Quicksilver (The Fae & Alchemy Series Book 1)

“No. Absolutely not. Not here. Not in my furnace.”

Elroy glared at me like I was a four-headed serpent, and he didn’t know which one of my heads would strike him first. I’d upset the old man a million different times, a million different ways, but this disapproving look was new. His expression was one of equal parts disappointment and fear, and for the briefest of moments, I questioned my decision to bring the gold into the workshop.

Where else would I have taken it, though? The loft over the tavern where Hayden and I had been sleeping these past six weeks was infested with cockroaches and stank worse than a sand badger set. We’d found a way into The Mirage through a damaged section in the cracked slate roof. We were quiet when we crept in there to sleep amongst the rotten, long-forgotten wine crates and moth-eaten stacks of heavy, folded canvas, and so far, we hadn’t been discovered. But my brother and I weren’t stupid. It was only a matter of time before we were found out, and the proprietors of the public house evicted us from their attic space at the end of a blade. There’d be no time to collect our belongings. We didn’t have any belongings aside from the clothes on our backs. Hiding the gauntlet there would be folly. Elroy’s workshop was the only place I could take it. No matter what, I needed to use the furnaces. I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t melt down the metal and make something else out of it (very gods-cursed quickly), the gauntlet was a millstone around my neck that would wind up getting me tortured and killed.

“It’s bad enough that I had to tell Jarris Wade that you weren’t here an hour ago. He was furious. Said you’d broken some trade agreement with him. But then you show up here with that thing. What the hell were you thinking?” The despair lacing Elroy’s voice made me regret showing it to him. “Why did you take it in the first place? We’ll have Madra’s vipers scouring this place with a fine-toothed comb, searching for it. When they find you, they’ll flay the skin from your bones in the square for everybody to see. Hayden will be right there next to you. And me? Me? Even if they do believe I had nothing to do with this, they’ll take my hands for even allowing that thing under my roof. How am I supposed to make a living with no hands, you stupid, stupid girl?”

Elroy’s business was glass. With an abundance of sand at his fingertips, he’d made it his life’s work to become the best glassmaker and glazier in all of Zilvaren. Only those living in the Hub were rich enough to afford windows, though. And there were people who lived in the Third who sought other items that could be forged in a hearth. Once upon a time, Elroy used to make illicit weapons for the rebel gangs who fought to overthrow Madra. Rough-edged swords made from scraps of iron, but mostly knives. The blades were shorter and required less steel. Even though the pig iron was of the worst quality, it could still be honed into an edge sharp enough to send a man to the makers. But as the years had passed, life as an insurgent within had grown untenable.

Fresh food was impossible to find. In the streets, children clawed each other’s eyes out over a heel of stale bread. The only way to survive the Third now was by barter and trade…or by whispering secrets about your neighbors into a guardian’s ear. As a resident of the Third, if you weren’t dead or dying, then you were hungry, and there wasn’t much a starving person wouldn’t say to quell the ache of an empty belly. After too many close calls to count, Elroy had declared he wouldn’t be hammering out any more of his vicious, needle-like knives and told me I wasn’t welcome to forge them in his fires anymore, either. We were to be glassmakers and nothing more.

“I’m stunned. Stunned. I just—I can’t even comprehend—” The old man shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t even begin to fathom what you were thinking. Do you have any idea what kind of doom you’ve brought down on our heads?”

When I was little, Elroy had been a giant of a man. A legend amongst even the most dangerous criminals that ran the Third. Taller than most, broad, his back muscles straining beneath his sweat-stained shirt. He’d been a force of nature. A pillar of rock hewn out of a mountain. Immoveable. Indestructible. It was only recently that I’d begun to understand that he was in love with my mother. After she was killed, little by little, piece by piece, I’d watched him wither away, becoming less of himself. Becoming a shadow. The man that stood before me now was barely recognizable.

His calloused hand shook as he pointed at the polished metal glittering like sin on the table between us. “You’re taking it back is what you’re gonna do, Saeris.”

A huff of laughter escaped me. “The forgotten gods and all four fucking winds know that I’m not. Not after everything I went through to get it. I nearly broke my damned neck—”

“I’ll break your neck if that thing isn’t out of here in the next fifteen minutes.”

