Page 15 of Silver in the Bone

“I wasn’t raised to be a lady, if that’s what you’re asking,” I managed to say. “Not like you. There’s no one in the world like you. Not for beauty, not for power.”

“I’ve never enjoyed an overegged pudding, beastie,” Madrigal said, a mild tone of warning in her voice. “But speaking of tasty morsels, where is that delightful young man who accompanied you on your last visit? I barely got a glimpse of him and was hoping for a better introduction.”

“He ...” I grasped for an explanation that wouldn’t insult or infuriate her. “He had another commitment tonight.”

“Another commitment more important than me?” Madrigal asked.

My body was strung tighter than catgut. “My apologies.”

“How terribly annoying.” Madrigal glowered into her goblet of wine. “Tell me, Miss Lark, for I do not often understand the mysteries of the mortal mind: What keeps you from clawing out your brother’s heart when he annoys you?”

“Willpower, mostly,” I said before I could stop myself. “And weak nails.”

Emrys let out a shocked laugh. The Sorceress Madrigal was silent for a moment, then her head fell back in a howl. The sound was more animal than human.

I took another step forward, then another, until I was close enough to slide the brooch from its protective cover and place it on the table beside her.

“I suppose I must pay you now,” Madrigal said with a pout. She held out her hand, and a blood-red sachet appeared in her palm out of thin air. I hesitated for a moment, then took it, then risked a look inside to make sure the sorceress hadn’t filled it with stones or pennies.

To my surprise, Madrigal let out another sharp peal of laughter. “I see you have much experience working with my sistren, Miss Lark, but both of you may rest assured that I always pay for work well done.”

Work. So Emrys was here for work—not a favor, which I might have been quicker to believe. I’d known that the Dyes had direct dealings with sorceresses from time to time, to trade for information or sell their findings, but it was nothing like the uneasy contracts Cabell and I made with them. Most of our guild found it pitiful we had to take the jobs to stay alive.

I whirled to face Emrys. “You’re here for a job?”

“What if I am?” he challenged, his eyes flashing.

“Did Daddy cut off your allowance, Trust Fund?” I asked. “Or did he just tighten the leash?”

Emrys’s expression darkened. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

No. No. He wasn’t about to take good work from me. I needed it in a way he’d never understand.

“Mistress Crone,” I said, fighting to keep the desperation out of my voice, “if you’re pleased with my recovery work, it would be my pleasure to take on another assignment from you.”

“Are you so desperate that you have to poach work?” Emrys shot back with a new, unfamiliar edge. “Not that I doubt your wisdom, Mistress Crone, but Tamsin—Miss Lark—doesn’t have the most basic requirement. She’s not one of the Cunningfolk and doesn’t possess the One Vision.”

It was the truth, but something about the plain way he’d said it, the acknowledgment that it was something to be ashamed of, felt utterly humiliating.

“Unlike you and your best friend nepotism, I don’t need the One Vision to do my work,” I retorted.

“She makes a fair point, beastie. You cannot deny that Miss Lark has been successful, even with her impediment,” Madrigal said, picking up the brooch and holding it toward the candlelight. Her smile grew slowly. “Perhaps a little competition is in order, then. I’d be quite curious to see which one of you is able to deliver the Servant’s Prize first.”

The Servant’s Prize. The words rattled harshly in my memory, familiar but impossible to pin down. I knew that name ...

Emrys’s lips compressed as he sat back. A bead of sweat worked its way down the side of his face, following the path of some sort of welt or scar. I leaned into the table, momentarily distracted by the sight of the jagged line of raised skin. It stretched down, disappearing beneath his jacket, but as he turned toward the candlelight, it disappeared altogether, as if I’d imagined it.

“She can’t handle the work, Mistress,” he said finally. “And we’ve already come to our agreement.”

“Don’t listen to him,” I said quickly. “I’m nothing like him or any of the other hacks. I do a better job with half the resources and for half the price. And as you know, I recover specific items for clients—I don’t sell relics to any creep who can pay.”

Madrigal ignored us, still studying the way the brooch glowed in the candlelight. With a flick of her fingers, she broke the silver ornament in two, letting the emerald spill into her palm. Without a word, without so much as drawing another breath, she popped it into her mouth like a piece of hard candy and swallowed it whole.

My mouth opened. Closed. “I ...”

Didn’t want to know.

“I will concede that Miss Lark’s lack of the One Vision would be a problem for this particular search,” the sorceress said, placing a hand over Emrys’s. Heat burned in my chest. Her nails stroked his skin as if he were a pomegranate to be split open and devoured.

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