“Believing me dead, his mission accomplished, the man had no reason to lie,” she continued.
“What’d he tell you?” I asked, leaning forward in spite of myself. “Who’d he give up?”
“No one. That was the frustrating part. There was hardly anything left to him and he still wouldn’t talk save for some doggerel.”
“Doggerel?”
“‘The drowned rise.’” The Doga’s nostrils flared. “What does that even mean?”
“What’d you do?”
“Revealed myself, to see if that would change his story at all.”
“I take it that it didn’t,” I said.
“No, it did not.”
“They were dressed as beggars,” I pointed out. “Were they of the guilds, freelancers, or was it a disguise?”
“Oh, they were of Servenza,” she growled. “The guilds wouldn’t claim them.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Of course,” she agreed.
“You try flashing some coin about the rougher Quartos? Gold has a way of opening even the clammiest of lips.”
“Aye,” she said. “But there’s unrest in the streets of late and even gold stays lips when steel is sure to follow.”
“Unrest? The gangs squabbling over territory?”
She laughed mirthlessly. “Of course the Company would be worried about that, a turf war that keeps workers from showing up to the factory on time because they are worried that taking the wrong turn will land them in the gutters with slit throats.”
She shook her dusky brown hair. “Fighting over street corners isn’t the half of it. Gang leaders have been vanishing and none seem to know where they’ve gone. The gangs run everything within their territories: the factories, the stores, and that’s not even getting into the more criminal aspects of their organizations. Their leaders are necessary. Yet the Constabulary and even my Secreto—whom I’ve been running ragged through the Tip to find answers—are hearing nothing. Silence.” She slammed the glass down and wine splattered one of the books. The Doga took no notice but it took everything in me not to leap on top of it to save it.
“I’m blind and deaf in my own Godsdamned city,” she growled. “The only thing I know for sure is that there are sparks, Buc. Sparks looking for tinder, and if those sparks grow much more they could catch fire. All of Servenza could…”
“Does the Empress know of this?”
“The Empress?” The Doga took a deep breath, studied me for a long moment, and then something loosened within her. “The Empress is busy with the affairs of running the Empire. There’s possible war with Normain to consider and prepare for and if one of her lackeys comes asking for help, she’d as easily replace them as pitch in.”
“Even for the Doga of her home province, center of the Empire?” I asked, feigning innocence. I could practically taste her bitterness, so I knew the answer.
“Even then.” She picked up her cup and sniffed its contents but didn’t drink. “The Kanados Trading Company used to be of assistance in such matters, but ever since their little ghostly sugar scare this summer, their attention seems to have slipped.”
She knows. About this summer.
“She knows,” Sin agreed.
“Which brings me back to you, Sambuciña ‘Buc’ Alhurra.” She smiled and set her glass aside. “I know of your connections from your time on the streets, and the fact that you managed to gain not one but two seats on the Board, when those seats are only open when there’s a grave to be filled, speaks to your effectiveness.”
Her dark eyes latched onto mine and I was once again reminded of a sea hawk hunting over the open water, its eyes bright on prey. “You’ve proved your interest, if not your loyalty, by saving my life today, which makes me inclined to believe you’re just the woman I need.”
“Your Grace is kind,” I said after a moment. “And I did help the Company out … but they also had something I wanted at the time.”
“There were some who thought the Board had lost their touch, you know, after this summer,” the Doga said, ignoring my unspoken question. “First, in allowing the sugar crisis to get as bad as it had and then, to allow a slip of a girl with the stench of the streets still on her to con them out of two seats.” She smiled. “Their words, not mine. I’m merely a shareholder in the Company, one voice amidst many others. I’ll tell you, those whispers have quieted since. The Board has gone back to business, the girl kept on a short leash.”
I stiffened and she chuckled. “Of course, shareholders don’t know about some of the more interesting meetings you’ve been having lately, off the formal Company minutes and perhaps without the knowledge of even the Board?”
