by Sam Sykes
“What makes you think that?” I watched her set down the bottle with more than a little concern; both for the slur creeping into her voice and the diminishing liquor.
“Oh, come on,” Dalaris insisted. “A beautiful lady thief? Far away in a distant land? There’s got to be an interesting story there.”
I stared at her thoughtfully for a moment. “There is.”
“And?”
“And if you’re drunk enough to call me beautiful, you’re far too drunk to appreciate it.” I slowly slid the bottle away from her, casting a wink. “Not that it goes unappreciated, mind you.”
“I am not drunk.” She leapt to her feet, swayed unsteadily for a moment. And then a moment longer. “Not that drunk, anyway. Madame.” She folded her arms, attempted to look as intimidating as a drunk girl can. “I believe you owe me.”
“Oh?” I grinned. “You’re in complete control of your faculties, then?”
“I am!”
“Meaning you meant every word you said?”
“I did!”
“Fine.” I stood up slowly, placed my hands on my hips, and looked her over. “Then kiss me.”
The slack-jawed, unblinking look on Dalaris’s face would have fit her better had I slapped her with a dead chicken.
“W-what?” she asked.
“If you really think I’m beautiful,” I said, “then give me a kiss and prove it.”
“It … it was aesthetic appreciation!” Color rose to her cheeks so quickly I thought she might explode into flames. “I merely … appreciate your looks.” She held up her hands, flailing them wildly. “Among other things! It’s not mere looks!”
“Then this should be easy.”
I pressed my foot against the side of the table, slid it out from between us, and stepped forward, so close I could smell the liquor on her breath. She squirmed beneath my grin like a … a … a thing that squirms. I didn’t know. I had had a few, myself.
“Well?” I asked. “Unless … you didn’t mean what you said?”
“Of course I did,” she replied hastily. “I’m a Sidara. We are bound to our word.”
I held my hands out wide. “At your leisure, my lady.”
Her arms stiffened at her sides. Her hands clenched into fists. She looked me dead in the eye, those golden irises gleaming a moment before they closed. Her lips trembled, then puckered, her entire face quivering as she leaned toward me.
For a moment, it looked like she was actually going to do it.
Or vomit.
Really, I wasn’t sure which one it wound up being. She released a breath she had been holding in one gasp. Her eyes snapped wide open and she immediately pulled back.
“I … ah … that is…” She turned away, hurriedly heading for the staircase that led upstairs. “It’d be improper!” she cried out. “We have duties to attend to! Please, Shy, take your rest. I will figure out a way for us to infiltrate Alarin’s manor! Leave it to me!”
“As you say, my lady.”
I couldn’t see my grin right then, but I imagined it was particularly insufferable.
“And…” Dalaris hesitated at the top of the stairs and looked over her shoulder. “I appreciate all that you’ve done for me, Shy.”
With that, she scurried down the hall. I heard a door slam as she disappeared into her room, with her doubtless comfy bed and doubtless comfy quilts.
At that thought, all the aches my body had been delaying suddenly came rushing back to me. The idea of a bed—not specifically hers—suddenly sounded incredibly tempting.
I took a step forward, swayed, then collapsed back.
Then again, sofas were also tempting. Particularly when they came with bottles of whiskey nearby.
I plucked up my sleeping companion for the night, took another swig from its glass lips, and chuckled at the memory of Dalaris’s bright red face.
Not that I felt particularly good about teasing her like that, mind you. If anything, I should have been the one offended. After all, her desire to kiss me was much less powerful than my desire to not discuss my past.
Of course, I knew she’d get embarrassed and run. She was unused to affections of my particular persuasion. She was a timid girl. A charming girl.
A good girl.
No need to go reminding her what a mistake she’d made by consorting with filth like me.
10
Silk-Collar Jobs
“See, what you fail to appreciate is the simplicity of it all.”
At my words, Dalaris looked away from the cabin window and turned her attentions toward me as I sat on the carriage’s seat.
