“Dirt.” I rubbed my left arm. “Filthy business, thieving.”
She looked me over—eyes going from muddy boots tucked under my chair to the dust clinging to the ends of my dress. “Undoubtedly.”
The ring fit her finger perfectly—a striking silver against her skin.
“Of the two of us, I’d say I know the most about the Left Hand and what they do.” Elise handed me the charcoal and wrote “cat,” waiting for me to copy her. “I grew up around Emerald and the previous Opal. I’ve known Ruby since I started studying under Lady dal Abreu. I know exactly what you and the other auditioners are doing here. What I don’t know is why you’re here.”
She did know everyone—everyone I needed to know. Maybe she was more useful for information, but she’d not tell me anything if I was an ass. I palmed the piece of charcoal, flipping it from my palm to the back of my hand and down my sleeve, and spread my empty hands out before her. She laughed softly.
Good.
“Auditioning’s better than getting arrested.” I dropped the charcoal back into my hand. “And tutoring, of course.”
Elise’s smile fell. “Then let’s get to it.”
Elise ran through the alphabet, and I followed her lead, leaving everything as it was and using the silence between writing to sneak glances at her. Smudges of charcoal darkened her delicate hands, wisps of curls at the base of her neck escaped from gold pins with every twist of her neck, and her pulse fluttered beneath the blue lace collar of her dress. She was clever and so caught up in actually trying to teach me that she didn’t notice she’d scrawled lines along her cheeks as well as the parchment when she brushed back her hair. She was nothing like any Erlend noble I’d ever met.
A knock rattled the door.
“Time’s up.” Elise dropped her charcoal back into the tin. “Same time every night. We’re supposed to be through the basics in a few days in case you make it through round one.”
Optimistic of them.
So there were rounds. That was more than I knew about the auditions this morning.
“Thank you.” I pulled out my one handkerchief, an old robbery relic embroidered with a word I didn’t recognize, and handed it to her. Time to get on her good side. “You’ve got black on your cheek.”
Elise accepted the cloth, dotting her cheek. “The entire time?”
“You kept adding to it, so I figured I might as well wait till you were done.” I grinned at her blush and nodded. It was going to be doubly easy to draw information from her if she liked me. A little flirting was nothing, even if she was an Erlend. “Looks charming too.”
Elise opened her mouth, nose crinkling, and didn’t say anything. I stood and bowed.
“Tomorrow night.”
“If you’re still alive.” Elise stilled, like the dark humor gave her a chill she had to stifle, and pulled out a fresh booklet of paper.
I nodded. “Hope so.”
“Me too.”
This would be too easy.
Fifteen
I peeked out of the nook before leaving. The one-armed soldier who’d knocked was a glaring giant who didn’t take his rune-scrawled gaze off me. The back of my neck itched with these tight stone walls and low ceilings, and I dug my fingers into the wall. Quickly built and sturdy but still rough around the edges. I climbed into the rafters.
A colony of sleepy spiders and dust motes greeted me. At least I knew no one had been up here in ages. I could stop cracking my neck to glance up every time I was in the hallway. The soldier chuckled.
I’d have the advantage in a knife fight up here no matter how much he laughed. Even Fifteen, for all his muscle, would pull back a punch and smack his elbow on the wall. I leapt down and shoved up my sleeves, scrawling my new letters along my arm in charcoal. They weren’t near as nice as Elise’s.
Of course, she’d had a childhood of practice. I brushed the charcoal off with my dress—black on black, not like anyone would notice—and peered down the hall to my room. I wasn’t going to be good at getting information from her if I spent the whole time thinking about her. I’d have to think of some leading questions.
Darting around the corner, I froze.
The door to my room was open.
I crept toward it, fingers drifting to my knife. Light footsteps paced back and forth in my room, and I toed the cracked door all the way open. Maud jumped.
