“Sicarii?” the Doga breathed. Her mouth moved soundlessly. “Are you sure?”
“I am, Your Grace. I heard it from one of your own Constabulary, from a note on the corpses of one who tried to murder me, and from the Mosquitoes’ maestro—as he burned from this strange new magic.” I cleared my throat. “‘Sicarii’ is a foreign word meaning—”
“‘Blade,’” the Doga said. She rolled her eyes at my expression. “Look around you, girl.” She indicated the shelves of her personal library. “I’ve no end of knowledge available to me and I speak half a dozen tongues, including that of the Cordoban Confederacy.”
Silence reigned for several breaths. Then: “I expected better.”
“P-pardon?” I asked.
“You tell me beggars are trying to kill me. This I already knew. You tell me the streets are unrestful. This I already knew. You tell me about a strange magic that burns from water.” Her eyes locked onto mine. “This I already knew. We both did.”
She got to her feet. “Sicarii.” The word sounded strange on her tongue. “The question becomes, Sambuciña, have you uncovered conspiracy or only coincidence? Is the Cordoban Confederacy finally entering the international fray it has hitherto eschewed? To what purpose? And … most pressing, but the thing you’ve done the least to uncover despite it being my only real request: Who the fuck is trying to murder me?”
“Your Grace, I—”
“I’ve listened to you, Buc,” the woman growled. “Now you will listen to me. The Chair has enough support from the Board to see you exiled in the next week. It took almost no effort—you’ve done little to earn friends there.”
She leaned forward, looming over me despite the table between us. “I’d thought, needing a friend so desperately, you’d have done better by me. If you can’t find who’s been at my throat, I won’t stop her. Do you understand?”
“I do, Your Grace,” I said, my mind racing, torn between the threat and my still-swirling thoughts of Eld and the dance we’d shared. “I will find out who is guiding the blades directed against you.”
“I hope for both our sakes you do,” the Doga said, crossing her arms and straightening. “You’ve disappointed me, Buc, but I’m going to give you another chance. Find the assassins, find out who or what is directing them, and find this Sicarii. Do that and you’ll have my protection. Fail and…” She pulled her lips back in a predator’s smile that showed too many teeth.
“Enjoy my ball, but you’d best be about it after. You’ve half a fortnight.”
The Doga swept past me, her guards falling in around her as she passed, the Secreto captain in her hunter-green clothes last. As she pulled the door shut behind the Doga’s party, the captain wagged a finger at me.
“Ticktock.”
33
I sat there in silence for a while after the Doga left, my heart pounding. I had failed on so many fronts this evening. At last I plucked up my mask and fastened it to the hooks on either side of my face; they were attached to an armature that wrapped around the back of my head and was concealed by the mask and by my hair. Sitting here wasn’t going to give me the answers I needed.
“Well,” a sultry voice drawled from behind me, the bookshelves shifting slightly. “That sounded ominous, didn’t it?” I wanted to leap to my feet and spin around, but froze at the sound of a pistole hammer being drawn back. Even with Sin’s help, in my fancy gown, I couldn’t move faster than a bullet. I settled back into my seat. Curse dresses!
“That’s better,” the voice purred, but there was something hard there. “The Doga’s using you, Buc—you know that, aye?”
“Of course she is,” I snapped. “But I’m using her, too.”
“Are you now?” They made a noise in their throat. “I knew one who tried that once upon a time. Playing all sides, because when you play every side, how can you lose? Didn’t end great for them, Buc.
“Magic. Magic is a fickle mistress, a funny thing that can embed itself in your soul, but what is given can be taken. Back. Prised free and wrung from you like blood from a slaughtered pig. You ever see a slaughterhouse? The pigs go in happy or at worst confused, but in the end?”
“Not great, eh?” I asked.
“No.”
Sweat beaded on my forehead and ran down my spine, adding to the sensation like there was a blade there, waiting to thrust. Not that a pistole ball would be any better. Where are they?
“Must be a hidden shelf,” Sin whispered. “There’s enough of an echo that—” He paused and my vision faded while my ears burned. An instant later, everything snapped back into place. “I think they’re standing back in the passage. Even if you whip around, you’ll not find them there.”
“And I’ll end up with an entry wound between my breasts instead of an exit wound,” I finished.
“Diplomacy may be the best policy here,” he agreed.
“Can’t you see I’m trying?”
“Just reminding.”
“What,” I repeated out loud, “do you want?”
“I want,” the voice said slowly, drawing the words out in their heated tone, “the same thing you do, Buc.”
I chuckled. “Aye? Tell me what that is, then, because lately I’ve begun to wonder.”
“Inquisitive. I like that about you, Buc. The Doga does, too, doesn’t she?” they whispered. “I lied just now,” the other admitted. “Oh, I want what you want, Buc. But first, I want to hear the desperation in your voice as your failures pile up, weighing you down until you drown.”
I stiffened.
“Nuh-huh,” they said, clicking their tongue. “Move, and the Doga’s going to be redoing the upholstery in here. Could use the updating, I suppose.” They—no, she—laughed, low in her throat. The hoarseness had made it hard to discern, but the voice definitely belonged to a woman.
