NOTHING ILLUSTRATED A thief’s predicament quite like watching his partner get fed to dogs. All to the tune of the laughter of the gangsters they’d robbed, whose senses of humor proved fouler than the rotten slaughterhouse stink in the air.
Josiah Starling licked his lips and tried not to vomit.
Thomas, his friend and partner, a big brawler of a man, kicked and screamed profanities as a man called Skoren carved tender bits off for the hounds. Thomas dangled by his wrists from chains thrown through a rafter overhead, his toes brushing the hay strewn floor of the rundown cattle pen. Powerless to escape, but lively enough to make the whole affair entertaining.
Skoren. That was a problem—a deadly one. Handsome, easy-going, good-natured. And because of that, people underestimated the mad fucker all the time. If you didn’t know he was a murderous devil, you’d never have guessed it over evening ale. Starling had himself misjudged that one. To disastrous effect.
Skoren had one question. And even in the asking, it seemed rhetorical. “Where’s my gold, Starling?”
Every carefully prepared lie evaporated in the face of those four words, taking with them Starling’s hope in kind. No tiptoeing around it then. No doubt why they were here.
There was a reason the question sounded rhetorical. He didn’t have the money and he had no idea where to get it. He knew this, and the murderous gangster with the bloody knife knew it. All the chuckling scoundrels in the room seemed to know it too. Everyone except for Thomas, that was. That poor bastard knew just enough to get fed to the dogs. Sure, he had plenty of his own sins to answer for, but this wasn’t one of them.
Skoren’s wicked little knife flicked and sliced Thomas’s nostril like splitting an orange peel.
The man jerked and sputtered. “Give him the fucking coin, Starling!” Thomas’s chest heaved, and his eyes went wide and wild like a terrified horse.
“Oh, he can’t,” Skoren said, poking butcher-like fingertips along Thomas’s bare skin looking for what he might slice off next. “Tell him why you can’t, Starling.”
The thief gave a nervous laugh taking in the dilapidated room. There were eight of them. Eight gangsters he’d robbed, one by one, now accompanied by their favorite goons. The only door, guarded. Skoren, with his smile and his knife, made nine. “I wish I knew what was going on here. But, I don’t.”
Skoren tapped the back of the little blade against the single gold ring on his index finger in a thoughtful tempo. Tink, tink, tink. Then he nodded, straightening his bloody apron. “All right then. Here. I’ll help.” He snicked the blade through the middle of Thomas’s nipple and the man screamed in fresh agony. The gangster waited for his convulsion of pain to calm before he continued. “Do you remember a raven-haired beauty, a singer and dancer come to us from the deserts of Valasega? Your partner had such a shine for her.”
The simmering hate rising in Thomas’s eyes said that he did. Her name came out a growl. “Sadene.”
“I lost no less than nine thousand kingsmark to Sadene and Starling here,” Skoren said, prodding a spot he considered for dog fodder before deciding to move on to some other target. “How did I lose all that money, Starling?” He looked over his shoulder at the nervous thief. “How did you lose all that money?”
“I wish I could tell you,” Starling replied, cold dread tightening his voice. Skoren knew. The bastard knew.
The gangster turned back to his work. “See, I actually believe that. You have no fucking idea where my gold is. You have no fucking idea where Sadene is.”
“I don’t,” Starling admitted. Even then, in the face of a far worse fate than a broken heart, his stomach knotted at the thought of her.
Skoren looked up at his current victim as if sharing a companionly understanding. “This is what happens when you try to run a con above your weight. The conman gets conned.”
Thomas glared at his partner. “Did your cock get us killed?” he snarled, spittle flying from his bloody lips.
Chuckles, hoots, and jeers circled the gathering of gangsters. Starling felt every insult, every barb, every mocking chuckle like a jab to somewhere tender. That place where he stored what little remained of his pride now bled out like a slit pig in the stockyard mud. “Not exactly,” he replied.
Skoren perked up, a man eager to contradict. “Oh. Yes. That’s exactly what got you killed, actually.”
