Aldana

Six days to execution
I have got to get a better crew, Aldana grumbled to herself as she was escorted back to her prison cell. The trial had gone, how to put it, appallingly bad, and no thanks to testimonies put against her by her so-called loyal employees. But at least a sentence had finally been made.

Aldana laughed silently as her guards drew up beside the cell, remembering the crew’s looks of terror and pleading cries as they were dragged from the courtroom to await their fate. Oh yes, they had all received their sentence. Both those names called by the judge, and those still sitting on Aldana’s tongue.

The lead guard, a lieutenant by the insignia on his coat, was still fumbling with the keys. Aldana shifted her weight, tapping an impatient claw.

“Needing assistance?” she asked at last, voice dry as summer drought.

Lieutenant snapped, “Silence,” and jammed the correct key into the lock at last. He was flushing as he yanked on the door—the rusty hinges complained loudly as it swung open—and flicked his tail at the others to throw her in.

As Aldana dusted herself off, the guards marched back down the hallway, Lieutenant at their head. She threaded her forelegs through the cell bars and rested her head against the cold metal to watch them go, didn’t flinch when the outer door slammed, muffling their tromp up the stairs.

Yes, she knew Lieutenant. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the constable who’d crashed a cudgel against her head, but that skydancer feather crest was pretty distinctive. Better yet, she recognized his voice, which she’d heard yelling orders over her body as her vision flickered in and out before sliding into unconsciousness.

Her claws flexed. She remembered everyone on the Bazaar Indigo raid.

Four days to execution
“Are you really going to try that?” Lieutenant demanded, standing outside Aldana’s cell with a tray of food. “Right in front of me?”

“What’re you gonna do,” Aldana grunted, twisting around to fit the pick into the lock at a different angle. “Try and stop me?”

“Yes. That’s my whole job. Stopping criminals like you.” He set the tray down and knocked her claws away from the lock. The pick tumbled to the floor and he whisked it away with a sweep of his tail.

Aldana paused, claws held outstretched for a moment longer, then let them drop and dangle as she affixed Lieutenant with a scathingly unimpressed look. “Criminals like me?”

He failed to hold her gaze longer than a second, scowling as he lifted the door slot and kicked the tray into the cell. She ignored how the slop spilled off the tray and over her claws, keeping her eyes on him.

He turned to go, head ducked and hackles raised as if trying to hide, and Aldana drawled, “They already suspect, you know. They learned your little . . . secret.”

Sure enough, the little rat jumped nigh clear of his skin. Lieutenant whirled, teeth bared. “You are to remain silent, dealer!”

Her brow slanted up sardonically. “Oh, I will.” She leaned forward, teeth flashing in a grin. “But they sure won’t.”

He backed away one step, then another, uncertainty warring across his features as he struggled between fear of her being right about his unsavory habits being discovered and suspicion over trusting the word of a dragon on death row.

But Aldana only lied when it was needed. They both knew, condemned and lawkeeper alike, the court’s mercy for partakers of scratch-bark. They knew its mercy, from the way Bazaar Indigo burned.

Lieutenant turned and fled back up the stairs.

Night before execution
Aldana’s last meal was just the same old slop. She didn’t touch it, just stayed curled up in the clump of straw that served as a nest. And listening to the commotion overhead.

A clattering of harried footsteps down the stairs, then the heavy oak door crashed open and Lieutenant flew into the hallway. Angry shouts chased him, growing louder until he slammed the door shut and jammed his spear up against the knob to secure it, as it only locked from the outside. Heavy kicks and thumps soon rained down on the wood. Smart dragons would lock the door and just let them starve, but these ones liked justice.

Lieutenant backed away, every feather aprickle, looking harassed and panicked.

Aldana lifted her head, mouth twisted sourly. “Can’t a prisoner get one minute of shut eye around here? One night of peace before their death sentence at dawn?”

Lieutenant grabbed the bars of her cell. “Dealer. Dealer, please. I—I need your—” He broke down on a sob. Looked down. Forced his head back up, meeting her eyes with a desperation that warmed Aldana’s heart. “Please. They’ll kill me.”

She’d already spotted the blood on his coat. Not his own, by the splatter—a superior’s? A friend’s? Someone he’d trusted, or the other way around. She leaned back, chin resting on her forefoot. “So what they say is true. The scratch eventually becomes an itch. A bloodthirsty one.”

