Age of Ash, page 12
“I don’t.”
His nod left her wondering whether that had been the right answer, or if she had just failed some subtle test. He took something from a pocket in his sleeve and slid it across the table to her. It grated as it moved across the wood. It was a black iron key as thick as her thumb with an animal of some kind worked into the top. It might have been a wolf or a lion; the metal was too worn to know. She’d seen keys like it used on warehouse locks. When she picked it up, it was lighter than she’d expected.
“Newmarket, two streets south of the main square, there’s a soapmaker’s shop. You know it?”
“No,” she said.
“Well, find it. That key opens the door to the storage shed at the back. The others will meet you there tomorrow at sunset.”
Alys put the key in the wallet hanging from her belt. “What are we doing?”
“There’s someone we need. We’ve heard from the people who have him. You’ll get the details then.”
“Will it be dangerous?” she asked, and immediately regretted asking. She expected Tregarro to sneer at her and snap. Instead an expression passed over his face that might almost have been sorrow. When he spoke, his voice was gentler than she’d ever heard it.
“Everything we do is dangerous,” he said.
The world didn’t pause for Sammish. No matter what happened with Alys and her new people in Green Hill, Sammish needed money for food and to pay the baker for her room. Work only gave so much, and running a pull was always a balance between risk and reward. Festival days were an easy call; people were drunk and wearing their gaudiest jewelry. The bluecloaks knew to be on close watch, but they were also watching the empty warehouses and halls for burglars and pulling the intoxicated and aggressive out of their small celebratory riots. The usual squares—Newmarket or Riverport—were a more difficult decision. By their nature, they called people with coin in their wallets, sometimes there was beer and cider, but there was nothing like the abandon that a celebration brought.
Riverport in particular had its advantages and its dangers. Northernmost of the districts of Kithamar, there was more coin to be harvested there, but most of the people were Hansch, narrow-faced and straight-haired. The Inlisc who bought bread and fruit and meat, beans and herbs and knives from the stone stalls and tables there were usually servants of the great houses in Green Hill come across the river for the freshest goods instead of taking the scrapings of Stonemarket. A little fountain in the plaza gave frigid water to anyone with a bucket to carry it away and a place to sit and gossip, but few of the voices that rose above the splash and patter there had the accents of Longhill. The cloaks and embroidered hats and loomed scarves in Riverport were a bit finer than the clothes people wore in Newmarket. And Newmarket was better than Longhill. For Nimal and Little Coop and Cane, Riverport was a more dangerous hunting ground because they stood out there more.
Sammish didn’t mind, though. She didn’t stand out anywhere. Even if she had, she needed the money.
Little Coop was the cutter, and Nimal was the flea. Sammish was the walk-away because she always was. They had Cane as the fish, which made it a little safer, but also meant they were sharing the take four ways instead of three. Sammish tried not to be resentful of that. Nimal had put the crew together, but Little Coop was the cutter, and the cutter called the go.
Sammish sat on the edge of the fountain, her hands in her lap, and watched whoever was close to Nimal, but never the man himself. There was a change in how he walked when he was moving in, and that was her signal. It hadn’t come in half an hour. She’d been sitting there eavesdropping on the two old men next to her as they gossiped for so long that she was starting to form opinions about whether the thicker one’s daughter really was treating her father poorly, or whether he carried some of the blame. Usually, in those kinds of family issues, she sided with the woman, but he was making a good case for himself. She was starting to waver when Nimal’s back straightened and he turned sharply to his right. Sammish stood up smoothly, her shoulders a little hunched, her eyes a little down, and moved after him.
