Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Business,” he answered, as he kept scooping leaves into the pipe’s chamber and bringing it out to tap the tobacco down with his finger and nail, making sure it was solidly packed.
“Sure you weren’t getting lonely up there?” Eleanor said as Valen put the pipe between his lips and sucked. His lips twitched and he opened the bronze tin, which contained some char cloth.
“I could ask you the same,” he replied, putting his pipe in his mouth. Valen folded up some char cloth against the flint and struck it with the steel. It sparked with practised ease.
His whole attention seemed to be on lighting his smoking pipe, but Eleanor knew better.
“Luckily for you, I’m down here with the sewer rats, scurrying around in the darkness,” Eleanor said, watching him hovering the burning ember on the cloth over the tobacco while sucking on the pipe.
The way he gently let the ember kiss the leaves as he simultaneously dragged air into the pipe was like a lover, so soft and tender.
He chuckled as smoke started to come out of his mouth, and he kept dragging in the smoke, letting the ember come to the tobacco.
“One day, Nora, you’re going to wish you were up there in the brightness. ”
Eleanor rubbed the rim of the glass mug. “I don’t think it’d suit me. I like my darkness too much.”
Satisfied that his tobacco leaves had caught enough of a burn, he waved and patted the cloth out. “You might find you don’t have a choice in the matter. Sometimes we’re forcibly shoved into the light.”
She took a swig of ale and smirked. “No one forces me to do anything.”
“I know. I’m still trying to recruit you, but” —he gave her a self-deprecating look— “for your sake, I hope that’s true.”
Valen had tried to recruit her many times, but she’d respectfully declined, preferring to be a free agent.
Of course, that meant she didn’t have the protection he was offering, and she was on her own when she killed.
He didn’t say it, but he wouldn’t help her if she were caught.
She would be on her own, but that suited her.
She didn’t need others to complicate her life.
Trix saved her from having to answer. She walked brazenly into his inner sphere and placed a foaming ale on the table in front of him and, without saying a word, she sashayed away.
“Heard you had a little tussle down here,” Valen said. He watched as Trix moved to serve the next patron from behind the bar.
Eleanor recognised the question’s gravity. “Your bar wasn’t hurt, if that’s what you were worried about. Not even a drop of blood was spilled on it.”
“You sound disappointed.”
Eleanor ignored his comment. He knew she preferred violence, and she wanted to get to the point of their meeting. “Who am I killing this time?”
Valen took a long drag of his pipe, making the scar on his lips stand out and let the burnt vanilla curl around them.
“I won’t insult you by asking if he’s dead.
” He said as he stuck his pipe between his teeth and unrolled the stained handkerchief to reveal a silver ring still attached to the severed finger.
“You didn’t fancy bringing me his head?”
“Didn’t want a decapitated head smelling up my place. A finger is easier to travel with.”
“I do like your practicality, Nora,” Valen said with a quirk of his lips, the pipe still in his mouth. “I need you to get some information on Westgate Street.”
She raised a brow. “Why?”
He narrowed his eyes at her through the tobacco smoke. “It’s my city. I need to know what goes on in it.”
“You’re wasting my skills. You sure you don’t have anyone you want killed?”
“Bloodthirsty much? You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman as murderous as you.”
Eleanor quirked her lips. “Clearly you don’t know many women.”
He made a noise as he sucked on his pipe. “I thought you’d have welcomed the break from killing.”
“Maybe I like it,” she replied with a dangerous smirk.
Something flickered in his eyes. “I don’t doubt that…but this, this is a task I can’t give to just anyone.”
She narrowed her eyes. What wasn’t he telling her?
Did this man distrust his own men? “Valen—” she began.
She wanted to reassure this man but didn’t know how.
She knew he’d stab her in the back at a moment’s notice, but she’d do the same to him.
Perhaps from that mutual knowledge that she felt kindred of some kind with him.
“That’s all I need from you this time. Come back when you have the information, and you’ll get your payment,” Valen interrupted curtly. His tone was all business and reminded her she was there to serve him and his purpose.
She took a long inhale. “I’d prefer a different type of payment this time.”
“Oh?” he said, intrigued. Eleanor had never changed the conditions of their exchange before.
It’d been clean and simple arrangement. He’d ask her to kill certain people, and she got paid.
It wasn’t a sizable sum, but it was enough money to put towards her debt with Madam Grace and fuel her heavy reliance on alcohol.
But now she was changing it, and it was… personal.
She took a drag of her ale, then settled it down. She knew he wouldn’t like her request. “I want a favour, no questions asked.”
“It’ll cost you,” he said with a smile that implied he could ask much more from her in exchange for what she wanted.
“I’m getting you the information you want.” She reminded him.
The leaves glittered with red embers as Valen sucked on his pipe. Then he exhaled a long drag of scorched vanilla that had a hint of something musky. “I’ll be the judge of what it’ll cost when I have the information.”
She gritted her teeth, not liking the conditions, but this was the course she’d set out on. She had already made this decision by coming here tonight. “Fine. I’m looking for a pendant. I need to know if there’s more of them out there.”
“Jewellery,” he scoffed. “You’re wasting my time with jewellery? Go to the markets or see the Brigadier.”
“You know the Brigadier?” Eleanor asked with a raised brow.
Valen puffed out a cloud of vanilla smoke and said with a playful purr in his voice, “Nora, I know everyone.”
While the cloud dissipated, she considered her answer. She wasn’t going to tell him anything she didn’t need to, and neither was he going to willingly offer up information. “They won’t have what I’m looking for.”
He sighed as he held his pipe between his lips and pulled a piece of parchment, a quill, and ink pot from a drawer in his side of the table that she hadn’t been aware of before. “I’ll need to know what I’m looking for,” he said, pushing the items towards her.
She dipped the quill, acknowledging how dangerous this was, but the risk was worth it. Everyone who knew what it truly meant was long dead, as there were no real witches left.
He sucked on his wooden pipe, watching her draw the symbol.
When she finished the rough sketch with her last quill stroke, he asked, “Why are you looking for something like that?”
“Promised an old aunt a pretty birthday gift,” she replied with a false, innocent smile.
Valen chuffed at her sarcastic response but said no more.
Eleanor drained her ale and left the Three Bells just as quickly as she’d entered.
She didn’t know how she felt about her exchange with the gang leader.
Valen’s targets for her assassinations had aligned with her own motivations.
They’d been scum, profiteering off someone else’s misery, and she’d been more than happy to end their pathetic excuses for lives.
She received payment for the kills, and she had believed the arrangement would benefit both of them until Valen’s new request. This time, he wanted information.
Information of what kind she wouldn’t know until she started snooping.
It was what he would do with the information that weighed on her.
Information could prove as deadly as a knife to the gut.
Information was like a blade, and it depended on the owner to wield it as they saw fit.
The question would be whether he would sharpen the information and drive it into her.
Eleanor would have preferred a kill, and she didn’t know what that said about her anymore.