“You think I’m just going to walk up to the sentry post and hand it over—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Gods, why do you have to be so ridiculous? Scale the wall again and toss it back into the Hub once the Twins dip. One of those inbred bastards will find it and return it to the guardians without a second thought. They won’t even realize how much the damn thing’s worth.”

Gritting my teeth, I folded my arms over my chest, trying to ignore how prominent my ribs felt beneath the fabric of my shirt. My skin prickled with sweat. I was losing moisture I couldn’t afford to part with. I’d left my water ration hidden inside a wall in the attic back at The Mirage—hadn’t been able to risk someone trying to jump me for it while I was picking pockets—and the workshop was hellishly hot, as per usual.

I couldn’t count how many times I’d passed out at the billows here. I had no idea how Elroy survived it. For a moment, I gave the man the respect he deserved and considered his demand. And then I fantasized about what a cool breeze from the south might feel like, and the delirious weight of a full stomach, and how blissful a feather bed might be, and what a future for Hayden might look like, and my affection for the man who once loved my mother dwindled into insignificance. “I can’t do what you’re asking me to do.”

“Saeris!”

“I can’t. I just can’t. You know we can’t go on like this—”

“I know that struggling to scratch out a life here is better than bleeding out in the fucking sand! Is that what you want? To die in the street in front of Hayden? For your body to rot in the gutter like your mother’s, stinking and picked over by the crows?”

“YES! Yes, of course that’s what I want!” I brought my fist crashing down on the table, and the gauntlet jumped, a cascade of rainbows leaping up the walls. “Yes, I want to die and ruin Hayden’s life. Your life. I want to be made a spectacle of. I want everyone in the ward to know me as the glassmaker’s apprentice who was stupid enough to steal from Madra’s guard and got herself killed for it. That’s exactly what I want!”

I’d never spoken to Elroy like this before. Ever. But the man had experienced loss after loss at the hands of the city’s guardians. People he’d loved, dragged from their beds and executed without trial. His own brother had died just before I was born, starved to death during a particularly hard year because Madra wouldn’t divert any food from the Hub to the other parts of the city. The richest of the queen’s people had continued to throw lavish parties, had dined on exotic imports sourced from pastures well beyond Haeland, had drunk their fill of expensive rare wines and whiskeys, and all the while the people of Zilvaren had starved in the streets or shit themselves to death. Elroy had borne witness to all of this. Even now, he barely survived from week to week himself. If the guardians weren’t pounding on his door, checking to make sure he wasn’t making weapons, then they were kicking it down, hunting for mythical magic users who didn’t even exist. And he allowed it all to happen. Just sat there and did nothing.

He’d given up. And there wasn’t a single part of me that could accept that.

Elroy’s heavy brows, shot through with grey, bunched together, his eyes darkening. He was about to launch into another one of his rants about staying out of the guardians’ way, avoiding drawing attention to ourselves, about how cheating death here was a daily miracle that he thanked the makers for each night before he passed out in his shitty cot. But he saw the fire simmering inside me, ready to burn out of control, and for once, it gave him pause.

“You know I fought. I did, I fought the same way you want to fight now. I gave everything I had, sacrificed every last thing I held dear, but this city is a beast that feeds on misery, and pain, and death, and it’s never full. We can throw ourselves down its throat until there’s none of us left, and we won’t have made the slightest lick of difference, Saeris. The people will suffer. The people will die. Madra’s reigned over this city for a thousand years. She will live as she has ever lived, and the beast will still feed and demand more. The cycle will go on forever until the sand swallows this cursed place and there’s nothing left of us but ghosts and dust. And then what?”

“And then there will have been the people who fought for something better and the people who laid down and took it,” I spat. Snatching up the gauntlet, I made to tear out of the workshop, but Elroy still had a little speed left in him yet. He grabbed my arm, holding me back long enough to look me in the eyes. Pleadingly, he said. “What if they track you down and realize what you can do? The way you can affect metal—”

“It’s a parlor trick, Elroy. Nothing more. It doesn’t mean anything.” Even as I spoke, I knew I was lying. It did mean something. Sometimes, objects shook around me. Objects made of iron, tin, or gold. Once, I’d been able to move one of Elroy’s daggers without touching it so that it had spun around and around on my mother’s dining table, balancing on its cross guard. But so what? I met his exasperated gaze. “If they track me down, they’ll kill me for a slew of other reasons before they kill me for that.”

