Chapter Fifteen #2
He lifted his head and glared at her. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, like he had been up all night. “What part of ‘go away’ did you not understand? I want to be left alone.”
“I was just—”
“I thought we agreed that we would not cross any more lines,” he snapped. “That door is a line and you have crossed it.”
“Fine. I’m sorry.” She backed out of his room and slammed the door. Braced her back against it and blew out a frustrated breath. “Asshole,” she said, hoping he heard her through the wood, but if he did there was no sign of it.
She grabbed the coin purse Alderic had given her and stalked out into the hotel hallway.
Warham was swarming with people, as it always was, the flow of foot traffic bracketed by fruit sellers and newspaper boys and wandering performers all vying for attention and coin.
Usually, it brought Lyssa some measure of comfort—this was her home, after all, despite the bad memories rubbing elbows with the good—but today, prowling the streets by herself only darkened her mood.
She would have given anything for Brandy to be by her side, or even—the Lady help her—a ruffle-shirted asshole with more money than sense, no matter how pissy he was today.
Because as much as she hated to admit it, she found herself missing the idiot whenever she passed a shop with particularly outrageous clothing displayed in the window.
When Lyssa finally got to the Chimera’s Tongue, she breathed in the familiar scents of iron and coal and clay while she waited for Shendra to finish up with another customer.
The shop was one of the smallest on the Iron Lane, low-ceilinged and perpetually dark on account of the single sooty window facing the street, but what it lacked in aesthetic appeal, it more than made up for with its competitive prices, as well as the sheer volume of stuff Shendra had been able to cram into the miniscule square footage.
The space was as cluttered as Alderic’s parlor and as difficult to maneuver, boasting almost everything a blacksmith would ever need—billets and bars, hammers, tongs, gloves.
There was even an anvil shoved under one of the bow-legged tables near the counter.
Shendra also regularly bought finished products made by her customers, for a fair price or for trade.
Lyssa always came to the Chimera’s Tongue first when she had blades or talismans to sell.
When it was Lyssa’s turn to step up to the counter, though, the merchant winced.
“I’m sorry, Carnifex, but I sold out of all my Valdalian steel a few days ago,” she said before Lyssa could ask.
“You couldn’t have set a billet aside for me?
You knew I needed some,” Lyssa said, frustrated despite having known this was a possibility.
Shendra’s shipments of specialty items like Valdalian steel were smaller than those of the other shops on the Iron Lane, because of her ongoing storage issues.
They weren’t as in-demand as iron or the cheaper Ibyrnikan steel, and she couldn’t afford to have them taking up space in her shop.
That meant that when she did get a shipment in, she tended to sell out quickly—which often made it difficult for a customer like Lyssa, who couldn’t come back to check her stock day after day.
“You know I don’t allow holds,” Shendra replied, though her heavy brows bunched together with genuine regret. “First come, first serve.”
“You could let me pay you in advance, once in a while.”
“I don’t have the room to store things for you,” Shendra said, gesturing to indicate her shop, which looked ready to burst its seams. “Especially if I never know when you’re going to show up.
Blowing in here on the wind after vanishing for months at a time.
Besides, if I do it for you I’d have to do it for everyone, and I really don’t have the room for that. ”
“I know, I know.” Lyssa picked at her lip.
Valdalian steel was the best for her purposes—Ragnhild claimed that it held magic better than anything else they’d tried, and Lyssa had never cracked a blade during quenching, which was more than she could say for the cheaper Ibyrnikan stuff she had started out with.
“Do you know when the next shipment is due?”
“Not for another month. But I hear Joren still has some—only shop with stock left, from what old Billsy told me.”
“Of course it’s the only shop with stock left,” Lyssa said with a scowl. “Joren charges three times as much as the rest of you do for the same steel. I don’t know how he manages to stay in business.”
Shendra snorted. “You know what they say about beggars and the luxury of choice. His storefront is the biggest, he has the most stock of the specialty stuff, and when the rest of us sell out of what you need, he can charge you whatever he wants and you’ll pay it.”
Lyssa hated that she was about to go do exactly that. It felt wrong on principle, even though she had someone else’s money in her pocket, this time.
She thanked Shendra and left the Chimera’s Tongue, walking down the length of the Iron Lane to the very last shop on the right-hand side.
The Silver Shoe was twice the size of Shendra’s, with enormous windows displaying the latest—and most expensive—tools of the trade.
Lyssa couldn’t remember the last time she had been inside.
Joren was nice enough, but she simply couldn’t afford to buy from him when she was the one paying.
Luckily, she had Alderic’s coin purse in her possession today.
It wasn’t Joren at the counter when she walked in, though, the little bell chiming her entrance. It was some puffed-up young rooster in a scarlet shirt and black waistcoat, the pathetic beginnings of a moustache oiled to within an inch of its life clinging to his upper lip.
“Hello, love,” he said by way of greeting as he walked around the counter—his pants were as obnoxious as his shirt—immediately sparking Lyssa’s frustration into fury. “What can I do for a fierce-looking filly like you today?”
“I need Valdalian steel,” she said through clenched teeth. “Shendra said you—”
“Valdalian steel?” he interrupted. “How very much like a woman.” When Lyssa only glared at him in response, he said, “Valdalian is pretty, I’ll grant you that, but if you want quality metal you should really try Niadosian. Have you ever heard of it?”
“I did not care for Niadosian,” Lyssa said slowly, doing her best to keep her temper in check. “I would like—”
“Are you certain you worked it correctly?” the boy asked, giving her a supercilious smile that all but signed his death certificate. “I’ve never had trouble with it. Maybe you should—”
“Listen to me, you little shit,” Lyssa spat, her anger ratcheting up to a level she would not be able to control for much longer. “I need Valdalian steel, and I have the money to pay your ridiculous prices for it. Are you going to sell it to me, or not?”
