Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(70)

“As you should. Bring them. I’ll be at the fights. My partner’s up tonight.” She gestured for me to turn. A muscular woman entering the building flipped her braid over her shoulder and waved. She was my sort—a street fighter’s stance even in the middle of a crowded bar. “You look like you could throw some hits?”

“I’ll stick to dice.”

“Suit yourself.” Nana sighed, touching her fingers to her lips and flicking them away. Her hand fluttered to her chest. “Luck on your side.”

“Thanks.” I nodded to her partner, who was returning Nana’s hand signal with a love-eyed look. “And on hers.”

I collected my weapons, downed the last of my drink—bad luck to leave a gift unused—and headed to Quick Silver.

Tonin could have some more fun. I could wait.





Forty


Quick Silver was a cacophony of Erlenian and clattering credit coins styled to look like real pearls. Drawling vowels as inaccessible and inescapable as nobles filled my ears. I was so tired of it.

How could people put so much loathing in their words?

The guards charged a single copper tooth to let people in, and I circled the building with a scowl. The windows were distorted glass.

Useless.

The buildings around Quick Silver though were all tall fancy inns and eating houses—easier to keep your gamblers close. I snuck up the side of a white plaster building down the street—no guards and all the windows closed—and crawled onto the roof. The roof gardens were as expansive as the ones on the palace grounds, but these were filled with snap peas, garlic stalks, basil, and dozens of other everyday needs. I tiptoed around a trellis draped in huckleberries and stepped over the thin gap between the buildings.

Cities were the best for robberies. There was always noise to cover your tracks and alternate routes to get where you needed. I perched on the roof next to Quick Silver.

And these rooftop gardens were growing on me.

Tonin had a monstrously expensive garden with white and gray flowers blooming around the edge and silver furniture for his players. The table was dead center and framed by four chairs with cloud-shaped cushions. Tonin lounged on one with a stance entirely too relaxed for someone betting coin they cared about. His partner was ramrod straight and overcompensating, fancy slippers tapping out his nerves on the rooftop. The pair shared a pitcher of bloodred wine muddled with orange slices. Tonin downed the last of his glass, drizzled honey across the bottom, and poured himself another.

Good. Tonin was big, and he’d be easier to kill drunk. I didn’t want a fair fight with anyone who’d forearms big as my thighs. The pair of them gambled more, drank more, and traded enough boring business chatter to put me to sleep. I spun one of my knives in my fingers, straining to hear anything of use. The only words loud enough to hear clearly were curses.

Lady, if this was what being Opal was like, I was in for a lifetime of boredom.

“You rat!” Tonin’s partner tossed his dice into a carpet of woolly thyme. “No chance they’re not weighted.”

Tonin snorted. “You brought them.”

I leaned forward, drawing my feet up and rising to my toes on the edge of the wall. Finally, something to do.

Tonin rose, muttering the whole time. The other man tossed a handful of credit coins—wood carved with his name and symbol as a promise he’d pay up—onto the table and downed the last of his drink. He straightened the merchant guild pin on his hat.

I leaned over the roof, hiding in the shadows as one of the predictable guards passed beneath me. “Come on. Leave.”

Tonin’s partner turned.

Shan de Pau looked as well fed and fancy on this roof as he did on his business posters.

Shan de fucking Pau. The man who’d sold Nacean goods while they were still warm and bloodied was Tonin’s business partner. And I couldn’t kill him.

I rammed my fists into my thighs, pain biting through the rage howling at me to follow Shan de Pau, rip him limb from limb, and sell the pieces like he’d done to us. He’d no right to still be standing. I groaned and wrapped my arms around my head.

This was worse, so much worse than Seve, who’d been right there. I’d made it an accident, but this was a trap. They were making sure I wouldn’t kill him.

But why shouldn’t he die? Why should he get to walk free when so many were dead? Homeless? Starving?

They’d trapped me. The Left Hand knew. They had to know what he’d done—everyone knew—and they’d let him stand. Now they were luring me into their complacency. But why?

Tonin gathered up the credit coins Pau had tossed aside. Pau vanished through the door.

More money exchanged hands.

Money.

We’d so little farming land left intact after the war that Our Queen had bought extra food from across the sea. She’d needed money.

But, Lady, the cost of it. There had to be more—there had to be—because she wouldn’t sign away the murder of thousands so easily, not when she’d fought so hard to save everyone. There was more to it, and it was on Pau. Filth or not, he’d something she needed.

But he wouldn’t for much longer.

I leapt to my feet and shook out my arms. He wouldn’t live with it much longer because I knew where he was, and he wasn’t going to live with it comfortably. Pau would pay. I’d make sure of it. As the ache in my chest grew with each step he took down the street, I gripped the trellis next to me to keep from chasing after him. Blackberries and thorns crushed under my palm. I let my blood fall to the garden beneath me.