The safe cache was a cotton sack she wore inside her tunic, low enough that her breasts hid the lump. It already had two wallets and a silver necklace in it. She kept her eyes on the pavement near Nimal’s boots. She never looked at the mark. To her, they were only ever blurs at the edge of her vision. Little Coop’s feet appeared close to Nimal’s, and she shifted toward them. The critical moment came. Nimal grunted and a woman’s voice made a wordless sound of affront at the same moment Little Coop brushed by Sammish, passing something into her hand which she slipped into the little sack under her tunic through a slit at the seam. Three steps on, her hands were free and empty, the victim and her crew behind her. Cane’s yelp was just part of the show, an extra distraction that added to the confusion. Even if the bluecloaks asked the victim what had happened, it would all be so addled and unsure that the story they heard would be more invention than truth.
This one was smart, though. Sammish wasn’t more than a dozen steps away before the woman shouted for the guard. Of all the crew, she was the most at risk because she was the one carrying all that they’d stolen. Despite that, her heart didn’t race. She looked over her shoulder with mild interest. The woman was Hansch, but broad across the shoulders. Her face was dark and her hands were in fists at her side, the very image of outrage. Nimal caught Sammish’s eye and gestured that the pull was done, and to leave. Sammish made herself feel a mild curiosity—I wonder what all that’s about—and then lose interest and turn away.
It was her secret. She had learned young how to trick herself. For the moment, and for several minutes more as she walked toward the low wall that kept city and river apart, she could genuinely believe that she was innocent, and that the commotion, whatever it was, had nothing to do with her. She could perform belief so deeply that she could even fool herself. There were only a few places in her life where her little talent failed her. She couldn’t convince herself not to be afraid of the water snakes that lived in the canals or to stop craving the wheat beer they sold outside the university.
And Alys.
Alys was back in Longhill now, not across the river in her self-imposed exile in the cell of Oldgate. She always made a show of being pleased to see Sammish when they met. If she counted the minutes and hours they spent together, it likely wouldn’t have been all that different from what they’d done before Darro died. It was only that Sammish felt herself being left behind, and it ached.
She had imagined that the search for Darro’s killers would bring Alys closer to her. She’d imagined other things after that, and all of them seemed equally absurd and pathetic in cold daylight. As she walked along the street near the southern wall of the city, she let herself go over her fantasies again, but with a distance: examining them rather than surrendering to them, probing them like she was picking at a scab. She passed along the waterfront, looking out over the boats being made ready for the winter freeze. She paused, feeling the cold against her face and watching the men hauling at the dark, wet ropes, prying the wood and pitch that was their livelihood up out of the Khahon before the river squeezed them to splinters and ate them. Everyone knew water was hungry.
The sun was behind Palace Hill by the time she got back to Longhill and the Pit. The long walk had given her enough time to go from feeling sorry for herself to being angry to a kind of exhausted peace. The heat of the tavern’s air was almost a shock as she stepped into it. It wasn’t the fire, though a small one was muttering to itself in the grate. The Pit was thick with bodies, and the barn heat was enough to make the place almost uncomfortable. She slipped her hand through the slit in her tunic and kept it on her safe cache. More than once, someone had thought it was a clever idea to wait here and steal someone else’s day’s work. She wove her way back to the little table where Nimal and Cane were already waiting.
“Where’s Coop?” she asked as she sat on the little stool that waited for her. It was too short, and the legs weren’t even.
“He’ll be here by the time we’ve counted out,” Nimal said, and while it was likely true, Sammish bristled a little at his overbearing manner. Rules were you waited until everyone was there to make the split, but it wasn’t her job to watch Little Coop’s back. If he objected, he could talk to Nimal directly. She pulled three wallets, the silver necklace, and the leather pouch that the last, outraged woman had lost out on the table, and opened them one at a time while Nimal and Cane watched her hands. Palming a coin or two during the split was another pull, and while Sammish didn’t do it, she didn’t resent anyone being on the alert for it.
It was a decent haul. Bronze and silver coins for the most part, but also the necklace. One of the wallets had a little carved blackwood horse that probably wasn’t worth anything, but it was nicely made. Sammish leaned back, and Cane made the division. Four piles that were as close as he could judge worth the same. Little Coop arrived while he was doing it. If he was upset that they’d started without him, he didn’t show it.
