“Well, then how do we keep the palace safe in case a member of the fae courts decides to use magic against us?” Ari leaned forward, eager for the answer, but when Lady Tassi gave her a quizzical look, the princess grabbed a skewer of honey-roasted peaches as if that had been her goal all along.
Until she figured out the exact details of Thad’s dealings with Teague, she couldn’t let anyone suspect the king was tangled up with one of the fae. Especially if someone connected the rise in crime in Kosim Thalas to the king’s strange reluctance to send the city guard to patrol its busiest streets.
“For safety measures, we put iron fences around our estates and keep iron weapons handy, and we keep some bloodflower poison handy. The combination is enough to weaken or even kill most fae, though of course we aren’t trying to kill anyone we’re in business with.” Lady Tassi nodded a greeting at a passing nobleman while Ari’s mind latched onto these new pieces of information.
She couldn’t put up an iron fence without attracting attention, both from Teague and from the citizens of Kosim Thalas, and she didn’t want to advertise the fact that they were trying to keep out a member of the fae. Iron weapons and bloodflower poison, however, she could manage.
Thad was hiring a slew of new employees that afternoon to replace those who’d decided they no longer wished to work at the palace in the service of their new king. Most of the staff who’d left had been old enough to retire anyway, and Thad had settled a decent pension on all of them, no questions asked.
Once Thad had a new weapons master in charge of maintaining the armory, she could gather some iron scraps from the smithy and commission some weapons. And she could make some sort of excuse for going to the merchant district in Kosim Thalas without Mama Eleni—that woman’s watchful eye would make asking her favorite spice merchant about poison absolutely impossible unless Ari wanted to explain herself to the woman who now saw her as a girl in need of a mother’s guiding hand.
As Lady Tassi and the other representatives returned to their seats and Thad entered the room to finish the last nine items on the docket, Ari turned to a fresh sheet of parchment and began making a short list of things she needed.
Iron.
Bloodflower poison.
An excuse that Mama Eleni would accept.
Maybe a book or two on the fae so that she could learn more about how they worked and how to deal with them.
And, of course, a new weapons master capable of turning her iron into dangerous weapons.
Ari stared at her list, thoughts racing, and let the rest of the discussion slip past her. She had a starting point now. And by the time she cornered Thad and made him tell her the whole truth, she’d be well on her way to being able to protect her brother.
FIVE
THE SUN WAS just beginning to set when Sebastian Vaughn finished delivering freight to the shipyard for the merchant who’d hired him for the day. The thick, metal-studded cudgel he’d strapped inside his coat rested heavily against his chest, a reassuring weight as he faced east and began his weekly trip back to the home he’d left behind once his father had been transferred to the kingdom of Balavata and his brother Parrish’s body had been laid to rest.
When Sebastian reached the city proper with its narrow streets and its canals snaking through the busiest sections, he stopped at the first dock he saw and paid a ferryman to row him to the market closest to east Kosim Thalas. It was an indulgence he rarely wasted coin on, but it was nearly dark, and he didn’t want to be on the streets any longer than he had to.
Besides, he had some thinking to do.
He leaned against the side of the faded green boat, relishing the quiet swoosh of the water as the ferryman’s oars dipped and pulled, and considered what he’d learned at the waterfront. The new king was hiring—some said as many as forty-nine positions were available at the palace—and one of those positions was that of weapons master. Sebastian didn’t have much in the way of credentials. He’d been working any job he could find, but he’d had no steady employer. No one would hire a boy from east Kosim Thalas on a permanent basis.
But with quite a few members of the palace staff refusing to work for the new king out of loyalty to the recently deceased royal family, and with plenty of workers uneasy about casting their lot in with the king when rumor had it many in the upper class didn’t support him, Sebastian figured maybe the king was desperate enough to overlook Sebastian’s upbringing and youth.
Maybe desperate enough to not ask too many questions about why Sebastian, an eighteen-year-old boy living in poverty and filth, knew how to use every weapon in the king’s arsenal and then some.
It was the best hope Sebastian had of finding steady income and a roof over his head.
The best hope he had of finally saving up enough to leave Kosim Thalas, escape his father’s reach, and never look back.
The ferryman slowed his rowing as they bumped their way past a handful of boats leaving the dock the led into the eastern market. Once they’d docked, Sebastian tipped the ferryman and leaped from the boat.
Moments later, he’d picked up his weekly food order from a local merchant and was facing the entrance to east Kosim Thalas, his stomach sour at the thought of what lay ahead.
His mother didn’t deserve his weekly visits to fill her cupboards with food and to make sure she wasn’t lying passed out or dead, unnoticed and unmissed by anyone. He knew that. She deserved the anger and hatred she seemed to constantly expect from him, no matter how many times he refused to give it. But Sebastian wasn’t doing this because he felt obligated to the woman who’d given birth to him and his brother and then ignored their screams while her husband whipped them whenever he felt like it.
He was doing this because hatred and rage were the hallmarks of his father’s life. Making a different choice was the only way he knew to exert control over the kind of man he hoped to become.
Dusk clung to the streets in pockets of gloom that stretched hazy gray fingers toward the darkening sky. Sebastian strode toward the gate leading into east Kosim Thalas, shutting down all reflections about his parents until nothing remained but one burning thought: survive.
His steps lengthened, and he flexed his shoulders as he pushed past the last of the market’s shoppers and walked through the cracked, decrepit archway that served as an entrance to the corner of the city that only the desperately poor and those who hoped to prey on them dared to enter.
He reached for his cudgel and pulled it free as he left the gate behind. Tension hummed through his muscles. The scars on his back tingled and burned as he focused on every movement, every sound that whispered toward him.