“You little cunt!” Thomas growled bucking against his bonds. The fit made the rafter overhead creak and groan, bringing with it a wretched shower of grime and old rat shit. The sweet stink of it filled the stale air. Starling could taste it.
Skoren whistled a happy tune and sliced off Thomas’s left ear with the knife, sending the man into a fresh fit of screaming. He tossed the severed bit to the slavering dogs at his back, and they snarled and fought over it in a clatter of rusty chains.
Skoren gave the poor bastard a moment to regain his composure and turned to Starling, wiping the bloody blade clean on his apron hem. “Let’s make an accounting, shall we?”
Starling shrugged, then nodded helplessly. He was in no position to argue.
Skoren gestured around the dank pit of the abandoned slaughterhouse. “Everyone in this room is out coin to you and Sadene. Only one of you is here to answer for it.”
Starling took in the gathered cabal, eight notorious gangsters from the city’s underbelly. Eight horrible ways to die, plus whatever Skoren might have in store for him once he was done carving up poor Thomas.
“Who started your little shell game?” Skoren asked. “Was it you? Or was it Sadene?” Starling was slow to respond, so Skoren answered for him. “It was Sadene, wasn’t it? Because no offense, Starling, you’re not that clever.”
Starling raised his hands in surrender. “Is there anything I can do to make this right?”
“Do you have my money?”
“I don’t.” And he didn’t. Sadene had robbed him as blind as they together had robbed everyone else.
“Then, no.” Skoren motioned to one of his goons lurking in the corner, and the man came forward with a familiar set of saddle bags. Starling’s saddle bags. “Pour it out,” he ordered.
The thug turned the bags out onto the filthy floor and came up with a collection of coin purses. Nothing else. None of Starling’s other belongings. Just six bags of coins, ones he thought he’d had carefully stashed in six secret locations. Apparently not so secret after all.
Skoren came over and squatted over the pile of purses and saddle bags. Then, picking up each one, he nicked them open with his knife and let the coins spill out into the pile. Gold kingsmarks, silver drakes, bent pennies, and tineyes clinked and clattered to the floor in a spreading pool.
“Two hundred forty-seven kingsmarks, seven drakes, thirty-one shill,” Skoren declared, waving his hand over the pile like a presenter at a carnival. “I believe this is every penny left to your name.”
Starling nodded. No sense in denying it. “Yessir.”
Skoren picked through the coins with the point of his knife. “That’s a lot less than what you owe us.”
Again, there was no sense in denying it. “Yessir.”
“But, not an inconsiderable sum. Enough for a man to drink and whore for a year. If his tastes aren’t too refined, anyway.” Smiling, the gangster looked around the room at his associates. “Does anyone so owed wish to make a claim on good Starling’s last fortune?”
Chuckles of amusement. Little more.
Starling felt his heart sinking, and he fought to keep it from turning to piss running down his leg.
But Skoren shrugged. “Well. Good fortune for you then, Starling.”
The thief blinked in confusion. “Beg pardon?”
“You can keep it.”
Starling didn’t know how to respond. So, he held his tongue.
“You have five gates and two harbors to choose from. If you can get out of Peregos alive, this is yours to keep.” Skoren smiled. Like a friend. Like a man who wasn’t kneeling there with a wicked knife and bloody hands. He picked through the pile of coins and took up nine kingsmarks. He tossed one to each of his conspirators and tucked the last one into the pocket of his apron. Then he winked. “There. If there was any question, now we’re all cashed out. The remainder is yours.”
Again, snickers from the gaggle of gangsters.
Starling swallowed the lump bobbing up and down in his throat. “If I can get out of Peregos alive?”
“Yes.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Starling wondered aloud before he could stop himself. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t know what the game was, but he couldn’t believe these esteemed murderers would let him out of the room alive, let alone the city.
“By whatever means suits you,” Skoren replied. “Donkey cart. Row boat. Boot leather. Whatever carries you away from here.”
The fear, the rioting paranoia, it got the better of him. “But?” Starling asked, a pained hitch in his voice.
Skoren’s smile turned unfriendly, altogether sinister. “But.” He rose and walked his knife through bloody fingers with the deft touch of a bard at his lute. “How long since my men scooped you up? Half an hour or so?”
