Kingmaker

by Lindsay Smith

  Fourth round: the dance on the knife’s edge. Minister Durst would argue for caution. Edina would insist on it. But Vera didn’t need alcohol to feel reckless. Edina’s father had as good as marked her for death if she didn’t do as he said. Why run from death? Vera preferred to snuggle it close.

  “You ‘uns are Stargazers, aren’t ya?” Vera asked, gaze flicking toward the runner and his companion.

  She stacked her second-highest token with the table stack, then made a show of looking disappointed with her own stack. “I saw yous at the brawl, other night. Your Jorn’s a beast.”

  “Dumb as one, besides,” the runner said. He added to the table stack, then looked her over. “What’s it to you and yours?”

  Vera shrugged. “Nothin’ to me. I only bet on brawls when I get paid. So, irregularly, and never as much as I’m owed.” She cackled, too loud, and earned a few raised mugs in toast.

  “You a runner?” he asked, as the round progressed.

  She shook her head. “Nah. Taskmaster. Used to oversee those tunneler kids what cleaned at the university, back when the Bootstraps gang ran that gig. Destroyers messed that up good for me, though. They didn’t like the dean diddlin’ with the kiddies. Left him a nasty present. Dean throws a fit, kicks us out, now I’m here.”

  “We don’t talk about the Destroyers here,” one of the other women warned.

  The runner’s companion nodded. “Bad for business.”

  “Like callin’ on Nightmare,” the runner concurred.

  Vera shrugged again. “Just tellin’ my sad tale.”

  The Stacks Lord for the round did a quick tally and shoved that round’s pot toward the runner.

  “Ever worked with the Stargazers before?” the runner asked Vera, after everyone had surveyed their tokens for round five.

  “Sure. Just an overnight job, like—special work they had at the docks, nothin’ permanent.” Vera smiled with only one side of her mouth. “Why, they lookin’ for more?”

  “Might be. If your stories check out. Y’know how it goes.” He made a double play—the table stack and his personal one. Vera tried her best to look impressed.

  “Appreciate it.” Then she added to her personal stack—now a higher value than his, if she’d counted right. “Well, wait. Stargazers got that Garrith fellow, don’t they?” Finally, she could churn the waters of what she really wanted to discuss—whether or not Garrith was involved with the Destroyers—and hoped they’d take the bait. “That’s where he ended up?”

  The runner’s smile wiped away in an instant. “He’s second lieutenant. Why you ask?”

  Vera slid her jaw from side to side, then nestled back into her seat. “Enh, well, it’s only that—well, there was stories goin’ round. When I was Bootstraps, right? And he was, too.” A tidbit one of her other contacts had turned up, not that this crowd needed to know its origin.

  The runner’s companion slammed his token onto the table stack. “Everyone knows he didn’t leave the Bootstraps in a pretty kind of way.” His expression went stony. “That’s how the Stargazers like ‘em.”

  “Sure, sure, I hear that, boys. Only … the stories what were goin’ around. Well—” Vera gave him a grin full of teeth. “I s’pose they were only that.”

  Everyone at the table was quiet for a moment, though the two Stargazers men were a particularly noisy sort of quiet, fidgeting and curling their lips. Vera took her time counting out her tokens before deciding which would go where.

  “If y’know somethin’ about Garrith we don’t,” the runner finally said, “might be kind of you to share.”

  For a fleeting moment, Vera imagined recounting this victory to Edina—the way Edina’s eyes would light up and she’d bounce like a spring as she threw her arms around Vera. Like they used to. Before her father threatened to have Vera killed.

  The warmth from Vera’s victory in steering the conversation cooled, but she had to stay in her role. “All right, well. Word was, Garrith’s who tipped off the Destroyers to the crooked dealings in the university. Coz he’s one of’em himself.” That time, the silent over the table was absolute. The whole tavern went stuffy, smothering. So it felt to Vera.

  “An interesting story,” the runner said at last.

  The seed of doubt had been planted. Now Vera only had to hope her guess was right—that Garrith’s strange behavior really was because he was a Destroyer. That he’d just been put on notice.

