Empress of Rogues

by Carrie Summers

  Myrrh rolls her eyes and presses her mouth to his, leaning into him.

  Glint squeaks. “Gently, please,” he says around her lips.

  “Gross,” Nab mutters as he steps out of the room.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  THE MORNING AFTER the battle against the Nightblades, Myrrh gives Breeze and her smugglers leave to return to their rafts and begin the journey back to Carp’s Refuge. But to allow Glint’s wounds time to heal, she decides to keep her force of Knives at Elomstead’s inn for a few more days. Glint sleeps most of the time, but when he wakes, he remembers flashes and confused scenes from his time spent under Silver’s spells. Myrrh is relieved to learn that the talk of Silver using him as a bedchamber toy is nothing more than gossip. He can barely manage to kiss her without becoming winded, much less anything more exciting.

  As a small recompense for having smashed the common room to kindling, the Knives help bury the dead and restore the inn, carrying broken furniture to the woodworker’s shop for repairs. For five rubies—as much money as the innkeeper would ordinarily make in a season—Myrrh rents out every room in the inn while waiting for Glint to be ready to travel. She visits the docks daily in search of a barge with room to carry her and the troops, and when she finally finds a willing captain, she pays him another of the rubies for the favor of remaining docked and waiting for her.

  A picture of the situation with this Void Stalker, the Nightblades, and Silver’s plan comes to her in fragments and passing references she can’t quite piece together, so finally, when he’s strong enough to talk for a while, Myrrh decides to get the full story. While Hawk and Nab listen in, she sits at Glint’s bedside and drags out his history with the woman.

  “There was something between us,” Glint says, his eyes distant, voice still weak. “But it was long ago. We were business partners at first—she fenced many of the goods I brought into the Port Cities. We grew closer, but then she fell in with the Nightblades. I assumed it was her new friends that changed her because the differences were subtle at first. I broke off our relationship when I realized how cruel she’d become. She never directed it at me, but she had grown more manipulative. Anyway, she wasn’t someone I wanted to be around. Imagine my shock when she turned up outside my door in Lower Fringe.”

  “She mentioned something about that,” Myrrh says.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Probably made it sound like there was more to our meeting than me shutting the door in her face too.”

  “Did you really?” she asks, laughing.

  “Sadly, I’m too much of a gentleman for that. I offered her dinner, listened to her impossible, demented plan about taking over Ostgard by bringing an army of Nightblades, infiltrating the syndicates, seizing the city all at once. Of course now…”

  “It doesn’t sound quite as demented,” Myrrh says.

  “Demented, yes,” he says. “Impossible, maybe not.”

  Myrrh sighs. It’s true. If the woman had decided to stay in Ostgard, she might not have had the forces to take the whole city, but she would have spilled enough blood to fill the River Ost’s channel.

  “So you just saw her that one time? You probably realize this by now, but she had been keeping pretty close tabs on you.”

  Glint nods. “I’m not surprised. And she did send messages asking for more meetings. I just didn’t respond.” He pauses and looks at her. “If I had known it was more than just the cracked scheme of a washed-up fence, I would have told you. I hope you believe that.”

  Myrrh nods, finding that she does. “So she changed just after joining the Nightblades, or was there a delay?”

  “It’s hard to remember honestly. I’d mostly forgotten about her until she showed up. I thought it was her association with the cult making her…” He shrugs. “Making her arrogant I guess. But it sounds like there was something else…” He looks toward Nab.

  The boy, busy whittling something from a broken table leg, nods without looking up. “The corruption in Skorry’s gifts was faint at first, so she could have been part of the Nightblades for a long time before it affected her. Especially if the void disciples infiltrated the temple after she joined. But once the connection was open between the sunken pool and the void, it got stronger each year.”

  Myrrh’s brow furrows. “How do you know this, Nab?”

  The boy bites the corner of his lip in concentration while he drills the tip of his knife into a particular feature he’s sculpting from the wood. “From the Mouth.”

  “Wait. So they told you? What about Silver?”

  “When you and I were getting ready to leave—when you sent me to find Resh and Nyx—the Mouth pulled me aside and asked to meet up later so Silver wouldn’t overhear. The Mouth is dead to the gifts and can’t work a single cantrip. But Skorry speaks through the Mouth’s lips.”