“They tried blackmail,” I told her.
“What—?”
“The Company, they tried to blackmail me into solving their sugar problems.” I leaned forward. “But I don’t respond well to threats, Your Grace. Growing up on the streets showed me what comes of bending from fear. You just keep bending. Until you snap. I’ve come up in the world since then, so I’ve a feeling more pressure would be required, but some think that having more means having more to lose.” I let a smile touch my lips, but not my eyes. “Don’t make that mistake with me.”
Silence stretched razor thin after my speech.
“You’ve a grand marshal’s nerve, girl,” the Doga said finally. She laughed, edging forward on her seat as if she hadn’t sat back at my words a moment before. “And a sailor’s tongue.”
“So I’ve been told,” I murmured.
“So you don’t respond to blackmail, that’s good to know.” She tapped a finger against her lips. “But I’d no intention of blackmailing you, Buc. If I can turn you, who else can?” She shook her head. “The Company sees everything in terms of leverage, but as ruler I don’t care about balance sheets and profits. I have to weigh them, aye, but I’m judged on the welfare of my people. Plain and simple. And you’re one of my subjects, are you not?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before,” I said. “I mean, the welfare part,” I lied. “I am, Your Grace.”
“Then here’s what I propose. You know how difficult it is to unseat a Chair?”
“Intimately,” I growled, bringing a smile to her face. The bylaws were one of the first things I’d studied after our disastrous introductory meeting. Sin winced. Unseating the Chair required a two-thirds majority vote, which would never happen, or the death of the Chair, which seemed as likely to occur. Or the death of a Board member, but that just triggered another vote that would have the same result. The Godsdamned bylaws were the reason why the Chair had a better than even shot at carrying through on her threat.
“I don’t imagine you sailed to the Shattered Coast and went through all that shit just to put the Company’s purse strings at your disposal,” the other woman said. I nodded. She moved a hand up to the edge of her circlet. “You want power and that is something I can understand. But you’ll never have it while the Chair sits her bony arse at the Board’s head. I can help with that.”
“Say on.”
“I’m not on the Board—it would conflict with my dogeship—but my family has been a shareholder since its inception and I’ve ties to the members through blood, marriage, and society. It will not be easy, but I’ve recently come into some knowledge that will allow me to arrange to have the Chair cast down.” Her eyes shone in the light as she pointed at me. “And you raised in her place.”
“Th-that’s an awfully large favor, Your Grace,” I said, my throat suddenly dry. Eld and I had nearly died a dozen times over the summer to get seats on the Board and here was the Doga, offering me the whole damn Company on her family’s silver. Aye, there were strings attached, like keeping the Board from voting me out, and I’d have my hand on a tiller that everyone was pulling in every fucking direction. Still, it’d be my hand. Mine. “I don’t suspect this comes as a thank-you, for saving your life?”
“You’d suspect right,” she said. “I did say I’d give you m
aps of the underground,” she reminded me.
“A partial set.” I licked my lips. “You’ve books aplenty on whatever that bomb was this morning,” I said, speaking slowly, then picking up speed. Without kan, my mind used to race out of control. With Sin, it’s more focused, but it’s still a struggle at times to keep to normal speeds. I’ve never wanted to have anything at all to do with normal, but there’s a whole world of them and just one me, so sometimes I have to.
“And you’ve one slipped in there on doggerel and nursery lines from the street. That beggar got to you, didn’t he? With that line about the drowned rising.” I ran a hand back across the right side of my head, feeling the shaved skin there, and smiled. “You want me to find out who’s behind the attempts on your life, aye? They only have to get it right once, you have to get it right every time. And I might not be there next time.”
“Careful, Buc,” the Doga breathed after a moment. Her face gave nothing away, but I could see her chest rising and falling beneath her robes—I’d gotten to her. I tend to do that. It’s a gift.
