Night of Masks and Knives (The Broken Kingdoms Book 4)

Tova’s breaths were heavy and peaceful in the Falkyn nest. We’d taken a sitting room to sleep, one with a stone stove to keep warm.

Sleep nearly pulled me under when a hand clapped over my mouth.

The twin knives were under my pillow; I reached for them. But once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, stun dissolved into frustration. Gold eyes laughed at me in the dark.

″Too slow,” Kase whispered. “If I’d wanted you dead, by now, you would be.”

I shoved his hand off my face, smoothing my wild hair as I sat up. He grinned, and I was so unused to it, I didn’t know how to behave.

I pinched my mouth, battling with relief and worry from nearly losing him again. “Are you well enough to be moving about?”

″It would be more dangerous to keep me locked up. I do not like being idle for long and get rather ill-tempered when I am.” His crooked grin gleamed in the darkness. “Come with me. We’re not yet finished with Skítkast.”

Kase rolled off my sleeping mat. His blacksteel sword was missing, replaced by a suit and waistcoat. He’d dressed like someone in the Exchange Guild.

Curious as I was, I hugged my pillow against my chest. “I’m sleeping. And you shouldn’t be moving when your skin is healing.”

″I’m fine, and you are paying me to help, are you not?”

″With memories, yes. You stole my penge.”

″That is a matter of opinion.”

″We should return to not speaking, Nightrender, if speaking means you will wake me at all hours.”

″I think you’re afraid of me.”

″Well, you’d be the one to know,” I said, but sighed, breaking a bit of my armor against him. “You’ve been missing for turns, have hardly said a word to me, so this chatter between us is going to take more than a few nights to catch up.”

The answer must’ve satisfied him because he smirked and tossed a gown with rabbit fur sleeves at me. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

I groaned and untucked my legs from beneath the quilt. The tunic barely struck me at my knees, and my face heated when Kase’s gaze certainly noticed.

I cleared my throat. “Turn around if you please.”

A wickedness lived in those eyes. One that spun a web of heated delight low in my stomach. “Twice now you’ve asked me to turn away. There won’t be a third.”

My mouth parted. Those were the words he left me to fumble with in my brain. Hells, I could hardly fasten the clasp over the low neckline of the gown. A long slit ran up one side and it was entirely too diaphanous.

I added my rune pouch filled with my vials to the inside of my thigh. After a few deep breaths, I composed myself, and stepped into the corridor, admittedly anxious to learn what he had planned.

Kase spun the curved knife around his finger again. I tapped on his shoulder, and when he turned, his eyes combed the length of me. I cleared my throat, skin overheated, and clasped my hands behind my back. “Are you going to explain why you’ve dressed me this way?”

″You’ll see. Keep up.”

The streets of Skítkast were thick with brine from the sea and smoke from the torches surrounding the empty Wild Hunt arena. Kase led us in the opposite way of the city square. Good. I didn’t want any reminders of Doft or the battle with the skydguard.

″Where are we going?” I whispered when he paused in a narrow alleyway.

Across the street was one of the few houses built with smooth stones, still leaning slightly, but sturdier than the wooden alehouse next door. The windows were aglow, and laughter from inside floated into the streets.

″This house belongs to a trader named Klaus Krokig,” he said. “Klaus has a particular talent with creating cleverly hidden and wholly illegal trade rings throughout the regions. He was to design and inspect this turn’s masquerade layout. Including a new trade room. This is our way to know where Hagen will be. He has the design plans in his possession, and I plan to take them off his hands.”

″How do you know . . .” I didn’t need to finish the question. He knew because he was the Nightrender, because the Guild of Kryv had ways of learning everything about their marks. Even injured on a carving block, he kept scheming. “Why do you need me?”

He glanced over his shoulder, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t like the answer. “You’re going to take them for me.”

″I don’t understand why we cannot enter the masquerade as mere attendees. Why do we need to know every hidden door? Common folk are welcome this turn.”

Kase lifted one brow. “They are welcome, but will not be favored. Not to mention, common folk are not trying to find a secret trade, then steal one of the Lord Magnate’s Alvers. We need those plans.”

A flutter of unease spread in my chest, but I followed across the street to the side of the house. The Kryv were sly on their feet, and Kase was no exception. He didn’t make a sound. I suspected he gathered darkness when the night thickened around us until I was forced to grip his jacket.

″Go along with whatever I do inside,” he told me at the back door.

I was too nervous to argue. Kase pulled a sharp steel pick from his breast pocket and worked the door. After a few clever movements the knob clicked, and he ushered me into a cramped alcove.

