“No,” they answered in tandem, gazes sliding away from hers.
“Just on which version of you we’d be getting.” Though Sedge spoke through a lopsided smile, there was an edge of worry to it.
Tess’s, too, as she pushed a mug toward Ren. “Don’t be fashed with us. It’s only that we’ve missed you.”
Ren’s throat ached. “I’ve missed you, too.”
She truly had—to a depth she hadn’t let herself think about, because it would only bring misery. She was playing so many roles, even this had started to seem like one of them: Ren the sister.
Before she could try to put that into words, Sedge said, “But you’re here now! Tess, watch the table.” With no more warning, he grabbed Ren by the wrist, his hand warm against the scar the three of them shared, and dragged her into the diamond-shaped sets of dancers.
It was nothing like the elegant dances she’d learned as Renata. There, someone would occasionally bump into her out of drunkenness or error; here, the bumping more or less was the dance, given how close people were packed together. She had no lead to watch carefully for the cues that would tell her which way to move—but if she stepped wrong, nobody noticed or gave a wet leech, because half the time the step was “whatever you’re sober enough to manage.” At first the lack of structure was disorienting. Once she warmed to it, though, it felt like putting on an old and comfortable dress.
One that stank of millet beer after somebody spilled theirs on her. But even that, she could laugh off.
Tess replaced Sedge, then Sedge claimed Ren again. By the time she was allowed to retake her seat, she drained her mug in one draw, and they were all ruddy with laughter and drink.
“I only had to smack a hand twice, going for my pocket,” Tess said, shoving back sweaty curls from her face. “Is it just me, or are the filchers not as good as we used to be?”
“It’s ’cause everyone knows that Ganllechyns en’t got two mills to rub together,” Sedge said, then laughed harder when Tess forlornly pulled out the single mill he’d given her and wiped away fake tears.
Their banter had a well-worn rhythm to it. Ren was the one out of step, sitting with her beer—sour stuff, its poor quality not disguised by the lemon squeezed into it—and trying to find something to say.
Catching the distance behind Ren’s smile, Tess’s laughter faded. She reached over to tuck a few stray tendrils behind Ren’s ear. “Here now. Don’t make us drag you back to the dance floor. My feet can’t take much more.”
“I’m fine,” Ren assured her.
Sedge exchanged a look with Tess—another one that left Ren on the outside. And she wondered how often they’d done that lately… not because they’d grown away from her, but because she’d closed herself off from them.
Her heart surged like it was trying to leap out of her mouth in place of words. “Oh, fuck,” she said, and it wobbled like the drunk shoving past their table. “I’m not fine at all.”
She didn’t start crying—but only because she’d learned years ago not to. Tears were a tool, Ondrakja had always said; they should only be used when they were useful. Her hands shook as she reached out, though, and she gripped Tess and Sedge as if they were the only thing keeping her from drowning in the river. It didn’t feel far from the truth.
“You’ve been so busy,” Sedge began.
Tess shook her head. “She has time enough to skiff over to Kingfisher for an afternoon—”
Guilt knifed through Ren again. Yes, she had—or rather, she’d found ways to make time, even though the Serrados were near strangers. Why hadn’t she done the same for her siblings?
Because I can’t stand to be myself.
That was the ugly truth under the mask. It was easier to be the Black Rose. Or Arenza, even though she felt like a fraud every time she passed herself off as a real Vraszenian. Or even Renata, however much that felt like a trap Ren couldn’t escape.
All of those were preferable to being the half-Vraszenian liar who’d betrayed her knot twice, who’d gotten Leato killed, who didn’t deserve the trust of the Traementis or the friendship the Anduske had offered or the Black Rose’s mask.
The tears that came then weren’t useful, at least not in any way Ondrakja would have recognized. But they had to come out, because she couldn’t get the words out with them in the way, and she needed words for Tess and Sedge to understand. Which they did, even though what she said was a tangled mess. They knew her well enough to finish the half-completed sentences, to follow when she leapt from one thought to the next, to fill in what she didn’t say when she told them about the knot offer she’d refused, or the hole it left when she realized Grey wasn’t the Rook.
