Blade of Dream, page 6
He marched out toward the stairs and the holding cells. A light rain was falling from low, bright clouds. It wouldn’t last, but it broke the heat a little. If the clouds cleared too much before nightfall, the city would turn muggy as a hot towel over his face. The new recruits were drilling in the yard. Old Saal was showing them restraints. How to keep someone held down without hurting them, how to do it only hurting them a little or else a lot. How to make sure they never walked right again. The newest bunch wasn’t particularly promising, but also not the worst he’d seen. One of them was Marsen’s nephew.
Marsen had been with the guard for a decade and a half. He was better at telling legends of himself than he was as a guard, but every now and then, he pulled off a surprise. Senit walked down the stone steps to the holding cell with a hint of curiosity that he kept hidden under his annoyance.
The cell itself was small. The only light came from a thin strip along the eastern wall. Not even a window, just a row of bricks with a few missing, set high enough on the wall it would be hard to pass anything through them unnoticed. Not that people hadn’t tried.
People, in Captain Divol Senit’s experience, were idiots.
Marsen was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed on his chest. He stood straighter when Senit stepped in. The other man in the room was underfed at the ribs and hungry around the eyes. Sharp cheeks, but spilling, curled locks that came down past his shoulder and a neat, scissor-trimmed beard. Hansch cheeks. Inlisc hair. He wore a workman’s canvas trousers and a vest of yellow cotton with carved blackwood hooks, not buttons. When he scratched his neck, Senit saw the tattoo of a spider across the back of the man’s left hand.
“Captain Senit,” Marsen said.
“Guard,” Senit said with a nod. “I understand there’s something that needs my attention?” He kept his tone mild. The prisoner wouldn’t hear the threat in it, but Marsen did.
“I was on patrol in Seepwater, sir. This man called me over. He wanted to talk with a captain.”
Did he say why? came almost all the way to Senit’s tongue, but he stopped it. It was sharp and harsh, and more to the point, it was talking about the man in the yellow vest like he wasn’t there. It was rude, and rudeness was like salt. Easy to put on, hard to take off.
“Well, I see you’ve arranged it.” He turned to the man. “I’m Captain Senit of the city guard. Was there something you wanted to say to me?”
The man licked his lips. It was a flickering, lizard-like motion. It made him look cunning, but not smart. “I need protection.”
“All right. Tell me about that. Who is it you need to be protected from?”
The man looked from him to Marsen and back, weighing something in his mind. Whatever the man’s angle was, this seemed pretty damn late to start thinking it through. He was committed to his path, whether he knew it or not.
“I stole something valuable.”
“Did you, now?”
“But”—the man raised a finger—“I stole it from a thief, so that’s not the same.”
Senit almost stopped it there. Taking sides in the petty squabbles of Kithamar’s worst held less than no interest for him. The man had already confessed to theft, and even without the details Senit didn’t need to bother with a magistrate for this one. A few weeks cleaning the streets by day and sleeping in gaol by night, then they’d release the poor fuck to the streets again and see if the experience had made him any wiser.
That was a joke. It wouldn’t.
But… the holding cell was cool, and Senit was tired. He could give the poor fucker some more rope and see whether he wove it into a noose.
“All right. What was this thing you took from the thief?”
The man in the yellow vest shrugged. “A knife.”
“Well, there’s a lot of those out there. What happened to this knife? You still have it?”
The man chuckled like Senit had said something dumb. “I stole it because someone wanted it. It’s sold and the money’s spent. Three silver.”
“Pretty good,” Divol said, nodding. “All profit, I guess. Except that you’re here looking for space under my wing. What’s that about?”
“I stole it from Aunt Thorn,” the man said with a flourish like he was delivering the end of a joke. Which, in a sense, he was. He looked so proud of it.
“Ah. You’re fucked, then, aren’t you?”