“It’s common, I’ll give you that,” I said, holding my hands up. “But it’s common for a reason. It’s effective.” I pantomimed with my hands. “I creep across a lawn at night, open a window, go creeping around while everyone’s asleep.” I slammed my fist into my open palm. “And anyone who isn’t asleep, I put to sleep. It’d take no more than an hour, tops, and I’d have all the evidence we need.”
She nodded along to all of this as I folded my arms and smiled at her.
“You want my opinion,” I said, “it’s the best possible plan.”
The noblewoman assumed a thoughtful look, pursing her lips as she stared at the space above my head, as if weighing my argument.
“And if you want my opinion,” she said, “you don’t like my plan because it requires you to wear a dress.”
At that, my smile didn’t so much leave my face as run screaming and hurl itself off while on fire. What lingered behind was a frown I could feel like a scar. And I was quick to turn it down on the garb that covered me.
It didn’t fit right—made for someone much bustier and with bigger hips than a skinny Katapeshi girl. It had way too many skirts—and they all stuck out in ugly frills around my legs. Its gloves were too small, its shoes were too high in the heel, its laces were cinched up so tight that I could feel my ribs crush.
And it was mauve. The color of evil.
Frankly, wearing this, I didn’t see how I would be able to stab a man to death at all.
“I don’t like your plan because it’s a complicated, stupid mess,” I growled. “I like dresses.”
“Please,” Dalaris scoffed. “During our brief and eventful time together, I’ve seen you wear nothing but leathers. I’ve had to squint to avoid mistaking you for someone with a beard.”
I snapped open a feathery hand fan—the only thing that came with this dress that I kind of liked—and tilted my nose up.
“If you’re trying to imply my slim physique makes me look mannish, I will remind you that my body is not yours to cast judgment on.” I batted my eyelashes over the top of the fan at her. “Also, you’ve seen me naked. Pervert.”
In truth, I didn’t mind her comment too much—I’ve been called worse by better. But I found it hard not to savor moments, such as these, where she turned beet red and desperately sought to look anywhere but at my face.
I thought I might be developing a fetish.
“Well,” she said, huffily, “I’m the one paying, so I say how this is done. And unless you can think of a better plan—”
“I just said—”
“A better plan that does not involve you killing people,” she finished, glaring at me, “then we go with this one.” She flipped open her own fan, waved it like she could fan away her embarrassment. “You’re the one that said you were a good liar. Consider this an opportunity to prove your superiority.”
Outside, Harges called his horses to a halt. The carriage slowed to a stop a moment later, leaving me a moment to stew in my resentment.
In truth, she was right. I was a good liar, and her plan wasn’t the worst in the world. Hell, it might even have been better than mine. It was easier to collect information when no one suspected you of actually trying to do that, after all.
But if it was a choice between painting a rich man’s ass with honeyed words or clubbing him over the head and taking his stuff?
Well, c
all me a woman of simple pleasures.
The door creaked open. Harges stood dutifully to the side, looking positively miserable in the powdered wig and livery he had been dressed up in. I cringed in sympathy as I stepped out and onto the cobblestones.
“Announcing the arrival of Lady Sidara of House Sidara and guest,” a nearby man, wearing his fancy outfit much more comfortably, called out.
Across a vast lawn, various servants and a few nobles looked up and spared half a moment to sneer in disgust before concealing their contempt behind a round of light applause.
I glanced behind me and saw the reason for their contempt. The circular driveway was host to a variety of fine horses of black and white, all of them pulling a variety of fine carriages of gold trim and pleasant wheels. Compared to them, Dalaris’s worn carriage and powerful-looking draft horses looked as out of place as oak trees in a garden.
Not that the horses seemed to mind, if the way one of them raised her tail and dropped a load of dung on the pavement was any indication.
