Age of Ash, page 7
All the way over, Alys had worried that she wouldn’t be sure. She wasn’t worried now.
She remembered his voice as he threatened to cut her throat, and also his embarrassment and outrage when the shit and piss started raining down on him. He’d been humiliated. He’d lost his position in the guard. Would that have been enough to make him kill Darro? She imagined those pale hands holding a knife and the chagrin in Darro’s eyes as he bled out at those thick-ankled feet.
“Well?” Sammish said. “Was I right?”
“Yes,” she said, her heart feeling something like life for the first time since Grey Linnet had told her the news. “That’s him.”
“We have a start, then. I’m not sure what we do with him next. We can’t exactly go ask him whether he’s the one that killed your brother.”
The cart rolled into the shadow of the warehouse. The once-bluecloak stepped in after it, the steadying pole in his trembling hands.
“Oh, I think we can,” Alys said.
Tannen Gehart, once a city guardsman and now a junior laborer, ached. Every part of him from the soles of his feet to the place where his spine met his skull found some way to complain. His eyes were sweat-stung, his arms fly-bitten, and every muscle had been worked to the edge of collapse. The sun was gone, and the warehouse lit by moth-swarmed lanterns. His day still wasn’t done.
“Not bad for a tadpole,” the overseer said. He was a fat man named Hawls whose jiggling belly hid a terrible strength and boundless endurance. Tannen was well on his way to hating him. “A few more seasons like this, and you’ll be a real man, eh?”
“Just doing my bit,” Tannen said. He heard the others in the street, laughing at something. They’d all been paid out for the day’s work. Tannen was the last, and Hawls hadn’t taken his coins out of the paybox yet. He kept stalling.
“Your bit,” Hawls said, chuckling. “Yeah, that. Thing is, there’s always the sweeping up after. Used to be that was Darrit’s to do, but with you coming on the crew, well, you’re the newest, and it’s the new man’s duty…”
Despair deepened Tannen’s weariness. All he wanted was his day’s pay, a bowl of something with meat in it, and his cot. He knew when he took the job that it would be like this, for a while at least. Any whining he did now, he’d carry for years.
“Right,” he said. “Tell me what needs doing so I don’t miss anything.”
Hawls handed him a broom, gestured at the warehouse piled high with barrels of salt and stacks of cut lumber, and laughed. “We’ll be down at the porters’ hall long enough to drink a little. Find me there for your pay. If you take too long, there’s always morning.”
Tannen tried to think of something manly and smart to say, but he was too tired and a quick wit had never been his strength. He marched himself back into the shadows and started sweeping. Hawls shared a couple jokes with the night guards and walked off into the darkness, smoking a clay pipe and humming to himself.
The temptation was to go fast, do just enough, and be done. He made himself be slow and thorough. Every time he found his attention had wandered, he went back over the last stretch he’d done. More times than not, it wasn’t clean. True, they’d just be tracking in new dirt come dawn, but before that, Hawls would see what kind of job he’d made of it. If it was clean, he’d know Tannen was there to work. Suffering a little now to suffer less later was the smart way to go.
The night guards kept their watch. The city bluecloaks passed by once; a team of four that had Kannish and Maur in it. Tannen worked with his back to the street while they passed to keep from being recognized, or at least not to know that he’d been seen. Insects beat their bodies against the clear glass lanterns or found paths inside them and burned. The warehouse stank of their bodies and the cheap oil. Time lost itself. When he brought the last pile of dirt out to the street, he didn’t know if he’d gone quickly or slow. One of the night guards took the broom from him as he blew out the lanterns, and they closed and barred the doors behind him as he left.
He turned toward the night and the porters’ hall. His feet seemed farther away from him than usual, and harder to move. If Hawls were there, he’d get his pay and eat. If not, he’d go back to the bunks and sleep. Either one sounded wonderful.
The night was dark. What there was of the moon ducked behind high clouds, the shadows passing over the streets. He tried taking a few steps with his eyes closed to see if it mattered, but it felt too comfortable. He forced himself to open them to keep from falling asleep on his feet and stumbling into the river.
