Ms. Sparrow
Queen of SHIIIPS
“To the Tavern," Bramble replied in response to Damon's question. “To make sure Ana doesn't get reckless or too drunk. ”
“Because you worry for her, do you not?”
“Yes.” She sucked in a breath at the first jab and pull of the needle.
“And why is that?”
“No idea … Mostly because Ana has taken… care of us ever … since Mother took ill and … died.”
“And what are your thoughts on her fiancé?”
“He digs …” She breathed. Damon was going very fast. He had already tied off two stitches and was starting another.
“And what does he find?”
“He has his page … the young boy. He's investigating our court …” The pain was doubling with each fresh prick and pull. “Cartier says he's looking at the nobels… he eavesdropped on their discussion … he's looking at … someone. Your uncle was . . . A big discussion last night.”
“Emile?”
“That is what Cartier heard in … the middle … of the conversation. We have … to tread carefully. The Prince … must not suspect… me… to have... spies.”
“Did Frederick speak with Ana?”
“Yes, there was too … much noise for Cartier to hear. But he was careful. He has not revealed his true self… we need… to get rid of him... before three months... without hurting anything.” Unlike Damon, who was killing her.
“And where does your sister stand on this? Do you believe there will ever be love?”
Sophia took a moment to grip the bed frame. “No. Ana plays her … game too… close to love him. She knows … he plays his own game as well …”
“And she will continue her sharade”
“That’s why she … doesn't want us to make a move. If we challenge him he will invesigate us, and drop his… sharade.”
“And what of your plans? Will you keep jumping out windows at night? What will you do with Frederick?”
She held the wooden post harder. Those plans were her own, her only undiscovered secret it seemed. Truthfully, she still had to figure out how to get rid of Frederick without starting a war. But she'd be damned if she let Frederick boff off with Ana and the kingdom. But Bramble was beyond thinking of a lie to tell about her plans for thievery. For the moment, she was beyond speaking.
“There!” Damon said, running a sleeve across his brow. “Twenty-two. That is not so bad. I am a marvel, am I not? My uncle Renè says I am the fastest in the city.”
Bramble didn’t answer. She was sure her face must be white.
He dabbed at the newly bleeding wound with the bandage she’d been wearing, and then leapt up, wiping his hands on the front of his shirt. Her eyes followed as he retrieved Abenthy's bottle, then widened as he got right on the bed and straddled her, one knee to her back and one to her stomach, pinning her legs down with his weight. Bramble realized what he was about, allowed herself a sigh, and got a tighter hold on the bed frame.
“Apologies, my love,” he said, right before he tipped the bottle over the wound. Her body jerked of its own accord, but he had her held tight beneath him. She squeezed her eyes shut. He poured once more, liquid running down her stomach and back, not unlike the tears she could feel leaking down each side of her face.
She stayed still, panting as the weight of him left her and she heard the bottle being set back on the table. When she opened her eyes again he had taken off his shirt, ripping methodically, tearing away another strip from the bottom. His back was a little tanned, muscled, like the men of the Lower City. Not what she would expect from the Upper. And equally unexpected was the sharp glance of bright-green curiosity she intercepted when his eyes darted toward hers. But the expression was gone almost before she’d known it was there, and he came back to the bed, standing over her with no shirt and a smile that came straight from the old Damon.
“May I?”
She watched as he knelt down, lifting her body just enough to slide the strip of cloth beneath her, almost formal as he wrapped the wound again, and again, tight. While he was tying, Bramble reached cautiously, respecting the pain in her side, and grabbed the bottle from the table beside the cot. She emptied the rest of its contents into the glass, turned her face to brush the wet streaks from her cheeks, took a small sip, and then silently held out the glass to Damon. He laughed once before he took it, and by the time she’d gotten herself painfully upright, the last of Abenthy's whiskey was gone.
Damon sat next to her on the bed. “And how is your head, my love?”
It was awful. He reached over and ran a finger very delicately over the bump at her hairline, and when he put his arm back down again, it was behind her on the mattress. Bramble only just kept one of her eyebrows from rising.
“You never told me of your plans,” he said, voice much closer. “What will you do about your nightly activities?”
She remembered to be coy and peeked up at Damon from the corner of her eye. “ I don’t know. Maybe I'll give up.”
