The owner smiled at me. “Yes, my lady.”
Ten minutes later, we exited the shop with the dress securely wrapped in a fat roll of canvas. Clover had counted out the coins and taken it with a sour face.
Outside, Will and Lute flanked us. We’d walked for about half a block when Clover broke into a brilliant smile.
“It’s a two-grest dress and we got it for thirty nomas. Let’s go fast before someone arrests me for this robbery.”
She hugged the bundle to her.
“That was amazing, and I’m the luckiest ‘lady’ in Kair Toren,” I told her.
Clover gave me a brilliant smile. I didn’t have the heart to ask her what we’d do if the dress failed to take the dye.
A small dirty child darted toward us. Will caught her by the shoulder before she could reach me.
The little girl grinned at me. One of her teeth on the top was missing. “Buy a bracelet, my lady? Only two dens!”
She held out a bracelet of shells and sea glass. The excitement dashed down my spine. Darotha had found Isadau.
I held up three fingers. Lute pulled three dens out of his pocket and put them into the little girl’s grimy palm.
“Two for her, one for you.”
She handed the bracelet over to him, and Will released her.
“Do you have news about my special order?” I asked.
She nodded. “Come to the knight statue tonight when the bells strike ten. Bring a carriage. It is far.”
She giggled and dashed off into the crowd.
The carriage from Broad Street was the Kair Toren equivalent of the Texas white pickup truck. Perfectly nondescript and anonymous, but solid. It was also spacious enough for four people to ride comfortably, but Gort was a bit oversized. Shana sat on my right, Darotha sat across from me, and next to her Gort had barely enough room to stretch his legs.
Darotha rode in nonchalant silence, pretending that Shana wasn’t there. She hadn’t reacted to Will or Lute, gave Gort an appraising once-over, and snorted at the driver that came with the Shears’ carriage. But Shana had gotten a wary look. Something about her set Darotha’s teeth on edge. She watched her out of the corner of her eye, and Shana, in her chainmail and armed with a mace, did the same.
The carriage rocked slightly. In the past hour, we had crossed two bridges, steadily making our way north, to the maze of crooked narrow streets that made up the Tangle, a warren of the city’s slums. That was why both Will and Lute rode next to the driver, a burly, broad-shouldered man who looked like he wrestled bears on his days off.
“How much farther?” Gort asked.
Darotha edged the curtain on the window aside and glanced out. “Four streets.”
And once we got there, it was up to me to make things work. I had no idea if I could. I had never done magic before.
In theory, anyone with enough power and the ability to read Sareso should have been able to manage it, but Kair Toren had a habit of shoving my theories to the ground and stomping on their faces.
I had the power covered. Both the contract’s resistance and the drezmur’s reaction to me confirmed that thanks to whatever had brought me here, I had plenty of it. That made sense: Bringing dead me back to life had to require a wallop of magic. The problem was with Sareso. It was a weird language, and the entire sound of a vowel could be changed depending on tiny marks next to the word. Mispronouncing things could turn me into atomic dust.
I was so full of nervous tension my skin felt too tight. It was taking all of my will to not fidget.
If I failed, I had no idea how we would get Isadau into the carriage. And leaving her there wasn’t an option. I trusted Darotha about as far as I could throw her. If we left here without Isadau, she would disappear, and I would have to pay Darotha more money to “find” her again. She could string me along for weeks. I had to get this right the first time.
If Damaes had some kind of warning system set up and decided to respond in person . . . Well, there was no point in worrying about that because if he showed up, we would all instantly die. Even I might not come back from being hit with that much magic.
The carriage turned right. Darotha checked the window.
“Stop here.”
Gort knocked on the wall behind him.
