“Is that really necessary?”
Ryia peered over her shoulder at the disgruntled former captain as the pair stalked through streets filled with the gray, hazy light that came just before dawn. “Is what really necessary?”
“That strut?” Evelyn tossed back her fiery hair, thrusting her chest up and stepping in a terrible imitation. “For Adalina’s sake, you look like a Gildesh show horse.”
Ryia waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Might ride like one too—care to find out?”
“Ugh” was all Evelyn managed to articulate. A vein in her long, pale neck twitched as she balled her fists.
Ryia grinned. It was too easy to rile this one—almost no sport in it at all. She cracked a knuckle. “So, are you going to tell me where I can find these maps, or am I just making this up as I go along?”
The captain’s jaw twitched, but she still kept herself in check. “I’m not letting you within a block of the Guard’s base if I can bloody help it.”
“Well, you can’t bloody help it,” Ryia said, mimicking her strong Dresdellan accent. “Not if you want whatever Clem promised you.” She laughed as Evelyn ground her teeth to stubs. “If you want something from the Snake of the Southern Dock, you have to play by his rules. Ask Tristan what happens if you don’t.”
Ryia pulled one of her throwing axes from her belt, miming a quick slice across her own throat. Evelyn’s hand twitched toward the needle-thin sword at her waist.
“Bit jumpy for a guard, aren’t you?”
Evelyn pursed her lips. “From what I’ve heard, relaxing around you means losing a finger or two. You’re very dangerous to defenseless, sleeping sods, aren’t you?”
“If my marks happen to be sleeping when I stop by, that’s their problem, not mine.”
“Spoken like a true, honorless thug.”
Ryia’s eyes suddenly lit with recognition as she looked the ex-captain over. She threaded the axe back into its leather sheath mid-step. The crabby, redheaded guard from the fort—the one she’d easily given the slip in the courtyard. “Were you sweet on him, Evelyn? Old Efrain Althea? Pay him a few nighttime visits on your rounds?” She winked, indicating the elaborate ring circling Evelyn’s middle finger, bearing a crest of a crescent and quill. “Did he give you that, there?”
“Even if I had an ounce of attraction to the Prince of Nothing, I would never sully the integrity of my station like that.” The captain glowered at her, stuffing her ringed finger into her pocket and picking up her pace. “If you had even a shred of morality, you would understand that.”
“Oh come on, don’t you ever have any fun, Captain?”
“Don’t you ever shut up?”
The exasperated look on Evelyn’s face when Ryia said nothing in response was priceless.
The silence between them stretched until they could see the Needle Guard barracks silhouetted against the thick clouds to the east, just outside the southwestern wall of the Bobbin Fort. Ryia appraised the sprawling structure. Crawling with guards and guards-in-training, but not a single Adept within an axe throw, from the smell of it. Why did Clem think they needed the captain? Ryia could have pilfered these maps single-handedly, even if she had no idea where they were.
Though already she had to admit Evelyn’s advice on the timing had been helpful. The hour just before dawn—the overnight watch was tired, some drunk. As long as they could get in and out before the bells rang and the morning watch took over, there would be no need to silence anyone. She snuck a look at Evelyn out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t know what Clem had offered the captain to make her turn her cloak, but Ryia doubted she’d turned far enough to run a sword through her fellow guardsmen just yet.
“All right, Captain,” Ryia said, “which way in?”
Evelyn rolled her eyes, looking pointedly toward the open archway to the training yard. “Exactly how many options do you see?”
Ryia eyed the flat stone wall rising like a crashing wave in front of them. “Thousands.”
“You expect me to believe you can climb that?” the captain said stiffly. “How?”
“Maybe I’m half-squirrel,” Ryia said mysteriously.
“Slow the jokes, Butcher.”
“For all I know, I’m not joking.”
Evelyn glared at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Ryia lifted her namestone, letting it spin on its leather strap. One side was blank, the other engraved with a series of complex symbols. In Briel, everyone wore a stone like this; one side carved with the names of the mother’s lineage, the other side with the father’s, written in Old Brillish. If Ryia’s namestone were real, the blank side would mark her a bastard.