“You know that feeling deep within you, Buc, the one that forces you to act even when you know you should wait? The only true failure is never trying, isn’t it? I want you to feel that not trying is failure but that trying is worse. That’s what I want.”
“You’re insane,” I muttered.
“No more than you are, Sambuciña.” She breathed my name, closer now, and I felt her breath against the back of my neck.
“She’s close enough to take,” Sin whispered.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that revenge requires a sharp blade and a steady fist to guide it,” she growled.
That voice.
“Buc!” Sin shouted. “Let’s do this!”
But something in the voice held me fast, something warm in the cadence that had nothing to do with the spice scent that clung to her. Something like a warning, like when a piece of coastline looks familiar but is not, and the captain orders a sounding in case of reefs. Sometimes she finds nothing, sometimes she gets lucky and saves the ship. I didn’t believe in luck, but I believed in that voice in the back of my head, so I didn’t move.
“You didn’t take your chance,” she whispered. “I confess myself disappointed. Revenge is what we both want, after all.” The sound of the pistole hammer lowering was loud in the silence. “A gorgeous dress isn’t amiss either,” the voice continued. “Red, of course.”
The bookshelf shifted again and the pressure between my shoulder blades disappeared. I swung around at last, palming the blade I’d strapped to my wrist, and found myself staring at a row of books in purple-dyed leather. I reached out, pulling volumes off the shelf, searching. “Help me out here, Sin.”
“Looking, looking,” he muttered. “I think this was a one-way passage,” he said a moment later.
“Speed. Now.”
I threw myself out of the chair, nearly tripping over my gown and stumbling forward as Sin used his magic to steady me. I grabbed handfuls of silk, hoisting my skirts higher, and smashed my shoulder into the door that wasn’t a door. It shattered, admitting me into an empty sitting room, its paneled walls cast in deep shadows from a candle nearly burned down to the wick. Fuck dresses! Hiki
ng my skirts up again, I sprinted across the room and shoulder-slammed a second door, going right through with a crack of wood. In the hallway, I righted myself in time to see a slash of red silk disappearing around the far end of the hall.
My skin burned with magic and I tore off in pursuit, sweat beginning to pour from me like water as Sin’s magic off-loaded the fuck ton of heat that my feet, arms, and lungs were generating. In a few heartbeats I’d run nearly the entire length of the hall—I’d have done it faster if I’d been in proper trousers. As I twisted to make the corner, my slipper caught the hem of my gown and my legs went out from underneath me. I tumbled out into the hallway, arse over end and skeins of silk gown between.
The fall saved my life.
A dull thud reverberated through the hallway. I came to a stop against the far wall and my head slammed off the wood paneling, echoing the first thud, sending stars streaking across my vision and a smoky taste into my mouth. Sin yelped, cut out, and came back with a groan as I blinked back tears. Above me hung a stiletto, buried in the wall at chest height. I’d gone haring around the corner like I’d planned—
The hilt still quivered, trembling from the force of the throw. A crimson ribbon dancing and dangling from the pommel told me everything I needed to know about who’d done the tossing.
Sicarii.
* * *
Sin guided me back to the ballroom, reversing the course the Secreto captain had taken me through. I ran at a more normal speed, my skirts gathered up in one hand and Sicarii’s blade in the other. I’d a feeling there was a much shorter way, but sometimes life’s a bitch. So are Secreto captains. Must come with the job. I kept a running commentary of soft, fluffy bullshit in my mind, trying to avoid thinking about what had just happened. I’d been close to death most of my life—certainly this summer had been a season of near-death—but none had ever come so close.
She could have pulled that trigger at any moment. Put a hole through the back of my head. I slowed down, lungs heaving, and shivered despite the waves of heat still radiating from my skin from Sin’s magic. But she didn’t. She used the blade instead. She wanted me to see it coming.
“Or she didn’t want to get caught,” Sin suggested. “A gunshot in the Doga’s Palacio would draw attention.”
“Aye,” I agreed. “But why not both?”
“Aye,” Sin growled. “Why not indeed.”
I paused at the next corner, my ears picking up traces of frivolity over the blood still rushing through my head. If she wanted me to see it coming, then it was personal, which made no sense. I didn’t know this Sicarii. Not that I was aware of. Unless it’s personal for someone else? Sicarii hadn’t taken the same hands-on approach to the Doga’s assassination, which was odd. Is one business, the other pleasure? More than one client? My mind raced with possibilities.
“Where are we going?” Sin asked.
“To Eld,” I replied without thinking. Eld. I’d never been afraid of anything in my life. I mentally told Sin to shut it before he called me on the lie. If I was afraid now, there was only one thing to do. Besides, I had promised him I’d be honest, no more secrets.
“You did,” Sin agreed, reading my thoughts. “But you never got the chance to tell him and he never gave you a hint as to what his feelings are, so … what’s one more secret?”
“For a shard of a Goddess, you are really immoral, you know that?”
“The letter you’re looking for is A. Amoral,” he said. “Besides, I take on the characteristics of my host, so some immorality is to be expected, surely.”
“Fuck you.”
“You say that a lot.”
“I mean it a lot.”
