A Discourse in Steel

by Paul S. Kemp

  “Keep it up!” Tesha shouted from up the stairway behind Nix.

  She and Mere stood halfway down the stairs, their faces and clothes sooty.

  Kiir and Lis and Egil and the second man made for the bar for more of Gadd’s brew. Nix could see they’d have the fire out soon. Wanting to get Rose out of the smoke, he carried her toward the front door.

  He saw the man Egil had flattened rise to all fours under the remains of the door. He looked around, eyes wide, and clambered to his feet.

  “Shite! Egil!”

  The priest turned and saw the same thing Nix did. He reached for a hammer, but had neither on his belt. Nix ran for the door, still carrying Rose, and Egil came after.

  “Stop him!” Nix shouted. “That man! Stop him!”

  He reached the door to see the man shove one of the girls to the ground and sprint off down an alley off Shoddy Way. He laid Rose on the ground.

  “Watch her,” he said to one of the men nearby.

  Egil grabbed his hammers from the wreckage of the door. He must have dropped them after breaking it down. Nix looked back into the Tunnel, caught Tesha’s eye. The fire still burned, but it would soon be out. They’d been fortunate.

  “You all right?” Nix called to her.

  She nodded. “Go! Go!”

  Nix and Egil pelted off down Shoddy Way, pushing through a few late-night tavern-goers who’d wandered near to see what was the tumult. As they rounded the alley, Nix saw nothing. He cursed, but motion drew his eye up. He saw the man clamber over the top of the roof of a two-story building.

  “Fakker’s using the Highway,” Nix said.

  Egil had a hammer in each hand and an angry furrow connecting his eyes via the bridge of his nose. “I got the ground.”

  “Aye,” Nix said. “Going up then. Been too long since I ran the Highway anyway.”

  Nix put his hands to the wall of the nearest building, found purchase, and scrambled up. Fingers, toes, grip, weight on the legs. He’d done it hundreds of times and the wall presented him no challenge. He was up on the roof in moments.

  Before him stretched the Thieves’ Highway: the irregular lines and rise and fall of pitched eaves, flat roofs, and alleys and streets narrow and wide. It was like another world. A gibbous Minnear painted the way in greens and grays. The spire of Ool’s clock to his right jutted skyward, rising like a giant’s finger from the sea of Dur Follin’s buildings. In the distance rose the Archbridge, its soaring arc and twin support pillars ghostly in the moonlight.

  “See him?” Egil called from down below.

  Nix caught movement in Minnear’s light: the man scrambling over the roof two buildings away.

  “Got him.”

  Nix darted across the roof, leaped a gap to the next roof, and sprinted after the man. As he ran he whistled every now and again so Egil could track him. Clutching eaves and leaping alleys, with roof tiles crunching underfoot, he dashed across Dur Follin’s skyline. He lost sight of the man from time to time, but kept moving and eventually spotted him again. The man knew he was being trailed from Nix’s whistles. Nix tried to use the cover of dormers and spires and the occasional rain cistern as he ran, concerned the man might have a crossbow or sling.

  The man moved slowly—he might have been wounded when Egil knocked the door into him—and Nix gained ground quickly. He caught sight of him ahead, leaped a gap, and for the first time was on the same roof. The man was at the peak and Nix at the eave. The man threw something down. Nix couldn’t dodge but it was only a roof tile. It nicked his shoulder but did little damage.

  Nix gave a whistle and scrambled up as the man disappeared over the peak. On the other side, the roof flattened a bit between two dormers overlooking a narrow street. The man was gathering his nerve and strength to leap it. He looked back and saw Nix. Nix slid down the roof and ran after just as the man sprinted into motion.

  The man leaped across the gap and Nix leaped after him. They collided in midair and the impact ruined both their leaps. They slammed into the side of a shop, cracking shutters, falling earthward in a spinning tangle. The muddy road spared Nix a broken back but slamming into even soft ground drove the breath from his lungs, caused him to see sparks, and sent a shooting pain along one arm.

  The man recovered first, rolled away, and lifted himself on wobbly legs. Nix rolled over and lunged after him, hooking a few fingers on his mud-soaked cloak. The man whirled, swinging wildly with a dagger he’d produced from somewhere. Nix caught it on the forearm, cursed as it opened a gash. He lurched back awkwardly and reached for his hand axe, but it was gone. He’d thrown it. Turned out to be just as well as the man wanted no part of a street fight. He staggered off down the street. Nix cursed, stood, and stumbled after him, whistling for Egil as best he could.

  From around the corner he heard a shout of alarm and a deep, fierce exclamation that could only be from the priest. He put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.

  “You got him?” he called.

  Egil came around the corner, a hammer in one hand, the limp form of the man held aloft in the other like a neck-wrung goose. “I got him. You all right?”

  “Mud-covered and blooded, but all right.” He stood up straight and grinned. “Still pretty though, yeah?”

  “It’s dark, so I’m going to say yes. But don’t hold me to it.”

