by Lisa Shearin
“Did you forget to tell your men that we’re all on the same side?” Mychael asked.
Cradock laughed. “You’re on the same side you’re always on—whatever side pays you the most.”
“That was supposed to be you. But your welcoming committee out there makes me think that you’d rather get someone else for your smash and grab.”
Cradock’s hand went over his heart. “Your lack of trust wounds me.”
“Not half as much as you’ll hurt if you try to screw us over.”
“Would I do that?”
“In a beat of your black heart,” Mychael said.
“You understand that sometimes it’s safer to talk business without unsightly weapons around.”
“You mean without us having unsightly weapons.” I negligently toyed with a throwing star near my cleavage. “And I don’t find them unsightly in the least.”
Cradock laughed, an ugly, hollow sound. “Vincent, get our guests some drinks. What will you have?” he asked Mychael.
“I’m not thirsty.”
“What about the lady?” He said “lady” with a suggestive leer. “We can be most accommodating.”
“The lady’s blade would like something hot and red.” I felt my lips slip naturally into a chilling smile. Orla must have used that one a lot. “Still willing to accommodate me?”
Mychael glanced around. “All this peace and quiet must have cost you. Beckett doesn’t like losing business.”
Cradock shrugged. “I’m not footing the bill.”
“That would be the same person and the same money who is footing our bill,” Mychael reminded him. “I do hope you left enough to cover our expenses.”
“I wouldn’t insult you by offering you any less than we agreed. Five hundred kugarats of imperial goblin gold, fresh off a ship from Regor.”
I had to stifle an impressed whistle. Not only was imperial goblin gold the purest there was and worth twice the same amount of any other gold; it was attainable only by a member of the goblin court. Tam wasn’t a member, at least not anymore. Janos Ghalfari was. Though no doubt Balmorlan could claim that Tam could get his hands on anything he wanted to from court.
“Five hundred kugarats up front.” Mychael paused. “Plus expenses.”
Cradock slowly sat up in his chair. “Expenses?”
“Horses, lookouts, distractions, bribes.”
“Bribes? You’re kidnappers, not politicians.”
“You should have paid a few people around town to keep their mouths shut; it would have been a good investment. You and your boys snatched that elf general. It was easy enough to find out. You passed on this job; I want to know why.”
Cradock held up his hands. “An elf general turned up dead in the whore district; I had nothing to do with that. I’m only the middleman between the talent and a client who knows how to pay for what he wants.”
“Your man outside—the one my partner tried to geld—was seen leaving the White Street stables after hiring four horses for a certain black carriage night before last. The horses were brought to a town house off Park Street. You and two of your men arrived soon after. They hitched up the horses, one man played coachman, the other got in the carriage with you. You went to the house where the general was having drinks with the Count of Rina.” Mychael leisurely leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking in the sudden silence. “Is your memory sufficiently refreshed, or shall I continue?”
Anger flickered across Cradock’s face. “No need.”
The man behind the bar shifted. My fingers flicked a pair of throwing stars out of their leather slots.
“Hands on the bar,” I told him. “Now!” Maire Orla was no spellsinger, but her voice cracked like a whip.
Bar boy’s hands stayed right where they were. Oh yeah, he definitely had a crossbow under there. One big enough to splinter the front of the bar before it splintered me. Karl Cradock didn’t want either one of us dead, at least not until we’d finished the job. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to let his bar boy have his fun. Cradock was finished playing games, and he wanted to be sure we knew it.
I had news for him. I wasn’t in a playful mood, either. Maire Orla was a hypnotist, so I let her voice and eyes do their thing.
“Let’s see your hands, bar boy,” I whispered.
After a moment, the man’s mouth went slack and his hands came out of hiding.
“Good,” I purred. “Now put them on the bar and keep them there.”
The man slowly put his hands on the bar, fingers spread.
That was entirely too easy. I kept my eyes on bar boy, while Mychael continued the negotiations.
