Broken Blade Read Free Page A

rather doubted that the person I’d chosen to become would have. Thinking daggers at Triss and his sudden tendency to jerk and start, I pasted a confused look on my face and shook my head. The gesture made the world bob and twist—a not wholly unpleasant side effect of the empty bottle.
    “Is this Marchon a city noble? Or country?” I asked.
    “More the latter than the former, but she does maintain a city house—a big estate right on the north edge of town, just off the royal preserve. That’s where I need the delivery made.”
    I knew it well. The Marchon place had once housed the old king’s last mistress, the younger sister of the then Baron Marchon. I had slipped into the house on no less than three occasions while trying to catch a quiet moment alone with the king.
    “That’s a neighborhood with an ugly reputation for the shadow trades, heavy security on all the estates plus the occasional royal patrol in the streets,” I said.
    Not to mention the fact that the Elite had a clandestine chapter house near there and watchers in the park most nights, but I certainly wasn’t supposed to know that, nor how to slip past them.
    I pushed the purse back toward her. “I think you’ll have to find another jack.”
    She bit her lip in a quite convincing and quite fetching imitation of worry. I wondered how often she practiced.
    “How about a bigger fee?” she asked. “I think I could come up with half again more if I had to.”
    I had just opened my mouth to tell her no, when I felt a tugging all along my back, sort of like peeling away a sweat-soaked shirt. Triss again, letting me know he wanted me to take the job for some reason. I didn’t like the smell of the thing, or Triss’s pressuring me on it, but I really did need money. I decided to push Maylien a bit and see how she responded.
    “Half again might do,” I told her. “But indulge me for a moment by biding here, won’t you? I have an urgent matter that I need to attend to.” I flicked my eyes in the direction of the back door and the sign marking the privies beyond and gave her a what-can-you-do sort of look.
    It was a rude request under the circumstance, and she had every right to take offense, but I actually did have something that needed my private attention. Also, if she chose to see it as an insult and walk away, I would have solved my dilemma over whether to take the job.
    Before she could answer, or do much more than blush angrily, I pulled myself to my feet and tipped her a ragged tradesman’s bow—it wouldn’t do at all to deliver the proper Zhani high-court version. Besides, I’d put enough whiskey away over the past two or three hours that I might not have been able to manage the more formal one if I’d tried.
    “Back as soon as ever I am able, my lady.”
    A couple of lanterns filled with the cheapest oil money could buy guttered and sputtered in the yard. There was no risk of fire out on the cobbles, so no need for a magelight, which meant it was as dark out there as old King Ashvik’s heart had been. Some of the noble neighborhoods could afford to use magelight to illuminate the main streets, but the Stumbles was about as far away from being a noble neighborhood as it got. On nights like this, with the moon near her nadir, even night-trained eyes like mine had trouble, and Jerik’s lamps provided just enough illumination to find the privies.
    I slipped inside, trading the stink of one sort of shit for the stink of another. Given a choice, I preferred the yard and the horse; but I needed the privacy. I closed the door behind me and wedged it shut with a thin knife pulled from the sheath on my left wrist. The light inside was better than the yard’s, provided by a fading magelight nailed firmly to the ceiling—night-market certainly, but still costly. I presume the more expensive choice had been made because Jerik didn’t like what happened when the drunks couldn’t find the holes, and so he wanted to give them as much help as