“Well, I’m all human,” Evelyn said. “So we’ll be using the doorway. They won’t expect it. Your everyday idiots aren’t thick enough to try to waltz into the building that houses every armed guard in the city.”
“But we’re not your everyday idiots, are we, Captain?”
“No. We’re worse.”
Evelyn ducked through the open gate, snaking through the barracks and training yards. Ryia kept one eye on the captain and the other on the paling sky as they darted from shadow to shadow, cutting across a courtyard toward a turretlike structure. Two purple-clad guards roamed around the tower in listless circles. Ryia couldn’t see the rings under their eyes from this distance, but she could tell from their posture that they were there—the poor bastards were exhausted. The whiff of danger wafting off them was almost weaker than the smell of stale piss on the wind.
They bolted toward the door to the tower as the guards passed, griping quietly about how their comrades had gotten leave to go to the Satin House.
Blackness clawed at Ryia’s eyes as the door whispered shut behind them, only the barest hints of the pale, predawn light streaking in from narrow windows that may have been archer slits in the days before the Guildmaster banned all war. Evelyn struck a flint, holding it to a long, thin candle. As the light filled the room, Ryia had to admit that Clem had a point in recruiting Evelyn’s help after all.
The inside of the tower was one large, spiraling staircase. One end wound straight up and out of sight above them. The other snaked down below the ground. And every inch of the curved walls was covered with books. Some were leather-bound tomes thick enough to knock a man senseless. Others were skinny things, bound in the thin paper of Briel. Shelves were piled high with scrolls, either dusty and yellowed with age, or looking so new the ink might still be wet. No apparent rhyme or reason to any of it.
But Evelyn seemed to know exactly where she was going. She slipped down the staircase, eyes darting from side to side, like she expected the books to come alive and ambush them. Ryia hid a deep breath, eyeing the descent into darkness with distaste. Of course it had to be under the fucking ground.
“What is all this shit?” Ryia asked, flicking a scroll with calculated flippancy as she forced herself to follow.
“Show a little respect. This shit is the records of the throne of Dresdell.”
Ryia cleared her throat, trying to ignore the weight of the dust and mildew creeping into her skin. “What are they doing here? Shouldn’t they be inside the fort?”
Evelyn lifted her nose another inch into the air. “This is the most secure place in all of Carrowwick.”
Ryia blankly stared at her. “Clearly.”
“There are more guards inside these barracks than anywhere else in Dresdell. You’d never have gotten two steps inside that archway without my help.”
“I’ve been giving your Needle Guard pals the slip for over a year. Now, if there were some Adept here…”
“A well-trained guard is worth ten of those dead-eyed beasts.” Evelyn held out her left hand as they rounded the final curve of the staircase, spilling into the basement below. A vicious, knotted scar cut across her palm. “Assassination attempt on Princess Bellamy last Januar. Dozen bloody Sensers in that throne room, but I was the one who stopped the blade.” She bristled. “Something you’d think the king would rank higher than his worthless nephew’s finger.”
Evelyn walked her own fingers along a row of scrolls, pulling a few loose.
“The harbor… the island… arena… manor… there they are. That should keep that snake of yours happy,” she said, moving to stow them inside her coat.
Ryia snared her wrist. “Not so fast, Captain. I need to make sure Clem’s getting what he asked for.”
“You think I’d lie to you?” The captain sounded indignant.
“In this line of work, it’s safest to assume everyone is always lying,” Ryia said, unrolling one of the scrolls. “Something you might want to remember now that you’re one of us.”
“I am not one of you,” Evelyn said. “I will never be one of you.”
“If you say so.” Ryia pompously shook the paper out, studying it at arm’s length.
