THIRTY-SIX
The paltry warmth from the lantern had only just begun to thaw Aly’s bones when Yvaani finished her inventory and began quenching the flames. Aly shivered, wincing as her drenched linen shift stuck to her skin.
“Where are you staying?” Yvaani asked, as they walked down the passageway together.
“Just a dosshouse near the market.” Aly shifted her shoulders in a fruitless attempt to stop the soaking fabric pressing into her back. “Why?”
“You can’t go back there like that.” Yvaani gestured to Aly’s wet coat and the dripping rope that had once been a plait. “I take it the place isn’t heated?”
“It isn’t.” But it wasn’t as though she had an alternative.
“Come back to my flat.”
Aly stared at her, certain she’d misheard. “What?”
They reached the end of the passage and Yvaani doused the last lantern. “Come on, before I change my mind. You can have some of Mairi’s clothes while yours dry.”
“Thank you.” It came out as a croak.
“Don’t thank me.” Yvaani started up the stairs. “I just don’t want to go yell at the Wulver for nothing because you’ve frozen to death.” But there was warmth in the grin she flashed at Aly, her teeth white in the darkness.
Aly followed her away from the shore, away from the slums and into a neighbourhood where the closes were as narrow and the tenements as tall, but the streets were swept and clear of muck, and the tenements more even and less rickety, as though they’d been built by design and not cobbled together from debris and desperation.
Yvaani unlocked a door to a central stair, leading Aly up to the fourth floor and opening the door to a small, but cheerful, one-room flat.
The fire burst into life, illuminating brightly patterned rugs and dark wood furniture, dominated by a wardrobe in one corner.
It was almost unchanged from the last time Aly had been there, with the notable exception of Mairi’s framed sketches that had once adorned the walls.
The white plaster looked uncomfortably bare without them.
There was the scrape of wood on wood as Yvaani opened a drawer in the bottom of the wardrobe, pulling out a shift, skirt, stockings, and quilted waistcoat. She passed them to Aly, gesturing to the fire. “Go on, stand by the fire and get those wet clothes off.”
Aly took the clothes with a word of thanks and moved to the fire, careful to avoid dripping on the rugs.
Her sodden boots stuck when she tried to take them off, and she had to take the laces half out to remove them.
Yvaani produced a wooden clotheshorse, moving a rug out of the way to settle it in front of the fire, then pointedly turned to face the far side of the room.
Aly hung her coat and skirt, her skin goosepimpling as she peeled off her stockings.
There was a sharp sigh behind her, and Yvaani said, “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but we need to know who pushed you into the water. I can’t have folk working for me that are on the Wulver’s payroll.”
Aly paused in the process of unlacing her stays. The linen cord was bloated with water, stinging her fingers as she tugged it through the eyelets. “It wasn’t Cameron, I know that much. I didn’t recognise the voice.”
“And you didn’t recognise any of the folk on sight?” Yvaani asked.
A hiss of air escaped Aly’s lips as the cord grated over her fingers.
“No,” she said, too loudly, to cover the sound.
She threw a glance over her shoulder at Yvaani, barely a shadow in the dark room, but it seemed the other woman hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
Yvaani would surely help, but Aly didn’t want to ask.
“And I know everyone he employed.” Grant had often left her with the responsibility of handing out pay packets when he was out of town or simply couldn’t be arsed.
Aly probably knew his staff better than he did, because she acknowledged they were individual people and not simply tools for his use.
“So you’re thinking he hired someone?” Yvaani asked.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Aly tugged the stays down over her hips, her shoulder burning from twisting her arm behind herself to loosen the lacing.
She flung the stays over the clotheshorse and stripped off her shift.
“And it makes sense. Hire an assassin to kill me and make it look like an accident.”
The salty water and pressure of the stays had rubbed her skin raw, the red patches smarting when she pulled Mairi’s shift over them.
“The other possibility,” she said, as she emerged from the fire-warmed linen, “is they were a new hire, but I don’t think he’d entrust something like that to someone who hadn’t proved themself. ”
Yvaani was silent a moment, then said, “You know, doing that would solve your problem. You said you didn’t want to kill him, but you could hire someone to do it.”
Aly paused in the process of tying the closures on the waistcoat. It was too big to offer any support, but it was quilted and warm, and that was good enough. “With what money? Thank you for the clothes, by the way.”
“Are you decent, then?”
“Aye.” Aly smoothed her hands over the floral fabric of the waistcoat, taking the dry cloth Yvaani handed her and drying off her knives. The leather belt and scabbards she hung on the clotheshorse with her clothes.
A candle blazed to life over the table in the corner, a round jug of water in front of it giving Yvaani enough light to scoop some rice from a canister into a pot and cover it with water from a pitcher.
“I hope you like spice,” she said, suspending the rice over the fire and reaching for a pot on the hearth. “It’s too dark to cook anything fresh, so we’re having leftovers.”
“I’m sure it’ll be lovely,” Aly said, moving closer to the fire as Yvaani stepped away.
“Wine?” Yvaani opened a bottle and pulled two chipped mugs from a shelf.
“Please.” Aly accepted the mug gratefully and took a sip, letting the warmth flood her veins.
Yvaani murmured a word to snuff the candle over the table and moved to sit in front of the fire. Aly lowered herself next to her.
“You’d be the new Wulver,” Yvaani said, and for a moment Aly stared at her in confusion, before remembering their conversation. “Half the assassins in the city would be falling over themselves to kill him for you in exchange for a future favour.”
Aly stared into her wine. “I don’t want to be the new Wulver.
I want . . .” She lifted her head, meeting Yvaani’s eyes.
