The skelli caught the copper Shirin tossed her. “Me da were th’ Chandler’s man, weren’t he? He cacked it, and I come down here, didn’t I? Most others been here since they be toddlin’ rats, learn to speak th’ cant from their first words, didn’t they? Don’t babble street tongue, none.”

  Sábria placed her hand on the small of Farry’s back and indicated she should return to the stairs. When they emerged, everyone shielded their eyes from the bright sunlight until the night blindness from the pitch-black sewer left them.

  Farry’s voice was small and filled with shame when she turned to Sábria. “I didn’t know. I’m so, so sorry, Sábria. Ailith never said a word. She came and took the bags and returned them the next day to be filled again.” Tears rose in her eyes, and she swiped them away. “I heard that during the Festival, they die from starvation because they can’t come into the open. They’re dying down there, and I only wanted to help them. Feed them.”

  With a long sigh, Sábria ran her hand up into her hair and then pulled her quietly crying friend into her arms. “Farry. I know your heart’s in the right place, but you put my nineteen-turn shiv in grave danger without even mentioning it to me. She’s—” She stopped and glanced at the Blades, who’d formed a safety cordon around them.

  “Your trainees don’t do anything without telling their handler or someone else in their chain. You told me that yourself. Until they’re full Blades, you said, they don’t sneeze without their handler knowing. I thought she’d told someone, and they’d given her permission to keep coming.”

  “My Lady.” Shirin was watching a group of pidges and nobs edging toward them. “I think it’d be a good idea to take Lady Farryn back home now.”

  Sábria kept one hand on Farry’s back and lightly pushed her forward. “We can talk about this once we’re out of here.”

  The gutter scum formed a line in front of them, blocking their way. Shirin called out, “Weapons.” Everyone except Sábria drew their blades.

  Marne and Osstendler stepped forward, and Caitir, who was the senior of the remaining Blades, had everyone surround Sábria and Farry. Shirin walked forward and joined Marne and Osstendler. Shirin stood front and center while the other two stepped back a pace, forming the human equivalent of an arrowhead.

  Caitir ordered, “Forward,” and the group moved up behind the three Blades. It was a well-practiced tactic, one they used when they needed to break through a threatening crowd to get Sábria, or anyone else, for that matter, to safety.

  Sábria sighed and called out, “Commander, I’d rather you not remove any heads from shoulders today.”

  Knowing the words were meant more as a warning to the crowd than an order for her, Shirin added her own psychological warfare. “No promises, My Lady.” She motioned for Marne and Osstendler to move sideways to give her room and then executed a series of moves designed to impress upon the gathering crowd that she had no intention of holding back.

  The other two Blades began their own movements, and the entire group moved forward into the crowd. One man wearing the cuffed trews and canvas tunic of a sailor, possibly one off the foreign ships ferrying nobles into Sarlogne, showed his yellow teeth as he goaded the others, “Ain’t no woman alive can best me. Come on and give it a try ya ugly fowkin’ pounit.”

  With undisciplined steps, he lunged at Shirin, swinging his blade in the dangerous, chaotic way of a man used to the chaotic skirmishes that happen on ships being boarded by pirates. The others in the group started forward to join him until Shirin attacked with a figure-eight move designed to do exactly what Sábria had asked her to avoid. Under other circumstances, she would have simply wounded the nob as a warning to the others. With her Arch Priestess in danger, she didn’t hold back.

  The crowd scattered when the seaman’s head landed in the hands of one of his comrades. In a panic, that man grabbed it by the curly black hair and flung it to the side, where it smacked a knife-wielding man in the side of the head.

  That man had been racing forward to attack Marne, and she used the distraction to carve a long X across his chest. The rest of the crowd fled back to the gutters, and Sábria’s group moved forward, unmolested.

  Farry, whose eyes were wide with shock, kept as close to Sábria as she could. She’d covered her mouth with her hands, and Sábria was relieved her friend hadn’t screamed when the head had gone flying. The fact that Farry was naïve to what happened in the rougher parts of Sarlogne was the exact reason she’d sent her shiv into the Codpiece alone. She supposed another lesson in reality was a good thing and not something she should try to shield Farry from.

