“Unbelievable,” Gatto said, examining one of the astral silver ingots. “And you’re sure Lowen will have no idea?”

  Lain shrugged. “I don’t talk in definites,” she reminded the fence. “But I made every effort to disguise my involvement. If Lowen looks at anyone besides Saltcrest, he’ll be sharper than I expect.”

  “Best I can ask for, then,” Gatto agreed. He lifted another ingot, inspecting it with a critical eye. “They’re stamped.”

  “That’s a ‘you’ problem,” Lain said. She leaned back in her seat, not bothering to look around the dank little brick chamber where the fence conducted his business, in the back of what had once been a foundry. Too much stone and metal for Lain’s taste–she itched to get out. “I lifted the ingots. If you can’t find an amenable smith to scour the stamps, I still get paid.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gatto said with a sigh, dropping the ingot. The wraith, gray-skinned with bright olive eyes slitted like a cat’s, arched an eyebrow. “Fine. Agreed upon price for the silver, minus my cut. Any incidentals?”

  Lain tossed the rest of her loot bag at the man. “Nothing major. Call it three mantles?”

  Gatto frowned, sifting through the bag. “Six torches, eldrite shavings, vials… Two and three scepters.”

  Lain rolled her eyes. She hated haggling, but it was an expected part of the job. “Two and five. And my price for the ingots is my price–you can figure out your cut with the client.”

  Gatto winced. “This isn’t a client I can-”

  Lain gave the fence a flat look. “Well I’m not a freehand you can haggle with either, Gatto. Don’t pretend you didn’t already pad the offer you made me. I’m not handing you any more than that.”

  Gatto pursed his lips, and the broker’s feline eyes, a product of one of his gifts, glinted dangerously. “Let’s say I disagree, hrmm?”

  Lain shrugged idly, as if she couldn’t care less. “That’s your mistake to make. But it’ll be the last time I do a job for you, period. You made me an offer for the job–you didn’t say anything about taking a cut out of that.”

  Gatto snarled, and Lain felt the muscles of her legs tense, ready to move the moment the door behind her opened. But the fence was too smart to pick a fight with her–not now, at least. No matter what she said, she’d be turning down any future jobs from Gatto. It wasn’t worth the risk to work with someone who let a single large payout blind them to common sense.

  “Fine,” Gatto finally spat.

  Lain stood without further comment. “I’ll expect payment to my usual account. Three days.”

  Gatto made a curt gesture, and Lain turned for the door without a look backwards, her posture all but daring the fence to try something.

  He didn’t. She was, for the moment, too valuable an asset for Gatto to risk.

  Once upon a time, that sort of value might’ve made Lain feel confident, secure. Not long after that, it had started making her feel dirty and abused. These days, it mostly just made her grumpy. No matter how much they should know better, men like Gatto always started to think of their agents as possessions eventually.

  It was time to find a new employer, she decided.

  But first, a drink.

  #

  The Blackened Claw had long been the preferred watering hole for Lowrun’s criminal middle-class. While few high-end master rogues or crimelords would risk any significant time in such a public venue, the city’s most skilled thieves, seasoned mercenaries, strongest brutes, and canniest rumormongers needed a place where they could meet, relax, and have a drink without fear of random attack.

  Years ago, Bors, the Claw’s proprietor, had founded the tavern for just that reason, and its role as a neutral ground in the gang-ridden criminal underworld of Lowrun had earned it a certain level of immunity to the dangers that often plagued similar businesses. The Blackened Claw was a safe place, a meeting house, and half the rogues in Emeston would come crashing down on anyone who dared to break that truce.

  Lain had first come to the tavern for that reason, as a young thief working for Vamilla Greyveil. Then, it had been the preferred bar for the mid and high-ranking members of the various criminal gangs, syndicates, guilds, and organizations. That had changed over the past few months, ever since Telik had gotten himself killed.

  Once the most powerful man in Lowrun, a crimelord without peer, Telik had essentially run Emeston’s underworld. His organization was massive, with fingers in every industry, and he even had sway up the hill, acting as the middle man for Highwalk’s supposedly-upstanding merchants to buy illicit goods, as well as to run their own semi-legal enterprises.

  Half a year earlier, Telik had abruptly turned up dead, his broken, bleeding body decaying in the fountain at Rainbow Square. The details surrounding his death remained shrouded in mystery, though the disappearance of Telik’s closest wards and lieutenants–Vernen Copperfist, Porgit Rattail, and Allana, the Violet Edge–as well as the death of the master assassin Goldshade, often factored into most theories.

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  Lain didn’t particularly care about Telik’s death–the man had been a reprehensible sociopath whom she had gone to great lengths to avoid doing business with–but even she couldn’t ignore the fallout his death brought about.

  Every crimelord worth the name and every rogue who could get half-a-dozen friends together declared themselves the new Telik, the next king of Lowrun, and open warfare erupted on the streets as the many gangs, long in a state of reluctant armistice under Telik’s watchful gaze, began winnowing their competition.

  Inevitably, the street war had gotten intense enough that the wardens had come down from Highwalk, the powerful battle-gifted falling like the Warrior’s own hammer on the battling crimelords. While their purge had quieted the conflict, they had only managed to kill the loudest and boldest of the faction leaders. The war had shifted into something quieter now–a struggle that took place in darkened allies, in quiet bedchambers, and in bawdy taprooms.

