Cane shrugged one shoulder. "Ah. Those letters. I'm sure Bennel came on very strong. He was the one who approached Dracks. He was extremely interested in striking a deal to declare war on you. If all you recovered were the letters in Dracks' possession, I assume you have none of the ones he sent to Bennel—including those where he turned Bennel down, repeatedly, in no uncertain terms."
"Wrong. Dracks confessed."
"Did he? And how much torture did that require?"
Raxa gripped the haft of the bone sword. "If this wasn't your war, you sure seem interested in fighting it."
"Why would we want to start a war with you? Look around. Right now, who's winning?"
"I'm armed and alone with the leader of the Little Knives. I'd say the Order is about to carry the day."
"Wrong. We're both losing. We're out there gutting each other. Bleeding each other dry of everything we've fought to build. The winners of this war will be everyone who's not fighting it. When it's over, it'll be a race for the others to loot our bodies."
"Then why not tell Kerreven this days ago?"
Cane sputtered with laughter. "He'd look at my claims as a ruse. A chance to buy myself breathing room to dig in my troops and hit back. If I was in his position, that's how I'd see it. I know we didn't hire the Crows, but the only way to prove that is to find out who did. Which I'm in the process of accomplishing right now."
"So you don't know who did it."
"Oh, but I do."
Raxa edged nearer, lifting the sword. "Spill."
Cane wagged his finger. "That information is my insurance against you slitting my throat. Take me to see Kerreven and I'll tell him everything I know."
"How about I cut it out of you instead?"
"Sure. I'll make it easy for you." Cane tugged down the collar of his doublet, exposing his throat. "Kill me. That will end the war with my people. But it won't give you the justice you've been fighting for. And your enemy will still be out there."
Raxa held the sword pointed at his chest. She could cut him in half with a flick of her wrists. But if he was right, she didn't think killing him would actually end the war with the Little Knives. Instead, it would ensure the Knives never stopped fighting the people who'd wrongly killed their leader.
She dropped the blade's tip two inches. "How many people are here with you?"
"Six," he said. "I'll order them to stand against the walls. If any of them rushes you, you'll have plenty of time to cut my throat."
"Are you armed?"
He crossed his legs at the knee, extended his top leg, and tugged up his trousers, revealing a slender knife. He unstrapped this, dropped it to the ground, and kicked it her way.
Cane stood, lifting his arms above his head. "Feel free to search me."
Doing so required she sheathe her sword in favor of a knife short enough to put to use if he tried something while she was close. He was clean. Of weapons, anyway. After days cooped up in the tenement, his clothes smelled like they'd have to be cut free from his body.
She put away her knife and got out her sword. "I'm going to put this to your neck. You're going to walk us out of here."
Cane nodded and stood in the middle of the room. Raxa got behind him and set the blade to his throat. Careful not to make any sudden moves, he walked to the door.
In the room beyond, four men sat at a table playing dice. Seeing Cane's state, they shot to their feet and went for their swords.
"Get against the wall." Cane's voice was as authoritative as a hurled brick. "I'm on my way to end the war. Make a move, and she ends me instead."
At his word, they drew and dropped their swords. He called the other two men into the room and ordered them to disarm themselves as well.
"Mr. Dreggs," one of them said. "You're sure about this?"
Cane laughed softly. "Not exactly. But I'm sure what will happen if I don't go with her."
Raxa stared them down. "If your boss is telling the truth, you won't try to follow us."
Cane moved to the far door. Raxa's ears strained for the first sound of motion, but the men held as still as if they were decorative. Cane opened the door into a hallway and led her to a stairwell. They descended to the first floor.
"Stop," she said before they exited into the foyer. "We're switching things up."
She drew her knife, put away the sword, and wrapped her knife-arm around his waist, slipping the blade under his doublet and putting its tip to the underside of his ribs.
Cane glanced at her hand in amusement. "We're posing as young lovers?"
"Wrong. You're not that young. Now walk."