  “Well, anyway, s’pose it doesn’t matter none,” she said. “Destroyers aren’t gonna have anyone to turn to, before long. I suspect they’ll burn themselves out soon enough.”

  “Vigilantes like that?” the runner said. “Lots of tunnelers look up to them, even if the rest of us want ‘em dead. Not that the tunnelers got much power to help ‘em.”

  She shrugged. “Only the stuffy imperials would help folks like that. Ministry of Affairs, maybe. Constabulary’s too corrupt. Yeah, I reckon the Destroyers are good as dead.”

  The runner smiled to himself. “If Garrith’s really runnin’ ‘em like you think, probably won’t be long.”

  The conversation shifted. Vera stayed until she’d won double what she’d come with, then begged off for the night. Too much would’ve been rude; too little, a suspicious stopping point. Then she wandered toward the bar and clapped some fellows on the backs as if they were old friends she’d just seen come in. Spent some time chatting, calling for one last round. Waited until the Stacks players could forget her, if not her words. Then slipped out the tavern’s back door.

  The streets of Barstadt City rang with her footsteps, bootheels clicking on cobblestones and bouncing across the narrow whitewash buildings. Only the sea mist rolling up from the bay offered any cover in the starry night. Vera pulled off her hat, setting her dark curls free, and peeled away the first few layers of her tunics until she reached one that was a different color from the one she’d worn in the tavern. Good enough.

  A bootheel ricocheted on the alley walls behind her, and Vera turned, hand creeping toward the hilt of her knife, but no one approached. She waited a few moments for her rapid breathing to still and continued along her path.

  At first, she didn’t know where she was headed, but when she passed the Ministry of Affairs barracks and found herself in the Cloister of Roses, she recognized her path all too well.

  Alizard Manor, home to Lord Alizard and his cherished daughter Edina.

  Candlelight danced in the rows and rows of windows that spanned each of the three floors, but the manor was otherwise dark. Lord Alizard was an early riser—he had to be, to assume his seat at the Imperial Council each morning. Some in Barstadt thought he was the most powerful man in the empire, after the Emperor himself. But Vera knew the truth. He was more powerful even than the Emperor, thanks to his shady deals with countless of Barstadt’s criminal gangs.

  At least the Emperor had had the foresight to keep him and the other aristocrats in the dark when it came to the Ministry of Affairs. His own daughter worked against him there, trying to turn the tide against the gangs, while he thought she was tending to the poorhouses or sitting at lectures at the university. Oh, she did those things, too; enough to keep up the pretense, and enough to satisfy her altruistic heart. Edina was so pure and sweet and good sometimes Vera wanted to vomit.

  But supporting the Ministry of Affairs—that was Edina’s act of rebellion against Lord Alizard. Vera supposed that had been worth it to Edina. Fighting to be with Vera—apparently was not.

  Vera turned away. She no longer minded having a death threat hanging over her, but even she knew better than to overly tempt fate. Especially when the Dreamer only ever showed her what was behind, and not ahead.

  Pebbles cascaded along the stone behind her.

  Vera stopped and twisted to look back. As she slipped one hand into her waistband and closed it around a knife hilt, something in her unwound. This was what she’d been waiting for. A good, proper fight.

  The crickets roared around her; the fog pulled tight a
s a blanket. Vera listened carefully for the sound of footsteps, but there were no other disturbances, no shadows cris-crossing the path ahead. With a slackening of her shoulders, Vera started back down the path toward the Ministry barracks and her nightly dreams of what once was.

  *

  Except this night, the Dreamer hid something new in all those rehashed memories. A whisper and a hand clamped hard around her wrist. There has to be a better way, it said. Too faint for her to know who said it.

  A better way for what? For whom? That’s how the Dreamer’s hints always were, Vera thought. Useless right until the moment you needed them—and then they were too late.

  Edina was waiting for her outside the Minister’s office the next morning.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Edina whispered. A stack of papers were crushed in her fist; deep furrows cut through her brow. “Goading the Stargazers? Trying to find who’s in charge of those bloody vigilantes?”

