Chapter 8 #2
Three points of conversation bloomed around us—words mixing together in a cacophonous flurry. My hands rose to cover my ears at the abruptness, but Noble’s lips were suddenly on my throat, pushing everything else out.
The delirious moments allowed my scattering brain to connect what had just occurred. He had set a listening enchantment into motion somehow. The spilled brew puddle? The waitress? A connection between the tables? All three elements connected together?
Eavesdropping enchantments were notoriously difficult to hide and use. The city’s net made anything but close-range spells impossible.
Noble’s lips sucked a bruise into my neck, scattering my thoughts further, then he released me and slammed his drink back. This close, I could see the siphoning enchantment held impossibly between his lips.
Who was this man?
I lifted my mug, needing something to do. The dark brew hit my tongue like tar, like drift pollution in a drink. Possibly the foulest taste ever encountered. I forced myself to take another small sip, wishing I had wiped on some sort of numbing powder first.
Conversations rushed impossibly into my ears once more.
Noble hiked me against him so that my breasts nearly overflowed on his chest. A spell flowed from his lips between mine.
The taste of the brew neutralized immediately, and I sighed against him. He stiffened, then kissed me almost bruisingly hard before letting go.
The listening enchantment required splitting my attention three ways. The mind-drugging kisses should have made it harder, but my breasts started to feel heavy, my lower body started to ache, and absurdly, it became easier to parse magic.
“I knew it,” he murmured against my lips as I relayed another tidbit that seemed interesting.
Knew what? But that was a question for later. His strategy was working. We had passed initial inspection. We whispered observations back and forth as we sipped, watched, and devoured—drunk on information and magic.
The hierarchy in the pub unfolded quickly.
The main cluster at the bar was our target—and an audience, their most desired commodity.
Mages clustered around two central figures—the leaders of the local watch, with their green hats—while men at their sides held control of the crowd.
Patrons vied for the leaders’ attention.
I hadn’t needed Noble’s whispered words. As a person who hugged walls at social gatherings, I could nail power and social dynamics from a hundred paces away.
When a group of men with blue hats squeezed in, the tension spiked—two sides about to square off for a prize. Watchmen and Patrollers.
Noble nuzzled my neck. “Watch the leaders. Don’t make it obvious.
You are my eyes. Tip your head back. That’s right.
” The side of his face rubbed along my throat, his lips dropping kisses as he mapped me.
His lips clamped around my pulse point and the men wavered in my vision as the vow marks thrummed under my skin.
“No,” he whispered, nipping me back to awareness.
“Don’t close your eyes. Softly, tell me what you see. ”
“Green hat—” My breath caught. “—started an argument with blue.”
The conversation in the tavern rose then dropped in volume. The bodies shifted and other noise dimmed, as if the rest of the pub also wanted to be privy to what was happening. The enchantment narrowed its focus on the argument like a lens.
“I don’t care what you think you can do—we handle that area.”
“Who?” Noble whispered into my ear as his hand worked up my side and one thumb grazed my breast.
“Green,” I choked out.
“—as if you can handle your own house, watchman.”
Noble’s thumb circled the curve through my dress, stays, and chemise. Thin protection against his hot hand. “Blue.” The word got strangled in my throat as he brushed the tip.
“Shh, shhh,” he whispered against the skin under my ear. “I’ve got it now. And I’ve got you. Just relax and watch. I’ll listen.”
Was relaxing possible? Outrage and maidenly virtue had flown the pub.
My body was undulating, moving against his, like a snake charmed by its master.
My eyes fought to remain open as his lips moved against my throat, under my ear, beneath my chin, and his hands wound a coil of heat that kept spreading farther outward.
“Stay with me.” His hand drew up my leg, between my thighs. My closing eyes flew wide. A hot palm resting on my thigh was the most innocent placement I was going to receive.
“Damn magistrates thinking they can run things. Stay in Helborn where you belong, patrollers.”
“Listen to them whine, Sam, you’d think the poor watchmen needed no help with their street fights,” the patrol leader said to a crony over his shoulder.
The watch leader visibly bristled, his shoulders rising and flaring out. He took a step forward. “As if you helped in that scuffle. You were in the way. Davey and the boys had it under control. You just made it worse.”
The other man stepped closer as well, putting their noses inches apart. “Dangerously close to Helborn territory. You know that’s our jurisdiction.”
