by Martha Carr
The drow man turned his gaze to Cheyenne and looked her slowly up and down. His golden eyes blazed in contrast with the dark kohl smeared across his eyelids and beneath his lower lashes, and a line of white paint ran down the center of both his dark-gray lips. “I don’t imagine you do, though.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Excuse me?”
“Have a gentle touch.” He bit his bottom lip, and the white paint stayed where it was. “I prefer something a little rougher.”
Okay, am I imagining it, or is the drow Captain Jack Sparrow coming onto me right now? Cheyenne eyed him sideways. “Look, whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not gonna work.”
He tilted his head to the other side, his gaze roaming all over her face. “What am I trying to do?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have no idea, or I’d make you cut it out.”
“Too bad. I would have enjoyed that.”
Despite the weirdness of his gaze on her, Cheyenne couldn’t help a tiny smirk. Lamest pickup lines ever, but he’s not even smiling. Can’t say I’m not a little into it.
“Uh-huh.” She looked him over in turn and jerked her chin at him as she turned away. “We have browsing to do.”
“What do you seek?” He glanced quickly at Ember, who’d watched the entire interaction with a grimace of disgust.
“We can find it ourselves, thanks.” Cheyenne raised her eyebrows and stepped past him, looking at the piles of darkseller oddities without a single clue as to what any of it was. Don’t touch anything, and don’t ask for help. I’ve screwed up enough times to know not to go against advice like that.
“Or you could accept my assistance when I give it.” The drow man turned slowly after her but stayed where he was. “And perhaps a lowered price. Depending on what it is, of course.”
Ember blinked. “This is your shop.”
“Occasionally.” He tapped his fingers on the center counter and turned his head toward the fae girl, though his eyes never left Cheyenne, even as she kept her back turned to him. “R’leer.”
Cheyenne thought, Look at that.
“Well.” She turned back to him and folded her arms. “Where’s your flesh-setter hide, then?”
R’leer moved slowly toward her, the bone strings swaying with his hair and clacking against the rings of metal and leather wrapped around his throat. He stopped inches in front of Cheyenne and leaned toward her, staring at her lips. He reached around her, barely brushing her folded arms, and felt through the items on the counter behind her before slowly lifting a coil of something between them.
Cheyenne raised an eyebrow. “I need two.”
The drow man’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he invaded her personal space one more time to retrieve a second. Then he held both coils between them and took a long, slow inhale.
Dude’s all up in my bubble, staring at me and smelling me like Neros did, and I’m okay with it. What the fuck is happening right now?
“Anything else?” R’leer whispered.
“No.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “That’s it.”
“Forty-five veréle for both.” He finally stepped back to look her up and down again. “Normally, I charge thirty for just the one.”
“Gotta love a half-off sale.” For the first time, someone’s making me pay for magical ingredients. If he knows who I am, he doesn’t give a shit.
Behind the weirdly intriguing drow shop-owner, Ember snorted and tried to cover it with a forced cough. R’leer tilted his head at Cheyenne and waited for her to hand over the payment.
She couldn’t look away from the golden eyes locked on hers. Or maybe I don’t want to. “Em.”
“Huh? Yeah?”
“You have the veréle.”
“Right.” Ember pulled Venga’s veréle case out of her pocket and struggled again to open the latch.
R’leer turned slowly away from Cheyenne to study the fae, tilting the two coils of flesh-setter hide up and down in his hand.
“Need some help?” Cheyenne asked.
“No, Cheyenne.” The case popped open. “I got it.” Ember squinted at the thin cards of O’gúleesh money and let her activator translate the runes so she knew how much to pull out. “Okay. He said forty-five?”
“I did.” R’leer turned to eye Cheyenne again, biting down one more time on his bottom lip.
Could be a tattoo. You never know over here. Cheyenne studied the drow man’s morbid headdress and the swooping strands of bones and multiple leather-like loose collars around his neck. When she glanced at the flesh-setter hide in his hand, she almost cracked a smile at his black-painted nails. Well, look at that.
