“What was that about?” he asked.
I released the breath I’d been holding. He didn’t ask about my magic. Tension lifted from my shoulders. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Someone wants the Doga dead.”
“Clearly,” Eld said dryly.
I made a noise in my throat and closed my eyes. “The man was ill dressed and unkempt—was he disguised or a distraction so the real assassin, the woman, could get close?”
“She seemed the more dangerous of the two.”
“She did that,” I agreed. “Women usually are.” I heard him shift and bared my teeth without opening my eyes. “But I don’t understand how she went up in flames so quickly.”
“An explosive device of some sort?”
“Likely, but if it was then she must have rigged it wrong because she didn’t explode so much as implode.”
“Unless that was the point,” Sin chimed in my ear. “A suicide mission to burn the Doga alive.”
“Perhaps,” I whispered back in my mind. “That would certainly send a message.”
“But to whom?” Sin asked. “For what?”
“Those are the questions.”
“If you allowed me to Possess you, Buc, we could share our knowledge with the Goddess. It has been one hundred and eighty-seven days without her guiding hand. Unlike those undead fools, her knowledge truly is legion. She’d have the answers.”
“Not a fucking chance,” I said, pushing away his mental protestations.
I’d taken Sin from an artifact in a centuries-old shipwreck, doing it to save Eld from magic that was killing him and to defeat the Ghost Captain who’d used said magic. It had worked, but only just. Sin claimed his powers were at a fraction of their usual strength and that I was cut off from a huge base of knowledge and wisdom because I wouldn’t allow him to Possess me and complete Ciris’s ritual. I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not, but if he was, even the fraction of power currently granted to me was frightening.
“No—” I cut him off before he could start again. Persistent little fucker.
“So a coordinated attempt with some mechanism to ensure the Doga was only leaving the scene in pieces,” Eld mused, bringing me out of my head.
“Crispy pieces. That failed when our valiant hero dumped cold water all over her plans,” I added. “Literally.”
I opened my eyes and laughed at the look of consternation on Eld’s face. “I’d only hoped you’d distract her long enough for me to get a clear shot or for those loutish guards to notice her. You continue to impress, Eld.”
“I try,” he said, unable to keep the smile from his lips. Or his eyes.
“It’s been an eventful morning,” I said, settling back against the seat again. “The Board will want to hear of this.”
“Aye.” Eld dug into his vest and pulled out his pocket watch. “And we’re already late, so maybe the exciting news will assuage them.”
“You know it won’t.” I sighed.
“Remind me, why do we care about them again?”
“Because, my dear, simple Eld, I—we—intend to use them to drive the growing wedge deeper between Ciris and the Dead Gods, to force them into open war. But that won’t happen unless we get them dancing to our tune.”
“They don’t seem to like the music we’ve been playing so far.”
“That’s because they’ve no ear for genius,” I growled.
Now it was Eld’s turn to laugh. There was something in that sound that never failed to make my heart leap. It’s a Godsdamned thing, Sambuciña Alhurra, to be in love with a man who sees you like the sister he never had. A sister tainted by magic he hates with every fiber of his being.
“Fuck me,” I whispered, my words lost in Eld’s laughter. Tension settled around me like a cloak pulled so tightly that I could barely manage a breath. It was a weight I’d grown used to over these months and I hated both the tension and its familiarity.
Fuck me.
3
Our heeled boots clicked against the fine marbled hallway, echoes chasing after us as we followed the liveried servant—in gilded suit from head to toe, of course—down the fresco-lined hall. Every time we walked this corridor I remembered the first time we’d come, at bayonet point. These days the only knives were of the verbal kind, often hid behind silken tones and fawning smiles, but meant to cut as deeply as steel.
The Board worked toward one purpose and one purpose only: profit. Each and every board member thought they knew best how to achieve said profit and so while they all pulled at the oar, they pulled in a dozen directions. For all of that foolishness, they weren’t fools themselves, merely infected with the disease of wealth that made them believe they were born better than those mere mortals who sat outside their hallowed ranks.
