her from an important meeting.”
He looked up at Shallan, blowgun loaded. Those violet eyes seemed like glass, his scarred face expressionless. The room seemed to hold its breath.
He’d seen through her lie. Shallan felt a cold sweat.
“You are right,” Shallan said. “Tyn is well. However, the plan did not go as she promised. Jasnah Kholin is dead, but the implementation of the assassination was sloppy. Tyn felt it prudent to work through an intermediary for now.”
The man narrowed his eyes, then finally raised his reed and blew sharply. Shallan jumped, but the dart did not strike her, instead flying to hit the wall hanging.
“She reveals herself as a coward,” he said. “You came here willingly, knowing that I might just kill you for her mistakes?”
“Every woman starts somewhere, Brightlord,” Shallan said, voice trembling rebelliously. “I can’t claw my way upward without taking a few chances. If you don’t kill me, then I have had a chance to meet people that Tyn probably would never have introduced me to.”
“Bold,” the man said. He gestured with two fingers, and one of the people sitting beside the hearth—a spindly lighteyed man with teeth so large, he might have had some rat in his heritage somewhere—scrambled forward and plunked something down on the long table near Shallan.
A sack of spheres. Inside it must be broams; the sack, though dark brown, glowed brightly.
“Tell me where she is, and you may have that money,” said the scarred man, loading another dart. “You have ambition. I like that. I will not only pay you for her location, but will attempt to find you a position in my organization.”
“Pardon, Brightlord,” Shallan said. “But you know I won’t sell her out to you.” Surely he could see her fear, sweat dampening the lining of her hat, trickling down her temples. Indeed, fearspren wiggled up through the ground beside her, though his view of them might be blocked by the table. “If I were willing to betray Tyn for a price, then of what worth would I ever be to you? You’d know that I’d do the same to you, if offered a big enough bounty.”
“Honor?” the man asked, expression still blank, dart pinched between two fingers. “From a thief?”
“Pardon again, Brightlord,” Shallan said. “But I am no mere thief.”
“And if I were to torture you? I could get the information that way, I assure you.”
“I don’t doubt that you could, Brightlord,” Shallan said. “But do you really think Tyn would send me with knowledge of her location? What would be the point of torturing me?”
“Well,” the man said, looking down and tucking the dart into place, “for one thing, it would be fun.”
Breathe, Shallan told herself. Slowly. Normally. It was hard to manage. “I don’t think you’ll do that, Brightlord.”
He raised the reed and blew with a swift motion. The dart thumped as it stuck into the wall. “And why not?”
“Because you don’t seem the type to throw away something useful.” She nodded toward the relics in glass boxes.
“You presume to be of use to me?”
Shallan raised her head, meeting his gaze. “Yes.”
He held her eyes. The hearth crackled.
“Very well,” he finally said, turning toward his fireplace and picking up his cup again. He continued to hold the reed in one hand, but drank with the other, his back to her.
Shallan felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She exhaled in relief, legs wobbling, and sat down on one of the chairs beside the dining table. Fingers trembling, she got out a handkerchief and wiped her brow and temples, pushing back the hat.
When she stopped to put the handkerchief away, she realized that someone had taken the seat beside her. Shallan hadn’t even seen him move, and his presence gave her a start. The short, tan-skinned person had some kind of carapace mask tied to his face, pulled tight. In fact, it looked like . . . like the skin had started to grow around the edges of the mask somehow.
The arrangement of red-orange carapace pieces was like a mosaic, giving a hint of eyebrows, of anger and rage. Behind that mask, a pair of dark eyes regarded her, unblinking, and an impassive mouth and chin were also left exposed. The man . . . no, the woman—Shallan noticed the hint of breasts and shape of the torso. The exposed safehand had thrown her.
Shallan stifled a blush. The woman wore dark brown clothing, simple, tied at the waist with an intricate belt, studded with more carapace. Four