Maud was quick to remind me that she wasn’t jumping out of any windows.
She left to get me a uniform. I double-checked my stitches and bandaged up the rest of my hurts so they couldn’t be seen while I was playing servant. She returned with a sharp-looking set of clothes identical to Dimas’s fitted shirt, flared coat, and matching gray pants. I tucked the soldier’s uniform away for later and got dressed. Maud looked me over with her critical gaze.
“Passable.” She buttoned the collar up to my chin. “Now how to serve drinks.”
I shifted about in the stiff coat. “Pour when the glass is empty?”
“Just be quiet and pay attention.”
It was boring. Exhausting for sure but mostly boring, and the fact that Maud had a strong enough will to stand around waiting for folks to order her about made her all the more interesting. Anticipating people’s needs was a whole different kind of spying. It took me till dawn to get the hang of all the little rules. I even had to stand a certain way.
Maud straightened my clothes one last time and wrinkled her nose at my less-than-polished boots. “Go now—the guards will switch shifts after you get there. It should buy you some more time.”
“You sure you’re not a criminal mastermind?” I muttered as I left.
Maud only scowled.
But she was right. Two yawning guards patted me down as soon as I crossed the threshold. I’d not stayed in training long enough to study the building, but it was larger and taller than it looked. The first floor dropped into the ground—more basement than anything else—and gave the guards their own little room for checking people as they came and went. I adopted Maud’s passive stance while they looked over me.
“I only need something stronger to clean up my auditioner’s mess.” I shrugged while he patted down where I’d hidden my lock picks and dropped my voice into the soft, resigned tone of someone forced to do something out of their control. “You know how they are.”
The explanation had been Maud’s idea.
He huffed and waved me through, laughing when his partner saluted me through her yawn. I smiled back at her.
“I appreciate it.”
The building was mostly deserted. Only two servants paced the halls, scrubbing the floors by the dim dawn light. I fiddled with my heavy coat, high collar noose-tight and stiff sleeves confining as shackles. It didn’t take long to find Isidora dal Abreu’s laboratory.
I wasn’t keen to leap out a window though. Not one I’d never seen. Worst-case scenario was that Maud misplaced the cart and I broke my legs, tumbling ass over shattered feet to the hard-packed dirt.
I slipped my lock picks out, fumbled on my first attempt, but popped open the door on my second.
None of this mattered; fear didn’t matter. I had to do this.
I slipped into the laboratory. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, and glassware glittering in the dim light of one dying lamp littered the tables. A few chairs were scattered throughout—one covered by a fancy yellow coat with obnoxious black stitching had a sheathed sword with a melon-shaped pommel resting on the table before it. I slipped off my own coat and scanned the walls. I only needed a little nightshade.
Any more and I’d be poisoning Four instead of fixing him.
A sketch of the bell-shaped flowers covered a label halfway up the far wall. I picked the lock on the cabinet.
Among the dozens of vials inside sat the one I needed. The small white crystals that countered Lady’s Palm were hard to create unless you were a proper physician, and they were usually too expensive to buy if you were a thief unlucky enough to need them. I carefully picked it up.
I might actually pull this off.
“You couldn’t ask me this last night?” The sharp, sleep-husky voice of Isidora slipped through the door. “Or literally any other time that wasn’t now?”
I paused. A muffled laugh answered her.
“Triad bless, you’ve not grown up at all.” The tap of her graceful footsteps neared.
Only one thing left to do. No more time to stall.
I backed up against a counter, kissed Elise’s ring, and leapt.
Air hit my face. I bent my knees, vial of nightshade safe in my chest pocket. The world blurred, a smear of greens and browns ripping through my sight, and I clenched my teeth and looked down. A white smudge rushed toward me. A jolt shuddered up my heels.
I collapsed, breath knocked out of me. A puff of down feathers fluttered over my shoulders. I checked the vial.
Safe.
Maud plucked a feather from my hair. “You’re welcome.”
I opened my mouth but could only gulp down the breaths that my landing had smacked out of me.
“I do love leaving my employers speechless.” She clicked something on the cart and shoved it down the path. “Did you get it?”
I nodded.
She’d caught me. She’d kept her word. I patted one of the pillows she’d tied around the edges of the cart.
“Good.” She pulled a string and the knots holding the pillows in place fell. Quick release. Clever. “I’d have had a bigger mess to clean if I’d placed this incorrectly. It might be my job, but I loathe extra work.”
I couldn’t stop myself from grinning even though my heart was still beating like horse’s hooves pounding my ribs to dust. My backside would be bruised, but it was worth it. I could bribe Four into recanting.
“It was fun to watch too.” Maud shoved the cart across the little lip of the bridge. “You know what you remind me of?”
Not a cat. Everyone said cat.
Rath always said, “The slinking and staring and general air of arrogance only you and cats have mastered.” Then he’d point to the ratty-eared street cats with dark fur and feral eyes. The sort that hissed and clawed when people got too close.
It made my skin crawl.
“One of those mountain goats.” Maud raised her hands to her head, fingers curling into little horns, and scrunched up her nose. “The climbing ones.”
I scowled. “A goat?”
“Only the mountain ones.” She nodded. “They can stand on air, the good ones. Stroll right up cliff sides sleek as glass and never fall.”
“How do I remind you of a climbing goat after falling out a window?” I kicked a dirty blanket off my legs and groaned. A goat.
She laughed. “I saw one fall once. Made the funniest sound when it hit the ground—like the ground was the one in the wrong, not the goat.”
I smacked her hand.
“Trust me,” she said without flinching. “You’re a mountain goat.”
I wasn’t a mountain goat, but she did catch me. I’d the nightshade in my grasp, and Four would soon recant. I settled back into the cart and watched the sky roll past overhead.
“I trust you.”
Thirty-Two
Maud taught me the last little tricks of serving—pour Emerald’s drinks from the left while everyone else was from the right and keep your head ducked to avoid meeting gazes. I practiced slipping Lady’s Palm into a glass.
Using dirt instead of the powder, of course. I wasn’t dealing with the real thing till I had to.