He opened the stairwell door and crossed the musty foyer to the exit. On their way down the stoop, he winced, sucking in air. The knife had nicked him. Raxa didn't apologize.
The walk to Kerreven's tenement felt as long as a full night of dreaming. Every person they passed seemed to lock in on Raxa's hand. A few of the grimier-looking men sized them up—couples were a favorite target; men would usually rather turn out their pockets than risk harm to their wife/mistress. Seeing the look on Cane and Raxa's faces, the thugs frowned and walked on.
"They tell stories about you, you know," Cane murmured. "Some say you're a demon. That you pop right up from the floor to drag men down to hell. Then again, when they don't know the truth, they make up whatever stories are the most fun to tell."
"So I've noticed."
"Me, I don't care for stories. I like facts. How do you do it?"
"I make myself so thin I can walk right through the walls."
He chuckled, then winced as the knife jabbed his side. "I understand. Trade secret. Maybe you can tell me after we both retire."
As they neared the entrance of the tenement where Kerreven was holed up, the drunk man slumbering against the wall popped to his feet and goggled at her.
"Raxa?" He drifted forward. "Is that Cane?"
She nodded. "He's got something Kerreven will want to hear."
The spotter dashed up the stairs ahead of them. On their arrival, the apartment was abuzz with rumor. The muscle took Cane into the back room. Kerreven emerged from his quarters, gave Raxa a nod, and went into the back, closing the door.
"Cane Dreggs." Gaits chuckled, shaking his head. "Where in the world did you find him?"
"In the room where he was staying."
"Allow me to rephrase: how did you find him?"
"After they ambushed me last night, a couple of the Knives ran off. Figured they were either going for reinforcements, or to let someone in charge know I'd gotten away."
"Let me guess, he's ready to wave the white flag? Funny how being captured by one's foes will turn the most bloodthirsty man into a pacifist."
"It's bigger than peace," Raxa said. "He claims it wasn't the Knives who hired the Crows."
Gaits reached out to support himself against the wall. He tried to speak but choked on his own spit. "Bullshit. Transparent effort to save his own skin."
"Could be. I figured I wasn't the one to make that call."
"I expect Kerreven will agree with you. All right, I'll bite. Who does he claim really hired the Crows?"
"He wouldn't tell me. Only Kerreven."
"Right move on his part, too," Gaits muttered. "Though if we were betting, I'd say he wouldn't tell you because he hadn't come up with the right lie yet."
They took a seat, speculating with the other men about who else could be behind the Crows, what Kerreven's reaction would be if Cane was telling the truth, and what it meant for them. Wine and rum were produced and consumed. There were no screams or thumps from the back room. Just the steady murmur of male voices. When her companions exhausted new areas to speculate on and turned back to who'd really hired the Crows, Raxa found a cot and went to sleep.
She woke to the gray light of dawn. She wandered into the kitchen to see if anyone had made tea. Yesterday's kettle was cold, but she wasn't choosy. As she poured a cup, Kerreven entered the room without so much as a creak of the floorboards.
; He eyed her puffy face. "Are you awake enough to talk?"
She shrugged. "We can find out."
He led her to his room. Gaits was there, ensconced in a chair, chin propped up on his palm, snoring heavily. Kerreven bumped his chair. Gaits snapped awake, dabbing drool from the corner of his mouth.
Kerreven took a seat, gazing at the ceiling. The bags under his eyes were big enough to feed a destrier. "Do you know the silver lining of a crisis, Raxa?"
She took a gulp from her mug. "Definitely not the quality of the tea."
"When it's bright and sunny, it's hard to notice a new flame. But when the lights go out? That's when you get to see who burns brightest." He smiled tiredly. "Now that we have Cane? One way or another, the war will end. Because of you. If you hadn't already talked your way into a share, I'd be giving you one now."
"Thanks."
"Are you uncomfortable with praise?"
"I'm uncomfortable with this hangover. I'm guessing you didn't wake me up this early to clap me on the back."
Kerreven chuckled. "Did you find Cane's story compelling?"
She tapped the side of her mug. "Enough to bring him back here."
