CHAPTER THREE
Ky crossed her arms and stared at the jewels set on her velvet-covered tray without touching them. Ackles wandered the store, trailing her fingers over random items, and Cima tried not to be distracted by the other woman’s movements.
Not when Ky hadn’t spoken in a full five minutes. The shop, always kept on the uncomfortable edge of cool, pressed close and humid around her, too many things and corners and noises.
The noises were mostly Ky’s intricate ship clock, Cima’s heart, slamming itself against her ribs without concern for her well-being, and Ackles’s footsteps. Still her ears twitched, imagining strangers bursting in and demanding information about their latest score.
Impossible, that. Ackles had locked the door behind them when they entered the shop, returning Ky’s raised eyebrow with her own. Anyone with a need for their usual fence, occasional boss, sometimes friend, and current treasure-mover had ways of signaling the woman without crashing into someone else’s business.
Ky did nothing by halves, and therefore no one interrupted her more than once.
Cima kept her eyes locked on the other woman, not the interlocked brass bars of the chronometer clicking the fractions of minutes. Unlike Ackles, she didn’t lose herself in the countless marvels of Ky’s shops—objects from across the sea and under it, toys to occupy the wealthy, devices she’d never sell because the people of Broadside had no idea what they were. And it was safer to focus on Ky, not the treasure on her tray.
In the focused light Ky trained on the pieces, they had become even more intense. Cima’s fingers twitched to scoop them up and run out the door, and if her gaze dropped to them a weight flattened her chest. They were literally breathtaking. How could Ky not react?
Because at present, Ky had done nothing but stare and breathe for a stretch of time so endless a drip of sweat beaded under Cima’s braid. She held as motionless as the older woman, and just when she thought she might break first, Ky blew out her breath on the edge of a soft curse.
“Where?” Ky slid her ringed hands casually into her deep pockets, affecting the lounge that indicated they were wasting her time.
Cima lifted a shoulder, returning the fence’s careless ease with her own, only slightly less practiced version, and tilted her head. “Thievery, not scavenge, so no need to disclose.”
“You know that’s not the way.” Ky’s throaty voice hinted at a laugh, though her light blue eyes remained watchful, not amused. “What if I try to sell them back to a wronged customer?”
“When in the history of our time together have we set you up in such a way?” Cima stretched her back and leaned an elbow on the counter next to the velvet tray. Ky’s glance followed the motion, but Cima knew better than to gloat over a temporary victory. “This time is no different.”
“Not at all, hm?” Ky rested her hip against her side of the counter, and Cima followed the direction of the other woman’s eyeline to the deeply purple gem draped in improbably fine chainmail. Against the black velvet, it sparkled and shimmered even more than it had in Ackles’s hand when she set it down. “Seems of a slightly different quality.”
The five other pieces gleamed in their own manner; a broach of perfect emeralds set in gold to evoke some sort of small reptilian creature, an inkwell carved from an unblemished aquamarine crystal, a filigreed pocket watch that chimed delicately when opened, a pendant luminescent with half a dozen colors that returned light like a prism, and a silver bright ring studded with flawless blood red jewels, each the size of a pinky nail. Every individual piece was worth more than Ky had ever paid them for a legitimate job. Their value combined?
A sum worthy of a Council Seat, were there to ever be one outside of the five families. Could a Seat be set aside for purchase, allowing a new family to buy into the Council? Terio would be an incredible Councilor—Broadside would never know what hit it, and they’d get a bit of a break from her usually undivided attention.
A win for everyone. Cima’s favorite.
“We went to Terio’s fortune teller,” Cima said, as though she were admitting something. Maybe she was. “Picked a few houses that hadn’t been knocked over in a while.”
“Not ones on the docket for scavenging?” Their fence had a way of angling her head that brought her bright yellow hair partly over her eyes. The move managed to make her stare more penetrating, rather than less.
“That would be encroachment, Ky. You taught us better than that.” Cima widened her own dark eyes, all innocence.
Ky snorted, but relaxed against the counter, mollified. “Got a good double-eye finally, did she?”
Fortune tellers all carried some variation of a stone amulet, carved on either side with a stylized eye, but Cima had only ever heard Ky call soothsayers that particular nickname. “Got lucky on the first?”