“Here you go.” Ember floated awkwardly forward and thrust a handful of the plastic-looking veréle toward R’leer. “Forty-five.”
He didn’t look away from Cheyenne but held out his other hand. As his fingers closed slowly around the stack, he handed the flesh-setter hides to Cheyenne and tilted his head. She’d seen that look before the day she’d met L’zar face to face, her drow-thief father behind bars and her shoulder burning from the unhealing wound of a skaxen dipshit’s black-magic sludge.
Like a hungry dog looking at a steak. Big difference between what L’zar wanted from me and what I bet this drow would do.
She took the coils of flesh-setter hide, lifted them in front of her, and dipped her head. “Thanks.”
“Any time. I’ll see you soon.”
Those words broke the tension, and Cheyenne gave a wry laugh. “Yeah, we’ll see.”
She stepped past him, holding his gaze until he was behind her. “Come on, Em. Time to go.”
“Uh-huh.” Ember glanced between her friend and the creepy drow man staring after Cheyenne like she was a rare item he could acquire and put on display in his darkseller shop. She shoved the veréle case back into her pocket and turned to follow the halfling toward the door. When she glanced over her shoulder one last time, he was still there, the fingertips of one hand pressed lightly on the center countertop. R’leer widened his eyes at her, and she slapped at the curtain of strung bones to hurry through them after Cheyenne.
R’leer turned his head toward where the drow woman Cheyenne had stood against his shelves and sniffed the air. In my shop. Interesting.
He waited beside the center counter piled high with displays of rare and in some cities illegal items he’d procured over the last three hundred years in case she decided to return. She didn’t, and after a quick scan of the dark windows lining the front of his shop, R’leer headed toward one of the darker recesses in the back.
The magicals he employed to keep the place running for him and who dealt with the unsavory clients he didn’t want dirtying his hands met his gaze and nodded as he passed. Gyla grunted and lowered herself onto the worn, ratty fabric of the armchair that had become something of a throne for the ogre woman in this establishment. She closed her eyes and didn’t say a word as R’leer passed her and turned into a dark, smoke-filled alcove.
Sitting on a pile of rank, dusty pillows, the Oracle crone Ur’syth puffed on a pipe hose, the other end of it attached to a burning bowl of Goldsmile R’leer had personally acquired for her. The crone’s black-painted face scrunched in on itself as she looked at him, then she blew a stream of thick white smoke and nodded toward the front of the shop.
“You know who she is, Darkchild?”
R’leer nodded and turned to lean against the outer wall of the alcove beside the crone’s hiding place. “L’zar’s daughter.”
Ur’syth took another long drag from the pipe, then turned her wrinkled face to the ceiling and opened her blood-red mouth. She puffed four bursts of smoke into the air above her, which coalesced a four-pointed star rising to the ceiling before the shape disappeared.
“Stay away from that one.” White smoke puffed around the crone’s toothless gums, filtering out of her wrinkled, black-painted lips as she spoke. “She’s got the Weave all over her and can’t even see it.”
R’leer glanced briefly down at the bu
rning dish of Goldsmile nestled in the Oracle’s lap. Then he returned his gaze to the front of his shop to scan the passing shapes of Hangivol’s more darkly inclined magicals passing by in the narrow avenue of the bazaar. “I know.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cheyenne and Ember hurried out of the bazaar. The wall beside the Goldsmile den emitting puffs of hazy white smoke unfolded at a wave of the halfling’s hand, then they were in the tunnel again. The low murmur of the darksellers inviting O’gúleesh into their shops of black magic and macabre supplies cut off as soon as the door sealed behind them, and Cheyenne burst out laughing.
Ember stared at her with wide eyes. “I don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what, Em?” The halfling’s activator lit the shortest path through the city’s lower levels and back to the fortress since she knew where she wanted to go. She stuck the flesh-setter hides in her coat pocket and stared straight ahead.
