14. Aiden

Chapter 14

Aiden

The crowd at The Weary Traveler was loud and in good spirits as their night of drinking, eating, and gambling began.

Light poured from the candle chandeliers and a few iron braziers. Men and women, dressed in clothes stained from work or travel, flocked to the scarred tables. Smiling barmaids delivered pitchers of beer and bottles of wine to cheery shouts or grumbled thanks. The scent of roasting meat made my mouth water.

I’d always felt much more at home in places like this over somewhere like Melaena’s club. The restrained conversations and side glances from the rich patrons rang false.

But here... here people celebrated another day lived or wallowed in their sorrows out in the open.

Tercel’s sharp eyes immediately spotted me, and he jerked his chin to an empty table. His bushy eyebrows lowered when he noticed Kiera trailing behind me. I rarely brought people here except Maz and occasionally Ruru. But I was always welcome. Mostly because of the mutually beneficial business deals between us.

Where ideals didn’t earn allies, money usually did.

“Friend of yours?” Kiera muttered as Tercel’s gaze followed us to the table near the dead hearth.

“Of a sort. Have you ever been to a tavern before?” I unclasped my cloak and draped it over the chair with its back to the stone wall.

Her eyes halted their perusal of the crowded tavern to dart to me. “Yes. I... I snuck out of the palace a few times when I was younger. Before I was a guard.”

She sank into the chair opposite me and drummed her fingers on the uneven tabletop. I kept finding myself fascinated by those fingers. The thin scars that decorated them. Their deftness. The way she had grasped my knives so tightly last night, as if she never wanted to let them go.

Clearing her throat, Kiera tucked her hand under the table.

I lifted my gaze to meet her guarded one. “Did you get caught?”

“Yes.”

“How did you sneak out?”

“Is this why you brought me here?” she asked sharply. “To interrogate me? I thought we were here to eat and play a game.”

I smiled, relaxing my posture and lazily waving down one of the barmaids. “We are. I was merely curious.” The barmaid bustled up to our table, her arms full of empty mugs. “Hello, Iris, how’s the new baby—Farah, was it?”

She beamed, her cheeks like shiny apples. “Farah, yes. Oh, she’s much better now after that tonic. No more coughing! I thank the gods every day that they led me to you. I can’t... I can’t imagine—” Her eyes suddenly welled with tears.

I shook my head desperately. “I’m glad to help.” I gestured to Kiera. “But my companion and I are incredibly famished and were hoping you could help us out.”

Iris dabbed her eyes with her damp apron. “Of course, of course! Anything you want!”

“We’ll take a platter of whatever you’ve got roasting tonight and two mugs of Sunshine. Oh, and some of Tercel’s biscuits, if he has any left,” I added with a glance at Kiera, who looked taken aback.

Iris nodded and hurried away.

“Are you some sort of healer for the city?” Kiera asked, her tone less guarded than before.

“Not exactly. I help where I can.” I pulled open a small drawer under our table and fished out a bulging pouch. “Ready to play?”

Anticipation gleamed in her eyes. “What are the stakes? I haven’t got any coins. Unless you’ll let me work for you alongside Ruru.” She gave me a saccharine smile. “Delivering teas and tonics, it sounds like.”

I shook out the Death and Four tiles as a prickle of admiration for her relentlessness stirred in my gut. “I still haven’t decided.”

“Perhaps that should be our wager, then. If I win, you give me the job.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “And if you lose?”

“Then I suppose I’ll just have to owe you some coins from our other job.”

“Nice try. But I’d rather play for something else.”

Immediately, Kiera was on her guard again. “I have nothing else.”

I smiled slowly, wickedly. “Yes, you do.”

I paused to let her—and my—imagination run wild. As if we were just two strangers who had met in a tavern and wanted to enjoy each other’s company until dawn. It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself to even entertain such a simple, yet complicated, pleasure.

And I had no intention of truly doing so with Kiera.

But a dark, yearning part of me wanted to see her squirm in her seat. To catch a little spark of the heat that seemed to flare between us at odd moments. To see something other than fear or suspicion in her beautiful eyes. Like the way she was looking at me now.

I crushed my thoughts into meaningless dust. “Answers,” I said abruptly. “I’ll play you for honest answers.”

She seemed to mentally shake herself. “And if we choose not to answer?”

I dipped my head in agreement. After all, there were a great many things I could never tell her. “Then we will keep asking until there is a question we can answer.”

“How do I know the answer you give me is honest?”

“If you can’t figure that out, then you needn’t worry.”

One of the strategies in Death and Four was bluffing. If she couldn’t decipher my lies from truths, she wasn’t likely to win, anyway.

And I’d been lying my whole life.

Challenge flared in her eyes. “Deal.”