  The Commander’s eyes narrowed as she turned to Marne. “An X? Why didn’t you just take off his head?”

  Marne shrugged as they moved forward. “Ya told me to do what Sábria said, and she said to leave their heads on their shoulders. So I did.”

  With an appreciation for Marne’s sardonic humor poking fun at her for disobeying Sábria’s request, Shirin grinned slightly and led the group out of the Codpiece, past the lower district, and back to Lady Farryn’s home.

  Sábria motioned for Shirin and the guards to wait in the street while she walked Farry up to her door. Farry was shaken by the experience, and while Sábria was still angry, she hadn’t meant it when she’d implied that they were no longer friends. She didn’t want to leave her friend completely off-balance, so when they stopped in front of the door, she looked deeply into Farry’s eyes.

  The intense blue of Sábria’s gaze mesmerized people, and her close friends were no exception. Farry stared into them now, upset at what she’d seen, mortified at the danger she’d unknowingly put Ailith in, and saddened at the thought that she might have lost one of her very best friends. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

  Not wanting to leave things as they were, Sábria motioned to the door. “Will you invite me in?”

  Relief washed over Farry as she hurried to open the door. “Of course. You’re always welcome here, and—” Realizing she’d already apologized, she cut herself off and pushed the door open. “After you, My Lady.”

  Sábria stepped into the foyer, where she was met by Farry’s lady’s maid, Bela. The look of relief on the older woman’s face when she saw Farry coming in behind Sábria in one piece would have been comical under different circumstances.

  Farry put her hand on Sábria’s lower back and gently ushered her into the parlor. “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, I need to get my guards back so they can get back to their regular routines. Don’t ever do that again, Farry, not to my Blades, and absolutely never to one of my shivs.”

  “I would never, Sábria. I wrongly assumed that Ailith would tell her handler and that her handler would tell you. I’m so deeply ashamed and horrified that I might have cost that child her life.”

  “Not a child, Farry. A shiv. A young woman who’s chosen a profession where thirty percent don’t live into old age. The deaths of every shiv and every Blade I’ve lost have taken a part of my soul. I guard my shivs tenaciously, like a jealous zealot who gives no quarter to anyone who needlessly puts them in danger. I understand you wouldn’t knowingly put Ailith’s life at risk. But if you ever do anything so monumentally stupid again….”

  “I won’t. I give you my word as a noblewoman of the Realm, on my soul and my daughter’s life, I will never ask one of your people to do anything without speaking to you first. I swear it, Sábria.”

  Nodding, Sábria held out her hand, which Farry took in her own. She bent and kissed Sábria’s ring to seal her promise. Sábria placed her other hand on Farry’s shoulder. “You’re forgiven, my friend. Now, I need to go. I’ll send an invitation for dinner sometime soon, yes?”

  A smile brightened Farry’s drawn features. “I’d like that.” Relieved she’d been forgiven, she watched as Bela held open the front door and Sábria left to join her Blades.

  CHAPTER 5

  Shirin waited in the dining hall for Jenx to come in for her evening meal. When she saw the lanky woman come in with several friends, she walked over and smiled at the group. After exchanging small talk, she looked at her Blade, “A word?”

  “Of course, Commander.” Jenx stepped out of the group and followed Shirin to the door. She was surprised when the Commander didn’t stop but instead continued towards the Citadel.

  Sábria had instructed her guards to keep their afternoon foray into the Codpiece to themselves, so Jenx hadn’t heard anything about what her shiv had been up to the last fortnight. Shirin led her up the stairs, through the outer office, and directly into where Sábria sat behind her desk, apparently waiting for their arrival. Jenx stepped in front of the desk and came to attention.

  Shirin stayed in her customary place by the door.

  Sábria sat back in her chair and settled her hands in her lap. “Stand easy, Jenx. We need to talk about Ailith.”

  Taking the rest position with her legs shoulder width apart and her hands clasped behind her back, Jenx looked puzzled. “What has she done, now, My Lady? I thought we’d turned a corner with her. Our communication’s been better than ever. She’s not so quick to dislike the nobility,” she cocked her head and thought about what she’d just said, “…well, we still have a lot of work to do in that area, but at least she’s learned to hide her derision whenever we deal with one on the street.”

