Night of Masks and Knives: Book 2 – Chapter 16

To the wicked and vengeful, I was a dark fae whose deals gave them hope for a better life. To the desperate, my deals were a necessary evil.

I’d worked to shape the reputation of the Guild of Kryv into a name folk whispered, as if we might appear from the darkness at any moment. Like phantoms in the night.

Dealmakers transformed after working with us. When their desires were granted, some became killers, some wealthy, but most ended up broken and still desperate. Our deals were not soft and pretty, they were vicious and unforgiving. The same as I tried to be.

So, it made little sense to me how a few harrowed glances from a woman who couldn’t even strap her knives correctly had me unsettled and wanting to lash out at anything that moved.

I thought she might look away when I narrowed my own gaze. But Malin Strom merely tightened her mouth into a bloodless line, those eyes telling me I was going to pay for something.

No mistake, I’d need to guess what before she cut me with one of those blades she thought were hidden beneath that too-thin skirt.

. I blinked my stare off her legs. Trouble all its own.

Truth be told, the girl who’d been the whole of my boyish soul would be simpler to avoid if she’d grown to smell like hog piss and not . . .

.

Malin only looked away when a heavy pelt pulled back from a doorway, and a woman who brought a reek of sour wine entered. Made of lumps and curves unfit for her corseted gown, white powder dusted in her hair, and an odious black mark was painted in the line of her cheek.

″Ah, you must be Peder and Helena. I received your name from my house boy.” She made a gesture at nervous, twitchy Helgi at her side. He avoided my eyes and set a tray of flour cakes and blood apples in front of our seats. Mistress Salvisk shooed him away with the flick of her fingers. “I am honored to have you in my household. Tell me, how are the lovely shores of Hemlig this season?”

″White and glowing, as you, Mistress Salvisk,” Tova said, bowing her head.

″Sit. Eat.” The patroness beamed and wrapped her broad shoulders in a rabbit fur stole. “We’ll begin shortly. I have more than this cheery for you to see tonight.”

The girl on the stool whimpered and stared at her hands in her lap.

Tova and Vali played their roles well, lifting their noses in the air as they shared passive greetings with Gunnar and me. Malin stood next to Raum and kept her eyes trained on the floorboards.

Perhaps she was angry we’d left her in the dark over Gunnar and I being in the room. She’d survive, and I would owe her no explanation. I gave information when and to whom needed it. Malin needed to know her role, not mine.

″Cake, darling?” Salvisk said brightly, holding up a plate to Gunnar.

He shot her a wicked sort of grin and reached for one of the cakes with red glaze, richer than blood, dripping off the sides.

″Damn the hells.” Gunnar dropped the cake and recoiled. By the time he was on his feet, shaking out his hand, the skin had already raised in red pustules.

Salvisk didn’t have time to return her tray to the table before the blade of my hooked knife was lodged against the fleshy folds of her neck. “I would not move if I were you.” I flicked my eyes to the wall. Where I thought Malin might reel back in terror, instead she stood at Gunnar’s side, inspecting his hand, a knife drawn in hers.

I refused to be impressed.

″Raum,” I snapped, tangling my fingers in Salvisk’s powdery hair to keep her in place. “Inspect it.”

Raum kneeled beside the fallen sweet, studying it without getting too close. “I can’t be sure without tasting, but there is certainly something added to this little lovely. I’d say eldrish poison.”

Eldrish. The only elixir I knew that could poison mesmer to burn through the veins. Fetters called magisk collars were doused in it. Black Palace Elixist Alvers were the ones responsible for lacing the collars in the poison. With the right connections, it would not be impossible to buy a few vials from Ivar’s Elixists who had a twisted sense of thrill and love for poisoning fellow Alver folk.

″You think I don’t know you,” Salvisk tried to shake me off. “Alvers. I can smell the likes of you from ten lengths away. Your ruse must mean you are unregistered. We signaled for skydguard before I opened my door. Better run, little ones. No, better yet—stay. I’d love to watch as the guard tears the skin from your bones.”

The woman was aggravating, and I’d heard enough.

Salvisk shrieked when I dragged her by her hair to the table at the far side of the room, then tossed her onto the top in a flurry of skirts and cloying perfume.

