Dark Dealings (9 page)

Heyerdar met Mairin’s smile before his dropped away. He straightened. “Regan Searlaim.”

“Ziskia’s strange little man? Arrived with the late evening crowd. We get a lot of flushers.” She winced. “Keep a tub out in the yard so they wash first.”

“Have Wulgar Yule, Ulmar Treowe, Alder Tayt or Oswel Reve passed through here?”

Mairin pushed back her loose hair. Behind her, shadows moved and the pulse of sexual energy increased. “You want me to break my pledge, Nahum? I already stretched it by confirming Searlaim was a patron.”

“It would be helpful to our inquiries.” Heyerdar’s voice was smooth, easing. Ava gritted her teeth. How he approached this woman had nothing to do with her.

Mairin briefly tapped her finger to lips. “They don’t stand out. We get a lot of the low trades. They put money with us, their savings, and they are...rewarded.” Her smile was wide, sensuous and directed wholly at Heyerdar. “We make every effort to keep their custom.”

Ava stopped herself from sneering. The woman couldn’t make herself more obvious if she hung a Fuck Me sign around her neck.

“Searlaim was also leaving his money with you?”

And Ava was certain Searlaim’s wife didn’t appreciate how her husband had used their family savings. A question burned on her tongue, but she was simply a messenger. She had to stay silent to maintain her cover. Heyerdar asked the question she wanted to know.

“And the others? I need you to go through your books, find them.”

“Going to make it worth my while, Nahum?”

He stroked her cheek, and the spike of energy almost caught Ava’s breath. The flow between them tasted sweet, familiar, mirroring the touch of sex she’d felt in the lower halls with Eleta. They’d fucked and fucked often. Did Fallon know about his time in Madam Lunete’s brothel? Was that why she’d left him?

“Business today,” he murmured, and his fingers curled back into his palm. “Go through your ledgers. See if all or any of these men bank with you.”

Mairin’s smile deepened. “I so love it when you’re forceful, Nahum.”

Ava would eat her plain, no fuss. Slit her throat, watch her bleed out, let her cool and then devour her. She had to bite the inside of her cheek, feel the pain and the coppery taste of her own blood to stop the thief rising.

Heyerdar shifted beside her. “I need to speak to Ziskia.”

“She’ll have just finished the night shift.” Mairin pointed across the taproom, her robe falling open to reveal heavy breasts and a smooth, rounded belly. “Up the backstairs. Room number twelve.”

Heyerdar’s heavy hand closed around Ava’s arm. His heat bled through the sleeve and she had to breathe and will back the fierce pounding of her heart. She wanted to yank his power from him. Consume him.

“Thank you, Mairin.” His voice dropped low, his lips almost brushing her temple. “This way, little thief.”

“Did Fallon know about her?”

“Mairin is business.”

He pushed her through the narrow arch and she half stumbled up the first stair. The shadows wrapped around her and for a moment she closed her eyes, letting the darkness take her. Everything about her agreement with Heyerdar was throwing her off balance. “I’m business.”

He climbed the stairs. “Yes, you are. So move. I want you to touch Ziskia, take some of her memories. I need to know this thief.”

“Touch her?”

“You can feel the thief on her.”

“You want me to
consume
her?”

Heyerdar stopped on the stair above her. The strength of his essence painted him against the shadows. He was...delectable. “Anger is opening your hunger. Forget about yourself. About Reist. The more we know who these thieves are, the greater the chance I have of ending this. Of putting the bastards in the ground. I will not allow what happened to Kaia happen to another baby. And if you get the information from Ziskia, then we can let her mother rest.”

Heyerdar turned and Ava had to follow him. A cut of guilt sharpened in her belly. Fucking elemental. But touching Ziskia would be easier. The corridor beyond the stairs was narrow and lit by a single sconce, amber light flickering over the rough-plastered wall. Heyerdar knocked on the dark door with a large white Twelve painted on it. Muttering leaked out into the shadowed corridor.

“Ziskia?”

“My shift is over...” She’d yanked back the door, her face set. Her dark hair had come loose from a pile on her head and her robe was fastened too tight at her waist. “Captain Heyerdar.” She tilted her head and her mouth slipped into an easy smile. He was
far
too well-known at the brothel. “How can I be of service?”

“A patron, Regan Searlaim?”

Ziskia gave a delicate little shudder. “Him.” She stood back from her door and waved Heyerdar inside. Her pale gaze darted over Ava and looked away. Ava’s gut tightened. She was obviously of no interest, or threat. “He didn’t smell right.”