“Or a curse,” Sin said.
“My apologies, Your Grace. I simply wanted you to know that I understand the enormity of your offer to me and the similar enormity of the task before me.”
“Uh-huh.” She cleared her throat, taking a large sip of her wine. “I want you to find out who is trying to kill me, Buc, and then I want you to do to them what you did to Blood in the Water. Do that, and I’ll see you Chair.”
“And the old crone won’t be able to stop you?”
“How do you think she got the Chair in the first place?” Her expression was sharp enough to draw blood. “Do we have an agreement?”
“Sin—”
“Time dilated … but not for long—you really should eat something if you’re going to call on me so often.”
“If I’d known that today I’d prevent an assassination, fight off a bunch of canal pirates, and go mental rounds with some of the scariest women in the world, I’d have eaten a Godsdamned buffet,” I told him. “Now, let me think.”
I was getting nowhere with the Board. The Chair put paid to whatever fantasies I’d conjured up today. I would find a way to swing the odds back in my favor, eventually, but that would take time that I simply didn’t have. When I was ten-and-seven I dreamed of finding a means to end the Gods. Now I’d found that means, and if I was going to make good on my promise by the time I was ten-and-ten that meant ten-and-eight had to be one holy motherfuck of a year. To say nothing of ten-and-nine. All the holy motherfucks. I felt Sin mouth “motherfuck” in my mind. It wasn’t going to happen if I kept adding up the same sums. The Doga clearly had something on the Chair, or more likely, something on all of the Board, and she was willing to call those debts due to save her life. That made sense. What didn’t make sense—and true, I’d nothing to go on as of yet—was who wanted her dead so badly. And was it connected to the recent unrest in the streets? Of course it was. Which the Chair wanted me to look into. Several thousand thoughts began crowding in, but Sin held them back. Information first, theories later. All of that was well and good and true, even, but what tipped the scales, and I hated myself for it, was Eld.
Eld.
I’d always laughed at those who made fools of themselves for love and I’d no intention of being a fool, but set love aside for now: I needed my friend back, at the least.
I wasn’t planning a damned life with Eld. Not yet. I just needed to get him comfortable sharing a gondola with me for longer than one Quarto’s ride. Worry about the rest later. I didn’t know where the Doga’s case was going to lead, but this morning had ended in gunfire and a woman burned alive. I was willing to bet that the rest was going to be as bloody and violent, and there was no way Eld was going to let me have all the fun alone. Together we’d taken down the Ghost Captain and won seats on the most powerful trading company in the world. Together, with the Doga as a blade, we could win control of that company and then the Gods would be within my grasp.
It will work. It has to.
The world rushed back to greet me as Sin dropped his magic, and with it came a deep, coring hole within me. Hunger, of several kinds, and only one way to satiate it.
“You’ve a deal,” I told the Doga. “Let’s go find whatever batshit crazies are willing to blow themselves up to see you dead and give them a burial at sea with weights around their necks.”
The Doga’s eyes twinkled. “I think I’m going to enjoy this partnership, Buc.”
“I was wrong, before,” Sin said. “She makes me nervous, but you? Buc, you’re terrifying.”
We all three laughed.
9
“You dare to threaten me, Ulfren?” the Doga asked, talking past the burning at the back of her throat. Standing slowly so that the Veneficus, pale enough that his robes looked blacker than a moonless midnight, had to look up to meet her eyes, she leaned forward. “Within my own Palacio? After everything I’ve done for you and yours?”
“Not threaten, Your Grace,” the mage said, showing his teeth in a way he likely meant to be reassuring, but made her want to signal her woman hid above to put a silver ball through him. The Doga worshipped the Dead Gods, but their servants had grown drunk with their blood in the millennia since the deities’ slumber had begun. Without Grandmama they’d never have had a bloody square span of Servenza, let alone half the Quarto their cathedral takes up. And without me—
Ulfren’s pallid features twisted as if the effort of being civil physically pained him. “I merely suggested that with the information we’ve passed to you on the Chair, it’s time you made your move and returned the Kanados Trading Company to serving the Empire.”