We flipped tiles to see who would go first. Kiera unveiled Mynastra’s fierce visage while I unveiled a lowly three.

Kiera selected her tiles first. I didn’t draw mine until after she’d peeked at hers. Her expression was as carefully blank as it’d been when she’d lied to me about playing well.

I picked up my four tiles, rubbing them between my fingers. The wooden squares were smooth and thin, with each number or deity burned into one side. I’d played with many sets over the years, including one of solid gold and another of animal bone.

I didn’t so much as twitch a muscle at the two, eight, ten, and the god Arduen with his headdress of burning flowers I’d drawn.

Not a bad hand. Only one of each of the four gods existed in the game, as well as the skull of Death. Hence the name Death and Four. The numbers one through ten had three tiles each.

I nodded at Kiera to take her first turn. Let’s play, little thief.

We were a silent island in a sea of laughter and conversation as we took our four turns, discarding and swapping tiles or passing.

Then we came to the Duels.

She laid a tile facedown between us. “Ten,” she told me, her jaw tight.

Liar. Trying to make me to give up a higher tile early in the game, are you?

I placed a seven facedown between us. “You lie,” I said evenly.

She scowled, and we flipped our tiles. My seven beat her six, but I didn’t gloat. Playing off emotions was also a handy trick.

I laid down another tile. “Mynastra.”

She grinned with triumph, slamming down her tile—the true Mynastra tile. “Liar.”

I flipped my tile, and Death leered up at us. “So eager to prove me wrong,” I said, unable to help a smirk at her incredulity.

“Shut up,” she growled, “and keep playing.” She plunked down another tile. “Eight.”

I chuckled. “Truth, I think. It seems the angrier you get, the more honest you are.”

I won the Duel with a nine.

She clenched her last tile as if she were wishing it was a dagger she could throw at me. Instead, she tossed it to the table in defeat as I’d won three of the four Duels. My Arduen would’ve beat her ten, anyway.

Four tiles, four turns, four Duels. The gods must have really liked the poetry of their number when they invented this game to play with humans.

“Ask your question,” she said, violently crossing her arms and legs as if to ward off an invasion.

But I didn’t want us to be enemies.

Before I could ask anything, Iris swept in with a platter of cinnamon-glazed ham and tender root vegetables, two mugs of golden Sunshine mead, and a plate crowned with three steaming biscuits as big as my palm.

Kiera immediately relaxed, her fingers snatching a biscuit the moment the plate touched the table. She quickly took a bite. I hid a smile as her eyes rounded like gold coins.

She let out a muffled groan that unfurled strange ribbons of heat through my stomach.

I looked away from her to thank Iris.

Iris grinned and winked at me. “I believe you’ve found the way to that girl’s heart,” she whispered conspiratorially in my ear.

I clenched my jaw. Gods, that was the last thing I wanted to do. Such attachments never ended well in my world.

Oblivious to my chagrin, Iris pattered away to answer the call of another customer.

Meanwhile, Kiera had inhaled her biscuit and was reaching for another.

I batted her hand away. “There are only three, little thief. You’ll have to play me for the third.”

She scowled. “It will be cold by then. I’ll Duel you for it.”

“Fine.” We turned all the tiles facedown and shuffled them around. She drew Terraum’s regal, bearded head, and I drew Viridana’s smiling, doe-eyed impression.

“A draw,” I said. “We could split the biscuit.”

Kiera shook her head. “Again.”

This time, I drew a two, and she flipped over Death.

“Ah, Death wins the biscuit,” I said, graciously passing it to her.

Surprise and a hint of gratitude flickered in her eyes as she took it from me. After several moments of staring at the moist, flaky bread, she sighed and tore off a chunk for me. Not half. But something.

My lips quirked. “Thank you.”

She didn’t look at me as we devoured our biscuits. Her gaze pinned to a far corner of the tavern where Tercel had fashioned a target from a wooden barrel top and nailed it to the wall. A few men shouted and laughed as they competed with throwing knives.

“What weapons did you used to carry with you?” I asked her.

She glanced at me. “Is that the question you choose as your prize?”

“Yes.” I wanted to know what she’d been like before her arrest. Last night had turned that curiosity from a prickle to a burn.

“Knives,” she said, confirming my suspicion. “Small ones for throwing. Better than what they’re playing with.” She nodded at the men in the corner.

“Do you miss them?”

“Aren’t you supposed to play me for the answer?” she asked dryly.

I shrugged, giving her a charming smile. “Humor me.”

Her brows pinched together, and she took a sip of Sunshine. She smacked her lips. “Mmm, that’s good. Why is it called Sunshine?”

“Because it tastes like sweet drops of sunshine,” I said.

