“I know. I trust you. Which is why I want you to have the bounty for Grell da Sousa. I killed him, and I won’t need it if I’m dead. Amethyst seems nicest. Talk to her about it.”
She opened her mouth, and I thrust my slip of paper into her hands.
“Just accept the money and go get your siblings.” I could read it—mostly—but I had to be sure. “What’s it say?”
She stared at me for a moment too long. “Thorn da Tonin, nineteen hands, shaved head, runes on forearms and back, scar across left side of mouth, lives in Willowknot, runs Quick Silver.” She wrinkled her nose and handed it back to me. “He’s one of yours.”
I checked all four of my knives and pulled on my gloves. “Mine?”
“Street fighter, gambler.” She leaned against the tub. “Alibi’s this old gambling house. Dimas bans all the new workers from going, but the soldiers still show up beaten to bits every few nights, and it’s good money. Thorn tried to buy it out, but they never gave in, so he opened up Quick Silver across from it. Stole half their business.”
“And you know all of that how?” I asked. “Don’t strike me as the gambling type.”
“I was looking for work.” She crossed her arms, wincing. “The Triad help whatever poor souls he’s got working for him now.”
“Well, Our Queen’s helping them at least.” I tore up my slip and handed it to her. I was Sal again—dressed for a job in mostly fitting clothes and pleasantly buzzed with the thrill of it all. Finding people was easy and getting to them easier. No different than robbing a house. “Remember, Lady de Farone.”
“Yes, yes.” Maud shooed me away. “I did exist before you walked into my life. Go be Opal.”
I grinned all the way to Willowknot. The streets were different by lantern light, sharper and louder. Crowds moved from building to building, shouting through tavern doors, and I slipped my hood from my head while watching them drift from bar to gambling table to bar again. With so many workers flooding the city, the shops were thriving.
I followed a group yattering about Alibi—best place to get dirt was from your target’s competition. The place was flush with people.
Igna soldiers drank around the bar—their coats thrown off and weapons gone. A large crowd of women played drinking games I’d never heard of and cheered in one of the western languages from over the Blue Silk Sea that I didn’t know. A couple at the back whispered to each other with the telltale harsh accent of Berengard from over the eastern mountains.
“Weapons to the bar,” the person behind me said in Alonian.
“The bar?” I spun around, gripping my side, and eyed the older woman trying to herd me to the counter.
“No weapons inside. Drop them on the bar, you’ll get a number, and they’ll keep them locked up till you leave.” She smiled, suntanned skin crinkling like the lines on a river map, and led me to a seat. “Check your weapons and have a drink or see yourself out.”
I obeyed and traded my two knives for a ribbon with the number 247 looped over the end.
“You from down south?” my companion asked. She fixed herself a drink from the bar, winking at the barkeeper.
The barkeeper tossed a candied lemon slice at her.
“The coast.” I smiled and nodded. “Rath da Oretta.”
“Nanami Kita.” She crunched the lemon between her teeth. “Most here call me Nana.”
Neither of us was from Erlend or Alona then. I laughed and rubbed the back of my neck, copying one of the bashful musicians in the corner trying to talk their way into a free drink.
“I was looking to gamble, but…” I said and looked around like I was lost. Not a gambling table in sight.
“We’ve been known to have some of that.” She leaned in toward me, bringing the scents of salt and seaweed with her, and poured out a decent measure of a nutty-smelling clear liquor into a cup. She set it in front of me and topped it off with golden tea. “You like dice or chalk?”
“Dice.” I took a sip of my drink. She’d pulled it straight from the bar and couldn’t have poisoned it. The woody tea did nothing to cover up the smooth burn of the spirit. “Friend told me Quick Silver’s the place for it, but their tables look too good to be true.”
Nana scowled, twisting the scars carved around her crooked nose. “Quick Silver’s a den of thieves playing at riches. Don’t go there.”
“All right.” I poured more tea into my drink to ease it up. She was forceful. “That sounds like a good story.”
