Page 41

Nevertheless, the figure crosses the threshold.

The lights show a man, perhaps Millie’s age or not far off, with a peerlessly handsome face, black hair, strange eyes, pale skin and a five o’clock shadow that’s almost blue.

And Millie can’t do anything about the physical reaction that rolls through her at the sight of him, the heat that starts at her curling toes and washes up, spends a little extra time at the apex of her thighs, then continues its journey until her face blushes the pinkest of pinks. Oh! Familiarity.

“But I’m here now.” The voice is deep, commanding, different , and immediately switches off any ardent desire that Millie might have had to see him naked and sprawled in her bed.

He’s looking through her with those eyes – black?

With a flaring hint of something else, here, then gone?

Surely that’s not right? – and she realises the familiarity seems entirely one-sided.

“An unhappy circumstance,” she says, standing, keeping the desk between them. She’s not as tall as he is, but she’s not some tiny thing to be intimidated, either. And he can also see the knives at her belt, the muscles in her bare arms that say she won’t quit without a fight. “Pandora? Time to go.”

Almost immediately there’s a rustling in the furthest room on her left, and the door opens.

A short, bearded man shuffles out, tears on his cheeks, but a smile making his features glow.

He repeats thank you, thank you, thank you to the thin, red-headed medium who follows, and to Millie as he exits The Bureau without a glance at the newcomer.

Pandora, running her hands down her dress front as if to ensure its neatness, gives the stranger a doubletake and says, “I don’t mind one more client. ”

Millie gives the girl a look that says it’s not up for negotiation.

The girl reddens and her freckles briefly disappear, then she nods, and passes close by the tall man.

The door closes behind her with a small slam that might be carelessness, might be a sulk.

Millie doesn’t take her eyes off the client.

“As I said, sir , we’re done for the day. All my staff are gone.”

“You’re here. You’re Millicent Broad.” He’s speaking as if the act is a recently learned skill. There’s something wooden in his use of her name, as if he’s dragged it up from somewhere, all unwilling. “You bring them back.”

Millie’s suddenly very cold; her talents are not spoken of so freely, not in the light. “Do you have your proof of payment?” she asks steadily, fingers itching to creep towards at least one of her knives.

Instead of a reply, he tosses a leather pouch onto the desktop; the noise it makes upon landing is almost a gasp, almost a protest. Millie can see the thing’s weight has scuffed the polished wood; his expression says all’s settled.

That it’s only a matter of money, as if she’s a joy-house girl. “There’s more than enough in there.”

“Nevertheless, sir , that’s not how it works. I don’t take cash here. If you’ve heard of my business, you’re aware that a proof of deposit at Billings Bank is required. Their tellers know my account, how much to transfer, they will give you the correct proof to show me. I make no exceptions.”

“But I wish to engage you now . This very moment.” His eyes darken even more and his forehead creases into a frown. The marks around his mouth grow deeper, like furrows of rage. “ You bring them back .”

“You appear to be under a misapprehension. If I do not wish to take on a client, you don’t get a choice. And therefore there’s no point in you returning on the morrow.”

“But I’m the—”

“—Crown Prince Augustus. I know who you are.” Mind you, she didn’t know it three weeks ago when they were entangled and the name he’d offered was ‘Gus’; or at least, not at the start, although in hindsight perhaps she should have.

Nor when they locked eyes in the anteroom of a joy-house close enough to the sunline that she’d be less likely to encounter anyone she knew, and apparently far enough from it that he’d been similarly convenienced.

It was only after, when they’d begun to speak, that she noticed the tattoo behind his right ear, in the spot where princes and princesses are marked.

That was when she made her excuses and ran.

Despite knowing her name, however, he doesn’t seem to recall her .

“Your position entitles you to nothing here.”

“I will—”

“You will not. You’re alone, none of your guardsmen here to fight your battles, and I have no compunction about slitting your throat, sir , and stuffing you into the incinerator in the basement. By the time you’re missed, your ashes will have drifted across the bay.”

There’s a spark in the prince’s eyes. Millie realises it’s a red tint that’s been flaring in his gaze, and she remembers those eyes were blue three weeks ago.

