“Raych has probably been far more understanding than I deserve, Verci,” Asti said. “But I’m a danger to her, you, and your boy. And if anything happened . . .” Asti felt tears coming to his eyes. He didn’t want to do this with Verci. Not now. Not today. “If I hurt any of you, I couldn’t live with that. I . . .”
Verci grabbed Asti in a close embrace. “All right, brother, all right.” He pulled back, touching Asti’s face. “We’ll just deal with tonight for now, all right? The rest we’ll figure out when it comes.”
“Sounds good,” Asti said.
“Will you two stop sucking each other’s faces?” Helene said as she came around the corner from the back. Asti glanced over to her, and his hand instinctively went for a knife; she didn’t look a thing like herself. Her hair was blonde, pulled short to one side. Her olive skin was now alabaster fair. Even her nose looked thinner and smaller. Only her voice and her familiar dark eyes told him that Helene was standing in front of him. Pilsen had worked his craft like he had never seen.
“That’s amazing,” Verci said.
“You like?” Helene asked.
“Perfect,” Asti said. “If anyone marked you the other night, they wouldn’t recognize you now.”
Pilsen came out from the back, Mila in tow. “I am amazing, I know.”
“That should do it,” Verci said.
“I need to do the big guy as well,” Pilsen said. “As well as myself.”
“Are you going that severe?” Asti asked, nodding to Helene.
“Blazes, yes,” Pilsen said. “I haven’t seen Mendel Tyne for ten years, but he damn well would recognize me, I can tell you. So I’ve got to bury this beautiful face.”
“What else do we need to do?” Verci asked.
“Mila needs to go get in her perch,” Asti said. “We’re burning daylight.”
Helene shook her head. “Not before she helps me into that blasted corset.”
“Anyone can help you with that,” Asti said.
“No,” Helene said. “That’s going to be Mila. Then she can go to her perch.”
“Fine.” Asti looked around. “Anything else people need before Mila goes to her perch?”
“Yeah,” Kennith said. “I . . . there’s something I want to do. Since we’re all here. One click.” He went into the back of the stable, and came out a moment later carrying a clay pot. Win and Cort came out with him, each with a stack of bowls. Neither of them looked like they knew what was happening.
“What’s this, Ken?” Asti asked.
Kennith put the pot on the workbench, turned to the whole group. “This is . . . chr’dach.” The foreign word sounded like it scraped against his throat.
Verci grinned. “And here you insisted you were Druth, not Ch’omik.”
“I am!” Kennith said. “But my pop did try and teach me a few old things. Not much stuck, except this.”
Mila piped up. “What is krah-duck?”
“Chr’dach,” Asti said, fairly certain he didn’t mangle the word. “It’s a Ch’omik dish, a sort of good luck before a fight tradition.”
Kennith nodded with a half-hearted agreement. “There was more ceremony to it than that, a joining together of brothers-in-arms as they went out to face death. Mostly I remember the recipe.” He spooned out the dishes and started passing them around.
Mila looked at her bowl. “But what is it?”
Asti poked at the creamy, spicy-smelling mess in his bowl with a spoon. He wasn’t sure.
“They’re a sort of meatball, cooked in cream and cheese,” Kennith said. “There are some peppers in there.”
“Do we just eat it?” Win asked.
“No, I . . . I never learned the words in Ch’omik, so I’ll . . .”
“Just do the blasted thing, Ken!” Helene snapped.
“Right.” Kennith held up the bowl. “Tonight we go forth. Tonight we are victorious, or we are dead. We accept both with full hearts. In the names of our fathers we do this.” He brought the bowl back down to his face. “In the name of Nohtho Rill.” He looked over to Verci expectantly.
Verci held up his bowl and brought it down. “Kelsi Rynax.”
“Kelsi Rynax,” Asti repeated.
Mila held up hers, choking her words out quietly. “Jono Kendish.”
“Orton Kesser,” Helene said.
