiots aren’t thick enough to try to waltz into the building that houses every armed guard in the city.”
“But we’re not your everyday idiots, are we, Captain?”
“No. We’re worse.”
Evelyn ducked through the open gate, snaking through the barracks and training yards. Ryia kept one eye on the captain and the other on the paling sky as they darted from shadow to shadow, cutting across a courtyard toward a turretlike structure. Two purple-clad guards roamed around the tower in listless circles. Ryia couldn’t see the rings under their eyes from this distance, but she could tell from their posture that they were there—the poor bastards were exhausted. The whiff of danger wafting off them was almost weaker than the smell of stale piss on the wind.
They bolted toward the door to the tower as the guards passed, griping quietly about how their comrades had gotten leave to go to the Satin House.
Blackness clawed at Ryia’s eyes as the door whispered shut behind them, only the barest hints of the pale, predawn light streaking in from narrow windows that may have been archer slits in the days before the Guildmaster banned all war. Evelyn struck a flint, holding it to a long, thin candle. As the light filled the room, Ryia had to admit that Clem had a point in recruiting Evelyn’s help after all.
The inside of the tower was one large, spiraling staircase. One end wound straight up and out of sight above them. The other snaked down below the ground. And every inch of the curved walls was covered with books. Some were leather-bound tomes thick enough to knock a man senseless. Others were skinny things, bound in the thin paper of Briel. Shelves were piled high with scrolls, either dusty and yellowed with age, or looking so new the ink might still be wet. No apparent rhyme or reason to any of it.
But Evelyn seemed to know exactly where she was going. She slipped down the staircase, eyes darting from side to side, like she expected the books to come alive and ambush them. Ryia hid a deep breath, eyeing the descent into darkness with distaste. Of course it had to be under the fucking ground.
“What is all this shit?” Ryia asked, flicking a scroll with calculated flippancy as she forced herself to follow.
“Show a little respect. This shit is the records of the throne of Dresdell.”
Ryia cleared her throat, trying to ignore the weight of the dust and mildew creeping into her skin. “What are they doing here? Shouldn’t they be inside the fort?”
Evelyn lifted her nose another inch into the air. “This is the most secure place in all of Carrowwick.”
Ryia blankly stared at her. “Clearly.”
“There are more guards inside these barracks than anywhere else in Dresdell. You’d never have gotten two steps inside that archway without my help.”
“I’ve been giving your Needle Guard pals the slip for over a year. Now, if there were some Adept here…”
“A well-trained guard is worth ten of those dead-eyed beasts.” Evelyn held out her left hand as they rounded the final curve of the staircase, spilling into the basement below. A vicious, knotted scar cut across her palm. “Assassination attempt on Princess Bellamy last Januar. Dozen bloody Sensers in that throne room, but I was the one who stopped the blade.” She bristled. “Something you’d think the king would rank higher than his worthless nephew’s finger.”
Evelyn walked her own fingers along a row of scrolls, pulling a few loose.
“The harbor… the island… arena… manor… there they are. That should keep that snake of yours happy,” she said, moving to stow them inside her coat.
Ryia snared her wrist. “Not so fast, Captain. I need to make sure Clem’s getting what he asked for.”
“You think I’d lie to you?” The captain sounded indignant.
“In this line of work, it’s safest to assume everyone is always lying,” Ryia said, unrolling one of the scrolls. “Something you might want to remember now that you’re one of us.”
“I am not one of you,” Evelyn said. “I will never be one of you.”
“If you say so.” Ryia pompously shook the paper out, studying it at arm’s length.
She was getting claustrophobic just looking at the damned thing. Of course, that might be the basement pressing in on her, forming moist shackles of darkness around her ankles and wrists.… No. She pushed the thought away, focusing instead on the inked lines on the parchment. She had heard that the island was small, but this was minuscule. Just over a mile and a half from end to end, according to the markings.
The only passable waters were to the south, the heavily guarded harbor the sole place port could be made. But that didn’t matter anymore. They’d be going in as merchants, whether that was suicidal or not. Ivan was already working on their disguises, Nash and her crew already cleaning the smell of piss and dormire’s blood from her precious ship. What mattered now was finding the Guildmaster’s Quill once their feet hit dry land… and then ending the reign of that bald-headed son of a bitch once and for all.
Her eyes flicked over the buildings sketched on the parchment in fading ink, taking in the layout of the Guildmaster’s infamous island for the first time. There were five in total. Two sets of barracks along the eastern cliffs, one for Kinetics, one for Sensers. The Guildmaster’s manor and its infamous dungeon tucked along the northern peninsula. The auction and tournament arena to the west. The massive bell tower in the thick-walled courtyard just off the arena’s southern edge.
“Were you planning on memorizing the blasted t
hing?”
Ryia arranged her face into a grin before raising her head. “I—” she started. Then she froze, nose pointed toward the stairs like a hunting hound on the trail.
Danger. The tower was suddenly rank with it.
“Get down!” she hissed, diving behind a bookshelf so old it looked like it might collapse at any second.
“What?”
“Get down! And put that candle out. Now! Unless you’re no longer interested in keeping that head of yours.”
“Are you threatening me, scum…?”
Evelyn trailed off as the door to the tower creaked open above their heads. She dove to the ground beside Ryia, snuffing the candle out against the filth-encrusted floor. Phantom images swam before Ryia’s eyes as the stagnant air faded to near blackness. She could almost hear the rattling of chains… could almost feel the metal biting into her flesh… taste the thick, warm salt of blood as the cup tilted toward her mouth…
Pull it together.
“Watch change?” she asked Evelyn.
“You’d better hope not. Because if it is… shite.” Evelyn’s sentence dissolved into a gasp as the distant sound of a bell clanging echoed down the stairs.
“What?” Fresh guards might be a little bit of a challenge, but nothing unmanageable.
“Remember those Adept you were missing before?”
“Oh, terrific,” Ryia whispered. “How many?”
“It’ll be two of them, if the schedules are still the same. Sensers. They sweep the whole barracks every watch change.”
“And you didn’t tell me this before… why?” Ryia asked, rummaging through her cloak pockets.
She could feel Evelyn’s glare in the pitch-darkness even though she couldn’t see it. “If you hadn’t taken a bloody decade down here, it wouldn’t have been an iss— What the hell is this?”
Evelyn broke off, obviously confused as Ryia thrust a bundle of lemon balm into her hands. Ryia crushed a few leaves between her teeth, cringing at the taste. “Chew them.”