“Djek,” Ren said when the flood finally tapered off. She’d already soaked her own handkerchief and Tess’s—Sedge didn’t have one—so she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Thank the Faces nobody likes to look at a sobbing drunk. Otherwise the whole city would know my secrets now.”
“If they could hear anything over this noise,” Sedge said. She’d wound up leaning into his side somewhere halfway through, and her back protested when she straightened up.
Tess blew out a slow breath. “If you can’t even have a good cry with your friends without worrying about your secrets getting out, I’m thinking you need more crying, more friends, and fewer secrets.”
A watery laugh bubbled up at the truth of Tess’s assessment. Ren did need those things, badly. And she wasn’t surprised they’d planned this—not just the visit to the Whistling Reed, but a conversation that was long overdue.
“I’m sorry,” she said, holding Tess’s gaze, and then repeated it to Sedge. “I’ve been an absolute ass to you both.”
“Not an absolute ass,” Sedge said. “I know asses that would put you to shame. You’re just…”
“Trying to spin moss into emeralds,” Tess suggested, refilling Ren’s mug with the dregs of their pitcher and nudging it toward her. “But you can’t eat neither of those, and none of this life of yours was part of our plan. So stop thinking for a moment about the con and all those things you need to do. What do you want?”
Ren’s mouth opened, but no words came. What did she want? Not piss-poor beer and meat whose origins she shouldn’t question. But also not a bed that was still too soft and too lonely, and cold friends who would drop her like hot iron if they knew the truth.
She’d gone into the con thinking she wanted money. In truth, it was safety she’d craved. Safety, though, was about more than living on the Upper Bank with enough wealth to pay her way out of problems. Victory wasn’t being able to buy Tess a dressmaker’s shop—not if it meant the two of them parting ways.
But she couldn’t see a path to having everything. Wealth and status and the protections those brought, and her family and the ability to be herself. Nadežra just didn’t work that way.
When she voiced that, Tess pulled her close into a hug, unpleasantly sweat-damp from the dancing—and yet it still felt like home. “We may not have a solution now, but we should be smart enough to get out of this mess. Weren’t we smart enough to get ourselves into it? But that means no more hiding. Not from us, and not from yourself.”
“And no more sniffling,” Sedge said, joining the hug by slinging a long arm around them both. “At least, not tonight. It’s my birthday, you know.”
“Is it?” Ren asked, mustering something like her usual deadpan.
“Hey, if you and Vargo can make up birthdays, why can’t I?”
Falling out of the hug, Ren tossed back the remaining beer and thunked her mug onto the table. “Then we must change the subject—and order another pitcher. I care not where I’m supposed to be right now; I want only to drink this terrible swill and talk about anything other than my problems.”
Her stomach regretted that by the time they stepped out of the Whistling Reed, but her heart felt lighter than it had in months. Light enough that instead of hurrying back to her disguise, she lingered with Tess and Sedge, chatting and laughing—
<
br /> —laughter that faded when she saw the man crouched on the stoop across from the Whistling Reed.
It was Stoček, the old aža seller who used to give honey stones to his favorites among the street children. He’d lost finger joints to the Cinquerat’s punishments before; now he was missing an entire hand. Rapprecco, one of the senior magistrates, had been cracking down hard on the illicit aža trade. By the stump of his wrist and his starved look, Stoček was feeling the loss.
Ren had been one of his favorites. Of all the people in Nadežra, he would definitely recognize her. She ought to get out of his sight as fast as possible.
Fuck being afraid. She might be a knot-cutting traitor, but she could still do something for an old friend.
Turning toward him, Ren dug into her pocket. But before she could go pour her handful of deciras into his lap, Sedge blocked her with his body, his grip a manacle around her wrist. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Helping him!”
“D’you want him to get mugged as soon as you’re gone?”
His words stopped her dead. It was one thing to toss a beggar a coin or two—but she’d been about to give Stoček what by the standards of Lacewater was a small fortune.
To Alta Renata, it was pocket change.