“It was a long night.” Cima tapped the edge of the tray, and the ring shifted, glimmered more brightly in the light of Ky’s line of hung lanterns. She curled her fingers back to keep from reaching for it. “But worth it, clearly.”
“Clearly.” Ky chuckled, the warmth of the sound relaxing the bulk of the tension twisted through Cima’s middle.
“What are you thinking you’ll get for it?”
“Enough stacks to buy a house. And not a squat in Muckers. We want Hiane.”
“Hiane outskirts, maybe.” A pause, the corner of Ky’s mouth quirked like she might smile. “You think I have access to that kind of weight?”
“Yep.” Cima blinked, caught the subtle shift of Ky’s posture and continued as though she’d always meant to, “I have faith you can access it, at any rate. Seen you do more for less.”
No daggers flashed, so Cima had to assume she’d avoided offending Ky or indicating she had any idea how much money the other woman kept on the premises.
“Either way, this isn’t enough for a house. Maybe a floor in the Terraces. Was there more?” Ky’s expression didn’t change, but Cima could feel the heat of their fence’s regard on the side of her face.
When she lifted her head to check, Ky’s attention had focused on the jewels in front of her. “Not yet.”
“Then stacks enough to get your lot a floor’s worth of living in Terraces. It’ll be better than your flop.” Ky smiled, finally, the expression sharp as a blade. “Until you bring me more.”
“If we find more, we’ll bring it here.” Cima straightened, held her face still so Ky wouldn’t suspect how her heart hammered in her throat.
“Do that,” she responded. “More like this, and we’ll have you in Hiane before long, I’m sure.” Ky swept up the tray and spun toward her back room in one easy movement. “And don’t touch that, Ackles!”
“I’m not touching anything!” Ackles called back, indignant as a Hiane child caught stealing a treat.
“Don’t lie to the nice lady before she brings us our money,” Cima said, given the thick curtain between Ky’s front and back room wouldn’t block their voices. Ky was hardly above listening in.
Ackles swerved around the three rows of shelves between her and Cima and huffed out her breath. “I don’t lie to Ky. That’s part of the issue,” she added, raising her voice for the second sentence before dropping it to a more normal level, “But I was thinking about buying that darling little miniature house she’s had here since forever. You remember, the blue and yellow one Meesh used to stare at when he was, what . . . ten or so?”
“He asked if we could find magic to make him just a little smaller, so he could live in it.” Cima’s lips twitched upward, though she bit back the smile.
“Gods, he was so tiny.” Ackles shook her head, glanced sidelong toward the curtain, and then gestured in the direction she’d come from. “What do you think? Joke we couldn’t get a whole Hiane house yet, but I brought us a mansion to grow?”
“I think everyone would laugh, remember how much it cost, be sad we spent the money . . . and then . . .” There she went again, smiling until her face hurt. She couldn’t say it, not in the dubious privacy of Ky’s shop, but from Ackles’s near identical grin she knew her closest friend and long-adopted sister heard the unspoken words: and then remember it doesn’t matter, because soon we’ll have more money than the Council.
Maybe not all the Council families combined, but certainly as much as a single Councilor. Rumor had it the Coradons had faded over the generations, scrambling to secure their latest Council Seat. Maybe Cima’s crew could replace the Coradons, give themselves their own family name. It wasn’t like any of the current Seats were particularly helpful to the people of Broadside. She’d briefly entertained the idea of putting Terio on the Council, to watch the city straighten up. But maybe instead their family would nominate Meesh, and watch Broadside burn.
“Maybe next time,” Ackles said, the edge of a sigh at the end of her sentence. Because again, they shared an unexpressed thought—Ky would question why they were wasting the money on something so impractical, if they didn’t have a line on a great deal more to sell. Scavenging jobs might be steady and pay enough to live, but one impressive find was not enough to change spending habits Ky had watched them develop over the last decade and change.
Not without rousing some measure of suspicion, and as well as Cima could move through the city without being noticed, there was always someone better. And Ky, of all people, would be able to deploy such a person at a moment’s notice.
