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“Yes. Estrella Vane is playing at the Rival Theater this evening. I need you to get me in.”
“If you already know that,” he said slowly, “then you’d already decided she was the key to getting what you want.”
She shrugged.
“You could have asked me for anything and you asked a question you already had the answer to. Why?”
“Because if you gave me anyone else’s name, you would either be a liar, or incompetent. I can work with both, but I needed to know what I was dealing with. Can you get me in, or not?”
“Yes.” He studied her for a moment, but she only waited, so he continued. “Am I to take it you know why it’s called the Rival Theater, then?”
She flashed him another smile in response, and the way her eyes shifted when her lips curled up—he was half convinced she lost a sliver of her soul each time she smiled.
“If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, you need a better dress.”
She looked ready to snarl, as if he’d inexcusably insulted her intelligence. “I wasn’t planning on wearing this one.”
“I meant you need something better than anything you have.”
“And you know what I have?” she asked, a dangerous edge to her voice.
“I can guess.” He pulled a pen and a small notebook from his pocket, scratched a series of characters across the back. “There’s a tailor near here. Chalen Mora.” He rattled off directions, trusting she’d remember them. “Tell them what you need the dress for and give them this.” He tore the page out and offered it to her. “They’ll get you what you need.”
She eyed the paper with obvious distrust.
“And Clare? This does come with a condition.” She relaxed, now that he was giving stipulations. He was beginning to realize she was the sort of woman who didn’t trust anything unless the price was stated up front, and perhaps not even then. “I respect Chalen. Don’t insult them. And it is them.”
He could tell by the blank look on her face she didn’t understand what he meant. She was clever. She’d figure it out. And if she didn’t—or if she had a problem with it—Chalen would throw her out, and Numair would get an earful about it.
He stood, which was the signal for a server to approach with the food he’d ordered earlier, setting it down and retreating.
Clare eyed the food, then him. “You aren’t staying to eat?”
He shrugged. “I have things to do. You’re welcome to it if you want. Or leave it and the staff can throw it out.” He walked away with the feel of her scorn heating the outdoor courtyard far better than any of the warming spells.
If he’d told her he’d bought it for her, he was relatively certain she would have refused it. But his wasteful dismissal of it had pissed her off, and he was equally certain that pissing Clare Brighton off was a good way to get her to do things.
And she needed to eat something. She’d found clothes that hid it well, but the woman was more than half-starved.
Chapter Ten
I Don’t Bite
If Veralna’s Hightown could be said to have a poor side, Chalen Mora’s shop resided in it. Clare stopped at the mouth of an alley—still a very clean alley compared to any previous one Clare had known—tapping Taius’ card against her thigh.
On the one hand, this could be a trap. On the other hand, there was little point. The man had money, and therefore far easier ways of gaining control of her if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to. She knew the look men got when they wanted to own her, was all too familiar with the sick, obsessive need that could stare out from the depths of someone’s eyes. Taius didn’t have that. Whatever reason he was helping her for, it wasn’t actually for her, and that was a relief.
She moved down the alley to a door made of gleaming black metal that looked too smooth and perfect to be iron. The looped, swirled symbols it twisted into seemed to shift before her eyes, serpentine and mesmerizing. She put her hand on the metal and found it hot to the touch, like solid fire. It felt old and powerful, and the Song rumbled inside her in response, perking up in its cage.
Clare removed her hand, but her touch had been enough to summon the building’s occupant. The outer door slid to the side, revealing an inner security door and the person standing behind it. Clare looked into golden-yellow eyes, tilted ever-so-slightly at the corners, and black hair that fell in shining sheets to either side of one of the most arrestingly beautiful faces she had ever seen.
Chalen Mora stared at her suspiciously. “Yes?”
She held up the card. “I need a dress.”
Chalen motioned and Clare slipped the card through the bars of the security door. She wanted to know what it said, but even if she’d been able to read Common, she wouldn’t have been able to read this. It wasn’t written in letters as she knew them, but characters that were an art form in their own right.
