Rahlizje was only meant to submit to her mistress’ demands. No one expected her to find the one thing worth biding her time to steal.
Chapter 1
The weak ale went down faster when she had more coin to spend on it. The Three Tempests tavern was a bawdy establishment just off the wharfs in Vereling Town, and Rahlizje sat alone at a small table beside the doors. The last man had approached her without an inch of tact, slurring his forward invitation to join him in the back for a quick tossaround he’d been drunk enough to assume she couldn’t resist. Shortly thereafter, he’d left her table covered in his own ale, his head no doubt ringing from the echo of the pewter tankard bashing against his temple before Rahlizje tossed it onto the gritty, sticky floor. Now, with a good portion of the sailors, dockhands, and general miscreants turning to witness the short-lived commotion, she withdrew the dagger from her cloak and buried its tip in the wooden tabletop. Then she sat, grabbed her fourth ale, and took a long pull.
Those who’d paused to see what happened now turned away, her point quite clearly made, and continued with whatever brought them to the Tempests on a balmy summer night. But the next man who showed more interest in what she had between her legs than what she could do with a blade would get that dagger in his neck. This she promised herself. Then she drank.
The tavern filled to capacity after that—raucous, reeking of sweat and fish, the air stale and stifling with the heat of so many bodies willingly in one place. Rahlizje did not remove her cloak; that only ever invited the misconception that she worked the taverns like the women wearing far less and willing to do far more. Despite the fact that she sat alone, fully clothed, scowling at anyone who glanced her way, the men most desperate for company never stopped to consider how all those things would have made her quite the unsuccessful whore. It didn’t matter where she went; every town and city was the same until she staked her claim to her body and her solitary table with the same dagger sticking out of it now. Being a woman had never stopped her from getting what she wanted, but it certainly didn’t make it any easier, especially in taverns. All Rahlizje wanted now was solitude amidst the Tempests’ chaos and more ale.
When she drained the last of the tankard in front of her and lowered it from her face, another man had appeared at her table. He blocked her entire view of the tavern and its patrons, forcing her to look up from his dirt-stained cloak at his face. A black beard peppered with dust covered most of it, matched by wild black eyebrows over one dark, glistening eye. The other had been cut out, leaving behind a puckered mass of scarred flesh he clearly hadn’t been bothered to hide.
Rahlizje glared at him and wrapped her hand around the dagger’s handle, though she didn’t yet pull it free.
“I only want to sit,” he told her, his voice rumbling through the boisterous laughter and the rowdy conversation and the repeated clink of tankards raised together in pointless toasts.
“Then sit somewhere else,” Rahlizje replied, swaying a little and blinking at him. “This place is full of chairs.”
“And you seem to be guarding the only one without a drunken idiot in it.”
Squinting, she studied the man’s bristling beard, then dropped her gaze to the empty chair across from her. He hadn’t touched it yet, which was the only thing keeping her from cutting off his fingers. Then she looked back up at him. “I want to keep it that way.”
The man took a deep breath through his nose, though his blank expression never changed and his one eye didn’t leave her face. “If I wasn’t stiff from riding with a bad leg, I would’ve left this pisspot the minute I stepped inside. I’ll do what I have to do for that chair.”
It wasn’t a threat, she knew. He was clearly travel-weary, and a man who didn’t cover a missing eye was a man who didn’t need to make threats. She imagined this was as close as he came to asking politely. “Buy me another ale,” she said, “and no more talking.”
If he’d told her ‘very well’ or ‘thank you’—if he’d said anything at all—she would have changed her mind. But the man merely dipped his head, staring at her from beneath his dark brow, and turned toward the bar at the other side of the tavern.
“Wait.” Rahlizje pulled the coin purse from her cloak and tossed it onto the table as the man turned back to look at her. “Don’t spend your coin on me.”
For a moment, that one eye gazed fiercely down at her; whether it was in appraisal or insult, she did not know. Then the man glanced down at the coin purse on the table beside her upturned dagger.
