I shoved in between two old men at the bar to order myself another whiskey and one for Lysander.
“Sorry about the ruckus, Chester,” I said as he poured the drinks.
Chester was a heavyset guy probably in his sixties, with a bald head and a long, droopy mustache. Everything else about him was droopy too.
“Least you didn’t destroy nothing.” He handed me two glasses filled with liquid amber.
“That’s what I like about you, Chester. You’ve got perspective.” I winked at him. “And a great set of tits.”
He rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the old men at the bar.
As I sat down at the table with our drinks, Lysander said, “I don’t know why you tease him so much.”
“Are you kidding? He loves it. Probably jerks off to it every night. Why else do you think we get so many free drinks?”
“I think it’s more likely because of when we shut down that gang trying to squeeze him for protection money.”
“That too.”
“Another one of your nonpaying clients.” Lysander took a hard swallow of his whiskey.
“He pays us in top-shelf liquor.”
“I’d rather have the money,” said Lysander. “You know, for a mistress of the dark arts, you sure do have a weakness for sob stories.”
“Only ignorant pencil dicks call it the ‘dark arts.’ ”
“Sorry. The grimoric arts. Point is, you need to stop committing us to these barter jobs. You’re just indulging people.”
“We get all kinds of useful stuff out of it,” I said.
“A man only needs so many pairs of boots.”
I smirked. “Well, I got more than boots from that cobbler.”
“Don’t I know it. I thought we were supposed to split everything fifty-fifty.”
I held up my hands. “Hey, you had your chance. He was certainly open to the idea.”
“Portia would have killed me.” He nodded to my raised hands. “By the way, you should put your gloves on before our client gets here.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “You think he’ll know what they are?”
“I reckon he knows enough. Unlike you, I found us a classy client who’s willing and able to pay us the kind of money we deserve to make.”
“Well fuck me gently with a halberd, aren’t you posh.”
“Give me a break, Roz,” he said. “You know Portia and I have been talking about having kids soon.”
“I still think that’s a terrible idea,” I told him. “Kids will ruin your life.”
“I’ll take that into consideration if I ever ask your fucking opinion on the matter,” he said. “Anyway, we need some decent jobs with decent pay. I found us one, and I expect you to behave yourself.”
“All right, all right.” I leaned back and fished my leather gloves out of the deep pockets of my coat. “You’re turning into an old man on me, Lye. Maybe you’d be happier doing some honest work right here with Chester and Julia.”
His eyes stretched wide with horror. “Don’t even joke about something like that.”
I laughed as I pulled on my gloves. I was giving him a hard time because that was how our relationship worked, but I knew he was right. We needed proper, spendable money. I already didn’t like the sound of this “classy” client, but I decided I really would try my best to behave, if for no other reason than so Lysander wouldn’t have to wrap his dick in lambskin every time he wanted to fuck his hot wife. That’s the kind of thoughtful friend I am.
Apparently, Lysander’s client knew more about the courtesy of punctuality than he did, because I wasn’t even finished with my second whiskey before the guy arrived. Flanked on either side by burly men in polished plate armor, he swept into the Skinned Cat in a perfectly tailored lilac frock coat with dark breeches and silk stockings that showed off calves that at first seemed incredibly well formed, but at second glance were just padded to look that way. He held an embroidered lace handkerchief to his nose as his sharp, green eyes surveyed the tavern. His sculpted eyebrows arched in a way that suggested that the reason he’d agreed to meet us here was because he’d had no idea that places of such low standards even existed.
“That fop our guy?” I asked, knowing with a sinking feeling that he was.
Lysander shrugged. “You want to make money, you got to go where the money is.”
It was going to be harder than I thought to behave myself.
Our potential client gazed around the tavern in distaste, then caught sight of us, and his disgust lessened somewhat. Or maybe he was just making an effort to appear that way so we’d take the job.
When he and his bodyguards came over to our table, Lysander stood up and pulled a chair over for him. I remained seated. Lye always got a little nervous around upper-class types, but they didn’t impress me. I’d grown up a merchant’s daughter, and we’d been successful enough to get our fair share of posh customers. I’d also met a few more when I was in school. Even had a couple I considered friends. They weren’t all bad, but I knew firsthand that wealth and privilege didn’t make a person any better.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet us here, Mr. Quince,” Lysander said in that gentle way he had when he was talking to a prospective client. “I know it’s outside your… usual circles.”
Quince sat down, taking care not to actually touch the table, and smiled thinly through his handkerchief. “No, it’s quite all right. What I have to discuss with you is of a delicate nature, and it’s preferable that we not broach the subject in a place where I might be recognized, or my lord’s activities be of interest.”
“So you’re not the client, then?” I asked. “You’re his messenger?”
“Approximately,” he said.
“I don’t agree to jobs for anyone I can’t meet,” I told him.
“Roz…” said Lysander.
