“She’s ready,” she said as she came to his side. His quartermaster had put on a finer black tunic tonight, the gold rings in her ears shining in the low light.
He glanced back at the cards in his hand. “Well?” he asked his opponent, a thin man in a pin-striped robe who sat in front of him. “Cutthroat or fold?”
The man had been stalling his answer for the better part of a quarter sand fall, and Alōs’s patience was more than used up.
“You must call it now, sir,” the dealer urged him as well.
His opponent swallowed. “C-cutthroat,” he said, displaying his cards: three swords and three boulders.
Alōs laid down his two vipers and four daggers.
The man turned pale.
“You know the rules, sir.” The dealer cleared the cards from the table. “Empty the entirety of your pockets and billfold.”
“But it’s all that I have!”
The dealer sighed, bored. “It’s called Cutthroat, sir. That’s rather the point. Now, do I need to call management over?”
“No.” The man slouched. “It’s just, how will I be able to pay my way back to my boat?”
“Perhaps you can swim,” suggested Alōs as he stood. “I’ll collect my winnings upon my leaving.”
“Of course, Lord Ezra.” The dealer bowed.
Alōs loomed over his still-seated opponent. “And be warned, sir. If you keep even one silver from me, I’ll know, and I’ll be more than pleased to show you the real reason it’s called Cutthroat.”
The man’s eyes bulged, and Alōs shot him a smirk before turning to leave.
“How did it go?” he asked his quartermaster as they descended the rugged stairs to the lower floor.
“It was not easy,” admitted Kintra. “She put up quite a fight after you left, once she learned of her actual task. She’s got a temper, that one. But we left in one piece, and I paid Regina a bit extra to keep her in our good graces.”
“Thank you.”
The pair walked past a second saloon that stretched the breadth of the ship, the lavish chandeliers lighting the red couches and tables filled with more merriment and patrons. Alōs nodded to a few he knew and winked at others he knew better, though he didn’t have the time to stop and chat. Perhaps later, after he got what he’d come here to find. But even then, while his crew could rest, he knew he could not. Despite the leisurely aura he often gave off, Alōs hadn’t rested in a very long while.
Not since he’d been given the sandglass that sat on the desk in his quarters, the trickling hiss of falling grains reminding him of the potential loss of the only thing he had ever truly cared for in his life. Alōs had sacrificed everything for him, for them, only for his actions to return to haunt him.
Could he never have peace?
There was too much at stake now, too much to fix, and Alōs’s mind was in a constant state of whirring, of fast actions to get quicker results. Which was always how mistakes were made, like the mishap with the phorria from the Thief Kingdom. But there had been no other choice. Which appeared to be his forever curse: anything done for good, he could only fulfill with great evil.
Why try to be virtuous, then?
It was a question Alōs had stopped asking himself long ago.
If the lost gods were determined to make him a villain, then a villain he would be.
As they came to a lushly decorated corridor lined with private entertainment suites, Alōs turned to Kintra. “Does she look the part?” He knew he didn’t need to ask such a thing, but the question fell from his lips anyway.
“See for yourself.” Kintra gestured to where the dancers’ dressing rooms sat at the end of the hall. “She’ll be the one in green.”
Alōs strode past the guard at the entrance, acknowledgments given, and pushed aside a curtain to enter an overperfumed, chittering room. Glass mirrors leaned above stretches of tables where men and women painted their faces with extravagant imaginings. Some were designed like wild beasts or tear-stricken kittens, others like voluptuous beauties and wrinkled hags. Their bodies were adorned with an assortment of tantalizing fashions, from a sequin-covered bodysuit to sheer frocks to complete nudity. Alōs’s gaze skipped over it all as he walked the rows, ignoring the whistles and catcalls as he passed.
“Tell me what number you’ll be in tonight, darling.” A man dressed in little else but silk stockings smiled, leaning against his friend. “I’ll be sure to give you the lounge special.”
“Another time, perhaps,” said Alōs as he kept walking.
Reaching the very end, he was about to turn down another row when he spotted her, for how could he not.
Niya was surrounded by a horde of other dancers, all preening. Some touched her green silk robe or complimented her mane of red hair, sections swept up to create an intricate braided crown, while others threw their heads back in laughter from something she’d said. Niya was at center stage, as if back in the Mousai’s dressing rooms beneath the Thief King’s palace after a performance. She would have been masked there, hair tucked away, face shrouded, but her energy was much the same. Alōs had often watched her then, merely one of many others invited to the Mousai’s connected rooms for a postparty, where finer spirits and debauchery were always promised. Niya was glowing now as she’d glowed then, resplendent, though she carried a hint of danger. A heady mixture that burned any who drew too near.
Except him.
Because for Alōs, the threat of the fire dancer ran deeper than attraction or power. Niya represented the temptation to be reckless, to react without thinking, to act on basic instinct and desires. And these were luxuries Alōs could never afford. Even when his actions appeared negligent, they were in fact the result of carefully calculated decisions. Years of rebuilding a life he could control after suffering an old one that had controlled him.
This was why Alōs had made sure to never get singed by Niya’s tantalizing fire. He had done so by extinguishing it.
As Niya noticed his approach in her looking glass, her smile dropped, the red haze of her energy pulling inward. At the evident change in her mood, her admirers glanced up at him. With a quiet word from her, they dipped away, though a few curious gazes still lingered.
“Regina and Kintra did well,” he said, stopping behind Niya and meeting her gaze in the mirror.
Niya’s eyes thinned. “I know better than those two about creating an outfit to dance. I could have put something together with my eyes closed.”
“Did you create this?”
“Practically.”
“Then you did well.”
She seemed unsure what to do with his compliment. “I also remember saying that I would not be the entertainment. Yet here I am.” Niya gestured to her costume. “Now explain.”
“I only ask for tricks you’re well accustomed to performing. Just think of tonight like any other night you go scheming for your king.”
“Except you are not my king.”
Alōs smiled sharply. “I am for the next year.”
Niya laughed at that, the sound sending a cloud of magic flowing off her. Alōs stood utterly still as the warmth washed over him. “Sure,” she said, mirth still twinkling in her eyes as she picked up a jar of powder and began to dab her nose. “Whatever you men need to tell yourselves to help you sleep at night. Now, who is this Cebba Dagrün? Kintra says she’s who I’m to perform privately for?”
Alōs slid onto a stool beside her. “She is the most notorious trader in Barter Bay,” he began quietly. “She can flip any item, hide any trail, and pay the highest price. Once she sees something she wants, she will obtain it, even if the item was not intended to be sold.”
“She sounds lovely.”
“She’s ruthless.”
“Even better.”
“Yes.” Alōs regarded Niya’s profile, her smooth skin made tan from her days working in the sun. “She’s entertaining company if you’re not in her debt.”
Niya’s brows lifted. “And you are?”
“Not exactly. But I need something from her.”
“Then why not go ask her for it yourself?”