“Maybe it’s enough to buy you a fancy berth on the Amber Edge.” Cima tapped her chin mock thoughtfully. “Get you that deeper learning Ky’s always going on about. Broadside’s a big city, there’s probably room for a second sailor courtesan spy assassin fence Council contractor.”
“I can hear you.” The snap in Ky’s tone set both Cima and Ackles to laughing, and a moment later the curtain pulled back. “The disrespect in today’s children . . .” The older woman huffed, but there was a nondescript string-tied bag bulging in her hand and a twitch of a smile on her lips. One of her rings glinted in the lamp light, but the others were carved of stone, small pools of shadow in their bright metal settings.
“We haven’t been children in a long time,” Cima replied loftily, laughter threading the words. There was truth enough in the statement, but the bubble of light in her midsection couldn’t be bothered concerning itself with mourning for lost years—not when the ones ahead were so promising.
“Be a little weird if we were,” Ackles added with a pointed look at Ky, who snorted and extended the bag with their payment toward them.
Cima ducked her head so neither woman would see her growing grin, and squeezed her aching hand tight in her pocket. Step one, completed. Ky had taken the first pieces and paid them accordingly, they’d meet the others at the Barren, and make plans for their next round of loot dispersion while they drank and celebrated.
She and Ackles had never lost hope that the path ahead would be good for them, no matter how rocky it had been. Now they’d been proven right.
It would only get better from here.
The crooked wooden door of the Barren, the fifth iteration of interchangeable crooked wooden doors over the last few years, swung open with a reluctant creak lost in the wash of noise spilling from inside.
Cima had a single moment to remember the stubborn, smug door in the depths of the Liddow, and then forgot it again as they were presented with an unlikely crowd in the large open space of the Barren’s lower floor.
Somewhere in the mass, sounds adjacent to music clawed through the clamor, a peppy beat Cima couldn’t begin to place. Smells rushed at them almost as quickly, the usual odors of beer and various flavors of smoke near overwhelmed by the weight of semi-washed bodies. The long bar, made of driftwood and reclaimed wood from countless destroyed houses and scavenged blocks, stretched to their right, only partially visible between at least twenty bodies, none of whom were immediately recognizable.
Weirder and weirder—they’d claimed the Barren as their regular meet up at least fifteen years ago, and had long learned its usual ebbs and flows. Two weeks after a new shipment had cleared the Harborwatch, half of the Ossington and a few of the Muckers regulars would spill in, an ambitious busker would set up in a corner, and Mandiva would bellow he was only one person, and everyone could wait their turn for refills. After a lock down the crowd was small, and somber, and almost entirely familiar faces. During a festival there might be strangers, but not quite at this volume, physically or sonically, and it took a full handful of seconds before Cima could do more than blink.
“What is going on?” Ackles asked, in a tone of awed wonder. Her eyes had gone wide, her smile bright and her posture loose.
“What is going on?” Cima echoed, softer and rather more suspicious. She half turned and shifted the cross strap of Ackles’s fishskin bag to be secure at Ackles’s front rather than vulnerable at her side.
Ackles grinned, then gestured above, and Cima blanked her expression as she followed the gesture. The Barren’s second and third floors were more irregular than the entrance, wide balconies with tables and semi-walled booths for occasional privacy, and usually half full at best.
The second floor had at least thirty more people, half of whom were hanging over the rickety reclaimed wood of the railing as though they wanted to be dropped on the crowd below.
Everyone had a drink or two in their hands, yelling, laughing, drinking, waving . . . A blink, and Cima understood Ackles wasn’t gesturing at that, but a different absurdity. Meesh, who had decided to walk the thin top of the railing with a mug in each hand and scarcely a wobble in his step.
“Free drinks!” someone screamed in her face as they worked their way inside. Neither noise nor music nor Meesh’s absurd movements got any better with proximity, but Cima managed a quick smile and a quicker movement between the yeller and a small group of guffawing strangers without losing her hold on Ackles’s upper arm.
“One drink, one drink free!” Mandiva shouted in yet another stranger’s general direction as they approached the bar. Half the faces were ones she knew or at least recognized, but there was an impressive number of new people.
Did we conquer plagues or something? She would have asked Ackles, despite knowing her friend couldn’t possibly know any more than she herself did, but there was no way to make it subtle in such a mixed, and outrageously noisy, crowd.