“No, no,” said Quince. “I quite understand. And rest assured that should we come to an agreement, you will have the opportunity to personally meet with my lord to finalize the arrangement.”
“So this is you testing us out?” I asked.
“In a manner of speaking.” He removed a small silver box from his coat pocket, opened it, and took a pinch of snuff. “You come highly recommended for… this type of work, but gossip and rumor alone are not enough for me to put my lord at risk.”
“And what kind of job is it?” I asked.
“A kidnapping.”
“What?” I turned to Lysander. “Goddammit, Lye, there’s no way I’m abducting someone!”
“Roz, relax,” said Lysander. “Let the man explain.”
“Yes, apologies, Miss Featherstone, I should have been more specific,” said Quince. “We do not want you to kidnap someone. We need you to rescue someone who was kidnapped the night before last.”
I leaned back into my chair again. “That’s a big fucking difference.”
“Again, I apologize. But it is gratifying to see your honest response regarding such an underhanded and revolting act.”
That made me wonder if he’d done it on purpose, just to see how I’d react. I didn’t like being toyed with. He might have decided we checked out, but I still wasn’t sure about him.
“So who got kidnapped?” prompted Lysander.
“The victim in question is my lord’s infant son,” said Quince.
“You hear that, Roz?” Lysander’s big brown eyes shone. “A baby.”
“Uh-huh.” All of Portia’s talk about wanting a child was really starting to get to him. I turned back to Quince. “Okay, so maybe that’s all on the level, but why us? We don’t specialize in kidnappings. Why did we come ‘highly recommended for this type of work,’ as you put it?”
“That’s more to do with the perpetrators than the crime itself.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “Who did the kidnapping?”
“We believe it was done by a grimoric guild by the name of Alath.”
“Huh.” The guild’s name didn’t ring any bells, but it didn’t need to. If there was one thing in this life I couldn’t stand, it was grimoric guilds, and I had promised myself I would steer clear of them in the future. I turned to Lysander. “Did you know this part already?”
He looked guilty. “Roz…”
“Don’t ‘Roz’ me, you giant piece of—”
He clapped his big hand over my mouth and forced a smile in Quince’s direction. “Will you excuse my partner and me so we can have a quick discussion?”
Without waiting for a response, he picked me up, his hand still over my mouth. I kept my glare on him while I allowed him to carry me over to a corner of the pub.
“Do not fuck this up, Roz!” he hissed as he put me down and removed his hand from my face.
“I can’t believe you thought I’d be okay with this,” I shot back.
“Actually I knew you wouldn’t be okay with it, which is why I didn’t say anything.”
“That was stupid, because you knew I’d find out eventually.”
He looked pained. “Okay, you’re right… I’m sorry. Maybe I didn’t handle it the best way. I know you said you were done dealing with the guilds—”
“A grimoric guild.”
“Yeah, especially grimoric guilds, I know. I know. But you have to move past it.”
“I don’t have to do shit.”
“Fine!” His brow furrowed, and his nostrils flared. “I didn’t want to do this Roz, but if you’re going to dig in your heels like a goddamn child, you don’t leave me any choice. Either you do this job with me, or I do it without you.”
That brought me up short. “Wait. What are you saying?”
“You heard me. I’m sick of being broke all the time. You are not the fucking center of the world, Rosalind Featherstone, and if you won’t suck it up and meet me halfway on this one, then you and I are through.”
Lysander only used my full name when he was dead serious. This was it. He’d put up with a lot of shit from me over the years, and he’d finally had it. Was a large portion of this new resolve coming from Portia? Probably. Did I blame her? Absolutely not. I would have done the same thing in her place. It was no secret that I was bad news. Nothing but trouble for just about everyone I was close to. Portia knew goddamn well that if she could get him away from me, he’d be better off. But that didn’t mean I was ready to let go of my only real friend in the world. He wanted money; we’d get him some money. Hell, knocking around snobby guild members was the least I owed the big lummox. I could swallow my pride for one lousy job.
His eyes were steady as he looked down at me. “Do we understand each other?”
“Yeah, we do. But if this goes bad, then I get to say I told you so every day for the next fucking year.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Then he grinned so wide I thought his face might split. “I’ll just stick money in my ears so I can’t hear you.”
I stalked back to the table where Quince and his metal-encased goons waited. I glared long enough for him to take another pinch of snuff, his eyes darting past me to look for reassurance from Lysander. Good. He understood that I was the scary one.
I said, “If we’re going to tangle with a grimoric guild, there better be enough money to make it worthwhile.”
“Miss Featherstone, I can assure you that the compensation will likely be beyond your expectations.”
I took my dark fireproof coat from the back of my chair and slid it on. It was a thick, shapeless thing that stretched down to my knees. I pulled up the collar and shoved my hands deep into the pockets.
“Then let’s go meet this lord of yours.”