She was grateful for the clothes.
As she did every morning, Sandis walked down to the dining room. Sometimes Talbur was in there; sometimes he worked in his study or at his single-story office deeper in the city. Today, he was absent, but there was a plate of tarts sitting in the middle of the lace tablecloth. Sandis sat down, picked up one of the delicate pastries, and sank her teeth into it. She was also grateful for the food, despite the guilt she felt eating it. How many people in this city had never tasted a tart? How many were skipping breakfast today, while she wore expensive clothing and makeup and ate finely catered food?
What were the other vessels eating? Was Alys all right? Had there really been no way to grab her and take her with them? Would she have wanted to come?
The injury to her arm had looked pretty bad. Maybe even bad enough to impact her ability as a vessel.
Sandis stared at the imprint of her teeth in the broken tart crust. She had no idea if the others wanted to risk escape. With the exception of Heath, who’d been killed in one of Kazen’s attempts to summon Kolosos, none of them had spoken about it. They hadn’t dared.
Heath.
Celestial above, he must have been so scared. So scared and so alone, just as she had been when Kazen had attempted the same with her.
Her stomach tightened, but Sandis finished the tart, regardless—she wasn’t one to waste food. She considered eating another, if only to prolong breakfast, but ultimately stood from her chair and wandered the house, passing Amila once as she did so. So much space for so few people. Amila didn’t even live here.
The house consisted of three stories, though only two were aboveground. The third was the basement, where Talbur kept his study.
Rone hated houses like this. Too short for roof jumping—
Stop it. But she didn’t chide herself soon enough to avoid the hollow pang that radiated in her chest. Sucking air through her nose, Sandis filled her lungs to bursting, pushing away the unpleasant sensation. It worked, a little.
Wandering to a window, she peeked out to the street. The sunlight had a gray cast to it from all the pollution, even this far from the smoke ring. No one lurked in the bushes across the street. No one lingered in the windows. She was safe.
The strange feeling of being watched pressed into her hair. Sandis whirred around, heartbeat quickening. The kitchen and dining areas were empty. Nothing out of place. Yes, safe. She was awake. She had to be safe.
Needing distraction, Sandis sought to busy herself. She didn’t have much to do during the day, a complaint she didn’t dare voice. She was incredibly fortunate. She feared getting a job in case Kazen still searched for her, but Talbur wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway. “You work for me now,” he’d said after first bringing her here. “Only a few hours a week, and you’ll have all of this. Not bad, is it?”
It was only a few hours a week. But what started as simple filing had already shifted to delivering packages at night to darkly clad messengers who reminded her all too much of grafters. To walking into a bar with her bloodstained vessel shirt on under her jacket—Talbur had kept it—and revealing the Noscon letters of her script to a client who owed his dues. That one had happened just a few days ago. Sandis hadn’t spoken to the man. She’d barely looked at him. Just lowered her jacket and turned her back long enough to let him know she was a threat. A weapon. Talbur’s weapon.
He takes care of you, she reminded herself as she climbed back up the stairs. He’s family.
She thought again of the other vessels. Would Kazen try to summon Kolosos again, into one of them? But Heath had died under the monster’s brute strength. Kazen wouldn’t waste the others. They weren’t like her.
A low, otherworldly growl sounded in her ears. Pausing at the top of the stairs, Sandis shook her head, listening to the rhythm of her own too-quick breathing. They’re fine, they’re fine, they’re fine. You’re fine.
She stopped at the nookish library and picked a book she hadn’t yet perused. She’d never had access to books like she did here. She was a slow reader, having had so little practice, but she could read, so she took the book back to her out-of-place bedroom and sat on the floor with it.
She picked her way through the words until the bell rang for lunch.
