She was past caring about lying, anyway. Lore was damned whether or not she kept her spiritual record spotless. Might as well lean into it.
“Oh, you poor girl.” Pierre was probably younger than she was, and here he went clucking like a mother hen. Lore managed to keep her eyes from rolling, but only just. “And with a poison runner? You know he won’t be able to take care of you.”
Lore bit the inside of her cheek again, hard.
Her apparent distress made Pierre bold. “You could come with me,” he said. “My father could help you find work, I’m sure.” He raised his hand, settled it on her bare shoulder.
And every nerve in Lore’s body seized.
It was abrupt and unexpected enough for her to shudder, to shake off his hand in a motion that didn’t fit her soft, vulnerable narrative. She’d grown used to feeling this reaction to dead things—stone, metal, cloth. Corpses, when she couldn’t avoid them. It was natural to sense Mortem in something dead, no matter how unpleasant, and at this point she could hide her reaction, keep it contained. She’d had enough practice.
But she shouldn’t feel Mortem in a living man, not one who wasn’t at death’s door. Her shock was quick and sharp, and chased with something else—the scent of foxglove. So strong, he must’ve been dosed mere minutes before arriving.
And he wanted to disparage poison runners. Hypocrite.
Her fingers closed around his wrist, twisted, forced him to his knees. It happened quick, quick enough for him to slip on a stray pebble and send one leg out at an awkward angle, for a strangled “Shit!” to echo through the morning streets of Dellaire’s Harbor District.
Lore crouched so they were level. Now that she knew what to look for, it was obvious in his eyes, bloodshot and glassy; in the heartbeat thumping slow and irregular beneath her palm. He’d gone to one of the cheap deathdealers, one who didn’t know how to properly dose their patrons. The veins at the corners of Pierre’s eyes were barely touched with gray, so he hadn’t been given enough poison for any kind of life extension, and certainly not enough to possibly grasp the power waiting at death’s threshold.
He probably wasn’t after those things, anyway. Most people his age just wanted the high.
The dark threads of Mortem under Pierre’s skin twisted against Lore’s grip, stirred to waking by the poison in his system. Mortem was dormant in everyone—the essence of death, the power born of entropy, just waiting to flood your body on the day it failed—but the only way to use it, to bend it to your will, was to nearly die.
If you weren’t after the power or the euphoric feeling poison could give you, then you were after the extra years. Properly dosed, poison could balance your body on the cusp of life and death, and that momentary concession to Mortem could, paradoxically, extend your life. Not that the life you got in exchange was one of great quality—half-stone, your veins clotted with rock, making your blood rub through them like a cobblestone skinning a knee.
Whatever Pierre had been after when he visited a deathdealer this morning, he hadn’t paid enough to get it. If he’d gotten a true poison high, he’d be slumped in an alley somewhere, not asking her for rent. Rent that was higher than she remembered it being, now that she thought of it.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Lore murmured. “You are going to tell Nicolas that we’ve paid up for the next six months, or I am going to tell him you’ve been spending his coin on deathdealers.”
Fuck Michal’s ineffectual bargains with the landlord. She’d just make one of her own.
Pierre’s eyes widened, his lids poison-heavy. “How—”
“You stink of foxglove and your eyes look more like windows.” Not exactly true, since she hadn’t noticed until she’d sensed the Mortem, but by the time he could examine himself, the effect would’ve worn off anyway. “Anyone can take one look at you and know, Pierre, even though your deathdealer barely gave you enough to make you tingle. I’d be surprised if you got five extra minutes tacked on for that, so I hope the high was worth it.”
The boy gaped, the open mouth under his window-glass eyes making his face look fishlike. He’d undoubtedly paid a handsome sum for the pinch of foxglove he’d taken. If she wasn’t so good at spying for Val, Lore might’ve become a deathdealer herself. They made a whole lot of money for doing a whole lot of jack shit.
Pierre’s unfortunate blush spread down his neck. “I can’t— He’ll ask where the money is—”