George Martin - Rogues

“It has always been a dream of mine to see a Sister of the White disrobe before my eyes, but I was rather wondering whether you found the—”

Shev tossed over the package and Carcolf snatched it smartly from the air.

“I knew I could rely on you.” Carcolf felt a little dizzy with relief, not to mention more than a little tingly with desire. She had always had a weakness for dangerous women.

Bloody hell, she really was turning into her father …

“You were right,” said Shev, dropping into the chair she had so recently frightened Carcolf out of. “Pombrine had it.”

“I bloody knew it! That slime! So hard to find a good expendable decoy these days.”

“It’s as if you can’t trust anyone.”

“Still. No harm done, eh?” And Carcolf lifted up her shirt and ever so carefully slid the package into the uppermost of her two cash belts.

It was Shev’s turn to watch, pretending not to as she poured herself a glass of wine. “What’s in the parcel?” she asked.

“It’s safer if I don’t tell you.”

“You’ve no idea, have you?”

“I’m under orders not to look,” Carcolf was forced to admit.

“Don’t you ever wonder, though? I mean, the more I’m ordered not to look, the more I want to.” Shev sat forward, dark eyes glimmering in a profoundly bewitching way, and for an instant Carcolf’s head was filled with an image of the pair of them rolling across the carpet together, laughing as they ripped the package apart between them.

She dismissed it with an effort. “A thief can wonder. A courier cannot.”

“Could you be any more pompous?”

“It would require an effort.”

Shev slurped at her wine. “Well, it’s your package. I suppose.”

“No it isn’t. That’s the whole point.”

“I think I preferred you when you were a criminal.”

“Lies. You relish the opportunity to corrupt me.”

“True enough.” Shev wriggled down the chair so her long, brown legs slid out from the hem of her gown. “Why don’t you stay a while?” One searching foot found Carcolf’s ankle, and slid gently up the inside of her leg, and down, and up. “And be corrupted?”

Carcolf took an almost painful breath. “Damn, but I’d love to.” The strength of the feeling surprised her and caught in her throat, and for the briefest moment she almost choked on it. For the briefest moment, she almost tossed the package out the window, and sank down before the chair, and took Shev’s hand and shared tales she had never told from when she was a girl. For the briefest moment. Then she was Carcolf again, and she stepped smartly away and let Shev’s foot clomp down on the boards. “But you know how it is, in my business. Have to catch the tide.” And she snatched up her new coat and turned as she pulled it on, giving herself time to blink back any hint of tears.

“You should take a holiday.”

“With every job I say so, and when every job ends, I find I get … twitchy.” Carcolf sighed as she fastened the buttons. “I’m just not made for sitting still.”

“Huh.”

“Let’s not pretend you’re any different.”

“Let’s not pretend. I’ve been considering a move myself. Adua, perhaps, or back to the South—”

“I’d much rather you stayed,” Carcolf found she had said, then tried to pass it off with a carefree wave. “Who else would get me out of messes when I come here? You’re the one person in this whole damn city I trust.” That was a complete lie, of course; she didn’t trust Shev in the least. A good courier trusts no one, and Carcolf was the very best. But she was a great deal more comfortable with lies than with truth.

She could see in Shev’s smile that she understood the whole situation perfectly. “So sweet.” She caught Carcolf’s wrist as she turned to leave with a grip that was not to be ignored. “My money?”

“How silly of me.” Carcolf handed her the purse.

Without even looking inside, Shev said, “And the rest.”

Carcolf sighed once more and tossed the other purse on the bed, gold flashing in the lamplight as coins spilled across the white sheet. “You’d be upset if I didn’t try.”

“Your care for my delicate feelings is touching. I dare say I’ll see you next time you’re here?” she asked, as Carcolf put her hand on the lock.

“I shall count the moments.”

Just then she wanted a kiss more than anything, but she was not sure her resolve was strong enough for only one, so though it was a wrench, she blew a kiss instead and pulled the door to behind her. She slipped swiftly across the shadowed court and out the heavy gate onto the street, hoping it was a while before Shevedieh took a closer look at the coins inside the first purse. Perhaps a cosmic punishment was thus incurred, but it was worth it just for the thought of the look on her face.

The day had been a bloody fiasco, but she supposed it could have been a great deal worse. She still had ample time to make it to the ship before they lost the tide. Carcolf pulled up her hood, wincing at the pain from that freshly stitched scratch, and from that entirely unreasonable ulcer, and from that cursed chafing seam, then strode off through the misty night, neither too fast nor too slow, entirely inconspicuous.

Damn, but she hated Sipani!

Gillian Flynn is the author of the #1 New York Times best seller Gone Girl, the New York Times best seller Dark Places, and Sharp Objects, which won two Dagger Awards. A former writer and critic for Entertainment Weekly, her work has been published in forty countries. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son.

In the tense and twisty thriller that follows, she shows us that while it’s always good to want to take your career to the next level, sometimes trying to get there can take you into some very tricky and dangerous territory.

I didn’t stop giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it. I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it.

For three years, I gave the best hand job in the tristate area. The key is to not overthink it. If you start worrying about technique, if you begin analyzing rhythm and pressure, you lose the essential nature of the act. You have to mentally prepare beforehand, and then you have to stop thinking and trust your body to take over.

Basically, it’s like a golf swing.

I jacked men off six days a week, eight hours a day, with a break for lunch, and I was always fully booked. I took two weeks of vacation every year, and I never worked holidays, because holiday hand jobs are sad for everyone. So over three years, I’m estimating that comes to about 23,546 hand jobs. So don’t listen to that bitch Shardelle when she says I quit because I didn’t have the talent.

I quit because when you give 23,546 hand jobs over a three-year period, carpal tunnel syndrome is a very real thing.

I came to my occupation honestly. Maybe naturally is the better word. I’ve never done much honestly in my life. I was raised in the city by a one-eyed mother (the opening line of my memoir), and she was not a nice lady. She didn’t have a drug problem or a drinking problem, but she did have a working problem. She was the laziest bitch I ever met. Twice a week, we’d hit the streets downtown and beg. But because my mom hated being upright, she wanted to be strategic about the whole thing. Get as much money in as little time possible, and then go home and eat Zebra Cakes and watch arbitration-based reality court TV on our broken mattress amongst the stains. (That’s what I remember most about my childhood: stains. I couldn’t tell you the color of my mom’s eye, but I could tell you the stain on the shag carpet was a deep, soupy brown, and the stains on the ceiling were burnt orange and the stains on the wall were a vibrant hungover-piss yellow.)