Sandis recognized the sound of Talbur coming home; it was easy to catch, as his home was always so quiet. First, the sound of two horses trotting up the cobbled lane, growing louder and louder before stopping without any call from the driver. Then the carriage door opening and closing—he preferred closed carriages—followed by the opening and closing of the front door. In her great-uncle’s absence, Sandis had picked her way to page 30 of her book; it was a novel about a pirate who sailed the Arctic Ribbon. So far, not much had happened in the plot, and she’d accumulated a list of words she needed to look up. The list was longer than she’d like. As she stared at them, she thought it might do her well to begin practicing her penmanship. Good penmanship could get her a respectable job. Maybe.
The floorboards in the hallway creaked, and Sandis closed her book just as a knock sounded at her door.
“Come in.” She sat up straighter and smiled when the young Amila appeared.
She curtsied, only briefly meeting Sandis’s eyes. Sandis had tried luring the woman into conversation on multiple occasions, but thus far, the attempt at friendship had been entirely one-sided. “Mr. Gwenwig wants to see you in his . . . study.”
Sandis rolled her lips together to fight a frown. Amila always said it like that, with the hesitation. “. . . Study.” Like she was afraid of it. But the study wasn’t that much different from Talbur’s office near the smoke ring, just better furnished.
Sandis nodded and rose to her feet. Amila skittered away, leaving the door ajar. Sandis took the first flight of stairs down, her fingertips trailing the polished wood banister, then circled around to the door leading to the basement. There were two narrow railings that sandwiched this flight, and she touched both of them as she descended the steep stairs. A large room with some sitting furniture and several stacks of boxes opened at the base of the well. Sandis had been told not to rummage through anything in it. None of the lamps were lit.
Why did her great-uncle always work in basements? In dark, cramped spaces filled with drafts and shadows?
Circling behind the stairs, Sandis approached the door to Talbur’s study, which was kept locked when he wasn’t within. She knocked.
“Come.”
Sandis opened the door and stepped inside. The air was clean of cigar smoke, but the walls reeked of it, radiating the scents of old spice and ash. Talbur smiled when he saw her. Sandis smiled back.
“How was business today?” she asked, sitting in a chair opposite his desk.
“Fine as always. But it’s tonight’s business we need to discuss.” He put aside whatever papers he’d been looking at and pulled out the ledger that lay beneath them. He flipped through the pages before settling on one. “I need another late night from you, but this shouldn’t be too bad. The place is close by. The Rose Inn. You know it?”
Sandis shook her head.
“Ah, well, I’ll draw you a map. You can’t take a carriage straight there, but I’ll have someone drop you off on Marcis Street, and you’ll walk from there. You know the rules.”
Sandis shifted in her chair, the brands on her back itching. “What . . . do you want me to do?”
Talbur’s eyes locked on his ledger. “There’s a chap there named Gint Dana. Not a pleasant fellow. Not the first time he’s bailed out on his promises to good clients. He’s a crook and a swindler, but he’s not bad-looking.”
Sandis tilted her head. Why did it matter how attractive he was?
Talbur met her eyes. “He’s hurt a lot of good people. Left them in the poorhouse, really. People with kids.”
Sandis frowned. “That’s terrible.” A lot of the men her great-uncle sent her after were terrible people. She didn’t envy his job—broker work that required him to mediate between angr
y and hurt parties. Some of the people he worked with were high caliber and wealthy; others were darker and crueler. Men like Kazen.
But Talbur hadn’t realized what he was doing when he’d dealt with the grafters. He hadn’t understood who Sandis was. Not really.
Her stomach tightened.
“Yes, it is.” He nodded. “And this one has gone too far.”
“Can’t the police arrest him?”
A smirk touched Talbur’s lips, but he rubbed it away with his thumb. “Ah, no. They don’t care about us poor folks. You know that.”
Talbur was anything but poor. Sandis nodded anyway.
“Police won’t help, and the government only looks out for its own.” He shrugged. “But our Mr. Dana will be at the Rose Inn tonight. You’ll need to be careful what you wear. I want you to blend in without being mistaken for an employee.”
Sandis furrowed her brows. “Why would someone assume I work there?”
Talbur looked at her matter-of-factly.
She waited.
Her great-uncle sighed. “The Rose Inn has rooms reserved for more than sleeping, if you understand me.”