"I'm glad you did. He's still alive. Know what that means?"
"You think he's telling the truth. Who does he think hired the Crows?"
"An outfit called the Black Star. By the look on your face, I'm guessing you've never heard of them?"
"Nope."
"You're in good company. Cane doesn't know who they are any more than you or I do. He was in the midst of trying to find that out when you brought him in."
Raxa rubbed sand from the corners of her eyes. "So what do we do now?"
"What would you do?"
"Ask you why you're not making that decision yourself. After that, I'd negotiate a truce with the Knives, keep Cane here for insurance, and work to confirm his story."
Kerreven smiled and laced his hands together. "Which is exactly what we're doing."
"You're not afraid he's playing you?"
"Am I afraid this is a trick? Of course. But you know what I'm afraid of more? Continuing to fight a war against the wrong enemy."
Raxa drained the last of her tea. "Makes sense. What can I do to help sort this out?"
"For now? Sit tight. You're one of my most valuable assets. I'm not going to expose you to any more danger until we're certain who the target is—whether that's the Black Star, or the Little Knives."
* * *
By the end of her first day being kept in reserve, Raxa was as restless as the evening winds that blew off the bay.
Gaits came and went from the apartments with news from the informants and street rats, but the Black Star remained nothing more than a name. As for the Knives, they were less than thrilled to hear their commander was being held prisoner. It looked like the truce would collapse before it could begin.
Cane wrote a letter to his people confirming he was alive and asking them to help the Order of the Alley run down any leads. Morning brought the news: for the first time since the war had begun, during the last night, there'd been no new attacks, injuries, or deaths.
But there was no fresh intel on the Black Star, either. Nor the day after that. The third day of the truce, Raxa went to Kerreven to ask to go back into the field, but he told her to stay put.
Later that same morning, he called her back into his room.
"Glad you changed your mind," Raxa said. "I'm being wasted kept in this room."
Kerreven waved his hand. "You're not going into the street. You ran into a group of Crows during the attack on the Marrigan, didn't you? Did you take a ring from them?"
"I did," Raxa said. "But no one could identify it."
"Still have it?"
"It's at my house. Want me to grab it?"
"Please," he said. "But don't wander off, okay? Now that we don't know who the enemy is, we're in more danger than when we were at open war."
It was a long walk to her house. With all the time she'd been spending away, she'd had to keep it locked up. The interior was hot and smelled like a mouse had died somewhere inside. Kerreven had made the ring sound important, but not urgent. Raxa tossed open the windows and doors, found the ring, then spent an hour hunting down the source of the smell, which turned out to be one dead mouse and one larger and deader rat. She tossed these out back, closed the house up, and returned to the tenement.
There, Kerreven's door was closed. The rank and file sat around a table playing dice with Cane.
"Care to join us?" Cane nodded to his pile of croutons they were using in place of money. "These friends of yours may be fine thieves, but they're awful gamblers."
She pointed to Kerreven's door. "He in there?"
Jenker nodded his head, the fat bunching under his chin. "Yup. And nobody goes in."
"Who's he talking with?"
"One of Cane's—who says he knows the Black Star."
Raxa took a seat to prevent herself from pressing her ear to the door. Dice rattled on the table. Behind the closed door, a table crashed to the ground. Feet thumped back and forth.
Everyone bolted to their feet. Kerreven's door swung open, revealing a man in black. He held a bloody dagger in his hand.
Seeing Cane, he stood straight and saluted. "Milord. It's done."
He raised the dagger and slit his own throat.
Jenker grabbed Cane and wrestled him into a headlock. "Check the room!"
Raxa and two others ran inside. Kerreven lay in a pool of blood. He was blinking, but he was too weak to put a voice to the movement of his lips. After a few seconds, his face went slack.
Raxa staggered out to the main room, spots dancing in her eyes. "He's dead."
Jenker tightened his arm around Cane's neck. "By this bastard's assassin!"
"It wasn't me!" Cane sputtered. "I've told you nothing but the truth!"
