The chef lies on the floor, legs splayed and arms outflung. He isn’t moving. His cleaver rests a few inches from his fingertips, glinting in the red glow from the oven. She doesn’t see blood but can’t tell if he’s breathing.
She waits for ten long breaths, listening. The only sounds are the low crackle of flames in the oven and the cooing of pigeons in the building’s eaves. She pulls her dagger, nudges the window open. Lays hands on the windowsill and vaults up and through. An echo of her entrance into Porcelain Hand’s tavern.
She runs in a crouch for the chef. Lays fingers on his neck. There’s a steady but weak pulse. His eyelids flutter at her touch, but he doesn’t wake. There’s no sign of Tep.
Or Nab. It hits her all at once. Nab was here, safely tucked away in the sitting room to play dice with his new friend.
Myrrh’s heart thuds as bile rises. She can’t lose him, not so soon after Hawk.
It takes everything she has to force away rising panic. With a deep breath, she slips to the door leading to the dining room, cracks it, peers out.
Darkness fills the room. The dim light that falls through the front door is reflected faintly in the shards of glass that litter the floor. The table’s been overturned, candles and pitchers and cutlery strewn.
It’s quiet as a tomb. Myrrh slips forward, setting feet between crunching fragments of glass. Still no sounds from inside the building. Whatever happened here, it’s over.
She should hurry to the rendezvous, get help. But she needs to know. What happened to Nab?
She takes the steps three at a time, dashing up to the fourth floor and the sitting room where she last saw the boy.
She stops in the doorway. The carafe lies on its side, watered wine spilled across the table. The dice are scattered, two on the floor, the rest on the table. The fire still crackles.
No bodies. At least she can hold on to hope that Nab is alive. But he’s gone. Vanished.
Back against the wall, she slides down and covers her face with her hands.
***
The safe house is a tenement building designed to house servants for the merchants and traders and shipping magnates who call Lower Fringe home. The captives—around fifteen members of Porcelain Hand—have been locked into individual apartments, windowless rooms that are barred from the outside. Lower-level members of the organization stand guard over each makeshift prison cell while Glint’s leadership crowds into a ground-floor room.
Nyx, a slight man with shifty eyes and hair cut close to his scalp, paces.
His glance lands on Myrrh. “Thank you for the report. You can go.”
Myrrh steps farther into the room. “I’m staying.”
“Inner circle only.”
“Nyx,” Mink says. “It’s okay.”
The small thief glares at Myrrh, then shrugs and resumes his pacing. Silence gathers in the room while the thieves consider what Myrrh has told them.
After a moment, Mink pushes off the wall. “There’s a body on a rooftop. A crossbowman ambushed us en route from Glint’s to the tavern near the Crafter’s District. Probably worth searching.”
“Send someone,” the big, bald thief, Resh, says.
The other thieves nod, and Mink steps into the hallway. She speaks in a low voice to someone, then returns and shuts the door behind her.
Resh clears his throat. “We’ll want to search the residence.”
“Better to do it in daylight.” This from Lavi, the woman with the gem-studded eye patch. Except now, she’s not wearing it, and Myrrh can’t help but notice that neither of her eyes is damaged.
Myrrh meets Nyx’s gaze, daring him to challenge her when she speaks. “Our captive, V. She knows something.”
A rumble rises from Resh’s throat. “Let’s bring her down.”
Mink leaves again, slipping out the door. While they wait, Myrrh crosses the room, edging around the table where no one sits, and takes up a spot with her back to the wall. She feels eyes on her, meets their stares, and confronts expressions in a range from calculating to dismissive.
The bartender enters the room with a glower on her face.
“Sit,” Nyx says with a sneer. The orientation of the table means the woman will have her back to trained killers. Myrrh sees the hesitation on V’s face, but the woman swallows her nerves and stalks to the table. She flops into a chair, props a heel on another seat, and turns a surly glare to the room. “I’m waiting for my offer.”
“There’s been a delay,” Mink says.