Starling nodded.
“Well, then that means every cutthroat in the city has a half hour lead on tracking you down.” The glittering knife stopped, and Skoren used it to point to the pile of coins. “And there is the bounty on your head. The sum welcome to be kept by whoever puts a miserable end to you. Or the prize you win for surviving. Whichever comes first.”
Starling’s heart skipped and skittered in his chest. His mind raced, events moving too fast and chaotically to snatch hold of, like trying to catch sparrows in an attic.
“Fly fast, Starling,” Skoren said, turning his attention back to his work on poor Thomas. “The word on the bounty has been out for a while now. Time isn’t waiting for you.” The hungry dogs began to whimper and growl in anticipation as their master moved back toward the meat.
Hands trembling, stomach clenching, Josiah Starling scooped the coins out of the grimy rushes and ran for his life, while Thomas’s screams, the baying of hounds, and the laughter of killers echoed after him.
THINGS HAD NOT always been so desperate. Not so long ago, Starling was up and coming in the underworld of Peregos. He had built his own crew, surrounded himself with real talent. Inside a year they went from small time to taking real scores. People who mattered were beginning to take notice. Admittedly, Starling had always been more of an idea man. Much of the heavy lifting, the day to day, he’d left to Thomas, who was now feeding the dogs, and to Maeda, who was running the crew in his increasing absence.
Now, he was cowering in the ass-end of a rundown stable not a block from where Skoren’s men had turned him out onto the street. Wondering if he’d live to see the next block over.
You can’t just sit here and die, he thought, his belly full of quivering worms. Get yourself together. One thing at a time. Take it all one thing at a time. What did he need first? What did he need most? What would keep him alive for the next ten minutes?
Curling up in a ball right here until I die of thirst, he thought. But that wouldn’t do. Though the idea wasn’t entirely without merit. He wouldn’t actually die of thirst. There was a moldering rain barrel just outside the alley door. He’d shit himself to death from drinking putrid water before he died of thirst.
Starling couldn’t help it. He giggled. A madman’s chuckle. Since he couldn’t stop it, he indulged himself and let it happen as nature willed it. Then, when the giggling fit dried up, he tried to carry on, head pounding, eyes hot with tears.
What did he need? And what did he have? He needed a lot. Other than the clothes on his back and the damnable coins in the saddle bags, he had nothing. There would be no going back to his apartments. Same for any safehouse he knew. He had cached a few essentials here and there throughout the city, for emergencies, but retrieving them would require him to expose himself.
You’re going to have to do that, no matter what, he thought, swallowing the lump of dread that came with it. A thief could disappear from the Law, from the Kingsmen easily enough. But the scoundrels of Peregos would be hunting him on the rooftops, the thieves’ highway, the sewers, in every alley and flophouse. His head was worth a year of drunken fuckery. And word would be spreading like wild fire. Anywhere he might hide from decent folk would put him right in his hunters’ laps. And anywhere he could hide from his hunters was no place to hide at all.
A disguise. What he needed first was a disguise.
He ransacked the stable, looking for anything he might use to make him look less like himself. A ratty red horse blanket thrown about his shoulders was worth a try. That lasted five seconds before he decided all it accomplished was making him look like Josiah Starling gone mad, running through the streets in a ratty red horse blanket.
Come on, you idiot, do better. What would have served best was a dress and a bonnet. Starling knew from experience he made a fine looking woman—bristly scruff of a beard aside. He checked the corners of the barn and peeked into the alleyway, seeking clotheslines laden with any suitable fare. He found almost nothing to pick from. Is it not washday on Ashby Street, you miserable bastards?
He hovered over the rain barrel, staring down into his own murky reflection, trying to come up with something near at hand that would hide him from prying eyes. The man looking back at him seemed to have aged a decade in a day. His eyes were wild and hollow. His cheeks sunken. The gray spreading at his temples and creeping into his short beard made him look like an old man.