Oldgate rose on the far side of the water, a few torches and lanterns glittering on the switchback that rose up its face. The palace glowered at its crown, looking like the ancient war keep that it had once been. They were probably sleeping fine up there, curled in soft sheets on mattresses of quilted silk or something. He’d be lucky if the rushes on the bunkroom floor were fresh.
He noticed the girl stepping out from the gap between two ivy-choked walls, but she didn’t alarm him until she stood in his way, her hands clasped in front of her. His first thought was that she was an unclean spirit thrown up by the river. His second was that she was a whore looking for work he couldn’t afford to give her. He paused. The moon shadow passed, giving a little pale light. He saw an unremarkable, round face, neither pretty nor ugly. Her expression was something like chagrin.
“For what it carries?” she said. “I am sorry.”
Through his weariness, a little thread of alarm came too late. Something hit his back, and he stumbled forward, hands out to catch himself. He skinned his palms against the pavement. If he cried out, he didn’t notice it. A hand knotted itself in his hair and hauled his head up. A blade pressed against his neck.
Oh, Tannen thought, this is how I die.
But the blade didn’t tug to the side. His throat stayed unslit. Instead a voice hissed at his ear. A woman’s voice, but not the apologetic girl. Someone else. “Did you kill my brother?”
“Who the fuck are you?” he squeaked. And then, “No, I didn’t kill anyone. I’ve never killed anyone.”
“You were a bluecloak.” The knife pressed closer. If she drew her arm to the side, he wouldn’t see morning.
“For half a year,” he said. “I saw maybe four fights the whole time, and no one died in any of them. I swear it. I’ll swear by anything!”
The darkness around them thickened. He wondered, if he called out, whether any of his old friends would hear him. If they’d be in time to watch him die in the street. The first girl spoke again, but not to him. “I believe him.”
Two long, shuddering breaths passed before the knife girl replied. “I do too.”
The blade vanished, and a boot came down hard in his ribs. He felt something crack. Then another kick came, this one a toe-point to his kidney. The pain was brighter than fire. Tannen curled into a ball and waited for another blow. It didn’t come. Through the sound of his own breath, he heard two sets of soft footsteps moving away. He rested his head against the stone of the street. As hard as it was, it still felt like the most comfortable pillow in the world.
Alys felt like she was flying, like her heart had widened to the size of the city and become fire. She wore the cool Kithamar night like a wide black cape and walked like she was still and the world moved under her. The long, empty days in her cell felt like a dream she’d had. Or the threat of a nightmare she’d fall into if she closed her eyes again too soon.
Sammish walked at her side, grinning. Alys remembered the weight and solidity of the bluecloak’s back as she hit him as if it were happening again. The thin whine of his voice. The first time she’d had enough wine hadn’t felt this good. The warmth and the broadness of spirit were both there, but the drink had left her muzzy-headed and sleepy. Now she felt more awake than she’d ever been, and she loved it.
“You know, then,” Sammish said as they reached the river and started across. “It wasn’t him.”
“It’s a good start,” Alys agreed. The river roared against the stone under their feet like a god talking softly. Alys had the urge to jump over the stone lip and dive into the water as if she could command it. She knew better than to give the impulse life. She thought instead about digging the coin out of her safe cache and finding some taproom where she could sing and spend and be lifted up by what she’d done. That was a dream. The night was already full, and Kithamar in its beds. Any taproom she found now would be on its way to empty before she stepped in. Her own company would have to be enough.
She walked up the slope of Oldgate, her legs burning pleasantly from the effort, and ducked into the thin inner streets within the hillside’s flesh. It struck her that this was likely the longest she’d ever spent sleeping outside Longhill. When she was younger, she’d gone out to work harvest at an orchard east of the city that had taken her away for a time, but this harvest was longer, darker, and not yet at its end.
