Chapter 2

The next night, he came back into the parlor and she forgot what she was saying to the merchant she was supposed to be seducing.

Kaz pointed to her, the flick of one gloved finger. She hardly saw the bills he folded into Tante Heleen's hand, but she knew by her owner's smile that they must have been a fat fold indeed. It was confirmed when Heleen nodded to her to abandon the plump merchant with his gold pocket watch.

Inej's heart was a stone, lost at sea.

So the gleam in the dangerous boy's eye hadn't been respect at all, but something much more common. On her way out, she lifted the merchant's pocket watch out of sheer spite.

Kaz's footsteps were uneven but measured, the thunk of the cane marking his way across the floor. Like a clock ticking down.

When she met him upstairs, he closed the door. His throat bobbed on a swallow so fast she might not have seen it if she weren't already watching for any sign of what he was planning. If he meant to blackmail her for her thieveries, or simply avail himself of her wares or… She had no idea but he was a man who seethed with silent possibility.

Once they were alone, he looked at her. In the face. His eyes didn't dip lower, but they had something of the extra spark in them, like all the other men who looked back twice after they saw her. It was so jarring and she was so sharply disappointed that there wasn't more to his visit that she reached immediately for the laces of her dress. She jerked them open, not bothering with any of the feigned smiles and coyness Heleen had trained into her. This was what he came for, this was what he valued her for, and he wouldn't get an ounce more.

"Not that," he said. "I need you for more than that."

She blinked, uncertain how to proceed.

He looked pained, the frown lines in his face deepening. "Can you fight?"

She tensed, abandoning the laces even though it left the dress falling loose around her bosom. Some men liked that, paid extra for her to kick and scream and all the things Tante Heleen used to beat her for when she first came.

Kaz's frown lines deepened further. "Not me."

He clunked past her, gazing out the unbroken half of the window at the view of the brick wall next door. "If you're done attempting to distract me, perhaps we could make a deal."

It was odd, she thought as she tugged her laces closed and knotted them once, then with a glance at the slash of his shoulders, knotted them again. He didn't seem the sort to turn his back on anyone. Then again, the reflection in the glass would give him clear enough view of her as she was setting her dress to rights, if he wanted to steal a look.

"You're Suli, correct?"

She held in a sigh. Some men paid extra for that as well, but at least he hadn't called her lynx. "Yes, sir."

A choking sound came from his throat. "I'm no sir. I've heard they have the biggest circuses in the world there, the quickest acrobats. Do you know anything of that?"

"Not a thing," she lied.

He turned, and that gleam was back in his eye. She jolted to see him smiling, before she realized his mouth hadn't actually moved at all. "Come work for me."

Her chin lifted, throat tensed. He'd want a piece of the wares, no matter how many he rented her to per night before he took his cut. She could imagine that black glove, sliding beneath the hem of her skirt. Her skin prickled and became aware of the texture of her gown as if she'd just put it on. But there was something uncrossable about that thought. The idea, maybe, of someone who actually saw her, looked into her eyes to see what she was before, and then made her do…that. She thought she might rather stay with Heleen, who saw her as nothing more than another girl in a stable of them.

"I wasn't aware the Crow Club employed their own whores."

"They don't. And it would be Haskell buying out your indenture, but make no mistake, you'd be working for me. As a spy. You're quick, you're clever, and you hear more than you say. But you'd need to be less…" His gaze never flicked down, but her skin prickled as if it had. "Noticeable."

She nodded eagerly. Invisible was all she wanted to be, from the moment she awoke until the hour she finally fell exhausted onto the rug in her closet—because she could never find sleep in that bed. But one detail was still tickling at her mind.

"What changed your mind? You said you didn't need me, and that even if you did, I was worth more here."

"Someone like you is wasted here," he said dismissively, but her skin was prickling as if he'd said more.

"That's not what you said before," she insisted.

He looked faintly pleased by her stubbornness. "People are always coming to me, begging me to help them. Asking for favors. Handouts."

She'd asked if she could help him. He hadn't said it, but it ached sharply in the back of her teeth that those were the words that had caught him.

But then, she supposed someone as powerful as Brekker didn't have many people he could trust. She hadn't entirely made up her mind if she wanted to be one of them. He didn't seem like a good man, even if he didn't visit the pleasure houses. But he wasn't waiting for her reaction.

"Do what you wish, I don't give a damn either way. If you want to work as my spider, come to the back door of the Slat by midnight. If you want to remain flat on your back in a feather mattress, stay here." He clunked across the room again, each placement of his cane like a punch against this floor she hated.

He paused before the door and his jaw muscle flexed.

Her hands were cold, almost numb as they fluttered at her sides. Could this really—did he really?

But no, she wouldn't let hope take hold, not yet. She'd be back here tomorrow, no doubt, when he realized she was trained for high wires and shortened skirts and knew not even a wisp of what it meant to be a spy, or what a man like him would need to know that he didn't already.

"It's not freedom," he said abruptly. "You should know that. You'll still have to pay your debt back to Haskell, and it won't be safe. More dangerous than this. I won't be able to look after you or my enemies will be on you the first moment I step out for a job. You'll have to be able to hold your own."

She wasn't breathing, and he wasn't looking at her.

"But if you come to the Slat, I can promise you, you'll always make your living on your feet. Not on your back. And no one will own you, not ever again."

Her heart skipped and trilled up, up, up. Why would he say that? Did he read it, so clearly in her carefully schooled face, how much she hated it? Why, why would he care?

He left without looking back. She beat him to the Slat.