Mychael’s voice was as cold as bare steel. “You didn’t want to touch this job. I want to know why and I want to know who I’m working for.”
“Neither have anything to do with you.”
“If I still accept it. Maire and I have the next job, so it has everything to do with us. If we’re dead, we can’t spend all that goblin gold you’re about to pay us—plus a hundred extra to keep some mouths shut, or the deal’s off.”
“We had an agreement.”
“An agreement that didn’t involve us taking a stroll to the executioner’s block because you were cheap.”
Cradock shrugged. “The goblin wouldn’t give me his name, not even a fake one, but his gold is the real thing, imperial pure. He came in on the same ship as that gold.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Why do you need to know?”
In my peripheral vision, Mychael stopped just short of rolling his eyes. “We’re doing a job for him; chances are we’ll see each other at the exchange. I want to be sure I’m handing over the merchandise to the man who paid for it.”
“He’s a goblin,” Cradock said. “Gray-skins all look alike; you can’t tell the bastards’ ages.”
“Guess for me.”
“I don’t know; fifty, maybe sixty. He had streaks of white in his hair.”
That sure as hell wasn’t Tam. It had to be Uncle Janos.
“Why does he want us?” Mychael asked.
“You’re not elves. No one suspects humans in this town. Besides, you two have a reputation for good, clean work. My client needs the same attention to detail with this job.”
“Our target is an elf?” I kept my voice level and business-like. Piaras was an elf; so was Mychael; so was my whole family.
“Yeah, he’s an elf.”
Dammit.
“Who’s the job?” Mychael asked.
“Duke Markus Sevelien.”
Chapter 12
“And my client wants him delivered to the old Ta’karid temple at sundown tomorrow,” Cradock said, with a smug smile that held no hint of apology for any death and dismemberment we might incur from trying to pull off a major kidnapping in less than a day.
Mychael didn’t move. “No deal.”
“You agreed to the terms.”
“Terms that gave us at least three days’ planning and prep time.” Mychael stood. “The deal’s off.”
“Are you saying you can’t do it?”
Mychael didn’t bite. “I’m saying we won’t. If your client wants the duke, he’ll have to pay more and wait longer. One day to get inside the elven embassy, get Sevelien, and get out isn’t kidnapping; it’s suicide.”
Cradock smiled like a man with a secret. “The duke isn’t staying in the embassy. Two days ago he moved into the house at the end of Ambassador Row.”
That was more than a little disconcerting. Why the hell did Markus move out of the embassy?
“Ambassador Row, which is conveniently around the corner from the elven embassy,” Mychael noted dryly. “Still no go.”
Judging from the sweat beading on Cradock’s upper lip, if the deal didn’t go down, and Markus didn’t get taken to the Ta’karid temple, Cradock wasn’t going to live much longer than sundown tomorrow himself.
I knew exactly what he’d done. “The goblin has already paid you, hasn’t he? Though perhaps a better qu
estion would be what is he going to do to you when he doesn’t get what he’s already paid you for? I think he’ll take his gold back with interest out of your hide.” I leaned forward and crossed my arms on the back of Mychael’s chair and lowered my voice. “Unless he said he’d take you—just like he did the general.”
A twitch took up residence in the corner of Karl Cradock’s left eye. Yep, I’d hit a nerve.
I pushed on. “You heard what happened to him, didn’t you? Or did you get to watch while it happened?”
Cradock’s continued silence was all the answer I needed.
“Sounds like you did the job, then stayed to help with the cleanup,” Mychael noted. “While your client no doubt found your attention to detail commendable, I wouldn’t exactly call pushing the general’s body out of a coach tidy.”
“You’re not paying us enough to clean up that kind of mess,” I told Cradock. “We’re in acquisitions—and I don’t do housework.”
In a blink of his twitching eye, Cradock’s bravado was back, though he still looked a tad pasty. I didn’t blame him; riding in a dark coach with a dried corpse would turn me pasty, too.
