“Step back, Karlo, or Murtazi gets your left testicle for supper,” Nusha said without looking up from the desk.
Behind her, perched on an overturned lectern, the six-legged Corpse Cat opened all three rows of translucent teeth and let out a sound like wet leather tearing in two. Karlo’s hand twitched toward his hilt, but Levan stepped smoothly between them, tall, calm, his expression thoroughly wiped of the boyish warmth he had worn three seconds prior.
“The council can wait twenty minutes, Karlo. The war cannot,” Levan said. His tone didn't invite debate; it laid down iron tracks. “Clear the hall. Now.”
Karlo spat on the stone flagstones, gave Nusha a curdled sneer, and backed out.
Nusha shut Giorgi’s journal with a hard snap. “He’s charming. You should give him a medal before he sells your neck to the Magistrate for copper pennies.”
“He won’t,” Levan murmured, though his jaw worked tight against the lantern light. “He’s angry because his brother died in the mud at Osta. Men like him need targets, Nusha. Not riddles.”
“Then he’s lucky we have a target.” She tapped the ciphered parchment. “The vault below the high manor in Reshnari. Only one key opens the antechamber where they keep the Core. My cousin, Lord Archil, wears it around his throat like a bloated pig showing off a prize ribbon. And tomorrow night, he hosts the Winter Solstice masque.”
“A ball,” Levan said, eyebrows lifting. “You want to walk into the belly of the serpent in silk slippers?”
“I want to steal the bone-iron key off his chest while he’s drunk on spiced brandy,” she corrected, gathering her hair into a vicious knot. “And you are going to be my doting, idiot fiancé. Try not to trip over your boots.”
***
Reshnari’s glass-domed conservatory floated above the smog like a cage made of diamonds. Below its crystal arches, the elite of Aznavan grazed on roasted lark tongues while outside, the grayrot took another half-block of tenement housing.
Nusha adjusted the mother-of-pearl mask pinching the bridge of her nose. The emerald velvet gown weighed fifteen pounds, stiff with whalebone and lined with lead thread to dampen her aura. Her spine screamed from the posture Giorgi had spent seven years helping her forget.
Beside her, Levan looked infuriatingly regal. The charcoal coat suited his broad shoulders; his mask—black lacquer chased with copper filigree—highlighted the stark cut of his mouth. Under his embroidered sleeve, she felt the hard outline of a spring-loaded boot dagger.
“Keep your chin up,” he muttered through teeth fixed in an easy, aristocratic smile. “You look like you’re plotting an arson.”
“I am plotting an arson,” she replied under her breath. “Preferably starting with the curtains. Look at my cousin over by the font. Third glass of Tokay already. His fat neck is practically begging for a garrote.”
Across the floor, the young lord laughed—a braying, wet sound—flanked by giggling sycophants. Dangling against his brocade waistcoat was the key: five inches of pale marrow-iron carved with the nine interlocking rings of their house.
Nearby, a young serving girl stumbled under the heft of a silver salver. A noblewoman in feathers barely glanced down as she kicked the girl’s shin with an ivory heel. “Mind the hem, filth. Go wash that scabby face in the trough.”
Nusha’s fingers twitched toward her skirts, where her scalpels rested in concealed sheaths. The girl hurried off, eyes down, shoulders hitched to her ears.
“Nusha,” Levan whispered. His bare knuckles brushed against the silk of her wrist, cool and steadying. “Don’t.”
“They haven’t changed,” she spat, tasting bile. “Not by an inch. Ten years, and it’s still perfume poured over rotting meat.”
“Then let’s take what they stole and leave them the rot.” The orchestra struck up a sweeping, minor-key quadrille—the old Imperial waltz. Levan offered his gloved hand with a courtier’s bow. “May I have this dance, Lady Vaneva?”
She took it because she had to, because the target was drifting toward the edge of the rotunda, and because dancing was the only way to drift with him without the guards raising halberds.