“Whatever that was.” Now that they were out of the bazaar, Ember finally loosened up and cracked a smile. “I mean, I get it. Everyone’s intrigued by the ex-Crown Black Flame, but come on. That drow took it way too far.”
“He didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, but he wanted to.” Ember laughed. “And you didn’t do shit to stop him.”
“Nothing to stop, Em.”
“Uh-huh.” The fae folded her arms and followed her friend to the first turn in the tunnel. “Or maybe you didn’t want to stop him.”
“Whatever.”
“Oh, my God. Cheyenne Summerlin has a crush on a bone drow dressed up like some kind of witch doctor.”
Cheyenne cast her friend a sidelong glance, trying to look annoyed, but a tiny smile crept through. “Okay. You have to admit all the bones were weirdly hot.”
“No.” Laughing again in surprise, Ember shook her head. “No, I don’t have to. You do. The guy was wearing makeup, Cheyenne.”
“So?”
“And he got all up in your personal space. You stood there staring at him, and I thought the world was ending.”
Cheyenne scoffed. “What?”
“Look, if anyone else had looked at you like that and practically pressed you up against a counter, you would’ve splattered their brains all over the wall.”
“Whoa. Jeeze. To be clear, I’ve never splattered anyone’s brains anywhere.”
Ember pointed at her. “Not for lack of trying, right?”
Cheyenne shook her head but couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. “We needed the flesh-setter hide. That’s it. I wasn’t about to jeopardize that because one drow got a little too close.”
“One creepy-hot drow. Your words, not mine.”
“I said, ‘weirdly,’ Em.”
“Yeah, well, he creeped me the fuck out. So did you, playing right into his dark vibe.”
“I didn’t play into anything except for getting what Venga sent us to get. That’s it.”
“Uh-huh.” Ember looked her friend up and down and chuckled. “It’s totally fine, Cheyenne. Just admit it. You went all melty for a drow darkseller wrapped in bones and feathers.”
“Going melty, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, isn’t on my priority list right now.” Cheyenne stuck her hands in her pockets and ran her fingers over the coils of flesh-setter hide. “He got my attention, that’s it. And now we’re out here.”
Ember narrowed her eyes as she stared at the halfling’s profile. “You’re thinking about going back, aren’t you?”
“Come on. You’re making way too big a deal out of this.”
“No, I don’t think I am. Hey.” The fae grabbed Cheyenne’s shoulder, and they stopped in the empty, dimly lit tunnel. “Promise me you won’t go back there by yourself to flirt with the bone drow.”
“That wasn’t flirting.”
“Right. Like you know anything about how drow flirt.” Ember’s crooked smile grew, then quickly faded again. “I’m serious. Promise?”
“Yeah, Em.”
“Say it.”
“I promise.” I won’t go back there to flirt with R’leer. But if I happen to need something else only a darkseller with my kinda style has in his shop... Cheyenne nodded at the end of the tunnel. “Now, can we drop this and get back to the necromancer? We’re not gonna heal the blight by standing here philosophizing about drow courting rituals, okay?”
Ember barked a laugh and took her hand off Cheyenne’s shoulder and they continued up the tunnel. “You say that like we’re talking about exotic birds, or…” She swallowed thickly. “Fuck. That bird.”
“He had some weird shit in there, that’s for sure.”
“What kind of living thing calms down by being strung up with a wire around its neck?”
“A starjaw, apparently.” Cheyenne shrugged. “I mean, I kinda get it.”
Ember choked in surprise and stared at her friend. “Please don’t tell me you’re into the whole strangulation thing. I don’t think I could handle that.”
“No! I’m just saying everybody has their own thing. Like for me, I’m in my happy place when I’m either hacking into a system that doesn’t want me there or bashing loyalist faces in trying to get their shit off the streets. It’s all relative.”
“Different strokes. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yeah. And that bird just wants to be hung by the neck and stroked down its belly.”
They both laughed, and Cheyenne’s activator lit a doorway on their left for a potential shortcut from the lower level toward the center of the city.
“This way.”
“Right into the wall, huh?”