Lieutenant hissed, but it ended in a whimper. “It wasn’t like that,” he whispered. “I swear, I’m not—”

“A murderer?” Aldana rolled to her feet and arched her back in a stretch, fanning out her wings before folding them neatly back. She strolled up to the door and flew up to perch on a bar that put her eyelevel to the skydancer. “Don’t be silly. Tonight, you’ll be saving my life.”

His jaw dipped slightly. “I can’t . . .”

The pounding on the door grew louder. The spear began to splinter and buckle. Lieutenant looked to it in utter terror.

Aldana gnashed her jaws, and his attention flew back to her. She hardened her gaze. “We’re in the same boat, now,” she snarled, whisper-soft and merciless as steel. “You’re not getting through that door alive.”

He hesitated a moment longer, torn between sworn duty and—but, well, he’d already broken those oaths, hadn’t he? Aldana saw in his eyes the exact moment the last remnants of his convictions wavered, then fell.

He pulled the key ring from his coat pocket and unlocked the cell door, swinging it open.

Aldana flitted out and to the oak door.

Lieutenant threw the keys away from himself in disgust. Self-hatred and fear manifested as anger as he rounded on her. “Now what, dealer?”

He never even bothered to remember my name. Though his actions had landed her in the courtroom. Aldana lifted her claws to the trembling spear. “This,” she said pleasantly, and gave it a shove.

Lieutenant’s eyes darted to hers one last time, flaring so wide that she saw irises green as sour apples. She flipped him a salute and tucked herself into the corner as the door was thrown open, almost torn off its hinges, and half a dozen guards came barreling through. They leapt straight for Lieutenant, ignoring his strangled, senseless cries of “GET HER GET HER SHE’S THE ONE YOU WANT SHE’S THE TRAITOR—” as they wrestled him into the cell waiting so conveniently empty with its door held wide open.

When all their backs were turned, she slunk through the doorway, turned, and was gone. She didn’t fly but climbed, scurrying up the wall then across the ceiling, keeping to shadows and pressing her body against nooks in the timber when guards passed beneath. Bazaar Indigo taught one many tricks in survival—until it had crumbled itself.

A new one will be built, and better, Aldana thought. She found a crack in the ceiling—a terrible leak during storms, no doubt—and squeezed herself through, clawing out onto the tiled roof. There she crouched in the true dark of night tainted by torchlight ringing the prison, and revealing the positions of guards posted on the roof’s corners.

For a moment, she wished sorely for the knives of the spiral she’d employed to keep her and her cart safe in Indigo. Then she snapped the thought away. Slow and careful, she moved to one torch and doused it. As a pair of guards came over to investigate and relit it, she crept to their abandoned post and used the gap in scrutiny to dart up into the night, her flight angled to sit her in the blindspots of all those torches.

In the chill wind slicing prison filth off her scales, Aldana formed her plans. A new crew. A new market. And better. From now on, Aldana would only deal with the best. Thieves and assassins who would never betray her—

If trust and oaths, the allure of gold, were not enough, then fear would have to do.

Not one would dare cross Aldana again. Not when she made the same look come to their eyes as the one she’d seen in her poor doomed, scratching, mewling, fickle Lieutenant.

How many days until his own execution, Aldana wondered. But she didn’t really care. She remembered the rest, every face and set of claws that had been on the Indigo Raid. They deserved a taste of their own medicine. And she needed a start on her name, to attract the best and brightest like moths to the flame.

Sysuul was easy. A set of rumors directed Aldana to a tavern, where she goaded him into challenging her into a foreleg wrestling match, and thanks to the muscle relaxant she’d slipped into his drink earlier, she pushed his foreleg down at a constant, slow pace, never breaking eye contact nor her sneering grin as he sweated and gnashed his jaws, until the final fateful THUNK of fist meeting wood. Groans and cheers from their audience spun about the room, tails thumping and wings battering each other’s heads as bets were lost or won. She’d been wary of his and his cronies’ reaction—never showed it, but sat back in her chair with lax wings, lounging like knives couldn’t scratch her—but Sysuul tilted his head, flexing his claws loosely for a moment, then looked up and laughed to hide the shadow of unease that crossed his eyes. And Aldana had him.

Ribacci was harder.

“We need a thief,” Aldana said, strolling down one of the busier lanes of the Hustle, a black market toiling to peddle itself as at least grey, and being a sore loser about it.