Mandiva caught sight of them, and the tall, bearded man snapped his attention onto them so fast Cima braced herself for what her sinking gut told her would happen next.
“Festival terms?” he asked. The pleading look on his usually taciturn face stilled her reflexive urge to decline. Besides, their payment from Ky would be safer with Ackles behind the bar than amid this madness.
“Bar or crowd?”
“Bar, the both of you. I’ve got coverage for both floors, but it means I’m—wait your drowning turn!” Mandiva glared to Cima’s right, where a wobbly man in a finely made but faded green shirt had shoved in to demand his free drink. The man held up both hands, mouth and eyes wide, and the Barren’s owner and primary bartender rolled his eyes. “Needing help over here. Kalli has extra aprons and shirts in the back, and it’ll slow down before too long because WE’RE ALMOST OUT OF FREE DRINKS!” He pitched that last at a full, impressive bellow, and Cima winced even as she wondered if the tales that Mandiva used to work the docks might be true after all. She knew he’d run with a crew in his wild young days, but there was a mysterious period of time between that and his taking over the Barren. After giving himself a little space, Mandiva spun the bracelet of small dark stones on his wrist as if to ward away all the strangers’ sicknesses, and dove back into his work.
Ackles tugged her through the pressing bodies. At the far end of the bar they pushed through the heavy door to the back room. Unlike the front door into the Barren, this one was usually away from any altercations, and had only once been replaced in their memory. While the ruckus didn’t drop away entirely on the other side, even the slight lessening set her shoulders down entire inches.
“What under the—” Before Cima could finish the question, she caught a flicker of motion and put herself between it and Ackles.
Kalli, Mandiva’s niece and usual barmaid, emerged fully from behind two wine barrels and offered a teary smile. “He hoped you two would turn up. Want to change?”
“Uh, no, first what’s wrong—”
“What is happening?”
Ackles and Cima spoke at once, both concerned, and glanced at each other before turning their focus back to the slightly younger woman.
“I . . . I’m fine, I’m sorry, it’s just a lot out there and I needed a minute.” She gestured at the cart propped under one of the barrels of wine and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. “It’s all your boy’s fault.”
“Gaudi?” Ackles asked, and took a full step toward Kalli before the barmaid waved it off. Gaudi had a pretty face and knew it, and he’d dallied with Kalli here and there, but for his playful sweetness to have inspired this reaction had clearly surprised Ackles as much as it had Cima.
“No, Meesh.” The barmaid tucked her hair back, pulling a strand free that had wrapped around one of her stone earrings. Though Kalli didn’t believe they truly warded off sickness, not like her uncle did, she’d proclaimed more than once she’d do whatever superstitious nonsense it took to fend off the many forms of sickness that came from dealing with the public.
“Meesh!?” they exclaimed simultaneously, and the shock must have been clear on their faces because after a long moment of gaping at them, Kalli huffed a snort that turned into a giggle that ended with her head thrown in a cackle.
“Your faces . . . no, not—not like that.” Kalli rubbed her face, cleared her eyes again for an entirely different reason, and gestured wildly with her hands. “Well, that helped, I think.” She laughed again, and Cima bit her tongue to keep from demanding clarification. Kalli would get there. She always did. “He came in at the top of the night and said he was paying off all your tabs.”
Oh no.
“Then he slapped down a ruby the size of my face and I thought Mandiva was going to swallow his teeth.” She took a deep breath, spun one of her earrings, and Cima considered swallowing her own teeth. “Mandiva said you didn’t owe that much, since all of you worked the last festival week, and he—that boy said he’d pay off all the tabs, and free drinks for all his friends until Mandiva called it square.”
“He did what?” Ackles asked, her tone polite and inquiring and not at all the growl of frustration forming in Cima’s throat.
“I don’t even know how word got out so fast. Or, I suppose . . . well, Old Tem was setting up to practice a new set, and then he was gone. You know how slowly he moves, so it must be every musician in Broadside flew here on wings, and brought seventeen of their own friends, each.” Kalli’s eyes shifted from one to the other of them and she shrugged. “So you don’t know what he was up to either? Figures. That boy is a menace.”