Needless to say, having an orphaned street rat and a mercenary—or whatever they thought Eld was—sitting at their table did little for their humor. I’d be damned if I let them think us afraid or, worse, weak. Still, my stomach tightened as we reached the ornate white doors that rose from floor to ceiling, inlaid with the gilded sigil of the Kanados Trading Company.
“Never let the bastards see you sweat,” Sin whispered in my ear.
“That’s my line.”
“Then you know it’s a good one.”
He’d timed his rejoinder just right, so I couldn’t keep the smile from my lips as the doors swung open, admitting us to the already-in-session meeting. As always, the room was dominated by the massive table, though half the seats stood empty, waiting for a time when the Company ran the world and needed to admit additional board members.
At the head sat the Chair, an older woman whose skin looked like a quill drained of ink. She was flanked by the rest of the Board, a dozen or so men and women who were theoretically allowed to sit where they chose. In reality, those with more power or who were close to the Chair sat nearer her, while those who had less influence or were newer to the group sat farther away. Their finery sparkled beneath the great chandelier overhead and I was suddenly conscious of the dried sweat on my brow, the dust on my jacket and boots. I’d intended to change before coming, but that was before we saved the Doga’s life.
Salina, sitting nearest our seats, motioned hurriedly for us to join her. She shook her head, blond braids barely moving where they were piled down the left shoulder of her green jacket, failing to keep the disapproval from her face. Half a year ago she’d threatened us with hanging if we didn’t solve the mystery behind the Company’s disappearing ships, but I’d managed to turn the tables on her. Still, if we had any to thank for our newfound seats here, it was her … a fact she hoped the rest of the Board would forget. When it became clear they wouldn’t, she’d become an unexpected ally, but she still leapt when the Chair said “jump,” and the Chair liked that word an awful lot. I slid into the seat beside her while Eld took the longer walk around the unoccupied end of the table to sit opposite me.
“What’d I miss?” I whispered.
“So kind of the pair of you to grace us with your presence.” The Chair’s voice, high and lilting like chimes on a summer’s afternoon, belying the steel beneath, echoed through the room. “What’s put the smile on your face, Sambuciña?”
“Buc,” I reminded her, although we both knew she needed no reminding. “I’m just thinking of knowledge and that old ditty about it and power and how profit follows power. I know that’s what we’re all here to discuss, right? Profits.”
“Profits.” The Chair shook her head. Her dark hair, sprinkled with white and gathered loosely behind her, tinkled with the jewels she’d threaded through them.
“How quaint,” the woman seated at the Chair’s left said. She was the Parliamentarian and as old as the Chair, as dark-skinned as I was, face unlined despite a clear love for the sun. “Do you have any new ventures to put before us? Perhaps less flammable than your last?”
“Ah, yes, the child’s redesign of our sugar factories,” the Chair said, raising her voice to be heard over the laughter reverberating
from the rest of the members around the table.
I heard Salina’s breath hiss between her teeth: she alone of them all knew what I was truly capable of. If looks could kill, the Chair would have been in her grave already. I opened my mouth, but the Chair didn’t give me a chance to draw steel, verbal or otherwise.
“You put forward interesting schematics, true, child,” the Chair said, flashing her teeth when I bristled. “Then you rushed them into production without consulting our engineers, without testing, so eager were you to prove your genius to us. And what happened?” she asked, spreading her thin arms.
“Poof,” said the Parliamentarian.
“Always back to this, eh?” I asked. I’d reengineered the way the sugar the Company brought back from the Shattered Coast was refined and forced the Board’s hand into letting me pilot the new designs in the Mercarto Quarto. We’d been riding high after saving the Board from bankruptcy and the Ghost Captain’s piracy and this was meant to clinch my position atop the Board. It had worked, until it hadn’t. I suspected the fire had had something to do with the spacing of the new machinery and the excess heat generated—sugar is highly flammable, after all, so one spark and—
My memory of the fire itself was vague; Eld said I’d taken a knock and a lungful of smoke—but my memory of what came after was clearly sharper than theirs. “The venture proved profitable, did it not? The insurance payout was vast. I don’t remember any tears when our shares increased.”
