“Forty-two,” she answered smugly. “Cheater.”
Zip stared at the number he’d carved into the wood, at his knife, at his men, at her. Without another word, he went to Chenaya and made good on his bet.
The glaring sun had long since disappeared beyond the western edge of the world, and beautiful Sabellia, resplendent in her fullness, scattered diamond ripples over the ocean’s surface. Chenaya dangled her feet over the end of Empire Wharf, stared at the glistening water, and listened to the muted sounds of a nearly silent thieves’ world. The old pilings creaked gently, rocked by the relentless surf; the riggings and guy wires of nearby fishing ships hummed and sang in the night wind. There was little else.
It was one of the places she went when she was troubled. She couldn’t say for sure exactly what it was disturbed her, but she felt it like a gloomy darkness on her soul. She tried to dismiss it. The water often made her melancholy. But the mood lingered.
She touched the bag that was tied to her belt. It contained a mixture of sugar and the high-grade krrf Gestus had obtained for her. She squeezed it and grinned. No, it certainly wasn’t that which bothered her. She planned to enjoy her little prank on Tempus.
What then?
Far out on the water something flashed in the moonlight. There was a muffled splash. She peered, straining to see, and spied the silver gleam of a dorsal fin as it cut through the waves. Briefly visible, it submerged and was gone. A dolphin, she wondered? A shark?
The world-particularly this thieves’ world-was full of sharks. She thought of