“No, it’ll splatter. My name’s Sal.” I held my arms out as far as I could and flipped back my hood, dirty strands of black hair falling across my eyes. Should’ve sheared it again before I left. “It’s my invitation.”
“Take a break, Hackett. They’re here for the Left Hand auditions.” Another guard nudged the spear away from me and prodded Grell’s hand with a gloved finger, chuckling the entire time. “You got an actual invitation or just the hand?”
“Just the hand.” I shrugged. “Poster said invitation or proof of skill.”
Grell’s warrant included a handprint taken when he’d been arrested a few years back, all his identifiable scars immortalized in ink on the posters. They even listed the tattoos around his knuckles.
The too-small signet ring on his middle finger wasn’t on the posters, but he’d gotten it after the arrest and had never been able to slide it over his knuckle again. If the handprints and posters weren’t enough, it was.
“Who’s this then?” the guard asked, shoving Hackett aside before he could vomit on our boots. “Most folks bring heads.”
“Grell da Sousa from Kursk. I wasn’t going to travel for days with a rotting head, and his warrant description includes his hands.”
“Gang leaders fetch a pretty pearl, but Ruby’s been rough with the uninvited this year. There’s more of you than usual, and they already got eight invitees. You got anything else?” He tossed a handkerchief to Hackett and rapped hard on the gate. “Another one for the auditions!”
“Only knives and the hand.” I pulled on my old mask and yanked my hood back onto my head.
The guard beckoned me through a short door in the gate, steps leading down into a well-worn tunnel beneath the city. No room for thieves and killers on the public streets of our new capital. “You travel light.”
I’d given up everything else. It would’ve only dragged me down.
Five
Ruby’s face was a beacon of red among the black-clothed auditioners. His mask glowed in the sunlight and cast flickers of red across the ground. He’d no visible eyes or nose, only a single smiling slit that split his cheeks from ear to ear. The gap was dark with metal mesh.
I knew there were eyeholes—he had to see somehow—but when his eyeless face turned to me, I shuddered.
“Name?” The metal muffled his voice. He was dressed in pale off-whites. Thick tan leggings covered his powerful legs, and his knee-length tunic, slit up to his hips, was sleeveless and fitted. The muscles in his arms tensed with each gesture.
“Sal.” I lowered Grell’s hand.
He tipped my hood back with one long scarred finger. No armor and no weapons. If not for the mask, I’d not have thought him Ruby. “Aliases?”
“Sal.”
“Nicknames?” I swore I heard him laugh behind his mask.
“Sal.”
“Grell da Sousa—an interesting bounty.” He plucked Grell’s hand from my fingertips and held it up. A nail tumbled from the green-veined flesh. “How’d you kill him? You couldn’t have gotten his hand without killing the man.”
I winced. The crowd behind Ruby tried to catch a glimpse of me, and I shuffled so Ruby blocked their view. “Pin in the neck and knife in the ribs. It was quick.”
The crowd was getting fidgety, and I was too with their eyes on me. They were all thick and tall with well-fed muscles and shiny new clothes. A few sported worn leather bracers and empty quivers. I’d nothing but two knives.
“Your knife work was sloppy.”
“I used a sword. A dull one. Pulled it off the wall in Grell’s office. Didn’t want to ruin my knives.” I sucked in a breath and steadied my voice when Ruby huffed in response. “I’ll get better with practice.”
“Lovely.” Ruby flung Grell’s hand aside and pointed toward the soldier who’d led me here. “Practice on him.”
I lunged. The soldier only had time to widen his eyes and raise his fists. I thrust my foot into his crotch. He gasped and crumbled.
Worked on everyone.
I clutched his collar and pulled him to his knees. He was a soldier. He’d signed up to die for Our Queen and this was his service. I slid behind him, one foot on his pants to hold him down, and pinned his shoulders between my knees. I needed to be Opal, and he needed to die. I gripped either side of his head.
“Nothing personal.” I blinked away the image of his face.
“Stop.” Ruby pressed a hand to the top of the soldier’s head. “Let him go.”
I dropped him. He scrambled away and vanished into the crowd watching the auditioners. Ruby tilted my chin up, his mockery of a face grinning down at me.
I hadn’t heard Ruby move. Hadn’t seen him.
“Join the others.” He pulled a small black mask from his pocket, the sort one wore to the gallows that went over your head like a hood—thin and black with a sliver of a mouth and wide eyeholes. A pure white “23” as big as the mask was stitched across the face. “You’re Twenty-Three now. No more Sal.”
“Thank you.” I pulled the mask from his hands, fingers shaking.
One step closer to Opal, to the Erlends, to cleansing the hunger for revenge from my blood.
Ruby huffed and waved me away. The auditioners all stared—Five raked me over with pale eyes, Fifteen rolled his massive shoulders back, and Thirteen, hooded gaze focused on my hands, showed off the old jagged runes etched into her arm. I held back a shudder.
No one spoke. We snuck silent, less-than-secret glances at each other while Ruby paced across the gate. Most auditioners were taller than me. Fifteen was the tallest, and Seventeen was the widest. Three was stoop-shouldered and slouching, all wiry muscles, but her belt had worn spots for knife sheathes. Twenty-One’s long nose tented his mask.
Auditioners One through Eight must’ve been the invited—their masks were slightly better, their stances slightly looser, and most of them seemed my age or close enough.
Great.
The tunnel gate creaked open. Hackett, the soldier I’d made sick, peered around the crack. A brawny arm hooked through the opening above his head and forced the gate open. Ruby stilled.
“Name?” Ruby’s voice was the perfect mixture of bored and cutting.
“Victor dal Graf,” the newcomer said. He was a street fighter—I knew his type—with scarred, swollen knuckles and a crooked nose.
Two and Four snorted, and a few others I couldn’t see laughed. Killers with information were dangerous people.
“Aliases?” Ruby circled Victor. “Nicknames?”
“Snap Bone,” said Victor. He looked strong enough to snap my thigh. “I fight down in Kursk.”
I’d never heard of him.
“Undoubtedly.” He waved Hackett forward. “Victor, kill him.”
Hackett backtracked.
“Kill him?” Victor’s eyebrows bunched together. “What’s he done?”
Ruby nodded and held out his hand. “Thank you, Victor, but that will be all.”
Ruby waved Victor to the gate. Hackett clapped Victor on the back while another, with one arm and enough height to reach, whispered in Victor’s ear. The gate shut behind them in a puff of dust.
“So.” Ruby spread his arms wide in welcome, scars from years of sword work and fighting black in the sunlight, and laughed. “It begins with twenty-three.”
Six