Vanth rewarded him with a small smile and held out her hand. “Let’s be having it, then.”

  Barlo handed the bottle to Vanth. He gathered up the discarded bed sheet, tying it around his waist like a shapeless skirt, and perched on the opposite side of the window ledge as Vanth pulled the cork from the bottle with her teeth. She took a long swallow. The rum was strong and sweet, working a warm, delicious trail down her throat.

  “Leave some for me.”

  She passed him the bottle and carefully shifted her weight on the window ledge, stretching her aching leg with a grimace.

  “I keep thinking about those people who ran from the Bard’s Rest,” she said, her own candour surprising her. She must have taken a larger shot of the rum than she realised.

  “The people who died, you mean?”

  “I know many people died that day.” She took the bottle back from Barlo and downed another swig. “But they died right in front of me. They died because of me. I had to choose between saving them or saving a druid. Lord Dewer told us to protect the druids, so that’s what I did.”

  “You must not blame yourself.” Barlo placed his hand on her arm and Vanth flinched but did not push him away. “It was not you who unleashed a monster in your own city.”

  “No.” Vanth spoke into the bottle. “But I carried out the orders of the man who did.”

  She took a last bittersweet swallow of the dark, swirling rum before passing the bottle back to Barlo.

  “When I first joined the Salt Swords, I never questioned anything. Everything feels different now. It feels—” She groped for the right word. “It feels complicated. The world has been set off-kilter. Ever since Gwin arrived.”

  She spoke these last words through gritted teeth. Barlo didn’t know what Gwin had told her in the Leafling’s Half and she had no intention of ever telling him about the apparent moon-blessed blood lurking in her veins. Blood that made seemingly innocuous shadows grow large and frightening; blood that sang in her ears as she slept and spun vivid, otherworldly landscapes through her dreams.

  “It was Gwin who saved the Bard’s Quarter,” Barlo reminded her.

  “I know. If you recall, I risked my own bloody life to help her do it.” She grabbed the bottle back from Barlo and clasped it to her chest. “Albin and Pictor say I’ve gone soft. They wonder what has become of Vanth the Vile.”

  “I do not believe such a woman ever truly existed.”

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  “You were not there as witness when I first earned the title,” Vanth replied with a humourless grin. She turned back to the window, her warm breath making fog on the cold glass. “Everything was clear then. I trained my mind to keep my thoughts from wandering. My focus was sharp and narrow. If you were not trusted by Lord Dewer, you were not trusted by me. It made matters very simple.”

  She glanced at Barlo. “You would have hated me. I was cruel. I filled the Pit with fresh prisoners so fast, they ordered me to slow down; the cells were getting overcrowded. I acted like a wild animal, full of piss and rage. But that was all it was. An act. I haven’t truly felt an emotion as pure and undiluted as rage for years. Not the way other people do. Not since my mother died.”

  “Well, of course, anyone would feel that way. You suffered a terrible loss and you were so young—”

  “No, you don’t understand.”

  Barlo waited patiently as she gazed across the room, unseeing, struggling to find a way to explain that hollow feeling. It was like being trapped behind prison bars, forced to watch everyone around her live their lives in the sunlight while for her on the other side, the rain was endless. There was comfort to be found in rain. It could soothe, it could refresh and transform. But after a while, you’re bound to get tired of the constant cold and damp. You’ll start to squint at the horizon, yearning for the return of the sun.

  Vanth couldn’t explain any of this. She frowned at the peeling paint of the window frame, at the wood warping and splintering along the ledge, and kicked at it with her good foot. A chunk of detritus fell to the floor.

  “What changed?” Barlo said.

  She stared at him, her expression dark with suspicion. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why did you stop being Vanth the Vile? These days, you’re trusted throughout the Bard’s Quarter. What changed?”

  A long roll of thunder unfurled across the leaden sky and Vanth looked for the harsh flash of the ensuing lightning. She had never allowed herself to consider why she no longer felt the need to press a boot into the back of anyone who crossed her.

  “Living your life through a lens of cruelty and degradation is just so bloody tiring,” she finally said. She drained the last of the rum and set the bottle on the floor.

  “Well, I for one am delighted that Vanth the Vile is no more.”

  “You should be. She would have detested you, a theatrical layabout with delusions of grandeur. You would definitely have spent a few nights in the Pit.”

  “What a poor, miserable wretch she must have been, unable to see there is nothing at all delusional about my grandeur.”

  “Indeed.”

  They smiled at each other for a few moments in the half-light, then Vanth began to move and stretch her leg once more, preparing to stand.

  “I must leave,” she said. “It will soon be daybreak and it’s a long walk between here and the Obsidian Citadel.”

  “You intend to travel in this weather? If your leg is not rendered entirely useless by the time you get there, you will catch your death of cold.”

  Vanth winced as she stepped into her trousers. “My leg will ease as I walk, and I don’t intend to let death catch me because of some sodding rain.”

  Vanth stepped out into the wash of rainwater that had been a dry street when she first arrived at the inn. The mysterious visitor to the Wool and Cloth Merchants Association exited the building just ahead of her. They rounded a corner, thick cloak fanning out about their feet. Vanth wished she had thought to bring a cloak of her own. She could only bow her head against the onslaught of rain and limp back to the citadel as fast as her protesting leg would allow. There would be opportunity to procure more of the druids’ spicy-smelling salves in the morning.