  The clock in the city tower chimed eight times, and Jenx realized that what she’d first thought of as a relaxed posture was really her Arch Priestess reining in her temper. Sábria had barely blinked as she sat staring at her, and now that Jenx was aware of the tension, she noticed that Sábria’s fingers had gone white from clasping them so hard. “My Lady. What has she done?” Despite the coolness of the air, Jenx felt a bead of sweat rolling down between her shoulder blades.

  Sábria stood and stepped to her window. It was dark outside, but the torches had been lit around the courtyard, giving the Temple a bright, welcoming ambiance that contrasted sharply with her mood. “Ailith has been stopping by Lady Farryn’s home after shift.”

  “Yes, My Lady. I didn’t think that was a problem. You told me you didn’t like it, but said she had a right to see Lady Knight Farryn during her off-duty time.”

  “Lady Knight Farryn is in the south making sure the caravans ferrying nobles to and from Sarlogne are safe and unmolested by the riffraff who take advantage of the traffic across the Empire during Festival.”

  “She must have only recently left, then, because I know Ailith has been going there regularly after shift. Unless.” She paused and thought a moment. “My Lady, I don’t believe Ailith would ever lie to me about where she’s going. She’s always been completely honest with me, even if it meant I’d punish her for doing something she shouldn’t.”

  “Oh, she didn’t lie.” Sábria turned away from the window. “She’s been going to visit Lady Farryn, all right, just not the Lady Farryn we all assumed she was visiting.”

  Jenx wasn’t surprised Sábria included herself in that “we.” The Arch Priestess always knew where her shivs were, even if she relaxed that vigilance when it came to her Blades. Again, Jenx paused to consider what Sábria was implying. “She was visiting Ryn’s mother?” She recoiled slightly, “Not to—” The thought of Ailith and Farry having sex was so completely off Jenx’s list of possibilities that she winced and shook her head.

  That at least brought a bit of amusement to Sábria’s eyes. “No, not for sex.” Her eyes hardened again. “At the beginning of Festival, someone mentioned to Farry that the skellis and nints were being hunted in the Codpiece by roving bands of foreign nobles, and as a result, they’re laying low. Their routine is always disrupted at this time of turn, and therefore, they’re starving to death down in the sewers.”

  Jenx nodded. “It happens every turn. It’s awful, but there’s not much we can do about it. We try to monitor their activities by following the nobles who go into the Codpiece on horseback, but they’ve become smart about their hunts. They’ve started causing problems on one end while their friends go hunting in the other. We just don’t have enough people to be everywhere at once. But what does that have to do with Ailith? You’ve warned her about doing things without discussing them with me first.”

  “I have.” The icy gaze pinned Jenx with its intensity.

  “But?”

  “But Lady Farryn asked Ailith to carry food into the Codpiece to feed the starving skellis and nints.”

  The surge of emotion, the pure, unadulterated outrage that welled up in Jenx, had her seeing stars. “She what?” She spun on her heel to go confront Ailith and was surprised when Shirin stepped in front of the door, blocking her way. Jenx turned again to face Sábria, her face red with outrage at the betrayal she was feeling. “How many times?”

  Sábria came forward and leaned back against her desk. “A fortnight.”

  Under normal circumstances, Jenx was the model of propriety. She was a member of one of the more prestigious noble houses and had been strictly brought up to follow the rigid set of rules governing protocol among the upper classes. Her shock and gut-wrenching surprise at hearing about Ailith’s—well, the only thing she could think to call it was betrayal—had put her so off-balance that her courtly manners fled. “Let me get this straight. My shiv has been carrying food into the Codpiece every day for a fortnight, and I’ve known nothing about it?”

  Her mind was reeling, and without realizing she was stepping out of the rest position without permission, she paced to the shelves of books on one side of the room, turned, and strode absent-mindedly to the conference table on the other. When she came to one of the heavy wooden chairs pushed beneath the table, she gripped the back posts of the top rail with such intensity her knuckles turned white.