“I . . . we only let him out of our sight for an hour.” Ackles laughed, and it sounded light and careless. Cima resisted the urge to splutter at both of them, which came in second only to the effort it took to suppress herself from sprinting out into the Barren proper and tackling Meesh off his perch.
“So you didn’t see it?” Kalli’s tone and demeanor changed instantly, her gaze soft and unfocused, one hand partly reached out as if to grasp something. “It’s the most perfect thing I ever saw. Red like the sunset after a storm, with a speck of darker red in its heart—not like a flaw,” she added hastily, and her eyelids fluttered. “I don’t think it has a flaw at all. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even when the Councilors do the Walk in their most amazing finery.”
Cima wanted to note they were all fairly certain the Councilors wore nothing close to their finest for the Winter Walk that commemorated Broadside’s survivors of the Cataclysm. Despite the Watch and their Harbor compatriots, no one could walk through Muckers dripping in wealth and not lose a little of it to some enterprising individual or crew.
A reminder for why Meesh shouldn’t have charged into the Barren and flaunted any of their find, no matter how nice the sentiment. They’d agreed on paying Mandiva back, yes. Quietly. Privately. Discreetly.
The chaos outside the door behind them couldn’t have been further from any of that. And delaying dealing with it wasn’t going to help, either.
“Well, let’s get to work taking care of the custom Meesh brought.” Finally able to trust her voice, Cima brushed her hands together and rocked forward on her toes. “And we’ll take it out of his hide later.”
“Oh.” Kalli startled a little, then came back into focus. “Yes. That little rascal—I wish he could tell us where he found that treasure—yes, sorry, later, I know.” The barmaid nodded, perhaps to herself, and pointed behind her to the standing drawers against the far wall. “Anything you need for the night is in the usual place.”
The Barren’s back room served as the less organized of its two storerooms, and was the one Cima had seen most often. The one with beautiful shelves of bottles and dried goods and cleaning rags was kept obsessively neat by Mandiva’s mother, who had lost mobility over the years but not her ability to send interlopers packing with a single gesture.
This room served as general storage and a resting place for Mandiva’s endless projects. The jumble of old tables and chairs that Mandiva had, or needed to, or would, restore had not appreciably changed since the last time they were back here, but given the furniture had to be replaced far more frequently than the doors, that didn’t mean it was all the same pieces. The aisles were wide enough to make passage easy, and by the time Kalli maneuvered her barrel out to the bar, Cima and Ackles had the cabinet open and the standard Barren shirts—soft, square-cut, darkly colored and cap sleeved—shaken out and examined for spots or holes.
There were none. Not a surprise, as Kalli had never slipped up on such a thing before, but it had been a wild night. They changed quickly, with a minimum of bared skin in defense against the chill air. Cima tied both their half aprons to turn the widely cut shirts into a more figure-flaunting shape, and together they voyaged out into the mayhem that the Barren had become.
If the drowned and forgotten gods had remembered to leave one blessing, it was that Cima didn’t have time to catch her breath, never mind think, for the next few hours. Good for her little brother, as her banked annoyance with Meesh didn’t have much chance to burst into deeper flame.
As night trekked closer to dawn, and the free drinks dried up, the crowd too dispersed. By the time the semi-transparent windows of the second floor demonstrated the sun had, in fact, begun clearing the horizon, only a handful of regulars remained.
Meesh, Terio, and Gaudi had started cleaning the second and third floors, so Kalli and two of Mandiva’s other nieces spelled Ackles and Cima on the first floor. Mandiva, ensconced on a stool by the front door, barked an occasional order that Kalli and her cousins for the most part ignored. The people in the Barren by dawn were old hats, even if not the sort to get pressed into helping like Cima and her crew.
Perhaps because those regulars hadn’t wandered into the bar years ago with eyes big in their half-starved faces, flushed with ill-gotten gains and determined to drink themselves warm. Mandiva had taken one look at the group of semi-grown and fully feral children and put them immediately to work, gave them a back room to crash in, a meal, and promise of more work on the bar’s busiest days.