“I want freedom. I want to be able to live without looking over my shoulder, for Grant or for the police.” And she wanted Grant to know what it was like to be afraid, to know that he was powerless and his future was in someone else’s hands.
“And you think working with your copper will let you do that?” Yvaani asked.
Did she? She trusted Calum, far more than she should trust any copper.
She wasn’t foolish; she knew that once they’d put Grant away and Aly had the chance to start fresh Calum wouldn’t want anything further to do with her.
But she believed he wanted to do the right thing, if not for her then for all of Grant’s other victims. “Aye. I do.”
Yvaani looked sceptical, but instead of challenging Aly further she said, “You remember how you asked me why Mairi left? It was because she found out about the smuggling.”
Aly turned to look at her, exhaling. “I’m sorry.” There was little else to say. Yvaani had kept such things secret to keep her wife safe, but it must have seemed the greatest betrayal to Mairi when she found out.
“Be careful, Aly. With whom you trust, and whom you care about.” Yvaani fell silent, leaving Aly to her thoughts.
Aly felt suddenly awkward, sitting with Yvaani in the other woman’s home.
Her mind was inexorably drawn to that final, brutal argument they’d had in that same flat, before Aly had stormed off.
How different things would be now, if she’d listened to her friend.
She’d never have got tangled up with Grant, wouldn’t now be afraid for her life—and wouldn’t have met Calum.
Her chest constricted at the thought of never knowing him.
She tightened her fingers around the handle of the mug to banish the ache.
She was far too fond of him for her own good.
Nothing could come of their friendship except more grief.
Same as all her friendships, sooner or later.
“I’m sorry,” she said, staring into the fire at their feet. “For the things I said, when . . .” She lifted a shoulder. “When I went to work for Grant.”
Yvaani’s eyes glittered in the firelight. “For calling me a jealous twat, you mean.”
Aly winced. “Yes.” She traced her finger around the rim of her mug. “You know how folk accuse others of doing the things they themselves do?”
Yvaani nodded slowly. “Aye.”
“Well, that was me.” She took a shaking breath.
She hadn’t had nearly enough wine to be admitting this, but if she was going to apologise, she was going to apologise properly and be honest for once in her life.
It was the least Yvaani deserved after the way Aly had treated her.
“I told you at the time I wanted more stability and security, and I wasn’t lying, but .
. . but there was more to it. I also chose Grant because he wanted me.
And you didn’t. Not in the way I wanted you to. ”
She chanced a glance up at Yvaani, who was staring at her, lips parted in surprise.
Her expression wasn’t horrified, though, and for a moment Aly wondered what would happen if she kissed her.
Yvaani was certainly a safer choice than Calum, one who had proven time and again she would look out for Aly, even when Aly repaid her friendship with betrayal.
Yvaani was a better choice than a copper.
A copper whose tenderness warmed Aly’s blood and whose smile sent desire racing through her.
There was no future with Calum, but she desperately wished there could be.
Her gaze dropped to Yvaani’s lips, lush and tinted red from the wine.
Perhaps all she wanted from Calum was sex with someone she was fond of, as she was of Yvaani. It didn’t have to mean more than that.
Yvaani was undeniably beautiful, with her dark ringlets cascading over her shoulder and the firelight burnishing her bronze skin. Sex with her would, Aly was sure, be a perfectly enjoyable experience.
But there was more than that with Calum. More than simple desire, more than simple fondness. It was foolish and dangerous, what she felt for Calum, but she owed Yvaani more than to use her in an effort to burn away her feelings for Calum.
“I’m not propositioning you now, nothing like that. I just wanted to apologise for being a jealous twat.”
The words hung between them like dust in a sunbeam, Aly’s heart beating a tattoo against her sternum, then Yvaani’s face broke into a smile, her teeth flashing in the firelight.
“Apology accepted.” She unfurled to her feet, bending over the pots hanging over the fire.
“Looks like the rice is ready.” She gestured to a shelf next to the hearth. “Could you reach down two bowls?”
The bowls were cold in Aly’s hands as she lifted them down, separating them and holding them out to Yvaani to dish out the steaming, fluffy rice and a spiced lentil stew.
Yvaani took one bowl—the one with more stew and less rice—and passed Aly a spoon, and they sat on the rug in front of the fire to eat.
Heat exploded across Aly’s tongue at the first bite, warmth spreading through her limbs as she ate. Beneath the heat, there was a subtle sweetness layered with the earthiness of the lentils, and soon she found herself scraping the vestiges out of the bowl.
“Thank you,” she said, when Yvaani took her bowl. “That was delicious.”
Yvaani gave a small smile as she set the plates aside and refilled their mugs with wine. Aly accepted hers, leaning back on her elbows with the soles of her feet facing the fire.
She could ask Yvaani about the fae ointment. Yvaani wanted to find the missing salchs as much as anyone in the crime guilds, of that much Aly was certain. And whatever Yvaani thought of her, however untrustworthy she thought Aly was, she would believe Aly as to the purpose of the fae ointment.
Aly slid her gaze to her sometime friend.
Yvaani’s long legs were crossed, the firelight gilding her trousers and making the silk noil of her waistcoat glimmer.
There was no way she’d agree. The fae ointment was too valuable.
Yvaani cared about the missing salchs, but she was still a crime lord, and even if she’d risk her own financial interests, she had employees who depended on her for their income.
Aly suppressed a sigh, trying to ease the knot in her belly. Was she seriously considering betraying one of the only true friends she had? It was for the greater good, but that meant little when it led to harming someone who had shown her such kindness.
She chatted with Yvaani late into the evening, pushing aside the pre-emptive guilt that tightened her throat, and tried to pretend that tonight was the start of a renewed closeness in their friendship, and not the catalyst for something that could destroy it entirely.