Levan drew her onto the polished marble. His hand found the small of her back, large, firm, pressing with just enough force to guide her into the turn. The lead-threaded skirt swished against his woolen trousers.
They moved with frightening grace. Nusha had expected clumsiness from a rebel fighter bred in frontier skirmishes, but Levan moved like water over stone. He held her tight, closer than etiquette dictated, his gaze locked onto hers behind the lacquered mask.
“Where did a backwoods rebel learn the high step?” she breathed, pivoting beneath his arm.
“Before the war, my father was a magistrate in Telavi,” he murmured against her ear. The warmth of his breath sent a prickle across her nape. “He insisted on violin lessons and dancing masters. Said a barbarian could win a siege, but only a gentleman could negotiate a surrender.”
“Did you surrender?”
“Never.” His fingers tightened slightly against her waist, pulling her flush against his chest as the violins swelled to a crescendo. The press of his ribs against hers was hot, alive, a stark contrast to the hollow, painted faces surrounding them. “And I’m not surrendering you to this tomb, either.”
For two beats, the orchestra seemed distant. Her cynical veneer cracked just wide enough for the heat in his chest to reach hers. She saw the speck of gold in his hazel irises, the scar cutting through his left eyebrow, the fierce, stupid hope that made him look at a ruined world and see something worth mending.
“He's turning,” she said, her voice dropping into business mode to kill the sudden knot in her throat. “Now. Spin me.”
Levan didn’t hesitate. He swung her out wide, catching the centrifugal drag of the heavy hem, then reeled her back in on an off-beat that brought them skimming within inches of the lord's elbow.
Nusha’s left hand shot out like an adder.
Her thumb hit the release catch on the gold chain; her index finger snagged the loop of marrow-iron. In the same fluid rotation, she tucked the pale metal into the gathered sleeve of her gown. The fool merely blinked into his cup, oblivious, complaining to a courtier about the tax levies.
Levan finished the turn, bringing them cleanly toward the service corridor exit.
“Got it,” she whispered.
“Good girl,” he murmured, the low praise hitting her lower belly like dropped shot.
They broke from the circle of dancers, gliding past the mirrored pillars toward the servant passages that led to the lower cellars. Murtazi was waiting by the coal chute, supposed to have unlatched the iron grate twenty minutes ago.
The music faded behind heavy double doors of polished oak. The cold damp of the service hallway swallowed them, smelling of lye and wet masonry.
“We move fast,” Nusha said, hiking her skirts above her ankles. “If Archil realizes his neck is empty before we hit the canal—”
“Archil won’t notice until dawn,” a voice said.
It didn't come from the shadows; it seemed to leach out of the stones themselves, dry as winter reeds and razor-sharp.
Nusha froze.
At the end of the narrow corridor, seated on an unvarnished stool beside the dumbwaiter, sat an old woman in plain black wool. No mask. No jewels. Her white hair was pinned into a severe crown, her hands resting calmly atop an ebony cane capped with silver filigree.
On the floor beside her paws sat Murtazi, purring softly, rubbing his six-ribbed flank against the woman’s embroidered slippers as she fed him strips of raw pigeon breast.
“Murtazi, you traitorous sack of gristle,” Nusha choked out.
Levan’s blade cleared its scabbard with a clean shriek of metal, stepping directly in front of Nusha, but the matriarch didn't even look up from the cat.
“Put that toy away, boy,” Vardo Zakarova said mildly. Her pale, sunken eyes finally drifted up, settling on Nusha like an executioner's ledger. “You danced reasonably well, Anoushka. Your posture has improved since you left the scullery.”
“Grandmother,” Nusha managed, her hand gripping the stolen bone key so hard the teeth bit into her palm.
Vardo smiled—a thin, bloodless parting of lips. “Did you really think your cousin’s clasp was faulty, child? Or that the garden gates opened by accident?” She stroked Murtazi’s third pair of ears with a wrinkled knuckle. “You wanted the key. I wanted you inside the perimeter. Now, be a good girl and come home.”