“Then why are we talking?”
Nyx steps forward, pulls a knife, and smacks it onto the table. He stares at the woman. “We took down your syndicate in one strike. Nabbed everyone who matters and sent the rest packing.”
“Everyone?” V asks, a smirk touching her face.
“So you’re aware that five of your inner circle were missing tonight.” Mink spins a blade over her fingers as she speaks.
“I might be aware of that.”
“You couldn’t have known we were coming,” Nyx says. “Which means your men didn’t flee.”
“That’s quite an assumption. Perhaps we knew your plans. Expected a strike and sent five of our best away to rally the retaliation. The counterattack could be moving in on this building as we speak.”
Mink snorts. “You’re a decent liar, but we’ve got you on this one. We didn’t even know we planned to take you down tonight. Not until just before the operation.”
V laughs. “All right. Got me there. So, want to tell me why my offer’s delayed? I expected to meet your leader. Unless…” She pointedly looks around the room, seeming to evaluate and reject each thief as capable of leading an organization.
No one answers her query. One by one, Glint’s associates cross their arms over their chests.
“Look,” V says finally. “I get it. Porcelain Hand is gutted. Done. Dead and buried. Even if those few who escaped your net come back, they won’t be able to reconstitute our organization. I need somewhere to go, but I’ve got my pride, you know. I ain’t signing on without some tempting promises.”
Myrrh glances around the room. This stonewalling isn’t getting them anywhere. She steps forward. “You’ll have a position of leadership. Equal in rank to everyone here. Freedom to organize operations in the Crafter’s District. You can take twenty percent directly out of the proceeds from your work, plus the usual stipend.”
The rest of Glint’s leadership stares. She can hear their unspoken questions. Where in the sixing world did she get the authority to offer that?
Nyx opens his mouth to protest, but Lavi elbows him in the ribs.
“Now that’s better. Wasn’t so hard, was it?” V takes her heel off the chair, sits forward, and meets Myrrh’s eyes. “You’re right that we didn’t expect you. Was just bad luck. We got word that Slivers was making an offensive in our territory. Didn’t know their plans, whether it was a heist or a grab for turf or what. Just knew they were moving in with heavy hitters and not a single attempt to negotiate an operation in our area. You missed capturing our best people because we sent them to lead a counteroffensive.”
“When?” Resh asks.
“Early evening. We expected results by now.”
“So you have nothing to do with the attack on one of our safe houses?” Myrrh says.
V raises an eyebrow. “No disrespect, but I’ve got no sixing idea who you people are. Much less where you have safe houses.”
Myrrh swallows the rush of cold rising from her gut. Slivers? What are they doing so far from Rat Town?
She can’t help the thoughts that crowd in. Hawk was betrayed in Rat Town. For that matter, so was she. And if Glint hadn’t stepped in, she’d probably be just as dead as Hawk. And now the same people who did him in may have Glint and Nab.
A knock comes at the door. Mink yanks it open, admitting a thief who pants from exertion. “The rooftop. Wasn’t Porcelain Hand.”
“Slivers?” Resh asks.
The thief nods.
“You sure?”
Myrrh’s heart sinks as the thief holds up a steel rod of the sort Slivers uses to pierce the cartilage in their members’ upper ears. It’s their syndicate’s mark. No doubt about it.
Chapter Twenty-One
WITH THE DOOR firmly shut and barred, Myrrh and Lavi pick through the ruins of Glint’s dining room. The heavy drapes are drawn over the windows, shutting out the morning sun. Myrrh is glad for the dimness. She hasn’t slept, and her eyes are full of sand. She peers around the back side of the table, looking for clues about what happened. As far as she can tell, tipping the table was a show of violence for the sake of it.
Nyx emerges from the kitchen, shaking his head and tearing—disrespectfully, in Myrrh’s opinion—at a hunk of bread with his teeth.