Sysuul snorted. “Why? Between your deals and my knives, we’re rolling in gold.”

A meaty snapper stepped in Aldana’s way, leering down at her. Aldana stopped short and fixed them with a cold, silent glare. Before they could open their jaws to speak—some insult, threat, not a Deity cared what—they suddenly yowled in pain and stumbled back, clutching their bleeding forefoot.

Sysuul flipped back to Aldana’s side, smugly sheathing his blade. “See?” he demanded, with a dismissive flick of his wing at their would-be assailant.

Aldana continued forward, Sysuul dogging her steps, and she stayed silent as they wound through the crowded street. The two dodged an overturned cart with its owner yelling at a hapless gaoler whose fur was splattered with the aromatic oils once stored inside the cart and now smashed on the cobblestone. They ignored the shouts and wheedles from hawkers shoving their wares and merchandise in their faces. As Aldana fluttered over a puddle of an uncertain yet stinking brown substance, she thought of how, one day, a walk through a market such as this would be different. No idiot thugs or shrieking vendors would dare disrupt her passage. No, whispers of her name—if any dared use that—would trail her in rippling waves, sweeter to her ears than any angelic hymn. Eyes would skew away, cowed by her mere wandering, idle glance, and when any patron of her streets displeased her, she’d but tilt her head, shift her stance, and one of Sysuul’s ilk would dispatch to see her derision swiftly carried out.

Ambitious. Her old stallmate at Bazaar Indigo, selling incense and vices worse, would have laughed to hear such arrogance come from Aldana’s bitter tongue. But then again, the nocturne was dead, scales burned to an unrecognizable crisp and still smelling of her sticks, and Aldana had lived. So better leave off the scheming to her, eh?

Aldana turned down a side alley, Sysuul cheerfully shouldering aside a beggar fae who grasped at her mane, and exchanged the blistering stench of too-many dragons sweltering in a too-small space for the cooler fetor of a moldering lane cast in perpetual shadow by a dully-glittering fog clinging to the sides of buildings overhead. Each brick of the alley walls was encrusted with layers of mold and moss, in varying colors of green, orange, and violet. Aldana thought she recognized a liverwort.

Sysuul made a noise of disgust as a fern overburdened with spores stretched out and curled around his claw, unsuccessfully trying to shake it off before resorting to a knife to slash himself free. “I hate this place,” he whined, but followed as Aldana went up to the singular door in the alley—perhaps there had once been others, before integration with the living walls—and knocked twice.

The door dragged open, they were admitted, and the business was conducted. When Aldana stepped back out, she was in a mood worse than before.

“That,” she hissed to Sysuul, stalking back out to the main street, “is why we need a thief. So I never have to pay such exuberant—” she used a swear that made Sysuul laugh, damn him— “prices again.”

“I mean, I could just go kill them,” Sysuul drawled. They both blinked as they stepped out into the harsh sunlight, morning hastily approaching noon.

Which is when Aldana felt her purse shift, every so slightly, as if moved by a breeze, and she whirled, slapping down claws on the cocky pickpocket—but she missed. She saw a blur of a shadow slip smoothly out of her grip, and heard the faint buzz of wings darting back towards the misty alley.

“Sysuul,” she growled, and her hired knife loosed an eager snarl, zipping after the disappearing figure with his blades already bared.

Aldana didn’t wait, but stalked ahead. Without Sysuul’s cruel grin, she had to push her way through knots of dragons, but at least her dark scowl warded anyone from messing with her. She got to her destination early, another side alley farther south of the fungus one, and so examined her purse. The pickpocket was no novice: they’d swapped the weight of her coins for a clawful of pebbles—as well as a tiny scroll, rolled so tightly she had to pick at its folded edge with her claws before being able to unfurl the parchment:

A thief, eh? Might be served better by another set of eyes. Accompanied by a crude approximation of a fae sticking out its tongue.

Aldana flicked the last pebble out of her purse in time for the sound of Sysuul yelling bloodthirsty threats to arrive at the end of the alley. A figure whipped around the corner, the howling Sysuul on their heels, and didn’t notice Aldana stepping away from the wall until she stood in the center of their path. She saw a flash of yellow eyes growing wide before the black-scaled veilspun darted upwards to avoid her—but never again would she let the thief slip away from her. Aldana caught the end of his tail and wrenched. A startled yelp burst from his jaws as she slung him back, right into Sysuul’s ready grasp. She let go and stepped back as the two wrestled briefly on the alley floor, just a churn of writhing scales and flying hair, before Sysuul ended up on top, twisting the pickpocket’s limbs behind him and grinding his snout into the dirt. The pickpocket wheezed in something like pain, wings twitching, but he opened his eyes to glare at Aldana.

