Rain studied Kiya hard for a long moment. Then glanced out over the dining room, grunted her thanks, and left.
Eris swung herself out from under the steps. She saluted Kiya, who winked, then took the stairs two at a time. Jemsin’s regular room was at the end of the hall on the top floor. As Eris approached, she stretched, rolling her neck and shoulders, trying to rid herself of the tension building all the way here.
Finally, she sucked in a breath and rapped on the door the way Jemsin taught her all those years ago. When it swung in, the orange glow of a lantern made her squint.
“Evening, comrades,” Eris drawled, forcing a lazy grin as she lifted her arm to block the light.
When they grabbed her shirt, Eris knew better than to fight back.
They yanked her inside and slammed the door behind her.
Seven
It took three hard pulls before the door came open and dust flew into Safire’s face. She sneezed, then froze, listening hard.
But no sound came from the hall behind her.
Safire let out a breath, then stepped into the room. Holding up the lamp, she found it full of dusty crates. She sniffed and the smell of old wine engulfed her. A storage room of some kind, then.
Looking upward, she scanned the ceiling until her gaze caught on the square crawl space door.
After she’d heard a red-haired girl at the bar say the words “Death Dancer,” Safire ordered a drink, found the drunkest looking man in the room, and asked the right questions. He happily told her all about his golden days, as he coined them. Days when he used the crawl space above the second floor of the inn to watch the patrons undress in the rooms below.
Safire forced herself to listen to his disgusting escapades, but as she stood beneath the crawl space now, she silently thanked the foul man for giving her precisely what she needed. (And vowed that if she ever found herself the occupant of an inn, she would thoroughly check the ceiling, and maybe the walls, before undressing.)
Safire began stacking boxes. When they were high enough, she climbed up to the crawl space door and unlatched it. More dust fell. She turned her face in to her elbow to stop the sneeze this time, then pulled her sandskarf up over her nose and mouth. When the particles settled, she lifted the lamp, set it inside the crawl space above, then climbed up after it.
The space was long and narrow, dark and crowded, and her palms were soon coated in dust. She swiped preemptively at cobwebs while testing each and every board before putting her full weight on it to avoid creaking.
Half crouching, she made her way toward the far end of the crawl space, pausing every once in a while to listen to the sounds below. When she heard two voices arguing, she stopped just above and set down the lamp.
Safire slid the sleeve of her shirt across the boards beneath her, wiping away dust and dirt before laying her cheek against the rough wood.
“I warned you not to wreck things with Kor,” growled a man’s voice, partially muffled by the wood between Safire and the room below.
Silently, she turned down her lamp, listening.
“I didn’t wreck it,” came the familiar voice. The one, she was sure, belonged to the Death Dancer. “I set it on fire.”
Safire found a crack in the boards wide enough to look through and peered into the room below. The surface of a worn table lay directly beneath her. On it a slender wooden object spun around and around, nudged by long fingers.
That was her thief.
“I told you to stay on his good side,” said the man through gritted teeth. “Trying to burn him alive is the opposite of his good side.”
Safire tried to make out just how many people were in the room, but the lighting made it difficult. As she listened, she slid out one of the throwing knives from her belt and began to move the blade back and forth between her knuckles—a trick she’d taught herself while sitting through too many of Dax’s tedious council meetings.
“He wanted something I couldn’t give him.”
That wooden object kept spinning.
“That’s not how this works, Eris,” growled the man. “I don’t care what he wants. Next time, you give it to him.”
“I may be in your debt, Captain, but I’m not your whore.”
A chair scraped the wooden floorboards. With the hilt of her knife back in her palm, Safire watched the man’s gray head lean over the table.
The pirate Jemsin? she wondered.
He slammed his hand down on the spinning object, halting its rotation. A silver ring glinted on his smallest finger. “You are whatever I say you are.”
And then he lunged for her. Safire flinched as he flipped the girl on her back, pinning her to the table with one meaty hand wrapped around her throat.
“I can’t afford to carry dead weight around.”
Safire’s stomach twisted as he squeezed. She watched the girl kick and thrash, trying to push him off. Safire’s whole body coiled, ready to go down there and stop this . . . before she remembered the girl was the Death Dancer. A criminal who—she realized now—clearly worked for Jemsin.
Not to mention the room below could be full of deadly pirates. And Safire was here alone.
“I’ll give you one chance,” said Jemsin as the Death Dancer writhed beneath him, trying to dig her nails into his hands. “You got that?”
Finally, he let go. The Death Dancer moved like wind, scrambling out from under him and landing on the other side of the table, keeping it between them. She gulped down air, hands cupping her neck. Her pale blond hair was a mess and her eyes were wild.
“I’ve got a new job for you,” said Jemsin. “You get it done, and your debt is paid.”
The Death Dancer frowned. Her hands fell away from her throat.
“Paid?” she whispered. “What do you mean, paid?”
He tossed her the spindle. Eagerly, she caught it.
“You do this job, and you’ll go free. You can run to the ends of the world, and I won’t follow you. I won’t even care. In fact, I’ll be glad to be rid of you.”
Safire leaned closer to the crack in the boards, listening hard.
“But fail me again—sabotage me in any way—and I’ll hand you over to the ones you’re running from. Got it?”
The Death Dancer watched him in silence for a moment, as if trying to find the loopholes. Finally she said, a little warily, “What’s the job?”
Jemsin sank back into the chair. “Catch the one they call the Namsara,” he said. “And bring her to me.”
Safire went stone-still, her whole body attuned to that title.
The Namsara.
Asha.
What did the deadliest pirate on the Silver Sea want with Safire’s cousin?
The Death Dancer was saying something else but so softly, Safire couldn’t hear it. She shifted, trying to listen. But as she did, the board beneath her creaked.
The air turned immediately cold as the room below plunged into silence.
Safire froze as a soft thud echoed—the sound of two chair legs lowered to the floor. A heartbeat later, between the crack in the boards, two watery brown eyes peered into hers.
Safire rolled back just as a knife surged up between the boards, narrowly missing her face. When she turned to look, the blade was so close, her breath fogged the steel.
“Come out, little spy,” Jemsin called up to her.