  “Okay…so this person asked to meet. And they just told you this whole story?”

  “Yeah, along with the training, which it turns out I didn’t need much of. So basically, Skorry has been trying to banish the taint ever since the Disciples of the Void poisoned the pool. He’s been trying to withdraw his gifts, but it doesn’t work that way. The only thing he managed to do was keep the secret of the ninth cantrip.”

  “I thought you said there was no ninth cantrip.”

  “Exactly. The secret is that anyone who masters the eighth gains terrible power over every other follower of Skorry. Do you remember when Silver freaked out at me for making the cantrip motions toward her.”

  Myrrh nods.

  “Well, it turns out there’s a reason for that. The higher you advance through the cantrips, the more susceptible you are to them…until you reach the ninth. Then you’re immune, but you’re able to basically make the other followers into slaves if you want.”

  “So that’s why it was so easy for you to use mass delusion on the Nightblades, even when you commanded them to submit to execution?”

  “Yeah, more or less.” He whittles a long strip of wood from his creation.

  “So why you, Nab?” Glint asks.

  Nab rolls his eyes. “Because I’m awesome?”

  “Seriously…” Myrrh says.

  The boy sighs. “So apparently, Rattle and the Mouth were working together for a long time. Trying to find people with a natural talent for the cantrips.” He pauses whittling and points at himself, eyebrows raised.

  “Or maybe they were looking for someone with such an overgrown sweet tooth that they’d practice the misdirection cantrip for hours and hours in hopes of fooling Rat Town’s bakers,” Myrrh says.

  “Regardless,” he says, “Rattle died without getting word to the Mouth about my prodigious talent.”

  Myrrh shakes her head. Where did he even learn words like prodigious? “So it was just dumb luck that brought you and the Mouth together?”

  “Or Skorry had a hand in it. I kind of think Silver is right about one thing. She said that she thought Skorry and the Queen of Nines were related. I think that’s true. Either they’re facets of the same being, or they’re allied in fighting the void. Anyway, since I’ve never been anointed by water from the sunken pool in Skorry’s temple, I’m immune to the taint.”

  “Now wait,” Hawk says. “I sensed something…I sensed darkness when Myrrh used the cantrips, same as I did with the Nightblades. And she’s never touched the sunken pool. Whatever that is.”

  Nab shrugs. “Hmm. So maybe it’s just the purity of my innocent soul,” he says, sticking his tongue through the hole where he recently lost a baby molar. “Anyway, I guess it’s a good thing she’s terrible at the cantrips, or she’d probably turn into an evil witch like Silver.”

  Myrrh sighs. “I’m starting to wish you’d run away after all.”

  Nab smirks, looking rather pleased with himself. “Anyway, you’ve probably guessed, but I’m going to have to take a trip down to the Port Cities soon.”

  “Uh, pardon?” Myrrh says.

  “To deal with t
he void cult and cleanse the pool. It’s pretty much the reason that things have gotten so crappy along the coast.” He glances at Glint. “You’re always talking about how rotten the leadership is and how the citizens of the cities are so oppressed.”

  Myrrh blinks, not really sure what to say. “Maybe we should save the rest of this conversation for later.”

  Nab snorts and holds up the carving he’s been working on. It bears a vague resemblance to a person, though highly disproportioned. Myrrh cocks her head. She doesn’t want to make him feel bad, but it’s really a terrible effort. “It’s…nice,” she says.

  He laughs. “Yes, I think so. It looks just like you.”

  ***

  Later, Myrrh shoos the others out of the room and climbs onto the far side of the bed, settling gently beside Glint. He runs a hand down her cheek, neck, and then brushes her breast with the tips of his fingers. Myrrh feels her pulse in her neck as her breath quickens.

  “I thought you were too weak,” she says.

  He smirks. “I am. But it’s so fun to watch you blush.”

  She elbows him, provoking a hiss. “Ow.”

  “That’s what you get for teasing,” she says.

  He raises an eyebrow at her. “Just you wait, Mistress Myrrh. I’ll make up for it.”

