Chapter Twenty Blood and Whiskey
CHAPTER TWENTY
BLOOD AND WHISKEY
Watch it!” Reya bellowed as a pirate with a red feather in his cap shouldered into her, spilling her mug of ale across a nearby table. She grabbed the middle-aged man by the collar and pulled. “You owe me another drink.”
The man grinned, revealing a lone gold filling in a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth rotting at the gums. Reya wondered how much she could pawn the tooth for. Gold was gold. But she’d have to punch it out of him, and that would mean she would have to leave.
He gripped her hips and yanked her against him. “How about I give you something else instead?” His breath was like a sewer in summer, and Reya nearly gagged as she slid her hand along the lining of his jacket.
She pocketed the brown leather coin pouch she found there. “Remove your hands, sailor, or they’ll be removed from you.”
“What fellow is going to do that for you, little miss? I don’t see him anywhere.”
Before he could blink, she had her ruby dagger pressed to his throat. “This fellow,” she said and shoved her knee into his crotch. He stumbled back into his cohorts, who howled with laughter.
After weeks of being lectured, made a fool, bitten, shot at, and damn-near roasted alive, she was practically begging someone to pick a fight with her, if only to prove she was not as incompetent as she felt.
She’d gambled twenty-three days on this absurd venture. Now she had no job, and only thirty-eight days left before she became a veritable prisoner. Oh, right. And she’d doomed Caelan to die and, as a consequence, all the magic-born relying on him.
She wasn’t sure when the notion of a world without Caelan Halcyon in it had become so abhorrent. Worse, the honorable bastard had apparently rubbed off on her, and she couldn’t even bring herself to try and rob him blind.
The players struck up a familiar melody, and Reya was swept into the melee as everyone with a drink in hand raised it high and sang along. It was a song of outlaws, an anthem of the underworld, and soon the whole building was swaying with the tune.
A man threw his arm over her shoulder and rocked her from side to side.
She swayed with him, belting out lyrics she knew by heart as she reached into his pockets.
Her fingers brushed against lint and air.
Another dry pocket. She pretended to stumble and allowed herself to be drawn into another group for fresh pickings.
Her night had started innocently enough.
She’d come to the Row looking for new leads.
It hadn’t been her intention to hustle a group of sailors out of all their coin in a game of cards.
Her first, second, and third ales had been compliments of her dance partners.
Her fourth and fifth had been compliments of the coin pouch a merchant had so foolishly tucked into his front coat pocket—honestly, that one was hardly her fault.
By the time she’d switched to whiskey at the tavern before last, she’d convinced herself she could pickpocket her way to one hundred thousand golds, and the liquor had quieted all logic to the contrary.
When the final note rang out, the crowd broke into wild cheers, and she used the distraction to move about the bar looking for new marks.
Unfortunately, she’d nearly robbed this place dry.
That’s when she spotted a new patron at the bar, one who hadn’t been there when she came in. He wasn’t handsome, but he was well groomed and far too well dressed for the Row. Her best guess? The son of a wealthy merchant in port for the night.
Several courtesans were eyeing the man, but Reya got there first. She brushed up against him innocently, doing her best to look helpless as she tried to shove apart the bodies amassing to order drinks.
As soon as someone bumped her a little too hard, she threw herself into the well-dressed stranger, who reached out to catch her.
“Are you all right, miss?” he asked, helping Reya to her feet.
When she was standing again, he yanked on the jacket of the trader who had supposedly shoved her, giving Reya the perfect opening to slide her hand into his coin purse, where she felt the weight and texture of a handful of silvers.
“You would do well to watch where you’re going, sir,” he shouted in Reya’s defense. “You could have hurt the lady!”
She was the furthest thing from a lady he would ever meet. But why correct him? He could play the savior as much as he liked. She had what she wanted in her front right pocket.
Reya smoothed out her hair and blouse, which she’d left unbuttoned just so, and tried to duck away. “Thank you.”
But he grabbed her hand. “I’m Simon! What are you drinking?”
Reya let out a too-loud laugh. “They only sell ale here!” And it wasn’t very good, either.
