Dragon Soul (19 page)

He’d been this stubborn when we were younger too.

“You haven’t even said whether you like it or not,” I prompted, to let him know I was giving up on the idea of his office—for the time being, in any case.

“What’s that?” Dmitri asked, looking suddenly puzzled.

“My
voice,”
I told him. He truly was impossible sometimes, the way too many men tended to be impossible around a woman.

“Oh,” Dmitri said, as though he would rather have been elsewhere at this precise moment in time. “Well, Malahide, it’s a little like a cat trying to do fractions. I’m not sure whether it’s a question of liking it. It’s very peculiar. Unexpected?”

“You’ve no idea at all how to speak to a lady,” I muttered darkly.

He knew enough to avoid the trap of trying to defend himself against that claim, at least. Instead he pressed his hands together, fingers steepled, and gazed at me over the top of them. He was so handsome that it made my heart hurt, and sometimes made me wish I’d thought to cut that out as well, alongside the tongue. If only it would have garnered me anything, yet there was no trade for that particular organ.

“You’re here on business, I take it?” he said at last.

“Ah,” I said, “and at last we arrive on the same page.”

“What can I do for you?” he asked. “And please, don’t make me regret asking.”

“Not at all,” I said, favoring him with a smile I knew to be completely unreassuring. “I simply need you to avert your eyes from a certain district in Molly for the time being. Not so long as to make you seem inept, of course; just long enough for me to seem very
ept
, indeed.”

He raised his eyebrows, looking as though he had a mind to be disagreeable about things. When he didn’t protest outright, however, I took my opportunity to continue.

“I need something,” I explained. He liked it when I spoke with brevity and remained concise. “Information, specifically, from the black market they’re running down by the piers.”

Dmitri swore under his breath and let his hands fall against the desk. “I had a feeling you were going to say something like that,” he said. “Judging by the looks of you when you came in here…”

“I just need to know where they’re getting
their
supplies from,” I continued. Dmitri was already on my side, I knew; he was merely looking to be convinced. “Or rather, I need to know if what they’ve told me is true. Once I know that, you can do whatever you’d like.”

“Most of ’em brought their ‘supplies’ back with them, after the war,” Dmitri said, tilting his chair back on two legs. “Raided what they could from Ke-Han houses and brought it back here to sell, or trade, or what-have-you. Almost everyone running the market right now is a vet from the war. Makes me feel like an ass not to be able to grant them a little peace, after everything they’ve been through, but the second I do that is the second I lose all damn control, and it was a bitc—It wasn’t pretty trying to win it in the first place.”

I shrugged. “Those who want peace don’t generally conduct grossly illegal acts,” I said—my womanly version of
there, there
. “In any case, Dmitri, I wasn’t talking about trinkets and incense, with all the proceeds of the transactions siphoned off to fund the Ke-Han’s economy at the expense of our own.”

“Oh?” Dmitri asked. “I guess that makes sense, if you’re on the case. And I don’t suppose you’re at liberty to disclose what you
are
talking about, even if you do need my help.”

“Essentially that’s it, yes,” I said. One of my own personal rules was always to err on the side of discretion, and the fewer people who knew about the true nature of my task, the less trouble I would encounter. And the less trouble
they
would encounter, as well, on my behalf. Perhaps shockingly, I wasn’t a secretive person by nature—I derived no joy from holding information back, as some might have done in my uncomfortable shoes—but it was simply one part of my duty and I preferred to be efficient above all else. Besides, to share information was to involve another party, and the nature of this assignment was too delicate for anyone but myself. “It’s all terribly dull, I’m afraid. It would bore you to tears even if I decided to share it.”

“You always say that,” Dmitri said, as though he didn’t quite believe me. He sighed like a man with the weight of Thremedon on his shoulders—and the three maidens were a heavy lot—and cast a glance around his office. I didn’t know what there was to look at, only bare walls, a bare floor, and a ceiling with a crack in it shaped suspiciously like the Basquiat. Perhaps the office was like Dmitri himself: unadorned, but teeming with hidden depths. Or maybe he really did just
prefer to have his office look as boring as was humanly possible. I shifted in my seat and let out a slight cough.

