“Who’s Val?” Shura asked, shooting Daks a worried look.
Dagma’s eyes glistened in the dim light. “My little brother,” she replied, suddenly sounding very young. “Mama fought and screamed. Val cried. The neighbors had to drag her away before the brothers could call the guard. It was—it was horrible.” Her lips trembled.
“What rebels?”
Daks hadn’t meant to growl the question, but the anger he’d carried inside him for years threatened to break the stranglehold he kept on it at the mention of the Brotherhood.
He received another kick from Shura that made him grit his teeth. He threw her a wounded look before clamping his lips closed and huffing out a breath. Their primary contacts were all rebels in one way or another, but Dagma made it sound like this was something more organized, and that was information they needed to have.
Dagma’s unshed tears dried as she looked at him like she was beginning to wonder if he was a little dense. “The rebels,” she hissed, casting her gaze nervously about the room again as if she suddenly remembered where she was.
Daks gritted his teeth, clenched his fist around his tankard, and took a calming breath. Hoping to avoid another bruising kick to his shin, he softened his expression and his tone. “Perhaps we should wait and talk to Maran. It might be safer for you if we cut this conversation short.”
He should’ve known better than to attempt subtlety. He’d been chosen for his gift, his skill in a fight, and his ability to impersonate a ruthless black marketeer, not because he was a charmer.
Dagma stiffened and her eyes narrowed. She ran a hand over her demurely plaited hair as she drew back her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I’m with the rebels now too,” she huffed quietly. “We all share the risk, for Val and everyone else who’s lost someone they love.”
“You’re very brave. And we’re so sorry to hear about your brother,” Shura cut in before Daks could open his mouth again. She pushed forward, grinding an elbow into his ribs in the process. “But this conversation sounds like more than our usual trade with Maran. So, for all our sakes, perhaps it is best kept to that more private location you mentioned, where we may all talk at length and you can tell us everything you’ve been up to.”
Dagma’s eyes softened and her cheeks pinked as her attention riveted on Shura again. That was fine with Daks, especially if it meant no more physical attacks on his person. Of the two of them, Shura was the better-looking anyway, and Dagma obviously agreed.
Cigani were rare in Rassa. Since the Brotherhood had taken over hundreds of years ago and made life hell for anyone who didn’t share their fanatical beliefs, Shura’s people had eventually all been pushed out of the lands they used to roam freely. Her skin color and slightly catlike dark eyes sometimes made missions there challenging, but her looks and shapely figure came in handy with starry-eyed boys and girls—and many men and women too. If Shura was disposed to being charming and gentle today, Daks was fine with being the dumb brute who sat quietly while the grownups talked.
As he took a pull from his refreshed tankard, he glanced at his partner and a small smile curved his lips, edging out some of the anger still seething inside him. When Shura was being soft like this, he sometimes regretted that neither of them swung in the other’s direction. But then he’d remember what a horrible idea that was and how terrible they would be together in any relationship other than the one they had, and sanity would return… or sobriety, whichever came first.
After another furtive scan of the room, he set his tankard down and forced himself to listen to the conversation again before Shura gave him yet one more bruise somewhere more sensitive than she’d hit already. Except when he focused on Dagma, she was already rising to leave.
“Good day, traveler,” Shura said, nodding to the girl.
“Good day.”
Dagma bobbed her head before pulling on her cloak and whipping the hood up with a little too much enthusiasm as she scurried toward the door.
“What’d I miss?” Daks asked after scooting his chair out of Shura’s reach.
She narrowed her eyes at him and pinched her lips.
“What? You obviously had her handled,” he protested.
“Are you done?” she asked, nodding toward his plate.
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s go to our room.”
Without waiting for a reply, Shura donned her damp cloak, shouldered her pack, and made her way to Faret’s bar. After exchanging a few words with her, Faret waved to another one of his four daughters, and she led them up the stairs toward their usual room at the end of the hall above the kitchens. The heat rising from the great hearth below wasn’t ideal after the closeness of the common room, even if it did chase away some of the damp, but it was the room nearest to a second set of stairs only the family used—which also afforded Daks and Shura a means of coming and going from the inn without being seen.
Daks hung his cloak on a hook by the door, tossed his pack in a corner, and slumped into one of the two plain wooden chairs set up next to a small table by the only window. He took a sip from the almost empty tankard he’d carried up with him and frowned. He’d have to go back down for a refill soon.
“Comfy?” Shura asked.
She stood over him with her hands on her hips and her teeth bared in what only an idiot would think was a smile.
“It’s a little warm in here and the chair is hard, but, eh, you take what you can get.”
When she continued to glare at him, he sighed and set his tankard down. “What? You were the one telling me the job was sucking the life out of me and that it was a good thing this would be our