She arranged herself on the wide bed tucked into the corner of the square room. The sheets were still rumpled. A chink of morning light pierced the heavy shutters, and a small lamp was the only other light. The room stank of sex.

“He’s a flusherman...” Heyerdar’s mouth ticked upwards and Ziskia recrossed her legs. The movement of her silk robe exposed a smooth thigh.

“They wash in the yard. I get him scrubbed and fresh smelling.” Ziskia wrinkled her nose. “This time...he smelled...too much like skin. Like an animal. A pig, maybe. Like uncooked meat.” She tucked a long length of her dark hair behind her ear, her attention fixed on Heyerdar, who stood before the shuttered window. She worked her shoulders to show her ample cleavage.

Ava’s hand twitched at the hilt of her short sword.

Ziskia didn’t notice. “Then when I went down on him, his dick was too wrinkled.”

Ava closed her eyes briefly, ignoring Heyerdar’s quick grunt of laughter. Taking the skin was a wrap of magic, the form the rendered soul had assumed in life. Their thief had a small dick. Not the easiest of leads to follow.

“What happened then?”

“Madam Lunete has said, if anything is odd, get out.” She smoothed her hair again. “You taught us well.”

Heyerdar wanted her to touch this woman? Touch her and not lose control of a mouth that wanted to twist a fair chunk of her flesh? “And Searlaim?” Ava ignored the captain’s glare.

Ziskia stayed focused on Heyerdar. “He wasn’t here when Nuno burst back in here. But we reported it to the Guard and the Watch.” Her smile was wicked. “Is there a reward, Captain Heyerdar?”

“None. As yet. Just the favor of the Left Hand.”

“And when will that be?”

“Ziskia...”

Could he flirt later? Whilst she wasn’t in the room? But it was a timely reminder. Put a woman in front of Heyerdar and he kicked into thinking about fucking. They had a contract. Sex for the power to turn Fallon away from Reist. Though if Heyerdar behaved this way,
why
would she want him back?

Ava frowned. Both of them were looking expectantly at her. What had she missed? Heyerdar had her thoughts twisted. She needed to focus.

“Ziskia has agreed to a pull on her memory of Searlaim.”

He spoke to her as if she were a child. She wanted to kick him. Ava flexed her fingers. She was cold and calm, but the bite of sex in the room—the hint of it in the air, a heavy, warm shadow over the bed—fought her control. The pungent odor of whitebane tea carved a layer through the sex. Ziskia was keeping herself healthy and protected.

Ava grabbed onto that thought before the sense of sex dragged up her thief. She moved forward and stood beside the woman.

“Is she a mage or something?” Nerves thickened Ziskia’s voice, and the air around her dropped from golden to yellow.

“Or something,” Heyerdar said.

Ava closed her eyes and let the recent sensation of the woman’s past flow over her. Men after and before the thief. Ava focused on her breathing, pulling in cool air, easing it out of her lungs. The edge of sex was always there, pricking at her skin, her thoughts.
Fuck.
Heyerdar had brought her to a brothel and was now making her live the night of one of its workers. Wet heat, the slid of skin, tongues, teeth, dicks.
Fuck
.

The yawning emptiness of her soul ached to feed. Her hand stretched over Ziskia, bending fingers back until there was pain. Ava wanted it. Needed it. She narrowed her thoughts. The fleeting glimpse of the thief in his ill-fitting skin brushed across her senses.

She tasted his flesh in her mouth as she had tasted all the others. He did smell...uncooked. The shadow of his true self pushed at her—thin, dark, forever wild and hungry. His first day in the city only sharpened his need for meat. He had taken the children, devoured and rendered them. Whole and sweet and—

Ava staggered back, her fingers curled back into a fist, nails digging at her palm, drawing blood. She clamped her hand to her mouth, let it feed the rise of her thief, feed the clamor for something fresh. Like Ziskia with sex on her skin and the twist of whitebane laced with delicious magic moving through her veins.

“Get breakfast, Ziskia. Now.” Heyerdar shoved Ava up against the wall, his massive frame pinning her there. He cupped her jaw, making her look at him. Hot gold eyes burned into her. “What did you see?”