He huffed. “I’m not asking for you. I’m not asking for me, either. I’m asking for Hayden. He’s not like us yet. The lad still laughs. I only want him to keep that innocence a little longer. And how’s he gonna do that if he watches his sister hang?”

I tore my arm free, my jaw working, a thousand cold, hard insults clambering over one another, competing to be first out of my mouth. But my anger had fled me by the time I spoke. “He’s twenty years old, El. He has to face reality at some point. And I am doing this for him. Everything I do is for him.”

Elroy didn’t try and stop me again.

There were ways in which Hayden and I were similar. His height, for instance. We were both tall, lanky creatures. We shared the same sense of humor and were both champions at holding a grudge. We both adored the briny, sour tang of the pickled minnows the skiff merchants occasionally returned from the coast with. But apart from our shared personality quirks and the fact that the two of us loomed over most people in a crowded room, there wasn’t much about us that was alike. Where I was dark-haired, he was light. His hair was curly to the point of chaos, and there was so much of it. His eyes were a rich, liquid brown and bore a gentleness to them that my blue eyes did not. The cleft in his chin came courtesy of our dead father, his proud, straight nose from our dead mother. She used to call him her summer child. She’d never seen snow, but that’s what I had been to her: her ice storm. Distant. Cold. Sharp.

It didn’t take long to find Hayden. Trouble had a way of following him, and I was an expert at seeking it out, so it was no real surprise I almost tripped over him, sprawled out and bleeding into the sand in front of The House of Kala. Kala’s, as it was known by most, was one of the only places in the ward that would trade food and drink for goods instead of money. A chancer with empty pockets and an empty belly could also gamble for goods with some of the tavern’s more disreputable types if they were brave or stupid enough. And, since we never had any money or items for trade, and Hayden was an outrageously proficient cheat at cards (second only to me in Zilvaren, perhaps), then it made perfect sense that he would be here, trying to swindle a pitcher of beer out of someone.

Blazing-hot gusts of sand blew over Hayden; they gathered in little pools in the bunched-up material of his shirt, which still bore the handprints of whoever had grabbed him and tossed him out of Kala’s onto his ass. A bawdy group of revelers passed by, their scarves pulled up over their faces against the twins and the sand, stepping over him without sparing him a glance. A young man with a split lip and the beginnings of a black eye lying in the gutter was nothing out of the ordinary in this part of the world.

I stood at my brother’s feet, folding my arms across my chest, careful to keep the satchel containing the gauntlet pinned against the side of my body. Pickpockets and cutpurses weren’t unusual here, either. A crew of hungry street rats wouldn’t think twice about performing a snatch-and-grab if they suspected the prize would be worth it. I kicked Hayden’s dusty boot. “Carrion again?”

He cracked an eyelid, groaning when he saw me. “Again! You’d think…the bastard would…have better things to do than beat the shit out of me.” The way he gingerly clutched his ribs suggested a few of them might be broken.

I nudged him with the toe of my boot, considerably harder this time. “You’d think you might have learned your lesson and would steer clear of him by now.”

“Agh! Saeris! What the hell? Where’s your sympathy?”

“In Carrion’s back pocket, right alongside the money I gave you to buy water.” I considered bruising the other side of his ribs, but the sheepish smile he sent my way doused my anger. He had that way about him. He was foolish and careless more often than he wasn’t, but it was impossible to stay mad at him for very long. Offering him my hand, I helped him to his feet. After much grumbling and complaining, Hayden dusted off his shirt and pants and adopted a wolfish grin that implied he’d discarded the ache in his ribs and felt brand spanking new. “Y’know, if you have a chit, I bet I could win back the water money and the red scarf Elroy gave me.”

“Hah! Keep dreaming, buddy.” I skirted around him and jogged up the steps to the tavern. As always, Kala’s was packed to the rafters, and stank of stale sweat and roasting goat meat. A dozen heads swung in my direction as I entered, a dozen pairs of eyes going wide when they observed who had just walked in. Hayden was a daily visitor here, but I only ventured across the tavern’s threshold when I’d had a bad day. I came here to blow off steam. To fuck. To fight. A wild array of outrageous things was whispered about me behind the backs of sunburned hands here: that a man might either get lucky or be beaten unconscious depending on my mood when I sat my ass down at the bar.