She saw the flare of his reaction when his eye narrowed. She’d thought it might have been greed or the flash of an opportunity recognized and instant plans formed. But by now, she’d had too much weak ale to be certain of what it really meant. The man stepped toward her table again, reached out for the purse, and moved far too quickly for a man with one eye and a bum leg. The table thumped and rocked a little, rattling her empty tankard. The next thing she knew, the man’s fist was buried in the collar of her cloak and her own dagger was pressed dangerously against her throat.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he growled, his hot breath washing over her face.
Rahlizje had to commend him for his attempt to scare her. She tried to stand, but he shook her by her cloak and shoved her back down into the chair. The point of her own blade pinched the skin just below her jaw, and she felt a warm trickle of blood run down over her collarbone.
“Don’t try to fight me off,” he said.
Turning her head toward him—and her blade in his hand—Rahlizje met his one-eyed gaze and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have to try.”
“I have your weapon,” he told her with a grunt. “And you’re drunk. Thief.”
That was when Rahlizje of Holjstruke realized she was well and truly caught. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was much harder to see her way to the end of it when she had no idea how she had been caught—or for which crime.
“Let’s go.” Her captor—apparently that was now what he’d made himself—lifted her from her chair with the dagger still digging into the soft flesh of her neck. Then he hauled her through the stinking bodies gathered inside The Three Tempests. No one seemed to notice a thing. And if they had, Rahlizje had already made it quite clear that she did not welcome interruptions.
She nearly slit her own throat when she stumbled forward; her surprise and all the ale only made it more difficult to resist the force with which he dragged her through the tavern’s front doors and out into the cobbled streets in the Fishermen’s Quarter.
The docks of Vereling Town did not offer a breath of fresh air to alleviate the stench within the crowded Tempests. Everything inside had smelled like sweat and ale and exhaustion. Everything outside smelled like fish. Her gaoler led her quickly forward through the alleyways leading toward the wharfs, one firm grip on the back of her cloak and her tunic now and the other still digging that blade enough against her flesh to remind her of her predicament.
Then Rahlizje realized how quickly they were moving across the uneven, cobbled stones. She glanced down at the man’s feet. “You told me you—” The world tumbled around her with a sharp, agonizing blow cracking against the back of her head, and then there was nothing at all.
Rahlizje woke with the darkness of night no longer surrounding her but with sunlight flickering across her face, over and over. That and the constant jostling made her ill. Perhaps that also came from the massive lump she was sure had risen on the back of her head. But when she tried to lift a hand to feel it, she found her wrists bound tightly with coarse rope—behind her back.
Then she realized where she was, and the night before came back to her.
Today, she was riding in the back of a wooden cart, trussed up like a pig, while the man with one eye and her dagger sat up front with the reins. Grunting, Rahlizje shifted her legs under her and pressed herself back against the siderail of the cart until she was up on her knees. A wave of dizziness overwhelmed her, but she blinked it away
and scowled at the back of the man’s head. “There is no bad leg,” she croaked.
The man cocked his head, paused, then looked back at her over his shoulder. “No clemency for thieves, either.” He turned back toward his horse, clicked his tongue with a light tug on the reins, and the cart came to a jolting halt on the road. Rahlizje nearly fell forward on her face, but she spread her knees and steadied herself enough.
Her liar of a captor climbed from the front of the cart and grabbed the satchel from the bench. Then he headed toward her with a steady, even gait. No bad leg, indeed. Unlatching the back gate of the cart, which Rahlizje could barely see from the corner of her eye, he set down the satchel and opened the flap. “Your crimes,” he said, setting out the coin purse she’d offered for their ale. Next came a brooch crafted in the shape of a tree, followed by a delicately painted porcelain box of the same size. The last item he removed was a large, thick ring of red gold with the same seal that had been stamped upon the coin purse. “My proof. Where’s the hairpin?”
Rahlizje gazed down at these expensive trinkets, having to turn her head quite far over her shoulder to do so. She’d been caught, and this mercenary had her only weapon. “Sold it,” she said blandly.
“Where?”