“Two pints!” Simon called to the barkeep over the chaos without letting go of her hand. “One for me and one for the lady!”
Well, shit. She needed to make her escape before he reached to pay for the drinks with coin he no longer had. She’d overstayed her welcome anyway.
She stuck a foot out to trip some poor fool at just the right moment.
He hurtled into the crowd around the bar.
The collision knocked down two men, and soon they were all throwing punches.
Simon hauled Reya behind him to protect her from the mayhem, and she snorted a laugh as she made her getaway. Poor Simon. He’d learn one day.
The players transitioned into a hard and fast tune as the brawl broke out. Women screamed as men shoved them out of the way, and Reya quickly got lost in the fray. All across the tavern, swords and daggers were drawn until absolute chaos erupted.
When the same gold-toothed pirate who’d spilled her pint saw her and changed direction, she grinned.
Finally.
One well-placed punch to the jaw and that gold tooth went spinning through the air. Reya caught it with a triumphant “Ha!” that died on her lips when his friends came to his defense. She dodged their blows with speed she didn’t bother to check.
The last one standing thought to use the opportunity to grope her backside while she was occupied searching the pockets of his fallen buddies.
Reya snatched up a bottle on a nearby table and took a quick swig before she hurled it against his head.
Glass shattered and liquor splashed over everyone in the immediate area.
She was scanning the bar for her next opponent when two arms picked her up by the waist.
“Hey!” Reya wailed, thrashing against the hard, muscled body that pulled her toward the door and away from the brawl she had so ingeniously started. “Put me down or so help me—!”
Calloused hands propped her upright outside the tavern, and she looked up to see Caelan glowering down at her.
“Oh,” Reya sighed, swiping the liquor and broken glass off her palms on the front of his black tunic.
“What the blazing stars is wrong with you?”
Ignoring him, she headed back down the Row, which was still alive and rumbling despite the late hour. Or was it early?
“You’re done for the night,” he said, grabbing her arm.
She threw him off far harder than she needed to. “You are not my keeper.”
“Haven’t you picked enough pockets for one day? Una above, you have to be practically dripping in coin by now.”
“How long have you been following me?”
“Long enough to know you can’t flirt worth a damn.”
Reya grunted and walked on, Caelan tight on her heels. When he cut her off, she sighed and headed back in the other direction. There were more taverns back that way.
“What is it you think you’re going to accomplish?”
Reya blew a stray hair out of her face. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
“Your next brilliant plan is to rob everyone in Port Talluah?”
No. Only the drunk and foolish people. “I’ll figure something out. I always do.”
“And if you can’t? What then?”
She sighed. “Then I suppose I’ll spend the next ten years paying off the debt I incurred when I let my conscience get the better of me.” For Paxton and Leo, she would do it.
Caelan snarled. “So this is the famous Crimson Dagger? This is all it takes to break you?”
Reya whirled on him too fast for her ale-addled mind, and the world spun.
“I warned you the day you hired me that this was a fool’s errand!
I’m sorry I couldn’t break your curse, all right?
But you knew the risks. Unless you want me to row out to sea and go Kraken hunting, our arrangement is at an end,” she said, slamming the lid on that wild, asinine idea.
“You’re better than this.”
“I am this. You know what? Keep the coin you stole from me. Use it to hire another thief. I’ll earn it back.” When he didn’t move out of her path, she demanded, “Why are you here, Caelan?”
Caelan looked like he wanted to shake her. The heat coming off him was normal, almost human. Her lips parted on an inhale when he began to crowd her, retreated suddenly like he’d moved against his better judgement, then closed the space between them again with a growl.
Just to see what he’d do, she tipped her chin up in invitation.
One moment they were standing on the sidewalk, and the next her back was against the alley wall, Caelan’s arms caging her in. She hadn’t expected him to take the bait. But now that he had, she wasn’t complaining.
A cluster of drunken pirates stumbled out of the tavern a few paces away. A courtesan in the window a story above them called down to Caelan, but he didn’t take his eyes off Reya.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Oh, bite me.”
He bared his teeth. “Don’t tempt me.”