I motioned to the worker. “Sensitive stomach.”
“Unsurprising,” said the woman. “Men tend to be the sensitive ones.”
“Hard to argue with that.”
I picked at the silver thread on my skirt and waited. I thought the worker was finished, but he made a strangled noise and retched again. He would be a while. I didn’t exactly have a while.
I tried to push past the woman, but she put her hand up and cocked her head. “Tell me what you wish for,” she said. “Savory food? A lover’s kiss? Or something more spectacular?”
When I groaned and tried to step around her a second time, she flashed her blades. She wouldn’t let me in without voicing a wish.
A few things came to mind, namely Zosa, but I quickly dismissed them because this was ridiculous; wishes were nothing but folklore and it was late. “Charcoal and parchment,” I said.
That seemed to appease her. Her smile grew and she let me through.
Inside, I slipped through a maze of long hall after long hall filled with wafting incense and dark wood. Merchants sold their wares by candlelight. Patrons in jewel-crusted garb sat at velvet-lined tables playing a Preetian card game that looked similar to Verdanniere poker. Except the suits were composed of celestial markings—stars and comets instead of clubs and spades—and each player ended their turn by tapping their thumb against their bottom lip.
A musician drifted past blowing through a bronze instrument that looked like a flute, while a handsome dancer in elaborate silks clinked brass cymbals between his thumbs and pinkies. Nearby, a woman traced the silhouette of another woman who stood patiently behind a backlit scrim holding a candle to her masked nose.
Artisans were everywhere, woven through shops that sold whatever your heart could wish up. I spotted a gentleman pressing kisses to the tip of an older woman’s ear while she handed him a fat coin.
Soon, I found a stall selling drawing supplies. I picked out a thick stack of parchment, along with a box of charcoal sticks wrapped in gold foil. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out two of the silver disks and nearly dropped them. They were no longer flat disks but ornately carved coins stamped with an owl wearing a crown on one side and a man’s profile on the other.
A merchant took the coins and bundled everything in twine. With my purchases tucked under my arm, I turned to leave but stopped in my tracks.
Bel sat at a crowded card table. He held a fan of cards, along with a glass decanter of whatever green liquor they served here.
A young woman with beautiful amber skin sauntered up to his table and ran a fingernail suggestively around his collar. I think I made an angry noise because Bel’s eyes flicked up and met mine for a brief moment—long enough to know he saw me—before looking away. He took a sip of his drink and put down a card, not bothering to look at me again. In fact, he avoided looking at the entire side of the hall where I stood.
That anger I’d felt in the lobby after the oranges fell came flooding back. My jaw clenched. I strode toward his table. Everyone watched me like they were about to witness a carriage ram headfirst into a rock wall. Every person but one. Bel looked down and flipped a second card onto dark wood.
How dare you, I wanted to scream, to somehow make him pay.
Instead, I swiped his glass and threw its contents at his face. I heard him curse and his chair scrape back as I stormed away. Ten steps were all I got before he grabbed my arm and whirled me around to face him. He stumbled then righted himself.
My nose wrinkled at the sharp scent of liquor. “You’re drunk.”
“Perhaps.”
I shoved him back. “When did you know I was a suminaire?” At the word, a pair of men looked over.
He leaned close to my ear. He didn’t touch me, but my heartbeat picked up nonetheless, and I hated that he had that effect on me. “I suspected what you were in Durc. I don’t exactly get the opportunity to give a contract to a suminaire every day. Why did you think I let you come in the first place?”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Did you honestly think I was some selfless fool? I’ve been searching for ways to reverse Alastair’s ink for years. Then you came along.” His eyes ran down the length of me and I shivered. “I thought if I could keep you a secret, you could somehow help me understand how the ink worked.”
I nodded, dumbstruck by his omission.
Every conversation we had, everything he’d shown me, told me, every time he sought me out or gave away any information—it all raced through my mind. His mouth against my ear at the moon window, the guest rooms and halls, and in the map room when I’d trusted him enough to tell him my secrets—secrets I didn’t even tell my own sister. Then in the blue city, he’d listened to my memories with such aching wonder. I’d thought Bel was forthcoming because I’d meant something to him. And I had.