Shrugging stiff shoulders with her hands bound behind her was a lot more difficult than she expected. “Somewhere between here and Cirgress, I’d wager.” The corner of her mouth twitched. But no, this man would not find her games amusing in the slightest.
“For the most part,” the man said, picking up each item to return them one by one to his satchel, “I’d say you knew what you were doing. Then you got cocky.” He’d saved the painted box for last. When he set the fragile trinket in his palm, his thick fingers opened the delicate clasp with ease before he lifted the lid. Then he thrust it all in front of Rahlizje’s face so she had no choice but to look.
She let her gaze fall to the box and what it held within. Her eyes closed almost instantly.
“You ever see a moonrite stone before?” the man grunted. Rahlizje turned her head away from his hand, and the man retracted it, carefully closing the lid and doing the latch again as he spoke. “Even if you have, my guess is that you just didn’t take the time to look. So you never saw this one.”
He had her in two precarious places, now; she’d been caught in the first place, which was in and of itself a trifle challenging. There was a fine line between a good thief and a stupid one, and Rahlizje had crossed it the night she stole from the Farden estate. They both knew it, and this in particular was what made it so hard for Rahlizje to envision her way out of this mess.
“Well, now you have.” The man gently secreted the box into his satchel again with everything else and leaned against the back gate of the cart. “I’ve gone wildly off my route to find you. Wasn’t Windel Farden himself who set me after you, mind. The man didn’t seem to care much. But his lady wife?” Her captor let out a low whistle. “Fiery temper for a highborn. Paid me more than I asked to cover the cost of retrieving what was taken from her. Didn’t want a thing to do with you, though.” He sniffed, slung the satchel over his shoulder, and pushed the gate back up before latching it in place to the cart’s sides. “So you and I have the misfortune of traveling together like this until I recover what I lost. Going off route can be the death of any merchant, you understand? I don’t aim to let you kill me.”
“You’re a mercenary,” Rahlizje muttered.
“Aye, for over three fortnights. We’ll rectify that.” His boots crunched across the dirt road as he headed for the front of the cart again. But he returned once more with a waterskin and a loaf of bread. The waterskin was the first thing he offered her, but Rahlizje had no intention of drinking anything. Not from this man. When he brought the mouth of the waterskin to her lips, she jerked her head away and glared at him. “Suit yourself.” His long, guzzling drink splashed rivulets of water down his coarse beard to splatter over his boots. She couldn’t tell if he always drank like this or if it was merely for show. To break her. Sighing, the man corked the waterskin and broke open the loaf of bread, though he didn’t offer an inch of it to her. “You’ll come around.” Crumbs tumbled into his beard as he spoke around a mouthful. “It’s a long road we’re taking now, thief. Might be it takes me longer to figure what to do with you. But you’ll come around.”
Then he left her again for the front of the cart, this time climbing up onto the bench and taking the reins in one hand. With the other, he munched on the loaf of bread and clicked his tongue for the very patient horse to set off down the road once more.
Rahlizje braced herself when the cart jerked into motion again, but sitting back on her heels helped with that. Her head still ached from the ale and the blow the one-eyed man had given her. Within a few hours of kneeling as she was, with the sun beating down on her and no real way to find comfort, she started to think denying his bread and water had been just one more mistake of many.
Chapter 2
It was always so easy to take what she wanted. Slip in, slip out, buy herself a few rounds of ale at whatever reeking tavern or ramshackle inn each town had to offer. Then she moved on as far as she could until hunger and thirst and perhaps a hole in her boot forced her to stop. Wherever she ended up, she’d sell it all, spend it all, and find someone else.
An entire lifetime of repeating the process had made Rahlizje of Holjstruke very, very good at it. And that had made her complacent.
She’d been aware of that fact since the last town in which she’d stopped to rouse up a bit of trouble. Now, it had clearly caught up with her.
The croft owner had taken a particular liking to Rahlizje—a fat, middle-aged bastard with a swollen nose and a permanently reddened complexion. His horse had ignored him completely for the apple Rahlizje had pocketed away in her cloak, which of course she’d stolen. But the beast’s disobedience had prompted its master to pay attention to the thin, dark-haired, unsmiling woman traveling the main road into Cirgress alone.
