Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(71)

“For what I’ve done and what I’m about to do,” I said softly. The Lady’s stars were gone tonight, too pale against the lights of the city and palace. I backed up from the edge, eyes fixed on my future, on Tonin, and double-checked that my path was clear. “And everything that will come after.”





Forty-One


I landed hard on the roof of Quick Silver, stumbled forward, and rolled over my shoulder into Tonin. He opened his mouth to scream.

I shoved my fist into his mouth, knuckles caught in his teeth. He flailed and kicked, and I pinned him under me with my knees on either side of his chest. He howled.

I punched him. Hard. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp. I eased my hand from his teeth.

Bloody gouge marks lined my knuckles. I leaned back and rubbed the pain away, staring down at Tonin. Pau was a coward and opportunist, and he’d never fight Tonin or anyone head-on. He’d wait till they turned their back.

I couldn’t kill Pau, but I could trap him like they’d trapped me. I just had to make them think he’d killed Tonin.

The empty glasses rimmed with silver glittered in the moonlight. I pulled the long, dull stirring rod from one and rolled Tonin onto his stomach. He moaned, fingers drifting toward his head, and I sat back down on top of him, pinning his arms with my knees. I glanced around and saw nothing better to use as a weapon, so I raised the rod. Pau hadn’t carried a knife. He would kill someone with whatever was on hand.

And he could get a lucky hit.

“What?” Tonin slurred the word, still trying to grab his bruised temple.

“Shush.” I pulled his signet ring from his finger. “You won’t even notice.”

I lined the rod up beneath the base of his skull and jammed it through his neck. He didn’t even twitch.

Dripping blood and sweat, exhaustion tugging at my bones, I rose from Tonin and tucked the stirrer into my pocket.

Dead.

My mark was dead. I hadn’t been caught, and I’d injured no one else. My final test for Opal had come and gone, and here I stood, one step closer to Shan de Pau and all the other bastards who’d buried Nacea in shallow graves and political nonsense. They’d finally have to pay up what they owed.

And it was going to be so easy.

I ripped the purse from Tonin’s belt. He wore silver cosmetic dust on his face, sparkling in the night like some wayward star, and I smeared some across Pau’s credit coins before stuffing them in the bag. I knocked over Tonin’s glass and upended Pau’s chair too. He’d be panicked.

A drunken brawl over gambling gone too far. A sudden stabbing. A frantic escape.

Careful not to step in the blood or wine, I made my way back to the edge of the roof. Every now and then, people and guards moved through the alley between Quick Silver and the building I’d leapt from. I shimmied down one of the decorative beams and waited for my path to clear.

The guards and crowds were none the wiser. I shoved my bloodied gloves into a pocket and straightened my clothes. Just had to find Shan de Pau.

A street kid that looked like me—young, dirty, racing away from a drunk man screaming about a missing purse—rammed into me as I turned a corner, and I grabbed her arm. “You want to make some money?”

She eyed me through a filthy fringe of hair and nodded.

“You seen Shan de Pau? Guards are looking for him.” I slipped her one of the clean coins from Tonin’s stash.

She turned the coin over in her palm, glancing from my hands to my face. At least the darkness hid the bloodstains on my clothes.

“Fancy inn with gold letters.” She shoved me in the right direction. “You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.”

I grinned and took off, the wind at my back and joy coursing through my veins. This was as good. They’d trapped me, but I always find a way out.

The inn where he was staying was bright and welcoming, shutters thrown open in half the rooms and flickering candlelight breaking through the cracks. Pau, a silhouette more cliff face than nose, paced behind the half-shuttered window of a room spanning the entire upper corner of the building. Of course he had the largest, fanciest room. I scaled the building next door.

I waited for him to settle and snuff out his lights. Safe in the darkness, I made the short jump to the inn and balanced on the large sill sticking out from Pau’s window. No one shouted at the clatter and the sill barely creaked. I nudged open the window.

A soft, fluttering snore met my ear. I held back a groan of disgust and slipped into the room. I laid still on the floor, listening to the footfalls in the hall and steady breaths coming from the bed, and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Pau’s merchant pins—of course he’d more than one—rested on the bedside table. A guard’s thick heels paced beyond the crack at the bottom of his door.

People depended too much on doors and guards.

Pau’s chest rose and fell. I crawled toward him in an awkward half-slither and pulled out Tonin’s coin purse. Dirt and dried blood crumbled to the floor, making a nice little pile of evidence next to Pau’s boots. I dropped the bloodied stirring rod into one like a drunkenly hid secret. Pau didn’t move.

I peeked over the edge of the bed. He’d a face that might’ve been handsome—large eyes closed and full lips open—if my hatred weren’t clouding my vision. He was well taken care of with smooth unburned skin. All of it was paid for with money he’d robbed from corpses.