I can look like an old man, he thought then he laughed at his own reflection. How the fuck does that help you? You are an old man. Good God. Running for your life was a young man’s game. He could feel that in every unsteady breath he took. He didn’t have the nerve for this anymore. Maybe once, when he was still too young to know better. But not now. Ten minutes on the run and his nerves were already shot.
You don’t need a disguise, he thought, flicking his fingertips against the glassy surface of the black water. What you need is a way out of this city. He spat in the barrel and slunk back into the stables. Of course he needed a way out of the fucking city. He had to survive long enough to do that. Every crooked guardsman would be watching the gates for him. Every harbor rat on alert. Maybe he was getting the cart before the horse. He didn’t need a way out of the city. Not yet. He needed a way out of the neighborhood.
He stared a thousand-yard hole through the stable wall until dusk fell, reciting the same question over and over again in his mind.
How? Where? Who? He came back to the same answer every time.
Maeda. The lady rogue who had helped him keep the crew running and in the good graces of everyone he hadn’t outright insulted along the way. And with less and less of his participation since Sadene had come along. The lady rogue who had kept all the daggers juggling while he’d played at being a gentleman thief and falling in love like a schoolboy. Maeda, who he’d overlooked, abandoned, and betrayed in every way short of taking a knife to her.
If Maeda couldn’t get him out of the neighborhood and out of the city, no one could.
And she had no reason to help him at all. But he didn’t think she’d knife him either, just for the coins in his bag and the favor of Skoren. At least, he very much hoped not.
With no better plan than that, Josiah Starling pulled his hood low over his head and made out into the streets, ducking and weaving along a mad random path like a man who’d lost his mind and sense of direction on the same day.
To be fair, he had.
“NO,” MAEDA SAID. She was standing over her fishbowl in her worn apartment, crumbling a dried cricket over the surface of the water for a school of tiny blue darters with feathery fan tails.
It was the answer Starling most expected. “Hear me out, please.”
“Let me try this another way,” Maeda said, “Fuck off.” She smiled as the little blue streaks pecked and nipped at the brown flakes floating on the surface of their bowl. She touched the tip of her finger to a larger piece of cricket wing lingering on the surface and skimmed it around in a slow figure eight, prodding the hungry little fish to chase after it.
“I will, Maeda. I promise. Once I’m out of the city, you’ll never have to hear from me again.” He thunked the coin laden saddle bags down onto the thick slab of a table. “And all of this is yours.”
Maeda finally turned away from her fish, scowling at the saddle bags. “I don’t want Skoren’s money. Not without your head to go along with it. That is the gist of the arrangement everyone’s chattering about.”
“Who would know? If I was gone and you kept the money?”
“Whatever bastard you blabber to when someone does catch up to you and finds you without it, that’s who. Besides, whether you believe it or not, Skoren just knows things. Sees things. No one even asks what sort of evil he does in the back rooms of his gambling halls. How do you think he caught onto you?” Maeda crossed her arms and shook her head. “I don’t want the money, Starling.”
Fighting down the panic, Starling changed tack. “A favor then. Just your help, this once, and I’ll be on my way. Out of your life, out of your affairs forever. The crew, all its business. It’s yours. Like I never existed at all.”
Maeda cocked a slender eyebrow. “I seem to recall asking Josiah Starling for his help and favors no less than three times in as many months. And receiving no answer at all, because he was too busy with his newest distraction to be bothered. How is Sadene, by the way?”
Starling took the knife twist to the gut in stride. “Gone.”
Maeda gave a chuckle. “I told you. Didn’t I?”
Starling nodded, the well of shame and regret rolling in his belly threatening to show itself in a display of dry heaving. “You did, Maeda. For what it’s worth I’m sorry.”
“Well, at least I gave you a ‘no.’ That’s more than I’ve heard from you in months.” She shrugged. “There’s your favor. I said no. Now you don’t have to wonder if I’m ever going to show up and do my part.”
“I know,” Starling conceded. “I… bobbled everything. Left you cleaning up my messes. Left you holding the bag.”
“Yes. You did,” Maeda said. “But this one, this one is all yours. And I can’t help you clean it up.”
“Please. Maeda. I just need a little help. That’s all. A single, tiny favor. A hand out of the city. It’ll cost you nothing.”
