Then again, would he rather be blinded by stink and battling the heaves, or lying on the floor of his well-maintained palace apartment, clean, perfumed, and utterly dead?

In the days since they’d learned of King Dorian’s demise, a string of tragic deaths had afflicted the palace. Lady Nadela, Prince Dorian’s betrothed, had tumbled down the marble steps of the grand staircase and broken her neck. She died instantly. Lady Jiarine Montevero, who’d been among the ladies walking with the future princess at the time, had been so terrified of being declared Lady Nadela’s murderer that she’d written a hysterical note proclaiming her innocence and hanged herself in her room to avoid being tortured again in Old Castle Prison. Two of the late king’s most trusted ministers had perished in horrible accidents.

Gaspare, himself, had narrowly escaped not one, but three, brushes with death, including an attempt to poison himself and Love at breakfast this morning. Only an open window and an unfortunate, hungry thief of a sparrow had saved them. Life in the palace had become a risky business since King Dorian’s passing, and considering that Gaspare’s breakfast was prepared and tasted by Her Majesty’s own servants, he greatly feared that the assassin was someone very close to the queen.

The king was dead, the Fey had left Celieria City, and the queen was possibly in league with an enemy of the crown.

With nowhere to turn in the city, Gaspare had decided his only viable course of action was to leave. That decision had brought him here, to the wharves. Or, more specifically, to the Crown and Cutlass Pub in the wharf district.

Tugging the collar of his greatcoat closer, Gaspare pulled down the brim of his dark hat, ignored the blinding smells around him, and marched towards the Crown and Cutlass. The burning lantern over the pub’s door swung in the strong night breeze off the bay, and the wide circle of its light rocked back and forth, like a pendulum, casting the door in and out of shadow as it moved.

“Be brave,” Gaspare muttered to himself. “Be brave. Be brave.”

“Mmrow?” A small, warm, furry head poked out of the edge of his greatcoat. The little skull beneath the fur nudged his throat as it twisted and turned to get a good look at their surroundings.

“Yes, I know, Love,” Gaspare sighed. “You’re brave enough for the both of us. Now get back in there. This is not a nice place. The men in here probably eat pretty kittens like you for a morning snack.” He pushed his kitten’s white head back into his coat and suffered the punishment of her tiny, needlelike claws sinking into his chest.

The pain of Love’s displeasure helped him summon the courage to open the pub door and step inside.

Crowded, dimly lit, and smoky, the interior of the pub fit Gaspare’s image of a pub of ill repute to perfection. The swarthy, dangerous-looking men idling inside looked up as he entered, as did the blowsy pleasure girls sitting on their laps and leaning low to whisper in their ears. Although, Gaspare noted, the term “pleasure girl” was something of a euphemism in this establishment. He doubted there was a single female in the place under the age of forty. Most were missing several teeth. And likely most of their hair, too, judging by the number of dirty wigs he saw.

“Hallo there, handsome.” A hand clapped on Gaspare’s shoulder, and he turned to find the grandmother of all pleasure girls standing beside him. Gaspare’s eye for detail captured the woman’s garish caricature of beauty in one horrific glance. A frizzy yellow mop for hair, greasy eye makeup that had melted and settled into the lines around her eyes, flaccid br**sts propped up on display by tight stays: The sight was indelibly seared upon his brain. “Lookin’ for some company? “

He stifled a shudder and tried not to breathe the fetid air gushing from the woman’s red-painted lips.

“Thank you, my good woman, but no,” he declined politely. “I’m looking for Captain Sarkay. I was told he would be here.”

“Har!” The woman near felled him with a heave of odorbefouled laughter. “Eren’t you the fancy gent? ‘Thank you, my good woman,’” she mimicked. “More’s the pity. Looks like you could use a good hoist of your mainsail. Ah well, some other time, perhaps.” With a prosaic shrug, she waved a thin hand towards one of the tables at the back of the pub. “Sarkay’s over there. The handsome one in green.”

Handsome was as relative a term as girl, in this place, Gaspare decided. The only man in green he could see at the back table was a swarthy giant, with a long black mustache, bald head, and tattoos curling around every inch of his beefy forearms.

“Many thanks, madam.” Gaspare gave a short bow out of ingrained habit, then wished he hadn’t when he noted the pub patrons eyeing him with speculation. If he wasn’t careful with his court Graces, he’d get himself clubbed and robbed and rolled into the alleyway.

He made his way as quickly as possible through the crowd to the green-clad giant at the back. “Captain Sarkay?”

The giant looked up slowly. “Who’s askin’?” Up close, the fellow was even more intimidating. Black brows arched with a wicked flare over dark, dark eyes. Scars curled around his head and down the side of his face—as if he’d stopped more than one sword blow with his skull.

“The name is…” Gaspare racked his brain for a name that sounded suitably tough and street-wise, “… Fist. Ruffio Fist.” He started to hold out a hand, then thought the better of it and grabbed the back of a nearby chair instead. “I understand you have a boat for hire? No questions asked?”