Lavi lays a hand on the edge of the sharply slanted tabletop. “So let me review. Porcelain Hand gets word of the Slivers incursion. They respond, results still unknown—”
“Well, we do know that the interception wasn’t completely successful,” Nyx interrupts. “Because Slivers came here.”
“You sure it was Slivers that did this?” Lavi asks.
“A strange coincidence otherwise,” Myrrh interjects.
Lavi scoots broken glass and the stump of a candle into a pile with her foot. “The Queen of Nines plays many strange games with chance. I don’t want to believe anything without proof.”
“In any case,” Nyx says around a bite of food, “Glint was expecting Myrrh to report in on the operation, so he was probably careless when they—Slivers or some unknown party—came knocking at the front door. Does that sound about right?”
“Seems right to me,” Lavi says. She picks up a fork. “This is nice silver. Who pinched it for him anyway?”
Myrrh takes a deep breath, feels her nostrils flare. For these people, this is just work. Glint is their leader, but they aren’t family. Not like her and Nab.
“We get anything from the chef?” Lavi asks. Shortly after Myrrh reported the break-in, a trio of thieves was sent to either get the chef to safety or to see to the disposal of his body. Apparently, he’d survived.
“He claims he heard a noise from the dining room and started for the door. Remembers nothing after though. He took a major blow to the back of his head.”
Myrrh sighs. Likely, someone came in the same window she did. It was too easy, just like their takedown of Porcelain Hand. Of all people, she would’ve expected Glint to be more cautious. Especially after Hawk. And what are the chances of Slivers choosing to strike tonight, both weakening Porcelain Hand and catching Glint during a rare moment of distraction? Is she missing something?
“Let’s go up,” Lavi says.
They take the staircase together. Myrrh stops at the second-floor landing, staring in shock at the ruins of the door that has been locked since she arrived. The jamb is splintered, and nothing but scraps of wood hang from the door hinges.
Inside the room, light falls through gauzy curtains, showing overturned crates and looted barrels. Bolts of cloth have been dragged across the floor, and the air smells chokingly of heavy perfume. She spots the shattered flask of scented oil after a moment’s searching.
Nyx snorts. “So much for our stash. Well, the biggest one. The proceeds from all our hard work. I suppose we can be glad they couldn’t carry everything…”
Lavi just shakes her head and continues up the stairs. When they reach the third floor, Myrrh steps into the corridor. “I’ll start here; will you take the fourth?”
Nyx shrugs. “Don’t suppose it matters. Sure.”
Myrrh’s boots whisper on the slates as she hurries down the hall. She starts at the end, hesitating for just a breath before slipping through the double doors into Glint’s room. The covers have been pulled off the bed and now lie in a heap beside it. Wardrobe doors and dresser drawers hang open. Papers litter the floor around the writing desk.
Interestingly, though, the locked drawer on the desk remains closed. Myrrh crosses the room and runs a finger over the wood surrounding the little drawer. Gouges mar the wood where the abductors tried to force the lock, but they seem to have given up. Why? Did they run out of time? Decide they had enough loot for one night?
One of the many pockets sewn into her leathers holds her lockpicks. Myrrh’s neither the best nor the worst at opening locks, but she shoves a pair of pins into the keyhole and hopes. With a deep breath, she starts fishing for the tumblers.
It’s not a complicated lock. Within a minute or two, she feels a click as it disengages.
She slides the drawer open, not sure what she intends to find. A clue about why the Slivers struck? A notion of the connection between the raid on Glint’s residence and Hawk’s death? Something else in his correspondence that could point her to Nab’s location?
Her hand falls on an oval of smooth metal. She pulls it out. A locket.
Unable to help herself, she thumbs the catch. The pendant flips open, showing a picture of an attractive woman dressed in finery that looks almost old-fashioned. She looks sad.
Myrrh swallows the strange emotion prompted by the glimpse into his personal life. She had no reason to believe he was unattached. It’s just…surprising.
She sets the locket aside and pulls out a sheaf of papers.
