Among Thieves

by M. J. Kuhn

  “We are waiting on you,” said Ivan, shoving a hat into her hands.

  Nash stuffed her hair into the hat. By the time she turned around, the smuggler was easily mistakable for a large man. “Don’t fuck this up, Red. I’m not dying for nothing.”

  Ivan’s jaw tightened. “No one is going to die.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not the bait,” Nash said, shaking her pockets gently. They rattled noisily, like they were filled with glass beads.

  But Evelyn knew what was really weighing down those pockets was far more valuable and far more dangerous than glass.

  Ivan’s hand darted out. “Be careful with those!”

  “Sounds like a stirring conversation,” the Butcher called from the deck, “but if you want the cover of the crowd you might want to get moving.”

  “All right, everyone,” Evelyn said, “try not to die. At least, not before we get the Quill. And Tristan.”

  “Good speech,” Nash said. She pulled herself up the ladder and onto the main deck. Then: “Whoa.”

  “Not a twice-damned word,” Ryia said, leveling a hatchet at Nash’s throat.

  Evelyn couldn’t keep her jaw from dropping at the sight of Ryia, swathed in the same skintight, sky-blue costume she was wearing herself.

  “I think you look nice,” Nash said, breaking Ryia’s “not a word” rule.

  “Do you?” Ryia’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Because I’m starting to think this is our worst idea to date.” She thrust her arms out, and Evelyn turned away, averting her eyes from the stubbornly clinging fabric. “I think it would have been more subtle if I’d just gone naked.”

  Ivan huffed. “I did what I could. You did not give me much to work with.”

  Evelyn’s eyes jumped to Ryia’s wrists as she wrestled with the near-transparent sleeves. A pang of something that felt suspiciously like pity rattled through her nerves as she caught sight of the puckered scars barely obscured by gauzy fabric. How long would someone have to be shackled to get marks like that?

  The whole party fell silent as a tinny sound rang out over the docks. The bell clanged from its tower, announcing the approach of the auction.

  “I believe that’s our funeral dirge,” Nash said, clapping Evelyn on the shoulder. “See you all on the other side. Either here or in one of the hells.”

  With that she hopped over the rail and melted into the crowd on the docks. Evelyn took a deep breath. This was it. No matter what happened, they would all be leaving the island tonight; though, whether they would be leaving on The Hardship or bundled in sheets and thrown into the sea remained to be seen. Their fates rested on a loudmouth smuggler, a Borean disguise master, the most reckless mercenary in Dresdell, and a kid who may have already cracked.

  Adalina save them.

  Evelyn and Ryia covered their ridiculous costumes with long coats and joined the throbbing masses on the docks. With Ivan close behind, they allowed themselves to be pushed along the roaring current of excited merchants.

  “What’s wrong?” Evelyn asked. The Butcher looked troubled, eyes locked on the Guildmaster’s manor in the distance.

  “Nothing.”

  “Right,” Evelyn said. The Butcher had been distracted ever since Tristan had been caught. “The last time ‘nothing’ was wrong, an Edalish sailor turned up dead.”

  “What, last night?” Ryia asked. “No one turned up dead. Unconscious, maybe…”

  Evelyn looked back at her. “Losing your touch?” she asked, struggling to inject the usual venom.

  “You’d better hope not.”

  Evelyn stared after her as she stalked a few steps ahead. Could there truly be some mercy left in her after all? She certainly seemed worried about Tristan and the others. Could there still be some good lurking there?

  What did she bloody care? It didn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter what Tolliver Shadowwood meant to do with this mysterious Quill they were after. All that mattered was that as soon as this mission was over, she would deliver the Butcher to the Bobbin Fort dungeons, and then Evelyn would finally have a rich, purple Valier cloak draped around her shoulders. She spun her father’s ring around her finger. That was what she needed to focus on. Not the cold that crept up her spine every time she imagined slapping those scarred wrists back into shackles.

  “Good luck,” Ivan whispered as they reached The Silver Swan, a steady stream of dancers slipping from its belly. “Try not to get dismembered.” He pulled the cloaks from their shoulders and shoved them forward.

