Karris didn’t think so. But she didn’t let the man’s words distract her. He could be talking so that his friends could take her unawares. But there was no one else in the alley.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
He grimaced. Gave up. “Dayan Dakan.”
“You owe me, Dayan Dakan.”
“Ah, balls.”
If whoever had hired him wanted this to take as long as possible, she needed to reclaim as much time as she could. She ran, arriving back at the Chromeria sweating in a very unladylike fashion. She’d considered hiring a horse, but figured it would have actually been slower. Not all streets were open to riders, and with the time it would take to hire a horse in the first place, running was faster, even awkward as it was in a thobe. She hopped into the lift, and took it as high as she could.
“News?” she asked the Blackguards at the top of the lift. One was the new boy, Gill Greyling, the other was the tall eunuch Lytos.
They looked at each other. Neither said anything.
“Where’s your escort?” Lytos asked.
Dismissing Samite after going to the Crossroads might not have been the best idea, but she wasn’t going to talk to Lytos about that.
“Gill, you owe me,” she said. “And this won’t even be close to setting us even.”
He sighed. He clearly would have preferred to forget letting that strumpet into Gavin’s room. He cleared his throat and said, “There’s an emergency meeting of the Spectrum. Was supposed to start an hour ago, but Yellow and Sub-red couldn’t make it then. They’re just getting started.”
Lytos looked at the young man.
“What?” Gill asked. “She’s one of us.”
Lytos glowered at him.
“What?”
“Thank you, you’re both lovely,” Karris said. She ducked into Gavin’s room—it was still too strange to think of it as her own room—and tried to decide if she needed to change, or if she could just use some powder to combat the sweat. She looked around for Marissia. For a room slave, the woman didn’t spend much time in her room.
Now I want Marissia to be here. Not very consistent, are we, Karris?
She mopped her face with a cloth and then slapped powder on quickly, fought with her hair for half a minute, and decided history belongs to those who show up. She headed to the lift.
“Wow, that was quick. You look f—” Gill started to say.
“Not a word, boy. Not. A. Word.” Had she really just called a nineteen-year-old a boy?
She approached the Spectrum’s Chamber and the Blackguards standing outside it, and suddenly wished she looked a little more glamorous.
“Lady Guile,” the ranking Blackguard said. It was her old counterpart.
“Watch Captain Blademan. Good afternoon.”
“The Spectrum meetings are only for the Spectrum, Karris, you know that,” he said, stepping in front of the door.
“I’m my husband’s representative here.” It was weak, and they both knew it.
“Karris, please, don’t make a scene.”
“It’s Lady Guile, thank you, and a lady doesn’t make a scene.”
Watch Captain Blademan was befuddled for a moment. And a moment was all Karris needed to thread her petite figure past him and open the door.
“Lady—” He stopped abruptly as the door swung open and Karris walked inside.
She walked over to Gavin’s seat as insouciantly as if she herself were Gavin Guile. She sat. She didn’t see how the rest of the Spectrum took her appearance, because all of her attention was on Andross Guile. He smiled behind his dark spectacles. The bastard. He didn’t even look surprised. For a moment, it shook Karris’s belief that the man who’d tailed her must have been sent by him. But if not Andross, then who?
“Hello, daughter, so good of you to join us,” Andross said. His shadow, Grinwoody, was standing at his elbow as always, whispering in his ear. “I suppose that more than makes a quorum. Shall we get started?”
Karris knew they hadn’t just started, but Andross liked to deadpan his jabs. It might not even have been aimed at her. She looked around the room and saw that only the Sub-red was absent. The woman was serially pregnant and usually nursing one of her brood, but she didn’t usually let either get in the way of her duties.
“We can continue from where we were, Andross,” the White announced.
So it had been a jab. Well, to hell with him. Karris was here now. It was a victory, if a small one.
“For reasons we discussed before all the hangers-on were allowed into this hallowed chamber,” Andross said, “certain, more drastic moves must wait. Our representatives are scouring the seas and the beaches as we speak. Until then, we have to play the hand dealt us, yes?”