“My client made it worth my while,” Cradock told us. “For that much money, I’d toss my mother into the street.”
I snorted. “You have one?”
He flashed a grin. “Not anymore. And he’ll probably offer you the same deal.”
“I wouldn’t call being allowed to live only if I help dispose of a body a deal.” Mychael adjusted his cloak, and I saw the flicker of light reflected in the gem on the chain around his neck. My own hung just below Orla’s ample breasts.
“We’ll take the job,” Mychael said. “On the original terms plus an extra hundred in expenses—but we’ll pass on the client’s bonus. We’re not undertakers.” He leveled his gaze on Cradock. “And we want it all now.”
“Half now, half when the job is done.”
“Karl, I don’t think you’re going to be here when the job is done. There are two freighters in port, both of Caesolian registry. You’re from Caesolia; you know the captain of the Reliant, and you’ve already booked passage.”
Karl Cradock tried to look cool and calm, but his eye twitch was back. “The client hasn’t paid me my bonus, and I’m sure as hell not leaving Mid without it.”
“Yes, you will, because you value your life more than a few goblin coins; I don’t care how much they’re worth. We want our money now.” Mychael put both hands flat on the table in front of Cradock and leaned forward. “Every. Last. Coin.”
Karl Cradock told us we wouldn’t find Markus Sevelien in the elven embassy, which was good because I’d been in there once, almost got caught, nearly died, and was in no hurry to repeat either experience.
Where we were going was worse, if that was possible. It only confirmed my opinion about the wee hours of the morning—nothing good ever happened after two bells.
Generally, if you’ve just been paid an obscene amount of money to kidnap someone, you stash your gold and then you snatch your target. Not that I’ve had personal experience, but my last name was Benares.
We were carrying our payment, all of it. Goblin gold is lighter than normal gold, so one man could carry what it’d normally take a pack mule to haul. Mychael was doing the carrying. He had a satchel and pockets; all I had was an absurd amount of cleavage.
We were doing our walking-and-hiding thing again. Walk until we spotted another living soul, then hide in the shadows. And when we talked, we kept our voices low.
Markus was staying in one of the lavish homes on Ambassador Row, which was conveniently around the corner from—and within screaming distance of—Embassy Row with all the guards and weapons and death and destruction. A great place to visit in the middle of the night, if you had a death wish. A fly couldn’t sneeze on Ambassador Row without attracting attention of the fatal kind. Not exactly the ideal scenario for a kidnapping that Mychael said wasn’t going to be a kidnapping.
Not that I thought knocking Markus over the head and hauling him off was necessarily a bad plan. And it definitely wouldn’t take much right now to get me to knock Markus over the head. In my family, kidnapping was often the first step to productive negotiations with a rival or enemy. Any decent strategist knew that negotiations were better conducted from a position of power. For a Benares, that often meant a small room, a chair, and your rival blindfolded and tied to it.
I suspected Mychael’s plan involved warning Markus in some way that he was next on Sarad Nukpana’s menu, but if the two of us as Mychael Eiliesor and Raine Benares couldn’t be seen anywhere but the citadel, I didn’t know how we could do whatever Mychael wanted to do and still remain among the living, or at least the un-jailed.
I didn’t know because Mychael hadn’t told me.
“So are you going to tie a note to a rock and throw it through his bedroom window? Or toss a carrier pigeon over the wall and hope a trigger-happy guard doesn’t shoot it?”
“What?”
“How are you going to tell Markus that Nukpana’s uncle put a price on his head—and the rest of him?”
Mychael gripped my upper arm and pulled me into an alley.
“I think a personal visit would be best.” He gave me a look that spoke volumes, and then he sighed. “Though this would be much easier if you weren’t with me.”
I knew exactly what he was getting at. “So suddenly I’m not so indispensable?”
“Suddenly you’re a woman with a vindictive glint in those pretty gray eyes.”
I pursed my lips against a smile I felt coming on. “Compliments will get you nowhere.”