  Myrrh turns on her side and traces a finger down his torso and across his hip, carefully avoiding his groin even when he closes his eyes. “Or maybe it’s me who will have things to make up for.”

  He lets out a breath and shakes his head. “I should know better than to try to challenge someone of your talents. Unless, of course, we’re talking about thieving.”

  “Hey! I just stole you from under Silver’s nose, right?”

  “I guess you did. Sort of.” His brows draw together. “So, about that. Remember when I told you not to follow us?”

  “It would be difficult to forget…”

  “Well, I had a good reason. You may remember, I said that based only on what Silver told me through her shadow speech, not due to influence from a cantrip. And I’m afraid that the problem hasn’t vanished.”

  Myrrh shifts, sitting up on a hip so she can look down at him. “So what did she say?”

  He presses his lips together for a moment. “She threatened to bring the Nightblades down on Ostgard if I didn’t go with her quietly.”

  “Her impossible, demented plan.”

  “Which had started to look a lot more realistic given how easily they dispatched the Scythe’s Knives.

  “But Nab dealt with them.”

  Glint sighs. “He dealt with every Nightblade in the inn—except Silver. I mean, please don’t think I’m complaining, but we’d be in a much better position if you hadn’t let her escape.”

  “Hey!” Myrrh says. “I wasn’t the one lying in bed watching her climb out the window.”

  He smirks. “Anyway, it’s not about the small force of Nightblades we dealt with here. Not really. Apparently, there are hundreds of them training in the Port Cities. Silver has been planning to expand, but she claims she hadn’t decided in which direction. She was in Ostgard deciding whether to move on our city first, or whether to consolidate control farther along the coast. When she spoke to me in the council chamber, she said she’d spare Ostgard if I agreed to go with her. After seeing what the Nightblades did to Meredith’s Knives, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. And I thought that if I left, I could maybe get word to you later and warn you. But now that we’ve beaten her here, I’m afraid she’ll turn her sights on Ostgard purely for revenge.”

  “We need to get home,” Myrrh says. “Get organized.”

  “Will it be enough?” he asks. “Clearly Nab has power over the Nightblades, but as for the rest of us, we’re hopeless against them.”

  Myrrh thinks ahead to the coming days. “It sounds like a difficult war is coming. But we can’t give up. We’ve won before, against the Death Cloak and the oathbinding, and even against Silver herself.”

  He grabs her hand and squeezes. “I guess it’s pointless to ask whether you think we should run away together and leave Ostgard to fend for itself. You still have a few of those rubies, right? Should be enough to get us somewhere exotic, fund the startup of a new syndicate…”

  Myrrh smirks. “And if I said yes, would you go?”

  He shrugs, brushing her cheek with the back of a knuckle. “I’ll never have to answer that because I know you won’t leave the city at Silver’s mercy.”

  She laughs. “No, I guess I wouldn’t be able to. So what do you say we head back tomorrow and create the first city government run entirely by thieves and scoundrels?”

  “You’re on,” he says as he winds his fingers through her hair and pulls her face down to his.

  Myrrh closes her eyes and breathes in his scent. Sandalwood and clove. They just talked about going home, but she feels as if she’s already there.

  Dear Reader,

  Thanks so much for reading Empress of Rogues. I really hope you liked it! As a working writer, I am utterly dependent on my readers to spread the word about my books. Please consider leaving a review for me and other authors you enjoy. Even just a sentence helps immensely.

  Click here to leave a review for Empress of Rogues.

  Book 5 in this series, Chronicles of a Cutpurse, will be coming to Amazon soon! Check for Sovereign of Shadows on your local storefront. You can also join my reader group (see below) or follow my Amazon author page to get a notice when it releases.

  In the meantime, I have some other series you might enjoy.

  Links:

  The Shattering of the Nocturnai – the complete series, now available as a boxed set for 50% off the cover price.

  Heart of the Empire - Book 1 in the complete trilogy, The Broken Lands.

  Stonehaven League – A LitRPG series! Book 1 is Temple of Sorrow.

  Finally, I’d like to invite you to join my reader group. You’ll get free books, fun (and free) interactive fiction where readers vote on the story direction, and lots more stuff. To sign up, go to CarrieSummers.com and put in your info.

  Thank you!

  --Carrie