Page 61 of Kill the Beast
The thought of him plunged the glowing heat of her anger into the cooling waters of shame. She had resented his assumption that she would punch the hotel clerk over her wardrobe, and yet here she was, not a day later, proving that assumption correct. Letting her anger overpower her without a thought to the consequences.
The polished wood floor creaked, and Lyssa looked up to find Joren coming out of the back room. “Is there a problem, here, Otho?” he asked the boy, though his eyes were on her.
“N-no,” Otho stuttered as Lyssa drew back from him.
“Actually, there is,” she said. The thought of Alderic, and how he might handle the situation, had given her an idea. “Your boy here doesn’t seem to want to take my gold.”
“Gold?” father and son said in unison, and the look Joren gave Otho could have set ice aflame.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out Alderic’s coin purse, jingling it in her hand. “Here I am with money from a rich employer who doesn’t bother to keep track of the coin he gives me, and Otho here seems more interested in showing off than selling me something. He’s recommending cheaper steel than what I came in for, by the way. Not sure what you’ve been teaching your whelp, Joren, but even I—a lowly woman with no head for business—know that’s just stupid.”
“I apologize for my son,” Joren said, as Otho wilted—shoulders, spine, and moustache drooping under the weight of his father’s scorn. “I would be glad to serve you, my lady. What can I get for you?”
“One billet of Valdalian steel, please,” Lyssa said, rattling off the length and thickness of the metal she required. As she did, she opened the purse and held up a coin to the light, pretending to inspect it. Far too large for her purchase. That much would be clear all the way across the room, to anyone who knew their coins—as Joren undoubtedly did. She put it back.
“Just the one?” he asked, watching the flash of gold disappear with the kind of look a hawk gives a mouse that has escaped its talons.
“Just the one,” Lyssa confirmed. She had iron aplenty in the smithy for the sword’s quillons, and just needed enough good steel for the blade itself. Buthedidn’t need to know that. “I’ll take the rest of my list to a shop that doesn’t seem to get off on insulting its customers.”
Joren snapped at Otho to go get the billet, turning back to Lyssa and putting a solemn hand over his heart once the boy had hurried off. “What you experienced today is not indicative of how we typically run our business. If you allow me the opportunity to serve you again in the future, I promise that I will see to your needs personally, and with the utmost respect.”
“You should be so lucky.” Lyssa made a show of trying to find a coin small enough for her billet, finally digging out the tiniest coin in the purse—worth twice what even Joren was charging. She handed it to him, and he sighed.
“Let me get you your change,” he said, as his son appeared with her purchase, holding it out to Lyssa on his palms like a squire offering his lord a sword.
“Keep it,” she told Joren, taking the billet and inspecting it to make sure it was the right kind, the right length and thickness. “Use the rest to hire someone who knows what he’s talking about.”
Otho flushed as scarlet as his shirt.
The shop door hadn’t even closed behind her before Joren started shouting at his son.
Lyssa whistled as she left the Iron Lane, her Valdalian steel billet resting on one shoulder, like a chimney sweep with his broom.
She could see why Alderic preferred to wield money and words like a weapon. They could cut as cleanly as any knife, and were far less messy.
The sky was already bruising with the beginnings of dusk by the time she rounded the corner and started up Garnet Street, toward the Plaza Alstroemeria. Her stomach was growling loud enough for the street-sellers to call out to her, specifically.Hunger like that can only be satisfied by my pasties!She had forgotten to eat breakfast—or lunch, really, given how late she had slept—intent on getting to Shendra’s. Now she was starving, but as good as a cup of hot eels sounded, she wanted to see if Alderic felt like getting dinner with her in the hotel’s lavish restaurant, instead. She wanted to tell him what had happened at Joren’s, and to make sure he’d put more into his stomach than just alcohol all day.
As she approached the Plaza’s gilded doors, a gorgeous woman with flaming red curls emerged from them, tossing a radiant smile to the besotted doorman. Lyssa couldn’t blame the poor fool for gaping at her—she was wearing a gown with a neckline so shocking that for once the snobby hotel guests were turning their dirty looks on someone besides Lyssa in her rumpled menswear.
Then the woman turned her face in Lyssa’s direction, and the two of them locked eyes.
It was Honoria.
“Hello, Carnifex,” the Hound-warden said.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
LYSSA TENSED ASHonoria took a few steps toward her, her heeled shoes clacking on the sidewalk. She didn’t close the distance between them completely, stopping just out of reach—near enough to converse, far enough that Lyssa couldn’t stab her with one of the blades hidden in her boot without throwing it.
“Let me guess. A sword?” the leader of the Hound-wardens said, nodding at the billet in Lyssa’s hands. In its raw form it was shorter than the finished blade would be, of course, but Honoria had been Ragnhild’s blacksmith before Lyssa. Knew at a glance what the metal would likely be when Lyssa was through with it, by size and shape alone. “It would certainly make sense, given how personal this one is to you. Swords are so… intimate, aren’t they?” She didn’t have her own sword strapped to her side today, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have an array of knives hidden somewhere on her.
Lyssa didn’t answer. The crowd parted around them like they were rocks in a stream, and she couldn’t help but feel grateful for the presence of so many people. The Hound-warden couldn’t attack with this many witnesses around, this many obstacles keeping her from a clean escape.
Although… in that dress, it didn’t look like Honoria was here to attack anyone. Lyssa’s eyes skated over it, snagging on the creamy swell of cleavage, the way it hugged the waist and flared out at the hips. A dress like that was meant for seduction. For teasing secrets out of drunk noblemen too deep in their cups to realize what they were saying until it was too late.
Secrets about a certain monster’s whereabouts, maybe.
