We’re probably dead already, so it makes no difference if I tell her the truth.

“My Lady, I’m the Black Cat of the Thieves Guild.”

She watches me.

“I’m looking for a Guild to take Ettie.” Nervousness makes me ineloquent.

“Who is Ettie?” Corday asks.

“I am!” Ettie lifts her head and shakes her golden curls out of her face.

Corday transfers her gaze to Ettie and pauses.

“Very beautiful.”

Ettie colors beside me. “Thank you.”

Corday raises an eyebrow before returning her attention to me.

“The Thief Lord won’t give her his mark,” I say.

“And I thought Tomasis was always eager for new pets.” Corday runs her fingertips over one another as if she’s testing them for sharpness.

I shake my head. “He won’t, because the Tiger wants her.”

Silence fills the room. The Death Dealers are good at silence. They wield it like a weapon.

“The Thieves won’t take her, but you think I will?” Corday says in a tone of mild amazement.

“N-no,” I stutter. “I would never … That is to say, I am looking for the Dead Lord. He is the only one who might take her despite the Tiger’s interest. But I have heard that his seat at the high table has been empty, and the Ghosts have not been seen in the shadows.” Even I know how stupid that sounds, but I’ve started and I must finish before I am condemned. “I know that you and the Dead Lord are allies of old. I have heard the stories.”

“What stories?”

“That the Dead Lord saved you as a child and brought you to the Dealers of Death.”

“Come here, child.”

Montparnasse is at my side in a second, his fingers burning into my arm as he guides me to my feet. I walk toward Corday, leaving Ettie behind me.

“You would ask the Dead Lord, a Lord of the Miracle Court, to defy the Tiger by giving this child a mark?” she asks.

“Do you know what happened to the last Guild Lord who defied the Tiger?” a voice interjects.

I turn to a fireplace tucked into the farthest corner of the room, before which is seated a plump little brown-skinned woman draped in colorless robes, a sturdy scarf wound around her head, her thick graying hair tied back.

Hers is a face I know well, for she is usually seated at the Lords’ high table when the Miracle Court meets. She peers at me now like an owl through large spectacles that dwarf her face. In the flesh she is not particularly intimidating, but appearances are deceiving, for this is Gayatri Komayd, Lady of the Guild of Letters, Mother of Ink, Keeper of Secrets, Head Auditor of the Miracle Court.

I do my best not to frown, confused by her presence here at the Assassins Guild. I’m so distracted, I almost miss Corday nodding to Montparnasse.

I swing around in horror to find that he has Ettie on her feet, his blade at her cheek. Ettie’s eyes are wide with terror, the razor-sharp dagger pressed into her skin.