“Lord Amalien is expecting you, my lady,” the well-dressed man said, approaching Dalaris as she stepped out of the carriage. He bowed low, gesturing across the lawn to the vast manor looming like a particularly foppish behemoth against the night sky.
House Amalien was remarkable in Yanmass if only because it seemed more a home and less a fortress. Its high, peaked roof was bereft of the hidden ballistae and watchtowers that other manors had. Its walls sprawled out to either side, baring windows without bars and doors without gates. The shrubberies in its lawn were shaped like animals. The servants were dressed like servants, not guards. The main doors were the size of a castle’s and cast wide open, light and music and laughter spilling out from inside.
At a glance, it appeared Lord Alarin Amalien had absolutely zero cares for anyone who might enter his home.
Which made it seem like we really wasted an opportunity by choosing this plan, but whatever.
“Shall we, dear?”
I almost didn’t recognize her voice by the prim way she offered it, but once I turned, I saw Dalaris standing beside me. The coquettish smile across her face all but transformed her from the nervous girl I had known before to a proper noblewoman. She stood taller, more confident, head held high and looking ever-so-slightly down on me. She extended her arm to me in a fashionable manner.
And I took it, as a proper lady should.
“By all means, darling,” I said, forcing my voice a little higher.
Chin high, back straight, eyes forward, left arm upon hers, right cocked at just such an angle, and smile, Shy, always smile!
I had to remind myself once or twice as Dalaris escorted me across the lawn, but it came easily enough. This wasn’t the first time I had posed as someone rich, brainless, or both, and since I was who I was, I was sure it wouldn’t be the last. But nonetheless, as we passed the various painted, powdered, pampered nobles, I was reminded keenly why I had hated this plan so.
“Look at that, is that a Qadiran with her?”
“Maybe an Osirian. Or a Katapeshi? How exotic!”
“Indeed, exotic! Sidara’s attracting a rather unusual fare.”
“—such dark skin, how does she—”
“—hear they sell their own mothers for a—”
“—curious, maybe quaint, certainly exotic—”
One by one, the whispers of a few ignorant dopes might not be worth much. There are, after all, millions of stupid pieces of shit in the world. But that’s precisely how stupidity flourishes; in bunches, in fast-growing weeds that choke delicately nurtured knowledge.
Thus, while I had certainly been called everything a gawping Taldan might call a Qadiran or a Katapeshi they thought was Qadiran—“thief,” “barbarian,” “warmonger”—it was only the words of the wealthy that ever irritated me.
After all, if I was a thief, I was still a person.
If I was merely “exotic,” I might as well be a pet.
I was just about to stop and force Dalaris to reconsider my plan to stab everyone when I caught another, subtler set of whispers beneath the ones about my heritage.
“Look at her, why was she even invited?”
I glanced out the corner of my eye and saw them. A thin, bony woman wearing a tight-laced white dress and a hat with a stuffed pheasant adorning a positively epic poof of hair whispered to a portly man dressed in a tight suit whose moustache looked like a war crime.
“Pity, I suspect,” another replied. “The late Amalien was her betrothed.”
“Gods know what he saw in her. Did you see the carriage she showed up in? Ghastly.”
“Have patience, Clarice. You know the poor thing’s down on her luck.”
“There’s down on one’s luck and then there’s a curse from Heaven.”
“I suspect when you’re a Sidara, they’re more or less the same thing.”
They chuckled so softly I was certain only I could hear them. But when I glanced to Dalaris, I could see that I was mistaken.
The mask of nobility she wore was just that—a mask, and a fragile one. Her lips trembled and her jaw clenched, fighting to keep its smile up. And she tilted her head a little lower, that it might be harder to see the tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
How many of these parties had she been to, I wondered. How many times had she heard these whispers? How many times had she lain awake at night, wondering what they were saying about her?
I didn’t know.
I only knew what to do.
I clutched her arm a little tighter. I reached out with my free hand and squeezed hers.