“Look the other way,” Dmitri repeated, as though the words left a sour taste in his mouth. “That’s what you want.”

“Just until I can confirm I’ve found the market’s road,” I said. “I know that it’s south of Thremedon, but I’d hate to waste everyone’s time and money on a wild-goose chase.”

“I hear wild goose is delicious, this time of year,” said Dmitri. “Very fat.”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?” I countered. I could do this without him, of course, but it would mean risking the good opinion I’d worked so hard to build up. Contrary to what others thought of me, I did
not
enjoy spending my days in a room that smelled of mold and rot, and streets outside that smelled of worse. I hadn’t been so careful all this time only to have it go to waste just because Dmitri was feeling particularly stubborn this month.

“I assume this is a job for, uh…” Dmitri trailed off. The words always made him uncomfortable. It was as though he couldn’t decide which ones to use, and being formal smacked of being pompous, and especially in front of me, since I knew the truth.

“For the Esar,” I supplied helpfully. “Yes. How else would I have gotten this?” Even though I was dressed as a common guttersnipe, I couldn’t help the fluttery motion of my hand clasped to my throat.

Dmitri cleared
his
throat, staring up at the crack in the ceiling. “Yes, that,” he said slowly. “I suppose that’s what tipped me off.”

“I think, at present, the matter with which I am struggling, and in which I require the benefit of your assistance, is more important to him than street crime,” I said, pushing my advantage, though it did leave me feeling somewhat dissatisfied. It felt a little too much like rubbing his nose in the consequence of my job relative to his, which was never my intention at all. We were all necessary to the crown, but Dmitri’s trouble had always been found in differentiating
that
purpose from his usefulness as a son to his father.

He wasn’t a prince—he wasn’t the
Esarina’s
son—and so that always had been a matter of some difficulty.

Dmitri coughed. “I can give you thirteen hours,” he said finally.

“That
does
sound ominous,” I replied. “Is there a particular significance to the number, or are you just being peculiar?”

“Thirteen’s a good, solid number,” Dmitri said. “I’ll have my men look the other way, but there’s only so long before they start asking questions. You’re just lucky I haven’t.”

“You’re a darling,” I said, reaching forward to clasp his hands with my own. “Absolutely fantastic.”

“It’s absolutely crazy, that’s what it is,” Dmitri muttered.

“You being so helpful?”

“No,” Dmitri said. “Talking to you like this.”

I supposed it
had
been years since I last had any voice to speak of, and Dmitri had never approved of so many of my charades. We’d been friends since I first discovered his secret: the truth behind his parentage, and his reasons for growing up in an orphanage along with other children of a similar fortune. I’d been alone as I so often was in those days—small enough to escape the notice of most of our caretakers, and strange enough that no one bothered much to keep an eye on me in the first place—and there had been a letter upon the desk of our floor manager. She had always been a careless woman, though not ill intentioned. In the letter had been the personal details of one of our newcomers, a small, sullen boy with red hair who spoke to no one. He was, as the letter explained, the child of our Esar and Lady Antoinette. And quite candidly, in the writer’s opinion, it was unfortunate that he’d inherited the Esar’s looks and not his mother’s darker coloring.

I’d admired him from the first for his silence, but it was only upon reading the letter that I felt I fully understood him. That was the first taste I had of the true power that a secret knowledge could give you, and I found it more intoxicating than the headiest ambrosia.

My first friendship was not perfect. He’d never quite accepted my decision to dedicate my life in service of his father, but then I’d never accepted his either. What we did agree on, however, was how important our duties were to us, and somehow through that certainty we managed to remain friends.

It was certainly very pleasant communicating with him via the post rather than in person; it gave Dmitri more time to gather his thoughts, and he had a surprisingly gentle way with composition that was extremely pleasing to an avid reader of many words.

“If I have the chance, I shall write you from the road,” I promised him.

