“Void smugglers don’tdealwith carnivorous immortals, Cardigan. We avoid them.”
The ice on her tongue should have shut him up, but Cardigan laughed. “Notallof you avoid them. Last year, I saw a sentence go out in the territory next door. Execution, for stealing from a governor. Dragged him to the daeyari screaming. Drew a crowd and everything!”
“Charming,” Fi gritted.
Her fist clenched, knuckles tight against silviamesh gloves. She imagined herself serene. Composed. A glassy mountain lake whowasn’ttempted to clock her client in the jaw.
Another crate moved onto her cart. Aisinay flattened her ears, blind eyes tilted to the load.
“I hope you’ll manage better,” Cardigan said. “I’m told you’re familiar with Antal Territory, enough to ensure—”
Fi left him mid-sentence. She pushed past the assistant and smacked her palm to a crate.
Heat swelled at her fingers. Every living creature had energy, a force to keep organs pumping and cells working. To Shape that energy was a matter of redirecting, leaching out of living tissue and concentrating into physical form. Fi drew a current from her forearm, fed by a breakfast of toast and too much sweetened coffee.
Cold prickled down her arm as she pulled the energy from her muscles. Hot, as a silver glow condensed in her hand. She pushed, sending a small pulse of her magic into the wood.
Something inside the crate shuddered, static thick enough to taste.
Fi recoiled. “Are theseenergy capsules?” Bigger than the glass vessels affixed to her gloves, judging by the current. A type of energy storage like Cardigan’s box of chips, but made for quicker access. Made morevolatile.
The assistant looked to the ground. Cardigan’s lips thinned.
“Our goods are our business.”
The nerve. The sheer audacity. “Did you not register my question about potentially explosive materials?”
Cardigan. As Fi rolled over the name, it poked a fuzzy memory, some connection to the energy production sector…
“What does it matter?” he demanded.
“It matters if you’re stacking a fuckingbombon my cart.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Your payment is more than generous.”
A younger Fi would have backed down. Alone and freshlyrun away from home, pockets empty and her father’s shouts haunting her heels, the allure of twenty daeyari energy chips would have silenced her sharpest protests. The allure of twenty daeyari energy chips wasstillpretty motivating. Only now, Fi would have them on her terms.
She squared up with Cardigan. He stood taller than her respectable five-foot-seven, but Fi didn’t blink, her irreverent tone and barbed exterior drawn up like a cloak of armor.
“Listen, Cardigan. I’ll deliver this cargo. Because it’s my job, and I’m Void-damnedgoodat my job, or you wouldn’t be here. But for that to happen, you’re going to tell me what’s in those crates, and how dangerous—”
She tensed at the snap of a branch. Aisinay’s ears perked.
Fi moved without thinking. Thinking was a delay, an invitation to take an energy bolt through the neck. The moment she heard the click of a crossbow, she shoved her clients behind the carts. A burnt taste laced the air. Two bolts of pure silver energy whizzed past to strike a tree, flaring out with asnap. Bootsteps crunched the leaves.
“Trade wardens!” a man called out in an Autum accent: crisp, and curt, and hand-crafted to ruin Fi’s day. “Come out with your hands up!”
Fi banged her head against the cart, exhaling an emphatic, “Fuuuck…”
“Trade wardens?” Cardigan hissed. “Were you followed?”
“WasIfollowed?” Fi pointed to the decoy apple crates. “While you’re out for a pleasant stroll with your apples,fifty miles from the closest market?”
“Can you get rid of them?”
Fi squinted through a slat in the cart, counting four figures. She pressed a hand to her temples, the throb of a hangover set aside, but not forgotten.
Twenty energy chips. Anything less wouldn’t be worth this.
