It did the trick.
Queensguard had a reputation for being off. The stories only got worse each year. Troops would turn up in the dead of night to evict entire rows of tenants for the Queen’s mining expeditions. Whole neighborhoods went down so she could build her silver Hill higher. The displaced wound up beggars, or employed in the same mines being dug under their stolen homes.
Now Rags was in Queensguard custody, a gang of them to take care of one small thief, dragging him through what seemed to be the Queen’s own white palace.
It didn’t get stranger than this.
They hadn’t been so quiet during Rags’s last encounter with them. So stiff. In the lineup of a dozen men and women, not one coughed, jiggled, or hummed to make the walk go faster. No one so much as pretended to bait Rags with an insult about his height, which didn’t sit right.
Their stark black uniforms, detailed with silver, turned them into shadows. They were all business, as though their mistress, the Queen, could see them everywhere, every heartbeat of every day, so they always had to be on their best behavior.
That thought gave Rags shivers, and he stepped down hard on it. Had to quit daydreaming. If he planned to see this bewildering trip through, figure out how to escape it, he had to pay attention.
A few more halls. The architecture was late Radiance period; this could only be home to a member of the Silver Court, a theory confirmed by the masterpieces—not forgeries—hung in lily-shaped frames between the windows. Then a brightly lit chamber, a chair at the far end flanked by two massive, wire-furred hounds. A lean young man sat dead center, his long black hair seeded with jeweled beads. At his back, another man, stockier, dressed entirely in red. Like a sorcerer.
Like a fucking sorcerer.
Shit, shit, shit.
The Queensguard didn’t let Rags go, didn’t give him the chance to bolt. One put his hand on the back of Rags’s head and said, “Bow.”
No choice. Down on his knees in front of some Ever-Noble, staring at his own filth-caked hands, fingers splayed on marble tile veined with silver.
“You need a bath,” the young man in the chair said.
And a knife, and a way to turn back time, to be a good boy and ignore the rumors about jewels buried beneath an abandoned bank.
“’Snot all I need,” Rags said. “. . . Your Importantness.” That last bit earned him a boot to the side of the face—a boot with its toe cased in iron.
“Rise,” the sorcerer commanded.
The Queensguard assisted Rags, shoving him forward. They let go of his wrists because they didn’t need security, not now that the sorcerer had stepped forward, his eyes just visible between swaths of bloodred fabric.
The sorcerer continued, “We’ll kill you if you don’t agree to our proposal.”
“I agree to your proposal,” Rags said.
The sorcerer shook his head. The cloth around his mouth and nose didn’t stir with his breath, sending a shiver through Rags’s body. The rumors that sorcerers didn’t have to breathe couldn’t be true.
Was he the last thing the Queen’s most recent enemies, the Ever-Loyals, had seen before their eyes had glazed over for good? Someone should’ve noticed that Rags didn’t belong in their noble, deceased company.
“Let’s eat first,” the sorcerer said. “Shall we?”
3
Rags
No names were offered, but they were generous with their food. Rags’s manners had the wiry hounds looking away in shame, but no one corrected him or was stupid enough to bring out a knife and fork to help him eat. He ate with his hands. At least they had brought him a basin of clean water and scented soap to wash them in first.
He had caught sight of himself in the surface of the water before he disturbed it. Hollows in his cheeks, under his dark eyes. The split in his lip was worse than he’d thought, definitely going to scar. He took in his sharply angled features, the mouth that felt permanently twisted. The posture and attitude of a magpie, with the bird’s shifty, quick grace. Black hair curling over the curves of his ears. The lobe of the right had been torn, the hoop that once hung there ripped out in his latest tussle with the Queensguard.
All that work, skillfully avoiding every trap, only to have Queensguard waiting for him at the end of the maze. It still smarted. The Gutter King was laughing in his vault somewhere.
And counting his un-stolen jewels.
The memory offered revelation. “Oh. You want me to steal something for you. Right?” Rags caught the Ever-Noble’s flicker of surprise and kept smug triumph from crossing his own face. “Figures. Even though I got pinned by your guys, you still think I’m the pawn for your special job?”
The Ever-Noble tipped his head back with a faint smile.
Rags’s eyes naturally picked out the shiny first: A shimmer of chain against the man’s dark skin, connecting the gold ring in his ear and the one in his nose. A whisper of metallic thread crosshatching his midnight-blue tunic. The gilt finish of his smoking slippers, the pure silver signet ring adorning his left hand. All these things told Rags that the Ever-Noble was a mover and shaker. Coming up in the world, doing well for himself, and showing off too much, like all new money.
The sorcerer’s eyes showed nothing, reminded Rags of polished stone. Reflecting, not revealing.
Rags’s throat was still dry. He contemplated drinking the water in the basin he’d used to wash his filthy face and filthier hands.
“You did well in the test,” the sorcerer said, and waited for this to sink in. When Rags swore, comprehension dawning, he continued: “Yes, I designed the obstacle course below the bank. You evaded every trap, save for the final one. Had you done that . . .”
“You would have been in trouble, Morien,” the Ever-Noble said, a flash of fire in his eyes. “No need to withhold names any longer. He’s the one for the job. Let’s treat him well.”
Morien. Morien the Last. Rags recognized the name from rumors only. His mind spun. Last what? Last in his class, or last thing you see before he tears out your still-beating heart and eats it with eggs at breakfast?
Morien shrugged beautifully, heavily. “As your will commands, my lord Faolan Ever-Learning. This thief is the one for the job.”
Rags swore again, curses so colorful that when his voice broke and he fell silent, Lord Faolan Ever-Learning of the Silver Court applauded him for his inventiveness.
Faolan wasn’t just your average lily-soft Ever-Noble. Most thieves worth their spot in the Clave knew better than to steal from House Ever-Learning, because young Lord Faolan worked directly under the Queen.
Poor folk kept track of that kind of thing. Needed to know who was too dangerous to be worth stealing from.
Rags’s old friend Dane from Cheapside would’ve eaten this story up. But Cheapside was a long way from the royal Hill, Dane was long dead, and Rags was in the deep shit now.
Lost-Lands help him, he wanted to know how deep.
4
Rags
They had him clean up first, while also, Rags figured, letting him stew in curiosity for hours, so he’d drive himself wild with the need to know what came next.
He only allowed himself to properly boil once he’d bathed and changed and prodded at the split in his lip in front of a spotless mirror, in a waiting room that would’ve held half of all the street rats with allegiance to the Clave. With space to spare. Family portraits hung in gilded frames; the window fixtures were wrought from precious metal, the chairs upholstered in the finest velvet.