“Being in business with you has cost me plenty,” Maeda said, her expression darkening. “Sums owed add up. You already can’t pay me what you owe me. And Skoren’s gold doesn’t count.”
Starling opened his mouth to protest but found no words.
“Look around you, Starling. See all that smoke and fire? That’s all the bridges you’ve burned. Catching flame all at once. I wash my hands of you. As far as I can tell, our business ended when you got your cock knotted up in Sadene. And good riddance to you at that.”
Starling wilted, throwing up his hands in resignation. “Is there nothing at all then? After all we’ve been through together in this city?”
“Sure,” Maeda said, and the dagger at her belt came free of its sheath.
Starling jumped, expecting violence. He was still woefully unarmed, and even if he hadn’t been, he didn’t think he could take her in something approaching a fair fight. But rather than come at him with the blade, she stabbed it into the table beside his saddle bags and left it there quivering.
“There you go, Starling,” she said with sneer. “A fighting chance for you, between here and wherever you wind up next.”
The startled breath Starling had been holding exploded out, and with a grateful nod, he plucked the dagger from the table. At least he had that much. He fished into his saddle bags for a token gesture, a kingsmark or two for the dagger if nothing else.
“Not a chance,” Maeda said. “Don’t you leave a single penny of Skoren’s money here.”
Starling retreated without another word, his head hung low, shame and regret taking their toll as he fled into the deepening night.
ALL OTHER DOORS closed, all other bridges burned, Starling knew he only had two real choices. Run or hide. He knew you couldn’t do either one forever, but the farther he ran from the city, from Peregos, the more likely it was his pursuers would give up the chase. Miles and days would peel the hounds away one by one until the doubt of catching him and the return on chasing him combined to discourage the effort. If he stayed, if he tried to hide, it would only be a matter of time. He’d be caught. He’d be found. And it would end badly.
If he ran, every day would increase his odds of survival. If he stayed, each passing day would make them worse.
So, there wasn’t really any choice at all.
Every minute you wait makes getting out harder. One more run across the city, he told himself. One more artful dodge. By the time the sun comes up in the morning, you’ll be a free man. The dagger up his sleeve and the bag of gold dangling from his shoulder did very little to help him believe it.
Summoning up his courage for the last time, Starling ran.
For a man of four decades, he was still light and fast on his feet. And the newly fallen night had come on blessedly dark. He dashed pasted tradesmen closing up shop for the night. Past tavern-goers mobbing the street in search of a mug. Between carriages as they carted the well-to-do off to supper or an evening at the theater. He skated over the narrow bridges that spanned Peregos’ winding canals, down the twisting streets in the lamplight evening murk. Had anyone seen him call on Maeda and then slink out again? Of course they had. If so, were they somewhere back there in the dark, giving pursuit? Most assuredly.
He kept out of the alleys and side streets and stuck to the main avenues. He was much less likely to find himself murdered on some wide-open public street at a busy tavern hour than in some back alley. He wasn’t hidden in plain sight. Not by a long shot. But it might keep him alive for a while until he came up with something better.
Of course, it didn’t take long, darting down the street like that, for a curious watchman to wonder what he was up to.
“Oy!” a yellow bearded watchman called out. “Hold there. What are you about?”
Running for my life, Starling thought. But instead he slowed to a trot and answered, “I’m going to be a father!” He capped it off with a happy hoot and a cheerful wave. And with no one calling out alarms in his wake, the guard lost interest and let him pass unmolested.
The tide would be right soon. Ships would be putting out that evening. If he could make Bell Harbor in two hours, he could throw a sack of gold at a captain or sailor and maybe get himself hauled aboard with few questions asked. To where didn’t matter. Anywhere was better than Peregos Failing that, maybe he could stowaway or ride out of port in some ship’s quarter netting before being found out. He had enough gold to spread around that it might make him a captain’s favorite unexpected passenger.
