Briona shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to hear your story, Kell. Most of the urchins you knew in Baldur’s Gate still live there, even if they’re not urchins anymore.”
“Who sold me out?”
Briona scoffed. “Oh, cheer up. If you play it right, you’ll not only have a chance to see your childhood home again, but you could stay there. Isn’t that a good bargain?”
“Why did you involve them?” Kell flung his hand in Saeldian’s direction.
“Because I need you both,” Briona said. “Saeldian, you must be present when the gem is returned. I have been told that the mounting has illusion magic on it, and illusions are a specialty of yours. You will need to place it where it belongs and then make sure the magic looks like it was never disturbed.”
“No one else can do it?”
“You’re uniquely suited to this task.”
“And we’re bound to do it, so I guess we’re bickering for no reason,” Saeldian said.
“Well, then. If that’s settled,” Briona said to everyone at the table. “Any more questions or complaints before we get on with it?”
“I have terms of my own,” Kell said, glowering at Saeldian and Jubilee.
Saeldian sighed and rubbed their temples with long, elegant fingers. “Let’s hear it.”
“This job is over when I say it is, and not one moment earlier. Until that moment, we are a team. You will not betray us, desert us, deceive us, or harm us until I say it’s over.”
“Neatly put!” Saeldian would have used that tone to praise a puppy learning to sit. Jubilee looked stormy and folded her arms while Saeldian gave Kell aYou’re a good boylook that made him itch for an honest fight. “Anything else?”
Saeldian would poke until he lost it and then turn it around onhim. Not today. “Only one thing. When the job is over, I will give you one minute to get out of my sight. And if I see you again? It will be the last time, I promise you that.”
Saeldian snorted. “Once you’re in the Feywild, you’re never coming back. All right, let’s bargain. What good will Waterdhavian gold do you where you’re going? Maybe you should give us your vault key to split.”
“I was going to do something good with it, so I’d throw that key in the harbor first.”
Angry sparks lit in Saeldian’s night-brown eyes. “Screw you, Kell Redsong.”
“Again?”
Saeldian sprang from their seat, their long, enameled fingernails aimed straight for Kell’s face—and then yelped as Mariel scooped them up in mid-launch. Kell didn’t even see the blur. Mariel set them back on their feet, delivering a disappointed look at them until Saeldian glared down at the floor.
The bodyguard reached out and lifted their chin. “He baited you, but are you blameless?”
Her accent was from south of here. Elturel? But her voice sounded like wagon wheels on an old road. And that expression had the power of a hundred disappointed mentors.
Saeldian shrugged, uncomfortable. “I’m more blameless than he thinks I am. I never—”
“Saer Charmhand, that is not what I asked.”
Saeldian tilted their face up to the bodyguard and huffed. “No. I’m not blameless.”
They settled in their chair. Jubilee offered them cheese, and after a sulky moment, they accepted.
Lorzok shifted. “You’ll be back in the Feywild, Kell. You’ll be home. If we steal to do it. And if we can trust these two.”
Jubilee leaned closer to Saeldian’s ear. “Home?”
“Long story,” Saeldian muttered.
“I was a firstborn child,” Kell said, not willing to let Saeldian tell hislong story.“The classic price of a fey bargain. I don’t know what my parents traded me for.”
Jubilee gasped, dismayed. “They gave you away?”