“Come on, Em.” Cheyenne flicked her fingers at the illuminated code on the wall, and it rearranged itself to open onto an ascending staircase. “That shouldn’t surprise you by now.”
Ember studied the open doorway even as the halfling stepped through to climb the stairs. “It does when I still can’t see half the damn doors before you open them.”
“Well, then hurry up before it closes.”
With a jolt, Ember floated quickly up the stairs, slipping through the doorway before it folded back into place and sealed up without a trace behind her.
They made quick time back up through the city toward the Crown’s fortress. Most of the passages lit by Cheyenne’s activator were empty, though they passed two different groups of magicals huddling in the dark recesses for private conversations and transactions they didn’t want anyone to see. Some of them thumped fists to chests when they recognized the Black Flame, but no one said anything.
Cheyenne wouldn’t have noticed anyway. She was too busy thinking about R’leer and the way he’d looked at her. What he’d said.
“I don’t imagine you do, though. Have a gentle touch. I prefer something a little rougher.”
The next tunnel let them out in a different alley between high buildings in the inner circle, and Cheyenne ran a hand through her hair, ignoring the stares and knowing smiles cast her way by Hangivol’s resident drow. Flirting or not, R’leer was after something. It’s one thing to make a sale. That’s his job, and I’d bet everything I have that he knows who I am and that I wasn’t the Crown for more than twenty minutes. So if he’s not going after the power I don’t really have, what the hell does he want? What else does he know?
She moved on autopilot through the twisting halls of the fortress, vaguely aware that Ember was talking to her. R’leer’s gaze and the way he’d studied her took up the forefront of her mind and wouldn’t leave her alone.
“Hey. Hello?” Ember stopped and stuck her hands on her hips. “Cheyenne.”
“What?” Blinking, the halfling glanced around and found her friend six feet behind her. “What’s up?”
“Have you been off in your own world this whole time?”
She shrugged with a small, sheepish smile. “Maybe.”
“Yeah, I could tell.”
“Sorry, Em. Just turning over a bunch of stuff, you know?”
“Uh-huh.” Ember pointed at the doors in
to Venga’s lab at the end of the hall. “Think you can get your head back in the game before we head into the necromancer’s lair again?”
“Lair.” Cheyenne snorted, then wiped the smile off her face and nodded. “Yep. I’m good. We’re in blight-healing mode.”
“Okay, good.” Ember glanced at her as she floated past and pointed to her own mouth. “You’re drooling a little, by the way.”
“What? No, I’m not.” Cheyenne quickly wiped the corner of her mouth, but there was nothing there. Her friend’s laughter echoed down the corridor. “Yeah, very funny.”
“Just trying to keep you on your toes.” Ember waited for the halfling to join her, then they pushed open the doors and stepped inside.
Venga hovered over the same workbench on the left-hand wall as if they hadn’t left. He didn’t turn to look at them as he mixed and poured with two hands and cast a long, complicated spell with a third. He reached his fourth hand toward the girls and grunted. “Do tell me you returned with what I asked for.”
“Yep.” Ember handed the necromancer’s veréle case to Cheyenne, and the halfling stepped forward to place that and the two coils of flesh-setter hide into Venga’s open palm.
He stopped working and stepped away from the table, thrusting the case back into his jacket pocket as he studied the flesh-setter hide. “Hmm.”
“What’s wrong?” Cheyenne folded her arms. If that drow handed me something I didn’t ask for to get me to come back, I’m done playing nice.
“Nothing.” Venga slipped a sharp black claw beneath the copper coils wrapped around the first coil of flesh-setter hide and sliced neatly through them. “These are fresh. Far more potent than I expected.”
The flesh-setter hide crumbled in his hand when he crushed it violently. A sharp, bitter tang filled the air, and Cheyenne wrinkled her nose. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“It means you bought more than we needed. If this trial isn’t successful, though I’m certain it will be, you won’t have to return and waste any more of our time.”
“Hey, we didn’t waste anything,” Ember said. “We were in and out of there.”