I didn’t sit at the bar today. Peering over the drunken rabble before me, I craned my neck, searching for a flash of color amongst all of the dirty whites, greys, and browns. And there it was. There he was, sitting at a table on the far side of the tavern with three of his dim-witted friends, his back to the corner so he could keep a weather eye on the crowd. Carrion Swift: the most notorious gambler, cheat, and smuggler in the entire city. He was also uncommonly good in bed—the only man in Zilvaren who’d ever made me scream his name out of pleasure rather than frustration. His bright auburn hair was a signal flare in the dimly lit tavern.

I beelined right for him, but my pathway was quickly blocked by a beleaguered-looking woman in her early forties brandishing a giant wooden ladle.

“No,” she said.

“Sorry, Brynn, but he swore he’d leave him be. What am I supposed to do, just let him get away with it?”

Brynn had a surname, but no one knew it. When asked, she’d say she’d lost it as a child and had never bothered to locate it again. She said family names made you easier to find, and she was right. As proprietor of The House of Kala, folks who didn’t know any better tried to call her Kala, presuming she’d named the place after herself, but she’d glower at them and show them her teeth. Where she was from, Kala meant funeral, and Brynn didn’t appreciate being likened to death.

“Doesn’t matter to me whether he gets away with it or not.” She cast a baleful sidelong glance at Hayden, who had skulked back into the tavern on my heels, looking rather sheepish. “He knows Carrion cheats, and I don’t need another full-blown brawl breaking out in here. Not tonight. I’ve already had to toss two chairs out the back for mending, thanks to that swine and your idiot brother—”

“I’m not an idiot!” Hayden objected.

“You are an idiot,” Brynn insisted. “You’re also on a twenty-four-hour ban. Back outside with you. If your sister pays, I’ll have someone bring you a cup of ale on the steps.”

“I’m not paying for anything.”

Hayden had the nerve to look disappointed. “Well, I’m not leaving without that scarf,” he said. “My lungs will be flayed raw by the time I get home.”

“Best hold your breath, then. Go on. Out with you.” Brynn waved the ladle menacingly in Hayden’s direction, and my brother paled. He eyed the over-large spoon as though he’d already been introduced to it once today and was well aware of what it could do. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Brynn had given him the black eye rather than Carrion.

“I’ll get the scarf for you. Go and wait for me outside,” I told him.

“You’ll not be taking it by force,” Brynn warned. She swung the ladle in my direction, but it didn’t have the same effect on me, and she knew it. A weapon had to be considerably shinier and a whole lot sharper to make me blink. She lowered the ladle, opting for a gentler approach. “I mean it, Saeris. Please. Keep the peace, if only for my sake. I’m at my wit’s end already and it’s not even eight.”

“You have my word. I won’t break any more furniture. I’ll get what I came for and be gone before you know it.”

“I’m holding you to that.” Clearly, Brynn didn’t think I was going to honor my word, but she sighed, stepping aside anyway. Hayden gave me a look that begged for me to vouch for him—he always had to push—but I knew better than to give in to those pleading eyes.

“Outside. Now. Hold onto this. Do not let it out of your sight.” I thrust my bag into his chest and was wracked with a spasm of panic as he took it. It was one thing wandering around the ward with a giant piece of gold just sitting in the bottom of a bag. It was another thing entirely to stand in front of Carrion Swift with such a valuable piece of contraband on your person. The man was capable of anything. His fingers were lighter than the dawn breeze. He’d talked me out of my underwear—perhaps the greatest heist ever performed in Zilvaren—and people hadn’t stopped talking about that for months. I wasn’t willing to risk that he wouldn’t catch a whiff of something interesting in the bag and endeavor to relieve me of it.

“I’ll be ten minutes,” I told Hayden. He pulled a face as he left the tavern.

Kala’s patrons paused their games of bones, their rowdy conversations faltering as I made my way to Carrion. Everyone followed me out of the corners of their eyes, half-watching as I arrived at the grifter’s table. Sparkling blue eyes danced with amusement as Carrion met my gaze. His hair was copper and gold and burnished umber, as if each strand were a fine thread of the metals that were so precious to Queen Madra. He was always the tallest person in a room by at least a foot, broad across the shoulders, and held himself with a confidence that made girls all over Zilvaren swoon. I hated to admit it, but it was that confidence that had lured me into his bed. I’d wanted to disprove it, to show him that his self-assuredness was nothing more than a façade. I’d planned on crushing that ego of his once I’d finished with him, but then he’d done the unthinkable and proven that his swagger was well-earned. More than well-earned. It made my blood boil just thinking about it. The man was a thief and a liar, and he loved himself far too much. I mean, who in their right mind wore this kind of finery? To a tavern full of savages who’d cut your throat and steal the dirty boots off your feet as soon as look at you? He was mad.