“Finally.” She beckoned me into the room, fingers shaking, and raked a hand through her hair. It was a mess with the normal plait falling apart from constant worrying. “There were hands.”
“What?” I locked the door behind me and pressed my back into the far corner, well out of sight from the window. A crossbow bolt could’ve taken the shutters and me out easy. “What hands?”
“Hands at the window.” She sucked in a breath and shook her head. “I didn’t think it’d frighten me, but I looked up and they were there.”
She shuddered. I leaned off the wall far enough to pour her the tea she’d set out for my dinner and retreated to my safe place.
The least dangerous place. Safety didn’t exist anymore.
“The rules matter. A lot. The Left Hand harps on them enough, none of us would think about breaking them.” They’d never want us to be Opal if we couldn’t be trusted to keep our weapons to ourselves in the palace. I slid down the wall. “And you don’t look like me.”
Where I was all angles, Maud was soft with round hips and dimples. Her light-brown, hooded eyes were nothing like my black ones, and she’d a waist-long plait of shiny black hair that must’ve been a trial to braid in the morning. Her button nose had never been broken like mine.
We shared the same rough hands though. Years of work and blisters.
Not that I couldn’t look like her with a little help.
“You’re prettier,” I said after a long moment. Maud was unsettled and needed the compliment. “And much shorter. They could turn around and not even see you, unless they ducked.”
She laughed. “They set off the bells. You’d have heard them.”
“You could’ve left. I wouldn’t have minded. Whoever owned those hands is someone I’ll have to fight eventually.” I pulled the tray of food toward me.
“I need you to be Opal.” She let out a low, long breath and cupped the mug in her hands. “I need the promotion, and I can’t help you, not really, but…”
She twirled her free hand in the air like she was gathering cobwebs, eyebrows rising to her hairline, and her gaze drifted to the mice fighting over the last of the sausage. She smiled as tight-lipped as she had when we first met.
“You’re being awfully nice.” I chewed, mulling over my words. I trusted her about as far as I could throw her—soon as our wants didn’t line up, she’d have no reason to help me beyond her duties as servant—but she was all right. Cooked better than anyone I’d ever known and picked out my clothes better than me. “I’ve never had a servant before.”
“I know.” She patted down her hair. “You’re not subtle.”
“Might’ve been a bit hasty.”
“Not all competitors are as nice as you.” She fixed me with a narrow-eyed stare, all seriousness and in a tone I was sure no servant ever used with an employer. “We talk about you—we have favorites—and we can’t help you, but hurting someone without anyone noticing is an art in Our Queen’s court. She can’t stand it, but no one can risk outright warfare. You’re an etiquette travesty, but you’re polite about it, and that goes a long way.”
“And the folks who’ve had servants before aren’t nice?” The invited were nobles or rich. They ignored the servants, pointed and took them for granted. They were the ones who needed to be told we couldn’t hurt servants. “The invited?”
Maud hummed. She gathered up her skirts and rose, mostly back to sorts. “Would you like a bath?”
“No, thank you.” I raised my voice so it carried out the window. Let the other auditioners come. “I’m exhausted. Going straight to sleep.”
She a
rched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
Rath and Maud were cut from the same cloth—too quick to be lied to and too clever to not pick up on signals. I’d bet my mask she was as clever with numbers as him. In a different life, she might’ve been more like him.
I shut one eye, finished eating, and nailed the door shut again. By the time I snuffed out my lone candle, my eye was ready for the dark.
Silence settled over my room. Curls of smoke from chimneys drifted through the shutters. I crept behind the bathtub, eyeing the makeshift dummy in my bed, and waited. The dark closed in, bleeding into the corners of my eyes. I shook my head.
No shadows here.
The window creaked, bells chiming softly in the wind. I let out a slow, quiet breath and slid my knives into my palms. I was faster with them than the ax, and I needed to be fast. A hand with pale white fingertips peeking out of a black glove curled around the bells. Silence returned.
