Vow of Thieves (Dance of Thieves 2) - Page 61

You’ll bring a nice profit.

Where is she?

Where is the brat?

My eyes shot up, and then I couldn’t take them away. They were frozen on his face the way they had been that long-ago night, and it felt like the room held only Zane and me. Only us, connected by my mother and five terrifying minutes. I found myself crawling out of a dark prison inch by inch. I looked at the mole on his wrist, his bloodless skin, his stringy hair and black eyes. He felt my glower and turned. I dipped my knife into the cold crockery dish, spun it cleverly around so butter curled upward in ruffled circles like meat being shaved from a hock. Zane’s next words hung in the air, unsaid, his black eyes shifting from me to the knife and back again. I slathered the curled butter onto a thick slice of bread, then dipped the knife back into the crock for more, spinning it again, imagining it boring into Zane, curling flesh, cutting away a piece of him at a time.

“Very clever how you do that,” the woman seated next to Zane said.

I slathered another curl of butter on my bread, then dipped the knife in for more.

“You like butter, do you?” another guest noted.

“No,” I answered, “in fact, I detest butter. I only like the way the knife feels cutting through it. So smooth and easy.”

Zane’s eyes froze with fear. Maybe not because he thought I would stab him, but that at any moment I might burst out and tell everyone about him, that I would steal his life from him the way he stole mine. My mind was what he feared, and the dark plans it might be fashioning. My mind was something he couldn’t control. Not even with the promise of seeing my mother again. She is gone, Kazi. Gone.

But I heard her voice. Fresh. New. There. My chiadrah. Eat, my darling. You must eat.

I couldn’t let it go. Hope. It rose up from some hidden place inside me.

Damn him to the hottest corner of hell for doing this to me again.

I released the knife, letting it clatter loudly against the crockery, and ate my cold dinner. Food should never be wasted.

Dinah nudged me. “The king is asking you a question,” she whispered.

I looked up. The king and everyone at the other end of the table was staring at me.

“Is there a problem?” Montegue asked.

I wiped my mouth with my napkin and set it aside. “No, Your Majesty. Just hungry and absorbed with the food.” I apologized and asked him to repeat his question.

“I understand that you tell riddles. Will you entertain everyone and tell us one now?”

Riddles? My temples burned, wondering how he knew. I had never told riddles to anyone but Jase and—

Garvin must have seen the confusion on my face. “Mustafier,” he spoke up. “A merchant who sells trinkets on the arena floor. He sings your praises.”

Mustafier. I didn’t know his name, but I did remember him. The logophile who gave me the vine ring as payment. Still, I wondered at the king’s motives. Entertain everyone? I doubted that. There was nothing he loved more than hearing his own voice. Maybe his point was that he knew things about me, things I didn’t even realize he knew. He had ears and eyes everywhere.

I stood and thought for a minute. The room remained quiet, waiting.

“All right,” I said. “Here you go.” I told several short riddles, easy ones about trees, eggs, and noses. After each one, muttering circled the table as guests discussed possible answers, but the king was always the first to answer.

“Surely you have something harder for me to guess?” Montegue said after the fourth one.

Many. But sometimes the point of a riddle wasn’t its difficulty but the depth of its distraction. “Let me think for a moment,” I answered, but I already knew one that would offer sufficient distraction. “Listen carefully,” I said. “I won’t repeat myself.” He nodded in reply, and I began.

“I sleep in a cave, dark and small,

Rarely do you see me at all.

But an angry word can lure me out,

Slashing and roaring, and tearing about.

Sometimes I sneak slow, my prey in sight,

Tags: Mary E. Pearson Dance of Thieves Fantasy
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