ELEVEN #2
Erskine’s lip curled in disgust. “Magic? That’s—” He closed his mouth again, apparently unable to find a word for how heinous a crime it was.
Aly’s fingertips itched to trace the scars that laced her body. If he knew . . . She clenched her hands into fists to stop them trembling.
No one knew why some people could salch and others couldn’t.
It didn’t correlate with magical ability—Aly herself could barely boil a kettle when she was tired, and yet Grant was quite keen on her power in particular.
It was something polite society regarded with distaste, not only because of its somewhat gruesome nature, but because it contradicted the closely held notion that magic was a skill anyone could learn with enough effort.
If magic could be bought and sold, then that meant to an extent the power was innate, carried in the blood.
Nevertheless, it had taken her a long time to get over her own prejudices against salchs, even though she knew well there was a double-standard in how society viewed the people who salched—generally poor, desperate, with few marketable skills—and those who bought from them, who were generally well off enough to fritter money away on chasing the high that came with someone else’s power.
Like every other salch, Aly had turned to it when all her other options had failed her.
“Why would he do something like that? He was a burgess, he didn’t need—”
“Nobody needs someone else’s magic,” Aly snapped, disdain edging her words. “They do it because they like it.” And because they didn’t care what might happen to the person they took from.
“My apologies—I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise,” Erskine said. “Only that if word got out, it would destroy his career.”
Aly shrugged, trying to look more nonchalant than she felt.
“I’m told it gives a feeling of ecstasy.
” It wasn’t a true addiction, but it could be incredibly alluring.
“Very popular with people who are otherwise miserable.” She didn’t know how he’d started, how a man who seemed to have everything he could want in life would ever wander down to the dregs of the town to find someone to slash their veins open so he could get high, but somehow he had started and it had been, perhaps, the last thing he’d done before he died.
“Do you think someone killed him for it?” Erskine asked.
Aly blinked. She hadn’t expected him to ask her opinion.
“It’s possible. He always went to the same place, the best place, and then—he switched.
” She couldn’t see the Caoineag hunting down a former customer, even one with such deep pockets as Gibson’s, and killing him for defecting.
She’d try offering better terms, perhaps, to lure him back, but she wouldn’t kill him in revenge.
Still, Aly couldn’t imagine why someone would go to the Caoineag’s establishment regularly for a year and suddenly switch to Grant’s.
Even if he didn’t care about the well-being of the people who sold to him, the Caoineag offered a safer and more pleasant environment, and the only reason Aly could think of for switching to Grant of all people was if Gibson had done something bad enough to be barred—bad enough, perhaps, for the Caoineag to take him out.
“When did he switch?” Erskine asked.
Shit. “Sometime in the last week, I think.”
Erskine frowned. “Maybe he was trying to quit. Switched from magic to sex instead of switching from one purveyor to another.”
Aly opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. It didn’t hurt her to let him think that for now, anyway.
Erskine tilted his head. “What did you mean about it being the best place?”
“It may come as a shock to you, but most crime lords don’t really give a shit about the people who work for them.
” Her insides warmed as the ghost of a smile curled the edges of Erskine’s mouth.
She ducked her head to cover the flush spreading across her cheeks.
“There are enough desperate people round here looking for tuppence that if one dies, there’s someone to replace them.
” It occurred to her that Erskine might not know more than the most basic details of how salching worked.
He’d have been trained to recognise the signs of criminality—the tell-tale scars, perhaps—but not the danger, not the way it felt like being dragged to the bottom of the ocean and desperately struggling to surface.
“The place he went to was different. They clean the knives properly and intercept people if they take too much. There hasn’t been a death there in ages. ”
“Hasn’t been a death there in ages,” Erskine repeated, his lips parting—in surprise, perhaps, or fear.
“That’s remarkably good for a salching market,” Aly said.
“Maybe he didn’t care about any of that,” Erskine said.
He had a point. Gibson was a wealthy man and a politician, neither of which endeared him to Aly.
“Maybe not. But he kept going there for a year, so maybe he did. Or maybe just seeing dead bodies ruined his high.” A note of bitterness crept into her voice.
She’d had one such customer years ago, who’d taken so greedily she’d passed out, and when she came to, he was still shouting that he needed more to make up for having it all ruined by the corpse three rows down.
“I’ll need the address of the place he was going to,” Erskine said.
“I can’t tell you that.” She wasn’t letting him arrest dozens of people just trying to find enough money for next week’s rent.
Erskine’s jaw clenched. “I need to speak with them.”
“You’re a copper. You’re not getting shit out of any of them.” She sighed. “I’ll talk to them.”
“If you think I’m trusting you to go there alone—” Erskine started.
“You can wait around the corner if it’s that important to you.” She looked at him, smiling sweetly. “Or you can come with me and pose as a potential client.”
Erskine’s nostrils flared. “I’ll wait outside.”
Aly smirked. “I thought you might.” Her stomach grumbled then, loudly enough that Erskine heard.
“When did you last eat?” he asked, concern creeping into his voice.
Aly shrugged, dipping her chin to avoid meeting his eyes.
“Breakfast, I think.” It had been a bowl of watered-down porridge, the oats soaked overnight so she didn’t need to heat the water as long in the morning to cook them; some days, Grant left the heating and lighting on when he left, and on those days she could cook over the copper stove, but they were becoming rarer and rarer.
She’d skipped lunch despite her disappointing breakfast; three meals a day was extravagant with the paltry amount of change in her pocket, and it was easier to go without lunch than without dinner.
She hated trying to sleep with hunger clawing at her insides.
“There’s a food market near the harbour, isn’t there?” Erskine said. “Wait here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you don’t need to—” Aly started, but he was already off. She didn’t want his charity, but she was hungry and not so stubbornly foolish as to stalk off before he returned.
He came back in a few minutes, carrying a paper bag that gave off the smell of buttery pastry. He opened it and handed a bridie to her, taking one for himself. She hesitated. Hungry though she may be, she didn’t want to be indebted to him.
“Don’t worry, it’s expensed.”
Aly frowned at the bridie. “The food is expensed, but not paying your informants?”
“Food vendors give receipts that the police accountants accept.”
Something in Aly’s heart loosened and she bit into the pastry, closing her eyes as she savoured it.
It was in the Rizh style, full of carrots and broccoli and beautifully spiced.
She hadn’t eaten a vegetable in weeks. Months, even.
They were so expensive in an island city she never bought anything with vegetables in it for herself; she only had them on the rare occasions when Grant took her to a restaurant or a dinner party.
Most of her diet consisted of seafood and grains, the latter shipped from the mainland a few times a year.
“This is really good,” she said, swallowing the last bit of pastry. “I haven’t had broccoli in years.”
Erskine pulled a second bridie out of the bag and handed it to her, a small smile on his face. It was a delicate thing, just the faintest curving of the edges of his mouth, but the sight of it lanced through Aly, heating her to the core. “Do you want another one?”
She ate this one more slowly, chewing each bite thoroughly and swallowing before taking another, her eyes on Erskine.
The food might be expensed, but his behaviour made her uneasy.
She didn’t trust him. She knew better than to trust kindness from men with power over her.
And she didn’t for a second think he’d be standing there sharing pastries with her if he knew the full extent of her crimes.
The look of disgust on his face when she’d told him about Gibson buying magic flashed into her mind.
If that was how he reacted to salching, he’d only be more horrified if he learnt he’d been collaborating with the Wulver’s deputy.
No amount of kindness could let her forget that.