Sandis was about to say she didn’t, but as she opened her mouth, her great-uncle’s meaning became clear. Her neck warmed. “Oh.”
Her brands itched terribly; she readjusted in the chair. She didn’t want to go to the Rose Inn if the women who worked there . . . did that. If she could be mistaken as . . .
Her mind flew through everything Arnae Kurtz, Rone’s martial arts master, had taught her. Had she learned enough to defend herself if someone tried to attack her? But no one would go after her without speaking to some man in charge. A brothel wasn’t a crime den, right? And she couldn’t do that, not if she wanted Ireth to—
A pang stung her chest, and she curled in around herself. She didn’t have Ireth anymore. No doubt Kazen had already tattooed one of the other vessels with the fire horse’s name. If Ireth was bound to someone else, she would never be able to summon him again.
“None of that, now.”
Sandis met his eyes. “Oh, no. I was . . . just thinking about something.”
He didn’t ask her what, and likely for the better. “Dana has fairly distinctive facial hair, and he’s on the tall side. I have a sketch.” He pulled out a charcoal drawing and set it on the edge of the desk, though Sandis didn’t reach for it.
Talbur smiled. “This is very clever, this next part. Real clever. Look at this.”
He reached into a cup and pulled out some sort of translucent film. It dangled from his fingers like a worm or small fish.
Sandis leaned forward and squinted. “What is it?”
“It seals over the lips.” He held it up to his mouth, though didn’t touch it to his skin. “Sucks right on. You can’t even notice it. Just lick your lips and stick it on.”
Sandis didn’t know where Talbur was going with this, but the itching on her back grew so intense she finally gave in and scratched it.
“You’ll wear this, and before you exit the carriage, put this on.” He held up a tiny unlabeled tube about the size of Sandis’s pinky. “Now listen here. Don’t spill it, and put it only on the outside of your lips, over the film. Don’t lick your lips afterward. You’ll go into the inn, find Dana, and give him a nice, full kiss.”
Sandis’s stomach disentangled from the rest of her organs and sank in her torso.
Talbur set the tube aside. “In an establishment like this, such a gesture is commonplace. He’ll accept readily, and after that, you can dispose of the film and leave. You’ll be done before midnight.”
Sandis swallowed, though it took three tries before she was successful. “Wh-What’s in the tube?”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Just don’t taste it.”
She knit her fingers together and squeezed. “Great-Uncle . . . is it . . . poison?”
Sighing, Talbur opened a drawer and pulled out one of his cigars. “It’s not perfume.” He chuckled like the observation was funny. With the cigar in the corner of his mouth, he continued, “Gint Dana has hurt a lot of people. Made a lot of deals. Broken promises, Sandis. You know what that’s like.”
Another pang echoed in her chest, and she felt this one all the way up her throat.
“He’s been bartered with. Warned. Threatened. He doesn’t care. He and his company need to learn to care. So yes, it’s poison. But you won’t get in trouble, my dear. It will take a couple hours for him to start feeling it, and by then he’ll have been around too many women to tell one from another. It’ll just look—feel—like he drank too much. And then we won’t have to worry about him, hm? My clients will be so grateful. So relieved.”
Sandis’s mouth was dry. Won’t have to worry about him? Then the poison was lethal? “But . . . that won’t get them their money back.”
He struck a match. “Maybe not”—he lit the end of the cigar and puffed—“but it gives the world a little balance, eh? You’ll be compensated well, darling. Don’t fret.”
“I . . . don’t want to be compensated.”
“Really, Sandis? That’s incredibly generous of you! But I’ll take care of you, just as I said. We’ll find something nice for you if you don’t want the money.”
He started rattling off various luxuries, but Sandis’s mind lingered on the money. On the image of her holding her hand out as Talbur placed bill after bill on her palm, compensation for killing a man she didn’t even know.
Just as Rone had held out his hand to Kazen.