“Do you curl it on purpose?”
She drew her brows together in question and Damon again lifted a finger to one of the blonde waves tucked behind her ear. She was fairly sure it had dried mud on it. “Sometimes,” she replied.
“But not when you ride?”
“No, not when I ride. You are so full of questions, Damon.”
She was on high alert now. Damon had a look about him, something about the slightly parted lips. It was dangerous. And fascinating. She forgot her pain for the moment and waited, curious to see what he would do. What he did was lean in closer, loose hair brushing her shoulder, his eyes half-closed. He smelled like wood and resin; she’d thought it would have been perfume.
“You have such pretty skin, Bramble Evrole. Like delicate snow. What do you call it?”
“Porcelain?”
“Yes, porcelain.”
A draft moved across the flickering room, but Bramble didn’t.
“And now that we have been so intimate,” he whispered, voice low in her ear, “do you not think we should discuss something more then friends, my love? Or …” He still had fingers on the other side of her face, playing with her hair. “Are you afraid of what your sisters may think?”
Bramble didn’t breathe. He was going to kiss her. She ought to say something, back away, tell him to stop. But she didn’t. Instead she wondered what it might feel like to be kissed by a daughter stealer. Turn her head just a little, and she would find out. The air hummed, full of static, stubble just brushing along her jaw. Her eyes closed on their own. And then Damon's cheek slipped to her shoulder, leaning there for just a moment before falling straight down onto the bed like a stone.
She opened her eyes and waited, drawing a shaky breath, and when she was sure he was not going to move she lifted his arm from her lap and scooted off the bed, wincing as she stood. She looked at Damon as he lay facedown on the mattress, running a hand through the curls behind her ear, brushing away a few small grains of white powder that had stuck to her fingers. The same white powder that had been hidden beneath the pale stone of the ring that was around her finger. The same white powder she had poured from the ring into Damon's whiskey glass.
Then she walked slowly to the brick fireplace mantle, dizzy and a little sick, found the glass vial stored behind a couple loose bricks, refilled the cavity in her ring, clicked it shut, and one by one blew out the lamp and the candles. It took a long time. When the only light left was the fire, she looked again at the bed and sighed. With difficulty and not a small amount of pain, she bent and managed to pull Damon off the bed with a sound thump and drag him across her floor, stuffing him into her grand wardrobe. No, definitely not Upper City. He had the body of a man who’d been working a ship, and it certainly wasn't from just thieving either. She threw the damp and bloody blanket over his chest. The bedroom was going to get cold, especially for as long as he was about to sleep. She'd have to get Ms. Graybe to wash the sheets, including this blanket.
She banked up the fire, retrieved her belt and knife, breathing hard, and then paused again. For someone who had made it a point not to look at Damon Hasard’s face, she certainly had stared at it enough today. He was still something wild, dark red-brown hair everywhere, wrapped in a blanket smelling distinctly of homemade bevvy. But the daughter stealer had been replaced by someone different. A bit like Damon when they were little. Almost innocent, but not quite. And he was beautiful.
Bramble stepped back. Damon Hasard was not innocent, and therefore could not be beautiful. He had blood under his nails, not just hers, but the blood of the dozens—maybe even almost a hundred—who had died in an "accident". Like anyone who chose to ally themselves with Emile. And he would not be sharing anything he’d seen in this room with that particular man tonight.
She had almost let him kiss her. She should never, ever think about that again. She turned the key and locked Damon in the dark wardrobe.
“Jeez I don’t know, Cartier. What should I have done?” Bramble leaned back into the pillows, having just vomited for the second time into the bowl Ms. Graybe held out for her. She was glad she had at least waited until now for that humiliation.
“Let her alone,” Ms. Graybe chided. “She’ll rip that cut open if she keeps this up.”
Cartier stopped pacing about her room and sat down in the edge of the bed, tapping his foot to take out his frustration. He glanced at the wardrobe.
“It is well sewn,” said Ms. Graybe, peeking beneath the blanket, where Cartier could not see. She handed Bramble a wet cloth for her face.
“I’m shocked a man like that would know how to do it,” Cartier commented. “And how in the name of the holy saints is he getting out of the wardrobe?”
Bramble shook her head. She didn’t know. There was much, she now realized, that they did not know about Damon Hasard. They might not know anything about him at all. “And where is the other one?” Cartier continued. “What’s his name?”
