In her room, Arthie clipped the chain of her watch and tucked it in her pocket. She buttoned her vest before throwing on a tweed jacket and adjusting the lapels, remembering her mother, who always dressed her best for everything—even death.
When Arthie closed her eyes, she could picture her mother lying in the sand, the sea-foam meandering around the beaded trim of her sari. It soaked through the fibers, turning them the same deep red of her blood until Arthie couldn’t tell where her mother’s beauty ended and her wounds began. She sometimes imagined herself beside her mother on the shore, the water lapping at her skin. Wake up, wake up, wake up, the waves seemed to whisper.
Arthie met evil when she was only a child, and the great big Ettenian ship came ashore in Ceylan. The Ceylani had gone out to greet the Ettenian soldiers, offering sweets and a place to stay in the shanties by the sea. Not long after, the clear island skies billowed with smoke and chaos as the invaders turned peace into madness. Colonists, they called themselves. The Ceylani didn’t have a word for that yet because they’d never faced people like that before: kind on the outside, greed and devilry on the inside.
They wore scarlet uniforms, sharp and commanding, as if they were righting the world’s wrongs. Their weapons were the stuff of cowards, allowing them to kill from a distance, rifles firing faster than their enemies could run. Some Ceylani fought back, some succumbed, others fled on boats, escaping to the neighboring country of Jeevant Gar, which, at the time, no one knew had already fallen to the Ettenians.
But it was monsoon season, and Arthie’s mother did not think her sickly eight-year-old daughter would survive the journey, so she took her to the village healer, who had toured the world beyond Ceylan and acquired the knowledge of it. The man had taken one look at Arthie and claimed they needed a miracle.
“Anything,” Arthie’s mother had said in her red sari, so focused on saving her daughter that she didn’t realize her own window to escape was closing. “Anything.”
Anything. Anything.
In the years that followed, Arthie sometimes heard that fervent plea in the dead of the night. She could hear the bullet that struck her father. The three it took to stop her mother.
She slammed her bedroom door closed, shutting the memory inside. The death. The blood. It was ironic that she was in the business of the same substance that haunted her past.
From the shadows of the second-floor balcony, she watched the way Flick devoured Spindrift, her hunger at odds with her sweet demeanor. The girl was taller than Arthie, buoyant curls framing warm features and a pert nose, her skin a deep, dusky brown. She was skilled beyond reason, enough that Arthie could overlook the fact that she was the daughter of one of Ettenia’s vilest women alive.
Arthie watched as Flick clutched the address like a lifeline. Whether she accepted the job or not was to be seen, but Arthie had her guess.
“Your guard is here,” Jin announced, rapping his knuckles on the wall behind Arthie. “I can see why you said yes.”
Arthie didn’t take her eyes off Flick. “I will not ask you to elaborate.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jin crooned, and she knew that if she looked his way, he would waggle his eyebrows. “You had to have some reason to shake hands with our enemy.”
The two of them had spent the remainder of the previous night running through the probabilities and risks. Their alliance with Laith would be tenuous, but they were on equal footing, for if he was dangerous and unpredictable, so was she.
Jin leaned against the railing and peered down, following Arthie’s line of sight when she shifted her gaze to Laith. He looked different in the daylight, more boyish and youthful. He looked like much easier prey than he did last night.
“Think we can get this ledger in two weeks?” Jin asked.
“We have to, and we will,” Arthie said.
“We’ll need to close Spindrift though. Neither of us will be around, and we’ll need all hands on deck.”
Arthie pulled her gaze away from the crowded floor, a kaleidoscope of color and aroma, of money trading hands and secrets spilling like rain from broken skies. Reni and Chester together had uncovered a scandal from the Afton sisters—apparently, their brother had carried on an affair with a maid, and their father had fired her, resulting in an accident that cost her life.
That made Lord Afton, by all convoluted counts, a murderer—a useful bit of information in the face of an impending betrothal between one of his daughters and the son of the late viscount that neighbored them. It was a union that would make Afton a bit too powerful for Arthie’s tastes, particularly since he ran the shipping warehouse where she stored her cargo.
Chester was on his way to the viscount’s house now, where a footman or two would learn the news and pass it onward and upward. Chaos kept the world in order. Not bad for their last day open.
“Then close,” Arthie said.
Jin was watching her. “It’s okay to feel something about it.”
She cut him a look. Oh, she felt something about it all right.
Jin looked like he wanted to say more, but Arthie didn’t want to hear it, so she descended the stairs and made her way through the bustling tables.
Laith lounged by the windows, a portrait of stillness amid the mayhem of the patrons filing in and out. He was in those snow-white robes again that tapered off at his mid-calf above fitted pants. A broad sash secured around his middle boasted a curved dagger.