The man’s face fell. Marsen shifted his weight. If this was really what it seemed, Senit would swap the senior guard for his nephew on the wine-and-piss patrol and let the whole barracks laugh at him. Marsen would have it coming.
“She’s set her people to kill me,” the man whined.
“I imagine she has. And when they do, we will find them and put them to law. You can count on that. I think we’re done here.”
He turned to the door, and the man leapt to his feet. He rushed forward, grabbing at Senit’s sleeve. Senit shifted his weight, turning from the hip, and landed his knuckles on the bridge of the thief’s nose. The cartilage crunched like gravel, and the man staggered back. A moment later, blood was dyeing his yellow vest a whole new color.
“Listen to me, you little fuck,” Senit said. “I know what you’re thinking. Aunt Thorn’s my enemy. She’s your enemy too. So must be we’re pals now, yeah? Here’s what you got wrong. My enemy is every self-centered lump of shit in this city who thinks that the law doesn’t count when it comes to them. You put two rats in a bucket, and they fight. That doesn’t make one of them my fucking pet. As far as I’m concerned, if she puts you in the river, that’s saving me time and effort.”
“I can help, though,” the man blubbered through the blood. “I can help you.”
Senit’s scowl made his cheeks ache. “How is a cat turd like you going to help a captain of the city guard?”
“I can find her,” the man said. A bubble of blood formed on his lips and popped. “I took the knife from the tunnels. The places she hides.”
Senit flexed his hand wide and back to a fist. “Say that again.”
“The knife I took. It was a special one. It was in her tunnels. In her rooms.” His voice was tight as a plucked string. “I was part of her crew. I know all the ways in. I know all the signs they use. I’ll help you get her.”
Senit’s knuckles were starting to ache. Truth was, he liked the feeling. And still. Aunt Thorn. That was a name to conjure with. She commanded her thugs and murderers the way he did his guards, and she held more sway in parts of the city than he did. If this thin, desperate waste of skin could open the door to catch her. Or better, kill her…
He looked to Marsen, who only lifted his eyebrows. Up to you, boss.
“Get me a stool and some water,” he said to Marsen, then turned back to the thief. “You start from the start, and we’ll see what’s in it.”
The summer ripened, the days growing shorter without any lasting break from the heat. Rainstorms came every few days; vast clouds darkened the tall air, washing the streets and filling the afternoon with steam and the smell of slaked stone. The leaves on the few trees that found purchase in the gardens or at the river’s edge took on a deeper green that promised red and gold to come. The sun lay on shoulders with the weight of an unwelcome hand.
To the uninitiated, the streets and warehouses might seem filled by carts of goods and wallets of coin, the awnings and counting house tables peopled by ledgers and contracts and honeyed almonds with beer. Garreth saw what he’d been taught to see: the constant probing for advantage, the slow and civilized battle of money and time, the triumph at the ruin of a rival house or the despair of one’s own collapse. Riverport moved through the hours of light and darkness with the deliberate, studied violence of a wrestler bending his opponent’s leg until the joint gave way. That was commerce, and it ran its course without pity.
In House Left, an unspoken tension ran through every meal, every week’s worship, every task. Garreth felt it from the moment he woke in the morning until he put out the candle at night. His jaw ached.
In the front drawing room, Vasch sat with Yrith, daughter of Sau, and a map of the world. Or the world that mattered, anyway. The Inlisc girl’s chaperone dozed in the corner with only a tiny wet glitter under the heavy lids to show that she was watching even still.
“No,” Garreth’s younger brother said, “the city’s not like an animal. It’s more like… a clockwork.” He interlaced his fingers in imitation of gears. “Everything fits together, each bit at its time and in its place. And fitting together like that is what makes the next bit possible. And on and on through the whole year.”
From where he stood in the shadows of the hall, Garreth could see the furrows of concentration on Yrith’s forehead.