For a fortnight, Rahlizje had strung him along. It had been laughably easy to convince Windel Farden that she was merely too terrified—and too meek—to step into his massive estate in the valley northwest of Cirgress. Even when he assured her she would do so on his arm, attended by servants instead of secreted away like one of them, she declined. Always, Rahlizje declined; while she was more eager and ambitious than most unfortunate souls without a penny to their name, she was not desperate. In fact, she went about her business in such a way as to almost prove to the rest of the world quite the opposite.
That false desperation had finally struck a cord in Windel Farden’s fattened, overworked heart. Once Rahlizje had watched him enough in that fortnight to know he could not suspect her of being more than she seemed, she’d timed her lie perfectly. The man had just ridden past the smallest and cheapest of Cirgress’ taverns, where Rahlizje had spent her last coin on a pitifully weak pint of ale. She’d barreled through the tavern’s doors and stumbled out into the road, failing to muffle her own sobs. The tears and red-rimmed eyes were real enough; they had to be, if the man were to fully accept his own assumption that she had nothing left. But they meant nothing. Tears were merely a means to an end.
When Farden turned round his horse and slumped his girth out of the saddle to go to her, where she sat huddled against the shadow-darkened stone of the tavern’s outer wall, those tears of hers had been his undoing. Grunting as he lowered into a squat before her, the man looked entirely too flummoxed for his own good. Just as Rahlizje had designed.
This time, when he’d offered her his hand, that offer did not come with a promise of touring her about his landholdings or dressing her in the finest gowns or entertaining her every whim with all the capabilities at his disposal. This time, he merely asked her when she’d eaten last and whether she would like to accompany him to his home to rectify that shortcoming. That was when she knew she had him, and that was when Rahlizje said yes.
She’d ridden before him in the sadd
le, not a word shared from either pair of lips until they’d reached his estate. Farden let his stablemaster take the mount by the reins, but he did not call for servants to attend them. Yes, Rahlizje had entered the stone walls of the man’s domain with him and in plain sight, but it was not on his arm as he’d promised. Instead, the man had put his arm around her, sheltering her, asking if she thought she was too weak to climb the stairs. It wasn’t pride that kept her from playing that ruse out so far but merely the certainty that the red-faced landholder would collapse beneath both their weight, despite her being so much smaller. Then she would have become not a welcomed guest in need but the trollop who’d sent the master of this house to an early grave. She might have done that anyway, but she hadn’t been eager to tempt the man’s fate before she’d taken what she wanted of him. Insisting she could climb the wide main staircase on her own—with a weak hand clenched around Farden’s forearm, of course—was the last bit of resistance she maintained that night. To everything else, she’d submitted quite willingly.
The man sent for a modest tray of food, which Rahlizje had assumed was an attempt not to overwhelm her. His cook also fetched them a jug of cool, clean water and a decanter of wine, the former poured for Rahlizje right away and the latter left unopened until she’d finished her meal. Then, once Farden had satisfied his rather small capacity for altruism, he seemed to remember why he’d asked her here no less than seven times in the first place. He’d beckoned her toward him and gently lowered her into his lap, where he dandled her on his knee as he opened the decanter to pour. The cup he offered her first contained an insultingly meager amount of wine, and Farden chuckled when she’d asked for more.
Sitting on a man’s lap and feeling his anticipation harden against her backside had never stoked any sort of fire within Rahlizje herself. Neither did it disgust her; she’d sat upon enough laps to know that the simple act of it brought her as close to her eventual aim as the tears without emotion. But Windel Farden, though not remotely too old to carry through with his natural inclinations, had a weak constitution. She sat upon his lap, meek and slow to smile, drinking as much wine as she wished because she knew he’d see the flush of it in her cheeks. It made him laugh and pepper her with the type of condescending, useless compliments commonly reserved for children. Rahlizje was clearly not a child. Farden was clearly drunk.
Playing With Fire Page 101
