SIX
The flat was cold when Aly arrived home. She swished a hand through the air, fire blazing to life in its wake, forming a bow above the bundle of rushlights hanging from the wall.
Fire was the only magic that had ever come easily to her, so easily she could summon flames that provided heat and light but didn’t burn fuel, not even the tallow-soaked rushlights on the wall below them.
But it was tricky to keep it going, and by the time she’d slid a rushlight into the clamp, the arc of flame was already flickering.
She sent a thread of will into the rushlight, wrinkling her nose at the stench of burning tallow.
The rushlight holder was cold when she picked it up, cold enough to prick at her skin, and she hissed in a breath as she carried it into the bedroom.
She set the iron rushlight holder down on the washstand, pouring water into the washbowl and wrapping a hand around the basin’s rim.
The ceramic was cold to the touch; she swirled her free hand over the surface of the water and fed power into it until steam curled from the basin, washing the grease from the rushlight off her hands with the sliver of soap left on the dish before turning her attention to the closet.
It was dark, the golden glow from the solitary rushlight barely penetrating the gloom, and she worked by feel more so than sight as she threw open the doors of her closet and pawed through her clothes.
Silk slid like water under her fingertips, velvet soft as cat hair passing under her touch as she leafed through her wardrobe.
Any one of these things would fetch her more than enough money to make up the shortfall from the kilt pin.
The fabric alone from the silk taffeta petticoat would pay rent on a small flat for a year, while the delicate lace fichu would ensure she didn’t go hungry for a long time.
Even pawning the simple woollen skirts and jackets would leave her with plenty of cash after paying Grant his four shillings.
Eskalan charged import duties on wool cloth to keep the prices of Eskalian wool high, but fabric, particularly wool, was so labour-intensive to produce to begin with that even comfortably off folk like Aly’s mum would save up for months for a few metres of wool, and most poorer folk relied on second-hand garments.
She forced her hands to fall to her sides. None of these clothes belonged to her. Nothing in this flat, with its fine patterned rugs and intricately embroidered tapestries, did. Grant had paid for it all, and while it may have been hers to use as she liked, he would notice if anything went missing.
She had learnt that lesson the hard way two years ago when, hungry and desperate, she’d pawned a pair of emerald earrings she hadn’t worn in over a year.
The next time she went to the theatre with Grant, he’d asked her to wear them, had asked her to wear an entire outfit planned around them, all greens and golds and whites.
And the look in his eyes when he requested it—he knew.
That was the day Aly learnt that Grant had someone monitoring the reports pawnshops made to the police.
He’d considered it a theft. Though he’d presented the earrings—and everything else—as a gift, they had been more of a shackle. He’d treated her the same way he treated any other employee who stole from him, breaking three of her fingers to symbolise the three pounds he’d spent on the earrings.
Aly curled her fingers into fists as she pulled away from the silks and velvets in her closet, her breath catching as the ring and middle fingers on her left hand crossed slightly at the tip.
She’d set them to the best of her ability herself, but they would never be quite straight again.
She hadn’t dared going to hospital, afraid of the questions and prying from well-meaning nurses and the ever-present risk they’d contact the guards.
Not after what happened the last time.
She clenched her fists until her nails bit into her palms. She had come here for a reason.
The flat may be full of things she could never sell without prompting violence, but there was one thing Grant wouldn’t notice, one thing that she had over a dozen of and that got worn through or mixed up in the laundress’s wash.
She sifted through her array of shifts, the fine linen flowing over her hands, swithering between one of the plainer ones and one with billowy sleeves and more fabric to it.
She settled on a plainer one; it still had a good couple of metres of fabric to it and Grant would be less likely to notice its absence.
Tucking it into her pocket, she quenched the rushlight with a flick of her wrist and strode out.
The three golden balls suspended over the close to mark the pawnshop glimmered in the streetlight.
Aly smoothed her hair in its plait, wishing she had a cap, and buttoned her coat to hide the patch on her waistcoat.
This was a legitimate pawnshop, not a fence that dabbled in the legal market, and in Aly’s experience such people saw signs of poverty as nothing more than an indication of problem behaviour.
She should have changed at her flat into some of the nicer clothes Grant had bought for her, but she had less than an hour before she was due to meet him and she didn’t want to waste time going back to change.
Her coat, at least, was of good quality, and would help cover the threadbare garments beneath it.
It had been her father’s, left behind when he’d abandoned her and her mother, and the tailor who had re-cut it to fit her had done a fine job.
Satisfied she’d done her best to look like a respectable member of society, only temporarily down on her luck, she pushed open the heavy wooden door.