Sysuul pressed a knife up close to the veilspun’s throat, purring, “Shall I?”

The veilspun tensed. It made Aldana smile. She strolled up and crouched down to meet him at his eye level. To his credit, he didn’t flinch, though Sysuul took the blade and started shaving down a tine of his horns.

She dropped the scroll in front of him, and arched her brow.

He grimaced. “In my defense, it wasn’t my idea. My associate thought it’d be funny.”

“Scintillating. And would they like to join our discussion?”

He eyed her. “Discussion of what?”

“Your life!” Sysuul chirped, now carving some design, probably crude, into the chitin.

“But more importantly, your treasure vault,” Aldana pressed.

“Uh, no, they wouldn’t be interested,” the veilspun said hastily, a keen light coming to his eyes.

Aldana sat upright. “I’m putting together a job. Triple the gold you lifted off me in it.”

“Awwww, Aldana,” Sysuul groaned, but she gestured and he reluctantly climbed off the pickpocket, grumbling as he roughly released him. The pickpocket shrugged off the restraining claw Sysuul set on his shoulder, who snapped back, but he flicked his tail disdainfully and turned his attention on Aldana, leaving Sysuul to seethe in the background.

“No attempt to run,” Aldana observed aloud. “Clever boy.”

The pickpocket smirked. “I’ll admit I may have bit off more than I can chew. But I won’t spit it out just yet—not all, at least.” A contemptuous look tossed Sysuul’s way.

Aldana considered him. She hadn’t come that close to being pinched in years—the most recent success was the Indigo Raid, when all her life burned down around her. And he was fast, if not subtle; he might’ve even escaped Sysuul, had she not reached the most likely avenue of escape before their arrival. He might even be good enough to suit her, and not enough to beat her.

“I said ‘job’,” she said, interrupting the spitting match between pickpocket and bodyguard, “but it’s actually plural. These will be a dedicated barrage of attacks, exactly aimed and executed, to utterly destroy my intended targets. I won’t settle for less.”

“I’ll gleefully deliver more,” Sysuul snickered.

Which was why she’d bought him. But her gaze was set on the pickpocket, gauging his response.

“Revenge?” he asked. “Seems fit for your dagger.”

Aldana bared her teeth. “A sentencing.”

He nodded slowly, then decisively, greed and competition in his eyes.

She asked, “What’s your name?”

Ribacci answered. So, really, her thief wasn’t that much harder at all.

“I know I’m late,” Sysuul sing-songed, yelling down one of the hidden entrances to the pit before slipping inside.

Aldana didn’t glance up from her desk, busily scribbling out either a list of orders for underlings to carry out, or a death threat to some competitor, or validating the commission of a new product she was confident would sell vastly across all venues—Sysuul didn’t know, and did not care, as he flung himself down into his favorite chair of the lot scattered about the room.

“But I made it, didn’t I,” he continued, twirling a knife free from its sheath to pick at his teeth. “Would never miss one of our quarterlies, now would I?” The words came out garbled, spoken around the knife.

“In one piece, at least,” Ribacci grumbled from his shadowed recess in the wall, shifting just far enough into the dim light thrown off by the shuddered lantern on Aldana’s desk for Sysuul to see the Thief’s scathing sneer.

Sysuul bared his teeth back, grinning. “Aw, did the widdle pickpocket get an owie? Did he trip and fall down while skipping on home? Should I kiss it better?”

Ribacci flexed his shoulder, the dappled bruising hard to see against his dark scales, and the metal sheath of his wing winked even in the gloom. “Only if you think you have knives small enough to replace teeth with.”

“Gentlemen,” Aldana said, and the two fell silent. “Brothers. My fellow Heads of the guild. Let’s get to business.”

“Thought we’d already begun,” Sysuul drawled.

“And may it never end,” Ribacci murmured, and for a brief moment the pit warmed as the three shared unspoken mirth at the small ritual, then Aldana cleared her throat, and focus snapped into place.

“Ribacci. You were almost as late as the Dagger. But surely your visit to Dragonhome returned a generous bounty. I trust it will soon be added to the guild’s treasury, if it has not already?”