She was getting claustrophobic just looking at the damned thing. Of course, that might be the basement pressing in on her, forming moist shackles of darkness around her ankles and wrists.… No. She pushed the thought away, focusing instead on the inked lines on the parchment. She had heard that the island was small, but this was minuscule. Just over a mile and a half from end to end, according to the markings.
The only passable waters were to the south, the heavily guarded harbor the sole place port could be made. But that didn’t matter anymore. They’d be going in as merchants, whether that was suicidal or not. Ivan was already working on their disguises, Nash and her crew already cleaning the smell of piss and dormire’s blood from her precious ship. What mattered now was finding the Guildmaster’s Quill once their feet hit dry land… and then ending the reign of that bald-headed son of a bitch once and for all.
Her eyes flicked over the buildings sketched on the parchment in fading ink, taking in the layout of the Guildmaster’s infamous island for the first time. There were five in total. Two sets of barracks along the eastern cliffs, one for Kinetics, one for Sensers. The Guildmaster’s manor and its infamous dungeon tucked along the northern peninsula. The auction and tournament arena to the west. The massive bell tower in the thick-walled courtyard just off the arena’s southern edge.
“Were you planning on memorizing the blasted thing?”
Ryia arranged her face into a grin before raising her head. “I—” she started. Then she froze, nose pointed toward the stairs like a hunting hound on the trail.
Danger. The tower was suddenly rank with it.
“Get down!” she hissed, diving behind a bookshelf so old it looked like it might collapse at any second.
“What?”
“Get down! And put that candle out. Now! Unless you’re no longer interested in keeping that head of yours.”
“Are you threatening me, scum…?”
Evelyn trailed off as the door to the tower creaked open above their heads. She dove to the ground beside Ryia, snuffing the candle out against the filth-encrusted floor. Phantom images swam before Ryia’s eyes as the stagnant air faded to near blackness. She could almost hear the rattling of chains… could almost feel the metal biting into her flesh… taste the thick, warm salt of blood as the cup tilted toward her mouth…
Pull it together.
“Watch change?” she asked Evelyn.
“You’d better hope not. Because if it is… shite.” Evelyn’s sentence dissolved into a gasp as the distant sound of a bell clanging echoed down the stairs.
“What?” Fresh guards might be a little bit of a challenge, but nothing unmanageable.
“Remember those Adept you were missing before?”
“Oh, terrific,” Ryia whispered. “How many?”
“It’ll be two of them, if the schedules are still the same. Sensers. They sweep the whole barracks every watch change.”
“And you didn’t tell me this before… why?” Ryia asked, rummaging through her cloak pockets.
She could feel Evelyn’s glare in the pitch-darkness even though she couldn’t see it. “If you hadn’t taken a bloody decade down here, it wouldn’t have been an iss— What the hell is this?”
Evelyn broke off, obviously confused as Ryia thrust a bundle of lemon balm into her hands. Ryia crushed a few leaves between her teeth, cringing at the taste. “Chew them.”
“How is munching a handful of leaves going to help anything?”
“Just do it.” Ryia edged around the bookshelf, holding her breath as light seeped into the basement chamber from the stairwell.
Evelyn’s lips curled in disgust at the flavor of the lemon balm. She raised one eyebrow in a silent question as the light filled the basement. Ryia shook her head, putting up one finger. One Senser, lantern in hand. No sign of the second. Yet.
The Senser drifted, almost dreamlike, into the basement. His eyes were blank, his face slack, nostrils flaring with every step. It was always unnerving to Ryia just how brain dead the real, island-broken Adept were. His robes were spotless, shining silk… but he wouldn’t care if they were made of burlap. Or poison ivy, for that matter. Once an Adept was fully trained, they would stand blankly at attention as their master slit their throat if he wanted to. She had seen it firsthand. But now was not the time to dwell on such memories.
Ryia waved Evelyn furiously forward as the Senser disappeared behind one of the shelves to the right. Outside, the bells were still tolling. They had less than a minute before every guard in this twice-damned city was awake and milling around the courtyard outside. Ryia had faced worse odds, sure… but still, that was an awful lot of trouble to go through before breakfast.