  As the factions went to war, the Blackened Claw’s place in the city changed. Now, it was the bar of choice for the neutral players within the city–freehands like Lain, who abstained from the territorial, power-hungry squabbling of the larger organizations and instead did work for hire, preferably at as much of a remove as they could manage.

  While the Blackened Claw had once been dominated by a sort of vague ease, the tension of knowing that your drinking buddy one night might stab you in the back the next, it now fostered a sense of community, of shared suffering, as Lain’s freehand peers simply tried to survive the fallout of Telik’s fall. But it was as safe as ever, as even Lowrun’s more lowbrow population knew better than to start violence in a bar that hosted rogues dangerous enough to survive the street wars without help.

  #

  “Lain.” Bors tilted his head in a respectful nod as she approached. The proprietor, bartender, bouncer, and brewer of the Blackened Claw was a heavy-set man, built wide and large, along the same dimensions as a barge. His face was plain, blocky, and covered by truly stupendous muttonchops. “You’re in late. You on a job?”

  “Don’t know what you mean,” Lain said easily, sliding into a barstool.

  Bors grunted, recognizing the words for what they were–street etiquette. You didn’t wander around the city talking about your robberies and keep your good name, especially not with the pains Lain went to keep her name out of things. Her words quietly confirmed that she had been on a job, and that she wasn’t going to talk about it.

  “The usual?” Bors rumbled.

  Lain nodded, sliding a scepter onto the bar–enough for three drinks.

  The barman grabbed a glass in meaty hands that were far more careful and agile than they looked, and filled it from a small keg on one side of the bar, a little bigger than Lain’s head. A recent addition to the bar, replacing the typical bottles of wine.

  Once the Claw’s tender returned, Lain took her glass–filled with a slightly sour green wine she had taken a liking to–then quietly told Bors, “I’d appreciate it if you can keep your ear out for me. I’m open to some new work.”

  Bors grunted, the sound lacking enough emotion to be called surprised or confused. “Weren’t you workin’ with Gatto?”

  “Working, past tense,” Lain said simply. Her flat tone made it clear she wasn’t open to any further questions, and Bors simply nodded. The stoic man had caught her meaning.

  “No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Lain tilted her glass in a small salute at him, then turned in her seat, leaning against the bar, one arm propped up on it, and surveyed the bar.

  It was a fairly busy night, considering the hour. The Coldsteel boys, three brothers known as reputable blades-for-hire, were playing some nonsensical card game with Albus and Alice, a pair of young pickpockets barely old enough for their gifts. Those two were winning, judging by the piles of wooden chips–used so that no one was flashing significant gold around.

  Lain didn’t know everyone in the bar by name, but she recognized most by sight, at least. The pair of large, brawny brutes were the bodyguards working for Belo, the skinny wraith a couple tables away speaking in quiet tones with a seasword Lain didn’t know.

  Two-Fingers was flirting outrageously with a couple young bruisers that couldn’t have been half their age, while nearby, a reed-thin seablade was acting as a seat for the teasing doxy pick in his lap. Cait, the doxy in question, flashed Lain a wink, and Lain tipped her glass at the girl, idly wondering if she should make an offer on the girl’s time for the night.

  Lain gave a slow breath. Here, at least, she could relax, but surveying the room, she felt the progressive return of the apathy that had been haunting her lately.

  Was this really all there was? Steal enough to live, then come to drink and kill time until you need to go steal again?

  Rogue’s name, Lain couldn’t imagine a more depressing life.

  She sighed, lifted her glass to her lips, and found it already empty.

  “Cross it,” she muttered under her breath. She had just turned back to the bar when her eyes caught someone unfamiliar, a new face sitting alone in a corner, tucked away such that Lain hadn’t noticed her the first time.

  “Hey Bors,” Lain said softly, catching the big man’s attention. “Who’s that in the corner? In the purple cloak?”

  The man snorted. “You got me,” he said. “She showed up an hour or so ago. Thought she was gonna faint before she could finish ordering. I gave her a glass of hard press, and she ducked over to that corner. Hasn’t moved since.”

  Lain considered the unfamiliar girl, looked down to her empty glass.

  Well. Someone new maybe meant someone interesting.

  Lain placed her glass down on the bar. “Let the word out, she’s to be left alone.”

  “Eh?”

  “Look at her, Bors. She looks like a strong wind would send her to the floor. If Cait or one of the Coldsteels hit on her, I think she’d just die on the spot.”

  Bors grunted again. “She’s shiny and fresh, Lain. They ain’t gonna like it.”

  “They don’t have to like it. If they have a problem, they can talk to me.”

  The bartender rolled a massive shoulder, his dark eyes going flat at the suggestion of violence in his bar. “You gonna take on all comers then, just like that?”

  “Nah. You know as well as I do I won’t have to.”

  Bors snorted–but Lain knew the man well enough to see the agreement in him. For all his tough talk, Bors had a charitable streak in him–even had Lain not said anything, he likely would’ve stopped anyone who tried to impose themselves on the new girl.

  Lain tipped her head to Bors, then stood and briskly crossed the taproom to the unfamiliar girl.