The walls of the alcove were lined in iron stew pots, drying herbs on racks, and canvas grain sacks against the wall. Kase turned his attention to the main kitchen, holding out his hand, as though he wanted mine.

My fingertips tingled as I laced our fingers together. With a tug to my hand, he pulled us out of the alcove.

Halfway across the kitchen, Kase swept me off my feet, had my back against the wall, and one hand possessively on my throat before I even knew we were moving.

His other palm tantalized the sensitive skin along my ribs, the curve of my waist.

″What the hells are you doing?” I hissed.

Kase tucked his face into my neck, and I froze. My skin, my pulse, everything was on fire when his mouth brushed against the nape of my throat. “Quiet,” he said.

I could push him away, but in truth, I had no desire to. In the next breath, the kitchen door swung open, tearing me out of my haze. All at once Kase’s rakishness made a degree of sense.

A woman with a white cap over her wiry hair shoved inside, carrying a silver tray. “Oh,” she squeaked when she noted the strange man and woman who did not belong.

Kase pulled away from me, one hand still on my waist, and tossed a copper coin at the woman, as though she was hardly worth his time. “Nothing to gossip about, woman,” he said, the way any nobleman might.

She bowed her head, and tucked the coin inside her apron pocket, and hurried into the pantry.

″Well played,” he whispered when we left the kitchen.

I pulled my arm away. “What were you doing?”

″Trusting you.”

I’d meant to be angrier but was pleased one of the iron walls he kept around his heart had crumbled. Still, I smoothed my dress with a frown. “Next time you could warn me.”

″Maybe I enjoy making you gasp.” Kase slid his arm around my waist, drawing me against him as more maids strode past. His lips were against my head, his breath on my skin. “If you will relax, this will be easier to sell.”

Simple, no doubt, for him to say. Every touch sent blood pounding in my head. I didn’t want to dwell too long on what the spice of his skin made me think, or the rough, commanding brush of his fingers on my body.

When this was over, if the Nightrender decided once more to cut off his past, how would I recover?

In a drawing room, noblemen and ladies speckled the fur rugs and sitting area, drinking, and bidding farewell to the Wild Hunt in their own way.

Kase took two glasses from a steward’s outstretched tray and handed one to me. He drank but kept eyes on the levity.

A woman with dark lips and the palest hair I’d seen paused in front of us. She grinned at Kase, ready to devour him. Her brief glance at me was one of insignificance. To her, I wasn’t even a challenge.

What a horrid woman. Giving herself to a man who clearly had arrived with company.

I prepared to dismiss her, but her eyes started to glaze. She staggered, the beads on her gown shivered. Disoriented, she fumbled across the room to the table of sparkling wines. When Kase turned his head, inky filaments faded from his eyes until they were gold again.

″Did you do something to her?”

″She fears hunger and thirst.” He grabbed my hand and led me to a corner. “Going to scold me for stepping into her mind?”

″I’m not going to scold you,” I said. “I was impressed.”

His eyes searched mine. I wanted to ask him what ran through his head in the moment, but breaking the silence seemed wrong. My hand rested over his heart, and I held to the steady beat like a ballast against the fury inside me.

″Malin.”

I blinked away my fog. He was saying my name. “What?”

He dipped his face beside my ear, making our conversation look like more than it was. “Doft’s courier is standing near the window. The man he’s speaking with—” He gestured at a man who looked like he was prepared for battle, not a house fete, “is Klaus. I’m going to distract them. The plans should be in Klaus’s chamber in the back. Find them.”

″And if I don’t find a way in?”

″Not an option.” Kase pinched my chin between his thumb and finger. Demanding, yet tender in one collision of opposites. “You’re capable like the Kryv and don’t see it.”

I fought a smile, even if it was a kind of backhanded praise.

Kase stalked over to the courier, a man with a single brow, and pock scars on his chin. Klaus eyed him suspiciously, one hand atop the silver battle axe tethered to his waist.

Kase removed an herb roll from his pocket and said in a thick accent, ”Herr, trouble you for a light?”

I licked my lips. I could do this.

Slowly, I made my way to the back. At the door a house steward, a gangly man with a beaklike nose, guarded the way.

″My lady,” he said, holding up his hands. “This room is not open to guests.”

I fanned my face and lied easily. “I’m afraid all this herb smoke has made me rather dizzy.” The steward didn’t move, so I hardened my gaze. “Stand aside.”

″I cannot.”

Doubtless we were short on time. Perhaps, the Nightrender could play a polite guest for a moment, but he was certainly not the sort of man who could spin mindlessly with nobility for long without revealing his disdain.

In one swift motion, I withdrew one of the small knives in the sheath above my ankle. The point pressed against the steward’s belly. He gasped, but I dug the point deeper. “Make a sound and I open your liver. Now, open the door. One of your guests has taken something of mine, and I will have it back.”