  Then he was gone.

  “Ladies! Form a line!” shouted a voice as thin as a razor blade. Evelyn flinched as a clawlike hand tightened on her shoulder. “Now is not the time for this kind of nonsense.” Without giving them as much as a passing glance, the woman shoved her and Ryia to the back of the line of dancers weaving their way toward the arena.

  Nothing looked out of order. The same number of Disciples as yesterday, no one seemed on unduly high alert. Hopefully for Tristan’s sake, the chaos of the auction had occupied all the Guildmaster’s men.

  It was fine. Everything was fine. One foot in front of the other no matter how much she wanted to vomit. She looked anxiously over each shoulder in turn. Unless the Guildmaster knew their plan and he was just trying to lure them all into the arena. Was this a trap?

  “If you’re trying to look as suspicious as possible, you’re doing a great job,” Ryia hissed.

  “Sorry, I’m not as resigned to my death as you seem to be.”

  Ryia flashed a distractingly wicked smile, tossing the brown locks of her wig over one bare shoulder. “I’ve worked hard to get to this level of apathy.”

  Evelyn couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not.

  Her heart thrashed against her rib cage like a fresh-caught fish in a net as the arena came into view. Once they were inside, they would be surrounded. Hemmed in by Disciples and nobles, with their only hope of an exit hanging on luck, her own spotty memories, and Ryia’s lock-picking skills. None of her Needle Guard training had prepared her for this.

  If she survived this job, she was never going to break another law again—and she was ashamed to admit it wasn’t even just her sense of honor driving that decision anymore. Crime was too bloody stressful.

  “Keep up,” Ryia warned as Evelyn started to lag behind. “Once we get into the back room, this job is in the bag.”

  “Assuming we can get into the tower. And past the guards in the courtyard.”

  The Butcher snorted. “We’ll get past them.”

  “Without killing them?”

  Ryia looked at her in mock innocence. “I just told you I didn’t kill anyone yesterday!”

  “Going one day without committing murder is not exactly a bragging point for most people.”

  “I’m not most people.”

  If that wasn’t the understatement of the age.

  There was something… odd about Callum Clem’s attack dog. Evelyn still hadn’t forgotten about the Disciples on the southern dock back in Carrowwick. The way Ryia must have scaled the sixty-foot walls of the Bobbin Fort the night Efrain Althea lost his finger. Her vicious scars.

  Evelyn had been so sure she had figured it out. Had been so positive that when Ivan shaved her head they would find a curling K already inked there. She’d thought that Ryia was a Kinetic, escaped from her master, but the Butcher’s skin had been nothing but brownish and bare.

  Maybe there wasn’t anything special about her at all. Maybe Evelyn had been listening to the woman’s arrogant bluster for so bloody long she’d started to believe it.

  Evelyn’s breakfast threatened to reappear as they reached the three rooms at the bottom of the bowl, set behind the thrones on the back wall. One door for animals, one for humans, and one for Adept.

  “Are we sure about this?”

  Ryia grinned. “It’s a little late for doubts, Captain.”

  And it was. There were only a few minutes before the Guildmaster would arrive to begin the auction. Then they w
ould have only minutes to slip the net before Nash set the plan in motion. Why had she agreed to go along with this? The door loomed larger with every step, the maw of a ferocious beast about to swallow her whole.

  The moment they were inside, the only escape routes were back through the arena or out into the heavily guarded courtyard. Dressed like chandeliers. She swore she saw her own fear reflected in the Butcher’s jet-black eyes as they slipped through the doorway. The door clicked shut behind them.

  “Damn it’s crowded in here. Maybe we should have tried for the other room,” Ryia whispered, eyeing the droves of performers between them and the battered back door of the room. “We’ll never make it out without being spotted.”

  “The Adept are packed in twice as tightly as this.”

  “I meant the room with the horses. With that face of yours…”

  “Ha-ha.” Evelyn shot her a glare, bending to touch her toes. “Let me know if you have any other brilliant ideas.”

  “Are you honestly stretching right now?”