Evelyn crept past her, chomping on the leaves like a cow chewing its cud as she mounted the stairs. The Senser’s lantern light bobbed between the bookshelves below as they tiptoed up the dusty staircase. Still holding her breath, Ryia eased the tower door open, waving Evelyn through. Moving as swiftly as freshly loosed arrows, they bolted through the shadows, slipping out the arched doorway and back into the city.
Ryia savored the scents of seaweed and raw sewage as they flooded over her. The too-moist breeze. The tang of sea salt. Anything but the suffocating stench of mildew and cobwebs. She spat her half-chewed lemon balm on the ground. Beside her, Evelyn did the same.
“So, that’s your trick, then?” she asked, looking toward the mashed leaves. “Where’d you learn that?”
Ryia forced a smile, pushing away the image of the Senser’s lifeless eyes and listless stride. “Secret of the trade.”
“Have it your own damned way. I have no interest in learning any trade of yours anyways.” Evelyn patted the scrolls nestled in her pocket to make sure they were still there. Or maybe like she couldn’t believe they were there—like she couldn’t believe what she had just done. “Robbing the records… robbing the damned Guildmaster. You lot are bloody insane. And stupid.”
“Insane I will gladly give you, but stupid…”
“Risking your lives for, what? A few crescents? Yes, I’d say that’s stupid.”
“You haven’t been in the Lottery that long, Captain. The Saints are already last in the pecking order these days. With the Crowns and Harpies all snuggled up, it’s only a matter of time before we start washing up dead on the shores of Golden Port.”
“So you’re all just trying to get yourselves killed instead of waiting for Asher to do it, then?”
“Maybe.”
“Fine by me. Anything that gets a few more Lottery scum off the…” Evelyn trailed off mid-sentence, gaze locked over Ryia’s left shoulder.
“What’s the problem, Captain?” Ryia grinned, turning to find a ragged piece of parchment tacked to the doorframe beside her.
A notice, written in grandiose script, set with the seal of the king. An arrest notice—the same one Ryia had seen fluttering from every corner of the docks since the night she had visited Efrain Althea.
“By order of the King of Dresdell, Duncan Baelbrandt the Second, the criminal known as the Butcher of Carrowwick is called for arrest… blah, blah.”
So, the king of Dresdell knew her name now, or at least her title—so what? The Butcher was only one of her names, anyway. She had many. Evelyn squirmed, obviously nervous to be spotted in the company of such a horrible criminal as the Butcher of Carrowwick, but Ryia truly could not care less. King Duncan was about as threatening as a kitten compared to what else was hunting her.
She turned to the captain, gesturing toward the image of her signature axe blade drawn just above the notice. “The king’s sketch artist is absolute shit. Doesn’t look a thing like me.”
Evelyn wasn’t amused. “You don’t take anything seriously, do you?”
“This is practically a love note compared to the flyers I got in Gildemar.”
They skirted a carriage with the shutters drawn tight. “You don’t understand anything. Do you realize your little stunt has soured relations between Dresdell and Briel? Because of this—because of you—we’re on the brink of war for the first time in three centuries.”
“And?”
“Seriously?” Evelyn rounded on her. “Goddesses, you’re impossible. Duncan Baelbrandt would tear these docks apart to find you. And he should. After what you’ve done, you should be rotting in a cell under the Bobbin Fort right now. Even Callum Clem won’t be able to save you from the whole Needle Guard.”
There was a long silence. Finally, the disgraced captain snapped, “What?”
“Oh, nothing, Captain.”
But it was not nothing. Ryia folded the arrest notice, tucking it neatly into the pocket of her cloak. Evelyn had just unwittingly handed her a way to make sure Clem did not accompany them on their voyage to the Guildmaster’s island.
A wicked smile spread across her face as they slunk back to the Southern Dock. Perhaps it was time to see just how far Duncan Baelbrandt would go to avenge his dear nephew’s finger.