“Not a good one for most.” Nana flipped her short black hair from her eye. “They set up a few years back. Most of the place is travelers or people who’ve come looking for work, and they look it. House always wins if you look too poor to pay up.”
“Sorry luck.” I sipped my laced tea. Grell had done the same thing—pinpointed the cheapest looking of the lot, made sure they knew they’d have to pay interest on their debt if they lost, and then suddenly every gamble was unluckier and unluckier. Kept people paying up and earned you more than what they’d lost. And if they were poor? Defaulting left the house with a handful of options on how to collect, and none of them were fair.
I hated my few stints with his gambling rings. I’d moved onto mousing apartments and robbing coaches soon as I could.
Nana nodded toward the street. “That’s what my illustrious competition says.”
“Yours?” I turned to look. Thorn da Tonin, as bald and scarred as my note had promised, stepped out of a small covered coach and into the guarded door of Quick Silver. Even his horses were trimmed in the color.
“Part of it. Have to have somewhere to live when I’m not in Mizuho,” she said. “Does give me the added advantage of saying ‘drinks on me.’”
“Thank you.” I grinned despite myself. Mizuho—they were a friend of Our Queen’s, but I’d never met anyone from there. If Tonin was moving in on Mizuho’s business interests and being an ass about it, she’d probably be angry. “Owners here always stay in the building?”
“I do rounds when I’m here. Tonin gambles—it’s why he opened the hall—but he’s got business partners that run it,” Nana said. “He’s got a nice little garden where he gambles with friends. All of them owe him money, but he keeps them liquored up to make amends.”
So I wasn’t getting at him unless he played without guards or till they left.
I shrugged. “If you’ve got the money.”
She hummed in response and took my hand in hers, drawing a sharp little rune on my skin. The ink didn’t burrow like when magic had run free—how it still did outside of our nation’s borders—but I couldn’t stop my shudder. The meaning was there even if the magic wasn’t.
We were meant to sustain The Lady, not use her.
“Don’t.” Nana grabbed me before I could wipe it off. “It’ll get you downstairs to the tables. You get caught without one, my guards will break your fingers.”
“I don’t like magic.”
“It’s not magic here.” She dropped my hand.
I sucked in a breath and steadied myself, trying to maintain the easygoing calm I’d been using to get Nana to talk. I forced a smile.
If I looked it, eventually I’d feel it.
“Through that door, down, and to the left.” Nana nodded toward the shadowy back corner of the room. “You keep that rune on you.”
Slouched at the end of the bar, wrapped in a hooded cloak that half-hid his face and nursing an amber spirit, Nicolas del Contes raised his glass to me.
As if that answered any of the questions I had for him. I’d other things to think about besides him and his spying. He had to know I’d killed Seve, but he’d done nothing about it. That meant he and Our Queen approved, or he wanted Seve dead for some other reason.
Either way, no time for him tonight.
“Will do.” I slid out of my seat. “Thank you. I’m going to run back and tell my partner not to hit Quick Silver.”
“As you should. Bring them. I’ll be at the fights. My partner’s up tonight.” She g
estured for me to turn. A muscular woman entering the building flipped her braid over her shoulder and waved. She was my sort—a street fighter’s stance even in the middle of a crowded bar. “You look like you could throw some hits?”
“I’ll stick to dice.”
“Suit yourself.” Nana sighed, touching her fingers to her lips and flicking them away. Her hand fluttered to her chest. “Luck on your side.”
“Thanks.” I nodded to her partner, who was returning Nana’s hand signal with a love-eyed look. “And on hers.”
I collected my weapons, downed the last of my drink—bad luck to leave a gift unused—and headed to Quick Silver.
Tonin could have some more fun. I could wait.
Forty
Quick Silver was a cacophony of Erlenian and clattering credit coins styled to look like real pearls. Drawling vowels as inaccessible and inescapable as nobles filled my ears. I was so tired of it.
How could people put so much loathing in their words?
The guards charged a single copper tooth to let people in, and I circled the building with a scowl. The windows were distorted glass.