She gave me a dubious look before turning to stare at Tercel’s perpetual frown. “ That man named it Sunshine?”

I laughed. “No. A customer did, and it stuck. Sometimes I order it just to see his face turn sour. But people love it, so he won’t stop making and selling it.”

“It is very good,” Kiera said, taking another swallow. She stared into her mug. “And I do miss them. The knives. I feel... exposed without them.” Her eyelashes fluttered. “Last night, before you gave me your daggers, I was so afraid. If they had caught us, I would’ve fought to my last breath. But there’s a difference between knowing you will certainly die and thinking you have even the slimmest chance of surviving. Knives give me that chance.”

“I understand,” I said softly.

I’d had to do terrible things to survive. Things that might drag my soul into the Abyss to wander through the Longest Night. Even vowing to never again put myself in a position to have to make those choices didn’t heal the wound.

She mixed the tiles again. “My turn to win.”

We set up another game as we chewed the sweet, hot meat and savory carrots and potatoes. Our plates were empty by the time she did indeed win the next game by the skin of her teeth.

She grinned as though she’d just won a fortune.

“Not subtle, are you?” I teased her as we drained the last of our mead.

“I still won, didn’t I?” A golden drop of Sunshine slipped from her mouth, and she caught it with the tip of her tongue.

Warmth fizzled and popped in my blood. Probably from the mead. “Winning looks beautiful on you.” Gods damn it, I should never drink around her.

She blinked at me, her cheeks flushed. “You think I’m beautiful?”

“Is that your question?”

“No! I... I...” She looked flustered, which gave me my own sense of triumph. “Where are you from?”

I grimaced. That was not a question I wanted. “Everywhere. Nowhere.”

“That’s not a real answer. I gave you?—”

“Yes, yes.” I held up my hands to stop her angry tirade. I sighed. “I was born on a ship on the Niviath Sea.”

“Yes, in a storm, you said. I remember. But where did you live before you lived here?”

“Many places. You’ve already figured out a few.”

She nodded. “Twaryn. Dagriel, with Maz, I assume. Is that all?”

“I’ve answered your question enough,” I said through gritted teeth.

“With things I already knew!”

“Then ask me something else.”

She hesitated, thinking for a moment. “How did you meet Maz?”

I shook my head. “Try again.”

She growled in frustration. “You’re impossible! I could ask you a thousand questions and get no answers.”

“There are lots of things you could ask me. My favorite... color.”

“I’m not wasting my win on something so trivial.”

And I was glad she didn’t, or I would’ve had to tell her that my favorite color was rapidly becoming the unique shade of golden brown in her eyes.

I glared into my empty mug. What kind of truth-telling, flirtation-inducing drug did Tercel put in the Sunshine tonight?

“Have you ever been to the sunstone mine?” she asked.

I froze. “Why would you ask me that?”

Her brow furrowed at my demand. “I don’t know much about it. You seemed to have traveled a lot, so I simply wondered...”

The scar on my back burned with memory. “It’s not a place you want to know. The closest a person can get to the Abyss in this world. Prisoners mine the sunstone. Soldiers guard the mine. No one gets out. It’s a place of death.” I flicked the Death tile away from me. “So I’ve heard.”

“Prisoners? From where?” she whispered, her eyes full of horror.

Bitterness snaked into my voice. “You’ve lived in the palace all your life, and no one ever mentioned the mine?”

“They did. But never . . . never many details.”

“Did you never wonder how Weylin carted in wagon after wagon of his precious sunstone? Did you think the miners were paid or even voluntary for a job that killed most people within a year of work?”

Kiera shook her head continuously as if to dislodge my words buzzing around her like flies.

I should stop. But I couldn’t. Years of unsatisfied rage cast words like sparks from my throat. “It wasn’t that way when the Falcryns ruled Rellmira. King Tristan and his father before him offered wages and the safe, clean town of Calimber to live in. But Weylin’s greed is too great for such fairness.”

My lips curled into a snarl as I drove my point home. “Where do you think we were headed once Renwell was done with us in the Den? Where Jerell is probably headed right now if there are enough working pieces of him left?”

“No. That can’t be true,” she said fiercely. But doubt clouded her eyes and crumpled her chin. “I would’ve heard about it. More people would know. People would?—”

“Would what? Stand up to Weylin? Fight? Look what happened last time they did that. No one wants that to happen again. No one wants to be the woman we burned last night. I can’t let—” My throat caught, snagged on guilt and secrets. I swallowed. “It’s the way things are.”

Silence sat between us like a cage, trapping all the things I’d said and couldn’t take back.

“What if the People’s Council came back?” Kiera whispered so quietly I almost missed it.

My gaze clenched hers as if I could pull her closer just by looking at her. “Who speaks treason now?” I rasped.