“Ulfren, you’re from Normain,” she said, not bothering to hide her smirk. “Speak plain: you want me to remove Ciris and her ilk from our island.”
“To start,” he agreed, running his long fingers through the fine hair, as pale as moonlight, that hung past his chin. He gripped it hard, nearly pulling a clump free. “We gave you enough on that old crone to see her unseated tomorrow.”
“Aye, but that does nothing if the next Chair elected also serves the Sin Eaters,” she reminded him. “We must weaken the Company as a whole, first. Then, when they are wounded, we’ll go in for the kill.”
She’d thought to deal the blow earlier, when she’d ordered a squad of her Secreto to send that girl and her brute of a partner to the bottom of the canals. Not just because she found their apparent interruption of the assassination attempt suspicious, but because it would force the Chair to hold elections for two new Board members to fill the sudden vacancies. And I have just the arses to fill them.
Her secret police were on edge now, having lost half a dozen of their brothers and sisters in a single operation. Only the captain knew Buc had killed them and wounded more. Had the others known the truth, the girl wouldn’t have made it here alive. Still, the failed attack had confirmed what all the unbelievable rumors said was true: they were special. Special, I can use.
“Surely,” she said, now that the silence had built, “your kind above all others can understand the value of patience. Our Gods breathed their last millennia ago, but here we kneel, faithful to their commands.”
“The war goes poorly,” he growled. “With the disappearance of one of our own, we must expend resources to find them.”
“Who now?”
Ulfren’s raw snarl sent a chill down her back. “Our brother in the Shattered Coast.”
“I thought you found the Ghost Captain’s body on the shore?”
“There were signs that he’d already left it,” Ulfren said. He snorted. “Some believe he may still be alive, weakened in his new form, aye, but with the knowledge we need.”
The Doga fought the urge to draw her robe tighter around her and nodded instead. Half of being a ruler was looming and the rest, wit, and she knew how to employ both to great effect. Thanks again, Grandmama.
“If you were going to find him, he’d have been found by now,
” she told the mage. His eyes flashed, but she waved his retort away with her hand. “He wasn’t the only one on that beach, Ulfren. I let you watch my audience with the girl so you would know I serve faithfully, but since it wasn’t clear enough, let me make it plain: Alhurra will give me everything after I’ve let her wrap herself around my thumb. I know her kind from the gutter, I see them at every Feast of Justice, when I pronounce judgments. Push her and she’ll push back for no other reason than she can. But let her pull and she’ll set the hook so deep within her she’ll think it her own idea when I reel her in.
“I’ll get the knowledge you seek, Ulfren, but in return you’ll continue on as we’ve agreed. I need the Company wounded and I need you ready to move on the Sin Eaters when I give the command. I won’t hear about lack of priests, not when I’m so close.”
She allowed him a deep breath, then added before he could say anything else, “Do you understand?” He straightened, tall and whipcord thin, saying nothing, his expression reward enough.
* * *
“Yon’s a firebrand in need of quenching,” a voice growled in the Doga’s ear.
She bit her cheek hard to keep from screaming, taking a partial breath to smooth her features before turning. The girl was a palm of steel that she needed to steer before it stabbed the wrong person, and the Dead Gods’ priest a chipped stiletto that wanted refining, but this one was an unsheathed sword with blood still wet along the blade … and no way of knowing whose blood dripped from its length.
“He’s a Veneficus,” she said, studying the figure who stood in the shadows cast by the library shelves. “They’re always like that.”
“He thinks you weak, dependent upon his Gods,” the woman countered, her voice rough and grating, like an unfinished blade plucked hot from the coals and drawn tight across the throat. She shifted, her jacket more of a cape that nearly hid her gender.
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