“Which one? Vindictive or pretty?”
I shrugged. “Either one works for me. But if you’re worried that I’ll choke the life out of Markus, I promise I’ll be perfect.”
Mychael chortled. “A perfect what?”
“Whatever Markus deserves.”
“No punching or choking.”
“I would never dream of it.”
“Raine.” That one word held a world of warning.
“Okay, I’d dream of it, but I wouldn’t do it.”
“Because you’d rather stab him.”
I just smiled. Mychael was getting to know me way too well.
“That’s not what we’re here for,” he told me.
“That’s not what you’re here for. If Markus had anything to do with Balmorlan kidnapping Piaras or getting Tam charged with murder, there are some impulses that I won’t even try to control.”
“Can you control yourself long enough for us to get into the house?”
My smile was tiny and perfect, maybe even demure. “Oh, you can count on it. I want to get in the same room with Markus. The question is how you propose to do that. We can’t exactly stroll up to the front door looking like this, knock, and hope we get invited in for drinks.”
“I thought we’d start by dropping our glamours.” Mychael dropped his.
I followed suit. I have to admit, it was a relief. My back was starting to hurt from carrying around what was no doubt Maire Orla’s pair of pride and joys. “Though what about the guards? If everyone’s supposed to believe we’re in the citadel and then Markus’s men see us, guess what? Cover blown.”
“We won’t be seeing the guards and they won’t see us.”
“Then what—”
“If you can’t control a situation, you have to know every detail, don’t you?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Mychael’s eyes twinkled from under the brim of his hat. “I’ll bet you don’t like surprises for your birthday, either.”
“No, I don’t. And what the hell does that have to do with anything?”
He leaned in close with a conspiratorial whisper. “Not all surprises are bad.”
Mychael took my face in his hands and those blue eyes gazed down into mine. There was no question reflected there, no uncertainty, and he sure as hell wasn’t asking my permission. Those eyes told me what he wanted.
>
He kissed me.
His lips didn’t demand; they simply took. With delicious slowness. His fingers of one hand ran lightly up the curve of my ear, lingering for a breath-catching caress at the tip before sliding down to my throat, leaving a trail of tingle-inducing heat in their wake. By the time his hand slipped around the back of my neck and pressed me to him, my hands were on him, sliding up to his chest and around his neck. My hands didn’t ask my permission, either. Traitorous hands.
Mychael’s kiss turned into a tantalizing nibble, gently pulling my bottom lip between his teeth, sucking, teasing.
I opened my eyes and was met with twin pools of deep ocean blue, gleaming with mischief as he released my lips and planted light kisses on my nose and forehead. His lips lingered there, the warmth of his breath and body doing a fine job of banishing the night cold—or at least giving me something better to think about. His lips had released mine, but his arms were wrapped firmly around my waist and didn’t seem to be in a rush to let me go.
“What was that for?” I found myself short of breath.
“Hopefully, a pleasant surprise.”
I looked up at him, a slow smile spreading across my face. “Eh, I’ve had worse.”
Mychael grinned and his fingers found that ticklish place on my ribs and I squealed before I could stop myself. His lips instantly covered my mouth, muffling the sound. He took his sweet time muffling.
“See, not all surprises are bad,” his lips murmured against mine. “And some are more enjoyable than you’ll admit.”
“Was that a distraction to keep me from stabbing Markus?”
“That depends. Did it work?”
“As a distraction, it was first-rate.”
“My lips humbly thank you.”
“As a deterrent . . . sorry, no dice.”
Mychael pressed his lips together. I actually think he was trying not to laugh—at me. I narrowed my eyes and glared at him.
“That sounds like a challenge to me,” he said. “I’ll have to make every effort to do better next time.”
“So what’s your plan?” I asked. “For Markus,” I quickly added.
Mychael ran his hands down my ribs to my hips and back again before releasing me. “Very well. After we’re in the house and have informed Markus of the situation, I plan to find out the truth of his involvement in all this.”