I could deal with people. I gripped my knives tighter, breathing in the smoke, and shifted to my toes. I had dealt with people.
And would.
I flattened myself between the bathtub and wall. The auditioner who’d come to kill me paused, staring at my bed from the window. Anyone would’ve caught my trickery by candlelight, but with clouds filtering unsteady moonlight through the shutters and shadows playing across the walls, they’d assume the lump of blankets was breathing. Hopefully.
The auditioner unhooked the bells. Another arm slithered between the wires and unhooked the broken shutters. The white ribbon stitched across Eight’s mask glowed in the darkness. Halfway through the window, hands flat on the floor and feet still dangling outside, he stopped and stared at my bed. I leaned forward.
Lady, guard me.
I lunged. Eight raised his head in time to catch my knee in his teeth. His head snapped back, and his arms collapsed, dropping to the floor. I buried my knife into the back of his neck. He gurgled.
“Sorry that hurt.” I twisted the knife.
His last few breaths left him in a rush.
I stripped Eight of his weapons. He’d a few vials in his pockets, unlabeled and useless to me either way. The daggers in his boots were nicer than mine—expensive and well cared for—and I took his ankle sheaths too. He’d nothing else of note except an archery brace and callouses like Emerald’s. He could’ve killed Twenty easy.
He’d crawled in here on the half-thought notion I’d be sleeping peacefully though. He wasn’t clever enough to have his own nest above the archery yard.
And I wasn’t clever enough to realize that killing him in my own room would leave me with a body. I had to get rid of him.
At least he was small—light on his feet and all lean muscle.
I worked the nails out of my door. No one was in the hallway or up in the rafters. The roof was equally empty, with only the hushed whispers of servants and guards circling the paths below breaking the silence. I dragged Eight as fast as I could into the unoccupied room across the hall from mine. The thin blood trail left behind I mopped up with a spare shirt.
I shut the door, and the dead eyes of my first competition kill stared back at me.
“You prayed to the Triad the first day.” I smeared a bloody triangle across his forehead. “I’ll send you back to them.”
I didn’t put any faith in the three divisions of magic—mind, body, and soul. Nacea hadn’t worshipped the Triad, hadn’t handled magic at all for fear of The Lady taking offense at us using blood to bind magic to our wills. She was magic, and it was her. You didn’t use someone to do your bidding. I remembered that much from my childhood.
Remembered how much magic and its shadows had taken from me.
But magic was gone, and the Triad and their power went with it. Only prayers and empty motions lingered to comfort the believers.
I drew the marks for mind and body over Eight’s heart and heels, with the final mark of his last rites dripping down his boots.
I dragged Eight’s corpse through the window and onto the roof, leaving him tucked between chimneys where anyone could’ve killed him. There were no auditioners in sight. I slunk back into the empty room, then to my room across the hall and collapsed into the tub.
I slept well till dawn. My rumbling stomach woke me, and I stumbled out of the tub, body weak and aching. The sun reached over the eastern spires and cast long shadows across the windows. The sooner I got to the safety of breakfast, the sooner last night was behind me.
The dining room was quiet, only a handful of servants setting up for the meal, and Maud’s superior, Dimas, watched over everything. I sat in a spare chair off to the side.
“Twenty-Three?” Dimas stopped two strides away from me and bowed—just as Maud had done when we’d first met. “Do you need something? Breakfast doesn’t begin until the Left Hand arrives.”
A reminder that I wasn’t safe here till then. I sighed. “There enough time for me to find the kitchen and get some tea before they get here?”
“I’ll let Maud know.” He straightened and gestured to a servant’s door across the room. “You may follow the servers to the kitchen, but please let us know if you need anything so we can retrieve it for you without causing any issues.”
Without me messing up their habits, more like. I nodded and took off after a twitchy server. The gall of it—I was an assassin, in theory, and bloodthirsty for all they knew. The auditions before this one must have set the tone. Assassins followed the rules and respected the servants. Maybe I was in the right place.