“Maven,” Ms. Graybe replied.
Cartier turned to Bramble. “Did Hasard mention where he was?”
She shook her head. They’d been careless about Maven—just like they had on watching Damon , because they trusted him for years, but now his manservant, misjudging Maven's potential in the same way they had always depended on others underestimating Ms. Graybe. A stupid mistake. The kind that could get someone’s head cut off.
“Then the question is,” Cartier said, “how soon might there be a hue and cry over his missing master?”
Bramble sighed. “Graybe, go into the Upper City, Damon's house and see if you can find Maven. Tell him that Damon sends word that he’s with his...friend, and might not return until just before dinner. Make it seem … you can make it seem as if he’s in my rooms, if you want. I doubt Maven will question you then.” Bramble ignored the soft swearing coming from Cartier's chair. “We’ll think of some other excuse before dinner. Perhaps Damon will be ill.” Likely he already was. She looked to Cartier. “Do you agree?”
He nodded. Ms. Graybe, grim as ever, patted her head once and hurried out Bramble's door. Cartier leaned back in his chair, rubbing a rough chin. “Emile knew that you would come. It was a trap.”
“But I think,” Bramble ventured, “that he did not expect the window.”
“Perhaps not.”
Bramble closed her eyes, trying not to remember the way it had felt to pull a knife out of a dead man. “Is there news from the manor?”
“Oh, yes. It’s all over the kingdom of Argonia in sure. Burglary and murder. They’re tracking the scent west. I left clothing much farther away, it'll take the guards all day to figure out it's a dead end. The nobels are enraged, they suspect the Thief has struck again, but this time, killed someone.” Cartier waited, but Bramble didn’t say anything. “And the dead man was a stranger to you?”
“Yes. Was he Emile's?”
“Must’ve been. He was a stranger to everyone. And who do you think killed him?”
Bramble's eyes opened. “Wasn’t it me?”
“Did you clean your knife?”
“No.” Bramble thought back to the fuzzy dark with the dogs barking and the unnatural silhouette of a knife sticking out of a chest. “It wasn’t my knife,” she said suddenly. “The handle was too thick. Did I have two knives when you spoke to me earlier?”
“No, only your own. Where is the other knife, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“And more to the point, whose knife was it, who put it into the stranger’s chest, and who else might have seen you climbing out a window of the manor?”
They were questions neither of them could answer.
Cartier said, “We are in a fix, my lovely friend.”
She nodded.
“But I am very glad you’re not dead.”
She smiled wanly from her pillow. She had considered long ago what might happen on one of the Thief missions, what was sure to happen if she was caught. She had thrown her death on the scale, weighed it out against her future, and made a choice. And that choice had been a secret shame to her. Personal fulfillment just wasn’t one’s top priority when the children were starving or raiders were cresting the hill. But Bramble Evrole had not been born into those dark times. She had been born into an enlightenment, an age of privilege, art, education, living in a way that her Evrole ancestors would not have dared to dream. And she’d been more than willing to risk it, everything her forebears had struggled to achieve, for nothing better than adventure and a challenge to her wits. When it came down to it, Bramble Evrole simply feared boredom more than she feared death.
But all of that had changed the first time she crawled into the window of a nobels. Being the Theif hadn’t been about adventure then. Suddenly it was about blood and disease and death and the children who watched their parents’ starved body's tossed into coffins because they could not afford a piece of bread. It was about injustice. Nobels had everything and some villages would do anything for food. It was about stealing from stuck up nobels and cheating the guards. And knowing that, in her opinion, only made her actions all the more reprehensible.
What sort of person went to the lengths she did to dam a flood of evil, and then lay awake at night dreading when there would be no more evil behind the dam? Without the Theif, she would be nothing but the girl she was before and the girl she would become: a wife, a princess, doing just as her mother and grandmother had, doomed to managing a house and having children leading a boring life of politics till the end of her days.
The truth was that Bramble Evrole went to the Upper City and stole because she didn’t know who she’d be anymore if she didn’t. If she was caught, she wouldn’t be sorry. She would only be sorry that the people she loved most would bear the pain of it.
“Tonight,” Cartier said, “let’s go on with this dinner as planned. Can you do it?”
Bramble nodded. She had to.
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