“Did someone lay a deep trap for you or have they been following you close all along?”
“That’s it,” I agreed. “I’m going to have to be more careful in how I handle my informants moving forward.”
“I’ll handle them,” he suggested.
“No, you won’t, they’re mine.”
“But why?”
“Because.”
Because as strong as your arm is, mine’s stronger now. And my will’s always been the stronger. Would you have let a girl slip a blade between your ribs rather than hurt her? You almost let me once. I looked around the alley, at the half-dozen dead, and remembered the way those flames had leapt up as if to consume Eld’s soul. Because I can’t lose you.
“Because they are of the street and, for better or worse, so am I. But I’ll take you along if it makes you feel better,” I added.
“It does.”
I hid my smile at the realization I’d just hooked him into staying by my side. “You were right, Sin.” He perked up in my mind. “This was a good way to win him back. All it took was murdering some children.” I swallowed hard to keep the vomit in my throat down.
“They weren’t all children.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Self-defense is never murder,” Sin protested.
“Aye, but they never stood a chance against me, let alone Eld and me together. So good as.”
“Your problem, Buc, is you never know when to take what you have and be satisfied. Sometimes a win is a win, no matter the price.”
“Satisfied? What’s that?”
“I suppose dead drops are out,” Eld said, pulling me out of my head and away from Sin.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We can’t run all information through cyphers and letters?”
“We could if they taught street rats how to read,” I said. “But actually, that does give me a thought.” I forced myself to look at Quenta again. Her hair was as tangled as it had been the last I’d seen her, the blond stained red in places; with her eyes closed she looked as if she could have been related to Eld. Her remaining jacket sleeve—I’d torn the other off along with her arm—was a mess of blood and gore, but the inside of the jacket, which gaped open, was perversely blood free. I saw a bulge in her pocket and reached for it. Paper crinkled against my fingers. It was wrapped around something hard and I pulled the whole thing free.
“Not sure what to make of that,” Eld muttered.
“Neither am I,” I said, staring at the full lira in the palm of my hand. The paper was blank save for a single drawing.
Of a stiletto.
14
Eld and I cut through back alleys, moving at a quick walk to put distance between us and the bloody scene we’d left behind, sometimes sprinting when none could see us. The last thing we needed was to draw attention to ourselves. I was less worried about the Constabulary—they didn’t give a rancid olive for street toughs who ran out their luck on the end of a blade, and I had the Doga’s sigil coin to flash if it came to it—and more worried that whomever tried to kill us had others lurking around to finish the job. My limbs were a strange combination of mini jolts of lightning from adrenaline and numbness from Sin’s magic wearing off. I saw Quenta’s dead face whenever I blinked, so I kept my eyes open wide, staying ready for the next attack. This was the second time they’d failed and I’d a feeling they wouldn’t stop now.
“Whomever tried that was following us,” Eld said.
“Clearly,” I said, pausing at an intersection that formed a T. I kept my palm-length blade concealed against my wrist as Sin searched for enemies through my eyes. “Turns out offering coin to strangers is dangerous, Eld.” I glanced down the left-hand side, which was empty save for a pile of rotting fish guts and a scrap of cloth that likely belonged to a body. “Who would have thought?”
He snorted. “No one tried to kill us until we saved the Doga’s life yesterday, so that must have been what drew attention to us.”
“Someone really wants to see her dead,” I agreed. “And now us with her,” I added. “But careful in your assumptions there … recall I’ve been losing some of my little fish to blades for weeks now, long before we knew anyone was trying to assassinate the Doga. I thought it was the Dead Gods, but she’s one of their biggest supporters, so that’s out.”
“Wait,” Eld panted, catching his breath. “You thought the Dead Gods murdered your informants?”
I nodded, brushing my braids back over my left shoulder.
“Then why in the Gods’ names did we meet with them at Baol’s cathedral?”
“I wanted to see if they’d own it or what kind of liars they were if they lied about it,” I said. Pointing to the right, which was free of rancid fish and bodies, I added, “This way, c’mon.”
I darted forward, my clothes starting to stiffen from the piss, water, and blood I’d rolled through in the fight. Sliding to a halt, I felt Eld bump into me and step back as I peered around the corner and spotted the dark glimmer of a canal between two buildings. The Foreign Quarto lay just beyond … or we could double back and use the canals to go through the Tip toward Servenza proper.
“W-what kind of liars were they?” Eld asked, his lips close to my ear.
I suppressed a shiver and tried to focus. “The inscrutable kind,” I said. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No,” I said, watching the flow of traffic. Most of the passersby were foreigners. Some wore the dark furs of the north, thrown open at what they felt were mild temperatures; others, from the south, had piled on layers of thin woolens to form bulky jackets and still shivered in the chill. A northerner and a southerner were brawling while half a dozen others had stopped to exchange bets. Judging by the curses being hurled, it’d started as a religious disagreement and come around to a gambling opportunity. So … normal. The flows and eddies seemed natural, no would-be murderers lurking. Yet.
“Whatever incendiary that was they planned to use on the Doga was the same as the one that nearly took your eyebrows. Which rules out the Dead Gods. For now.”
