“Kylar, what are you waiting for? Some glorious soul union with that girl out there? It’s just fucking, and that’s all you get. That’s the deal, Kylar, and you knew it when you started. We all make our deals. I did, Durzo did, and you did too.”

Giving up, Momma K gestured to one of her bashers downstairs to let a client through.

A hairy-knuckled slob wheezed his way up the stairs. Though richly dressed, he was fat and ugly and foul smelling and grinning broadly with black teeth. He paused on the landing, licking his lips, a slack-jawed picture of lust. He nodded to Momma K, winked conspiratorially at Kylar, and went into the virgin courtesan’s room.

“Maybe they were bad deals,” Kylar said.

“It doesn’t matter. There’s no going back.”

Chapter 28

28

F eir Cousat knocked on a door high inside the great pyramid of Sho’cendi. Two knocks, pause, two, pause, one. When he and Dorian and Solon had been students at the magi’s school of fire, they hadn’t rated such prestigious rooms. But he and Dorian hadn’t been given the rooms now so much to thank them for their historic services as to keep an eye on them.

The door cracked open, and Dorian’s eye appeared on the other side. Feir always thought it was funny: Dorian was a prophet. He could foretell the fall of a kingdom or the winner of a horserace—a lucrative trick when Feir could convince him to do it—but he couldn’t tell who was at his own door. He said that prophesying concerning himself involved spiraling uncomfortably close to madness.