Chapter 82 - The Grind

We had to stop by the Mop and Bucket before heading back up to the middle city. I wanted my seeker robe and cravat if I was going to approach them as the Barrow Knave.

I greeted a few familiar faces on the way up to my office. Miss Trundi grouched at me about finding half her girls turned to spies. Mender Bartran I thanked for patching up Annalisa and I after our undercity delve, and of course the card players I left to their own devices. I wouldn’t say I trusted them after they’d extracted the mender, but they’d certainly earned the right to not have their drinks watered down.

I also spotted Quin, at the bar, and I pulled up a stool next to him. He nodded to me, but almost coughed up half his drink when Annalisa slid into the seat on his other side.

“Ma’am,” he said, blushing. Annalisa smiled and batted her eyes. I rolled mine. Wasn’t sure what the highborn Soul Seeker saw in my rough and tumble lower city partner. Whatever it was, Annalisa seemed to be basking in it, doing her best impression of a proper coy lady—though the effect was somewhat ruined when she guzzled down half an ale in the span of one breath and belched loud enough to shake dust off the ceiling in the next.

“How’s your reeducation coming?” I asked.

“Still only got the three,” said Quinn, “but I’m getting better with petals. Able to combo the knave and make a fighter’s hits harder to see coming.” he took a pull on his own drink and shook his head. “All this time, who knew every single fight was fixed?”

“It’s not all that bad,” I said, clapping him on the back. “Most are fixed at both ends, so it’s a match between fighters and a match between fixers. Two for the price of one. They do the same thing in the upper city, just that both fixers are in the ring so they’re fair game for the fighters and fair game for the box office.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he said. Then he shrugged.

“When’s your next fight?” I asked.

“Two days ahead, in Cradledown.”

“Bring your boots,” I said, standing. “And careful with Annalisa. She bites.”

Annalisa chomped the air helpfully and then grinned at Quin. He blushed.

I passed Damen on my way to the stairs, and caught his eye, though I’m not sure if he stared at me or through me. “Stay strong! Looks like relief is on the horizon,” I murmured as I passed him.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He made no indication that he’d heard me. Poor devil. I moved past him and up the stairs to retrieve my robe. A stack of letters sat on my desk, which I perused. I had a number of notes and missives from the Kindledown operations, a query about odds for a fight from Brokier, and even a few scrawls in Mithra’s incomprehensible penmanship that I managed to decipher into dirty limericks. There once was a Drakkyn from Crassport… Fucking hell, I bet she made them extra illegible after I’d told her how tough it was to sort out her scribbles. I tossed the parchment back onto the desk and picked up another.

The Alinderre Masquerade Theater invites you to to a night of spectacle. Witness a production of the…

A play invitation? I turned it over. Admit two: For the Barrow Knave and the Lady Blue.

Interesting. Clearly a trap, of course. One of those things where they invite a bunch of lower city criminals to an event and then adventurers round them all up for the bounty. The knavesin my deck echoed my sentiment. I pocketed the invitation and grabbed my robe. It was difficult to picture Annalisa sitting for a play—or sitting still longer than the thirty seconds or so it took her to find the bottom of her drink, for that matter. But perhaps we could turn such a thing to our advantage.

It was time to go to work.

By the time I made it back downstairs, Quinn had started doing a reading for Annalisa, and she seemed to really like the results. I had to pull her away as she protested, but the devilborn girl finally fell in beside me and we headed back for the middle city.

Annalisa was uncharacteristically quiet. If my partner were capable of quiet contemplation, that’s what I’d imagine she was doing. The sun drifted toward the horizon, reflecting painfully bright off Annalisa’s polished horns. And as it dropped beneath the rooftops on the western rise and the glare dimmed enough to face her, I finally asked.

“What did you ask him to read for you?”

Anna shook herself out of her reverie. “Hmm?”

“Quinn, he did a reading for you. What did you ask?”

“Oh,” Annalisa said, looking away. She cupped her elbows in her hands. “I asked how my father was getting on.”

“Oh,” I said. then I paused. “Wait, why did you need a reading for that? Didn’t you say he was in the Cartographer’s guild?”

“Mmhmm,” she said.

“Doesn’t that mean he’s in the city?”

Annalisa was silent for a moment. We stepped aside to make way for a lamplighter and climbed up the narrow steps to the highest tier of Barrowdown.

“He’s… very busy. I don’t speak to him much.”

“Is he out on some long survey?” I asked.

Annalisa dropped her hands to her sides and curled them into fists. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Alright,” I said. “We don’t gotta.”

I let it go that she’d asked me uncomfortable questions about my own past, which I’d answered to her satisfaction. And gods know I don’t like those sorts of questions, so I couldn’t blame her. No devilborn comes from a happy home. Somehow Annalisa had convinced me she was the exception. With as much as she talked about her family, bragged about the work they did in Dragonmaw, shared details of their lives, and pent herself up writing letters to them in her room, I had assumed they were close. But in the few months I’d been nearly inseparable from Annalisa, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any of them. I’d given it little thought, but it certainly bears some.

I pursed my lips. Some diviner I am.