“He ate them. The children. Oh, fuck, they screamed. But they were just so sweet.” Ava thumped her head back against the wall, hating the horror within her and wanting the pain. Even as she ached to lick her lips, her mouth watering. This wasn’t her. She could never—would never... “The toddler. Still filled with mashed food and his mother’s milk, fresh and warm—”

“Move on, move back. Before Searlaim’s house.”

Ava swallowed, her throat tight and sore. Tears wet her cheeks. “Before...”

“Take it.” His thumb pressed to her open mouth. Golden power teased her lips, and her empty soul hungered for him. She had the taste, the blood, of a child on her tongue. She couldn’t consume again. “Bind his memory. Protect yourself.”

Ava sucked in a breath and pulled his power into her body. A long, golden slide of warmth and so incredibly sweet... It blocked the images of the children, of Searlaim’s ramshackle house. Cleared the insatiable need from her body. She drew air deep into her lungs, scented with him. The sense of freedom, of open spaces, the warmth of the sun against her skin, with no shadows, no shadows anywhere, washed a deep calm over her.

She let her forehead fall against his shoulder. The familiar odors of leather and him wrapped around her. “I can’t find his name. He turned up here five days ago. Through the South Gate. Him and two others.”

“There’re four thieves.”

“The fourth was already here.”

Heyerdar held her to him, his strong arms across her back. Ava sank against his body, her hands gripping his leather tunic. Nobody touched her. Nobody had ever held her to offer comfort.

A quick rap at the door forced her to bite back a curse. He wasn’t Reist—he never would be—but she wanted a moment of being normal.

“Your list, Nahum.” Mairin stopped in the open doorway. “Am I interrupting?”

Ava heard the amusement in her voice and it stabbed holes into the quiet calmness Heyerdar’s power and touch had thrown around her. She pulled herself free, not looking up at him.

He took the sheaf of thin paper. “All five men are banking with you?”

Ava frowned. The silence of the messenger be damned. “Is this building freehold? Or are you owned by the Crown?”

Mairin’s gaze narrowed and she looked to Heyerdar. “Ziskia said she’s some sort of mage. That she’s unhinged.” Her mouth drew tight. “What have you brought to my house, Captain?”

“Answer her question.”

“I have a lease from the Crown.” Mairin bit out her answer and lifted her chin. “My payments to the Treasury are up to date and regular.”

“Thank you for your assistance.” Heyerdar took Ava’s arm in his meaty fingers and pulled her from the room into the shadows of the corridor. He set a fast pace down the dark wooden stairs, Ava almost stumbling after him.

“Heyerdar—”

“You’re not to talk.”

Ava pressed her lips together, the familiar rise of frustration eating up what remained of his power within her. The scent of sex rushed at her again. It lay thick in the taproom, warmed by the fire. Ava held down a curse. Some of the cheaper patrons fucked the girls in their chairs or over a scrubbed table—the heat, the grunts and moans, the slap of flesh forcing Ava’s heart to beat hard. She averted her eyes. Fuck, fuck,
fuck,
she did not need that. She had to get out.

She yanked herself free of Heyerdar’s grip and shoved past the bulk of Nuno on the thick-stepped entrance to the brothel. And welcomed the city stink into her lungs. “You don’t take a thief to a place like this,” she muttered, knowing the advice was far too late.

Heyerdar put his hand to her spine and she jerked forward. “Did he come for that?” He let out a half laugh. “The atmosphere?”

“Maybe...” Ava didn’t know. Something itched with the information she’d drawn from Ziskia. But Heyerdar and her reluctance to let the thief’s life roll over her again kept her from digging deeper. Maybe it was a connection she was missing. “We’re headed for the South Gate.”

“He came through there. I want to check the wards. A thief can’t break them.”

The thick run of people parted before them and Ava prodded at an older memory. How had
she
made it into the city? There was only emptiness, her first memory being of somehow turning up on the kitchen steps of the Institute, ragged but not hungry. The classic taste of an elemental lingered, swamplike, brackish.
Fucking elementals.

Heyerdar stopped and stared up at the black arch stretching around him. The gates stood open, guards to attention, eyes sharp as carts and people moved in and out of the city. His frown deepened. “It’s still wrapped into the stones. Been...rewrapped. But not the way it used to be. Someone rewrote a ward.”

The disbelief was there in his voice. A rewritten ward. It pushed every other thought out of her head. Wards formed levels of protection. From the all-encompassing spells protecting the city from invasion to the tiny golden ward over the heart of each mage, ensuring that their hoarded power could never be used against the imperial line. It was impossible to break a ward. But somehow it’d been done.