With the four piles made, she and Little Coop and Nimal would each choose theirs, and Cane would get the fourth. Or that was how it was meant to go. After Little Coop took his, though, Nimal pushed one of the three remaining to Cane.
“Take it, and give us the table, yeah?”
They all hesitated, but then Cane shrugged, scooped up the pile he’d been given, and took Little Coop with him as he left. They vanished into the press of bodies like stones dropped in water. The sound of the crowd, conversations rising over each other to be heard, made a roar that would keep anything the two of them said from being overheard. Nimal leaned forward, careful not to put his hands near the coins.
“Had a proposition for you,” he said. “May have something you want.”
“You do,” Sammish said, and nodded to the two piles still between them. “It’s right there.”
“Weeks back, you were asking about Orrel. Would it be worth your cut to find him?”
Sammish felt herself go quiet. This was why he’d told the others to leave. If she’d given up her part before, they might have wanted a three-way split. The question was, what did she want? Any money Orrel had from the pull on coronation day was more than likely already spent.
The only other thing he had was information about Darro. Whether Alys’s brother had found him. And if he had, what had happened.
Sammish looked down at the coins. It was her room and her food. A fresh pair of boots. She wanted a beer and a roasted chicken and a warmer blanket. And a job at the brewer’s taking wagers behind the iron grate. Alys wouldn’t know if Sammish chose herself for once. She’d worked for it.
She put out her hand to grab up her share of the take, but what she did instead was pluck out a silver and two bronze. Something like shame or exhaustion sat on her chest, heavy as a cat, as she tucked the coins in her belt and left the rest for him.
Nimal smiled at her. One of his teeth was blue-dark and rotting. “Fair enough,” he said.
Alys held the iron key with her fingertips, rolling it to feel the roughness of the metal. Her boots were soundless against the stones, and a cold wind from the east smelled like coming snow. Newmarket was closing around her as she walked. The stalls and tables that lined the streets were empty now, the food and cloth and leather hauled back behind locked doors for the night. The canopies that weren’t yet furled were being taken in. It made the street feel wider than it was, like she was a great lady with her way cleared before her.
She imagined Darro walking with her. She imagined that she was Darro. It brought her head higher and it straightened her back. It hid, she hoped, that she was so anxious that she hadn’t been able to eat.
She was walking into a situation she didn’t understand with people she didn’t know, and whatever had led her brother to his death was waiting somewhere ahead of her. She felt like she was standing at the edge of a bridge, looking down into the dark, swirling water, knowing that she was about to jump.
The soapmaker’s shop was dark and its shutters closed. Behind the windows on the second story, shadows moved. A family sitting down to their meal after a long day or else bowmen standing guard against an enemy. She had no way to know, and anything seemed possible. At the north side of the building, a narrow alleyway no wider than her shoulders opened like a crack in the wall. She stood before it, the key in her hand. How would Darro have held himself? Would he have smiled or lowered his head? Kept a hand on the hilt of his blade?
She stepped into the gloom, her senses straining. After a half dozen steps, the alley widened just enough that someone had built a wooden shed against the wall. Even though the sky was only a dark ribbon above her, the wood was grey with age and weather. She found the keyhole with her finger and fit the key to it. The soft sound of a voice came from the other side of the door, masculine and vaguely threatening. She felt the bolt sliding back as a vibration in her hand, and the door swung in.
Two men stood in the light of a single candle. They were older, and she didn’t know them. One wore a cloak of worn leather like a coachman and a knit cap with a lock of grey hair at the temple. The other, shorter and broader in the face, was dressed like a laborer in a pale tunic and trousers of undyed canvas. The coachman held the familiar silver blade in his hand as if he’d been showing it to the laborer. It was the first time Alys had seen it since she’d given it over at the harvest festival. For a moment, all three were silent. Alys swallowed to loosen her throat.