Julien followed after her. “Holsten Kesser.”
“Layton Gin,” Pilsen said, holding up his bowl with one hand. “Miserable bastard.”
“Quentin Cort.”
Win started sobbing. “My girls, they . . . they won’t ever . . .”
Mila came over to him, putting her arms around his shoulders. “They will, Mister Greenfield. Saints’ll see to that.”
Win sniffed and nodded. “Billthym Greenfield.”
Kennith nodded solemnly and took a bite of the chr’dach. He closed his eyes, a smile across his lips.
The rest all took a bite.
Asti’s mouth was on fire.
“Blazes, Ken!” Verci said. “Some peppers?”
The room was filled with coughing and swearing, which slowly evolved into laughter.
“Well,” Pilsen said, putting his bowl down, “I suppose nothing worse can happen to us tonight.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Asti said. “Are we done?”
Kennith nodded. “Thank you. That . . . that actually meant a lot to me.”
Pilsen clapped Kennith across the shoulders. “Then, my friend, it was worth it.” He laughed as he pointed at Julien. “Come around the back, you.”
“You need anything more, Kennith?” Julien asked.
“Not right now,” Kennith said. “Before we head out, I’ll need you to crank that up.”
“All right,” Julien said. He glanced at his cousin. “It doesn’t hurt, does it?”
“No, Julien,” she said with a laugh. “How does it look?”
“Like someone else,” he said. He turned away quickly and went to the back of the stable.
“We should get ready,” Verci said.
“All right,” Asti said. “Let’s get geared up. I want us to be in the wine shop before sunset.”
Mila felt rushed. Asti had thrown a lot at her to arrange in a short order of time. Why the blazes were they moving so fast? Tonight! She had run over to the warehouse where they were supposed to go at the end of the gig, just so she would know where it was. It looked like a warehouse. She didn’t know what else she should have expected, but for some reason it was just a boring building. She supposed it was better that she found it in daylight, instead of hunting around for it at night. What were the moons supposed to be tonight? She couldn’t remember. That was the sort of thing she ought to be thinking about.
It was the sort of thing Asti would remember. Asti was always paying attention to those little things.
She worked her way through side alleys back toward the Emporium. Everyone else was getting dressed, getting ready. Helene would get a real pretty dress. Again. Helene would get surrounded by fancy people and good food and warm candles. Mila still was wearing rags, despite having a hundred crowns in paper notes inside her skivs. Those weren’t going to be anywhere other than on her own person.
At least the spring nights had been warm so far.
Asti had been vague about the take for this whole gig. He had said they should be bringing in thousands of crowns, if not tens of thousands. It was more than she could wrap her head around. How many of them were on the crew now? Nine people? Did Missus Holt count? Did she get a larger share? She had a whole slew of questions she had been afraid to ask Asti.
Her hands absently went to the rope tied around her waist, looking like a poor girl’s makeshift belt. It worked fine, a fashion she had seen plenty of times in Seleth and the western neighborhoods. As she walked she untied the rope, pulled
it taut, and tied it again with one hand. She wanted to make sure she could do it, anytime, as quickly as possible.
“What’s the word, Miss Bessie?” A boy had walked pace with her, one of the ones she had recruited to be in her cadre.
“I’m gonna need that street flat we talked about, pip,” she told him.
“What’s the time?”
“Time is when I tell you, pip,” she snarled.
“We gonna just stand around and wait?”
“No,” she said, giving him an angry eye. She did her best to sound like Asti when she talked to these kids. “You do that the sticks and the other shakers will get the stink, you hear?”
“Yeah,” the kid said, though he looked like he wasn’t sure what she was saying.
“You be ready, pip, but look like you’re all just standing around. The call comes, you’ll know it, and you flat that street but quick.”
“That’s gonna be tough,” the kid said.
“You can do it,” she said, looking him up and down. “You do it good, there’s ten crowns in it. You do it bad, you get my foot on your neck. You hear? Now scamper.”