Useless.
The buildings around Quick Silver though were all tall fancy inns and eating houses—easier to keep your gamblers close. I snuck up the side of a white plaster building down the street—no guards and all the windows closed—and crawled onto the roof. The roof gardens were as expansive as the ones on the palace grounds, but these were filled with snap peas, garlic stalks, basil, and dozens of other everyday needs. I tiptoed around a trellis draped in huckleberries and stepped over the thin gap between the buildings.
Cities were the best for robberies. There was always noise to cover your tracks and alternate routes to get where you needed. I perched on the roof next to Quick Silver.
And these rooftop gardens were growing on me.
Tonin had a monstrously expensive garden with white and gray flowers blooming around the edge and silver furniture for his players. The table was dead center and framed by four chairs with cloud-shaped cushions. Tonin lounged on one with a stance entirely too relaxed for someone betting coin they cared about. His partner was ramrod straight and overcompensating, fancy slippers tapping out his nerves on the rooftop. The pair shared a pitcher of bloodred wine muddled with orange slices. Tonin downed the last of his glass, drizzled honey across the bottom, and poured himself another.
Good. Tonin was big, and he’d be easier to kill drunk. I didn’t want a fair fight with anyone who’d forearms big as my thighs. The pair of them gambled more, drank more, and traded enough boring business chatter to put me to sleep. I spun one of my knives in my fingers, straining to hear anything of use. The only words loud enough to hear clearly were curses.
Lady, if this was what being Opal was like, I was in for a lifetime of boredom.
“You rat!” Tonin’s partner tossed his dice into a carpet of woolly thyme. “No chance they’re not weighted.”
Tonin snorted. “You brought them.”
I leaned forward, drawing my feet up and rising to my toes on the edge of the wall. Finally, something to do.
Tonin rose, muttering the whole time. The other man tossed a handful of credit coins—wood carved with his name and symbol as a promise he’d pay up—onto the table and downed the last of his drink. He straightened the merchant guild pin on his hat.
I leaned over the roof, hiding in the shadows as one of the predictable guards passed beneath me. “Come on. Leave.”
Tonin’s partner turned.
Shan de Pau looked as well fed and fancy on this roof as he did on his business posters.
Shan de fucking Pau. The man who’d sold Nacean goods while they were still warm and bloodied was Tonin’s business partner. And I couldn’t kill him.
I rammed my fists into my thighs, pain biting through the rage howling at me to follow Shan de Pau, rip him limb from limb, and sell the pieces like he’d done to us. He’d no right to still be standing. I groaned and wrapped my arms around my head.
This was worse, so much worse than Seve, who’d been right there. I’d made it an accident, but this was a trap. They were making sure I wouldn’t kill him.
But why shouldn’t he die? Why should he get to walk free when so many were dead? Homeless? Starving?
They’d trapped me. The Left Hand knew. They had to know what he’d done—everyone knew—and they’d let him stand. Now they were luring me into their complacency. But why?
Tonin gathered up the credit coins Pau had tossed aside. Pau vanished through the door.
More money exchanged hands.
Money.
We’d so little farming land left intact after the war that Our Queen had bought extra food from across the sea. She’d needed money.
But, Lady, the cost of it. There had to be more—there had to be—because she wouldn’t sign away the murder of thousands so easily, not when she’d fought so hard to save everyone. There was more to it, and it was on Pau. Filth or not, he’d something she needed.
But he wouldn’t for much longer.
I leapt to my feet and shook out my arms. He wouldn’t live with it much longer because I knew where he was, and he wasn’t going to live with it comfortably. Pau would pay. I’d make sure of it. As the ache in my chest grew with each step he took down the street, I gripped the trellis next to me to keep from chasing after him. Blackberries and thorns crushed under my palm. I let my blood fall to the garden beneath me.
“For what I’ve done and what I’m about to do,” I said softly. The Lady’s stars were gone tonight, too pale against the lights of the city and palace. I backed up from the edge, eyes fixed on my future, on Tonin, and double-checked that my path was clear. “And everything that will come after.”
