The Steel Princess

Chapter 10: The Copper Pot

We're getting very close to halfway through the story! I'd just like to thank everyone who's read this far. The last few weeks have been a bit of a personal disaster for me, and I know my posting schedule has slipped. I'll do what I can to remedy that over the coming weeks. Don't worry, though! One way or another, we'll get there in the end! :D

***

It was years since Skye had walked the streets of Celiande. Some things - the cobbled streets, the leaning buildings, the ground mist in the evenings - never changed. Some things did.

Auda, at least, had dropped the constant honorifics, even if she was patently furious. She kept muttering what a terrible idea this was, how reckless, and that this wasn't their concern anyway. Skye knew, though, that matters of propriety and jurisdiction weren't what had Auda on edge. This had too many echoes of what had happened to her family - a ruler getting unorthodox ideas in their head and following them despite the danger - and, by extension, Auda's.

"If all you wanted was excitement," Auda finished, "why couldn't you have stuck to visiting a brothel like every other royal?"

Skye winced, and not just because she couldn't help remembering Josselyn's suggestion about bastards. "I don't go deliberately looking for danger," she said. "And I'd be happy to leave this to the castle guard, except who do you think is more likely to catch this thief? Them, or us?"

For once, Auda didn't have an argument. She couldn't deny that, princess or not, Skye was trained for this. She moved through the shadows like a wraith, she was silent as a cat, and she knew Celiande better than anyone. This was what assassins were made to do.

"Do you know the Copper Pot?" Auda finally grumbled.

"I do. It's a cheap inn next to South Gate. The pickpockets use it as their base."

A grunt from Auda, as if to ask why said pickpockets hadn't been arrested if everyone knew where they were. The truth, Skye knew, was that a few petty thieves were hardly worth bothering with, when their numbers changed weekly, and that there were always guards who could be paid to look the other way besides.

The paved square next to South Gate was one of Celiande's most attractive, with arcades of glass-fronted shops and a huge inn popular with visiting merchants. The Copper Pot, by contrast, was a ramshackle building on the corner of an alley, with a permanent lean, as though it was about to tumble into the square and take half the row with it. A dozen ministers had tried to have it shut down; at this point, there were rumours the place was protected by black magic.

"Try not to glower at everyone," Skye instructed, cutting across the square. "You'll only start a fight."

Fights, really, were the least of their problems. Whilst she was small, dark-haired, and a typical Eskelene, Auda stuck out like a shiny new tack on a resoled shoe. Even hooded, she'd tower above half the occupants of the room.

"All right, keep glowering. You'll have to pretend to be a mercenary," Skye said. "Just don't come in right behind me. No-one has to know we're together."

Auda would, no doubt, have protested, but Skye didn't give her chance. She slipped ahead and through the creaking door of the Copper Pot, into the sweaty, smoky interior. She was heavily cloaked enough that she might have been a thief herself, concealing recent booty rather than an embroidered doublet, so no-one questioned her as she hurried across the crowded room and settled into a corner. Auda entered half a minute later, with better acting than Skye would have given her credit for; she stood in the doorway as though looking for someone, glared at the man who tried to squeeze in behind her, and finally took a seat beside the door.