“Right now, we’re coming to the end of the season,” Vasch went on, pointing to the map as he spoke. “All the goods coming in now are to get us through the winter. Salt from the Bronze Coast for the butchers to keep the meat from spoiling. Alum and dye for the clothmakers. Ore and coal and forge wood that they can use in the Smoke over winter, but those come by land from the east or float down the river from the lumbermen in the north.”
“And sugar,” Yrith said.
“Yes, that’s right. We get our sugar from Caram. My father’s cousin has field rights on a good stretch of land there. But House Reffon gets theirs from Imaja, which is a little bit closer, so they have an advantage.”
“Advantage,” Yrith echoed. Her accent was still thick enough to spread on toast.
“If we can get ours first, we can fulfill our obligations and sell the overage before them. If they get theirs first, we have to take whatever’s left once they’ve sold out, and we might be stuck holding some in the warehouse until spring.”
“And are bad.”
“Well,” Vasch chuckled. “It’s not good, at least.”
Garreth stepped quietly back. The windows were open all through the house in hopes that a breeze would pass through and cool the darkness. Some days that worked, but today the halls felt like a baker’s oven. Garreth climbed the main stair, leaving his soon-to-be-wife behind to her tutoring, and stalked back toward the family’s private office. It was a narrow room with a lattice of iron over the windows and a lock on the door that only his parents and Uncle Robbson could open. The door stood open now, and the low muttering told him that Uncle Robbson was there even before he looked in.
His uncle was at the little desk, his back to the window. The records were open before him and a small steel pen was in his right hand. A thin page was pinned to the cork of the desk, and without drawing close, Garreth recognized his mother’s hand and the family cipher. Robbson looked up.
“News, then?” Garreth asked. It was a risk. Before the girl had arrived, policy would have kept him from prying. But his status within the family and within the company had changed, and if he didn’t quite know what it had changed to, then neither did anyone else. The only way to know if he was ranked among the heads of the family now was to act as though he were and see what happened.
Robbson grunted and looked back down at the letter. For two long breaths together, Garreth thought that was all the information he’d get.
His uncle cleared his throat, coughed. “There’s some trouble.”
The rush of hope in Garreth’s chest was like a fountain being turned on in springtime. “Maybe that’s best,” he said, trying to keep his tone sober.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Robbson snapped.
“Going through with this… it’s going to humiliate us. I don’t want it to fall apart, but if it does, and we have to find another way, maybe in the long term, that’s better.”
Robbson put down the steel pen, leaned forward on his elbows, and smiled. There was no warmth in his eyes. “I forgot you’re still licking off your caul. When I say there’s trouble, it means that the deal isn’t closed yet. That’s all. Trouble is normal. It’s what we do. Sometimes they invite it, and sometimes we do, but there’s always trouble.”
“Oh, I didn’t—”
“If there was a better way, your mother would have found it. She’s doing this because it’s best for the company, and the family, and because of that it’s best for you. Show some fucking gratitude.”
“She’s not even Kithamar Inlisc,” Garreth said. “She’s Kethil. No one’s going to take her seriously. They’ll know this is all just part of a trade. They won’t respect us.”
“They’ll respect the money,” Robbson said, turning back to the page. “That’s all they ever respect. In this family, we eat the shit we’re served, and you’re not better than us.”
“I didn’t say that—”
“I’m working.”
Garreth took a step back, nodded to his uncle who made a show of not noticing, then turned back for the stair. The hope was gone like it had never been there, and he couldn’t put a name to what was in its place. Or he could, but he didn’t want to.
Serria was near the front door with a new house maid. As Garreth passed them, the older woman turned, her eyes widening in alarm. “Is something wrong, sir?”
He didn’t answer.
Elaine was in her cell at the Clovas Brotherhood. It made sense, as much as anything did. Her tutors and her father’s guards had a story about where she was. The servants at Clovas weren’t particularly used to her being there, so if she left, they wouldn’t be as swift to alert to the absence. And meeting Theddan at House Abbasann was asking for suspicion to be raised. Or at least, she guessed it was. She sat on her cot, stood and smoothed her gown, sat again, stood, paced. She felt like she was on the top of the palace, looking down the vast cliff of Oldgate to the river below. It was the same vertigo, the same giddiness. She had expected that there would be some part of her—some echo of her imagined mother, perhaps—telling her to stop. There wasn’t.