“Asshole,” I said stiffly by way of greeting.

He grinned, and my stomach rolled in a weightless way that made me curse under my breath. “Bitch,” he replied. “Nice to see you. I didn’t think we were…spending time together anymore.” His friends guffawed like morons, elbowing each other. Even they knew that this was a prod from Carrion. A poke. The last time I’d seen him, I’d been scrambling out of his bed, clutching hold of my bundled clothes, swearing on the forgotten gods and all four winds that I’d rather die than stick around for a repeat performance of the show he’d just put on for me. He knew he’d won. The supercilious prick hadn’t been shy about it. He’d told me I’d be back for more, and I’d told him in very colorful language that I’d snap his cursed cock right off his body if he ever tried to come near me with it again. Or something to that effect, anyway.

I got straight to the point, ignoring his friends and his suggestive barb. “You promised you wouldn’t gamble with Hayden again.”

Carrion angled his head, eyes drifting upward as he pretended to think about this. “Did I?” he asked incredulously. “That doesn’t sound like me at all.”

“Carrion.”

The bastard sucked in a sharp breath, his attention snapping back to me. “She said my name.” He pretended to swoon. “You all heard it. She said my name.” Again, this earned a round of snickering from his infantile accomplices.

“Not only did you break your word, but you beat the living shit out of him, Carrion.”

“Ahh, come on. Don’t be so sour.” He held out his hands, palms up, fingers splayed. “He begged me to play with him. Who am I to say no? And if I’d beaten the living shit out of him, I wouldn’t have seen your little brother sulking around by the bar just now, would I? He’d still be out on the street, spitting blood into the sand. I hit him…” He thought about it. “Once. Maybe twice. That only qualifies as a light beating. And what’s a light beating between friends?”

“Hayden isn’t your friend. He’s my brother. Messing with him is against the rules.”

Carrion leaned forward, propping his elbows against the table. He bounced his eyebrows in the most infuriating way. “I never met a rule I didn’t wanna break, Sunshine.”

“We had a deal. I specifically remember saying I wouldn’t interfere with your supply lines to and from the Hub, and you said you wouldn’t mess with Hayden anymore.”

He frowned. “Yeah, I suppose that does ring a bell.”

The gall. The nerve. The out-and-out audacity. “So then why are you gambling with him?”

“Maybe my memory’s patchy these days,” Carrion mused.

“You do get hit in the head a lot.”

“Or maybe,” he said, swirling the ale around in his glass, “I knew if I messed with Hayden, I’d get to see you. And maybe that was an opportunity too good to pass up.”

“You broke my brother’s ribs just so you’d get to see me?” I couldn’t have heard him correctly. There’s no way he’d be insane enough to hurt Hayden for such a ridiculous reason.

Carrion’s tone was suddenly sharp when he fired back, “No, Saeris. I broke them because he tried to stab me with one of your knives when I wouldn’t play another round. Even your brother doesn’t get away with that.”

My shock was a cold, dead weight in the pit of my stomach. “He wouldn—”

“He did.” Carrion drained his ale. When he set his empty glass down, his charming smile had returned. “Now that you’re here, you might as well join me for a drink. No hard feelings and all that.”

It was amazing how quickly Carrion could flit from one emotion to another. Also impressive was his ability to delude himself completely and utterly whenever it suited him. “I am not drinking with you. It makes no difference if Hayden deserved what you did to him. He probably pulled the knife on you because he was trying to get his mask back. He wouldn’t have needed to do that if you hadn’t encouraged him to gamble!”

“You like whiskey, right? Double sound good?” He was getting to his feet.

“Carrion! I am not drinking with you!”

The handsome snake attempted to slide an arm around my waist, but I’d dealt with predators far quicker than him. Ducking back, I put three feet of space between us, hands itching to move to my knives—the ones Hayden hadn’t ‘borrowed’—but I’d given Brynn my word there’d be no fighting. Carrion’s eyes traveled down my body, his smile broadening when they skimmed over my hips, and the memory of his tongue skimming over my hips slammed into me out of nowhere, drawing a wave of heat to my cheeks.

