Treachery Queen (The Callistra Chronicles #1)

FOURTEEN

She glanced at the window. She didn't think she was being followed anymore, but it was hard to tell.

"Planning to sit?" a faery waitress asked her, wiping down the next table over while the occupants were still eating. They gave her strange looks, but the girl just kept on cleaning.

"Yeah," Pasiphae sighed, dragging out a chair. Grimacing, she moved it away from a sticky puddle on the floor.

Pasiphae waited for the waitress to leave, but she just kept staring.

"Going to get anything?"

"Waiting out the rain," Pasiphae replied shortly.

As they were speaking, a brawl broke out at the other side of the den, with one faery smashing another's face into the wall over and over again. Other fae didn't so much as glance over.

Pasiphae forced her face to become as flippant. She rested her head in her hands, watching the window for any hints of her pursuers.

A clink of glass sounded before her.

The waitress had set down a dark blue drink in front of her and taken a seat. Pasiphae thought this was a good time to run.

"Wait," the waitress snapped, anticipating her movements. "You're from the Court, aren't you?"

At least that was better than being accused of being a witch.

"How do you know?" Pasiphae asked.

The girl stretched her arm over and seemed to point at Pasiphae's knee. It took her a moment to realise that the faery was pointing at the dress Pasiphae wore, specifically at a small emblem stitched to the edge, identical to the ones on the royal guard uniforms.

She had never even noticed it.

"You're not meant to leave without explicit permission," the faery continued, "certainly not to visit gambling dens at the edge of Khotadi."

Pasiphae took a sniff at the drink the girl had given her. She hoped she wasn't expected to drink this. "As I said, I'm waiting out the rain."

"You're not just waiting out the rain," the waitress replied, folding her arms. "Very nice avoidance technique though."

The joke was on her. Pasiphae didn't even need to avoid a lie.

"I saw the men run by the window a little after you entered. They're gone now, by the way." The girl laid out her hands flat on the table. "If you can pass on a message for me, maybe I won't report you to the queen for absences within her Court. I'm Isolde."

Pasiphae sat back. "If you can get into Court to report to the queen, surely you can get into Court to pass on your own message." There were other spies in the Court. She wasn't going to involve herself in business other than her own.

Isolde wrinkled her face. "Clearly you don't know how matters work for the lower class. They'll welcome my tattling but I cannot talk to the faery who's second to the captain of the Guard."

"Second to the captain of the Guard?" Now Pasiphae was interested. She sat up. "You should have opened with that."

"You have some plan to climb high in Court?" Isolde asked, lifting a brow. "What are you, a lower noble?"

"Something like that." Pasiphae pursed her lips, pretending to think. "I might be able to pass on a message, provided you owe me a favour."

Isolde's attention was momentarily diverted as someone stepped through the side door and yelled at her to get back to work. She held up a lazy hand to ask them to wait a moment, then turned back to Pasiphae.