All was going according to plan until he turned toward the harbor down Pale Moon Avenue and soon found the street ahead all but deserted. Gods be damned. The whole block was cordoned off for a wedding celebration. Someone with more money than sense no doubt. And other than the block where revelers were hours into their cups, celebrating some idiot couple’s nuptials, the street was empty. With no traffic coming and going it left a hollow hole in the heart of the city’s nighttime activity.
By the time he’d realized his mistake and turned back, three hooded horsemen had arrived on the street behind him. They didn’t look like they were on their way to a Pale Moon Avenue wedding reception.
Starling didn’t wait to test their intentions. He was up the nearest drain pipe and onto the rooftops, the thieves’ highway, as fast as he could scramble. Just as he pulled himself up over the gutter onto the third story roof, a crossbow quarrel hissed past his ear, ricocheting off the slate roof and into the night. A frantic glance back toward the street revealed one of the hooded riders leveling a crossbow at him while the other cocked and reloaded. Starling rolled onto the roof and tucked up tight behind a chimney as a second bolt sliced past.
Pulse hammering in his ears, he dashed out from behind the chimney and took off at a run, angling up a slope of the roof, dislodging tiles behind him. They clattered and clinked on their way down, pinging off the gutters to shatter in the street below. A third bolt chased him, sailing just over his head as he crested the peak of the roof and slid down the opposite side in a shower of tiles.
He caught the gutter with his boot heel and, very much in the image of the young sneak thief he’d once been, he was up and loping down the roof edge like a billy goat on a mountain ledge. He hopped that gutter to the next and went up and over that roof top as well, leaving less of a mess in his wake as his steps became more sure and steady. He crossed three blocks down, bounding over rooftops before dropping back into the street.
He landed in a back alley behind the Salty Dog Tavern and, without missing a beat, cut through the building by way of the kitchens. A startled barmaid gave a shout, but he was already gone and out the opposite alley before anyone could mount a response.
The chase was exhilarating. For a brief moment, he forgot the cares of the larger matter and focused on the escape itself. The wild flight of a sneak thief caught with his hand in the till. Darting and dashing one step ahead of those who meant to string him up. He couldn’t help but grin, a manic thing, he was sure, all teeth and wild eyes.
He got his bearings, crossed fast and light-footed over a canal on Westerly Way, and broke out onto Asher Street, a lamp lit main avenue that could carry him all the way to Bell Harbor. His wild grin became a genuine smile. Hope. A glimmer of it, that he just might make it. If anyone wanted to take him and the prize he carried now, they’d have to do it right in the middle of a gods damned public street. With carriages and theatre goers and evening revelers all in plain sight, and city guardsmen a shout away.
Which is exactly what that great big bastard with the sneering hair lip and the two-handed cudgel meant to do, it seemed.
Starling caught the man out of the corner of his eye just as he exploded from the darkness of a shuttered-up bakery’s doorway. The big cudgel led the way, whistling as the thug took a skull-shattering swing for Starling’s head.
Starling ducked with an inch to spare and backpedaled frantically.
“Thand thill, you little bathturd,” the big man snarled with a nasal lisp, bringing the cudgel around for another swing.
“Chaipps!” Starling called out in surprise. “Right here in the fucking street? Stupid as ever, man.” His gaze darted left and right, equal parts trying to pick a vector for escape while feinting the big club-swinging lunatic with his eyes. If he dodged when he should have dashed, Chaipps would smash him to pieces.
A woman loading up on a nearby carriage gasped in shock at the scene of sudden violence.
“What goes there?” the driver shouted as the two men spilled into the streets, Starling dodging another pair of swings from the big brute.
“Mind your own thucking bithness,” Chaipps snarled back, sparing a half a glance in the direction of the carriage driver.
That was all the distraction Starling needed. He picked Chaipps’ off-hand side and bolted. By the time the big man spun back to face him, he was out of swinging range of that nasty club. The big, neckless thug would never catch him in a foot race.
Out of swinging distance, yes. Out of throwing distance, no.
Starling made it five fleeting steps before the flying cudgel caught him in the shoulder blade, heaving him from his feet with a stunning impact. He wheeled and found himself on the cobbles, gasping for breath, stars darting and flickering across his field of view. The saddle bag of coins came crashing down alongside him with a metallic jingle.