“You’re pretty when you blush, y’know.” The gods-cursed thief didn’t miss a thing. “I tell you what. Sit down and have a drink with me, and I’ll give you Hayden’s mask.”

“No deal.”

“No deal?” He seemed genuinely surprised.

“Enduring fifteen minutes at a table with you is worth more than a ratty mask, you vulture.”

“Who said anything about fifteen minutes? You know I like to take my time when I’m enjoying myself.”

Holy martyrs. I did my level best to block the other memories that were trying to shove their way to the forefront of my mind. Carrion wanted his off-the-cuff comment to remind me of how long he spent working with his tongue between my thighs. He wanted me to recall just how long he held back his own pleasure—like it was his gods-cursed job—while he teased out mine. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“One drink. Fifteen minutes. And I want the chits back that you took from him, too. Plus another five on top for the inconvenience of having to breathe the same air as you.”

Carrion arched an eyebrow, considering me. I already knew I wouldn’t like what was about to come out of his mouth. “Saeris, if I knew I could buy your time, I’d be bankrupt, and you would be a very rich woman. You’d have spent the past three months on your back, begging for me to ride you harder, and—”

“One more word and I’ll relieve you of your fucking balls, thief,” I snarled.

What he lacked in manners, Carrion Swift made up for in common sense. He knew when he was about to cross a line that would cost blood to uncross. His hair glinted red, then gold, then deepest, richest brown as he held his hands in the air, bowing his head in surrender. “All right, all right. The scarf, the chits, and five extra because you’re greedy. Sit. Please. I’ll get you that drink.” He gestured to his table as if he intended for me to squeeze in between him and his cronies, but there were things I would do for my brother and a clean glass of water and things I would not. I picked out an empty booth three tables away and went and sat there instead.

I was going to kill Hayden. Kill him dead. What was he playing at? He’d tried to stab Carrion? The boy was only three and a half years younger than me but he acted like he was still waiting for his balls to drop. At some point, he was going to have to stop acting so recklessly and start considering the consequences of his actions. Even as I thought this to myself, Elroy’s words echoed around inside my head, shockingly similar to my own.

‘I can’t even begin to fathom what you were thinking. Do you know what kind of doom you’ve brought down on our heads?’

“Here.” Carrion set a glass of amber liquid down in front of me; the damn thing was almost full to the brim.

“That is not one drink.”

“It’s in one glass,” he countered. “Therefore, it’s one drink.”

I’d be staggering back to The Mirage if I drank all of that. I’d fall off the roof and break my neck trying to get back into the attic. Still, I picked up the glass and swallowed a healthy mouthful. I wouldn’t make it through this if I wasn’t a little buzzed. The whiskey burned all the way down my throat and set a fire in my stomach, but I refused to react. The very last thing I needed was Carrion Swift telling everyone who’d listen that I couldn’t handle my liquor.

“Well?” I demanded. “What do you want?”

“What do you mean, what do I want? Your company, of course.”

I knew a liar when I saw one, and the man sitting opposite me was a seasoned professional. “Spit it out, Carrion. You wouldn’t have bullied me into staying if you weren’t trying to work some kind of angle.”

“Can I not just be enamored by your beauty? Can I not just want to sit and listen to the angelic tone of your voice?”

“I’m not beautiful. I’m filthy, and I’m tired, and my voice is full of sarcasm and annoyance, so let’s just get on with this, shall we?”

Carrion huffed a silent breath of laughter. He raised his own (considerably smaller) glass of whiskey to his lips and took a sip. “You were more fun three months ago, you know that? You’re so cruel. I haven’t stopped thinking about you.”

“Oh, please. How many women have you slept with since then?”

He narrowed his eyes, looking confused. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

This was growing tedious. Shoving the glass toward him, I made to get up.

“All right! Martyrs, you are all business.” He took a steadying breath. “I suppose now that you come to mention it, there is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I’m shocked.”

Ignoring my tone, Carrion plowed on. “I heard something very interesting earlier. I heard that a raven-haired rebel from the Third viciously attacked a guardian and stole a piece of his armor. A gauntlet. Can you believe that?”

Huh. The asshole sure did love to play. Every line of his face and the way every muscle in his body was so casually relaxed gave me all the information I needed. Of course he knew that I had taken the gauntlet. I wasn’t going to admit to it, though. I wasn’t that stupid. “Oh? Really? But…how? It’s impossible for a resident of the Third to leave the Third.” I took another pull on the whiskey.