“What about the ones who jumped us on the gondola? Don’t assume they’re of the same,” he added.
“Aren’t you the smart-arse.” I glanced back at him and frowned at his grin. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I added. “The real question is, do we keep chasing down this lead on the Gnats or try to figure out who turned Quenta and see what canal that takes us down?”
“Both,” Eld suggested.
“Both,” I repeated. I closed my eyes and Quenta stared back at me. It’s one thing to find someone killing my little fish, it’s another to gut them myself. “You’re not wrong. We have to find Govanti and see if anyone’s been whispering in his ear or slipping coin in his pocket.”
“Govanti?”
“The first little fish I hooked,” I reminded him. “When we returned this summer. He’s not so little, a few years younger than me. I watched him pick a woman’s pocket so smoothly she never felt his tug, and when I followed him back to the little cellar he calls home, I found five score or more empty purses he’d set up as trophies.”
“Damn,” Eld said.
“Indeed. We had a word about hoarding enough evidence to send him to the gallows without bothering with the judiciary, and ever since he’s been running my eyes and ears out of the Rock and the Mercarto. He was the one who heard about the last of mine who got their throat cut.”
“I’ll go,” Eld said.
“We’ll go together.”
“No.”
I opened my mouth to tell Eld where he could shove his head and he touched my arm.
“Buc, say what you want, but you just fought a girl you tried to save. What if instead of a coin Govanti reaches for a blade? What if he’s already been bought and is waiting for you? Does he know me?”
“He’d recognize you, but likely not right away,” I admitted.
“So let me go in your place. I won’t run your infor
mants,” he protested quickly, “but I can find out if he’s been turned and if he hasn’t, if others have been. I’ll keep my distance, watch him, and approach him in the open. That way if he’s planning something, he can’t spring it.”
I wasn’t sure I trusted Eld to have the subtlety required for what he proposed, but I could still feel the phantom shiver in my arm from the impact of stabbing Quenta to death and I wasn’t especially eager to repeat that with Govanti. I could do it, and I would if it came to it, but perhaps Eld was right.
“You’ll find him near where the canal cuts past the Painted Rock and Mercarto. You remember that bakery that called their muffins scones?”
Eld chuckled. “The one whose maestra threatened to throw you into the canal if you corrected her pastry naming one more time?”
I felt my mouth smile against my will. “Aye, that wench. His cellar is the next building over. He’ll be somewhere around there.”
“What’s he look like?”
He looks exactly like you must have when you were a lad.
“You’ll know him when you see him,” I said, avoiding Eld’s eyes. “He’s got blond hair just below his ears, pulled back in a half-arsed ponytail, pale skin that doesn’t tan, and if he ever grows into his shoulders he’s going to make the toughs think twice before trying him. Blue eyes and a broken nose,” I added.
Eld opened his mouth, paused uncertainly, and shook his head. “Where will you be?”
“Home, of course. I’ll take a gondola.”
“I’ll find you there later?”
I nodded and Eld squeezed my arm, started to say something, gave me another squeeze instead, and stepped out of the alley as if he’d been heading toward the canal all along instead of lurking in the shadows with me.
“You sent him away,” Sin whispered.
“Did I? Or did he want to leave?”
“You think he’ll find Govanti?”
“Of course,” I said, watching Eld go. I glanced at the now-dried blood on my fingers and realized I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to be alone either. I wanted a friend, but the only friend I had was walking away.
15
“Buc?” Salina looked confused for a moment, but hid it behind a smile. “Mara said it was you, of course, but I wasn’t expecting—is that blood on your clothes?”
“What?” I glanced down at the dark stain on my amber sleeve. “Oh that? Aye, someone tried to kill me.”
“K-kill you? Mara didn’t mention that. I’d heard there was another burglary at the Fortescues’, in the Blossoms, but that’s what they get for living on the edge of the Quarto. I never imagined…”
Salina glanced at the young man in livery holding the door open and rolled her eyes. “Come in, won’t you?” she asked in a tone sweet enough to give me a toothache.
I stepped over the marble threshold, into an expansive foyer glittering with gilded filigree that shone in the chandelier light. The space was large enough to fit our own foyer thrice with room to spare. Like so many aspects of life around the rich and powerful, it was meant to make you feel small, if you were fool enough to let it. Salina motioned for me to follow, already speaking commands in that absent way that I knew meant she was anything but absent.
“Will you tell Mara we’ll be in the east sitting room? We’ll want tea and biscuits and warm water to wash up afterward.”
The servant bobbed his head, but seemed inclined to dawdle until Salina sniffed. Then he practically ran.
“I’ll have to learn that trick for my maid.”
“Won’t work—she’s too old to give a shit,” Salina said. “Servants are like children or dogs, you’ve got to get your bluffs in early.”
“It was children.”
“It was children, what?” Salina asked. She paused in the brilliant fire-maple-floored hallway and studied me. “Are you all right?”
“Sure, and children that tried to kill me. In the streets,” I said, answering her in reverse order. “I killed them instead.”
“Gods’ breath,” Salina whispered. “Not a burglary, then. And Eld, was he with you?”