Chaipps was coming, fast, a big knife clutched in his even bigger fist.
Still trying to sort out up from down, Starling shook Maeda’s dagger from his sleeve and gave it a desperate sidearm fling from flat on his back. The blade gave a single turn, slicing across the dark, before burying with a satisfying chunk into Chaipps‘ thigh.
The big man howled and hobbled.
It bought Startling the second he needed to shove drunkenly to his feet, scoop up the saddle bag, and take off in a weaving, weak-kneed run. Chaipps hurled his own knife in return, but his throw was artless, and the knife clattered off down the street, wide of its mark.
“You’re a dead man, Tharling!” Chaipps shouted, clutching at his wounded thigh. “I’m gonna be wearing your ballth round my neck come daybreak! You hear me?”
Starling heard him, and he believed him. So he kept running.
Somewhere behind him the carriage driver was calling out for the guard. That was bad, especially with Chaipps back there howling and causing a ruckus. No way he’d slip past alerted guardsmen now with a sly distraction or excuse. They’d stop him on principle, being the man running away from a knifing and all.
Shit, shit, shit he thought desperately, his momentary good humor at the thrill of the chase gone. Dried up. Evaporated. Starling heard the clatter of approaching hooves and imagined either angry guardsmen or the hooded crossbowmen who’d tried to perforate him earlier.
Sheer desperation drove him down the nearest alley, his plan for safety in plain sight gone to hell.
He yelped and nearly struck a boy when the little waif child caught hold of his sleeve. “Hands off, lad!” His heartbeat clicked in his clenching throat in time to the pounding pain his shoulder.
The little boy stared up at him with a narrow, dirty face, apparently unconcerned by his gasp of alarm. He held out a single red poppy with a nod back down the alley. “The lady says that way.”
A red poppy. Sadene tossed red poppies to the lust-struck boys and girls in the crowd when she danced. He’d introduced himself to her by returning one she’d tossed his way. Once upon a summer eve in what felt like a forgotten dream.
Starling blinked and tried to imagine every possible scenario compressed in the time between two startled breaths. Then he snatched the flower from the little boy’s hand and took off down the alley.
“Josiah,” a woman’s lyrical voice whispered from a darkened doorway ahead.
He saw her then, leaning into the alley, waving him on.
Sadene.
He didn’t hesitate, didn’t question his good fortune. He dashed for the door and hurried inside as she shoved it closed behind them.
And there she was, her face alight with a relieved smile, a lover’s joy. Beautiful as ever with pair of red poppies clutched in her hand. She tossed the remaining flowers aside and buried him in a joyful kiss.
“I thought you disappeared,” Starling whispered against her lips. “I thought you were gone.”
Sadene pulled away, a wounded look in her eye. “You think I would abandon you?”
He swallowed the lump in his throat, unsure what to say.
“Skoren has us,” she said. “And your name and my name are on the lips of every killer in the city. We have to go, Josiah. We have to go now.”
“I know,” Starling replied. “But how will we—”
“I have a boat for us,” Sadene said. “We must go. Now.”
“How did you find me?” Starling asked.
Sadene pulled at his hand and led him toward a cellar door. “I’ll explain once we’re safe. Come on. Let’s go.”
For a moment he hesitated, his old rogue’s instincts crying a warning. But, as with every warning related to Sadene, he ignored them, and as he’d done since the day they’d met, he followed her off into the dark.
THEY WAITED FOR the tide in a sewer junction-made-safehouse under Chandler Street near Bell Harbor. Shady men he didn’t know came and went in the dank, candlelit gloom, apparently in service to Sadene. He had a thousand questions and chose to save most of them for the boat. There’d be time for that, he figured. Now, he was simply grateful to be alive. Grateful to be on his way out of the damnable city.
And grateful to be with Sadene.
He bristled at the way she touched one of the men’s arms, a handsome dark-skinned rogue she called Daeglin. Something in that single touch lit a fire under his jealousy. Daeglin’s knowing grin at having spotted his unease stoked the flames. That was the smirk of a man who had a certain knowledge of a woman. Something else Starling set aside for the time being with plans to settle on the boat.