The thin stripe of light laid across Ribacci’s face betrayed no emotion. “Of course. Very soon.”

Sysuul was still eyeing him when Aldana’s sharp gaze cut to him. “And Sysuul? Your report?”

Sysuul leaned back in his chair, propping his hindfeet up on the edge of Aldana’s desk—deliberate not to disturb any of her papers. “Oh, the dignitaries from the Labyrinth?” He clicked his jaw smugly. “Taken. Care of.” He flashed a glance Ribacci’s way, as much jeering conceit packed into his look as possible.

But the Thief didn’t even see it, expression closed as he stared off into the distance, claws tapping silently on the rim of his nook.

Pompous sod, Sysuul thought, annoyed at the lack of attention, and only then realized Aldana was speaking, rattling off long strings of numbers from memory. Sysuul tried to remember what she’d said those numbers meant, and gave up.

“—all in all, the Brotherhood thrives,” she finished in satisfaction, setting her claws down on the desk as she looked the other two over. And frowned. “Ribacci?”

Slowly, the Thief came back to the pit, and blinked. “What if . . .” He tossed up his claws, pantomiming a great expanse above his head. “That’s not enough.”

Aldana’s eyes narrowed to thin orange slits. “Explain.”

“We thrive, but at what rate? By whose definition? We steal, we kill, we profit—shouldn’t we decide how much more we take?”

Ribacci rolled off the edge and landed in a neat crouch, then stood tall, wings folded smoothly back, just the tip of his tail twitching in agitation. His yellow eyes gleamed in the lanternlight. “I’m putting together a job, a big one.”

Aldana grunted, began shifting through several scrolls. “The Symphonies have two members free, I know—”

“I’m doing this one alone.” At last, Ribacci’s eyes flitted to Sysuul, and Sysuul’s heart beat faster at the challenge there.

Aldana stilled, glaring and appraising.

Sysuul barked a laugh, twisting around in his seat to perch on the backrest. “A contest!” he crowed, delighted. “Oh, Thief, you are on! Aldana!” He swiveled. “Make the bet!”

“Join us,” Ribacci invited, and Sysuul laughed again.

“Yes!”

They waited for her response. A slow smirk crawled up the side of her face. “A wager,” she mused, rapid calculations running through her head as she leaned forward. “What are the stakes?”

Sysuul looked eagerly to Ribacci, an insult locked and ready, but jolted to a stop at the emotion that darted—there a blink and gone the next—across Ribacci’s face.

Relief? Sysuul wondered, as Ribacci and Aldana argued over the terms of the bet. What the hell is that about?

~

“You’re late,” Ribacci snapped, swinging around as Healer Idaus —finally—came through the doorway, then stopped short. That was not—

“Aldana,” he greeted, recovering as quickly as he could—not fast enough, he knew, as the Brotherhood Head’s gaze swept coolly over him. Never fast enough, not for her. “There isn’t a meeting scheduled for another moon, not until our bet—”

“—is up. I know.” And her eyes bored right through Ribacci’s until he had to look away. Silent was the deeper meaning, the threat. I know.

Ribacci stepped back, closer to the room’s single window, though he had no hope of escape with his wing. The damned wing. It had been on the verge of healing, when everything, everything on the job went wrong—AGAIN—but not to Ezra this time, only Ribacci—he only had himself now—and the crumbling block of stone crushed his side for hours until he’d managed to dig his way out. Only magic had a chance of repairing the shattered thing. And without funds of his own, too many lines of credit run dry, forgery remained his only option.

Ribacci clutched the bandaged wing joint, watching Aldana warily, as a half dozen lies flitted through his head. He could bluff, say this was all part of the plan, he could beg, duck out of the wager to buy himself more time, he could—

Aldana turned, and shut the door.

Ribacci cursed under his breath, then forced disdain into his voice. “What did you do to Iduas?” He scoffed, hiding the fear making his heart beat faster. “Is the Dagger out in the hall, throttling them?”

“I am alone.” Aldana studied the carvings on the door, some geometric design. “Per our agreement, I’ve made no inquiries on your side of the bet. Until a curious request for the hiring of a specialized doctor came across my desk. Signed by a crew leader, but not one currently stationed here. In Flotsam Town. Far from the activities of the Trench.”

Ribacci’s jaw clenched, but the bitter, accusatory words wrenched from his tongue unheeding. “You broke your promise.”