“Aye, but he’s gone now. At my suggestion, I suppose.” I snorted. “He didn’t protest, though.”
“Ah, I see.” Salina’s brown eyes were surprisingly soft, not a word I usually attributed to her. “Well, let’s go back to my sitting room, where there’s less chance of my servants eavesdropping and carrying the tale back to the Chair or whomever else is buying them off.”
“You think they’re spies?”
“I think they’re all spies,” Salina said. She motioned for me to follow and kept walking, skirts swishing loudly enough to mask our conversation in the narrow hall.
“That’s the trick to not having your life gossiped about in back hallways—treat them all as if they were carrying tales, although most of the older ones aren’t on the take … that’s another reason why gestures, harsh looks, and sniffs don’t work on them.”
I nodded and let the rest of Salina’s words wash over me. Despite trying to blackmail us this summer, she wasn’t that bad, as far as merchants and nobles went. They all loved to hear themselves talk, though, and she was as susceptible to that flaw as the rest. Still, I’d come here for that, in part—to let someone else fill the silence for me.
And because Eld left instead of insisting he stay by my side as he would have done, once.
This morning I thought I could take a more direct approach in ways the Doga and her ilk never could. After all, I grew up on those streets; I certainly understood them in ways the Doga never would. But today had shown me the truth: even if I understood them in theory, I didn’t know them anymore. It felt strange, like a dress that had shrunk in the washing and now didn’t fit quite right. Or like rereading a book you’d read as a child and finding that your memory didn’t match what was on the page. It’d been a few years since I let Eld rescue me, and time had changed all of us. Which meant I needed to be more careful, more discreet. Which will take more time. I felt my mouth twist at the thought, but there was nothing for it.
“What were you doing in the Tip?”
“What if I told you the Chair gave me a way out of being sent off after Midwinter’s Day?” I asked her.
“I’d call you a liar,” Salina said.
“What?” I took a gulp of my tea and cursed as it scalded my throat. “There goes tasting food for days,” I growled. I blew across the top of the purple porcelain cup and glared as she grinned. We were alone; the servant who had brought and poured the tea had left.
“What do you mean you’d call me a liar? Does the woman never change her mind?”
“Only when circumstance or others force her to. I don’t think you appreciate the levels to the woman, Buc. Now, the Chair can make an example of you,” Salina said, taking a cautious sip of her own brew. “We haven’t recovered as quickly from this summer as any of us would like and she needs a distraction, something to focus the Board on that will then trickle down to the shareholders at the next Company Congress.”
“Something like me,” I muttered.
“Aye, something like you.” She pursed her thin lips, bright with lipstick against her powdered cheeks, and made a noise in her throat. “You’re different, Buc, and they all know it, but none of them like being reminded of it. It’s like an oarlock that’s not quite symmetrical, so whenever you pull, there’s a bump that throws your rhythm off. It’s enough to irritate, not enough to stop you from reaching your destination.”
With her free hand, she adjusted her blond hair so her curls were off her shoulder. “And it’s not like you’ve done yourself any favors in reminding them at every opportunity that you aren’t like them.”
“Fuck the Board,” I said, setting my cup down.
“Precisely how the Chair expects you to act,” she agreed with a nod. “I often wonder what happened to that strange girl I hired to hunt down pirates and mages in fathomless seas.” Her smile wasn’t happy. “She’d never have played right in
to their hands like this.”
“‘Hired’ is an interesting name for it,” I told her. “That girl would have told you to fuck yourself,” I added. I sniffed. “She’s become a woman and that woman found out quickly how far acting like she came from the gutter got her in this society. You remember the first months I was back? What were they like before the Chair gave me the chance with the warehouse?”
“Aye, and what was that, Buc?” Salina sat forward, her eyes flashing. “An opportunity.”
“It was,” I agreed. “Until it caught fire and burned itself to the ground.” Somehow. “And burned my chances with it.”
“More than just your chance burned,” she said in a low tone. “Since then you’ve been a different woman.”
“You tell me I need to change and then hate what I’ve become?” I shook my hair, felt some of the dried blood caked there crack, and stopped. Salina had already grown queasy at the stain on my dress—if I tossed blood in her face, she might actually pass out. “You’re right. The Chair didn’t change her mind,” I said, taking a careful breath. This had to be handled delicately. “What if I don’t need the Board? Or the Chair?”
“W-what do you mean?” She straightened in her low-backed chair, the ancient dark wood creaking at her sudden shift.
“What if…” I paused, taking in, as if for the first time, the frescoes carved and painted into the walls of the cozy sitting room. There were scenes of Servenza in different seasons, with a few landmarks that pointed to a common theme throughout: power. The Kanados Trading Company, the Doga, and the Empress. In that order, but Servenza’s flag seemed to be brighter, to stand higher, than the rest. Meaningless symbolism to most, and maybe it had just been the artist’s own opinion, but I’d a hunch that no matter its relative prominence, that flag said something. The question was … did it say something of Salina? “What if I had a means of superseding the Chair such that I didn’t have to worry about her sending me away?”
The Justice in Revenge Page 11