″Gunnar,” I said briskly. “Are you well enough to continue?”

Gunnar rolled back his shoulders. A muscle tightened in his jaw. “I’m fine and more than ready.” He waited until Salvisk met his gaze straight on. “Do not move. Sit there and imagine all the ways we could kill you.”

The corner of my mouth lifted into a smirk. Not what I’d told him to do, but I could appreciate the imagination.

There was a time where Gunnar could not work past the ache in his brain that mesmer brought, now he commanded compliance for great lengths of time. I had few doubts, someday, Gunnar would be able to take control of half a dozen minds at once.

A terrifying gift to some.

I reveled in it.

The itch from his tricky magic prickled across my scalp, but I brushed it aside, then flicked my arm until the narrow knife I’d hidden in my sleeve slid into my grip.

One thought, and the cold burn of my mesmer faded into its dormant place in my blood. A sharp tingling sensation rippled over my face as it slimmed and shaped into my true features.

I jerked my head at Raum and Vali. No need for words. We knew one another’s signals well enough, and together they rushed to the crying cheer girl on the stool.

″No, no,” she cried as they helped her to her feet. “Leave me, leave me.”

They ignored her and ushered her from the room. Tova followed, inspecting the girl’s bruised face.

In the distance, a formidable beat of battle drums wakened the night. Our countdown began. Gunnar could hold Salvisk for another quarter hour at most. After that, if we were not finished with our work, the night would take a bloody turn.

Salvisk wore a curious expression as she stared at the door. “The girl . . .”

″Don’t worry about her,” Gunnar said. “Tell me the names of the traders who bought your cheeries for the queen’s ring game.”

We needed a name. Any bleeding name and I’d hunt down the men who’d made deals here. Schemes were like a dance across a broken floor. Each piece needed to be laid in proper order or we’d find ourselves stuck in the open without a place to continue the next step.

″A name,” Gunnar pressed again, cheeks redder than before.

″I run a tight house, darling.” Salvisk blinked as if her attempt to poison us had never happened. “He merely went by Mister K.”

Dammit. I came prepared for this, but I would rather not depend on her at all. The more she fit into any plan the more it felt as if fate had grander schemes than me.

Gunnar let out a heavy sigh. “I’m afraid this might be more unpleasant for you, or perhaps pleasant, I really can’t say.” He stood and went to Malin’s side. “Now, sit still and think of knives under your fingernails.”

Salvisk went pale.

″Malin, we’ll need her memory,” Gunnar said. “She’s all yours.”

Malin shook out her hands. “What if she has that poison on her?”

″Are you losing your nerve?”

. Why did the need to speak—kindly or bitterly, it didn’t matter—always burst out as if I had no control over my tongue. I lifted my chin, a sneer curved over my mouth. “Hesitate, and you might as well gut yourself. You’ll be dead anyway.”

″I have a great deal of nerve,” Malin said. “So much, in fact, a little thing like talking about the past does not frighten me into surly shadows.”

Gunnar snorted and covered it with a false cough.

Bastard.

When I said nothing, Malin shook her head and kneeled in front of the dazed Mistress. “You’re keeping her this way, Gunnar?”

″Yes,” he said. “And I’d appreciate not having a headache in the morning by holding it longer than needed.”

Malin rapped on the Mistress’s forehead. “Think of the masquerade traders.”

Gunnar tipped the woman’s chin with his knuckle when she cursed at Malin. “Do as she says.”

With Salvisk once more malleable, I relaxed my shoulders and stood by, watching as Malin hovered her lips over Salvisk’s mouth. Her cheek twitched when the Mistress let out a loud, forceful breath, as if the woman might fall asleep any moment.

Malin closed her eyes, held her mouth a hairsbreadth over Salvisk’s plump stained lips, and inhaled.

Her mesmer had fascinated me once. In truth, it still did. I simply knew what a risk it was should the wrong people discover her Talent.

A few heartbeats passed before Malin settled back on her knees. Her lashes fluttered over her freckled cheeks. Cold as I tried to be, I wished I felt less when she came too close. Fewer dips in my belly, fewer leaps in my chest.

Most days I couldn’t decide if I should flee or reach out and touch her.

My fists were curled tight by the time Malin opened her eyes again.