His hand goes to the hilt of the sword at his side, and she points at the polished floor with both index fingers, drawing a circle around herself that appears as a line of salt, fine but definite.

Distinct. The crown prince – or the thing wearing him – recoils, then halts, steels himself, tries to pretend no fear.

Millie makes no other move; no matter what she’s said, murdering a prince isn’t easy, and she’d have to lug his enormous corpse down a lot of stairs, not to mention clean up in here.

All of which feels like too much trouble.

Crown Prince Augustus steps away, reefs open the door. He points a gloved finger at Millie and growls, “This isn’t over.”

Then he’s gone and Millie’s around the desk, slamming the door shut, and throwing the lock, breathing hard and wondering what she’s done to deserve such a visitation.

It hits her that she’s not sure whether she’s more annoyed about that or irked that the hours they spent, in and on each other, had not clung to his memory.

Insult to injury, no matter that something was clearly using him as a skin-suit.

Yet he came here ; she’d not told him what she did, offered no more than her first name, never mentioned The Bureau, and certainly had not uttered a word about bringing back the dead.

***

Millie waits nearly an hour, and when she does finally leave, it’s not the easy way.

A rope ladder she keeps for emergencies is rolled out the back window of the necro-room (which overlooks a tent-covered roof where rugs and carpets are stored for the shop in its lower levels), down to the street below.

It’s definitely not her favourite way to exit – rope ladders are snaky and wilful, and skirts aren’t the most compatible with such activities – but it means she’s unobserved, or most likely so.

Once Millie untangles herself, she’s able to slip along the cobbles in the darkness, towards the Inn of the Painted Face where she hopes there’ll be some answers.

It’s early in the evening, or late in the afternoon, and the tavern is already rather full.

That, of course, assumes there was a time during the day – or the week or the month or the year – when it was ever sparsely populated, and that is a very big assumption.

Millie drifts in behind a group of adventurers – all women, well-armed, dressed like pirates and smelling like a perfume shop – and uses them as camouflage until they’re well into the large front room filled with tables and benches and folk rapidly sinking into their cups.

Then she sidles to the left and into a narrow passage, following it along to a door banded with copper shaped like ivy.

The passageway is long enough to discourage most people, to give them second thoughts about their direction when seeking a bathroom or bedroom or cloakroom or the kitchen to check where their meal is.

Millie Broad knocks three times (not being given a key still irks, after all these years).

It takes an inordinate amount of time for the door to be hauled open, its inhabitant looming out.

Faustus Belisarius, pallid and bald and skeleton-thin, squints blearily; either he started drinking early or simply didn’t stop from last night, or the night before that.

When he realises it’s her, he looks surprised, then vexed, and tries to shut the door again.

“Oh, no no !” Millie wedges her boot into the gap, thankful for the steel-capped footwear because it’s the sole thing stopping him from crushing her foot, the mood he’s in.

She quickly says the only words she knows will distract him.

“The royal family.” He grunts, lets her pass.

She can smell the potent brandy he’s been imbibing.

The room looks small, overcrowded with books and all the tools of a bookbinder, but she knows that behind the shelving at the far end there are more shelves, more books, quite far back.

Its tenancy was creatively acquired just after what’s called in some quarters ‘The Fall of the Last Great House’ (the previous royal family), in others ‘Marquette’s Just Rebellion’.

Millie takes the stool furthest from the fireplace where Faustus has a cauldron of something unidentifiable bubbling.

In the event of an explosion, she doesn’t want to be too close.

The heat, however, is inescapable. Sweat breaks out on her skin quickly, soaks through her bodice, beads her brow and dribbles down her face through her makeup – she’ll look like a clown by the time she’s done – and bubbles on her spine, her thighs, calves. Ugh.

“Well? What?”

“The crown prince.”

“Yes?”

“What’s happened to him?”

“How should I know?”

“Because you keep an eye on them: King Marquette, his wife-of-the-moment, his nephew and heir. You know their every move. You did it with the last lot, you’ve been doing it with this one.”