“Aye, it was larger than anticipated,” the Chair said. “One almost would have thought you planned to fail.”
“The adjustor from the banks certainly did,” the Parliamentarian quipped. The woman was full of herself this morning. Even more than usual.
“Your eagerness to show us all your genius not only burned our operations to the ground, it took nearly half the Quarto with it,” the Chair continued. “The bribes required to keep the guilds off our backs, to say nothing of the Doga, erased much of the aforementioned profits.” She rested her thin forearms on the table. “Were we to follow your strategy we’d be out of business within a fortnight.”
“As I recall, the last time you were within a fortnight of losing everything, it was I who saved your arses.”
Eld’s groan was lost in the uproar that followed my words. I mouthed “whoops” to him and he buried his face in his hands. Weeks earlier, I’d started the first meeting we’d been part of by reminding the Board how much they owed us. It’d gone down like an overladen treasure galleon in hurricane seas, then and now. The rich don’t enjoy being reminded of their failures, but then again, neither did I.
“You’ve a guttersweep’s grace—” the Parliamentarian growled.
“Grace!” Eld’s shout cut off the sniping and brought every eye to him. His cheeks flushed. “That is to say,” he added in a milder tone, “we’ve news of the Doga. News you’ll want to hear.”
“News?” Lucrezia—a tall woman of Eld’s years, willow-thin, with a figure I’d never have, and perfectly curled brown hair that fell in unbraided waves down her sun-kissed skin—leaned forward. She was newly raised to the Board after her father’s unexpected passing and rarely spoke, but Eld always seemed to draw her out. Her eyes sparkled as she leaned toward him, her marriage hand hidden by an overlong sleeve. While others might wonder about her marital status, I knew she was single. So did Eld.
“We must hear your news, sirrah,” she said breathlessly.
Salina snorted softly and Eld’s cheeks burned brighter still. He stammered and gestured to me. “Buc?”
“Oh, that,” I drawled. “The Doga was nearly assassinated this very morn. It would have succeeded if not for yours truly. And Eld,” I added, nodding at him in acknowledgment.
“Always an afterthought,” he muttered, a smile ghosting his lips.
There was a sprinkle of murmured conversation around the room, but nowhere close to the hysterical outpouring I’d been expecting. I studied some of the faces nearest me. Interesting.
“You aren’t surprised,” I said.
“Fools try to kill the Doga every few years,” the Parliamentarian said. “It’s been that way ever since Servenza gave up our Grand Republic for a single ruler.” She made a small gesture with her hand, as if swatting at a fly. “Besides, the Doga is merely a pawn of the Empress.”
“Now, unless you and Eld wish to tell us all why you were at the Cathedral of Baol, treating with the Dead Gods, I suggest we move on to more pressing matters,” the Chair said.
“Not even a rat trusts itself to one hole,” I said. That they also knew where the assassination attempt had taken place told me they had spies everywhere—and spies fast enough to beat me back here with the news. The former, I’d known; the latter, I hadn’t. “You know my position on whoring ourselves out to Ciris,” I added, to offer a reason for our being there.
“And wouldn’t we be even greater whores if we treated with both the Dead Gods and Ciris?” someone from the middle of the table asked. There was a titter of laughter at that and I felt my cheeks burn.
“The Doga may be a pawn, but she’s still the Doga of Servenza,” I said, fighting and failing to keep the heat from my voice.
“Sambuciña is right.” The Chair’s voice, thin steel, cut through the room. I froze. The woman never agreed with me. Ever. I had Sin check I hadn’t dropped dead and he confirmed I hadn’t. My eyes burned with his magic and her features leapt forward so that she appeared a palm away from me. I saw a bead of sweat slick down the edge of her hairline. Her left eyelid twitched and her lips were pressed together in a way that told me she didn’t trust herself to say more.