″Doft,” she said, meeting my gaze. “A man with the surname Doft made the deal.”

If gods existed, they abhorred me. “Good,” I said. “Anything else?”

The drums outside grew louder. I ignored them and looked to Malin as she staggered off her knees.

″This man, Doft, was set to leave Klockglas not long ago, perhaps a sunrise or two. He mentioned something about Skítkast,” she said.

″Skítkast?” Gunnar smiled. “Thank the skies. The brӓn, there’s nothing like it, Mal.”

″What else.” I didn’t ask. This was an intentional demand. Our time grew short.

″Something about the Wild Hunt Games.”

The Wild Hunt came to Klockglas once. Riders galloped across the region, blowing goat horns painted in gold, hunting hidden ribbons and flags, then sparring in fierce matches to prove the greatest hunter or huntress.

Malin and I, we’d watched it from an oak tree. Did she remember?

Cursed hells. I didn’t care if she did. It didn’t matter in this moment. Didn’t matter at all.

″There’s more.” Without permission, Malin shuffled through stacks of parchment and thin rice paper on a narrow desk near the pelt covered doorway.

Mistress Salvisk clucked her tongue, slipping through Gunnar’s mesmer haze. “Get your hands off my belongings, or end up on your back where you belong, girl.”

″A little longer Gunnar,” Malin said more like a plea.

One snap of his fingers, and Gunnar had Salvisk back in the whimsical stupor.

″Malin,” he warned. “There is a nail driving through my skull.”

″Then hush and let me look.”

Distance was safest, but my wretched body refused to obey. In three paces, I was at her back.

She shuddered but didn’t look at me. “Here to frighten me into submission, Nightrender?”

″To assist,” I snapped, “if you would tell me what you’re looking for.”

″A ledger. The man in the memory left it here to give Salvisk a first bid in what he called the leftovers of an Alver trade set to go on at the masque.”

″Alvers aren’t traded at the masquerade. Those are done in a public bid.”

″This turn is different. He mentioned it, but would not give details in the memory. Kase, it is too exclusive for us to find on our own.”

She should not say my name. It stirred too much.

I heaved a sigh, my gaze roving over the parchment strewn table, to the baskets below it filled with booklets. “The ledger will tell us where the trade is?”

″Possibly. It should give us names. Hagen could be in it, so we’d know where they’ll take him at the Masque av Aska.”

Alver barters during the masquerade? It’d never been done. I made a mental note to look into it as soon as possible.

My eyes scanned stacks of parchment and paper, but only for show. I was hardly helpful in this. There were some weaknesses I would not share with anyone. Not my guild. Certainly not Malin Strom.

But like a fool, I’d volunteered to help search all things words and writing.

In one basket I took out a thick stack of lined parchment bound in pig leather. “Is this the one?”

Malin gave it a swift glance. “Is there a list of names?”

She asked too many questions for which I had no answer.

My face hardened and I tossed the booklet on the table. “You tell me if it is what you want. And hurry.”

Her eyes tore into me like a woman holding back a great deal of violence, but she blinked away from me, scanning the pages. “Gunnar. Look.”

Gunnar hurried to her side. “Kase, she’s right. Daj is in here.”

He pointed at a line. I didn’t look. It was enough to hear them say Hagen’s name was penned in this strange trade. By the gods. What did Ivar have planned for the Masque av Aska?

Whatever it was he would not get the chance to see it through.

″We have what we need. Let them in, Gunnar,” I said.

Gunnar hurried to a window and kicked out the bubbled glass. Salvisk mumbled a shriek when Lynx spilled his thick body into the room.

″Is the whole bleeding guild here? What was the point of coming separately?” Malin said with a sigh of annoyance.

I ignored her and made a quick move for the door.

″Hurry,” I barked. Tension unnerved me, and the way Malin looked at me like she had a thousand cruel things to shout back left me feeling more like a thorn bush than a man.

Lynx placed his hands on Salvisk’s face. Two breaths, that was all, before she slumped to one side, hardly breathing.

″Will you kill her?” Malin asked.

I blinked until both eyes were shadowed. “Yes.”

There was nothing left to say, nothing left to explain. Our roles were no longer needed near the other. I took out my karambit knife, spun it once around my finger, and left the room.