“And which are you?” asked Kell.
“I steal for freedom,” said Lila. “I suppose that’s a bit of both.” She wandered into a short hallway between two rooms. “So that’s how you came across the black rock?” she called back. “You made a deal for it?”
“No,” said Kell. “I made a mistake. One I intend to fix, if I can find the damned thing.” He slammed a drawer shut in frustration.
“Careful,” said a gruff voice in Arnesian. “You might break something.”
Kell spun to find the shop’s owner standing there, shoulder tipped against a wardrobe, looking vaguely bemused.
“Fletcher,” said Kell.
“How did you get in?” asked Fletcher.
Kell forced himself to shrug as he shot a glance toward Lila, who’d had the good sense to stay in the hallway and out of sight. “I guess your wards are wearing thin.”
Fletcher crossed his arms. “I doubt that.”
Kell stole a second glance toward Lila, but she was no longer in the hall. A spike of panic ran through him, one that worsened a moment later when she reappeared behind Fletcher. She moved with silent steps, a knife glittering in one hand.
“Tac,” said Fletcher, lifting his hand beside his head. “Your friend is very rude.” As he said it, Lila froze mid-stride. The strain showed in her face as she tried to fight the invisible force holding her in place, but it was no use. Fletcher had the rare and dangerous ability to control bones, and therefore bodies. It was an ability that had earned him the binding scars he was so proud of breaking.
Lila, for one, seemed unimpressed. She muttered some very violent things, and Fletcher splayed his fingers. Kell heard a sound like cracking ice, and Lila let out a stifled cry, the knife tumbling from her fingers.
“I thought you preferred to work alone,” said Fletcher conversationally.
“Let her go,” ordered Kell.
“Are you going to make me, Antari?”
Kell’s fingers curled into fists—the shop was warded a dozen ways, against intruders and thieves and, with Kell’s luck, anyone who meant Fletcher harm—but the shop owner himself gave a low chuckle and dropped his hand, and Lila went stumbling to her hands and knees, clutching her wrist and swearing vehemently.
“Anesh,” he said casually. “What brings you back to my humble shop?”
“I gave you something once,” said Kell. “I’d like to borrow it.”
Fletcher gave a derisive snort. “I am not in the business of borrowers.”
“I’ll buy it then.”
“And if it’s not for sale?”
Kell forced himself to smile. “You of all people know,” he said, “that everything is for sale.”
Fletcher parroted the smile, cold and dry. “I won’t sell it to you, but I might sell it to her”—his gaze glanced to Lila, who had gotten to her feet and retreated to the nearest wall to lurk and curse—“for the right price.”
“She doesn’t speak Arnesian,” said Kell. “She hasn’t the faintest idea what you’re saying.”
“Oh?” Fletcher grabbed his crotch. “I bet I can make her understand,” he said, shaking himself in her direction.
Lila’s eyes narrowed. “Burn in hell, you fu—”
“I wouldn’t bother with her,” cut in Kell. “She bites.”
Fletcher sighed and shook his head. “What kind of trouble are you in, Master Kell?”
“None.”
“You must be in some, to come here. And besides,” said Fletcher, smile sharpening. “They don’t put your face up on the boards for nothing.”
Kell’s eyes flicked to the scrying board on the wall, the one that had been painted with his face for the last hour. And then he paled. The circle at the bottom, the one that said If seen touch here was pulsing bright green.
“What have you done?” growled Kell.
Fletcher only smiled.
“No hard feelings,” he said darkly, right before the shop doors burst open, and the royal guard poured in.
V
Kell had only an instant to arrange his features, to force panic into composure, before the guards were there, five in all, filling up the room with movement and noise.
He couldn’t run—there was nowhere to run to—and he didn’t want to hurt them, and Lila … Well, he had no idea where Lila was. One moment she’d been right there against the wall, and the next she’d vanished (though Kell had seen her fingers go into the pocket of her coat the instant before she disappeared, and he could feel the subtle hum of the stone’s magic in the air, the way Holland must have felt it at the Ruby Fields).