the small twinge of regret that clung to him. Ana would be reunited with May, and they would go far, far away to someplace where they could be free.
Something about him changed when he was with Ana. The darkness, the scheming, the cold calculation in him faded, revealing faint traces of what he’d once been. A boy in love with the ocean. A boy who’d wanted to sail the seas forever, with the sun warming his back and the waves lapping at his hands. He’d forgotten about this boy, one who’d had big dreams and foolish hopes and had been good. The boy who’d become the smallest sliver of hope.
But what good was goodness itself, when the world was ruled by the cruel?
Ramson drew a deep breath, and only when he was near the tavern where he was staying did he take off his mask again. The man he had become in the Dams tonight, dead-eyed and merciless and calculating, was a side of him that he never wanted Ana to see.
Ramson returned to the inn in the early hours of the dawn, when the sun was just rising over the red-shingled roofs and glittering marble mansions of Novo Mynsk. Ana shut her eyes resolutely, pretending to be asleep as he unlocked the door to her room with the spare key he held. She sensed him standing at her doorway for a while, and then like a shadow, he was gone.
When she met him for a breakfast of salmon porridge and sourdough bread downstairs in the morning, something in his expression had shifted. “I have news,” he said through a mouthful of food. He’d showered and changed into a clean white shirt, hanging open at his collar. He squinted, and waved a spoon at her. “Is that hood always part of your outfit?”
“Is ignorance always part of your outfit?” Ana snapped, and cast a glance around the inn. It was mostly empty, save for one or two weary-looking travelers nursing mugs of black ale over cracked wooden tables. Still, she kept her hood drawn tightly as she sat across from him. “Besides, shouldn’t you be more cautious? After what happened with the mercenaries?”
Ramson leaned back, brandishing his spoon. “Caution’s my middle name, sweetheart.”
“Is that why you got kidnapped in the thirty minutes I left you alone?”
“I had that situation under control.” Ramson grinned at Ana’s expression. “All right, let’s just say I have some insurance now. Someone high up wants me alive.”
Ana dug her spoon into her thick bowl of porridge. “So what’s the news?”
“May is scheduled to perform in three days. One day before Kerlan’s Fyrva’snezh.”
Her spoon dropped. Porridge spilled on the table. The rest of the world—the dim inn, the smell of seared fish in the air, the chipped wooden table—faded. “How do you know?”
“I know everything.”
“You’re absolutely certain?” Her tunic suddenly felt too tight; it was hard to breathe.
“Yes. When you’re done interrogating me, perhaps we can finalize the plan.”
Plan. She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think of anything besides May behind those blackstone wagon doors, alone and helpless and afraid.
“Don’t worry so much.” Ana blinked, and realized Ramson was watching her with a smile curling his lips. “The plan’s simple. We’re going to bid for her contract after the show. Remember I told you that’s what happens in the back rooms.”
Ana’s mind spun. “I don’t understand. Bid for her? What if we don’t win?”
“We will. I called in an old favor.” He finished his last bite of sourdough bread and wiped his fingers on his napkin. “If you can’t win it, just rig it.”
“This is not a game, con man,” Ana snarled, her temper rising at his levity, at the thought of May sitting in a cell somewhere in that horrible place from hell. “If even one thing goes wrong, then May’s life is in danger.”
The grin faded from Ramson’s face. He placed his spoon back in his bowl, carefully, deliberately, as though handling a weapon. “You think I don’t know the difference between life and death?” he said. “I’ve been in this business for seven years. I started as a street rat and worked my way up to where I am today—where I was. One slip along the way, and I would’ve been dead.”
Her breathing came shallow. Ramson Quicktongue had taken care to never reveal anything about himself to her, other than what was strictly necessary. Yet something had changed. She just couldn’t place…what.
“And that’s why we have backup plans,” he said, and the