I shrugged. “Alive? I mean, if you want to interpret things that way…”
His calculating gaze zeroed in on every shift of my expression. I fidgeted under the scrutiny. The sour stench of dust heavy on his breath. It reminded me of Nikolach. I shuddered in revulsion.
“He’s still breathing.” Frustration etched itself into the permanent scowl wrinkles on his face. “What I’m trying to understand is why you let him go. I practically gift-wrapped him for you, and you still managed to bungle things up. I delivered him to you high out of his mind, there is no way he could have posed any real threat.”
I turned wide eyes toward him. “What?”
His voice was low and threatening. “I’ve tolerated him clawing for my scraps for years, because he is so predictable. Having a simple-minded thug for a rival works wonders to keep smaller fish out of the pond. Just leak information about the location of anyone he dislikes and poof. They’re gone.”
Icewater replaced the blood in my veins.
I’d been wrong about Yeshar. The threat Nikolach had posed to me was finite, and contained to the physical harm he’d threatened me with. But Yeshar had been orchestrating their entire relationship, allowing Nikolach to compete with him for his own convenience. He’d been controlling him from the start.
And like an idiot, I’d drawn Yeshar’s attention while I tried to safeguard myself against the lesser threat Nikolach posed. There was no way of knowing how far Yeshar’s reach extended.
“Customers don’t just go away when your product supply gets seized. And customers have needs. Plans were set in motion to have you remove the problem Nikolach poses, and it would be a simple matter of retrieving his supply to replace mine after. Squash two flies with one swat.” His expression worsened. “But you didn’t play your part. Why didn’t you kill him?”
I almost did.
“I did plenty to him,” I thought of his crumpled bloody form. “He won’t be doing much for a good long while.”
“You behaved unpredictably. Illogically.” Yeshar began tapping a finger against the fist of his other hand. “There were multiple reasons for you to have dealt with him permanently. You’ve derailed things.” A tendon throbbed in his neck.
“What do you want me to say? Sorry I didn’t do your dirty work for you?” I shifted between feet, fighting the instinct to flee.
“An apology is woefully insufficient.” Yeshar scowled. “You’ve always been a wild card, and I don’t like unknown variables. I don’t know, or care, what your involvement was with Nikolach and the missing Sentinel. Operating smoothly is difficult enough without adding in the chaos you create.”
I frowned. What chaos?
“As it stands, you’ve made yourself into a much bigger problem than Nikolach.”
I pressed my lips together, stomach churning. This was exactly the type of attention I'd hoped to avoid from Yeshar when I approached him at Docksiders. “I don't mean to be.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Yeshar gnashed his teeth together. “Did you think stealing the contact list would protect you from me?”
My brow creased. “What contact list?”
“Mycontact list,” he said. There was a cadence to his finger tapping. Four taps, a pause, then repeat. “Leveraging more information to the Ascendancy about me is a fast way to meet the Devourer. You’reluckyI found it before you did anything with it, or you’d have already been dealt with.” He smiled to himself at some private joke, teeth gleaming like a blade.
I took a step back, holding my hands up between us. “Woah, I don’t know who told you otherwise, but I never stole your contact list. And I definitely don’t intend to tell theAscendancy anything about you or your contacts. Or to meet the Devourer anytime soon.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you know what's most valuable for someone in my position?” He didn’t seem in the mood to appreciate a joke, so I resisted the defensive instinct to crack one. “Reputation. And right now, I look like a giant fool for expending the time and effort to compromise Nikolach and put him in your path, only for you to spare him. I shouldn’t be wasting any time at all on you, when all you do is steal and lie.”
“I’m not lying!”
“Oh, but you are.” His nostrils flared. “The stolen list was no rumor. I found it among your possessions.”
What?
“I swear, I have no idea what it even is.”
“You’re a convincing liar, I’ll give you that.”
One, two, three, four, pause.
“Fortunately for you,” he continued, “You’re bound up too tightly in the scheme of things.”
Yeshar’s tapping fingers were becoming frenetic, feverish.