Or maybe Old Tem had in fact had made for a similar picture upon arrival, a decade before Cima and her friends, and that’s why Mandiva put up with his caterwauling. Tem wasn’t half bad with the range of stringed instruments he played, but his voice . . . he had a voice meant for humming, or silence, though when the Barren was full it was easier to ignore.
After a few hours, ears ringing from the hectic din, Cima could have slingshot a perra pit into the man’s too-open mouth to lodge in his throat and smiled while the man choked on it.
She didn’t, and the fact that no one appeared at her elbow to shower her with accolades and gold for her impossible self-restraint was further evidence the gods had been well and truly drowned.
After a beat, she lifted her head off her folded arms and blinked slowly at the older man crooning off key in the far corner. “Guess we’ve been rewarded enough for one night,” she murmured, and Ackles unslumped from the chair across from her.
“Say again?”
Cima scrubbed her hands under her hair and then ran her fingers down her mostly intact braid. “Exhaustion has made me delirious. Ignore me. Should we get the others and make a graceful exit?”
“Don’t know how graceful I can possibly be.” Ackles pressed her hands flat on the table as though willing herself to stand, but barely budged from the wide bench.
“Are you heading out for the night?” Mandiva asked, his back against the worn stone of the Barren’s interior wall. “My mother made enough breakfast casserole to share. And I think I’ll earn enough extra once I sell off that anchor weight Meesh gave me to cover a few breakfasts.”
A warm meal was not to be missed. They were hardly in the same straits they’d been as desperate younglings, but at the flop they most often subsisted on hard cheeses, old breads, and the fish jerky sympathetic fisherman marked down at end week. None of them knew anything about cooking, certainly not like Mandiva’s mother. Without a cooling cellar or a reliable hearth in their building, those were the safest food options, and it would be a few days before they could finagle a move to the Terraces. If that’s what they chose to do.
They still hadn’t had much time or privacy to discuss what came next. Nor would they here, not in detail, no matter how kind Mandiva and his family had been to them over the years.
Cima considered his expression, when they were safely set up in Hiane and returned to take the Barren under patronage, and it warmed her stomach as much as the thought of the breakfast casserole. Still, it wouldn’t do any of them any good to make promises, or give word about their change in circumstances, not before the deals were done. Not more than Meesh had already given away, at any rate. Her crew she could trust not to get greedy and act on selfish, deadly impulse, but no one else.
It was already dawn, and they could last a little longer. They’d have the rest of their lives to lounge in the comfortable laziness of the fabulously wealthy. “Breakfast sounds lovely,” she answered, forcing herself to sit fully upright, and Ackles made a soft noise of agreement.
“Terio!” Cima stood, stretched, and didn’t immediately collapse back onto her bench. She tilted her head back and projected louder than necessary, because Tem was still mourning a long-dead man’s lost love in six different keys. None of which were correct. Mandiva had to be tone-deaf, or head-rung from his crew days. “Gather your boys. Mandiva’s offered to feed us!”
“When you’re done cleaning, you heathen creatures,” Mandiva called after, though he’d already heaved himself off his stool and ambled toward his mother’s sacred storeroom. Next to that was the kitchen, and the hall to the family’s apartments, none of which Cima had seen more than a handful of times.
“I’m done,” Terio replied, from some unseen corner of the second floor. “Meesh still has floors.”
“Meesh has cleaned plenty,” Meesh declared, sticking his head over the third-floor balcony. “Meesh hasn’t eaten since yesterday, and has worked very hard of late.”
“Meesh deserves everything he’s getting.” A small thump from the back corner above them indicated Terio had dropped her cleaning implements on her way to the stairs. “And can continue to do so.”
“Well that’s nice.” Meesh’s usually sarcastic tone held an undercurrent of satisfaction. Cima wondered if they all did, no matter how neutral they attempted to be, because they did, didn’t they? Deserve everything they’d gotten.
Meesh a little extra, of course, for flashing the ruby and crowding the Barren, but maybe it would be nice, to look back and know that they’d both brought so much custom in for Mandiva and also helped him serve it, one last time.
“Can Gaudi come down for breakfast?” Their muscle sounded tentative, but when he leaned over the top floor rail Gaudi’s pretty face was dominated by an ear-to-ear grin. “Or do I have to do extra punish stuff too?”
