The Things We Steal
1370 Words
Senna was laughing when Lira found her.
Not the restrained mouth-twitch she rationed out in public — real laughter, the kind that bent her forward at the waist and made her locks fall across her face.
One of Draven's market guards was standing three feet away looking simultaneously charmed and confused, which meant Senna's medium distraction had involved him personally, and he hadn't quite recovered enough to be annoyed about it yet.
Lira waited.
Senna straightened and said something to the guard that made him laugh in spite of himself and moved away from him with the casual ease of someone who had never in her life been where she wasn't supposed to be. She passed Lira's side without breaking stride.
"Twelve vials?" she asked quietly.
"Eleven."
Senna's eyes cut sideways. "Lira."
"The twelfth had a hairline c***k. I left it. Cracked enchanted ink leaks, leaked ink stains, everything inside a cloak pocket, stained cloaks are evidence." Lira kept her voice level and her feet moving. "You taught me that."
"I did teach you that." A pause. "Good call."
They moved through the thinning crowd toward the southern edge of the market where Senna kept her stall—a modest setup offering legally dubious but technically unprovable curiosities, which was the most honest description either of them had ever managed for it.
The afternoon light was showing grey and copper, the Ashland's sky doing what it always did at dusk, turning the color of an old bruise.
Lira waited until they were behind the stall's back curtain before she put the note on the table.
Senna looked at it. I looked at Lira. I picked it up.
She read the front — the description, the reward amount — and her expression did something complicated that she smoothed away before Lira could fully read it. Then she turned it over. Read the seven words on the back.
Read them again.
Set it down very carefully, the way you set down something that might be hot.
"Where was this?" Her voice was even. Too even.
"Eastern exit post. Fresh ink — placed while I was in the tent." Lira leaned against the stall's support beam, arms crossed, watching Senna's face with the same attention she gave exits. "You've seen that handwriting."
It wasn't a question. Senna knew she knew, so she didn't insult either of them by pausing too long.
"Once," Senna said. "Two years ago. A client came through the market looking for information on Ashborn bloodlines."
She touched the edge of the parchment without picking it up again. "I told them I didn't know anything about Ashborn bloodlines, which was true enough. They paid me anyway — just for the conversation — and left a receipt of payment in that handwriting."
The word Ashborn landed in the space between them and stayed there.
Lira had heard it before. Vague references, market whispers, the occasional drunk historian at the Veil's tavern going on about the old magic before someone told him to quiet down.
Ashborn was what they called the people — the vanishingly rare people — who carried the oldest Fay flame in their blood. Not court magic. Something older.
Something that predated the courts entirely and made the court-blooded deeply, quietly nervous.
It was also, by every account she had ever half-listened to, extinct.
"Extinct," she said aloud.
"Allegedly." Senna finally looked at her directly. Her eyes — fully Fay in their structure, deep amber without whites at the outer edges — were doing the thing they did when Senna was choosing her words with surgical care. "The markings, Lira."
"Are birthmarks."
"Are not birthmarks. I've seen birthmarks. I grew up around Fay knowing what a dormant bloodline mark looks like, and I didn't have enough courage to say this to you directly for three years, so I'm saying it now." She pushed her palms flat on the table.
I grew up around Fay to know what a dormant bloodline mark looks like, and I didn't have enough courage to say this to you directly for three years, so I'm saying it now." She pushed her palms flat on the table. "Someone knows what those marks are. Someone who is not me, not you, and not anybody in this market. And they want you to know that they know.
Lira stared at the note.
The marks along her collarbone were quiet now — cool, still, exactly as they had been her entire life except for the moments near old relics when they weren't.
She had a practiced habit of pressing two fingers there when they stirred, as though she could hold them flat through sheer stubbornness. She pressed them there now.
"The reward money," she said finally.
Senna blinked. "What?"
"On the front. The reward." Lira picked up the notice and looked at it again. "That's not a bounty. It's too high for a bounty on a market thief, even a good one. And the wanted notices the courts post go through the official channels — they'd have my actual face by now if a court was hunting me. Someone posted this independently." She set it down.
"Someone wants people looking for me so that I feel found."
Senna was quiet for a moment, working through it. Then: "So you'll go underground."
"I'll go underground," Lira agreed.
"For how long?"
Until I discovered who posted it and why or until the job opportunities dry up, whichever comes first.
She started pulling the eleven vials from her cloak pockets, setting them on the table in a neat row. "Who's the client for these?
Senna accepted the subject change with the pragmatism of someone who knew when pushing would only produce a locked door. She cataloged the vials quickly, counting, checking the seals.
"Merchant in the Hollow Quarter" Pays on delivery, no questions, reliable." She wrapped the vials in cloth with practiced efficiency. "I can have your cut to you by morning."
"Keep it."
Senna stopped wrapping. Lira
I need you to do something with it instead.
Lira pulled her cloak straight and checked the exits from the stall by habit — north gap, south gap, the curtain behind her. "I need you to find out everything you can about Ashborn bloodlines.
Not tavern gossip. Real history. Court records if you can get near them, Oracle texts if you know anyone who deals in them." She met Senna's eyes.
"Someone believes they know me."
She picked up the note, folded it once, twice, turned it inside her shirt against the markings that were already warming faintly at the contact, as though recognizing something in the ink.
"I'd like to know first."
She was at the curtain when Senna spoke behind her — quiet, careful, the voice she used when she meant something all the way down.
There's a letter that came for you this morning. Anonymous drop, market post-box, your code name on the front." A pause. "I didn't open it."
Lira turned.
Senna held out a small envelope, cream-coloured, sealed in black wax pressed with a sigil Lira didn't recognize. She took it. Broke the seal. Read the three lines inside once, then again, then a third time in case the words changed.
They didn't.
The Shadow Court vault. Third moon.
Triple your standard rate.
Come alone.
We know what you're worth, even if you've forgotten.
At the bottom, in the same precise, unhurried handwriting as the note on the post: Don't be late.
The marks burned gold against her skin for exactly three seconds.
Then the curtain fell closed behind her, and Ashland swallowed her whole.
- Writer
