Page 59 of Brimstone

“Well, as I said before, Iamthe owner of the Brigand’s Bank. But I’m the joint owner. I have a business partner. We have a vault where we store our items—”

“Contraband.”

“All right, yes. Our contraband.” He pulled a sour face at me. “The door to that vault requires two keys to open it. I have one. Eric has the other. But since I disappeared some time ago and he probably spent a long time scouring the city for me and came up blank, I’m betting Eric employed the services of a vault breaker and has subsequently gone to ground with our goods.”

This was precisely the kind of nonsense I’d been expecting. I shoved the table back so I could stand up.

“Wait, where are you going?”

I hoped my expression communicated my feelings effectively, because I didn’t have the words. “I’m going back to the palace. I’m going to find Madra’s treasury, even if I have to tear the palace down brick by brick. And then I am going to findsomewhere hopefully a little less hot to wait until Saeris reopens the quicksilver. And then I am going home.”

“You don’t need todothat,” Carrion whispered loudly. “We just need to wait for the vault breaker. Once he gets here, we’ll have him tell us where Eric has taken our stuff and we’ll be in the clear. We’ll go and pick out what we need, nice and quietlike. I keep the silver. Eric can keep the gold and all the jewels. I get to help Yvelia. We find Hayden. We go home, and everyone’s happy.”

I was going to have no teeth left by the end of this excursion; I would have ground them all to dust. “So your plan is entirely contingent on this vault breaker showing up here?”

“Yes. But heisgoing to show.”

“And how the hell can you know that?”

“Because healwayscomes here once his dealings are done for the night.”

“How can you even tell what time it is?”

“There are clocks everywhere, Fisher. Look.” He pointed at a metal prong jutting out of the wall over by the door. It was bathed in light and casting a thin finger of shadow perpendicularly across the stonework.

“That isn’t a clock—”

Carrion jumped to his feet, nearly upending his beer in the process. “Vorath! Vorath Shah!”

A man stood in the tavern doorway, half in, half out. His black hair was wild, tinged with gray at his temples, sticking up in all directions. His dark brown eyes rounded with surprise when he looked in our direction.

“Where d’you—no,” Carrion sputtered. “Don’t you do it. Don’t you run!”

The man ran.

Carrion hurdled over the table, knocking both our beers over.

“CarrionfuckingSwift! If that’s another of my tables broken because of you!” hollered the woman behind the bar, but Carrion didn’t waste any time checking the furniture. He was sprinting after the man in the sun-stained shirt and dusty pants who had just fled the tavern without a backward glance.

I had no business chasing vault breakers through the streets of Zilvaren. And clearly that was who this Vorath Shah was. But I followed Carrion all the same, because the vault breaker Vorath Shah hadn’t been looking at Carrion when he’d bolted.

The stranger had been looking right atme.

14

BLOOD IN THE MILK

SAERIS

Total known dead: 1,373

Total known infected: 1,665

Estimated infected landmass: 2,039 hectares

TAL DIDN’T BLINKas he led the way through the chaotic halls of Ammontraíeth.

The high bloods knelt for me, but it washimthey shied away from, averting their eyes—only natural, really, considering the male could boil the blood in their veins with only a flick of his wrist. I’d watched it happen during my coronation, when Ereth’s followers had tried to climb the steps to the dais, and the horrific sight lingered with me even now. It made sense that the members of the Blood Court feared the male.