  “Of course. Find them, turn them to the Ministry’s side, take down the gangs. That’s always been the plan, even when we worked together. What, you can’t stand it that I’m running that mission without your help now?” Vera shoved past her. “You’d best get accustomed to it. I’m finding I work far better alone.”

  “Vera.” Edina’s tone fell heavy as a stone. “You can’t toy with these people. They aren’t like the smalltime crooks you’re used to bringing in.” Her eyes shimmered; was she crying? “You’re going to get hurt.”

  Vera stared at her for a few moments. “Good. Some things are worth it.”

  She turned and headed for the Minister’s door, letting the righteous anger burn through her, stronger than any ale. But Edina called her back. “Wait.”

  Vera jammed her hands into fists and pressed them against her thighs, fighting against the tears welling in her own eyes.

  “The Stargazer you’re watching—Garrith? He sent a letter to the Ministry.” When she turned, Edina was holding a scrap out to her. “He knows the gangs are looking for the Destroyers’ leader. And he wants to meet.”

  *

  “Be careful,” Minister Durst said.

  “This is the chance we need. It’s Garrith—it must be. He knows he’s been pegged as part of the Destroyers, and he’ll be looking for the sort of guarantees that only we can offer him.”

  “Or it could be a trap,” the Minister said.

  Vera rolled her eyes. “Or it could be genuine. Imagine. If you were a second lieutenant in the Stargazers, and feared you’d been outed as the sort of vigilante trying to bring the Stargazers down—wouldn’t you be desperate for help?”

  “Or to silence the person who’d figured me out.”

  “No one knows that was me,” Vera said. But she remembered the footsteps in the mist, off and on, following her from the Cloister of Roses to the Ministry barracks themselves. Had they followed her all the way from the tavern?

  Well, Vera thought nonchalantly, either it was a trap, or it was an incredible catch. “He reached out to the Ministry. Not the role I’d been playing when we met. At least he’ll know my face, though—he’ll trust me. Please, Minister. Let me persuade him to work with us.”

  Durst rubbed at his jaw, his gaze far away. “The second lieutenant to the Stargazers. Must be an awful lot of knowledge locked away in his head.”

  Vera leaned forward. “Knowledge we can use to take down the Stargazers. To take down all of the gangs.”

  And Lord Alizard, Vera added silently. Edina’s father. A threat no more.

  Not that she believed it would change anything. Edina had already made her choice. But still …

  “All right. Meet with him. Find out what he knows and what he wants from us. If he’s just looking for money, forget it. We need a long-term relationship with him if we’re going to make this work.”

  Vera nodded. “Dreamer help us all.”

  *

  The five Ministry enforcers hidden around the meeting point—the tunnel entrance near Dreamer Square—did nothing to dampen Vera’s pounding pulse. Even the late winter chill couldn’t cool her down beneath the many layers she wore and the hood shrouding her face. No use revealing her identity to Garrith until she had to, after all. Assuming he showed. Assuming he really was with the Destroyers. Assuming he actually thought the Ministry could help.

  All Vera could do was trust in the Dreamer, and in her own gut.

  There has to be a better way, her dreams echoed in her mind.

  A trio of figures emerged from the tunnel grates, and the foremost of them lifted a hand to beckon her. Vera gripped her layered cotton skirts tight and followed. How close did the Ministry’s men intend to follow? She didn’t want to spook Garrith, but neither did she want to be left alone with him.

  The moment she squeezed through the bars of the tunnel, the harsh tang of metal and damp stone and unwashed flesh surrounded her. The darkness tucked in tight; only the stripes of luminescent paint on the tunnel’s ceiling cast any light. The world was reduced to shadows and even darker space.

  “You are from the Ministry.” The man was beside her before she even saw or heard him. But she knew it was Garrith from his height, from his short wiry gray hair catching the faintest glimmer of the light.

  “I am.” Vera lifted her chin. “We want to help you. We know you are under some … pressure.”

  The man laughed. They continued down the tunnel in silence, then he steered them off the main branch. Vera tried to twist her head back, tried to make it look natural, to see if her guards were following, but Garrith’s focus stayed on her.