Frustration welled up like bile. I just want one Mask-damned thing to be simple. No politics, no unintended consequences. Just help for a man who had once been kind to her.
Sedge pressed his nose to the top of her head, then turned her about before releasing his hold. “I’ll find a place for him to stay,” he said. “You go with Tess. I’ll see you later.”
Tess slipped an arm around Ren’s waist. “We’ll figure something out,” she said softly.
For Stoček, for herself, for all of Nadežra. Ren didn’t know how to solve any of those problems. But she looped her arm through Tess’s and reminded herself that at least she didn’t have to solve them alone.
Splinter Alley, the Shambles: Canilun 1
This time when Vargo ventured into the Shambles to check in with his newest knot ally, he left his guards behind.
“I don’t like this,” Varuni said when he dumped her at an ostretta on the edge of Arkady Bones’s territory.
“She’s thirteen,” Vargo said, laughing as he stuffed his concealed purse with mixed coins and his pockets with interesting things for the friskers to find—a puzzle box, a shark’s tooth, a handful of black powder flash-crackers. “If that girl can take me down, I don’t deserve to run the Lower Bank.”
Privately, he didn’t doubt that Arkady could kill him if she found reason. She had enough kids to swarm him, so long as they didn’t mind taking the losses. But this was as much about how his other knot bosses saw him as it was about what she was capable of. If he took protection to talk to a gaggle of children, he’d lose what little respect he was clinging to.
“Don’t worry. Arkady likes mocking me too much,” he said, slipping a knife he didn’t mind losing into his boot sheath. “The only thing that might take a hit is my pride.” Pride was just another commodity for him to peddle, and Arkady might be the only person in a place to trade for what Vargo needed. Handing his sword cane off to Varuni—that was one thing he wouldn’t sacrifice to Arkady and her grasping little flock—he sauntered alone into the Shambles.
As predicted, he was thoroughly patted down before they let him into the converted papaver den. He even lost the bottom two buttons of his waistcoat before he caught the hand nicking them off and moved it away with a soft declaration of “That’s enough.”
“Yeah, shove off and let him through.” The crowd of children parted for Arkady. They had to; she was shorter than half of them. And just as grinning mad as always. “I already seen enough nekkid nobles. I en’t no pervert like the Rook.”
Vargo smiled through the urge to wince. He wasn’t certain how the story of his encounter with the Rook had gotten out, but if he ever found out who’d talked, he was adding them to his list of people to ruin.
Arkady didn’t lead him back to her gallery throne, where every child in her knot could witness her exerting power over Eret Derossi Vargo. Instead she took him to a cozy side room that was a threadbare version of Vargo’s own office in Froghole. No hangers-on; just Arkady, Vargo, and the biggest, surliest, ugliest yellow tomcat in Nadežra—the one he’d seen at Staveswater. The tom lifted his head from an Uniat-perfect curl and cracked one sulfuric eye, a yowl simmering low in his chest.
A yowl that broke when Arkady grabbed him and draped him over her shoulder like an alta’s winter stole. Vargo found himself grateful that he’d left Alsius at home. If the kids hadn’t confiscated the spider, that monster cat would certainly have pounced on him. Vargo didn’t want to test whether the bond between them could keep Alsius alive through that.
“Have a seat,” Arkady said, nodding at the other chair as her raging hellbeast went as limp as an overcooked noodle. “And don’t try nothing. Doomclaw the Yowler don’t like cuffs anymore’n he likes biggies.”
“I en’t here to try nothing,” Vargo said, dropping into rookery accents as he sat. “Got a job, ’n’ I think you’re the only one who can do it. The only one I trust, leastways.”
The ever-present grin cracked into something more genuine, and a flush darkened Arkady’s sparrow-brown cheeks. “Yeah, heard you been getting bent and drilled by your own people. Tired of taking it, I take it?”
Vargo chuckled at her attempt at Upper Bank speech. “I’m ready to dish it. I want to know who sold me out to the stingers.”
Arkady’s nails dug into Doomclaw’s ruff as she thought, drawing out a stuttering purr. “You’d have less trouble with your people if you swore oaths direct to each of ’em.”
