I clenched my jaw.
“People slip and fall into canals, never to come up. It happens every day.” He flicked a lock of my hair and stepped away, his smile like a knife slash in his face. The smile I realized, too late, was his own mask.
I’d underestimated him. He was not a man to toy with.
“You can find your own way home,” he said. “I hope you’re fast enough to outrun the ghosts.” He walked out of the alley, whistling once again until he was gone from sight.
I took a deep breath and released it. No one had ever threatened me before. The lawmen in Lovero would never dream of wielding their power like that over people, because they could never be sure someone they had wronged wouldn’t hire a clipper to seek vengeance. Lefevre was the first person to show me what a man could do if his power wasn’t held in check.
I could only hope his threat to send a letter to the Da Vias was a bluff.
I pocketed my dagger. I needed to locate my uncle and leave this city before I found any more trouble.
fourteen
THE WIND LIFTED THE CORNER OF MY CLOAK AND I jerked it under control, shifting my weight. I’d been sitting on the rooftop of this damn inn since late afternoon and nothing even remotely interesting had happened in this dull city. I could have taken a longer nap and missed nothing.
Below me in a square, women washed their laundry in a fountain. The women in Yvain wore long skirts and short-sleeved blouses with shawls around their shoulders. I’d had to leave my hair uncovered, and more than once my long bangs had flopped into my face.
Stupid Yvain with its outdated fashions. I tugged the cloak around my shoulders, and my injured arm flared in pain. I should’ve been home in Ravenna, listening to music and revelers instead of watching the common go about their chores. I missed the smell of the sea and lantern oil. Yvain smelled of rotting fish and canals, and the common seemed to think putting flowers everywhere could somehow disguise the stink.
Thinking about Ravenna made my chest ache. I needed to find my uncle and go home where I belonged. Ravenna was all I’d ever known and I missed it, like another piece of my life had been stolen from me.
Children played in the water of the fountain or ran through the streets, hitting one another with rags and sticks.
Don’t think about Emile and how he’ll never get a chance to play games like this. How he’d never get a chance to dance with a girl at a masquerade or steal a kiss under the colored lights, their masquerade masks lifted, their lips pressed together.
I blinked, my throat tight. There was no use crying about it, wishing for things to be different. What was done was done. I could only worry about the future now, and how I could best make the Da Vias pay.
As the sun sank, the women gathered their laundry and children.
“Hurry now, before the ghosts take you,” one woman said to her dawdling daughter. Once darkness spilled across the streets, Yvain seemed as empty as the dead plains.
I sighed and picked at the hem on my cloak. My shoulder ached and itched. I stifled a yawn under my mask. If my uncle had been in Ravenna, I could’ve found him immediately. Rafeo would’ve known what to do. Rafeo would’ve found Marcello by now.
Below me a man stumbled out of the inn despite the late Yvain hour. He tripped and laughed uproariously. I frowned. I’d never alter my state of mind so much. Someone could be watching from the shadows, knife in hand and poison in their pouches.
On a rooftop across the street a shadow moved. I stilled my body, sinking deeper into myself. My spine pressed against the chimney of the inn as my cloak obscured my outline. I waited.
The shadow moved again and revealed itself to be not a shadow but a person, hiding in a hooded cloak similar to mine.
My uncle, Marcello Saldana.
He crouched on the edge of his building. The moonlight reflected brightly off the silver buckles on his boots and the weapons on his belt.
I frowned. Sloppy. Amateur mistakes. The cloak was to prevent accidental reflections and no clipper would ever leave the shadows if they had a choice.
Marcello watched the drunken man below. For a moment I recalled a similar night when I’d watched my own “drunk” stumble in the streets while Val snuck up on me.
Val. My heart clenched at the memory of his hazel eyes, his bright smile, the feel of his breath on my skin. But there was no Val here. And this time I was the hunter.
My uncle jumped off the building in a brazen move. He was either crazy or idiotic, and I scrambled from my post to peer down into the street.
Marcello landed directly on his target, slipping his knife into the man’s neck. The mark barely had time to react before he was dead on the ground, my uncle standing over him.