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aren’t is the leader.” Vera slipped into a righteous rage like a tailored glove. “You don’t believe my client warrants meeting with the boss?”
    Behind Synarius, his bodyguard—Jorn, the brawler from that night’s match, she realized—began to straighten, as if he’d just deemed her a potential threat. Nightmares, but he was a slow one. If she’d thought to smuggle a blade down here with her, she could probably slit Synarius’s throat before he had a chance to react. That would save the Ministry of Affairs—and the whole damned Empire—a lot of trouble. Skip over this whole tiresome masquerade.
    That’s what bored Vera about spywork—the slow, agonizing crawl toward a far-flung goal. It was worse than when she’d had to attend finishing classes, back when the most that was expected of her was embroidery and harp-playing. Stitch forward and back, forward and back, and never make a lick of progress at all. Well, it was time to plunge ahead.
    “The Stargazers boss is a very busy man, and you, my dear, have yet to prove your value to him. Not that you aren’t lovely to behold,” Synarius added, sharing a wry grin with his second lieutenant. “But I’m guessing your ‘client’ sent you here for a different purpose.”
    Enough games. “Eighty crates of Dreamless resin,” Vera said. “Three tons of regulated stone from the northern colonies, complete with papers. Five artifacts smuggled out of the City of Secrets in the Land of the Iron Winds.”
    “You smuggled something out of Birnau?” The second lieutenant’s eyebrows danced toward his hairline. “But how…?”
    “And enough grain alcohol to scrub your brains right out of your skull. That’s what my client’s looking to move.” Vera sat back. “We could do it ourselves, it matters not to us, but as a courtesy to the Stargazers as the reigning gang of this tunnel branch…”
    “Oh, please, don’t do us any favors.” Synarius’s lips snapped taut in a mirthless grin. “If your client tries to offload a single item in our territory, we will have your hides for breakfast. I’m sure you know what the Stargazer boss is capable of.”
    Vera had heard plenty of tales of the Stargazers’ cruelty. The usual dreck, about making a stew of his tunneler subjects who displeased him, bodies strung up by their intestines over the tunnel entrances … the sort of limitless violence only a life in the tunnels could allow. No one in the daylight world of Barstadt City behaved this way. Not where polite society could see. But Vera feared only one criminal mastermind, and she was fresh out of fear to spare for the ruthless Stargazers.
    “Oh, come off of it. We’d find some other tunnel branch where we can sell our wares. Even you must admit the Stargazers don’t own the whole city.”
    “No,” Synarius said. “Not yet.”
    Vera rolled her eyes. “In any case … The deal is yours to take, or not. Feel free to talk it over with the Stargazers boss, then send for us through Tyrond here. If we don’t hear from you before Tremmer’s Month is out, then we’ll find someone else more amenable to our terms.”
    Synarius looked to his second lieutenant, some wordless exchange passing between them, then back at Vera with a nod. “Very well. You’ll have your word by the end of the month if we’re interested.”
    “Dreamer bless,” Vera said, with a curtness both she and her persona felt. She started to stand, but then, with a show of reluctance, settled back onto her crate. “Oh. I’m afraid there’s one more thing my client asked me to investigate.”
    Synarius grunted to himself. “Yes. Of course. By all means, make even more demands.” The tips of his teeth showed through his grin. Tyrond’s hand fell on Vera’s shoulder—a warning.
    But this was the whole purpose of her mission here tonight—not to arrange some foolish trade deal with the Stargazers, and certainly not to watch tunnelers beat the pulp out of one another. Vera was here