The woman was the head of the most powerful trading company in the world and, depending on who you asked, second in power only to the Empress herself.
Yet she was clearly terrified by what I’d said.
Why?
“We are of Servenza, the most powerful city-state in the Empire, and to those outside these islands there is little difference between us, the Doga, and the Empress herself,” the Chair continued after a moment. “The Doga’s a pawn, true enough, but perception matters in the marketplace and given the recent … troubles, we can ill afford questions about our reach.”
There was truth to that: Servenza was the most powerful of the city-states in the Empire and the Company owed its beginnings to Servenza’s success. Or perhaps there was something more? The Chair had dozens of eyes and ears; all of the members did. My contacts were of the streets and while that was useful in some ways, they weren’t likely to tell me what hold the Doga might or might not have over the Company. Still, I did just save the Doga’s life. Possibilities raced through my mind. Delicious ones. Something caught my ear and I pulled myself out of the daydream and back to reality.
“The disturbances around the Tip are spreading,” Salina whispered as the Chair kept on, saying something about the need to remind the world who they owed their prosperity to.
I leaned forward; now this was something I might ken better. The far edge of Servenza tapered to a point and it was said all shit emptied out at the Tip. A rough Quarto, and I knew it like the scars on the back of my hand. Scars? I glanced at the teardrop marks on my hand, unable to remember where I’d picked them up.
“They are just sparks, so far, but our reports say that with murders nearly doubling since the fall and the gangs fighting for territory, they are catching.” Salina glanced at the parchment before her. “The Company shifted much of its operations farther west after your experiment went awry.”
“Burned to the ground, you mean,” I said. She nodded. “Moved our operations west?” She inclined her head again. “So,” I breathed, “right where the gangs are fighting.” That’s sure to be blamed on me. “Bloody great.”
“Then we are adjourned,” the Chair said loudly, interrupting our sidebar. She slapped her gavel lightly onto the table. “We’ll hold Congress again after the Masquerade on Midwinter’s Day.”
Everyone stood up, Lucrezia practically leapi
ng out of her seat, trying to catch Eld’s arm before he rounded the table to join me and I felt something twist in my stomach. He seemed politely confused at her attention, leaning down to catch whatever mindless flattery she was trying on him this time. The woman was harmless—I saw her fingers dance up Eld’s arm to his bicep—practically harmless. But she was an annoyance. The whole damned Board was an annoyance. As I stood up, trying to ignore the jealousy stuck in the back of my throat, a hand touched my shoulder. Spinning around, I caught the hand in a wrist lock; Sin caught me before I broke the offender’s wrist.
“Ow! Easy, Buc,” Salina said, trying to keep the pain from her voice. She pulled her hand free and smiled as if nothing at all was wrong. “The Chair would like a word with you.” She glanced past me to where Eld was trying to extricate himself from Lucrezia’s clutches. “Privately.”
“Sorry, ’Lina,” I said after swallowing the heat in my voice. “Startled me is all.”
“Aye, well, I’ll announce myself next time,” she said with a hollow laugh, rubbing her wrist. “You’d better go,” she added in a lower tone. “You’ve kept her waiting once already today, twice may make her explode.”
“Wouldn’t be the first woman I’ve had that effect on today,” I said absently. Salina stared at me but I shook my braid and stepped around her. The Chair awaited me at the head of the table with a smile on her lips that made me wish for one of my hidden blades.
4
“You know how to provoke, Sambuciña,” the Chair said. “Always pressing, reminding them”—she gestured at the now-empty table—“of who you are, where you came from. Keep it up and you’ll find yourself censured. The Parliamentarian was on the verge of calling for it when your hulking friend distracted her with your news.” She shook her hair, jewels chiming against one another in pitch with her voice. “I’m not sure what you’ve done to deserve him, but I can respect Eld. I can respect loyalty.”
The Justice in Revenge Page 2