In her tiny cell, she lit a white candle—she’d need to buy more in the morning—and set it beside Darro’s box. The yellow wax of his deathmark picked up the glow. Sammish sat on the cot, legs folded up under her. Her mud-brown eyes were brighter than usual, her smile an echo of Alys’s own intoxication.
“You did good work,” Alys said. “Finding him wasn’t the answer, but you did good work. You shouldn’t feel bad that he wasn’t the one.”
If Sammish’s smile seemed to dim for a moment, it was likely just her mind turning to the path ahead. Alys leaned her back against the wall. The cell wasn’t brick this deep in, but the native stone of the hill. She’d heard that in winter, the depths of Oldgate kept the cold at bay, but for now the wall felt cool against her shoulders. The elation was starting to fade, and she tried to hold it, willing it bright again like blowing on embers. She was suddenly tired.
“Orrel next,” Alys said. “You said he was looking for Darro. If he found him—”
“Or the knife,” Sammish said. “Orrel, we might put hand to, we might not, but the knife is here for certain. I could take it to the whetstone man I know. Maybe his clients. They might recognize it.”
No jumped to Alys’s throat, but she stopped it there. The thought of letting the weird blade out of her cell felt like a threat. What if it didn’t come back? What if she lost that bit of Darro too? It was a mad thought. Her brother wasn’t the blade. It couldn’t call him back from his ashes.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’ll be careful with it,” Sammish said, and then, almost shyly, “And I know how to stay clear of a cutter’s pull.”
Alys chuckled, and Sammish smiled. It was the smile that did it. Alys took the blade and its sheath and handed them over.
“Do what you can,” she said.
Sammish stood in the fortune-teller’s back room shifting her weight from leg to leg while the old man who actually ran the place pulled the knife from its sheath and held it up to the light.
“Looked similar to yours,” Sammish said. “I thought you might know it.”
The actual fortune-teller was a Hansch girl with one blue eye and one brown. It made her look exotic and mysterious. She sat in a red leather chair, watching the old man with a look of amusement that Sammish liked even less than the old man’s scowl. Sammish couldn’t tell if the girl had had too much wine or if she was drunk on something stranger. Either way, she wasn’t right. The room itself was dim, except for the one open-shuttered window. Tin mirrors lined two walls, throwing back twisted images of the three of them. A low black table had a wide silver bowl filled halfway with vinegar water that the fortune-teller would heat and pour egg whites into. The ghostly whorls were supposed to show the future. It stank of spices and incense.
The old man made a sour noise at the back of his throat. “These markings?” he said. “They’re supposed to look like old gregate runes. Life and death, love and sex. Truth and cutting through the space between spaces. All the usual. The calligraphy’s not bad.”
“It’s silver too,” Sammish said. “You can see where it’s tarnished up at the hilt.”
“Plated, yeah. Not kept very well, is it?” the old man said. It wasn’t plated.
He’d been running the fortune-teller’s place for as long as Sammish could remember. The girl might have been his daughter or his lover or something odder. Sammish fought the urge to take the blade back. She didn’t like the way he held it.
“Has to do with a murder, you said?” the old man asked.
“Didn’t say. Might, might not,” Sammish said, not looking him full in the eyes. “Someone had it.”
“And now they don’t.” The old man chuckled. “All right, fine. The workmanship’s not good. It’s not likely to keep an edge, but as props go, it has some charm to it. I can give you eight bronze. Not more.”
Sammish shook her head, confused. The old man didn’t take it that way.
“Don’t be like that,” he said. “I’ll go to ten because I like you, and Arnal’s been sharpening my knives on the cheap for years. It’s a favor, though. You’ll owe me one back.”
“I’m not looking to sell,” Sammish said, and she snatched the sheath back. “That’s mine. I only want to know what you thought about it.”
“I think ten bronze of it,” the old man said. “What’s a girl like you going to do with something like this? You’re not looking to come into my trade, are you? Because I won’t have that. People like us might not have a guild, but that doesn’t mean you can step into our business without consequences.”
