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Lore raised a hand in greeting. Val took hold of her fingers and pulled her into a hug instead. “You keeping out of trouble, mouse?”
“Only the kind you don’t want me in.” Lore hugged her back, the familiar scent of beeswax candles and whiskey a soothing weight in her lungs. Val and Mari had raised her since that day when she’d emerged from the dark into a world she didn’t know. They’d protected her and given her purpose, even when it was a risk. Even when the effects of her strange childhood had manifested in terrifying ways.
None of them talked about that, though.
Val snorted and straightened her arms, hands still on Lore’s shoulders. Her gaze had always cut like a scalpel, and now was no different. “I’m pulling you out,” she said with no preamble.
Lore’s brow knit. “What?”
“We have all the info we need on Gilbert’s outfit; if he’s moving as much contraband this week as you say, he won’t be running poison for much longer, anyway. There’s always a rush of religious feeling after a royal Consecration. The Presque Mort might be distracted now, but after that ceremony, they’ll have their noses to the ground like you won’t believe.”
For all that Lore loved her surrogate mothers, there was no denying that they were cutthroat. Val and Mari had visions of being the only poison suppliers in Dellaire—once they were, they’d be nigh untouchable. Bloodcoats took any bribe you threw at them, and even the Presque Mort and the rest of the Church turned their backs sometimes. The criminal underbelly of Auverraine was only criminal until the right amount of gold crossed the right palm.
Still, Lore shook her head, telling herself that her reluctance to leave was a business decision that had nothing to do with Michal. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. There’s still more I can learn.”
One pale eyebrow rose. Val cocked her head, that scalpel look delving deeper. “You like him.”
“No.” Yes. “That doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Oh, mouse.” Val sighed. “I’ve told you before. You have to keep yourself apart.”
But she was always apart. The power in her veins, the awful things she was capable of kept her always, always apart. And it was nice to let the pieces of herself that could be liked—loved, even—have just a little comfort, sometimes.
Val patted her on the shoulder again. “It’s for the best, Lore. Trust me.” A pause, her teeth digging into the corner of her bottom lip. “It’s all for the best.”
And she was right. Val always was. Lore sighed, nodded.
It wouldn’t be difficult. She had scripts for this, lists of excuses she’d given other lovers over the years, lovers she’d similarly been cautioned against taking when she infiltrated their lives to find the secrets of their employers. There was the sick aunt she had to tend, the jealous spouse who’d finally found her, the sudden desire to move to a new city and start over. Typically, the excuses weren’t questioned, and Dellaire was big enough that she rarely saw those people again. On the rare occasions she did, they didn’t notice her. Lore kept her affairs quick, and poison runners moved on even quicker.
“Tell me about this drop,” Lore said, eager to change the subject.
“It’s simple.” Val’s eyes flicked away from Lore’s. “Normally, I wouldn’t bother you with it. But the client requested that the boxes be left at the catacombs entrance in the Northwest Ward’s market square.”
“So you need me to watch it and make sure no one comes near before the client can pick it up.” Vagrants often used the outer tunnels of the catacombs to move around Dellaire. Leaving anything in them was a risk.
“Shouldn’t take long,” Val said. “If you leave now and cut by the dock roads, you should get there by the time the guard is changing. It’ll be chaos, since it’s the day before a royal Consecration. Jean-Paul is bringing the contraband to the square, and if he arrives during the changeover, he should be able to slip through without getting searched. Then you can help him unload.”
Get to the square, unload the drop, watch the poison until it gets picked up. Clients didn’t like to leave their contraband sitting for long, so she shouldn’t have to be there for more than an hour. Then she could go back to Michal’s row house, jump in the rusty claw-foot tub to wash off the itchy feeling of being near the catacombs, and decide which of her lies she was going to use to break whatever they’d built between them.
She gave Val a decisive nod. “I’ll head that way, then.”
The old poison runner watched her for a moment, expression unreadable. Then she pulled her forward again, a crushing hug that made Lore nearly yelp in surprise.
“We love you like our own daughter,” she murmured into Lore’s hair. “Mari and I do. You know that, right?”
Bewildered, Lore nodded, though she couldn’t move her head much. “Of course I do.”
“And whatever we do, we do it because we have to.” Val stepped back, keeping her hands on Lore’s shoulders, her green eyes uncharacteristically soft. “I’m sorry to make you leave him, mouse.”
Lore jerked another nod, swallowing past the curious tightness in her throat.
One more squeeze of her shoulders, then Val let her go. “Now get on with you,” she said. “Don’t want to be late.” She turned and started walking back the way she’d come.
Lore closed her eyes. Sighed, the sound of it shaking only slightly. Then she turned and headed in the opposite direction, toward the dock roads.
The dock roads were a mistake. Lore had barely gone a mile before she caught a glimpse of gilt on the horizon, and at a mile and a half, it became clear that preparations for the Sun Prince’s Consecration had overtaken nearly all of the street space between here and the Northwest Ward. Colorful stalls lined the usually deserted paths, hawking figurines of the Bleeding God and greenish-copper replicas of the Sainted King’s sun-rayed crown. Bloodcoats in their crimson jackets milled around the growing crowd with shining bayonets, and Lore even saw one or two Presque Mort, clothed head-to-toe in oppressive black.
“Stupid,” she hissed beneath her breath. “Gods-damned stupid to do a drop right before a Consecration.”
