Page 90 of Sharpest Court

And I know what I will choose, I’d said, so firmly that I almost believed the lie.

Because truthfully: While I’d come to Banarrat certain of my course, I now felt thread-thin with indecision, fraying out in two directions. Yes, I needed to obtain the sword to destroy the compass. Yes, Perla’s oath band provided enough incentive for her to tell me whatever Erik had wanted me to hear—and to tell Erik anything she learned about me.

But since seeing her here, a new, urgent fire had kindled inside me. It was the same fire that had driven me to scrub the Hunters’ Mark off Marge’s door all those weeks ago, and it now compelled me to try and make this right.

As long as Perla remained bound to the king, I knew I couldn’t fully trust her.

But I could certainly save her.

The door suddenly swung open, and my specter jerked through the hoop. Goren clocked my wince from where he was sharpening his axe on the adjacent sofa, but he mercifully didn’t extend the session.

“Success,” Lye declared, walking in ahead of Keil and Valeria. Keil’s eyes flicked to mine instantly, as though I was the first person he sought out in every room. Only as he offered me a soft smile did I realize that I’d bypassed the others to find him, too. “One of my contacts knows a locksmith on Waler Ridge,” Lye said once the door was shut. “She can get the key copied within half an hour.”

“How many contacts do you have, exactly?” I asked.

“Aw, don’t be jealous, Lockpicker. You know you’re my favorite.” Then he turned to Perla, who’d been watching him warily. She clearly didn’t know if Lye would receive her like Dashiel—civilized and kind—or like Goren, with barely veiled contempt. But Lye couldn’t be more distinctly himself as he winked at her and said, “Unless, of course, your new friend steals my heart.” He sketched a flourishing bow. “Lysander Moreau, my lady, but most people call me Lye.”

“Most people call you a pest,” Goren muttered.

Perla seemed to relax at that; a seal of disapproval from Goren was evidently a mark in Lye’s favor.

“Thank you for your help, Lye,” she said. “I’m indebted to you.”

“Excellent,” he said, grinning. And I began to understand how he’d amassed so many favors around the world.

“That wasn’t the only success of the morning.” Valeria set a parchment on the low table before me. “I got the schedule for the rest of the fete. Tonight’s jolly will end after thirty dances, to represent the thirty soldiers who infiltrated Saxon’s guard unit on the second night leading to his defeat.” She gave me a cunning smile. “And Holden will be expected to partake in each of those dances.”

I silently exhaled, relieved that the general would be occupied for one more evening.

Though Finbar’s mention of Erik last night had shaken me, he’d done us at least one favor with the visit. We’d been unable to work out how to enter Holden’s private office building without alerting the guards. But thanks to the manner of Finbar’s entry, I’d realized we wouldn’t need to enter through that building at all.

“How did you get that schedule?” Dashiel asked Val. “The festivity planners on this island are more fearsome than the soldiers.”

She perched on the arm of the sofa, looking impossibly regal in a triangle of sunlight. “Let’s just say I worked my charms.”

“You seduced them?” I asked.

“She Wielded their party supplies over the ocean and asked if they were waterproof,” Keil corrected.

I laughed under my breath, and even Perla’s mouth quirked into a smile.

“And the update on the security breach?” Goren asked, addressing the last part of their morning excursion.

“Less than successful,” Keil said, coming to sit on my armrest and stretching his arm across the back of my seat.

Since my encounter with the roses, the boundary between us had eroded further from both sides, and there was something quiet and natural in the closeness. This morning, when my camisole strap had drifted down my shoulder, he’d absently trailed a finger up my arm mid-conversation to readjust it. Then, later, he’d transferred his last honey-soaked fig to my breakfast plate, and I’d had to stifle the impulse to thank him with a kiss on the cheek.

As his thigh now brushed my elbow, my specter flared through the hoop once more. When I hissed my discomfort, Goren glowered at me, punctuating the look with a sharp drag of his honing stone.

I set the hoop aside and withdrew my specter if only to keep him from giving me that look again.

“I asked to see the reports,” Keil continued, “and they detailed nothing more than a negligent guard, an abandoned rowboat, and the smashed window of a harbor house.”

Lye scoffed. “So, essentially, the beginning of a bad joke.”

“There was a marble, too,” Perla said. And at the sound of her cool, confident voice, Goren’s honing stone faltered, giving an uncomfortable screech.

I pursed my lips to keep from smirking at him; apparently, I wasn’t the only one susceptible to distraction.