“What under the dark skies could you possibly need to be punished for, besides toasting a thousand times tonight?” Terio appeared from the stairway and tossed her hair over her shoulder without so much as a glance upward. Her posture and arch tone indicated something had passed between the two, but that was such a common occurrence, she and Ackles were better off ignoring it. Which they did, after only a quick, shared glance.
“I’ll help bring the food out,” Cima offered, because if she kept moving she would neither have to ask what happened nor risk nodding off at the table before a delicious meal could be devoured.
“Do we get to eat too?” Tem asked, finally ending his song on a beat that could be considered a note.
“No. Anyone still in here that isn’t staff, temporary or permanent, is beyond their welcome, can tip their waitress, and see themselves out.” Kalli blew him a kiss, then cleared two empty tankards from in front of the last few lingering customers.
“Usually if staff is eating, we’ve stayed too long.” The scrawnier one staggered to his feet and pulled his sturdier friend with him. Cima didn’t know them well, but had seen them close down the Barren more than once. “Good work tonight. Thanks for sharing.”
“Everyone’s gotta pay their tab eventually. Might as well make it a party when it happens.” Mandiva grunted, exchanged back slaps with both men, and caught up with Cima in two long strides. After the crooked door swung behind the last of the regulars, Mandiva held open the back storeroom’s door and gestured Cima ahead of him.
“And after you all finish, no need to help clean this up. Kalli’s baby sister is coming in for laundry anyway.”
“Baby nothing.” Kalli followed Cima in with an armful of cleaning rags and rubbed one of her ears on her shoulder to untangle her hair from her earring. “The girl’s ten and thinks she should be out on her own.”
Cima offered a tired smile. “Want me to tell her what that’s like?”
Kalli snorted, but paused to brush Cima’s elbow after she dumped her rags in the laundry sack. “If I thought her ability to listen would match your effort to tell her.”
Mandiva’s mother was nowhere to be seen—at her age, hopefully she’d gone to bed to take some rest well before the sun came up—but a covered tray waited atop the old iron stove, two thick gloves on either side of it.
“Use the wooden plates from the bottom cabinet.” Kalli grabbed a handful of luridly blue napkins and tossed them over her shoulder, then grabbed a set of forks. “I’ll throw ’em in with the last tankards to soak and my sister can do those, too, since our cousins are on their way home. Earn a penny or two to go toward her independence.”
Cima mustered another smile and did as she was told, but that voice in the back of her head told her to find Kalli’s baby sister and make sure she understood Broadside was no place for an unattended child. She’d been lucky to find Ackles at the charity house, and Ackles had Terio, otherwise . . .
She shoved both voice and memories into the corner of her brain they belonged in. With an effort, she balanced her stack of plates in one hand and held the door for Mandiva and the food with her body. Her left hand remained curled in her pocket—she hadn’t been able to keep up one-handed throughout the night, and though there was still no visible injury, the ache had spread from palm to wrist.
Gaudi had made his way to the table, sitting on the bench next to Ackles and across from Terio. Tem leaned at the far end, his hip against the table. Regular thumps from above said Meesh was still cleaning, and wanted them to know it. Mandiva shot a look between lingering musician and cranky cleaner with a weariness Cima understood in her bones.
“You get a small piece, Tem,” he said, clearly choosing to leave Meesh for later. Purveyors of fine rubies earned some measure of restraint, after all. “Seeing as you weren’t invited, but two of my waitresses are headed home.”
“Staff, you said. What’s the house musician if not someone who worked the night?”
“You weren’t strictly asked, were you?”
“Volunteered to save you the effort.” Tem winked—for all he couldn’t carry a tune, he was a tolerable person. No one came to the Barren to hear him, but he didn’t chase custom away, either. A fine line.
“Doesn’t pay your tab down though, does it.” Mandiva sighed, and Tem took a seat with a flourish.
“No, but the boy paid all the tabs tonight, I thought, so aren’t I starting fresh?” Tem’s grin could have matched their own, pleased as it was.
Mandiva sighed again, with more effort, and dropped the covered tray on the table with an audible thunk. Though at least some of the weight was the cast iron of the pan underneath, Cima’s mouth watered at the evidence of the casserole’s heft. Mandiva never offered to feed them if portions were scanty, but if this were as thick as her saliva had determined it to be, she wouldn’t have to eat again until they were packing up to return to the Liddow the following night.