“You mean it differently when it comes to Eld.”
“Why?” I growled.
“Why am I fucking with you?”
“What I asked.”
“Because,” Sin said, his tone shifting, “because you’ve a poison in your heart, Buc. Sometimes, the only way to get it out is to bleed it dry. Makes it hurt less in the long run.”
“Hmm.” I considered his words and shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a poison,” I said finally. “More like my heart took a wound when I lost Sister and never healed properly. Like a limb that’s been damaged, it atrophied and scar tissue grew where once muscle existed.”
“What book taught you that?”
“An old friend,” I said. “Verner’s Disciple of the Body. He warned of scars. They must be broken down by degrees and the limb encouraged to move, though it may hurt. That was the work Eld wrought in me these past few years. Now I feel like it’s all been undone.”
“Yet you still want to go to him?”
“I have to try,” I told him. “Patient’s prognosis doubtful, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a chance. Go to him now and tell him the whole bloody thing.”
“All of it?”
“All of it. Aye, you, too,” I said, shifting the blade in my hand so I could slip it up my sleeve beside the other knife I had there.
“And Sicarii. Eld needs to know.” It was a tight fit with both blades along my wrist, and I had to hold my arm at a slight angle or risk cutting myself, but it would do.
“The lies end tonight.”
34
The ballroom looked much the same as when I’d left it, save there were more flushed faces, from alcohol, kan, or dancing. It seemed as if every guest had finally found their way to the main event, so no matter how quickly I wanted to move, I was forced to keep to little more than a stroll. One that required sharp elbows, and once a kick, to move knots of masked guests out of my way. I decided Eld would have had enough of dancing by now, so my odds of finding him were better on the edges, where those looking for a breather or conversation stood.
“Sin.”
“Parsing masks, I don’t see—wait. There,” Sin said.
Following his indication, I glanced along the side of the room, closer to the center, where the dancers were spread apart, choosing partners for the next dance. Hmm, I was wrong. He wasn’t tired of dancing. I remembered the way it had felt to be in his arms and my questions about fear and uncertainty faded. We’d been interrupted before; maybe a second dance would do the trick?
“Beside the servant with the tray.”
“I see him,” I said, my eyes on the gold-and-ebony mask. He turned away just before our eyes would have met.
A moment later, Lucrezia, looking even more resplendent than usual in her swan’s white dress and glittering skin, stepped up beside Eld, gracefully curtsying and somehow wrangling his glass from his hand. She was facing me and I saw her stiffen when she saw me coming, so I gave her my biggest fucking smile. She returned it, raised Eld’s glass as if to toast him—then directed the gesture at me, throwing the liquid back in one long swallow. In the next breath she set the glass down on the nearby servant’s tray and caught Eld’s hand just as the orchestra struck up the next song.
“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath.
“You can’t just march up and rip her out of his arms,” Sin said.
“Watch me.”
“Buc!” he hissed. “Don’t.”
“For the last time, Sin…,” I said, straightening my back as I approached them. What was it Salina had said? Breasts up. “Fuck off.”
I dropped an elbow, ducked between another couple, and shouldered a girl a few years younger than me out of the way, knocking her into an elderly couple. All three erupted in protestations but I ignored them. I burst out of the confines of the crowd and saw them in the center of the dancers.
Lucrezia spun lightly in his arms, knocking against his chest before he caught her. They both laughed and there was something in his voice that stopped me in my tracks like a blade to the chest. I suddenly realized why I’d been afraid, why I’d hesitated for so long and gone to such lengths to ensure tonight was perfect. Because I already knew the answer to my question, had known it for a long time. Eld had never treated me as anything more than a friend, albeit a close one. You m
ight take a blade for a friend, maybe even risk death for a friend, but you don’t fall in love with a friend and when that friendship changes—say, when your friend becomes something you hate, like a Sin Eater—you change, too.
My breath left me, making the same sound a lung makes when there’s a stiletto stuck through it. I recoiled, stumbling blindly back through the crowd. Through the tears in my eyes I saw an opening, a doorway, and practically leapt through it—right into someone.
“Oof!” A woman. “Watch where the fuck you’re go—Buc?”
Salina wrapped her arms around me, holding me upright. “Buc, whatever’s happened to your dress? It’s torn and you look like you’ve swum right around Servenza! Buc?”
Somehow her voice was a salve to my ears, drowning out the roaring crowd that I was certain was toasting my failure. Or maybe that was just me beginning to lose consciousness, my vision narrowing as my chest contorted in on itself, squeezing the last of my heart to dust.
“I lost, Salina,” I told her. “I’ve been fighting a war I could never win.”
“Oh,” Salina whispered. “Oh no, I’m so sorry, Buc. What happened? Are you sure?”
I buried my face in her chest and began to sob. I felt her move me out of the room, felt fabric beneath my feet, felt a thousand sensations courtesy of Sin. Every one of them was a pinprick beside the searing, stabbing, white-hot pain that enveloped my every fiber. I’d found the man I loved, the man I needed. Need is a noose we slip round our own necks. I’d put my head through willingly enough, never imagining I’d kick the bucket out from beneath my own feet.
The Justice in Revenge Page 25