“Yes, Miss Bessie,” he said. He ran off down the street.
She loved it when they called her “Miss Bessie”.
The sun was hanging low. High time for her to get to her perch.
Asti felt cramped in the back of the carriage. It was not a big space inside, with seven people, Cort’s barrels, and Kennith and Verci’s contraption all pressed in there. Asti didn’t like it, but he knew they had to stay out of sight while together in this neighborhood, and a single carriage with drawn curtains going down into the loading alley wouldn’t look too suspicious. Seven people walking individually might draw someone’s eye, and if that someone knew the wine merchant had gone up to the north side of the city, they might call in a constab to sniff around.
Kennith drove the carriage through the narrow dirt alley, the horses moving at a slow pace as he brought it up to the back dock of the wine shop. Verci popped out of the carriage and went right to the door.
“Locked?” Asti asked.
“Yes,” Verci returned. He already had a tool out, fiddling with it. “But not anymore.”
“That was easy,” Win said.
“Figured it would be,” Verci said. “We are sure he’s gone?”
“Quite,” Gin said. “My sweet boy did his job well enough.”
“All right.” Verci popped open the loading door. “Let’s get in fast.”
Asti glanced at the dirty windows that looked onto the loading dock. Flops and tenements all, probably no one in there to worry about. He grabbed one of Cort’s barrels. “Let’s get these in there.”
Cort followed Asti’s eyes up to the windows. “Think someone is watching us?”
“Maybe,” Asti said. “But they’ll see us bringing barrels inside. The main thing people look out for are robbers, right?”
“And robbers rarely load stuff into the place they’re robbing,” Verci said, taking another barrel.
“We should get moving,” Gin said, indicating the Kessers. “I’ve made arrangements for a cab to pick us up at the Hotel Saint Gelmin.”
“Did you get a room there as well?” Helene asked.
“Two hundred crowns a night, are you kidding?” Gin said. “We don’t need to put up that much show. On the off chance, after the dust settles, someone traces us to our cab, the cabman will only know that’s where we came from.”
“And the trail runs cold there,” Asti said.
“Very smart boy,” Gin said, patting Asti on the cheek. “Let’s move, though, so we don’t have to run. Then we’ll sweat, and that would ruin the effect completely.”
“This is it?” Julien asked.
“Afraid so,” Helene said. “You ready?”
“I think so,” Julien said.
“You crank that thing as far as you could, Jules?” Kennith asked.
“Wouldn’t move another inch,” Julien said.
“Do we say good luck?” Helene asked. “Or does that jinx it?”
“I don’t believe in jinxing,” Asti said. “It either goes or it doesn’t.”
“And we have to go,” Gin said, hopping off the loading dock to the dusty ground. “Come along now.”
“Luck,” Helene said.
“Same to you,” Asti returned. The three of them slipped out the other side of the alley.
“Let’s get inside,” Verci said. Asti picked up a barrel and followed his brother.
Cort, Win, and Kennith were lighting lamps in the basement, which was filled with racks of wine. It was a dank, dusty place, smelling of mold. “Do we know exactly which wall we need to use?” Cort asked.
“Give me a minute and I’ll figure it out,” Verci said. Asti watched his brother’s face screw up with concentration. His fingers moved as he pointed into the air, his lips mumbling inarticulately. “That way.”
The five of them walked through the cellar until they came to a large wall covered with casks of wine. Verci sighed. “It’s this one.”
“Blast,” Asti said. “We’ll have to move all of these, won’t we?”
“Yeah,” Cort said, pushing up his spectacles. “Good thing we gave ourselves plenty of time, right?”
“Right,” Asti said. “A few things. Ken, get the carriage set so you don’t have to do anything else to bolt.”
“I should be the first one up there once we move,” Kennith said. “The horses won’t just stay at the ready forever.”
“Do what you can. Cort, Win, get moving the casks here.”
