Chapter 5 #2
“Can you believe my luck?” she said, without a hint of sarcasm. “Look at this haul! Imagine the stuff I can make with this. Quin gave it to me. He says there’s a bunch more I can have once he finishes his shift, too.”
She turned in her chair and cast a shy smile at the inn’s errand boy, a gawky teenager who wiped down a table in the back.
Mirie and I exchanged a glance. Quin, huh?
{Perhaps we will pay him a visit later,} Zefiah said.
Well, aren’t you protective, Zef.
{I say it only because you were already thinking it.}
She wasn’t wrong. I took another sip. The world pleasantly softened.
“Does that mean you’re taking on assignments again, machinist?” I said.
“Ooh, yes!” Val sat up, delighted. “Give me something good. Not too easy.”
“With that pile of junk?” I twisted up my face in faux disbelief. “No one could make something of it. Not even Srana’s highest acolytes.”
She beamed. We all knew this game by now. “They’ve got nothing on me.”
It was true. I’d met Srana’s highest acolytes. Been gifted weapons made by the greatest machinists in the world, eager to outfit the Vindica Ultis. Valentina put them all to shame.
I leaned back in my chair, considering. “I would like you to build me . . .”
I thought of my run-in with Septimus. The confident smirk twisting his perfect lips. His chest, smooth, sculpted flesh exposed beneath a thin shirt open a little too low, without so much as leather armor covering it. A heart so close I could’ve tasted it.
“I’d like a stringless crossbow,” I said.
Valentina’s face fell. “I already made—”
“Let me finish. I want a stringless crossbow, small enough to fit on your belt, that doesn’t need to be loaded. With bolts that can pierce fallen hearts.”
I imagined a silver bolt hurtling straight through that immaculate chest. Bam.
Val was intrigued. “Soulless hearts?”
“No. Vampire hearts.”
She grinned, delighted by this challenge. Near the hearth, the musician launched into a new melody, and she let out a gasp and leapt to her feet.
“I love this song,” she said. “How does he keep playing all my favorites?”
She rushed to the other side of the room, ready to join the small group of patrons swaying to the music. Mirie chuckled softly while I leaned over the bar and slid a coin across the worn wood.
“Have him play ‘A Dawn Sworn’ next, if he knows it,” I told the barkeeper, who nodded.
Mirie gave me a knowing glance, and I narrowed my eyes.
“She had a rough week,” I said. “It doesn’t make me soft to think that she deserves to enjoy her favorite songs for a night.”
“No one would ever mistake you for soft, Kyrene.”
I took another swig of wine. I was now swaying a bit in my seat, and the warmth in my chest bubbled up like the crackle of a warm flame, melting away the sharp edges.
Mirie’s smile faded. She leaned closer, voice low. “Are you sure that you can be here? This brings us two days off course, and the Lady of Justice—”
“We’ve had this conversation already. I’m sorry if I’m not devout enough for you, acolyte.”
Just like that, the sharp edges were back, drawn without my permission.
“I am not judging you, Kyrene. But the Lady of Justice might, if she feels that you’re squandering her gifts. You have put off her mission three times now. Vindica Ultis or no, there are bounds to her patience.”
{She is right,} Zefiah said. {As usual.}
The soft blur of my drunkenness felt suddenly nauseating. I raised my glass. “Shiket has bigger things to worry about than my two-day delay in heeding her bidding. Enjoy yourself. Or do priestesses not know how to do that?”
I pointedly turned to the musician, but I could feel Mirie’s stare peeling back layers of skin. From the very first night I had met her, she had looked at me that way. It had unnerved me then, and it still unnerved me now.
“I have spent three years by your side,” she said. “Give me a bit more credit than to think I see you the way everyone else does.”
I paused and cocked my head. “I can’t tell if that’s an insult. Is that an insult?”
She smirked. Offered a delicate half shrug. Even when Mirie was joking with me, she still somehow managed to remain so effortlessly elegant. I admired that about her. In a world where nothing had managed to cling to dignity, Mirie was always dignified.
“You can always go back to the temple, priestess,” I said.
She took a thoughtful sip of water. “Hmm. Perhaps tomorrow.”
That was the refrain, batted back and forth between us for years.
“Go back to the temple.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
I was accustomed to acolytes hanging around—usually acolytes of Shiket, but sometimes those of Atroxus, the fallen sun god, too.
I attracted lots of religious attention.
After all, following the Vindica Ultis was a mere step removed from following the goddess Shiket herself.
Most were tittering teenagers or self-righteous elderly masters, and all were terrible company.