“Meeting friends?”
She whirled and saw her cohorts at the end of the walk. Mason held the one with long red braids by the arm. Samuel and Aram stood on either side of the other one. The rest of our crew stood behind them, including Garvin, who had done his job well. There would be no more slipping away. Her fellow soldiers had been here the whole time, and I was certain Kazi knew it.
She looked back at me, her eyes narrowing to slits. Her tongue slid slowly over her teeth, and then she walked toward me. “Look here, Jase,” she said, patting the wall. “The place of our first meeting. I bet this is no accident, is it?”
I looked at the apothecary sign over our heads, surprised. “Actually, it is.”
She stepped closer and her hands slid upward around my neck, her face drawing near, her lips inches from mine. It was an unusual moment for an embrace. I wasn’t expecting it, but I wasn’t opposed to it either. My arms slid around her waist and I pulled her closer.
Her cheek touched mine. “Think again,” she whispered into my ear. “This is no accident. I led you here. This is a grand moment I’m offering you—if you do the right thing. Imagine, the mouthy Rahtan captivated by your charm and leadership while everyone watches—playing with your hair, laughing, smiling, maybe even kissing you. What a perfect way to erase the shocking image of me slamming you up against this very wall and holding a knife to your throat. Everyone would have a new image to remember and whisper about. It would cement your claim that I, and by proxy, the queen, am on your side.”
She smiled, her fingers playing with my hair as she had just described, playfully pulling a strand over my eye. “Release them,” she ordered quietly. “Now.”
No doubt everyone who was watching was imagining a very different conversation playing out behind our whispers. “Keep your word and our agreement,” she said, “and acknowledge Wren and Synové as guests of the Ballengers, free to come and go as they please. In fact, they prefer to stay here in town. I’m sure you can put them up at one of your inns. Free of charge. No questions asked. And they keep their weapons.”
“And if I don’t?”
“The alternative is I slam you up against this wall again and make the image of the Patrei on his knees permanent.” She shrugged. “I imagine that would only add to your troubles. It might even be written in your history books. The Fall of the Ballengers.”
“So this is another one of your blackmailing schemes?”
“A business proposition.”
I laughed and tightened my hold on her back, squeezing her against me. “You? Take me down again? Things have changed a little since that last time.”
“Think so? You don’t even know half of my tricks yet. Do you really want to take that chance? Everyone’s watching. I think I even spotted Paxton across the way.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m helping you, Jase. I’m giving you a chance to do the right thing. My friends are not your problem. Let them go.”
“I don’t need an outsider, much less a Vendan, to tell me the right thing to do.”
“Maybe you do. You promised me you would never harm them. Holding them against their will when they’ve done nothing is harm. Your word means nothing?”
Neither of us were smiling now.
“A large dinner out in the gardens is planned tonight for family and friends. It would be better if your friends came along quietly with us. As our new guests, their absence would be both suspicious and insulting.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is there anything that you Ballengers don’t find insulting?”
“Plenty. It’s just that you Vendans are so accomplished at dishing insults out.”
“Fine. They’ll come to your little festivity, but they’re free to leave when it’s over.”
Her gaze was steady, unrelenting.
Rahtan as guests and in possession of their weapons, which included quivers of arrows, when we still didn’t know who had started the fires?
Kazi’s gaze held, as unblinking as a statue, her loyalty to them fierce. I finally looked away, calling to Samuel. “Show our guests to the Ballenger Inn. Make sure they have the best rooms and everything they need.”
Her finger gently pushed on my jaw, turning my attention back to her. “One last thing, Patrei. No more tails. Call them both off. I am either your honored guest with whom you have an agreement. Or I am not.”
How did she know? The decoy, I understood, but Garvin was damn near invisible.
“No more tails,” I agreed, and I brought my mouth to hers before she could say one more thing. I was through with conditions.
I thought the kiss would be awkward, strained, but she relaxed in my arms, creating the show that she promised. I pressed her against the wall—the image that would burn in everyone’s memory and erase the last one—but that was the last of the show, at least for me. I felt her tongue on mine, the warmth of her lips, breathed in the scent of her skin and hair, and we were in the wilderness again, and nothing else mattered.
*
We sat in a dark corner of the tavern sipping a cool ale. Priya fanned herself with a tattered menu, and Mason absently spun a spoon on the table. After seeing Wren and Synové escorted to the inn, Kazi had gone back to Tor’s Watch with Jalaine and my mother.
“She made you,” I said.
Garvin swilled back the last drips of his ale. “No. She never looked my way,” he answered. “But when you stopped her outside the apothecary, she did spot me in the crowd.”
“She’s seen you before?”
He bit the corner of his lip, still chewing on some memory. “I didn’t place her when Mason first pointed her out to me. I was too far away. But seeing her up close—I know her, somehow, from somewhere, but I’m not sure where.” He told me that when he used to run wagons sometimes he went into Venda, mostly for the Komizar, sometimes for merchants in the jehendra, but the last time he was there was about seven years ago. “How old is she?”
“Seventeen.”
He rubbed his bristled cheek, trying to recall where he had seen her. “That would make her just a kid the last time I saw her. What about her name?”
“Only Kazi. No surname. But she goes by Kazi of Brightmist. I guess that’s the—”
“It’s one of the poorest quarters in Sanctum City. Well, truth is, they’re all poor, but Brightmist is an especially bad one. Don’t let the name fool you. Nothing bright about it. Never sold any goods there. No one in those parts has two coins to rub together. Her name doesn’t sound familiar though.”
“There must be a few well-to-do families. She said her father’s a governor and her mother a general.”
He shrugged doubtfully. “It’s possible, I guess.”
I asked why a ten-year-old among thousands would stand out for him. He shook his head. “Don’t know. But I’ll place her eventually. Faces are what I’m good at—even if she was just a kid at the time.”
“Seven years, seven inches, and”—Priya gestured toward her chest—“plenty of new curves tend to transform a girl.”
Garvin nodded in agreement. “But the eyes—those don’t change. Something about hers sticks. The fire in them. That girl has burned people.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “I’ll see you tonight. Maybe it will come to me by then.” He tipped his hat and left.