He was holding the knife by the handle now. He wasn’t quite threatening her with it. Sammish felt her throat go tight. She couldn’t win a scrap if the old man wanted one. She didn’t want him to talk down to Arnal about her either. She wanted nothing more than to take his offer, however bad it was, and leave. If it hadn’t been Alys’s blade they were talking about, she might have.
“Not mine to sell,” she said around the knot in her throat. “You can give it back now.”
He hesitated. “A silver.”
“I’d like to have it back now,” she said, and the fortune-telling girl laughed. The sound was so unexpected, Sammish jumped. The old man snarled but at the other girl, not at her. He tossed the blade on the black table.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “It’s a shit blade with some nice drawings on it. Hope it keeps you warm in your old age. I’ve got work.”
He stalked out. His footsteps tramped back through the hall and up the back stairs as Sammish scooped up her knife and put it back in its sheath. Even with him gone, she felt the threatening weight of his presence. She was about to leave when the fortune-teller spoke.
“Don’t mind him. He’s only angry because he thought he could turn a quick profit. He has a buyer for it.”
“A buyer?”
The fortune-teller sat forward, languid as a cat. “Foreign woman came in a while back asking after a blade like that. Down to the markings.”
“Foreign?”
“Not from Kithamar. Her accent sounded like something from the south. All clicks around the edges. She came asking after a silver knife marked with the same words as that.”
“You can read them?”
“They say Death of Death. More or less. Translation isn’t my work. She offered good money, too. Gold.”
Sammish felt her gut tighten, thinking of Darro’s secret coins. “How much gold?”
“Enough to be remembered. If you’d let that thing go for a silver, you’d have been getting the worst deal in Kithamar, and we’re a city of cheats.” The fortune-teller’s smile was hazy. The old man’s footsteps passed over them as he paced the floor above. Sammish had the image of him, weapon in hand, working himself up to violence. The smart thing was to leave and leave now.
“When did this southerner come?” she asked.
The fortune-teller shrugged.
“Please,” Sammish said.
“After the word came about Prince Ausai being ill. Before he died. In there someplace. I don’t remember.”
That meant the woman, whoever she was, had been seeking the blade before Darro was killed. Sammish felt her blood moving faster in her veins, but couldn’t tell if it was excitement or fear or both. “Did she have a name?”
“Saffa, I think. Or Sabba. She was an intense little thing. I liked her. I would have read her fortune for free, just to try working on a southerner. I like you too. Do you want to know your future?”
A louder thump came from above them, startling Sammish. “I should leave.”
“I see death before you,” the fortune-teller said, her voice suddenly deeper. “Death for you and everyone you love.”
Sammish’s breath went thin. Something must have shown in her expression, because the fortune-teller laughed and leaned back in her chair. She looked younger when she did it.
“Why is that funny?” Sammish said, surprised at her own anger.
“Because, green pea, it’s true for everyone.”
According to the vivisectionists at the university, the hearts of all animals were a kind of fist, relaxing to fill with blood and squeezing to push it out through the rest of the body. Alys imagined it working like a man flexing his hands before a fight he knew he’d eventually lose. The city had a pulse like that too, and harvest was the time when Kithamar filled.
The weeks before harvest saw the streets of Longhill and Newmarket and Riverport emptier than usual as everyone in need of extra coin signed up for short work on the farms. Carts from all the trading houses lumbered out, filled with men and women. The carts would come back filled with the produce of the year’s growth, the men and women trudging exhausted behind them as spent as an army back from campaign. Then the race began: on one hand, the sugar and salt, pickling broth, and wax-sealed long pots, and on the other, the inevitability of rot.
Alys remembered being almost too young to walk, sitting in the great stone kitchen of some house in Stonemarket where her mother had gotten work stirring a vast pot of berries as they cooked down for the jars. The memory had the smell of the woodsmoke and the brightness of the berries. There had been a foam of pink on top of the boiling darkness, and the head cook had let Alys help skim it off. She could still taste the sharpness and sweetness from when she licked her fingers after.
