“Since my life started depending on them.”
“The next time I’m in a fight for my life, I’ll be sure to ask your advice, my lady.”
“If you do, I’ll advise you to not throw away your sword.”
He almost growled, but it would’ve frightened her, and he held himself in check. An infuriating, impossible woman.
She tied the final knot and wrapped white tape around the bandage. “What’s next?”
“We go upstairs.”
“Very well.” She leaned toward him to tie a sling around his shoulder. Her hair brushed against his cheek. Desire stabbed him, sudden and overwhelming. His irritation only made him want her more.
Charlotte slid his arm into the sling and put the kit back into the bag. “If you promise not to get yourself cut or skewered with anyone else’s sword, I promise not to faint.”
Delightful. “I’d be a fool not to take that generous offer.”
They started up the stairs, agonizingly slow.
“Did you really think I would win?” he asked.
She turned to look at him, gray eyes so beautiful on her lovely face. “Of course.”
Richard imagined stepping forward, pulling her to him with his uninjured hand, and kissing her right there on the stairs. In his mind, her lips were warm and inviting. In his mind, she loved it and kissed him back.
His mind was a place of many dreams, most of them dead and abandoned. She’s walking next to you, he told himself. She saw the true you, and she’s still willing to care for you. Enjoy what little you have while you have it.
They made it into the hallway. A faint light painted the floor under the door on their right. Richard pointed at the wall by the door. Charlotte pressed her back against it.
He kicked in the door, spinning to the side. Bullets peppered the opposite wall, biting chunks out of the plaster. He’d seen the inside of the room for a fraction of a second, but it was enough: a red-haired woman sat behind a desk and a tall man stood next to her, armed with one of the Broken’s guns. Richard yanked a throwing knife out of the sheath on his belt, thrust himself into the doorway, and hurled the blade. The knife bit into the gunman’s throat. The man stumbled back and fell.
The woman stared at him with cold, clear eyes. She had a heart-shaped face, with the high, contoured cheekbones bluebloods often found desirable. Her flame red hair coiled around her head in a complex braid. Her tunic was silk, cut in what was assuredly the latest style. An oval pendant hung from her neck on a thin gold chain: a pale, aquamarine stone the size of his thumbnail. She looked to be near Charlotte’s age.
Behind her were two large windows. Rows of shelves supported an assortment of books on the right wall while a large white limestone fireplace occupied the left. An arithmetika, a magic-powered calculator, sat on her desk, next to stacks of paper. No weapons appeared to be in the vicinity.
“We found the bookkeeper,” Richard said. “Come inside, Charlotte.”
She walked into the room. She saw the dead gunman. Her eyebrows rose briefly, then Charlotte sank into the nearest chair.
“If you had a knife, why didn’t you throw it at the swordsman downstairs?”
“It would’ve been a waste. He would’ve knocked it aside.” Richard nodded at the woman. “Place both hands on the desk.”
She did so. Delicate fingers, adorned with thin gold rings studded with stones. Wealth and taste were sometimes unlikely bedfellows, but in this case, they were clearly bosom buddies. A familiar anger flared in him.
“You’re wealthy, probably well educated,” he said. “Juliana Academy, perhaps.” Juliana’s was considered the best place for blueblood girls with money to receive their education. He’d became very familiar with Adrianglian school selection for Lark’s sake. He shouldn’t have bothered. His niece shot down all of his careful choices.
“Winters College,” Charlotte said. “Her tunic perfectly matches the shade of her eyes. Juliana’s encourages more creativity.”
The woman arched an eyebrow and looked Charlotte over, pausing on her dirty, bloodstained clothes. His urge to injure her shot into overdrive.
“And where did you study, if I may ask?”
“I had personal tutorship from one of the first ten,” Charlotte said, her voice glacially cold and cutting with scorn like a knife. “Don’t try to belittle me; you’re hopelessly outclassed. I see shortcomings in your every single aspect, from your lack of taste to your rotten morality. You’ve involved yourself in the basest of crimes. You facilitated murder, rape, and the torture of children. Your conduct is unbecoming a peer of realm.”
He almost winced.
The woman drew back, her cheeks turning red. “Please, spare me the rhetoric. We’re a higher breed. You know this as well as I do. You simply put on blinders and call it altruism. I call it willful ignorance. Those of us who are blueblood became so because our ancestors rose from the ranks of unwashed mobs. They were the thanes, the chiefs, the leaders of their people. The betters of the rest by virtue of their abilities and will. We’re their descendants. They climbed to power, and we maintain it. It’s that simple. These people you’re accusing me of crimes against live like animals. In many cases, being stripped of their freedom is the best thing that ever happened to them.”
Charlotte stared at her. “The function of a noble title is to serve the people. Seven blocks from here, there’s a body of a boy whose eyes have been gouged out with his mouth sewn shut. He was still alive when they did it. What is wrong with you? Are you human at all?”
“A regrettable but necessary casualty.” The bookkeeper crossed her thin arms on her chest. “But you are right, perhaps we should’ve left him with his lovely family to live in squalor while his parents drank themselves senseless in an effort to forget their own laziness and beat him when his existence reminded them of their baseness. Those who are capable act. They amount to something in life. They don’t live in filth, gorging themselves on cheap food, drowning in addictions, and rutting to produce yet more of their ilk. We rescue children from that. We provide a valuable service.”
Unbelievable.
Charlotte made a choking noise.
“Your condemnation means nothing,” the bookkeeper said. “This enterprise was conceived by a mind far superior to yours or mine. Think about it, when a blueblood buys a pretty young girl, she has a shot at a better life. If she’s smart, she will elevate herself by having his child. Just the other day, we fulfilled a special order for a childless couple. They wanted a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, between the ages of two and four, resembling both of them. Do you have any idea how difficult it was to find suitable children? Yet we’ve managed. Slavery is an opportunity. It’s regrettable you can’t understand that.”
Nothing either Charlotte or Richard could say would ever make this woman see reason.
“Kill her,” Charlotte said. “If you don’t kill her now, I’ll do it myself.”
“We need her testimony and information.” He approached the table. He had no idea how they would make it down the hill and to the port with a captive, but by gods, he would try.
“Killing me won’t be necessary.” The woman raised her chin. “Unlike you, I know my duty to the spear.”
She grasped her pendant.
Richard lunged to stop her.
The stone crunched under the pressure of her fingers. A blinding spike of light shot out into her chin, through her head, and out of her skull.
Charlotte gasped.
The bookkeeper sagged in her chair, dead, her head drooping to the side. The whole thing took less than a second. She had been wearing an Owner’s Gift necklace. He should have seen it, gods damn it.
The world screeched to a halt. He felt like he was falling.
All this time, all this work, and the arrogant scum killed herself. Was there no justice in the world?
Maybe Charlotte . . . He pivoted to her.