“Andomaka sent me,” she said.
“Don’t say her name again,” the coachman said, but not as a threat. “And don’t ask mine. Or his.”
“I won’t,” Alys said. “I’m sorry.”
The coachman nodded to the door, and Alys closed it. The inner face of the lock had a wide iron lever. She pulled it down, and the latch slid closed. The shed itself wasn’t as close as her cell in Oldgate had been, but it was nearly so. Thin shelves lined the wall, and the air stank of rosemary and lye. She was alone with two men in a place where, if they turned on her, help would not find her. She put her back to the door and a hand on the hilt of her blade as if she were only resting it there. The coachman’s smile said he saw through the casual motion to the fear behind it. He tucked the blade into a fold of his cloak where it seemed to vanish. If there had been some conversation between the two men, her presence had ended it. She waited, and they waited, but the two stillnesses were different. She could feel their enjoyment of her discomfort. She might have left, if it hadn’t meant turning her back to them.
The lock shifted and hissed as the latch opened. She stepped forward to let the door swing in, and a third man came in behind her. He was more nearly Darro’s age, with close-cut dark hair and a smirk. She could have imagined him around the brazier with Black Nel and Terryn Obst. He lifted his chin at the coachman in greeting.
“I’m late,” the new man said. He had an accent almost like Andomaka’s, but lighter. As small as the shed was, Alys couldn’t help brushing against him, though he didn’t seem to notice.
“I knew that,” the coachman answered.
“What’s the work, then?”
“You come with me and keep your eyes open. If there’s not a problem, there’s not one. If there is, see to it that the silver blade gets out and back where it should be.”
“And the money?”
“After. And we’d better be going,” the coachman said, biting the words as he spoke them. “We should have been there by now.”
The late one shrugged and backed out of the shed. Alys followed him, and the others came after. The coachman headed west with long strides, the laborer close behind him. Alys and the late one brought up the back. The sunset lit the western sky red as blood. Palace Hill and Oldgate stood silhouetted against the fading brightness like a god with his back turned. Alys walked fast, watching for movement in the windows and alley mouths without knowing what exactly she was looking for and too uncertain to ask.
The late one glanced at her, his eyes flickering to her boots and then back up her body the way men often would. On him, it didn’t seem to mean what it usually did.
“You look like him,” he said.
“Like who?” Alys asked.
“Darro.”
They didn’t speak, though the late man sometimes whistled a low, breathy melody. The night grew cold quickly. Though darkness came early this time of year, Alys felt as if they were travelling deep into night. They passed a patrol of city guard heading the other way, and though the bluecloaks watched them pass, they didn’t call them aside. Slowly, street by street, she was able to put her unease inside herself and lock it away.
The Temple rose to their right, a darkness against the night sky except for a single glowing window, yellow as the sun and steadier than a star. Alys fought the sense that the gods were watching her.
The coachman stopped at a wide, dark building just off the Temple gate. It wasn’t a part of Newmarket Alys knew. The cracked stucco walls and orange-stained lintels had little in common with the raw wood of Longhill or the unforgiving stone of the Hansch quarters. The roof was steep. No one would be sleeping on top of it. It was a merchant’s house, but there was no trade sigil or sign to say what they traded in.
The laborer stopped walking first, looking back down the way they’d come. In the starlight, he looked grim.
“Would have preferred to do this in day,” he said to no one in particular. Then, a moment later, “Watch yourselves.”
A wide door at the corner of the house creaked and opened. Thin, buttery light spilled from it, and a woman stepped out with a lantern behind her. Alys couldn’t make out her features, except that she was thick-bodied, looked more Inlisc than Hansch, and had her hair pulled back under a cloth. The coachman nodded to the new woman, then plucked the familiar silver knife from its hidden sheath. Alys felt a little bloom of pride that it was here. The woman, seeing it, stepped aside. The coachman went in, and the rest of the crew followed.