Raxa stared into his eyes. "Let him go."
Jenker bared his teeth. "Don't tell me you believe him! That was his man. He vouched for him. He killed Kerreven!"
"Let him go," Raxa said. "So I can cut him in half."
She drew her sword. Jenker laughed and shoved Cane to the ground. Cane raised his arm to protect his head, but Raxa's blade passed through his hand like it wasn't there, cleaving through his skull.
Jenker was first to speak. "What now?"
"Get the body out of here." Raxa kneeled and cleaned her blade on Cane's shirt. "And get our forger in here. Cane's got a letter to write."
* * *
When Gaits returned and heard the news, he closed his eyes and dropped to one knee. "We've been so stupid."
"This was my fault," Raxa said. "I should never have listened to him."
"You can't blame yourself. Kerreven believed it, too."
"What now? We go back to war?"
"I don't know."
"I called in Ferrey to forge a letter from Cane telling his people that all's well. We could have him write a second letter calling for a meet with the Knives. And when they show up?" She drew her finger across her throat.
"None of us has the authority to make that decision." Gaits rose, eyes bright with tears. "So the first thing we do is elect someone who can."
"You're talking about a…" She had to hunt for the term. "The Midnight Coronation."
"Ridiculous term. But yes. If we resume the war with the Knives, things will get very messy very soon. If we don't have a leader with the authority to declare how to clean up that mess, the Order will fracture. Then we aren't just looking at war with the Knives—we're looking at war with ourselves."
He sent word to every member of the Order hidden across the city, instructing them to assemble the following night. Gaits didn't say why they were meeting—if their enemies learned Kerreven was dead, they might be emboldened to attack—but he did warn them that anyone who didn't show up would be expelled from the Order on the spot, be they the lowliest lowling or Kerreven himself.
They removed the bodies from the tenement. They scrubbe
d up the blood. Then they left, too, relocating to a tumbledown manor outside the Pridegate. The mood in the house that night was grimmer than anything Raxa had felt since the Gaskan empire had sieged the city at the end of the Chainbreakers' War.
In her room, alone except for the weak flickering of an odorous tallow candle, she turned the black-stoned ring over in her hand. Kerreven hadn't told her why he wanted to see it. Gaits hadn't recognized it. Neither had the jewelers she'd taken it to. She inspected the shank of the ring, but the scrollwork there meant nothing to her. Whatever Kerreven had found was lost.
The house's mood in the morning wasn't much better than the night before. The hours dragged past like a cricket with its hind legs torn off. Most of the men drank rum until they could nap. Night came. When the ninth bells of Ivars pealed across the city, they set out from the crumbling manor.
To avoid spies, strangers, or the possibility of running into their enemies, Gaits had called the Coronation to meet outside the city. The late summer night was lukewarm, but as they left Narashtovik behind them, Raxa felt a hint of cold in the air.
They took the western road, crossing a mile-wide field of stumps, grass, and evergreen saplings. Then the pine forest took them. Sheets of brown needles slid underfoot. Low, drunken voices carried on the night. Vagabonds. The wilds outside Narashtovik had fewer than most—years ago, the city had offered the plots of land abandoned on its outskirts to anyone willing to farm them—but some people wound rather roam the woods and hills than work the same square of dirt every day for the rest of their lives. Under different circumstances, Raxa might have been out there with them.
Jenker glared at a campfire burning in the distance. "How far is this place?"
"Several miles," Gaits answered.
"But there's a perfectly good forest right here."
"We are holding the first Midnight Coronation in nearly two decades. We're not going to hold it in the middle of a forest surrounded by a bunch of brigands."
"But we're brigands."
Gaits couldn't speak for three full seconds. "We aren't brigands. Do you see us sleeping next to our latrines? Rather than choosing our targets based on how much we're likely to acquire from them, do we simply mug everyone who steps out on the road? We are civilized, Jenker. We can't hold the ceremony under the nearest pine tree. A short walk is a small price to pay to honor Kerreven and whoever succeeds him."
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