Blinking to clear her eyes, Sandis coughed, the sound of which interrupted Talbur’s endless list of compensation. “No, Great-Uncle.” She tried to make her voice sound firm, but it came out brittle. She’d never denied him before. “I . . . I don’t want to do it.”
Talbur pulled the cigar from his lips and let out a puff of peppery smoke. “Pardon?”
She pressed her hands together before him, entreating him. “Please. Give me something else to do. I’ll do it. But . . . I can’t go there. I can’t do . . . that.”
She looked toward the desk corner where he had deposited the poison.
Talbur frowned. The wrinkles in his face deepened, making his nose look wider. His eyes narrowed. “You can, Sandis. And you will. We’ll never be able to go to my country estate if we don’t work together. Isn’t that what you want? To leave the city and those grafters who mistreated you so? Dana is a big part of what’s tying us here. No one can do this but you. I’m depending on you, Sandis.”
Her throat constricted until she could barely breathe. Her hands went numb. She shook her head. “Please, Great-Uncle. Please don’t ask me. I can’t do it. I can’t.”
His dark eyes watched her a little too long for comfort. He dragged on his cigar and blew the smoke out slowly. Considered. “All right. I’ll find another way. You may go.”
Her stomach crept back into place, and a cool sigh passed from her lungs. “Thank you.” She stood, smoothed her skirt, and turned for the door.
“Oh, and Sandis?”
She glanced back.
“Find somewhere else to stay tonight.”
Her muscles went rigid. “What?”
Talbur began flipping through the ledger, nonchalant. “You heard me. My home is reserved for those who do as I ask. Team players, so to speak. If you can’t cooperate, you can find another place to stay tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Sandis was stone. She didn’t move for a long moment, and all the while her great-uncle smoked and turned pages, smoked and turned pages. “But—”
“In. The. Morning.”
He looked up at her, his eyes cold and hard. His tone was so final, like a knife.
Even Kazen had never cast her out of his home.
Shaking, Sandis hurried into the hallway. Paused at the base of the stairs. She’d been out in the night before. By herself, even. But that had been by choice. Facing the darkness now . . . she was so unsure. She had no one to run from. No one to guide her to a safe place. No one
to wait for her.
It would be just her and the nightmares. And on the street, she’d have no white-painted walls to put between her and them.
She bit the inside of her cheek. Where would she go? Talbur would keep his word. She knew him well enough to be certain of that.
Shivers coursed up and down her limbs. Her chest hurt. She needed a glass of water. She needed—
But there was no time to comfort herself, no time, even, to think. He’d tell the servants to see her out. She had to hurry.
Her steps passed beneath her like air. Suddenly she was in her room, finding a bag, stuffing it with—What should she take? Food? He’d want her out by dinner . . .
She could return, grovel, apologize—
But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t pretend to be a harlot and kiss a stranger, only to take his life. The thought spurred nausea like acid in her belly. Why would he ask her to do something so awful? If he cared about her, why . . .
Pressing her lips together, she grabbed a change of clothes and a jacket. It got cold at night. Then she hurried down to the kitchen. The cook didn’t say anything to her as she took a few pieces of fruit and a roll. Sandis barely registered her own movements.
The porch. Would he let her stay on the porch? No, if he saw her there, he’d only be angrier. Oh Celestial, what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t stay in this neighborhood. The scarlets always lurked in the nice neighborhoods at night, away from true crime, but they wouldn’t tolerate her loitering or trespassing on another’s property to sleep. She’d have to go farther out, toward the smoke ring—
A small mewl sounded in the base of her throat. She heard footsteps on the basement stairs. Talbur? She hurried out the back door and started walking with no direction in mind. Clutched her bag to her chest like it was a buoy, carrying her through the waters of a canal.
She trembled with a sob and swallowed it down until it ached dully at the base of her throat. Her parents had never let her and her little brother, Anon, outside after dark. Too dangerous. If only Anon were still alive, maybe he would know what to do. Despite being two years younger, he’d always been wise. He’d had an old soul.
Myths and Mortals (Numina Book 2) Page 2