For a moment, Carrion did nothing but stare at me. He was reading me. Naturally, he didn’t buy my feigned ignorance for one second but wasn’t about to start openly flinging accusations around in the middle of Kala’s. “I know, right?” he said airily. “Crazy. Crazier still to think about that poor girl out there now, trying to find a place to hide such a massive piece of gold. Y’know, they’re saying that she brought it back here, to the ward.” He laughed quietly. “But of course…she wouldn’t have done that. That would have been way too dangerous.”

“Absolutely. Incredibly dangerous,” I agreed.

“She would have made sure she put it somewhere safe. Somewhere the guardians wouldn’t think to look.”

“Without a doubt.”

“Do you think a girl stupid enough to attack and steal from a guardian would have the sense to secret away her prize somewhere like that?”

I was gripped by the overwhelming urge to damage Carrion’s pretty face; it was only with a monumental force of effort that I refrained. “I don’t think the girl’s stupid. If anything, I think she’s brave,” I said through gritted teeth. “I think it was more likely that the guardian tried to arrest her, and he dropped his gods-cursed armor in the sand. I think—”

“But did she put it somewhere safe?” Carrion hissed. “We can debate this girl’s actions forever and a day, but if there’s a problem in the ward—”

I rocked back into my seat. “What do you care about the Third? You don’t even live here anymore, Carrion. Everyone knows you’ve got yourself a cushy little apartment below the second spoke.”

“I have a warehouse outside of the ward,” he said in a low voice. “It’s the safest way for me to get my wares from one ward to the other. I live here, so I can take care of my grandmother. You know that. Gracia, remember? You’ve met her. Grey hair? Wicked temper?”

“Yes, I know Gracia, Carrion.”

He leaned closer, eyes sharpening. “Those golden fucks will rain all mighty hellfire down on this place if they think we have something that belongs to them, Saeris. You know they will. There’ll be a river of blood running through the streets by morning if this girl brought the armor here.”

He had a point. The guardians were all-powerful. They didn’t have much to be afraid of, but they were terrified of the queen. Her justice would be swift and brutal if she had any idea the gauntlet was here. The gauntlet I had brought here. Elroy’s dismay didn’t seem like such an overreaction anymore. If Carrion, of all people, was this panicked about the whole thing, then maybe I should spend some time rethinking my plan. Or come up with a plan, perhaps.

“You’re thinking. I can see that you’re thinking. That’s good,” Carrion said. He donned an arrogant smile, but it was for show. He wanted Kala’s other patrons, along with his friends sitting in the corner, to think that he was shamelessly trying to antagonize me into bed again, but the spark of concern I saw in his eyes was real. “That warehouse,” he said. “It isn’t far from the wall. It would only take half an hour to move an item from here to there.”

Gods, he really was mad. “You think I’d give it to you?” Too late, I realized that I’d given myself away. But what did it matter? This game we were playing, tiptoeing around the truth, was only wasting time. “You don’t have anywhere near the amount of money it would take to convince me to hand that gauntlet over to you, Carrion Swift.”

“I don’t want it for myself, idiot. I just want it out of the Third.” He murmured as if he were whispering sweet nothings to me, but his words were laced with venom. “Our people suffer enough without a hundred guardians storming the ward, tearing the place apart and killing anyone who gets in their way. Take it to the warehouse. Take it anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you take it, so as long as it’s far away from here. You hear me?”

There was something very galling about being lectured by the likes of Carrion. He was one of the most selfish, most arrogant men alive. He loved for the world to believe that he didn’t care about anyone or anything. But it seemed that he did care, and I had done something so selfish that he couldn’t stand by and watch it happen? Gods.

I threw back another manful gulp of whiskey and discarded the rest, pushing the glass away. “I have to go.”

“You’re going to fix it?” Carrion’s pale blue eyes drilled into me as I stepped away from the booth.

“I’m going to fix it,” I snarled back.

“Good. Oh, and Saeris?”

The guy just didn’t know when to quit. I spun around, scowling at him. “What!”

“Even filthy and tired, you’re still beautiful.”

“Gods and martyrs,” I whispered. He was relentless. Carrion Swift’s silver tongue didn’t bother me for long, though. I had bigger things to worry about. When I stepped out into the brilliant evening, Hayden was gone. And so was the gauntlet.