The steward had less of a spine than I thought and fumbled with a brass key from his pocket.

″Inside. You’ll wait without a sound,” I said in a low hiss.

The man nodded mutely. I was a tyrant.

Inside the room was nothing remarkable. A simple desk strewn in parchment and vellum. A wet inkwell, quills, and a dusty ledger with scratches of sales and purchases over the turns. Klaus was a man of simple tastes. The only other furnishings were a small wooden bench draped in bear skins, and a chair next to a small stove built into the wall.

Design plans. To keep a bit of mystery, Ivar never had the same Masque av Aska. Tents, attractions, locations would constantly shift to different places around the Black Palace.

A long leather tube in the corner caught my eye. Beside the tube was a traveler’s satchel, and a cloak with the symbol of the Black Palace over the left breast. Possibly Doft’s cloak. Did the courier know the man was dead?

I broke the top, and inside the musty tube were rolls and rolls of parchment and vellum. I let out a muffled squeal of delight.

″Those do not belong to you, lady,” the steward said.

I slung the strap over my shoulder and crossed the room. Knife to his chin, I grinned with a touch of wickedness before pressing my lips just over his. Enough to catch his rough, breathy gasps.

Each inhale dragged smoke and outlines of my face to my own mind. What good was I as a memory thief if I did not steal memories of crimes I committed?

A sharp, ashen repeat of the brief interaction with the steward now lived in my head. When I pulled back, swallowing the last of his breath, he stared at me with a weary stun.

″Your mouth on a man is not the way I wanted this night to go.”

I whipped around. Kase leaned over the back of the wooden bench.

″How . . .” The door was still closed. “How did you get in here?”

″Carefully.”

″Ah, the Nightrender is witty tonight.” I glanced at the steward who hunched on the ground, rubbing his head with a befuddled expression. “I figured it would be best if he forgot me.”

Kase scoffed and signaled me to come to him. I crossed the room obediently and handed him the plans. Undeniable satisfaction came from the way his face brightened as he studied the parchment inside.

″Not bad for a memory thief.” He slung the strap on the tube over his shoulder. “Ready to leave?”

″From the moment we walked in.”

Alas, our silent escape was put on hold. The door crashed open.

It was one thing if I startled, but I discovered, in the untimeliest of moments, if Kase jumped in surprise, my stomach clenched to the point I thought I might retch.

″Damn thieves,” Klaus hissed in the doorway, battle axe in his grip.

If he was discomposed before, Kase showed no sign of it now.

″Malin,” he said. “I’ll leave you to take care of him.”

″What!”

Klaus stomped into the room, fists clenched. Kase pulled himself onto the highbacked chair. He unlatched a tall window and paused. “We’re in a hurry.”

When this was over, I’d strangle him.

″Come here like a good girl,” the trader said as he swiped a thick hand at me.

Three hells. I clung to my knife and sliced the blade over his wrist before he knew what was happening. Klaus reeled back, murder in his dark eyes when he looked to me again.

All I had was mesmer and a knife. They’d be enough. I’d make them be enough.

I gathered my gown in hand, and reached into the rune pouch, removing one of my vials. The trader took a swift step toward me, axe raised like he planned to cut open my skull.

Kase turned back, shook one arm, and as always, a knife slid from his sleeve. Call it pride, but now I didn’t want his help. This was my mark, my task to see through.

I rushed for Klaus, dipped my shoulder, so it struck his broad chest. He coughed and staggered back on unsteady feet. Already, a heady burn scorched in my veins, as if my mesmer boiled through every pour.

Never had such a fierce rush of magic filled me before. I needed those plans; I needed the Nightrender to leave here unharmed; I needed to live.

All of it collided in a burst of heat in my blood. A new sensation; one I wanted to grow.

I didn’t know if my plan would do anything. All I’d done was steal and deliver memories through breath. But what would happen if I forced one into the head of another?

I popped the cork of a vial with my teeth and pounced on the staggering man before Klaus found his footing. A few quick, frantic movements, and I dumped the ash into his eyes, pressing the burn of my palms against his skull.

At first, I thought I was merely a nuisance. This rush of what I thought was mesmer must’ve been sheer anger and fear for a man I could not bear to lose again.

But it all changed when Klaus’s knees gave out.

Mesmer pulsed in my fingertips. All I wanted was him to see every torturous end the poor sod whose finger bone I’d crushed had experienced before they met the gods.

Was it the captain whose underling had stabbed a dagger through the back of his skull? Or the woman with a peacock mask whose secret lover took her hard in a storage tent, then before he finished, strangled her with a red ribbon, merely for the pleasure of it.

