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My second and third close in, standing right behind me, as though they believe I might need help against the small, delicate flower. And they're right. They'll have to hold me back if she says one word out of tune, lest I become hunted for the murder of a noble.
"I don't want—" she starts.
So funny."Your wants are of no relevance to me, Duchess."
She huffs and winces. "By the gods, the words fail me. I'm not here to fight you. I have a proposal, Helyn. There is a place for you at my side. My husband cannot have children. You'd be his heir. You'd have everything you've ever dreamed of. You don't even need to see me."
This offer surprises me, and usually nothing does.
"Mother said you wished you could learn magic as a child. Is it still true?" Neleda takes one step closer than what I should allow. "You can study it at Five. I'm sure you can catch up to everyone else. You were always so smart, Helyn."
"Hel," I say, rejecting the name she gave me.
Five. She's offering a place at the university teaching kings and queens tome. Me, the street rat, the thief, and the shadow. And beyond that, she's dangling a duchy. In a remote, frozen kingdom, but a duchy all the same.
Five years ago, I would have killed for this dream.
Now, I just want her gone. "Go home, Mother. Take another man to your bed to give that duke an heir. Who knows? He might even enjoy watching."
CHAPTERTWO
DANGEROUS SCHEMES
Iinherited the underground hideout from the previous leader of the Claws Crew when she retired two years ago. I've barely made any changes, though the red drapes and dark tapestries are hardly to my taste. Truth be told, I don't care much what the den looks like. It's just a place to sleep, and after days of work in the city, I'm not fussy so long as I get a vaguely flat surface.
Khel offers to take the first watch in front of the door leading to the tunnels. No one has ever found the den, but if they did, we'd see a sign of light or hear noise from the tunnel. We can escape out back.
It'sAlva's turn to cook. Instead of humming and babbling merrily about a job well done, as she normally would, she stands in front of the stove in silence.
We did have a great day. After the funeral this morning, we tailed a shipment driving through the canals, up toward Whiteviews, a rich neighborhood uptown. The vessel was well guarded, by both ground and water patrols, but we got aboard it when the boat passed under the alley-bridge.
My policy is to never take enough to be noticed. It wouldn't do to swipe all of their shipments and drive the wealthy owners to send the guards up to us. Today, it was grain—rice, wheat, barley. Nothing fancy, but it keeps if well preserved, and we'll need it come winter.
Alva ran part of it to the orphanage where she grew up, and Khel distributed some to members of the crew—our errand boys, runners, scouts, and traders. The rest, we dropped off at the flea market on Glitter Lane. There's a community table we can load. Anyone in need can help themselves.
We've had better days, but we’ve certainly had worse. At least no one got shot at or magiked into a toad.
"Out with it, then." I know my second well enough to recognize when she's pissed at me. "Better you spit at me than in the goulash."
Alva doesn't hesitate to give me a piece of her mind."How can you be this selfish?"
I'm too astounded to think of a reply. I'm no stranger to selfishness, same as anyone, but I can't say any of my actions were about putting myself first today.
"You're given something on a silver platter the rest of us kill for," she continues. "A position of power! A chance at a life of consequence!" Her voice rises. "Dammit, Helyn, you could make a real difference, give the undercity a voice among the rulers of this realm, and you dare refuse?"
I'm taken aback and hurt by each word. Probably because they ring true to my ears. Alva doesn't get the whole picture. She might know about my history, but she doesn't understand Neleda the way I do. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know today all we achieved was giving a bag of rice and dried beans per family in one out of the fifteen quarters in the undercity. We've fed them for a week, and we could have gotten killed for our efforts. The nobles up there? They can vote to give us enough water in the summer, and affordable heat in the winter. They can decide to build an orphanage and just like that—" She snaps her fingers in my face. "A hundred orphans care for. Fed, clothed, taken off the street, educated. Dammit, Hel."
I'm not listening so much as straining to remain calm. When I think I can talk without reaching for my dagger or punching my closest friend, I say,"When I was seven, my mother came and cried about missing me so much she was going to stay put and never let me go. It lasted one week. Then she begged Grandma Lyn for money and was gone the next day. When I was eleven, she said she got a nice, sweet gig in a pub uptown, and she could get me a job with her. That pub? It was a brothel."
Alva gasps. She didn't know that. We met much later, after I'd started making a name for myself in the streets, and the crew looked my way. I've not volunteered the information before, though I made no secret of my contempt for the woman who gave birth to me.
Khel doesn't seem surprised, either because he has ears in every lane, or because he knows my mother better than I.
Both of my companions are older than me, butAlva's only twenty-five. Khel has ten years on her, which makes him only a couple of years younger than Neleda. He knows her from her days in the undercity, at least by reputation.
"Shit, Hel. I'm sorry."