“Chin up,” I whispered. “Courage. We have a job to do.”
She nodded at me, forced her chin up. Her smile still trembled, though.
“Besides,” I added quickly, “who are they to talk? That woman’s wearing a dead bird on her head and likely paid out the ass for the privilege.”
She laughed. Slightly louder than was ladylike.
And I smiled.
And walked with her, arm in arm, past the massive double doors opened wide, into the house of her husband’s murderer.
11
A Rogue’s Diplomacy
The exterior of House Amalien was magnificent. Merely magnificent. The interior was wealthy enough to tighten the trousers of every thief within sixty leagues.
Brilliant crimson carpet with gold trim layered over white tile so polished I could see up my own skirt. Marching pillars carved to resemble powerful, half-clad men held up the peaked ceiling. A vast, coiling staircase rose to galleries overhead, each one guarded by a marble-and-silver railing and housing countless portraits of countless ancestors. A small contingent of servants rushed about with a grace and discipline that would shame most armies.
And upon every tapestry, on the frame of every portrait, on the banister of every staircase and the breast of every servant’s livery, the sigil of two crossed swords.
House Amalien’s sigil.
Just like I had seen back in First Solace.
A peal of decidedly undignified laughter caught my ear. The party appeared to be in full swing, if the number of empty wine goblets in the hands of the seventy or so well-dressed nobles in attendance was any indication. And judging by the swiftness with which the servants rushed to refill them, things had doubtless been going swimmingly for a while. The fine fruits and cheeses went unappreciated, the dulcet tunes of the violin quartet in the corner unacknowledged. Tonight, the only culture heeded was the kind that came out of a bottle.
“I thought you said this was a wake,” I muttered to Dalaris.
“We do things differently in Yanmass,” she replied. “The nobles don’t like to be reminded of their mortality. There will be a more somber funeral later, but for now…”
“Right,” I grunted behind my fan.
I surveyed the crowd. Painted faces, men and women, conversing brightly behind fans, under hats and powdered wigs. Swigging wine, gorging on food, laughing and laughing like this was the
best damn joke they’d heard in a while.
“So what’s the plan?”
“There must be something here,” Dalaris muttered in reply. “Someone with a loose tongue or a servant who knows too much.”
I glanced around, immediately searching for the noble who wore a resentful scowl or the servant who looked a little too harried—someone who might talk.
My gaze settled upon a pair of them. A man and a woman with dark hair, currently waiting with silver platters full of wineglasses on a small circle of nobles. They looked like any other servants, clad in the colors and sigil of House Amalien, yet there was something a little too sharp about them, a little too hungry.
The male servant glanced my way and I tensed, only long enough to realize he was turning away so he wouldn’t be seen yawning. He whispered something to the woman and she nodded, scurrying off to what I assumed was the kitchen.
“So you want to go searching for someone who’ll talk?” I asked.
“We’ll both keep an eye out,” she said. “It shouldn’t be too hard so long as we can avoid—”
“Dalaris! Darling!”
“—notice.”
As the servants formed an army and the nobles the scavengers that follow in their wake, the man that came striding toward us was doubtless the general. Tall, well built, dressed in vest, breeches, and coat that fit his muscular frame perfectly, without a wig on his head or paint on his face, he came striding up. He wore no jewelry but for a ring around his finger, and no adornment but a glass in his hand.
Really, he didn’t need any.
Alarin Amalien was the sort of man whose looks would only be tarnished by trinkets.
His green eyes glittered in the light of the candelabras. His sharp features were unmarred by the softness that other nobles wore comfortably. And beneath a perfectly trimmed beard, he flashed a broad, bright smile.
An honest smile.
Made me wonder how long he had to train to fake it.
“Alarin.” Dalaris’s smile turned genuinely warm as she extended a hand. “It’s good to see you.”
“And you as well.” He took her hand in his, offered it a gentle kiss. “The rest of these copper-tongued flatterers, less so.”