And these rooftop gardens were growing on me.
Tonin had a monstrously expensive garden with white and gray flowers blooming around the edge and silver furniture for his players. The table was dead center and framed by four chairs with cloud-shaped cushions. Tonin lounged on one with a stance entirely too relaxed for someone betting coin they cared about. His partner was ramrod straight and overcompensating, fancy slippers tapping out his nerves on the rooftop. The pair shared a pitcher of bloodred wine muddled with orange slices. Tonin downed the last of his glass, drizzled honey across the bottom, and poured himself another.
Good. Tonin was big, and he’d be easier to kill drunk. I didn’t want a fair fight with anyone who’d forearms big as my thighs. The pair of them gambled more, drank more, and traded enough boring business chatter to put me to sleep. I spun one of my knives in my fingers, straining to hear anything of use. The only words loud enough to hear clearly were curses.
Lady, if this was what being Opal was like, I was in for a lifetime of boredom.
“You rat!” Tonin’s partner tossed his dice into a carpet of woolly thyme. “No chance they’re not weighted.”
Tonin snorted. “You brought them.”
I leaned forward, drawing my feet up and rising to my toes on the edge of the wall. Finally, something to do.
Tonin rose, muttering the whole time. The other man tossed a handful of credit coins—wood carved with his name and symbol as a promise he’d pay up—onto the table and downed the last of his drink. He straightened the merchant guild pin on his hat.
I leaned over the roof, hiding in the shadows as one of the predictable guards passed beneath me. “Come on. Leave.”
Tonin’s partner turned.
Shan de Pau looked as well fed and fancy on this roof as he did on his business posters.
Shan de fucking Pau. The man who’d sold Nacean goods while they were still warm and bloodied was Tonin’s business partner. And I couldn’t kill him.
I rammed my fists into my thighs, pain biting through the rage howling at me to follow Shan de Pau, rip him limb from limb, and sell the pieces like he’d done to us. He’d no right to still be standing. I groaned and wrapped my arms around my head.
This was worse, so much worse than Seve, who’d been right there. I’d made it an accident, but this was a trap. They were making sure I wouldn’t kill him.
But why shouldn’t he die? Why should he get to walk free when so many were dead? Homeless? Starving?
They’d trapped me. The Left Hand knew. They had to know what he’d done—everyone knew—and they’d let him stand. Now they were luring me into their complacency. But why?
Tonin gathered up the credit coins Pau had tossed aside. Pau vanished through the door.
More money exchanged hands.
Money.
We’d so little farming land left intact after the war that Our Queen had bought extra food from across the sea. She’d needed money.
But, Lady, the cost of it. There had to be more—there had to be—because she wouldn’t sign away the murder of thousands so easily, not when she’d fought so hard to save everyone. There was more to it, and it was on Pau. Filth or not, he’d something she needed.
But he wouldn’t for much longer.
I leapt to my feet and shook out my arms. He wouldn’t live with it much longer because I knew where he was, and he wasn’t going to live with it comfortably. Pau would pay. I’d make sure of it. As the ache in my chest grew with each step he took down the street, I gripped the trellis next to me to keep from chasing after him. Blackberries and thorns crushed under my palm. I let my blood fall to the garden beneath me.
“For what I’ve done and what I’m about to do,” I said softly. The Lady’s stars were gone tonight, too pale against the lights of the city and palace. I backed up from the edge, eyes fixed on my future, on Tonin, and double-checked that my path was clear. “And everything that will come after.”
Forty-One
I landed hard on the roof of Quick Silver, stumbled forward, and rolled over my shoulder into Tonin. He opened his mouth to scream.
I shoved my fist into his mouth, knuckles caught in his teeth. He flailed and kicked, and I pinned him under me with my knees on either side of his chest. He howled.
I punched him. Hard. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp. I eased my hand from his teeth.
Bloody gouge marks lined my knuckles. I leaned back and rubbed the pain away, staring down at Tonin. Pau was a coward and opportunist, and he’d never fight Tonin or anyone head-on. He’d wait till they turned their back.
I couldn’t kill Pau, but I could trap him like they’d trapped me. I just had to make them think he’d killed Tonin.
The empty glasses rimmed with silver glittered in the moonlight. I pulled the long, dull stirring rod from one and rolled Tonin onto his stomach. He moaned, fingers drifting toward his head, and I sat back down on top of him, pinning his arms with my knees. I glanced around and saw nothing better to use as a weapon, so I raised the rod. Pau hadn’t carried a knife. He would kill someone with whatever was on hand.
And he could get a lucky hit.
“What?” Tonin slurred the word, still trying to grab his bruised temple.
“Shush.” I pulled his signet ring from his finger. “You won’t even notice.”
I lined the rod up beneath the base of his skull and jammed it through his neck. He didn’t even twitch.
Dripping blood and sweat, exhaustion tugging at my bones, I rose from Tonin and tucked the stirrer into my pocket.
Dead.
My mark was dead. I hadn’t been caught, and I’d injured no one else. My final test for Opal had come and gone, and here I stood, one step closer to Shan de Pau and all the other bastards who’d buried Nacea in shallow graves and political nonsense. They’d finally have to pay up what they owed.
And it was going to be so easy.
I ripped the purse from Tonin’s belt. He wore silver cosmetic dust on his face, sparkling in the night like some wayward star, and I smeared some across Pau’s credit coins before stuffing them in the bag. I knocked over Tonin’s glass and upended Pau’s chair too. He’d be panicked.
A drunken brawl over gambling gone too far. A sudden stabbing. A frantic escape.
Careful not to step in the blood or wine, I made my way back to the edge of the roof. Every now and then, people and guards moved through the alley between Quick Silver and the building I’d leapt from. I shimmied down one of the decorative beams and waited for my path to clear.
The guards and crowds were none the wiser. I shoved my bloodied gloves into a pocket and straightened my clothes. Just had to find Shan de Pau.
A street kid that looked like me—young, dirty, racing away from a drunk man screaming about a missing purse—rammed into me as I turned a corner, and I grabbed her arm. “You want to make some money?”
She eyed me through a filthy fringe of hair and nodded.