Marcus wondered, uncomfortably, what would happen if these two heavenly forces directed their gravities in opposite directions, and shook his head to banish the thought. Janus would never allow that to happen. He picked up his rifle again and raised his hand in greeting as the queen’s party approached.

*   *   *

RAESINIA

“You convinced him?” Andy said incredulously. “You convinced Smiling Jack to help us?”

“Well,” Raesinia said, “I doubt I had much to do with it. Cora did all the real work.” She put an arm around Cora’s shoulders and squeezed her tight. “I just had to go in and say the magic words.”

“What?” Andy said. “What magic words? They say the last man who asked Smiling Jack for charity was found spiked on the weathercocks of six different buildings!”

“Ah, but we weren’t asking for charity. We were making an offer.”

Andy looked from Raesinia’s smiling face to Cora’s blushing one and gave her a pleading look. Cora shrugged awkwardly.

“Smiling Jack is having . . . liquidity problems,” she said. “A lot of the Oldtown gangs are suffering under the blockade, and now with the seedies cutting down on nightlife. I did some research on where he’s been going for coin, and bought an appropriate stake in some of the larger institutions.”

“In other words,” Raesinia said, still grinning, “Smiling Jack is up to his eyeballs in debt, and thanks to Cora a lot of that debt is now owed to us.”

“Or to banks that we control,” Cora said. “It’s safer that way. Less of a chance he’ll resort to extralegal measures.”

“That is, that he’ll decide his problems would be over if we were found floating facedown in the river,” Raesinia translated. “Once we got him to understand the situation, you should have seen him grovel.”

In truth, Raesinia had found the meeting with the crime lord disappointing. She’d heard endless stories of the famous gangs of Oldtown, criminal dynasties that stretched back into antiquity. Some supposedly occupied premises that dated from before the founding of the Vordanai monarchy, give or take the odd citywide fire. While crime in Newtown rarely rose above the level of petty theft and vendetta, the loose alliance of gangs, families, and guilds that ruled the city’s oldest district had loftier ambitions. They ran the brothels and gambling houses of the Cut, and controlled empires of smuggling, corruption, and vice stretching from Essyle to the Jaw.

So she’d always been told, anyway. Smiling Jack had been a middle-aged man with a paunch and thinning hair, bedecked in gaudy jewelry and silks. He’d met her in the back of his tavern, the Lion’s Den, where he had what amounted to a throne room. To other criminals, the ostentatious display of wealth in the furnishings was probably impressive; to Raesinia, who’d grown up in the vast, gilded halls of the Palace at Ohnlei, it felt like an overcramped storage closet.