Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(69)

“No weapons inside. Drop them on the bar, you’ll get a number, and they’ll keep them locked up till you leave.” She smiled, suntanned skin crinkling like the lines on a river map, and led me to a seat. “Check your weapons and have a drink or see yourself out.”

I obeyed and traded my two knives for a ribbon with the number 247 looped over the end.

“You from down south?” my companion asked. She fixed herself a drink from the bar, winking at the barkeeper.

The barkeeper tossed a candied lemon slice at her.

“The coast.” I smiled and nodded. “Rath da Oretta.”

“Nanami Kita.” She crunched the lemon between her teeth. “Most here call me Nana.”

Neither of us was from Erlend or Alona then. I laughed and rubbed the back of my neck, copying one of the bashful musicians in the corner trying to talk their way into a free drink.

“I was looking to gamble, but…” I said and looked around like I was lost. Not a gambling table in sight.

“We’ve been known to have some of that.” She leaned in toward me, bringing the scents of salt and seaweed with her, and poured out a decent measure of a nutty-smelling clear liquor into a cup. She set it in front of me and topped it off with golden tea. “You like dice or chalk?”

“Dice.” I took a sip of my drink. She’d pulled it straight from the bar and couldn’t have poisoned it. The woody tea did nothing to cover up the smooth burn of the spirit. “Friend told me Quick Silver’s the place for it, but their tables look too good to be true.”

Nana scowled, twisting the scars carved around her crooked nose. “Quick Silver’s a den of thieves playing at riches. Don’t go there.”

“All right.” I poured more tea into my drink to ease it up. She was forceful. “That sounds like a good story.”

“Not a good one for most.” Nana flipped her short black hair from her eye. “They set up a few years back. Most of the place is travelers or people who’ve come looking for work, and they look it. House always wins if you look too poor to pay up.”

“Sorry luck.” I sipped my laced tea. Grell had done the same thing—pinpointed the cheapest looking of the lot, made sure they knew they’d have to pay interest on their debt if they lost, and then suddenly every gamble was unluckier and unluckier. Kept people paying up and earned you more than what they’d lost. And if they were poor? Defaulting left the house with a handful of options on how to collect, and none of them were fair.

I hated my few stints with his gambling rings. I’d moved onto mousing apartments and robbing coaches soon as I could.

Nana nodded toward the street. “That’s what my illustrious competition says.”

“Yours?” I turned to look. Thorn da Tonin, as bald and scarred as my note had promised, stepped out of a small covered coach and into the guarded door of Quick Silver. Even his horses were trimmed in the color.

“Part of it. Have to have somewhere to live when I’m not in Mizuho,” she said. “Does give me the added advantage of saying ‘drinks on me.’”

“Thank you.” I grinned despite myself. Mizuho—they were a friend of Our Queen’s, but I’d never met anyone from there. If Tonin was moving in on Mizuho’s business interests and being an ass about it, she’d probably be angry. “Owners here always stay in the building?”

“I do rounds when I’m here. Tonin gambles—it’s why he opened the hall—but he’s got business partners that run it,” Nana said. “He’s got a nice little garden where he gambles with friends. All of them owe him money, but he keeps them liquored up to make amends.”

So I wasn’t getting at him unless he played without guards or till they left.

I shrugged. “If you’ve got the money.”

She hummed in response and took my hand in hers, drawing a sharp little rune on my skin. The ink didn’t burrow like when magic had run free—how it still did outside of our nation’s borders—but I couldn’t stop my shudder. The meaning was there even if the magic wasn’t.

We were meant to sustain The Lady, not use her.

“Don’t.” Nana grabbed me before I could wipe it off. “It’ll get you downstairs to the tables. You get caught without one, my guards will break your fingers.”

“I don’t like magic.”

“It’s not magic here.” She dropped my hand.

I sucked in a breath and steadied myself, trying to maintain the easygoing calm I’d been using to get Nana to talk. I forced a smile.

If I looked it, eventually I’d feel it.

“Through that door, down, and to the left.” Nana nodded toward the shadowy back corner of the room. “You keep that rune on you.”

Slouched at the end of the bar, wrapped in a hooded cloak that half-hid his face and nursing an amber spirit, Nicolas del Contes raised his glass to me.

As if that answered any of the questions I had for him. I’d other things to think about besides him and his spying. He had to know I’d killed Seve, but he’d done nothing about it. That meant he and Our Queen approved, or he wanted Seve dead for some other reason.

Either way, no time for him tonight.

“Will do.” I slid out of my seat. “Thank you. I’m going to run back and tell my partner not to hit Quick Silver.”