Aldana turned and looked at him. Ribacci fought the urge to fling himself out the window, useless wing or not, and met her gaze, helpless. Powerless. At her mercy.

Hating her.

The intensity of his feeling shocked him. But it was true.

Ribacci glared back at Aldana, hating, hating, every little irritation and resentment over the long, long years flashing through his mind in a flood—but none of which could compare to the sudden overwhelming torrent of sheer, seething, loathing he felt for her now. Trapped, pinned under her claws, nailed bleeding like a bug, and her watching him squirm.

She stalked towards him, and he backed away, hissing, because he had no choice no choice no choice—

His back hit the wall, the window just above him, and Aldana stepped up until she stood over him, looming. Hating, hating, hating.

“I’ll get the money,” he spat. “I’ll make it back, twice over.”

“Thrice.”

Ribacci began to shake. Hating hating hating— “Thrice.”

“All of it.”

Did she know about Ezra? “All of it,” he whispered, when really he was thinking, I can’t do this anymore. Not just can’t, but not this anymore, either. Not for her.

Aldana leaned in, placing her claws on his wing and pressing down, down. Pain lanced through his body and he writhed, a lifetime of thievery making him bite down on the scream rather than be heard and get caught, knowing she was going to break it, she was going to break it, break it, break it—

She stepped back, releasing him, and Ribacci broke down into sobs, curling in on himself with his wing lying crumpled and twisted across his face. He was barely cognizant of her retreating, walking to the door, the squeak of hinges as she opened it.

A pause, then over her shoulder, “You should get that looked at.”

And Aldana was gone.

HATING HATING HATING—

~

“He’s late!” Sysuul snarled, already pacing the length of the pit in long, angry strides as Aldana climbed down and dropped to the floor. “And so are you! Surely the world’s crashing down when I’m the only one to arrive on time—”

Aldana let the Dagger continue his tirade as she moved to her desk. She didn’t sit, but looked down at her papers, but didn’t see them, either. Only a room, a vault, that never—never—should have been empty.

She permitted herself the anger, the fury. Then she folded it up and packaged it away. For later, once it had simmered into the delicious, delicious gratification of revenge exacted to the severest degree. And what better way to do it than maneuver her other finest tool.

“He isn’t here,” she said, shutting Sysuul up instantly.

He halted, uncomprehending. “He’s on his way,” he said slowly, then alarm flashed through his eyes, quickly shut down with anger as he spun away to resume his self-righteous march. “He better be! I have a lot of questions for him to answer—”

“Ribacci,” Aldana said, “is gone.”

Sysuul stopped short a second time. He couldn’t pretend this time, couldn’t deny the truth, the note of finality, of consequence weighed in her voice. He faced away from Aldana, silent and unmoving, but for the barest tremble of his wings.

Aldana sank down into her chair. “He fled. I checked the treasury this morning. All of his share, gone.” She laced her claws together and set her chin on them. “And not a whisper of him throughout the guild.”

Say what you would about him, but the Thief knew how to cover his tracks. He’d messed up—massively, embarrassingly so—on his “big job” at the Sea. And she’d thought she’d cleaned that up.

Ribacci had proven her wrong. For now. But he was alone now, well and truly, wherever he was, and she had all the Brotherhood, and all its knives and bloodhounds.

She waited, studying Sysuul, until he turned and walked to her desk, oddly quiet. He’d get over the shock once his knife was buried in Ribacci’s chest, she knew.

He looked up and met her eyes. “I’ll bring him back, to explain himself. He can’t just leave,” he spat in disgust.

“No.”

Sysuul rocked back, surprised.

The world of thieves was, by necessity, a quiet and deceitful one. Full of hidden signs, whispered code, crude jargon. Direct orders, simple truths, clear language—none of that existed, could be used, in the rotting underbellies of society. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t done. Just like betraying the Brotherhood.

So for a traitor, Aldana spoke traitorous words. “Kill him.”

Sysuul stared at her in shock. But slowly the disbelief melted away, and she saw only his hurt and anger, and the guileless conviction of justice. She sat back, satisfied. Her Dagger wouldn’t fail her, she knew, as Sysuul jerked his head down in acknowledgement of his task and left the pit at a brisk, businesslike pace. He would devote all his resources, his skills and cunning and relentless drive to hunt Ribacci down and make him suffer for his crimes.

He wouldn’t dare cross her, too.