Daeglin left them with a half empty bottle of wine and a couple of dented tin cups. “A quarter hour,” the man said, setting the bottle down on the ledge beside Sadene. “Then we sail.” He departed down the grimy passage into dark.
“I take it he’s coming with us when we sail out of here?” Starling asked.
“He is,” Sadene said as she uncorked the bottle of wine and poured them each a cup.
“What’s he to you?” Starling asked.
“Loyal,” Sadene replied, handing him a cup. Then she smiled, nodding toward the wine. “A Glossler Fina.”
Starling laughed. The very same fine wine he’d offered her on the night they met, pilfered from the personal stock of a fur and timber baron no less. He wondered where she’d stolen this bottle from. He raised his dented tin cup with a conciliatory nod and took a long swallow.
“Where are we sailing to, Sadene?” he asked. The wine’s finery had dulled to a sour undertone, clearly having sat open too long. There was a petty part of him that wondered if Sadene and that smirking bastard Daeglin had been the ones to polish off the first half.
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose it doesn’t.” Starling licked his lips, the tart, dry wine tingling in his throat. “We both know I’m going to ask, so I might as well ask now. Where’s money?”
“I’ve got it,” Sadene assured him with a pretty smile. Then she tapped the pointed toe of her shoe against the saddle bags under his boot. “Well, almost all of it anyway. I assume that’s Skoren’s prize, then?”
Starling nodded. His lips had gone numb.
“All of it?” Sadene asked.
Again, Starling nodded. Cottony confusion began to set in. The first cramp knotted up in the bottom of his stomach. He touched fingers to his numb lips and stared back at her in mute shock. By the time he realized Sadene had never touched her own cup, the edges of the room were already growing dark.
He dropped the dagger from his sleeve with a snarl, but his wooden fingers fumbled it and it clattered to the grimy stone underfoot.
“Oh, I’m afraid that won’t do you any good,” Sadene said, rising from her seat on the ledge and wiping her hands clean on the hem of her vest.
Another wave of gut cramps sent Starling to the floor beside his dagger.
“What are you doing?” he gasped as the tunnel began to spin in the pale candlelight.
“What I do best, Josiah,” Sadene replied. “How did you really think this was going to end?”
With the two of them sailing away to somewhere better than this to spend their ill-gotten gains, naked and drowning in wine. That’s what he’d thought. “Why?” Starling gasped, the scent of blood and bile and rotten stomach filling his nose.
“Loose ends,” Sadene explained. “Ill fortune just flocks to you, Josiah Starling. Like crows to carrion. You told me that yourself. The curse of your whole life. I have enough luggage, love, without taking you on.”
Starling choked and sputtered and reached out for her foot, his fingertips brushing her shoe. But she paid him no more mind. She stepped past where he lay and retrieved the saddle bag of coins. Then she turned and started off down the tunnel the way Daeglin had gone.
He croaked, groping for words, and none came. What was he going to do? Gasp out about love? About betrayal? That’s all he and Sadene really were. Betrayal of one flavor or another. Means to different ends, and she was taking what she wanted most. How had he thought all this would end?
In the painful dark, creeping like thorny vines into the edges of his mind, Josiah Starling remembered Maeda’s words. I don’t want Skoren’s money. Skoren just knows things. Sees things. No one even asks what sort of evil he does in the back rooms of his gambling halls. How do you think he caught onto you? Don’t you leave a single penny of Skoren’s money here.
Starling gurgled, a ragged bloody chuckle that stopped Sadene in her tracks.
She turned back and glared down at him where he lay curled up around his rotting belly, dying. “What could you possibly be laughing at, you simple bastard?”
Don’t you leave a single penny of Skoren’s money here. Skoren just knows things. Sees things.
Starling had no doubt, as candlelit vision faded to black and everything became pain, that Skoren would find his lost gold. Every last penny.
See you in hell, love, he thought. We’ll square up there.
Sadene stalked away then, leaving Josiah Starling alone in the dark. Choking on his own blood. Spending his last few agonizing breaths on drowning, hopeless laughter.