“Heavy lifting,” Win said. “Shame we sent Julien away.”
“You can handle it,” Asti said. “Verci, come with me to get the last barrel out of the carriage.” He went back upstairs, leaving Win and Cort grumbling as they started to move the casks.
Verci was right behind him when he was back outside. “Why did you need me to come?”
“Because you’re going to carry the barrel back down,” Asti said. He pulled it out of the carriage and put it in Verci’s hands.
“It’s already time to go up to the watch flop?”
“No use putting it off, you know,” Asti said.
“I suppose,” Verci said. Asti could tell Verci was skeptical.
“We didn’t say this before the carriage gig, brother,” Asti started. “And we probably should have . . .”
“No matter what, drive forward?” Verci said. “Is that what you want to say?”
“Yeah.”
“You did notice that I drove forward on the carriage gig, even when you nearly skunked it?”
“I noticed,” Asti said. He laughed despite himself. “We’ve got a lot riding here, you know? So no matter what . . .”
“We’re committed, brother,” Verci said.
“One more thing, Verci,” Asti said. “I want you to promise me, if you have to choose between getting yourself clear, and coming for me . . .”
“I’m coming for you.”
“No, Verci. Get yourself clear. Get so blazing clear and back to Raych and Corsi and don’t even think about me.”
Verci scowled. “It won’t come to that.”
“Promise me!”
“Fine,” Verci said. “If you’re going to go, go.”
“I’m going.”
Verci heaved the barrel over his shoulder and went back into the wine shop.
Asti had no nostalgic feelings about the fifth-floor flop. If a place had deserved to get burned to the ground, it would have been that building. Looking around the room, he figured that it wouldn’t take much to turn the whole place into a cinder. Even still, no matter how much of a blighted hole the entire building was, no matter what messes the squatters there were, they didn’t deserve anything like that.
The vi
ew of the Emporium was still clean. It was all he needed. Then he could walk away from this dump.
Lens to the eye. The cab was coming up to the door. The valet came up, helped Helene step down. Smile and nod. Gin and Julien got out of the cab. All good.
The front door opened, the three of them walked right in.
Five minutes, they’d either be in, or sent out.
Unless it went really wrong in there.
Asti shook that thought off. There was no reason for things to go that wrong, not for them. Worst case, they’d be kicked out.
Asti counted off three minutes. He panned his scope over to the mouth of the alley. Mila was there, looking more like a dosed wastrel than a hatshaker. All the better. No one would look at her twice.
Five minutes. No action at the door. The three of them were in clean.
Asti slipped the scope back into his coat pocket. He did one last check of the room. Nothing left he’d need. He grabbed his pack and threw it over his shoulder. Five steps, he’d be out the door and never have to think about this room again.
Which was when the door was kicked in. Miles and six other goons stood in the hallway.
“Beautiful night, Rynax, don’t you think?”
Chapter 26
HELENE FELT THE COLD, clammy sweat of fear all over her body. The valets were the same two people as had been in the foyer the other night. Neither one of them showed any sign of recognizing her, but she worried that they might be well trained at maintaining such a façade.
The old man showed no fear at all. He was fully in character, playing to the hilt the role of a visiting businessman from out east.
“Queen Mara,” he told the valet with complete confidence.
“Excellent, sir,” the valet said. “If you will step over here?” He brought them over to the side and gave Gin and Julien a more thorough pat down than any of them had received the night before. The female valet did the same to Helene.
Helene felt her arms tense involuntarily as the woman’s hands went to her midsection.
“I love your dress,” the woman told her.
“Thank you,” Helene said. Gin had told her not to bother with an accent or airs of any kind. She should play that she was a West Maradaine girl who had ended up with a moneyed man. That was easy enough for her. “The secret is the corset.” Helene couldn’t believe that had just come out of her mouth. What was she thinking? Why did she say that?
The Holver Alley Crew Page 31
