ChaoticArmcandy

  Mi watched the slender bde of fme rising from the long candle on the table in front of her, and waited for the questioner to appear.

  The bedchamber was richly-appointed, one of the nicest in the inn. Thick red curtains covered the windows, ensuring privacy from the bustle of the street below. Thanks to the creak of the iron stove in the corner, it was quite toasty. She tensed as she heard the floorboards creak outside the door, but it was only the guard, shifting his weight.

  An agent of the Duchy, not a guard. Mi closed her eyes, trying to calm her racing heart. Better the Duchy than the Ministry, she told herself sternly. Stop panicking. Get ahold of yourself, or you’ll never get out of here.

  “Don’t act like a prisoner,” came Roxa’s voice, echoing fresh and urgent in her memory, “or they will see you as one. Try to convince yourself that you are one of them, their co-conspirator, their operative.”

  Well. Here she was. She had let herself be reeled into the spider’s web.

  Outside the door, brisk footsteps.

  I’m a fool for going along with this, Mi thought with a surge of despair. Damn you, Roxa.

  There was a muffled mutter of conversation, and then a knock.

  “Enter,” said Mi, carefully bnking her face.

  The door swung open and a young woman stepped swiftly into the room and favored her with a smile of greeting that did not reach her clear gray eyes. The door snicked shut behind her.

  On the table between them, the candle fme trembled and stabbed at the sudden draft.

  The two girls beheld each other for a moment. This newcomer was tall, matching Roxa’s height. Her movements were crisp and her bearing bespoke buried, coiled steel. Her hair was cropped short in a messy bob. Her full lips twitched into something more conspiratorial than a smile.

  “So,” she said casually. “It’s Mi, is it?”

  Mi nodded. “And you are?”

  A half-smile, wry. “Roxa didn’t tell you?”

  “Roxa tells me little, and cares less,” Mi lied with feigned bitterness.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Whatever you do, don’t trust her,” warned Roxa, rifling through a drawer.

  Mi sat on her bed, biting her lip. Their room y in a mess of upheaval, prior to flight.

  “I’m going to leave you with her, for safety’s sake, but she will try to co-opt you, and almost certainly she will try to get to me, through you.”

  “Get to you?” Mi frowned. “Why?”

  A wince. “Well, she’s my ex.”

  Mi gaped at her roommate. “You’re kidding.”

  “Bme my mother,” Roxa muttered. “I’m sure she picked Mariah on purpose.”

  “Then how is this any different than going to Cordivar?” asked Mi, desperation staining her voice like blood through thin silk.

  “With my people…you’ll be safer, at least. There are still no inquisitions, no social cleansings in the Duchy.” Roxa threw her a conflicted look. “And I’m hopefully about to subvert Aralia, so we’ll be able to compel her, which gives us more options than just putting ourselves in her power, unprotected.”

  Mi groaned and flopped backwards, her forearm thrown over her eyes. “Seasqualls, this blows.”

  “I know.” Roxa stuffed the two dowsers she’d made, one for each tea girl, into her bag with the encrypted letters. “But at least we survive the kuffa hunt Ellie managed to warn us about. Nobody is safe during those, except snitches.”

  Mi sat up. “Roxa, if you do manage to best Cordivar then you must promise me something–”

  “Ellie made her choice, Mi.” Roxa said, more harshly than she intended.

  There was a silence, stretching bleakly through the hollow pces in both their chests.

  “Maybe,” Mi relinquished finally, bowing her head.

  Roxa took a deep breath and turned to her friend, her voice softening. “Have you considered that she may be safer as Aralia’s asset, at least for the moment? Given what’s coming?”

  Mi’s eyes were like a field surgery. “If you can get Cordivar to release her though–”

  “I’ll find Ellie,” said Roxa grimly, kneeling to slide a long knife into her boot sheath. “And I’ll compel that hawk woman to release her, if and when I can find a way to do so that doesn’t put our entire bluff at risk. But bear this in mind, Mi–we may soon learn things about Ellie that will confirm our worst suspicions.”

  “I know,” Mi winced. “It’s just–I still have to try to get her out of this mess. No matter what she’s done. And so do you, Roxa.”

  Steeling herself, Roxa turned her swiftwater-over-riverjade gaze and met Mi’s tortured, impcable dark vernal pools for a long moment. “Mi–”

  “We’re a package deal,” said Mi firmly. “You don’t get to save my life at the cost of hers. No matter what compromises you have to make in this game of pawns and predators, remember that–I refuse to be a part of this drivel, otherwise.”

  Roxa hesitated, then nodded, tight-lipped.

  ~ ~ ~

  Mariah pulled out a chair and took a seat across the table as Mi watched her warily through the bobbing, weaving candle fme.

  “I find it difficult to believe Roxa did not tell you even my name.” The gray-eyed operative cocked her head. “Given our dense history together.”

  Mi snorted. “I’m not. She treats me like a not-very-useful horse most of the time. I’m far from her confidante, trust me.”

  “And yet you have survived, even learned to py the game, despite being forced to enter it against your will. You have done well here, for an isnder.”

  Mi resisted the urge to roll her eyes. That certainly didn’t deserve a response.

  “She tells me you served her well,” Mariah pressed, a mocking smile curving her full lips. “And that you are clever and quick with your tongue.”

  “I might as well be a sve to people like you,” Mi said coldly, sidestepping those double meanings. “Merely a pawn in your games of power.”

