Palace of Silver (The Nissera Chronicles #3) - Hannah West Page 0,144

legs over the ledge. “You’re back. Why? I let you take that boy.”

I stalked over to perch on the edge of his desk, toying with the trinkets and shuffling a stack of coins. “I’m here to politely ask you to cancel the debt of every person who works for you and let them go free,” I said.

He laughed in response.

“I amuse you?”

“They signed contracts,” he said, opening the drawer and flinging a stack of parchment on the desk. “They knew what they were agreeing to.”

I smacked a hand on top of the contracts and slid them over, peering at them as though giving them a once-over. Instead, I tore them up and smiled at him. “The polite part is a one-time bargain.”

“The Jav Darhu are making a delivery tonight,” the man grumbled. “I don’t know who you are or where you got the money to buy that boy, but you had better hope you’re gone by the time Captain Nasso arrives.”

I pursed my lips. “I think I’ll stay. I was going to track Nasso down, but this saves me the work. I have plenty, seeing as I am the elicromancer queen of Yorth and the newly appointed leader of the Realm Alliance. I’m quite busy.”

I lifted my elicrin stone out of my collar. The man balked.

“I’ll give you a week to cancel your workers’ debts and set them free,” I went on. “You will make sure every lone child in your care has a guardian. You will employ people who need work and pay them a dignified wage.”

“It is not against the law to demand what you are owed,” he growled, growing flustered. “I will appeal to King Agmur to overturn whatever authority you claim to have here. Go back to Yorth and make your own laws.”

A downstairs door opened and shut. The factory owner looked me in the eye, tilting his head, thinking that he had surely called my bluff. Everyone in their right mind ran from the wrath of Jav Darhu.

The longer I waited him out, the more he squirmed. When footsteps trampled to the landing outside the study door, I crossed my hands and waited.

The door flung open. Captain Nasso and two of his men escorted a middle-aged man and his daughter, who looked only a few years younger than me and terribly frightened.

Captain Nasso’s unflappable expression changed to surprise. “Kadri Lillis,” he said sedately. “I heard Rasmus Orturio was bludgeoned to death with a fire iron.”

“You heard correctly.”

The creaks behind me signaled that the factory owner was again squirming in his chair.

Nasso flicked his brown eyes to the elicrin stone around my neck.

“Let’s talk,” he said. “What do you want?”

“You cannot bargain with me, Ardjan Nasso.”

“The kidnapping was not personal,” he said, as though that made it any less heinous. “I delivered on a promise. It’s what I do. You should be angry with King Agmur.”

“Oh, I am angry with him. But it’s very important that you know, Captain, that people do not belong to other people, even if your clients’ pockets tell you otherwise.” I looked over his shoulder at the man and his daughter huddling in the corner. “You’re free to go and your debts are cancelled.”

They turned to take advantage of the opportunity I had given them. The two mercenaries behind Captain Nasso began to draw their curved swords to block them from leaving the room—ever protective of the goods to be delivered.

I nocked an arrow and sent it straight through one’s shoulder. The other, I hit with the thrusting spell. My next arrow went through Nasso’s calf. He yelled through his teeth.

The man and his daughter ran.

I strode toward Nasso and stared him down.

“I have a tracking map with your name on it,” I said. “If something happens to it, I can make another. I can stalk you, haunt you for the rest of your days, which won’t be many if you cross me.” I clamped his broad, bearded jaw. “You will find other employ, Ardjan Nasso, or your torment of me will look charitable compared to what I do to you.”

The summer sun baked the sand and salt water onto our skin. Rynna and I reclined on the beach, watching Sami’s fastidious attempt to build a sandcastle that looked like the real palace.

Rynna’s slender fingers traced my palm. The scar from the scourge in the forest marred her wrist, and she was not the only one of her people who bore such a mark. Over the past weeks, I had found