“I can work with that.” Gisele smiles at Ragne.
“Wait,” I say. “Let me handle getting the skull. It’s not like having guards at the door ever kept me out before, and if you have to knock them out, they could be discovered. Besides, you need someone to pick the lock on—”
Barthl clears his throat. “I have keys.”
“As long as we get out and get to the gala, it doesn’t matter if the guards are discovered,” Emeric says. “It’s a safer bet.”
“Then what do you want me to do?” I ask.
There’s a stiff, uneasy silence, and then I understand. Gisele has the pearls, Barthl has the keys, Joniza has the stage, Ragne has her claws, and Emeric has his coin. They have no need for a thief and a liar.
I am not needed.
Somehow, that scares me more than maybe even Adalbrecht von Reigenbach.
“Irmgard,” Gisele says quickly. “Someone needs to keep an eye on Irmgard. You could come to the gala as my attendant, and Ragne can hide with you, and if Irmgard tries anything you can stop her.”
Gisele, always handing out her charity pennies. We can all hear what a weak excuse it is. I nod, pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth until it aches.
“Sure” is all I say.
“I think that works best for everyone,” she adds.
Gisele has no reason to know why those words strike an agonizing chord in me. She doesn’t see the lantern at the crossroads; she doesn’t hear my mother leaving me to Death and Fortune with the same excuse.
I only listen with half an ear as they talk through signals, timing, locations. It’s fine, because none of it depends on me. None ofthemdepend on me.
This shouldn’t be personal but it is.
It’s the fear that gnawed at my belly last night, breaking its teeth on something harder to swallow. Not only have I learnednothingin the last thirteen years, I’ve made a new and terrible mistake.
At the end of the day, Gisele will likely have Castle Reigenbach, she will have Ragne, she will have wealth and power and a fairy-tale ending. I will be lucky to keep my pocket full of gold. I may not even have the boy I stupidly care for.
But that’s not my new mistake.
Somehow, I’ve let all these people, even Barthl, matter to me. I’ve found them shelter and smuggled them around the castle and fought monsters and somehow,somehow, I have let myself be—loyal.
And now they don’t need me. No more than they trust me.
What a terrible, foolish mistake, to think loyalty would ever serve me in kind.
Greed, hate, love, revenge, fear. One way or another, they are all my motives.
I’ll help stop Adalbrecht. I’ll save Gisele to break the curse. Then I will take my money and run, and I will remember this lesson when I’ve left the Blessed Empire behind: There is one person in this world who I can trust to need me, and that is myself alone.
They may not need a thief and a liar, but I do. I do, if I want to survive.
When I leave Fortune’s cathedral late that night, it’s with Yannec’s ledger buried deep in my satchel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
NothingStolen
Friday morning breaks cold and brittle, the silver sky bright and flat as a white penny, and it finds me in the tidy cobblestone streets of the Obarmarkt. Anyone who sees me with my satchel and House Reigenbach servant badge will think I’m on an errand for the wedding; the gatehouse guards certainly bought the lie easily enough.
No one has to know I’m carrying around a small fortune in Eisendorf jewelry in this bag.
It was all too simple to figure out who Yannec was selling to. Just as I’d hoped, he kept his ledger in charcoal, and it survived its trip in the Yssar. All I had to do was skim through the deliveries he made after each of my thefts. One customer came up every time: a goldsmith by the name of Frisch, with an address near the Salzplatt.