“Don’t do anything that’ll get you in trouble,” he warned. As if I
needed to be reminded of that! I could tell that he wanted to ask me, “What road?”—but he was good enough to refrain from prying, and I was good enough to offer him a smile of gratitude as I showed myself to the door.

I dropped him a stubborn little curtsy—difficult as anything to manage, wearing these awful boots—and left his office with renewed purpose.

It was easy enough to slip back from the Provost’s den unseen, and I had my excuse ready even if I had been. If I so much as told Nor I’d been taken in by the wolves and managed to give them the slip—and it would be obvious I wasn’t lying when no one pounded down his door in the middle of the night shouting about the jig being up—then I’d be even more the apple of his old eyes. I just preferred not to lie to him; it would so destroy him when I disappeared for good. It was simply necessary to have all my excuses in order, lest I be caught in the tangle of my own snare.

But I only had thirteen hours.

I was lucky it was nighttime.

Molly at night was pitch-dark, since there was no wasted light and the buildings were too crowded together to let in much by way of moonshine. You could hear people before you could see them, and it was best not to get involved with anyone you
did
hear.

Unfortunately, Hapenny Lane was between Provost’s Den and lower Molly, which I was currently calling my home. There were ways around it, but risking a walk through them was about as dangerous as tying each limb to a different horse and cracking a whip, and I wasn’t in the mood to be split open by a shanker whose own loneliness and futility had turned him to violent crime, taking the lives of other people because his life meant nothing at all.

I ran the gauntlet of Hapenny in silence, feeling young eyes on me from the corners. I didn’t look like a customer, or even someone with a ha’penny to my name. No one called out to me, nor did anyone clutch at the corner of my peacoat, but the silence was more chilling than any noise could have been—only the sound of my own breaths and, matched by the child whores’, my footsteps echoing loudly off the close walls.

It was one of the more hideous sights I’d been privy to—and I’d witnessed my own tongue after it had been cut out of my throat—so,
noblewoman though I might have been, I was not unaccustomed to monstrosity.

Dmitri knew of it—these terrible things some men referred to as pleasures. It was one of the reasons he got so little sleep at night. To be a good man and to be aware of the way business was conducted—and to be in a position of power yet no more capable of preventing it…I pitied him, and would not have traded my worries for his on any day of the week.

Nor’s place was just past Tuesday Street, where at least business was conducted behind closed doors—a small favor for which I could barely thank the heavens enough. One could turn a blind eye if one so wished, which was exactly what I did.

“There you are,” Nor said as I stepped in, stamping mud and Regina-knew-what-else off my feet. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Had to give the wolves the slip,” I told him neatly. “Felt like I was being followed all day. Thought it better to lie low for a while.”

“Good boy,” Nor said. “Well, it just meant I had to wait a while longer. But I’ve got a sweet little surprise for you.”

My heart lit up, but I didn’t let that light come all the way to my eyes. “Something good, I hope,” I said instead, scuffing the heel of my boot against the floor. Nor was inspired by something—loneliness too, I would have wagered, as well as the promise I’d made to split my end of the profit halfway with him when all this was said and done—and he was working like a devil for me, just as I’d hoped. Show a man in Molly a little kindness and he’d pick any pocket you asked.

“We’ve got the route,” he said. “Managed to get it this morning, but we couldn’t find you. Some of the boys thought you were givin’ us the good one-two, if you know what I mean, but I vouched for you.”

“And I won’t fuck you over for it, either,” I swore. That much was true; I could never hand Nor in after all the kindnesses he’d shown me, whether I’d manipulated them from his weathered little heart or not. “Guess I’ll be needing a new pair of boots.”

“Just fished a man out of the canal,” Nor said. “I took his boots off ’im for you.”

What a man
, I thought.

“Cheers” was all I said. It didn’t do to seem overly grateful for anything in Molly. It stank of desperation, and there was nothing like
sounding desperate when you needed something that made people not want to give it to you.

Nor shrugged. “Seeing as how I can’t give you a personal escort and all, I figured this was the next best thing.”

“Don’t give me that,” I said, playing along. “You’d handle the road
much
better’n I would.”