“As if we’d forget, what with you whining about it all the time, as if you miss your mummy and she’s working the line.” A nasty smirk appeared.
“You keep believing you are capable and we’ll keep being amused.” The sentence was delivered calmly, but the man’s knotted fists said otherwise.
“Problem?” A new voice entered the fray, and Noble’s lips moved from my neck. A lock of his hair tickled my chin as he glanced at the newcomer.
The man was of average height, but the way he carried himself made him seem taller.
He stood next to a few of the more hulking patrollers, and even though he was shorter, magic heavier, there was something distinctive about him.
Not something necessarily nice, but dignified and powerful all the same.
“Here we go,” the man groaned, lifting his pint and tapping it against the side of a fellow watchman’s.
“No wonder crime in Midtown grows. Too busy drinking to patrol,” the new man said.
“Here now, the murderer’s been caught. And by one of our own. Didn’t see you catching him, and wasn’t that your job, inquisitor? Didn’t see you collecting the reward.” The green watchman leaned back, a sneer in his posture.
I tightened my grip on Noble’s hand and he gave mine a comforting squeeze back. We were in a tavern filled with watchmen, magistrate-appointed patrollers, and an inquisitor—and all of them were jockeying for position.
Noble’s lips found my ear again. “This is exactly what we want. Relax.”
“He was lucky,” the inquisitor said. “If Penner hadn’t needed to piss himself so badly, he never would have found him.”
“Call it luck all you want, Dresden.” Dresden, the man assigned to Kennen’s case? “But it’s not you that gets the glory. And the patrollers have to continue licking the magistrates’ balls just a few days more.”
The leader in blue and his fellow patrollers bristled, but Dresden replied first. “You think that stopping one man, one murderer, is enough to put you on top? To stop the might of Command Street?”
There was a forced dignity about him that filled me with dread—a competent man who felt the need to prove himself would be a dangerous foe for Kennen’s case.
“Oh, la, la, the might of Command Street. Hear that Patrolman Joe? We are facing the might of Command Street.” The watchman smirked at his counterpart.
“Am shaking in me boots, I am.”
“Always a pleasure to have such a fine gentleman in our midst, eh, boys?”
The tide had turned from the two groups fighting one another to showing a united front. The moment the inquisitor left, they’d be back at each others’ throats.
“Look around, Dresden. These are pleasures you’ll never have. A fine ale, a fine woman.” The man pointed to the couple in the corner, then to us.
The inquisitor’s gaze found mine and narrowed. Noble hooked his fingers into the meat of my thigh, brushing between my legs at the same time he pulled my earlobe between his lips.
I arched back and gasped.
The inquisitor grimaced and turned away. “You can have your weak drink and pox-ridden prostitutes.”
Outrage pierced my haze. I was neither a prostitute nor pox-ridden. The man who called me “a fine woman” rose through the rafters in my esteem, while the inquisitor buried himself six feet below.
The inquisitor sneered at the serving gal as she passed, and all hell broke loose.
“Don’t you sneer at Betsy!”
Noble chuckled against my throat, warm puffs of air hitting my skin before skittering away. He sat back to watch the fray. I grabbed my mug and took a few quick gulps.
“Betsy, is it?” The inquisitor looked our waitress up and down, his eyes communicating open contempt.
Betsy narrowed her hard, lined eyes. “Rumor whispers you have the cock of a worm. Hard to catch the pox with such wee bait.”
I spewed my drink. Noble patted my back as the pub roared with laughter.
“Just what I expect from a lady in this place.” The inquisitor moved to the corner and cleared the table there with a word. He scanned the room, assessing and watching movement the same way we were—just without any subtlety at all.
The token at my wrist warmed.
Noble pressed close to my ear. “Come.” He nudged me up and we snaked through the crowd. With the arrival of the patrolmen and inquisitor, normal pubgoers were forced to spill outside. Our table was swallowed immediately.
The inquisitor’s gaze followed us until we stepped through the door. The eavesdropping enchantment fell with the step, making me blink and reorient my senses.
Outside, Noble activated his seemingly boundless charm on the people milling around the street—patrons, pickpockets, patrollers, prostitutes.
It took a few exchanges before I eased into the role, aiding him with raucous queries about the watch and inquisitors.
Most had seen nothing that night. Some had seen the arrest. It wasn’t until well past midnight that we found treasure.