Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
I stared at the plaza.
“It would be good if we could hide in one of those buildings.”
Reynald smiled at me and touched the roof to the west of the statue. “I’ll take the oil merchant.”
“How? Did you bribe them?”
He shook his head. “No. Didn’t bother asking. They would never let me into their warehouse overnight.”
“Then how are you going to get into the building?”
Something heavy landed on the table in the middle of the map. A thick padlock with its arm out.
“Done!” Kaiden said.
“How?”
He grinned at me. “My dad was a lockmaker.” The smile faltered, then slid off his face. “I’m good with locks.”
I’d had no idea. It struck me—I knew almost nothing about Kaiden. According to Lasa’s notes, his parents had died, and he must’ve been apprenticed to someone, because the entry mentioned his “trainer” had sold him.
“The lock on the oil merchant’s door is the weakest,” Gort said. “And there is no guard inside.”
It made sense. Pan oil wasn’t dirt cheap, but you would have to steal barrels of it to make it worth the risk, and then you would have to sell it somewhere. There were better thieving targets in that plaza. The oil merchant didn’t bother with a guard.
“It’s not a bad lock,” Kaiden said. “It’s not a good lock either. Thirty breaths. Maybe fifty.”
“Once the killer shows up, I will engage him,” Reynald said. “If he tries to retreat, one of the others will block his exit long enough for me to press the advantage.”
Anxiety squirmed through me. I didn’t like this plan.
“In addition, we’ll put Shana on this roof here.” Gort tapped one of the western roofs. “If things get out of hand, she’ll shoot him.”
“Where am I going to hide?”
“At home,” Reynald said. “You’ll stay here and wait for us to come back.”
No, I didn’t like this plan. Not one little bit.
Reynald nodded to Kaiden. He swiped the lock off the table and scurried out of the room.
“What do you know about your friend from the Garden?” Reynald asked.
“He is not my friend, and next to nothing.”
“Do you have any guesses as to who he might be?”
“No. You’re obsessing about him.”
“I know him from somewhere,” Reynald said. “I can’t place it, but my memory tells me to be wary. Why was he at the market, where the body was displayed, with his face covered?”
“You also had your face covered.”
“I was escorting you, and I didn’t want to attract attention. Your clothes and hair don’t communicate the right level of wealth. You can’t afford me, Maggie, and that discrepancy would draw the eye. People would come to the wrong conclusions.”
By Rellas’s standards, my usual dress put me somewhere in the lower nobility. Reynald didn’t read as a lower-nobility bodyguard. Gort fit the bill—an aging mercenary who had decided to take a cushier job. Will and Lute would pass as well, skilled and dangerous, but too young to have developed a reputation.
But Reynald was well known. If people saw one of the top swordsmen in the kingdom guarding a woman who clearly couldn’t afford to hire him, they would conclude that I was paying him in other ways.
“Thank you for protecting my honor.” And I’d just said that with a straight face.
“Don’t mention it. The man from the Garden. Tell me about him.”
I recounted the meeting in the Garden.
“A lord,” Gort said when I finished.
Reynald nodded, his face grim. “What does he look like without the coif?”
“Very handsome,” I said.
Gort and Reynald shared a look.
“What kind of handsome?” Gort asked.
“Beautiful. Like the kind of face that makes you stop and stare. He has these captivating eyes, light hazel, like golden amber. They almost glow. Long eyelashes, too.”
Reynald rubbed his face.
“I’m not helping, am I?”
“No.”
“Sorry.”
“No matter,” he said. “He will appear again and when he does, he will tell me everything I want to know.”
“He didn’t seem scared of you,” I reminded him.
The demon from the basement gave me a narrow smile. There was no humor in it. “And that will be his undoing.”
CHAPTER 20
PLANTER 18
The morning sun spilled into the courtyard, warming up the laundry benches. I squinted at the sunshine.
Gort sat on the other side of the bench, twisting a thick wire into some sort of object. Occasionally he squished it with a pair of tongs, then twisted again. Across from us, Kaiden sat cross-legged on the wall around the wine tree, messing with another lock.
In the center of the courtyard, Reynald and the Magnar brothers clashed. All three wore padded gambesons, formfitting quilted jackets shielding their torsos and arms. Will’s gambeson was blue, Lute’s pale green, and Reynald was in dark, charcoal gray.
Both Will and Lute towered over the blademaster by about four inches and the quilted gambesons made them seem even larger. Both were remarkably strong and fast. Both were younger and had the training and experience of professional mercenaries. At twenty-one and nineteen, they were seasoned veterans, who identified weaknesses and zeroed in on them like hungry wolves.