So there were rounds. That was more than I knew about the auditions this morning.
“Thank you.” I pulled out my one handkerchief, an old robbery relic embroidered with a word I didn’t recognize, and handed it to her. Time to get on her good side. “You’ve got black on your cheek.”
Elise accepted the cloth, dotting her cheek. “The entire time?”
“You kept adding to it, so I figured I might as well wait till you were done.” I grinned at her blush and nodded. It was going to be doubly easy to draw information from her if she liked me. A little flirting was nothing, even if she was an Erlend. “Looks charming too.”
Elise opened her mouth, nose crinkling, and didn’t say anything. I stood and bowed.
“Tomorrow night.”
“If you’re still alive.” Elise stilled, like the dark humor gave her a chill she had to stifle, and pulled out a fresh booklet of paper.
I nodded. “Hope so.”
“Me too.”
This would be too easy.
Fifteen
I peeked out of the nook before leaving. The one-armed soldier who’d knocked was a glaring giant who didn’t take his rune-scrawled gaze off me. The back of my neck itched with these tight stone walls and low ceilings, and I dug my fingers into the wall. Quickly built and sturdy but still rough around the edges. I climbed into the rafters.
A colony of sleepy spiders and dust motes greeted me. At least I knew no one had been up here in ages. I could stop cracking my neck to glance up every time I was in the hallway. The soldier chuckled.
I’d have the advantage in a knife fight up here no matter how much he laughed. Even Fifteen, for all his muscle, would pull back a punch and smack his elbow on the wall. I leapt down and shoved up my sleeves, scrawling my new letters along my arm in charcoal. They weren’t near as nice as Elise’s.
Of course, she’d had a childhood of practice. I brushed the charcoal off with my dress—black on black, not like anyone would notice—and peered down the hall to my room. I wasn’t going to be good at getting information from her if I spent the whole time thinking about her. I’d have to think of some leading questions.
Darting around the corner, I froze.
The door to my room was open.
I crept toward it, fingers drifting to my knife. Light footsteps paced back and forth in my room, and I toed the cracked door all the way open. Maud jumped.
“Finally.” She beckoned me into the room, fingers shaking, and raked a hand through her hair. It was a mess with the normal plait falling apart from constant worrying. “There were hands.”
“What?” I locked the door behind me and pressed my back into the far corner, well out of sight from the window. A crossbow bolt could’ve taken the shutters and me out easy. “What hands?”
“Hands at the window.” She sucked in a breath and shook her head. “I didn’t think it’d frighten me, but I looked up and they were there.”
She shuddered. I leaned off the wall far enough to pour her the tea she’d set out for my dinner and retreated to my safe place.
The least dangerous place. Safety didn’t exist anymore.
“The rules matter. A lot. The Left Hand harps on them enough, none of us would think about breaking them.” They’d never want us to be Opal if we couldn’t be trusted to keep our weapons to ourselves in the palace. I slid down the wall. “And you don’t look like me.”
Where I was all angles, Maud was soft with round hips and dimples. Her light-brown, hooded eyes were nothing like my black ones, and she’d a waist-long plait of shiny black hair that must’ve been a trial to braid in the morning. Her button nose had never been broken like mine.
We shared the same rough hands though. Years of work and blisters.
Not that I couldn’t look like her with a little help.
“You’re prettier,” I said after a long moment. Maud was unsettled and needed the compliment. “And much shorter. They could turn around and not even see you, unless they ducked.”
She laughed. “They set off the bells. You’d have heard them.”
“You could’ve left. I wouldn’t have minded. Whoever owned those hands is someone I’ll have to fight eventually.” I pulled the tray of food toward me.
“I need you to be Opal.” She let out a low, long breath and cupped the mug in her hands. “I need the promotion, and I can’t help you, not really, but…”
She twirled her free hand in the air like she was gathering cobwebs, eyebrows rising to her hairline, and her gaze drifted to the mice fighting over the last of the sausage. She smiled as tight-lipped as she had when we first met.
“You’re being awfully nice.” I chewed, mulling over my words. I trusted her about as far as I could throw her—soon as our wants didn’t line up, she’d have no reason to help me beyond her duties as servant—but she was all right. Cooked better than anyone I’d ever known and picked out my clothes better than me. “I’ve never had a servant before.”
“I know.” She patted down her hair. “You’re not subtle.”
“Might’ve been a bit hasty.”
“Not all competitors are as nice as you.” She fixed me with a narrow-eyed stare, all seriousness and in a tone I was sure no servant ever used with an employer. “We talk about you—we have favorites—and we can’t help you, but hurting someone without anyone noticing is an art in Our Queen’s court. She can’t stand it, but no one can risk outright warfare. You’re an etiquette travesty, but you’re polite about it, and that goes a long way.”
“And the folks who’ve had servants before aren’t nice?” The invited were nobles or rich. They ignored the servants, pointed and took them for granted. They were the ones who needed to be told we couldn’t hurt servants. “The invited?”
Maud hummed. She gathered up her skirts and rose, mostly back to sorts. “Would you like a bath?”
“No, thank you.” I raised my voice so it carried out the window. Let the other auditioners come. “I’m exhausted. Going straight to sleep.”
She arched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
Rath and Maud were cut from the same cloth—too quick to be lied to and too clever to not pick up on signals. I’d bet my mask she was as clever with numbers as him. In a different life, she might’ve been more like him.
I shut one eye, finished eating, and nailed the door shut again. By the time I snuffed out my lone candle, my eye was ready for the dark.
Silence settled over my room. Curls of smoke from chimneys drifted through the shutters. I crept behind the bathtub, eyeing the makeshift dummy in my bed, and waited. The dark closed in, bleeding into the corners of my eyes. I shook my head.
No shadows here.
The window creaked, bells chiming softly in the wind. I let out a slow, quiet breath and slid my knives into my palms. I was faster with them than the ax, and I needed to be fast. A hand with pale white fingertips peeking out of a black glove curled around the bells. Silence returned.
I could deal with people. I gripped my knives tighter, breathing in the smoke, and shifted to my toes. I had dealt with people.