“What’s this?” Arthie asked.
He rose and presented the bouquet in his hand like a dead rabbit. “I heard that the custom here is flowers.”
He was giving her flowers while she was planning his funeral. “We’re working together, not courting.”
“Are they not one and the same?” Laith replied.
She took the bouquet. The wax paper was smooth beneath her fingers, the flowers fragrant, the gesture altogether unexpected. She clenched her jaw.
Laith was devouring every second of it. Nope.
“Chester,” she said, stopping him on his way past her. “Be a dear and take these flowers outside, will you? Toss them in the dirt where they belong.”
Laith’s tiny, knowing smile reminded her of what he’d said in her office, when her eyes had betrayed her by following the shift in his throat.
“Aw, Arthie’s first flowers,” Jin remarked, joining them. “Pity they’re from you.”
“No need to be hostile. I brought you a gift as well,” Laith said. “Apple?”
There was a weight to his accent, so the p’s sounded like soft b’s. Abble. Jin stared at the offering. It was the shiny kind he liked, the skin a plum color near black.
“Pretty sure there’s a fairy-tale analogy for this moment,” Jin said, taking it from him. “I’m Jin. Jin Casimir.”
“I wondered about that,” Laith said, tilting his head. “You don’t look related.”
“We don’t really care for lineage on this side of White Roaring,” Jin said, but what he didn’t say was that he had spent days looking over his shoulder when Arthie and he had first linked hands, fearing whoever had come for his parents was coming for him too, until Arthie gave them a last name of their own.
It wouldn’t do much, really, but when one was young and lost, almost anything made you feel powerful. A new surname promised a new start, a new future they could forge for themselves.
Laith hmmed but didn’t comment. He dipped his head. “Laith Sayaad.”
“Welcome to life as a criminal,” Jin said. Laith began to protest, but really, one couldn’t ally with the Casimirs and not get a little tarnished. “Can’t say we have your kind around here. Where from?”
Laith’s gaze dimmed. “Far enough that two became one.”
That was new information. Had he left someone behind, or had they died? Arthie inched away, turning her back on Laith, and Jin followed.
She could sense the smirk on his face.
“I take it your mission to Admiral Grove went well,” she said before he could speak, heading for the stairs.
That did the trick. He sighed and straightened a frame, oozing reluctance.
“You know she’s the best forger there is,” Arthie said with a sidelong glance. “So stop whining.”
“You didn’t even let me start whining.” He followed her upstairs. “She doesn’t forge anymore.”
“She will for me,” Arthie said. Flick was already invested. Arthie had seen it on her face. “You never complained about working with her before.”
In fact, he’d always wanted to—offering to go down to her warehouse before Arthie could, taking more time than was necessary. He’d even offered to pick up Flick today when Arthie had planned to go herself, knowing Admiral Grove loomed with the ghosts of Jin’s past. He was the reason they’d even trusted Flick to begin with, given who her mother was.
“It’s one thing to go out to her warehouse and hire her for a job. It’s another to involve her in a dangerous scheme. She’s not cut out for this,” he said. Flick was innocent, that was true. Untried and untested. The girl looked as though she were made for decorating pastries, but looks were meant to deceive.
Arthie opened the door to her office. “If only her mother was as concerned for her well-being.”
Jin was still scowling. “Did you at least tell her about the job?”
“I don’t make a habit of talking twice, Jin. So no, not yet,” Arthie said. “We’ve only got four in our crew right now.”
Jin picked up the vase on her desk. “Should have kept the flowers. Poor captain boy.”
“They matched my hair quite well, didn’t you think?” Arthie asked, turning away when his eyebrows shot up. She pulled on her baker boy hat and stepped back out to the balcony hall before he could tease her again.
Laith was still seated at the same table, strands of that unnaturally bright white hair dusting his forehead. Arthie wasn’t naive. He spoke with an accent, he wore the clothes of his kingdom, he walked with a distinct pride many foreigners shed like a coat—he was new to Ettenia. Too new to be so invested in the ledger and taking down the Ram. Too new to care for a country such as this.
She didn’t like the idea of him breathing down her neck, privy to her every word, but this was White Roaring. Comfort was hard to come by—even coffins were made of stone.
“Waiting on you, habibti,” he called as she started down the stairs. She didn’t know what that meant and didn’t want to ask. It was likely an insult. He stood up, and the sun cast his eyes in honey and spice. “Where to?”
Arthie pulled up her collar, and Jin picked up his umbrella. “We’re going to 337 Alms Place to recruit our fifth.”