Page 29 of Poster Girl

“Ice princess,” she says. “Poster Girl. Descending from her kingdom on high—” Light laughter ripples through the other people in the bar, their faces hidden. “All right, maybe ascending from the shithole to which we’ve exiled her—to ask formyhelp? Little old moi?”

She sips her liquor.

“I never thought I would see the day,” she says.

“Well,” Sonya says. “Neither did I.”

Knox laughs again. “Get the Delegation girl a drink, on me. Who’s that?” She gestures at Alexander, lingering a few feet away.

“My minder,” Sonya says.

“Nobody likes a babysitter,” Knox says. “Sit down and stop looming, Minder.”

The bartender sets a glass in front of Sonya, the drink clear, the glass frosty.

“I don’t drink alcohol,” Sonya says.

“Oh, you do today,” Knox says. “I’m not talking to you until you spend some DesCoin for me.” She smirks. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

She’s older, but there is no sign of it in her face, her skin smooth, her dark eyes lively with scrutiny.

Sonya feels like a puppet dangling by Knox’s strings. She sips from the glass. It tastes like pine and citrus, and burns her tongue. Another thing she has to trade away, she thinks, to find Grace Ward.

“There’s someone I need to find,” Sonya says. “Her name is Grace Ward. She was rehomed—”

“Rehomed.” Knox snorts. “No. Try again, without the Delegationspeak.”

Sonya sets her jaw. She hears Alexander laugh a little, beside her.

“Oh, let’s not pretend you’re not a former Delegation henchman yourself, Alexander Price,” Knox says. “Alexander Price, with his father’s face and his mother’s name. Just because you figured out which way the wind was blowing faster than your girl here doesn’t mean you’re not still Delegation scum.” She raises her glass to him in a toast. “Lucky for you, scum drinks free today, on me.”

“Did you memorize some kind of Delegation leadership database?” Alexander says, his brow furrowing.

“I have a stellar memory for the people who tried to put me away for life—and their families, just in case I needed to do some blackmailing,” she says. “My arrest was ordered by August Kantor, and I was sentenced by Nikhil Price. What a pair. Cheers, to my narrow yet somehow inevitable escape.”

Little pinpricks of light shine all around them as people raise their glasses to Knox. She looks expectantly at Sonya.

“Well?” Knox says. “You want my help but you don’t want to toast my freedom?”

Sonya raises her glass. Knox touches it with her own.

“Let’s hear it again, Ms. Kantor,” Knox says. “And say it right this time.”

“I need to find a girl named Grace Ward,” Sonya says. “She was taken from her parents—”

“By whom, pray tell?”

“By theDelegation,” Sonya says. “She was placed with adoptive parents and given a new name. I need to find her and reunite her with her parents.”

“And what’s in it for you?”

Sonya hesitates.

“Freedom,” she says.

“Ah, freedom. Freedom for the Children of the Delegation, I hear that’s all the rage these days.” Knox drains her glass and drops it on the bar top. “There was a very straightforward sense of justice when you were sentenced. For decades, the Delegation held people accountable for the actions of the people around them. It saved us all money on police, you see. You don’t neednearlyas many ‘peace officers’ if you turn your own citizens into them. I bet...”

She leans closer. Her eyes are straight at the top, single-lidded, irises so dark they are indistinguishable from the pupil.

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