  Mariah raised an eyebrow. “You could be more. Especially if you are dissatisfied with how Roxa has dealt with you. A pretty girl with a quick wit is valuable anywhere, you know.”

  Mi blinked. “Then you should know I can sniff out a test, when one is served to me. I haven’t survived here this long by falling for sweet lies.”

  “No test.” Mariah leaned forward. “I do not serve the stripling Monir, but her mother, the Countess. How would you like to be more than a disposable asset? Prove yourself to me and I can even get you a spy’s commission, and better assignments than those in the rotten heart of this bleak regime. The coming war will be fought across the whole Whistling Sea, and we desperately need more operatives out there. You could rise far with us–even come to command your own cell.” Mariah favored her with another smile that fell short of her penetrating gray gaze. “I am always looking for educated, cool-headed talent, especially those as pleasing to the eye as you.”

  Mi stared at her levelly, mind racing. Does she see through the bluff, or is she just hitting on me, or is she serious? “Say that I am tempted. What would I have to do?”

  Mariah grinned like a wolf that had cornered a rabbit. “Tell me what she has on you. Whatever it is that compels you to serve her, whether reward or punishment, I will match it or remove it.”

  Mi dropped her gaze to the table. She did not trust that wolf smile.

  Mariah’s tone was soft as a velvet-shrouded bde. “All you have to do is tell me about her. What does she have you doing here? Why is she so scared of Penelope Caul?”

  If Mi were a real asset with no actual loyalty to Roxa, she knew she would take this chance–holding her silence would only give her away as something more. She had to lie, and lie well.

  Mi’s hesitation made Mariah’s smile curve even more. “Help me bring Roxa Monir to heel, and you will be richly rewarded. Tell me, what does she truly want–what is her long game?”

  “She never let me into her confidences,” Mi hedged. “All I can tell you is that she ordered me to make myself vulnerable to Aralia Cordivar, to py bait. When Cordivar bit, I did as I was told and fed Roxa information about her. As you must know by now, eventually that paid off.” She shrugged coolly. “Otherwise Roxa had me steal reagents, compound some alchemical weapons, run errands. Besides that I was more or less her maid. She was always remote, always guarded.”

  Mariah’s smile crooked. “Come now, surely we can’t be discussing the same person. Roxa Monir? So reluctant was she to py the games of power and coercion, to do anything close to her duty–at least when we were lovers.” Mariah leaned her elbows on the table and tapped her teeth pensively. Her gray eyes never left Mi’s. “And that was not so long ago. What could have inspired her to change so abruptly, I wonder?”

  Mi bnked her face, cursing her roommate internally. Your ex is running circles around me, Roxa. Why the hell didn’t you tell me more about this girl? “Harmine is an…uncompromising pce. It renders everyone into a predator trying not to be prey. Survival here demands more…suspicion than many are used to mustering.”

  Mariah ughed. “What a compassionate expnation. But still, I’m sure Roxa hesitated, even balked at turning you into an asset. I know her, remember–perhaps even better than you yourself do. She would have jumped at the chance to py pretend, to bond with a foreign student here, to wallow in make-believe trust. She deyed, didn’t she? She procrastinated, tried to forge new loyalties, even betray her sworn oaths. She failed this test of her mother’s–I know she did! Don’t lie to me, Mi. You were her friend first, weren’t you? And perhaps her lover?”

  Mi disciplined her face.

  Mariah grinned triumphantly. “Ah. A brave attempt at silence, wasted on someone who doesn’t deserve it. Trust me, Mi–you know her less than you thought you did. I was once her lover too, as I’m sure you were told.” Her full lips curled, her gray eyes turned flinty as her voice took a bitter turn. “Unlike you or me, Roxa is a noble–and her unwillingness to take basic responsibilities seriously makes her unfit for your loyalty. Do you really think someone who would shirk her duty to her people wouldn’t shirk her duty to you? She will always turn her back, always default to running away. I’m sure that she didn’t tell you who she really was, what she was really trained for, no?” The words dripped steadily on and on, each one full of slow-breaching poison. “She may have you fooled, may have convinced you that she just wants to be herself, but she’s a hypocrite–that too is just another sorry excuse.”

  Mi gritted her teeth. “What do you want from me?” she said abruptly.

  Mariah snorted. “Tell me, Mi–can you ride?”

  The Opali girl was silent.

  Mariah shook her head, chuckling. “I thought not. All of it becomes clear now. You’re the reason why she wanted one of Countess Mora’s cutters dispatched to stand off the coast and await her signal, aren’t you? You’re the reason she wants a Hierophancy operative assassinated in exchange for a hold on Aralia Cordivar. It was all to protect you–wasn’t it?”

  Mi’s stomach twisted. Oh Roxa, what have you done?

  Mariah stood, looking pleased. “No answer is necessary, sweetheart. You’ve just given me everything I wanted.”

  She strode to the door and rapped. When it swung open, she beckoned the guard in. He was a wiry, sun-bronzed man with a short beard and quick eyes, dressed pinly. Mi thought she saw a sailor’s tattoos across his gnarled knuckles.

  “Don’t let her out of your sight,” ordered Mariah, clear relish coloring her voice. “She’s the key to the Countess’s rogue daughter. We’ll need her before this is over.”

  She turned long enough to tip Mi a wink, and then she swept out.

  ChaoticArmcandy