Ackles and Gaudi had fastened their eyes to the tray as well, not even Mandiva and Tem’s usual sniping distracting them. Terio tapped her fingers on the table, then half turned from the table and whistled, one-three-two, the sound less piercing when not aimed directly at them.
Cima’s throbbing head appreciated the effort.
“Am I summoned?” Meesh’s small face didn’t appear, but his voice pitched effortlessly from wherever he was. “Am I allowed to stop cleaning and eat?”
“Are you done?” Mandiva and Terio asked in unison, and Cima swallowed back a laugh, almost choking on it when Meesh’s reply was wordless and indignant, suitable to an angry cat in an alley, or Tem’s singing voice.
“It’s clean up there, and if I missed anything you can take it out of my pay.” Sarcasm aside, there was nothing but joy in his face when he appeared on the stairway. He nearly missed the last step, and even Cima’s exhausted body sat upright. Meesh never missed a step. How much had he had to drink?
Even as the thought occurred, Meesh recovered and threw himself over the last few stairs to the ground, landing with only a stagger. He bowed, and added, “I’ve worked hard. And now I could eat my weight.”
“Only slightly less scary than hearing Gaudi say it,” Cima replied, and Ackles tipped her hand back and forth to indicate more or less. “Thank you again, Mandiva.”
“It means something, that your crew had a good night, thought of your tab to me, and stayed to help.” His words emerged gruff and he didn’t meet anyone’s eyes, choosing instead to lift the tray and reveal some delicious concoction of egg, sausage, cheese, and at least two vegetables. Cima couldn’t have said if the warmth radiating from the center of her was for his words or the rich scent of food she hadn’t had to make, steal, or scavenge for.
“You’ve been home for us more than once, Mandiva.” Terio leaned forward enough to briefly touch the stone-studded bracelet on his wrist. “Least we could do.”
“And it was my idea, so everyone is welcome.” Meesh plopped next to Gaudi and Tem slid down to make space for him, then Kalli returned with a steaming pitcher and a tray of half cups.
“No honey until next market, but I think we all earned an herbal treat.” She set the pitcher down near the casserole, the battered thick wood of the table more than capable of supporting its heat without adding a noticeable mark to its scuffed surface, and Ackles clapped her hands.
“Kalli, may a relic fall out of the sky to your feet and bless you forever.” She stretched her arms out toward the steaming liquid, though it would have to sit a while longer. The fragrant grasses that grew along the marsh could make a delicious compote or disgusting swamp water, depending on how they were dried and how long they were allowed to steep. Cima was hesitant to indulge, as the wave of lassitude sure to follow plus the events of the last stretch of hours might tip her right into sleep when she needed to stay up and talk to the crew, but tomorrow . . . tomorrow would be soon enough for planning. This new dawn, they could eat, and toast each other, and grin like idiots.
They had plenty of time.
As though reading her mind, Gaudi cleared his throat, stood up again, and offered a toast. “To a life as long as you want, to not a want in your life, to the ones behind you and the ones beside you and the ones—”
“I swear to the depths if you say beneath you,” Terio muttered, and everyone laughed. Gaudi pulled a sentimental toast from time to time, but mostly he preferred the ones only appropriate for a rowdy night at the Barren.
“—the ones you couldn’t do it without,” he continued, as though long-suffering. Maybe it was what he was going to say the whole time, but his soft grin, aimed directly at Terio, said otherwise.
Chuckles and tired cheers followed, their cups met in the middle, and everyone drank.
It zinged through her, the excitement and possibility of a life without want, with the people beside her. Didn’t fade even when the wave of relaxation took hold nor after they stumbled home. Cima stared up into the dark, vibrating with exhaustion and elation and all the aches she’d accumulated from the long night, and waited for unconsciousness to take her.
It didn’t. Cima’s heavy eyes wouldn’t stay closed, her mind raced, and she emphatically did not sleep. How could she, with all their dreams laid out before them, perfect and shining and finally, finally within reach?
There’d be time enough for sleep. There’d be time enough for everything.