Forty-One
I landed hard on the roof of Quick Silver, stumbled forward, and rolled over my shoulder into Tonin. He opened his mouth to scream.
I shoved my fist into his mouth, knuckles caught in his teeth. He flailed and kicked, and I pinned him under me with my knees on either side of his chest. He howled.
I punched him. Hard. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp. I eased my hand from his teeth.
Bloody gouge marks lined my knuckles. I leaned back and rubbed the pain away, staring down at Tonin. Pau was a coward and opportunist, and he’d never fight Tonin or anyone head-on. He’d wait till they turned their back.
I couldn’t kill Pau, but I could trap him like they’d trapped me. I just had to make them think he’d killed Tonin.
The empty glasses rimmed with silver glittered in the moonlight. I pulled the long, dull stirring rod from one and rolled Tonin onto his stomach. He moaned, fingers drifting toward his head, and I sat back down on top of him, pinning his arms with my knees. I glanced around and saw nothing better to use as a weapon, so I raised the rod. Pau hadn’t carried a knife. He would kill someone with whatever was on hand.
And he could get a lucky hit.
“What?” Tonin slurred the word, still trying to grab his bruised temple.
“Shush.” I pulled his signet ring from his finger. “You won’t even notice.”
I lined the rod up beneath the base of his skull and jammed it through his neck. He didn’t even twitch.
Dripping blood and sweat, exhaustion tugging at my bones, I rose from Tonin and tucked the stirrer into my pocket.
Dead.
My mark was dead. I hadn’t been caught, and I’d injured no one else. My final test for Opal had come and gone, and here I stood, one step closer to Shan de Pau and all the other bastards who’d buried Nacea in shallow graves and political nonsense. They’d finally have to pay up what they owed.
And it was going to be so easy.
I ripped the purse from Tonin’s belt. He wore silver cosmetic dust on his face, sparkling in the night like some wayward star, and I smeared some across Pau’s credit coins before stuffing them in the bag. I knocked over Tonin’s glass and upended Pau’s chair too. He’d be panicked.
A drun
ken brawl over gambling gone too far. A sudden stabbing. A frantic escape.
Careful not to step in the blood or wine, I made my way back to the edge of the roof. Every now and then, people and guards moved through the alley between Quick Silver and the building I’d leapt from. I shimmied down one of the decorative beams and waited for my path to clear.
The guards and crowds were none the wiser. I shoved my bloodied gloves into a pocket and straightened my clothes. Just had to find Shan de Pau.
A street kid that looked like me—young, dirty, racing away from a drunk man screaming about a missing purse—rammed into me as I turned a corner, and I grabbed her arm. “You want to make some money?”
She eyed me through a filthy fringe of hair and nodded.
“You seen Shan de Pau? Guards are looking for him.” I slipped her one of the clean coins from Tonin’s stash.
She turned the coin over in her palm, glancing from my hands to my face. At least the darkness hid the bloodstains on my clothes.
“Fancy inn with gold letters.” She shoved me in the right direction. “You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
I grinned and took off, the wind at my back and joy coursing through my veins. This was as good. They’d trapped me, but I always find a way out.
The inn where he was staying was bright and welcoming, shutters thrown open in half the rooms and flickering candlelight breaking through the cracks. Pau, a silhouette more cliff face than nose, paced behind the half-shuttered window of a room spanning the entire upper corner of the building. Of course he had the largest, fanciest room. I scaled the building next door.
I waited for him to settle and snuff out his lights. Safe in the darkness, I made the short jump to the inn and balanced on the large sill sticking out from Pau’s window. No one shouted at the clatter and the sill barely creaked. I nudged open the window.
A soft, fluttering snore met my ear. I held back a groan of disgust and slipped into the room. I laid still on the floor, listening to the footfalls in the hall and steady breaths coming from the bed, and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Pau’s merchant pins—of course he’d more than one—rested on the bedside table. A guard’s thick heels paced beyond the crack at the bottom of his door.
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