Beneath my palms, Klaus whimpered. He begged me to stop.

I pressed the bone dust into his eyes with more venom, hardly caring this was something I’d made up. A twisted desire I’d hoped might cause a bit of damage, and I was making it come to pass.

The pain it caused was startling and captivating all at once.

I was harming him—burning a memory he never asked for into his brain.

What more could I do?

I removed my hands when Klaus collapsed in heaving sobs. My mouth dropped and I hardly noticed when Kase took my arm.

″I think I forced him to take the memory. It was powerful. Painful. I . . . I’ve never done that.”

Kase cupped his hand beneath my foot and hoisted me up through the open window. “I hate to say I told you so, but I did say you had more power than you knew.”

I doubted he hated it all that much.

Before we’d made it through the window, a gaudy woman strode past the doorway, fanning her face. Her dark eyes dropped to the wounded trader, then swept up to find Kase and me.

She screamed.

″I’d suggest you move faster,” Kase said and practically shoved me outside.

The window was below the roof’s edge. I hooked my arms over the side and tried not to think of the short time my legs dangled over the streets before I leveraged onto the flat spine of the rooftop.

Calls for our capture disrupted the night. I snatched Kase by the hand once he pulled himself onto the wooden tiles.

He ran with me along the edge of the roof, and without a thought to consult me, sprang off the ledge. I must’ve screamed because my throat was raw when I twisted my ankle and stumbled onto the roof of the neighboring alehouse. A slanted shape, steep and narrow. I barely managed to keep from falling off the balcony he’d tossed me upon.

″All right?” Kase asked as he helped me to my feet.

I cut him with a glare as a reply.

On the streets, guests abandoned their merriment in the stone house and risked the sludge of the alleyways and muddy walks. If they weren’t chasing me, I’d laugh because all around the lesser folk watched from windows of alehouses or packed tenement slums, but no one lifted a finger to help their upper counterparts. Some even tossed dirty linens or rotting pomes at the party goers.

Kase sprinted along the gutter of the roof with expert balance. I tried using his hand to steady me, but I fell more than once.

″Jump,” he shouted right before he leapt off the alehouse.

This time I didn’t flail as much and didn’t roll my ankle as I landed in a cloud of dust and loose tiles onto a flat top of a crooked tenement. Folk whose sleep had been disturbed groaned inside, but no one came to investigate.

I gathered my skirts into my arms and hurried back to my feet.

Kase beckoned me to the edge. He pointed across a wider gap between the flat balcony and a sloped rooftop with gabled windows next door. “Go.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. The bunches of fabric in my arms were unnaturally heavy.

″Malin, aim for the window,” he said, his hand holding one side of my face. A smile curled on his lips. “Trust me, I’m plenty afraid.”

I didn’t know how it would help, but there was some comfort knowing the Nightrender had fear pounding through him much the same as me.

The head of a grungy Skítkast patrolman, drunk as the guests, stood on the rung of a ladder, and peeked over the tenement’s edge. He called for me to halt.

I ran.

With my gown still bundled in my hands, I vaulted across the open space. The skirt draped over my feet. The moment I reached the edge, with all the brocade under my shoes, I’d slip all the way down. A horrible thought to have during a freefall through the air.

Too soon, my chest smashed against the eaves of the roof. My ribs ached. Each breath was heavy, and my gown was like a stone in water.

I started sliding back, but shadows surrounded me. The same thick, cold comfort from the city square when Kase’s mesmer knocked me aside buoyed me in the air until a hand snatched my wrist.

Niklas’s white grin broke the dark. Half his body hung out the gabled window with Eero and four more Falkyns holding him steady inside. “Dress looks lovely.”

I freed a breathy laugh and found my footing on the wooden slats as he helped me through the window into a musty attic.

Kase crashed onto the roof after me, and in another breath stumbled inside.

″Want to mess with them a bit?” Niklas asked. “I always enjoy your tricks.”

Kase shook out his hands and looked to the streets where calls for our heads rose to the stars. “Spent what I had left. Still a little off from the eldrish.”

My fear of falling—he’d used it to hold me steady, surely. Or was it his fear that held me up?

It didn’t matter. I understood why he’d given Klaus to me. He didn’t have the strength to do it alone, and all of it made me angrier. Kase should’ve waited before doing something this outrageous.

Eero opened a crawlspace in the floorboards and signaled for us to follow.

″Productive night, then?” Niklas asked.

″Thanks to Malin,” Kase said once I’d slipped halfway through the escape door.

I didn’t know if he saw, but a smile spread over my lips before I dipped out of sight.