The weak twilight did not penetrate the small leaded windows, leaving the shop gloomy, lit only by a handful of magical lamps of the poorer sort; they gave off a thin, watery light, but Aly supposed that in the long run they were cheaper than a steady supply of beeswax candles, particularly for a shop that needed to keep regular hours even in the dead of winter.
Looking around, though, Aly suspected that it was more a symbol of status than anything else.
She’d tried to choose a shop that catered to the middle classes, the people who kept a rotating wardrobe of expensive clothes and cheaper jewellery in and out of pawnshops, and she’d chosen well.
To many of them, the presence of any magical lighting elevated the shop from a questionable establishment that existed primarily to bail out the desperate to something that supported their own questionable habit of buying more than they could afford so they had clothing and jewels for every occasion.
Aly rang the brass bell at the counter, her gaze sliding over the gems in the glass-fronted case behind the desk with the practiced eye of a criminal. As she’d expected, it was mostly semi-precious stones and metals—garnet set in silver more often than ruby set in gold.
An elderly man, thin to the point of gangly, entered from the back room, his eyes bright as he assessed Aly. “How can I help you?”
Aly pulled the shift out of her pocket. “I’d like to pawn this.” She kept her vowels clipped and her consonants sharp, the way her mother spoke.
The man’s lip curled. “We don’t really do . . . undergarments.”
“Why not?” She lifted the linen to the light, spreading her fingers beneath it so he could see the translucence of the fabric.
“It’s fine quality, a very even weave—” She broke off as the man remained stone-faced.
A sales pitch wouldn’t work here; his clientele might haggle over price, but a man who dealt primarily in clothing had doubtless already assessed the linen.
Aly bit her lip. “It’s just— Well, my mum always said you were the best.” Her mother had said no such thing.
One of the few good things she’d taught Aly was to never spend more than you had—of course, that lesson had never accounted for the times when what you had wasn’t enough to get you by.
“She’s a doctor, you see.” That much was true.
It was always easier for Aly to keep her story straight when she sprinkled truths in amongst the lies.
And a doctor was the sort of person who made enough money for fine clothing, but not enough for the quantity her peers expected of her.
She cast her eyes downwards. “Well, was a doctor.” Not technically untrue.
Aly had no idea what her mother was up to these days, and didn’t much care.
Her mother had lost the right to expect Aly to care when she’d evicted Aly at the age of sixteen.
She allowed her lower lip to tremble slightly as she peered at the pawnbroker through her eyelashes.
“She’s not well, and my apprenticeship—I’m training to be a brewster, you see—doesn’t quite pay enough, not until I’m qualified, and I just need a little more money to see us through till the end of the month, and I didn’t know what else to sell, but—” She allowed herself to trail off, staring at the pawnbroker with wide eyes.
The pawnbroker sighed, picking up the shift and rubbing it between his fingers. “I can give you two shillings and sixpence for it.”
Two shillings and sixpence. It was only about a quarter as much as she’d hoped for from the kilt pin, but, along with the money from Yvaani, she was less than a penny short of the money she owed Grant. She shouldn’t have wasted a ha’penny on the oyster pie.
Three shillings and eleven-and-a-half pence was close, though, and she had three days to scrounge together another ha’penny.
“Oh, thank you so much,” she said to the pawnbroker.
“That makes such a big difference.” The pawnbroker gave a small smile, like he was being particularly benevolent, and turned to the till.
The door behind Aly swung open, bringing with it a gust of cold air.
Aly shivered, turning to see who had entered.
Her pulse quickened when she caught sight of the insignia of the City Guard on the woman’s cap and the plain epaulettes that marked her as a constable.
You’re not doing anything wrong, she reminded herself.
The pawnbroker turned around, three silver coins in his hand.
“How can I help you?” he asked the constable, passing the coins to Aly.
Aly slid the money into her pocket, turning to leave.
She kept half an ear out for what the constable said out of habit, even as she reminded herself yet again that what she was doing was entirely legitimate.
“Has anyone pawned a kilt pin since last night?”
The words jarred through Aly’s spine. She forced herself to keep walking to the door. Surely there were dozens of kilt pins pawned every day; there was no reason to believe this was the one she’d sold to Yvaani.
“It’s silver, in the shape of a claymore, with a sapphire set in it,” the constable continued. Aly squeezed the doorknob, her skin tightening.
“Doesn’t sound familiar,” said the pawnbroker, “but I’ll check.
What’s so important about it?” Oh, for the love of Méabh, that tosser had gone and reported it stolen, hadn’t he?
She knew she oughtn’t have trusted him, paying with something worth more than twice what he owed, but she’d thought he’d just been so desperate for a hit he’d been willing to part with anything.
The constable’s next words turned Aly’s blood to ice.
“It’s evidence in a murder.”