him that I return to offer him the largest Trade of his life.”
“And what is it that you are offering?”
Ramson almost hesitated a beat, but the words were out of his mouth already. “The Blood Witch of Salskoff.”
Bogdan’s mouth formed a small O. The hostility vanished from his face, replaced by a look of pure greed. “That’s just a myth,” he said, but his tone begged Ramson to prove him wrong.
“She’s as real as the gold in your teeth, Bogdan. Took down five guards with a sweep of her hands.”
“She’d be a fortune,” Bogdan whispered. “Worth more than the Nandjian Fire Palace. I mean…how much do you think she’s worth?”
How much is she worth? The question jarred him, and he suddenly felt sick. He thought of Ana now, of the bold dash of her mouth, the way she frowned when she was thinking, the way she’d stubbornly kept her face fierce at the Playpen when her eyes had betrayed her horror.
The way she shone like a torch in the darkness.
Something stirred inside his chest: something buried far beneath the wall he had built from the ruins of his heart. It was as though a block had shifted in his carefully built world, changing everything with it for the first time in seven long years, when he’d flung his past behind him and kept running and had never stopped to think about what he was doing with his life.
What do you want?
I told you. Revenge.
But that was no longer enough, he realized. All this time, he’d thought he held the keys to his fate when really he’d been in a cage all along. Just one of Kerlan’s puppets with a fancy title, scrambling to do his bidding and cast aside when no longer needed.
Handing Ana to Kerlan meant he was still playing the hand Kerlan had dealt him.
It was time to change the game.
“She’s worth more than you could ever imagine,” Ramson said quietly. The wheels in his mind were already turning, skipping two, three steps ahead and fanning out in the infinite possibilities that this conversation could play into. Calculating all the scenarios in which he would win, and the conditions that would allow him to.
And as he spoke, he began to weave in details for his new plan. “I want you to listen carefully, Bogdan. You’ll tell Kerlan that at this Fyrva’snezh ball, I’m going to kill my betrayer, win back my title, and hand him the most powerful Affinite known to exist.”
Bogdan swallowed. “All right.”
“There’s more,” Ramson said. “I want you to get me a list of the guests attending the event this year. You’ll find a runner boy outside your home by the seventh hour tomorrow morning. Give him the list.”
“That’s hardly any time!” Bogdan spluttered, but at a look from Ramson, he conceded. “Fine.”
“And you’ll have me added to that list. Me, and my…wife. I expect my runner to hand me the invitations along with the guest list tomorrow morning. And I’ll know if they’ve been forged, so don’t get any ideas, Bogdan.”
Bogdan looked as though he’d somehow eaten a mouthful of cat shit that he wanted to spit into Ramson’s face. Slowly, with vein-popping effort, he swallowed and said instead, “Of course.”
“If anything goes wrong and I’m unable to get into Kerlan’s Fyrva’snezh, it’ll be on you.”
Bogdan sniffed. “Right.” Sullenly, he fished from his jacket a gold engraved pen and a piece of notepaper where he kept his balances. “And what name will I be adding to the guest list?”
Ramson paused. Not “Quicktongue,” the flashy, ridiculous pseudonym he’d adopted for the Order of the Lily. He needed a name that nobody but Kerlan knew, that would send a signal. A code.
The answer was so obvious that it came to him like a punch in the gut.
“Farrald,” he said quietly.
Bogdan rolled his eyes as he jotted down the name.
As soon as the pen and paper vanished into one of the many pockets lining Bogdan’s expensive silk suit, Ramson leaned forward. “And there’s more.”
“For Deities’ sakes!” Bogdan threw up his hands, and then lowered his voice in an angry whisper. “You’re Trading me three conditions for only two secrets.”
“Four conditions,” Ramson corrected, and plowed on over Bogdan’s indignant splutters. “The best deals are never on a one-to-one ratio. Think bigger picture, Bogdan. What’s the loss for me if these conditions aren’t met? I’d lose the option to return to the Order, and I’d leave the Empire to start a business elsewhere. But what would the exposure of