“No,” the rooster said, drawing himself up to his full height—several inches shorter than Lyssa—and pinching one end of his patchy mustache.
“I don’t think I will. Not if you’re going to talk to me like that.
My father is the owner of this establishment, and I think I can safely speak for him when I say that we do not want or need your business. ”
If Lyssa didn’t punch him soon, she was going to burst a blood vessel in her brain. “I need that steel.”
“Then you’re going to have to get it somewhere else.”
“There is nowhere else. That’s the only reason I’m even in this shop to begin with.”
The boy smirked. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to be rude to me.”
Lyssa found herself closing the distance between them in a few quick strides. Found herself backing him against the counter as he scrambled to get away from her. Found herself glaring down at his now-panicked face. Gone was the arrogant attitude, the condescending sneer.
She flexed her fingers. It would be so easy to teach him a lesson.
But then he held up his hands in surrender, stammering something unintelligible, and the jaunty scarlet of his shirtsleeves snapped her out of the blinding rage that had all but consumed her. There was a pattern of roses sewn across his cuffs in a slightly darker shade of red than the shirt itself.
Alderic would have loved it.
The thought of him plunged the glowing heat of her anger into the cooling waters of shame.
She had resented his assumption that she would punch the hotel clerk over her wardrobe, and yet here she was, not a day later, proving that assumption correct.
Letting her anger overpower her without a thought to the consequences.
The polished wood floor creaked, and Lyssa looked up to find Joren coming out of the back room. “Is there a problem, here, Otho?” he asked the boy, though his eyes were on her.
“N-no,” Otho stuttered as Lyssa drew back from him.
“Actually, there is,” she said. The thought of Alderic, and how he might handle the situation, had given her an idea. “Your boy here doesn’t seem to want to take my gold.”
“Gold?” father and son said in unison, and the look Joren gave Otho could have set ice aflame.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out Alderic’s coin purse, jingling it in her hand.
“Here I am with money from a rich employer who doesn’t bother to keep track of the coin he gives me, and Otho here seems more interested in showing off than selling me something.
He’s recommending cheaper steel than what I came in for, by the way.
Not sure what you’ve been teaching your whelp, Joren, but even I—a lowly woman with no head for business—know that’s just stupid. ”
“I apologize for my son,” Joren said, as Otho wilted—shoulders, spine, and moustache drooping under the weight of his father’s scorn. “I would be glad to serve you, my lady. What can I get for you?”
“One billet of Valdalian steel, please,” Lyssa said, rattling off the length and thickness of the metal she required.
As she did, she opened the purse and held up a coin to the light, pretending to inspect it.
Far too large for her purchase. That much would be clear all the way across the room, to anyone who knew their coins—as Joren undoubtedly did. She put it back.
“Just the one?” he asked, watching the flash of gold disappear with the kind of look a hawk gives a mouse that has escaped its talons.
“Just the one,” Lyssa confirmed. She had iron aplenty in the smithy for the sword’s quillons, and just needed enough good steel for the blade itself. But he didn’t need to know that. “I’ll take the rest of my list to a shop that doesn’t seem to get off on insulting its customers.”
Joren snapped at Otho to go get the billet, turning back to Lyssa and putting a solemn hand over his heart once the boy had hurried off.
“What you experienced today is not indicative of how we typically run our business. If you allow me the opportunity to serve you again in the future, I promise that I will see to your needs personally, and with the utmost respect.”
“You should be so lucky.” Lyssa made a show of trying to find a coin small enough for her billet, finally digging out the tiniest coin in the purse—worth twice what even Joren was charging. She handed it to him, and he sighed.
“Let me get you your change,” he said, as his son appeared with her purchase, holding it out to Lyssa on his palms like a squire offering his lord a sword.
“Keep it,” she told Joren, taking the billet and inspecting it to make sure it was the right kind, the right length and thickness. “Use the rest to hire someone who knows what he’s talking about.”
Otho flushed as scarlet as his shirt.
The shop door hadn’t even closed behind her before Joren started shouting at his son.
Lyssa whistled as she left the Iron Lane, her Valdalian steel billet resting on one shoulder, like a chimney sweep with his broom.
She could see why Alderic preferred to wield money and words like a weapon. They could cut as cleanly as any knife, and were far less messy.
The sky was already bruising with the beginnings of dusk by the time she rounded the corner and started up Garnet Street, toward the Plaza Alstroemeria.
Her stomach was growling loud enough for the street-sellers to call out to her, specifically.
Hunger like that can only be satisfied by my pasties!
She had forgotten to eat breakfast—or lunch, really, given how late she had slept—intent on getting to Shendra’s.
Now she was starving, but as good as a cup of hot eels sounded, she wanted to see if Alderic felt like getting dinner with her in the hotel’s lavish restaurant, instead.
She wanted to tell him what had happened at Joren’s, and to make sure he’d put more into his stomach than just alcohol all day.
As she approached the Plaza’s gilded doors, a gorgeous woman with flaming red curls emerged from them, tossing a radiant smile to the besotted doorman.
Lyssa couldn’t blame the poor fool for gaping at her—she was wearing a gown with a neckline so shocking that for once the snobby hotel guests were turning their dirty looks on someone besides Lyssa in her rumpled menswear.
Then the woman turned her face in Lyssa’s direction, and the two of them locked eyes.
It was Honoria.
“Hello, Carnifex,” the Hound-warden said.