  “If you don’t think of something quickly, we’ll be prancing around onstage in a few minutes. I’d rather not pull a bloody muscle.”

  “Now you develop a sense of humor.”

  Evelyn rolled her eyes. “I—”

  “Excuse me.”

  Evelyn broke off mid-sentence as a new voice cut into their conversation. She raised her eyes, finding herself face-to-face with the talon-handed woman who had shouted at them on the docks.

  The Butcher turned to face her. “Can we do something for you?”

  “Yes.” The woman pursed her lips. “You can tell me who you are.”

  Evelyn’s gut sank like a stone.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but the woman held up a hand to stop her. “Someone alert the Disciples,” she said, grabbing Evelyn and Ryia by the wrists. “We have a pair of intruders on our hands.”

  24

  NASH

  Nash willed her shoulders to relax as she wove through the crowds. Back on board the ship, their plan had seemed daring. Gutsy. The stuff of folk tales and legends. Here and now it seemed laughable to think there was even half a chance she’d end the day with all her limbs intact.

  She shook her pockets nervously as she walked, listening to the rustle of the little black beads. She had never heard of Ivan’s Trän vun Yavol before. He said they were a tool used by the medev royal guards up in Boreas. Apparently the name translated to “Tears of the Underworld,” so they had to be good.

  At least, good enough for a distraction. And if they weren’t, well, she would be joining Tristan in his cell one way or another.

  Last night everyone had worried about the boy—about how much Tristan might have been encouraged to tell the Guildmaster about their plan. Everyone but Ivan, that was. Nash had asked him why, and the disguise master had said, “None of you were there the night he was brought in to Clem.”

  “So what?” Ryia had said.

  Ivan had reminded them. “So why do you think none of us knows where he really came from? The boy can hold his tongue.”

  Ivan’s hunch was good enough for Nash. Besides, if they couldn’t trust one another, what were they even doing here? Ivan had to trust Nash to plant the Trän vun Yavol so he could do his part. Ryia and Evelyn had to trust that Ivan would do his part to draw the eyes of the arena away from the courtyard. And all of them had to trust that skinny little Tristan Beckett could hold out in the Guildmaster’s torture chamber for half a day.

  Nash ducked her head as she passed beneath the archway leading into the arena. “Pardon me, excuse me, apologies,” she muttered under her breath as she brushed her way through the crowd. Each person she passed received an amiable pat on the side, and each amiable pat slipped a few small black beads from Nash’s pocket into theirs. She was a little rusty on the technique—it had been years since she had picked a pocket at all, much less reversed the process.

  It should have been Tristan who planted the Trän vun Yavol. With those quick fingers of his, he could have filled twice the pockets Nash managed as she bumbled through the crowd, bumping elbows and knocking against the sheathed swords of guards and merchants. Thirty-three was all Nash could hit before she made it to her seat near the servants’ entrance to the arena. Would that be enough? She watched her unsuspecting carriers as they picked their way toward their own benches, spread out all around the left-hand side of the bowl. Of all the beads she planted maybe half would work out as planned—and that was a best-case scenario.

  A grating quiet rippled over the crowd as the royals started to arrive, flanked by their marching guards and fluttering flags. It would have to be enough. She took her seat, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as the crowd cheered for the smiling, waving royals. As if every last one of them wouldn’t sell those crowned bastards out in a heartbeat to take their place. That was the first thing she’d learned after traveling every inch of the Thamorri coastline.

  Places like the Lottery had a hard reputation, but everywhere was the same. The lawful types made you peel back a layer or two of gold before you reached the shit, but it was still there. In the Lottery, the shit just sat proudly on top.

  The cheers continued as the Adept wards for sale slid dreamlike into the arena, filing into one of the three rooms behind the stage. Whatever brainwashing process the mainland Adept went through must have happened sometime between last night and this afternoon. Every last ward crossing that auction block now had a face as vacant and staring as a doll’s. They were followed closely by a slew of prancing Gildesh show horses, then the dancers and acrobats. Nash held back a chuckle as she caught sight of Evelyn, looking about as comfortable in the tiny, sparkly outfit as a cat in rain boots.

