first time.
Sicarius stopped a step away from Evrial, his face impossible to read. He had a knack for that expression. Evrial noticed that her fists were clenched, her arms up in a defensive posture. Though he’d stopped, she didn’t lower them.
“ Asking isn’t what I had in mind,” Sicarius said.
“ Yes, I can see that.” Amaranthe planted a hand on his chest, fingers splayed. “Why don’t you give Yara and me a few minutes alone to discuss this? I’ll brief you on whatever we decide to do before we do it. And you can loiter nearby in case anything goes wrong.”
His face didn’t soften exactly-and he gave that hand a long look before meeting Amaranthe’s eyes-but the hostility he’d been oozing did seem to lessen. “Assassins don’t loiter,” he said.
The comment startled Evrial, and she wondered if she’d heard it correctly. The man hadn’t uttered much that could be classified as humor, not with her around anyway. Maybe he was simply feeling indignant.
But Amaranthe smiled. “What do you call it?”
“ Standing. Purposefully.”
“ I’ll note that for further discussions,” Amaranthe said. “In the meantime, would you mind standing purposefully in your own cabin? I’m sure Basilard has missed you, and we girls need to chat.”
Sicarius didn’t sigh-his expression didn’t even change as he backed away-but something about the way he looked over his shoulder implied he thought Amaranthe was going to stir up trouble. Evrial had a feeling she should be thinking the same thing.
After the door snicked shut, Amaranthe waved for her to take a seat. “I suggest we sneak into a maid’s closet during dinner hour, grab uniforms and a cart, and go see if anyone needs their beds turned down.”
“ What if we run into the real maids?”
“ Oh, I imagine we can talk someone into distracting them.” Amaranthe nodded toward the cabin Maldynado shared with Books.
Evrial scowled at the idea of Maldynado flirting with a couple of young women, but she didn’t say anything. Apparently, as the pretty face on the team, this was his job. “He’d better not distract them with more than words.” She regretted voicing the threat as soon as it came out, for Amaranthe’s nod was a little too knowing. Evrial’s feelings weren’t anyone else’s business, so she ought to keep signs of them to herself.
“ I’m sure he won’t,” Amaranthe said. “And if he does, then it’s better to know that now than six months further into the journey, isn’t it?”
“ There aren’t any journeys happening there.”
“ Hm.” Amaranthe stood. “I guess that’s everything. Shall we have something to eat before our adventure?”
“ That’s all the planning we’re doing? Why’d you send your assassin away?”
“ Because all the protective looming he’s been doing this week has left me feeling smothered like an egg under a chicken’s bu-, er, behind.”
Evrial almost snorted and asked which of her men she’d gotten that phrase from.
“ Don’t misunderstand me,” Amaranthe said. “I certainly appreciate his solicitude, but I’m concerned he’s seeing me as some frail, broken being not capable of taking care of herself anymore.”
“ Solicitude?” Evrial asked, her mind snagging on that word. “From… Sicarius?”
Amaranthe hesitated, as if she held some secret she wasn’t sure she should be sharing. “Not so most people would notice it, but yes.”
That was hard to believe. “Was that an example of it?” Evrial waved toward the door to indicate the stiff order tossing the assassin had done before stalking out.
“ No, that was the protective looming.”
“ All right…”
Amaranthe cleared her throat. “Enough girl talk. There are enemy cabins full of dastardly old ladies that we must infiltrate.”
“ Unbelievable,” Evrial murmured.
“ What is?”
“ That you can say things like that and still get those men to rally behind you.”
“ Sometimes I also have to gaze into their eyes with youthful exuberance that they find impossible to resist.”
Evrial could imagine that working on Maldynado, but Sicarius? “Unbelievable,” she repeated.
There were times when Evrial’s height came in handy; being squished into a dark cleaning-supply closet with another woman wasn’t one of those times. A laundry cart was digging into her ribcage, her foot was in a bucket of mop water, and the overpowering scent wafting from stacks of lye soap tempted a sneeze. She dared not rearrange herself, not with people talking on the other side of the door, so she suffered in stillness.
“ Surely, there’s no rush, my lovely ladies,” Maldynado was saying, his smooth baritone floating through the door. With luck, he was leaning against it so the “lovely ladies” couldn’t enter.
“ Please, my lord,” came a young woman’s voice, “if we’re tardy, we’ll be punished.”
“ Again,” another woman said. Neither sounded older than twenty, twenty-five.
“ There are things in life worth risking punishment for,” Maldynado said.
Evrial imagined a suggestive smile on his face, and he was doubtlessly touching his chest. Knowing him, he’d found a way to unbutton his shirt to display the swell of pronounced pectoral muscles.
“ Are you changing clothes?” Amaranthe whispered.
“ Er, what?” Evrial blushed, glad for the darkness. It wasn’t like her to let her mind wander when it should be focused on work. “I mean, there’s no room. I couldn’t change without making noise.”
Amaranthe pushed a stack of clothing into her hands. “Try anyway. They won’t hear anything over the sound of how beautiful Maldynado is.”
Evrial held back a snort, barely. She unfolded the clothing and, by touch, soon realized she was holding a dress. She grimaced. “I hate dresses. They always snag on something.” She remembered running through the briar patches behind the smithy as a girl, trying to keep up with her brothers. “I haven’t had to wear one since…” She realized she was complaining-whining, she’d say if Maldynado were doing it-and clamped her lips shut. The situation was what it was.
“ Since when?” Amaranthe’s voice came from the floor-she must already be changing shoes.
“ Nothing.”
The voices continued outside, but an expectant silence came from Amaranthe’s side of the closet. Or maybe it was only in Evrial’s imagination that it was expectant. Either way, she felt compelled to explain. “My mother used to make me wear them as a girl and later on, too, when we visited grandmother and grandfather’s ash cairn.”
“ She stopped doing it?” Amaranthe asked. “Or…?”
“ She’s dead.”
“ Oh. How’d it happen?”
“ Are you always this nosy, Lokdon?”
“ Always.” Amaranthe’s voice held a smile.
“ She was murdered when she was in the city trying to sell the family’s wares. It’s why my brother and I became enforcers. My father never approved of the career, not for me, but I think he understands it.” Evrial extricated her foot from the bucket, propped it against a shelf, and unbuttoned her utility belt and trousers. She wriggled out of the clothes, wincing when her elbow clunked against a shelf. Wood bars fell into her-mops. She growled and tried to straighten them without making more noise.
“- hear something?” one of the girls outside asked.
“ Bloody balls,” Evrial whispered and almost crouched to grab her knife. She caught herself. What was she going to do? Stab some twenty-year-old girl?
“ Nah,” came Maldynado’s voice, followed by a response too low to hear through the door. Whatever it was, it caused the girls to giggle.
“ It’s good that you still have your father,” Amaranthe whispered. “I lost both parents before I was eighteen. I was too young to remember Mother much, but Father… He was sick, and the disease ate at him over the months.
