“How can you worry? You know the future, right?” he joked. “Hadrian said you read his palm once.”
Gwen didn’t laugh. Instead, she said, “I’ve read many palms.” She looked up at the sign with the single blooming rose, and sadness crossed her face.
Royce felt like stabbing himself. “Sorry, I…I didn’t mean…”
“It’s all right.”
It didn’t feel all right. Royce’s muscles tightened. Both hands became fists, and he was glad she wasn’t looking at him. Gwen had a way of seeing through his defenses. To everyone else he was a solid wall fifty feet high with razor-sharp spikes on top and a moat at its base; to Gwen he was a curtainless window with a broken latch.
“But I do worry,” she said. “It’s not like you’re a cobbler or bricklayer.”
“You shouldn’t. These days I don’t do anything worth worrying about. Hadrian won’t let us. I’m stuck with fetching lost possessions, stopping feuds—did you know we helped a farmer plow his field?”
“Albert got you a job plowing?”
“No, Hadrian did. Farmer took sick, and his wife was desperate. They owe money.”
“And you plowed a field?”
Royce smirked at her.
“So Hadrian plowed and you watched.”
“I tell you, the things he does.” Royce sighed. “Just doesn’t make sense sometimes.”
Gwen smiled at him. She was likely siding with Hadrian; most people did. Everyone thought good deeds were great—publicly at least—and her expression was one of patient understanding, as if she were too polite to say so. It didn’t matter. She was smiling at him, and for that brief moment it wasn’t raining. For that instant the sun shone, and he had never been an assassin and she had never been a prostitute.
He reached out, wanted desperately to touch her and hold that moment in his arms, to kiss that smile and make it more than a fleeting brilliance he would otherwise only recall as a dying spark. Then he stopped.
Gwen looked down at his faltering hands, then up at his face. “What is it?”
Is that disappointment in her voice?
“We’re not alone,” he said, nodding across the street to where three wretched figures moved in the shadows near the kitchen door. “You need to talk to your bartender. Dixon is dumping scraps outside the door, and you’re drawing flies.”
Gwen looked over. “Flies?”
“Elves. They’re pawing through your garbage.”
Gwen squinted. “Oh, I didn’t even see them.” She waved a hand. “It’s fine. I told Dixon to give them any leftover food. I hope he’s not just throwing it in the mud. I’ll need to get a barrel or set out a table.”
Royce grimaced while watching the miserable creatures. The rags clinging to their bodies were little more than torn scraps pretending to be clothes. Soaked with the rain, the elves looked like skin-wrapped skeletons. Feeding them was an example of cruelty by kindness. Gwen gave them false hope. Better to let them die. Better for them, better for everyone.
He looked at her. “You realize they’ll just come back. You’ll never get rid of them.”
Gwen nudged him and pointed up Wayward Street. “Albert’s here.”
On foot and veiled behind the hazy curtain of solid rain, Albert Winslow approached the dreaded pond with disgust. Soaked through and through, the viscount’s new brimless hat lay flat against his head, sliding down one side of his face. His cloak was plastered to his body. He looked at the murky lake and then across at them with a frown. “If it’s always going to be like this,” he called across, “can’t you put in a bridge for your moat, Gwen?”
“I don’t have a charter governing the street,” she called back. “Or the Bridges, for that matter. You’ll need to take that up with the king, or at the very least the Lower Quarter Merchants’ Guild.”
Albert looked down at the churning pond and grimaced as he waded in. “I want a horse!” he shouted at the clouds as the water reached the middle of his calves. “I’m a viscount, for Maribor’s sake! I shouldn’t have to wade through a sewer just to report in.”
“Can’t afford three,” Royce replied. “Can barely afford feed for the two.”
“Can now.” Albert pulled back his cloak to reveal a purse. He shook it. “We got paid.”
Six shiny gold coins stamped with the Melengar Falcon and twenty silver bearing the same image lay on the table in the Dark Room. The only room without a single window, it once was used for all manner of kitchen storage. Gwen had transformed the space to serve as the headquarters for Riyria, his and Hadrian’s rogues-for-hire operation. She’d added a fireplace for warmth and light, and the table where Albert had emptied his purse.
Royce brought over a candle. Every kingdom and city-state produced their own coins, but the tenent was international and supposed to be of consistent weight—equal to a typical robin’s egg. A silver tenent weighed the same as a gold tenent, but it was larger and thicker to make up for the lighter metal. That was the intention, and, for the most part, it held true. These felt to be honest coins.
“You got away clean, by the way.” Albert stood by the fire and pulled off his sodden hat. “Lady Martel either doesn’t know her diary was taken or is too embarrassed to report it. I’m guessing the latter.”
Albert began to wring his hat out onto the floor.
“No, no, no!” Gwen shouted at him. “Here—give me that. Oh, and just get out of the rest of your things. They have to be washed. Dixon, can you please get a blanket?”
Albert raised his brows at Gwen as she stood with hands out, waiting. He glanced at Royce and Hadrian with questions in his eyes. Neither said a word. Both responded with grins.
“Albert, do you really think you have anything I haven’t seen before?” Gwen asked.
Albert frowned, wiped the wet hair from his face, and began to unhook his doublet. “Anyway, as I was saying, Lord Hemley hasn’t called for so much as a search. According to our employer, Lady Constantine, Lady Martel only reported a nasty scare in the middle of the night that turned out to be nothing.”
“Nothing?” Royce asked.
“I’m not sure Ralph and Mister Hipple would agree,” Hadrian said.
“What kind of scare did she say they had?” Royce inquired.
Albert shrugged off the dripping brocade, which Gwen took. The big bartender returned with a blanket, and they traded material. “Can you please give this to Emma and ask her to do what she can?”
“Tell her to be careful,” Albert said. “That’s expensive.”
“We know,” Royce reminded him.
“Emma is experienced with brocade,” Gwen assured him as Dixon left. “Now let’s have those stockings and breeches.”
“Can I have a chair?”
“After the breeches are off.”
“What was the nasty scare Lady Martel mentioned?” Royce asked again.
“Oh—” Albert chuckled as he rolled off his long stockings. “She said a raccoon came in through a bedroom window and set her dog to barking. Hearing the noise, one of the grounds’ guards came running, and, in the dark, he banged his head against a poplar branch. He called out, thinking he’d been attacked.”
“Thinking he’d been attacked?” Royce asked.
“His story was that two guys broke in and threatened to kill him. Lady Martel called him delusional.”
Royce took a seat opposite the fire and tapped his fingertips together. He wondered what was in that diary that made Lady Martel want to avoid an investigation.
Hadrian just laughed.
“What?” Albert asked, handing over his second stocking, which Gwen took with a look of disdain.
“Lady Martel just saved Ralph’s life,” Hadrian said.
“Oh really? Who’s Ralph?”
“The delusional guard. Royce has been waiting for the rain to stop, and then he was going to pay ole Ralph a visit.”
Albert clapped his hands together. “Then it’s a day for everyone to celebrate, isn’t it?”
“After the breeches are off.” Gwen scowled.
“Are you this way with all your customers?” Albert asked.
“You’re not a customer, Albert.”