The first few are a series of unsigned letters, observations on flow of trade along the River Ost. Records of which merchants and cartels have control over which types of goods. Though she doesn’t recognize the handwriting, the choice of words reminds her of Hawk. Maybe some of these letters led them to the discovery of a faction moving against the Maire.
Other sheets detail locations—taverns, inns, gambling dens, and so forth—by street name or proximity to well-known buildings and intersections. Beside each, Glint has written down names of syndicates that control the locations and, or so it seems, the key players working there. Other notes record defenses and the number of syndicate members typically staffing each location.
It’s a glimpse into Glint’s so-called contingencies. Their organization was able to move on Porcelain Hand with no knowledge because of records like this. He’s spent months amassing detailed knowledge of his enemies, even if he never planned to use much of it.
The next paper catches her eyes because it’s been crumpled and flattened.
The handwriting is different than either the script she’s decided must be Hawk’s or that which she thinks is Glint’s. It reads:
Your demands are not acceptable. We had a deal. Quell this threat to my authority, and I’ll keep the rest of my bargain. Regardless of the ill will that taints our relationship, you can trust me in that.
Yours,
No name is signed. None is necessary. The Maire’s seal is stamped at the bottom of the paper.
Myrrh feels as if she’s standing on shifting sand. Glint has a deal with the Maire? He knows the man personally?
She blinks as she reads the note again. Is there something she’s not understanding here?
The fact that the paper has been crumpled suggests anger. Maybe Glint contacted the Maire, thinking he could warn the man about the plot. Maybe he then tried to pressure the man for concessions once he proved that he could help the Maire keep his title. But that still doesn’t explain the comment about their relationship.
She runs a hand through her hair. It’s not like she hasn’t been lied to before. Betrayed by people she thought she could trust. But not like this. Not when the life of an innocent boy is at risk.
Myrrh folds the note and tucks it into a pocket. She goes back to the rest of the papers, searching for a contingency for information on Slivers safe houses. Regardless of what Glint has been up to, it still seems almost certain the Rat Town syndicate took him and the boys. Finally, after rifling through another dozen sheets, she finds it. A list of Rat Town locations. The notes include names familiar to her from her time working as a grubber in Slivers territory.
“Anything?” Lavi asks from the door.
Myrrh jumps and turns to face the woman. Words form in her throat, but all of a sudden, she isn’t sure whether she should tell these people anything. She isn’t sure she wants them to go into Rat Town in force, not when she knows so little about what Glint was really up to. Not when Nab and Tep are hostages. She doubts Slivers would hesitate to kill the boys if they thought it would make Glint’s people back off.
She needs to know more. Figure out where the captives are being held. Figure out why Slivers came for Glint. And she needs to do it without forcing the Rat Town syndicate to do anything rash. Quiet work. From the shadows. Tonight.
Myrrh shakes her head. “Nothing.”
Lavi sighs. “Same. Just a bunch of ransacked rooms. But I don’t think they were looking for anything in particular. Just opportunistic looting. The real prize was Glint.”
“And Nab,” Myrrh says. “They took two boys too.”
She doesn’t miss Nyx’s eye roll. Lavi, at least, softens her expression.
“And Nab,” the woman says. “Shall we go meet with the others? They should be done speaking with the prisoners and searching for a trail out of the district.”
On the way out of the room, Myrrh folds the list of Slivers dens and stuffs it up her sleeve. She’s been freelance for as long as she’s been a thief.
Tonight, she’ll work alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
MYRRH IS SITTING at the now-righted table in Glint’s dining room when a quiet knock comes at the door. Myrrh doesn’t open it. Instead, she slides aside a small panel, opening a barred window.
An urchin with a grubby face stands outside. For a moment, hope tightens Myrrh’s chest. An emissary from Slivers? Have they decided on a ransom? She’s not sure she’d be eager to pay one for Glint, but no price would be too high for Nab’s safe return.
“Tell your people Goosefoot wants to meet. Winks Tavern on the waterfront.”
Mistress of Thieves (Chronicles of a Cutpurse Book 1) Page 14