The blue door opened into a comfortable room with a canopy bed, all in various shades of red. The sheets were black silk. A thick red rug hid the floor. The furnishings were rich but slightly vulgar.
A moment, and a woman walked through the door. She was slender, blond, and doe-eyed. She saw Sophie.
“I don’t do kids.”
“Let’s talk.”
“Who about?”
“Brennan.”
“I don’t know any Brennan.”
Charlotte opened her wallet and dropped a coin on the desk. Miranda’s eyes widened. That’s right, a gold doubloon. Charlotte added another to the first, making it clink. Another doubloon. Another. Five now. Five doubloons was probably more than Miranda made in a month.
“I could just take the money,” Miranda said.
“I’d cut off your hand before you touched it,” Sophie said. Her eyes were glacially cold. Miranda looked at her and took a small step back.
Six doubloons.
“Once I stop dropping coins, my offer to pay for your information is withdrawn,” Charlotte said. “Better make up your mind.”
Seven.
She held the eighth doubloon between her fingers for a long moment. Miranda sucked in a breath. The coin clinked against the others on the table.
Charlotte sighed.
“Fine!” Miranda shrugged. “I’ll tell you. Money first.”
Charlotte let her sweep the gold off the table.
“He comes, he fucks, he leaves. If you’re looking for state secrets, he doesn’t share.”
“Tell me about his habits. What does he like?”
Miranda sat on the bed. “Nothing too twisted. He likes to feel he owns you. Sometimes he makes me crawl to him and beg him to fuck me. I don’t care—as long as he’s paying. He’s got this thing about all women being secretly whores. Sometimes he makes me dress up in a nice prim outfit, formal gown, flowers in the hair, the whole thing, and suck him. He gets off on the perversity of it, I guess.”
“Do you know that you have Dock Rot?”
Miranda grimaced. “I know. Damn soldiers. I already took my medicine.”
*
AFTER the perfumed air of the Palace of Delights, the cold night breeze felt refreshing. Charlotte and Sophie walked down the street. Charlotte walked fast. Regrettably, the closest place where they had been able to leave their phaeton was a brisk five-minute walk away, and the neighborhood wasn’t exactly safe. They left the dog tied to the vehicle just in case.
“Making her crawl to him is sick,” Sophie said.
“Brennan likes to debase women. He also likes to feel powerful.”
“Why did we need to know that?”
“Because he’s investigating Richard, which means he hasn’t bought our story completely. Angelia’s ignoring him in favor of Maedoc. He’ll look for ways to punish Angelia and possibly replace her. There may come a time that I will have to distract him.”
Sophie mulled it over. “Just like that?”
“Brennan is power-hungry, and I’m his type: tall and blond.”
They turned into the phaeton lot. Two men blocked their way. The taller of the two flashed a knife. “Money. Now.”
Nice tactic. The Palace had to have maintained security because mugged patrons were bad for business. So someone there either noticed that they left early and surmised they were looking for information rather than pleasure, or Miranda had raised an alarm. Likely the first option—the proprietress had given them a sharp look when they left, and Miranda was paid too well to blab. Now they were being scared off, just in case they had any thoughts of coming back.
“Money, you cow!” The man raised his knife.
“May I?” Sophie asked. “Please?”
“Leave, or she will kill you,” Charlotte said.
“Suit yourself, whore.” The man lunged and gasped as his arm slid off his body and fell to the pavement. His mouth gaped open in the horrified beginning of a scream. He never got to make one. Sophie swept past him, and he crumpled to the floor. The other thug backed away, his hands in the air, and fled into the night.
Sophie pulled a cloth from her tunic and cleaned the blood off her blade.
Charlotte looked at the body on the ground. He was damaged beyond her skill. A child had just ended the man’s life and seemed completely untroubled by it.
“Come.” Charlotte headed toward their vehicle. “Do you enjoy killing, Sophie?”
“I enjoy the shadows,” Sophie said.
“The shadows?”
At the phaeton, the wolfripper hound licked her hand. Charlotte let it into the back, and they got into the vehicle. Sophie started the phaeton, and they rolled off into the night.
“I walk the path of the lightning blade. A warrior poised between light and darkness. It’s difficult to explain.”
“I would appreciate it if you tried anyway.”
Sophie frowned, her profile, lit by the golden glow of the instruments panel, etched against the night outside. “The death isn’t important. The only thing that matters is the moment of decision. My path is a line. My opponent’s path is another line. In the instant we meet, we’re forever altered. We may both walk away, or my line or his line may end, but for a brief time we exist in the same space on the verge of action, and that space is full of possibilities. It’s the moment in which I truly live. It’s short. It’s always so very short.”
An old memory flashed before Charlotte. She was sixteen, attending a dance during a summit with another college, and as she stood there, chatting with her friends, she saw an older boy looking at her from across the floor. She saw admiration in his eyes. In that brief instant, when their gazes met, an array of possibilities flashed before her: he could come over, he could talk to her, there could be the start of something . . . It was a sweet kind of thrill, slightly frightening, but exciting. But Sophie found it in battle and was addicted to it. How could you even begin to fix something like that?