  Her smile fell as the arena suddenly went quiet, leaving nothing but the sound of waves crashing against the cliffs beneath them. A silence like that could mean only one thing. The Guildmaster.

  He swept across the center of the arena, sleeves billowing with every step. Unlike the royals onstage, he was accompanied by no armed guards. No Kinetics, no Sensers. He walked alone. A bold move—one Callum Clem was famous for back in the Lottery.

  Where Wyatt Asher tended to surround himself with a team of heavies, Cal went solo. Rather than making him seem unimportant it had made him look confident—and made Asher look like a twice-damned coward. It had the same effect here. The royals looked frail, crouching behind their guards’ chain-mail skirts. There was no way that message was lost on the crowd. Everyone knew exactly who ruled Thamorr, and it wasn’t a single one of the bastards on those velvet-coated thrones.

  And Tolliver Shadowwood really thought he could hold this Quill hostage for some kind of reward from this man? If he tried, he was more likely to find his castle razed and his crown handed off to someone the Guildmaster found more agreeable. But that wasn’t Nash’s problem. It was just like when she was smuggling drugs across the various borders of Thamorr—if she thought too hard about what people meant to do with the things she sold them, she might not want to sell them at all. It was best not to know.

  “Welcome, once again, fine visitors from the mainland,” said the Guildmaster. “We have gathered this day to celebrate the two hundred and eighty-ninth anniversary of peace among the five kingdoms. To fully recognize…”

  Nash’s heart raced. This was it. The second he started calling wards up onto that stage the wheels would be in motion, and, like a runaway carriage down a cliff side, there would be no stopping it. She clapped distractedly as the rest of the crowd roared with applause.

  “As always, we will begin with our strongest wards. First for acquisition is one of our most powerful Kinetics. A practiced telekinetic with seventeen summers on the island.”

  A Kinetic in a plain brown robe was led onstage, swirling K marking its head, its face blank, its cheeks unbranded. She winced, imagining the blood-drenched, white-hot iron that would press into the young Kinetic’s face, binding it with its new master. She had heard the Adept lacked the fear or pain to
flinch when it happened. But to Nash, that sounded like the usual bullshit people used to justify doing shitty things.

  “Excuse me, I’m sorry, excuse me,” she intoned again, pushing herself up from her seat and edging along toward an aisle. She managed to slip beads into another three merchants’ pockets along the way.

  She wasn’t alone in her jostling. Much of the crowd was shifting and moving around. Servants and employees ran back and forth between nobles and merchants, carrying jingling pouches and little slips of parchment, organizing bids and offers before calling them out. But instead of looking for a merchant or employer, Nash was looking for Ivan.

  He wasn’t in position yet. When they were ready to go, he would be in the lower middle section of the bowl, directly in front of the stage. That section was reserved for the noblewomen of Briel and their guards, so it would be tricky for him to get inside, but if anyone was capable of that it was Ivan.

  She took another few steps forward, jingling her coin pouch (mostly coppers, not that anyone needed to know that). The first Kinetic went to the king of Boreas for seven hundred crescents. Bully for the king of Boreas, Nash thought distantly, eyes locked on the place where Ivan should be turning up any second now. The minute he was in place, he would give her the signal. She ran her fingers over the smooth marbles remaining in her pockets. Then it would be time for each and every one of the hells to break loose. They might actually pull this off.

  At that moment, sounds of a muffled commotion broke out somewhere to the right of the stage. Nash snapped her eyes toward the noise. Her stomach dropped as the cries of “Intruders!” sounded from the room the dancers had disappeared into.

  Shit.

  More eyes started to shift toward the door as a series of loud bangs sounded out behind it, almost like the sound of a body being slammed against a wall. Ryia was back there—that was probably exactly what that noise was. They had about thirty seconds before the Disciples went to see what all the fuss was about. Then Ryia and Evelyn would join Tristan in his cozy cell, and Nash could say goodbye to her dreams of selling the Quill for a ridiculous amount of gold.