  “Someone’s been telling stories on me. False stories. The kind that get a Stargazer killed.”

  Vera pressed two fingers against the shape of the knife tucked into the waist of her tunic. “Sounds like you need our help now more than ever.”

  “Ahhh, I remember you now.” He pressed into her, driving her side up against the curved stone wall. “That snotty little attitude. I should’ve known.”

  They’d stopped moving. Footsteps splashed against the trickle of runoff that coursed down the side tunnel they now occupied. Both of Garrith’s guards tightened their circle around them. And her guards were nowhere to be found.

  “It worked, didn’t it?” Vera managed to say, though her insides felt like they’d turned to water. Why was she so nervous? And then she remembered—Edina’s warning about just what sort of criminals these men were. Maybe she was in over her head after all. “The Ministry always gets its way. You’d like working with us. We’ll keep you safe from your gang, help you accomplish all your goals and more.”

  Garrith pinned her torso in place with his own. “That’d be great,” he murmured. “If I really were a Destroyer.”

  Vera tried to swallow, but his forearm was suddenly at her throat.

  “Too bad for you. I’m not. And I’ve got to kill this foolish rumor of yours before it spreads too far.”

  “They’re handled,” someone said from the tunnel mouth. Coarse, heavy. Jorn, the brawler—it had to be.

  Garrith grinned, his teeth almost blue in the luminescent paint’s light. “What was it, five guards you brought?”

  A bead of sweat ran down Vera’s back.

  “Sorry, little girl, but even the whole Imperial army won’t keep you safe.”

  Vera pulled the knife from her waistband, but Garrith was quicker. He bashed her hand back against the stone wall, knocking the knife out of her grip and pinning her to the wall. She brought her knee up to his groin, but he moved faster, angling his body away.

  Vera slid down the wall, trying to drop out of Garrith’s grasp. Jorn was stalking toward them, his hulking form blocking out the weak light. At least he was a slow fighter. She could handle Garrith and the others, maybe, but she’d have to save Jorn for last.

  Vera dived for her discarded knife, but Garrith caught her shoulder and wrenched her back. He was grinning again—a grin that made Vera’s blood run cold. Her throat constricted, waiting for the blow. The
n, before Vera’s eyes, the sick smile turned to a frown. Something slid slowly down his face and dripped into her eye.

  Vera blinked.

  There was blood dripping onto her face—and it was not her own.

  It was Garrith’s, pouring out of the gaping wound in his forehead.

  Vera scrambled back and out of his loose grasp. She scanned the tunnel, found her knife winking in the stream of runoff, and rolled toward it. She snatched it up before whirling around to face the next guard. Wait. Where was the next guard?

  She squinted into the darkness. All she saw were dark forms, dotting the tunnel floor like lumpy sacks of oat. And Jorn, standing over them all.

  “Dreams of death.” Vera clapped her hand to her mouth. How had he moved so quickly? But no, she realized, it had been just another strategy of his. He brawled slow and steady, dimwitted and blundering—so none would know his speed, his cleverness.

  She wondered what else he’d been concealing, too.

  “You’ve got some kind of death wish, don’t you,” Jorn said.

  “That’s my business.” Vera straightened up, forcing the tremor out of her arms. “What about my guards? You said you—”

  “They’re fine. Well—I had to rough them up a bit.” Jorn grimaced. “They’re, uh, waiting for us the next tunnel over. Had to be convincing, you know.”

  Convincing. A story to sell. Vera liked him already. Assuming he didn’t kill her.

  “Garrith was getting too cocky,” Jorn said, narrating to himself as he surveyed the carnage before him. “Thought he could impress the Stargazers leader and take down the Destroyers on his own. Tried to set a trap for you but didn’t bring enough men. Was quickly overpowered. Got the Stargazers’ prize fighter wounded.”

  Vera furrowed her brow. “But you’re not wounded—”

  Jorn grit his teeth and tugged at his shoulder until Vera heard the sickening pop of dislocation. “That should do.”