I might’ve cheated my way through near everything, but there was no point in hurting servants or putting them in danger.
No wonder Maud wanted to work here forever—Our Queen took good care of her people, even if there were snakes in her gardens. I had to take care of them for her.
Magic and its shadows hadn’t ended the war in favor of Erlend, The Lady hadn’t saved Nacea, and praying hadn’t spared Eight.
I had to place my faith in me.
Sixteen
I watched the servant who’d brought me tea return to the kitchen with an empty tray. Young, new—they were training just like us.
“You cleaned your room.”
I turned and found Maud staring at me.
“I got restless this morning.” I gestured toward the dining hall. “Dimas said he’d tell you.”
“He did.” She fell into step beside me but still slightly behind. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice blood spots under the bed?”
I winced. “One of the auditioners snuck in and tried to kill me. I broke their nose, they ran off, and I was left to clean up the mess. Must’ve missed a spot.”
We stared at each other for a long moment. It was obvious Maud was weighing her options. She could turn me in if that was suspicious, but then she’d be out her promotion.
“That’s not too far-fetched.” She shrugged. “I suppose you could win a fight.”
“I’ve won hundreds,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “It used to be my job.”
She raised an eyebrow. “But do remember—if you bleed to death, I don’t get promoted and I have to clean it up.”
“Your priorities are spectacular.” I checked the knives at my waist and tapped my heels against the ones at my ankles. With Eight dead, the others would start feeling the pressure. Maybe I’d luck out, they’d get paranoid, and they’d kill each other for me. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” She smiled and opened the door for me, ushering me into the dining hall. “I won’t see you again today. Good luck.”
Eight and Twenty-Two were missing. Dimas’s long gray tunic swirled around his knees as he paced the length of the table and directed servers, making sure all of us had what we wanted. There was twice the number of water pitchers there usually were. I waved him over.
“Twenty-Three?” He bowed, the silver cuff that curled around the scarred, holey edge of his right ear sparkling. He was barely older than Maud and me, and the scents of silver polish and cleaning
chemicals clung to him. Another orphaned war kid.
“What’s with the pitchers?” I poured myself a glass and spooned grits into my bowl. The food was as varied as it had been, but there were more ground foods—speckled oats, grits, cornmeal cooked with milk. Things I’d eat if I knew we’d be running all night from guards. “And food.”
His lips twitched. “We’re simply providing what is necessary.”
“Thank you.” For nothing.
I ate light and drank as much water as I could while he walked away.
“Servants?” Four asked.
I peeled a boiled egg and nibbled on the whites. “I knew you lot had servants. You treat them like nobles would.”
They’d come from one of those big carnivals then. The sort that trained you from birth and only let you go when you died—or got invited to Left Hand auditions.
Three sipped her tea, grinning. “At least we know she’s never had servants.”
“From Kursk, fights, and never had servants.” Two smiled. “Narrows it down.”
“Up!” Amethyst threw open the door to the nook.
We all shot to our feet. A shiver ran down my spine—they’d done this when they caught Thirteen. They’d caught me. They knew what I’d done, and I was out.
“Eight and Twenty-Two are dead—poorly.” Emerald slid into the room, light cotton tunic the color of dandelion stems and leggings dark as damp earth. “That leaves ten of you.”
Ruby laughed behind his mask and applauded. “Congratulations to our final ten auditioners. Welcome to your first real test.”
I sighed. I could survive a test.
Ruby held up ten pairs of thick iron shackles.
I’d gotten out of those before—three times with picks and once with a hatpin.
“Stop.” Amethyst shooed Ruby out the door and turned to us. “Follow me.”
She took off running. Emerald vanished up a servants’ staircase. Running I could handle, and the others could try to keep up with me. Five was at my heels, faster than I thought he’d be, and Amethyst spun around, a plume of dust engulfing us. I sucked in a breath of dirt.
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