  With a quiet growl, she decisively spun on one heel and faced Sábria. She swung her arm across her body in a gesture of finality, as though she’d made a decision and nothing anyone said would change her mind. “I don’t deserve to be a handler, My Lady. I respectfully resign from my position. I’m her handler, for Goddess’s sake. I’m supposed to be responsible for her safety, and I don’t even know she’s doing something so, so….” She couldn’t come up with a word to describe what Ailith had done. “You need to put her with someone who can keep up with her idiocy. I’m sorry, My Lady. I’m obviously not equipped to train her.”

  Her head jerked up at Sábria’s short bark of laughter. “Apparently, none of us are, and yet, she’s our responsibility, and no, I will not allow you to resign your position. And you will leave disciplining her to me. You’re right. Ailith isn’t the lying, sneaky type. I have no doubt she believed that what she was doing was the right thing, and in her mind, a noble lady asked her to do something, and since we’ve been trying to teach her to respect nobles if they deserve her respect, she took the food as she was asked.”

  Jenx came to stand in front of Sábria again, leaned forward slightly, and jabbed her thumb into her own chest. She’d never raised her voice to the Arch Priestess in the entire time she’d served under her, but she did so now. “Without asking me if she should? Without even telling me what she was doing? If I were a competent handler, any other shiv would have come to ask if they were doing the right thing. But no, not my shiv.” She jabbed her chest again. “My shiv doesn’t think twice about taking fucking bags of food into the most dangerous part of Sarlogne to give to a bunch of starving, armed children who wouldn’t think twice about slicing her gut open and stealing the food.”

  Sábria’s lips drew into a thin line at hearing her usually proper Blade using profanity in her presence. Jenx’s over-the-top reaction was concerning, and she needed to understand what was going on with one of her senior handlers.

  Misreading the slight uptick of the sides of Sábria’s mouth, Jenx scowled at her. “You find my incompetence as a handler amusing, My Lady?”

  There was a definite warning in the Commander’s voice when she growled, “Jenx.”

  The quiet rebuke stopped Jenx’s angry, knee-jerk reactions. She put her hand to her temple, closed her eyes a moment to regain her composure, and then once again took the rest position. “I’m sorry, My Lady. I’ll help you find another handler who might work. Maybe Marne can scare some sense into her. She was a handler once, wasn’t she? Maybe Ailith needs someone who has no wiggle room whatsoever in their temperament. Clearly, my personality is not a good fit.”

  Sábria crossed her arms and cocked her head. “What was it about ‘I won’t let you resign your position’ that was unclear, Blade Jenx?”

  Jenx pursed her lips. She knew the first answer that popped into her mind would get her a rebuke from Sábria and possibly even punishment from the Commander. Instead, she chose to remain silent.

  “I’m not angry at you for not realizing where she was, Jenx. You’re misinterpreting my foul mood, believing you caused it somehow by a perceived lack of ability as far as your handler skills go. Earlier today, I escorted Lady Farryn into the Codpiece and took her to see exactly where she’d been sending Ailith. I’m ashamed to say it’s been quite a while since I’ve actually been down in one of the fracks, and I’m appalled by what I saw.”

  Jenx let her anger seep out again, “My perceived lack? My Lady, my shiv was risking her life every day while I slept. How can you call that a perceived lack? Never, in the entire time I’ve been at the Temple, has a shiv so blatantly disrespected her handler to this extent. She didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me what she was doing, let alone trust me enough to help her figure out a solution to what Lady Farryn was asking her to do.”

  Relieved that her Blade had regained enough of her composure to discuss the problem without resorting to cursing, Sábria motioned to the conference table. “Take a seat, both of you. I’m going to have a drink. Anyone else? I have a very nice Tafonti from Frayham.”

  The offer helped Jenx relax somewhat. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear, but Sábria was taking this interview out of the realm of official into more of a group effort where they’d brainstorm to come up with a solution to the problems her shiv brought to the table. She rolled her shoulders to loosen the knots and stepped to Sábria’s small bar at the side of the room. “I’ll be happy to serve, My Lady. Three glasses of Tafonti?”