Vargo eyed the rainbow of knot bracelets circling up her arms. There was even one around her neck, matching the collar buried deep in Doomclaw’s rough fur. “That why you tied yourself to the cat? So he won’t give you trouble?”
Her laugh cracked through the room, startling the tom. He launched off her shoulder, thumping down hard onto the floor. “Naw, it’s ’cause he eats nightmares for breakfast.” Her expression flickered, as if that use were more than theoretical.
“I know your turf’s the Shambles,” Vargo said, abandoning banter for business. “But your kids can go anywhere and nobody pays them much mind. Including the Aerie.”
“If it’s Aerie gossip you’re wanting, I’ll send Pitjin. The laundresses like her, and nobody guards their tongue around a dawn child.”
They underestimate her was the unspoken meaning behind Arkady’s hard look. Just like people underestimated Arkady herself. But Vargo was learning to see past the lack of years, so he asked the question he’d ask of any other knot boss. “What do you need in return?”
Sitting back, Arkady pulled her feet under her, tucking into the chair like she, too, was a surly old cat who’d found a spot of safety in a hard world. “You hear about that mad cuff who tried to adopt a whole orphanage?”
“Giarron Quientatis,” Vargo said. His husband had talked him down, but the entire notion had been absurd. Enough so that Vargo had assumed Praeteri interference. He hadn’t been able to find any sign of it, though.
“Got me thinking,” Arkady said. “Orphanages en’t great—you don’t need me telling you that. Kids like you and me, we’re better off on the street.”
Vargo nodded. Nadežra’s orphanages were too few and too crowded, and too many of their administrators only cared about how much work they could squeeze out of their underfed charges.
Arkady lowered her voice, leaning forward. “But some kids en’t like us. They need to get off the street, ’fore somebody scoops them up or hurts them bad. Pitjin, for one.”
He couldn’t argue with that. If Arkady hadn’t been protecting her, the street would have chewed Pitjin up and spat her out long since. Even so… “If you’re asking me to—”
Arkady squawked with laughter before he could finish. “What, you as somebody’s papa? Not bloody
likely. But you’re a respectable man now, en’t you? I figure you know some respectable people who could use a kid. Without using them, if you follow.”
Vargo did. He might get in trouble if somebody accused him of circumventing the orphanage charters, but… “Bring me the name of the person who sold me out, and I’ll see what I can do.” He’d do the latter anyway, but he didn’t much fancy starting a new round of bargaining with a girl bidding fair to someday replace the Stretsko as his biggest competitor.
He spat in his hand and held it out. Hocking an impressive and entirely unnecessary loogie into her own palm, Arkady grinned and squished her hand into his. “You got it!”
Isla Traementis, the Pearls: Canilun 1
After Ren’s afternoon with Tess and Sedge, pulling Renata’s persona back on was as painful as shoving her feet back into fashionable boots. She barely listened to the footman as he told her there was a visitor waiting in the library. He must have said who that visitor was… but it hit like a shock of cold water when she walked in and found Diomen standing like a statue in the center of the floor.
A second shock came when he addressed her with her title. “Alta Renata. I’m glad I found you at home.” He swept one hand to the opposite shoulder and bowed in the Seterin style.
In hindsight, that much beer was a mistake. Closing the door bought her a moment to gather herself before saying, “Altan Diomen? Eret? I’m not sure how to address you outside… the usual context.” It felt wrong to have him standing here, in Traementis Manor. Like an ordinary visitor. But unless he was able to dim the burning intensity of his gaze, nothing about him seemed ordinary; the servants would gossip about this for days to come.
“Master will suffice. Worldly titles mean nothing to me. The Lumen has blessed me in other ways.” He regarded her with that unsettling gaze, hooded and unblinking. “It has blessed you as well. My only wish is to help you see it.”
Conflicting impulses warred within her. “When you brought me through the second gate, you said it was your duty to remedy the gaps in my education. But when you put me inside that numinat in the temple, you treated me as if I were still an ignorant initiate, explaining nothing at all. Now you claim you want to help me see my blessings—but how?”
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