Theddan came an hour before sunset. She carried a leather satchel. Her gown was silk in all the colors of sunset from red to orange to grey, and it draped from her body like a promise. Elaine felt her eyebrows rise in shock and appreciation. Theddan lifted her chin and paused, looking for a moment like the statue of some minor fertility god. When Elaine started laughing, Theddan laughed too.
“You are mad,” Elaine said. “Everyone is going to remember you.”
“They’ll all remember someone,” Theddan said. “No reason to think it’s me. I mean, some reason but no proof. That’s what matters. Here, put this on over—” She gestured at Elaine’s gown with two fingers, then tossed a cloak of brown plainspun on the cot at her side. It was a servant’s robe with a deep hood, and a hem a little too long for her leg. Elaine tied the stays down the front while Theddan slid another over the glorious gown.
“This works?” Elaine asked.
“No one sees a servant girl except other servants, and they know to keep their tongues sewn to their teeth. You’ll see.”
I’ll see, Elaine thought. Yes, I will, won’t I?
They slipped out past the brotherhood’s kitchens and into the ivy-choked alley. Elaine started turning to the east and the river, but Theddan took her elbow and steered her west.
“Where are we going? Stonemarket?”
Theddan didn’t answer. Elaine thought she saw her smile, but with the hoods pulled forward, she couldn’t be certain.
The aqueduct that marked the western edge of Green Hill had been built centuries before as a way to bring fresh water to the villages behind Palace Hill and as a barrier from raids by the enemy long since conquered. Wide as a canal, it was shallow at the edges and deep in the center. The granite blocks it was carved from were sealed with gum that was replaced every five or six years to keep the water in. At the footbridge that spanned it nearest the city’s northern wall, Theddan paused. She took two masks from the satchel, one gold and black, the other white and blue. She held the second one out.
“Here?” Elaine asked.
“And now,” Theddan said, fitting the black and gold across the bridge of her nose. The cloth draped her jaw, hiding her mouth, but she still looked like herself to Elaine. As Elaine put her own mask on, Theddan slipped off her sandals and stepped down into the shallow water at the canal’s edge.
“Follow me. Be quick!”
Elaine grabbed off her own sandals and dropped in. The water was cool, but not numbing. The stone under her feet was slippery and green, and she pictured herself stumbling.
“It’s too slick,” she said.
“It’s not,” Theddan said, already moving north toward the wall. “Just don’t fall in.”
Elaine followed, careful with every step to put her foot straight down and centered before she trusted her weight to it. At the wall, an iron grate that the city guard used to take prisoners out to clear branches and trash from the water stood open and a young man gestured to them. He was short, barely taller than Elaine herself, with broad shoulders and thick, dark, curled hair.
“Who’s this?” he asked Theddan as he took Elaine’s hand.
“My cousin,” Theddan said.
The man turned his smile to Elaine. “Well, her cousin. I’m Burr. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Same,” Elaine said as she passed into the narrow darkness. The tunnel that passed through the wall was close enough that they could only go single file, and with Theddan before her, Elaine couldn’t see the other side until she spilled out.
North of them, young trees rose like thin fingers toward the sky. Beyond them, the permanent roar of the distant river, and then past that, forest and gold-and-rose sky. It was only for a moment, but Kithamar was behind her. She was outside the city that she belonged to, and it felt better than she’d dreamed.
Burr—if that was his real name—led them along a path through the trash scrub and blackberry that grew outside the city until they reached the river. A little boat had been pulled up on the bank. Burr waded into the Khahon, pulling it with him, then steadied it as Theddan clambered in. Elaine followed. The boat bobbed and shuddered in the flow, unsteady beneath her.