  “Fak you, priest,” Nix said, cradling his wounded arm.

  “You’d like that, I know. Let’s get this bunghole back to the Tunnel.”

  “Gadd’s cellar,” Nix said.

  “Aye, that,” Egil said, giving the unconscious man an ominous shake. Nix stripped the man of a dagger, a purse, and a boot knife. He hefted the coin purse.

  “Eight commons and six terns, or within one of each. Wager?”

  “My half.”

  Nix dumped the contents into his palm. “Nine commons, six terns, and the single shiny disc of a gold royal.

  “Shite. A slubber like this with a royal. This is a night for surprises.”

  He tossed the purse to Egil, who caught it, pocketed it, then heaved the man over his shoulder and carried him as he might a bag of grain.

  By the time they returned to the Tunnel, many of the workers had drifted back to their rooms. Someone had carried the charred tables and chairs outside the building and piled them near Shoddy Way. They would eventually find their way to the Heap. The charred body was gone and Nix saw no sign of any Watchmen. Gadd, in a nicely cut shirt and pants embroidered with images of dragons, was trying to prop the broken front door in front of the open doorway.

  “When did he get back here?” Nix asked.

  “Did he leave?” Egil asked.

  Nix shrugged.

  Gadd saw them approaching and removed the door to allow them passage. As they passed, he showed his pointed teeth and barked something in his elaborate native tongue.

  “Seconded,” Nix said to him, nodding. “Whatever it was.”

  “What happened to the body?” Egil asked Gadd, nodding to the area on the porch.

  “Pigs,” Gadd said.

  “Pigs?” Egil asked.

  “Pigs,” Gadd said with a nod. He grinned and returned to work on the door. Egil and Nix shared a look and sneaked through the dark common room. The floorboards in one corner, and the wall near the window on Shoddy Way, were charred and the whole of it smelled like smoke and spilled beer. Tesha would be airing out the inn for days.

  “Stinks,” Egil said.

  “Stink gives character,” Nix said. “Or so I tell everyone about you.”

  Before they reached the bar, Tesha’s voice called down from up the stairs.

  “What are you two doing?”

  They turned to see her and Merelda seated side by side in the dark, halfway up the staircase. Nix nodded at the unconscious man.

  “We’re buying this one a drink. Oh, and also we’re going to hurt him.”

  Merelda’s eyes widened. Tesha nodded, her eyes hard. She took something resting beside her on
the stair—a long wooden pipe of all things—and inhaled deeply. The glow of the bowl made her eyes look shadowed.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Nix said.

  “There’s much about me you don’t know, Nix Fall.”

  He smiled. “If I wasn’t about to do bad things, I think I’d drop to my knees and ask to wed you.”

  “What kind of bad things?” Merelda asked in a small voice.

  Egil changed the subject. “Everybody back in their rooms? How’s Rose?”

  “She’s the same,” Merelda said.

  Tesha took another draw on her pipe. “Everyone’s back in their rooms. Not asleep, I’m sure. What happened? Why would someone try to burn the inn?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” Egil said, shaking the man he held.

  Tesha drew on her pipe, exhaled, eyeing the prisoner. “I’ll make sure no one comes down.”

  Merelda looked at Tesha, at Egil. “What kind of things are you going to do? Egil?”

  “Only what we need to,” Egil said. “No more.”

  “But no less,” Nix added.

  “Not helpful,” Egil said.

  Tesha stood. “Come on, Mere. We’ll check on Rose.”

  “Mere,” Egil said. “We may need you.”

  “For what? I can’t—”

  Egil was already shaking his head. “Nothing like that, Mere. But we may need you. Well enough? If this is what we think, we’ll need you. All right?”

  She nodded and she and Tesha went upstairs.

  “We’re going to use your cellar, Gadd,” Nix called back to the easterner.

  But if Gadd heard them he gave no sign. He was working to reattach the door.

  Nix lit a lamp and he and Egil carried the man behind the bar and down into Gadd’s large root cellar. Clay jars and leather bags filled the shelves. Glass jars filled with liquids of various colors gleamed in the lamplight. Herbs and other shapeless things floated in some of them. Hundreds of herbs hung from twine hooked to the ceiling or lay in bunches here or there. A bale of limbs from some kind of aromatic tree lay in one corner. Nix recognized mandrake, rose hip, and a variety of other herbs, most of them with medicinal or magical uses, but many he did not recognize at all. Brew barrels and various items Gadd used in the fermenting process lined one wall.

  “What in the Eleven Hells does the man do down here?”

  “Much more here than he needs for cooking and brewing,” Egil said.

  “We’re going to have to figure out his story one day,” Nix said. “But not today.”

  “Aye,” Egil said, and dropped the unconscious man to the floor. The man groaned. “Not today.”

  Nix took a length of thin, strong rope from his satchel of needful things—he always carried several lengths of the best line he could buy—and bound the man’s hands and ankles. Then he went back up to the bar, half-filled a tankard with ale, returned to the cellar, and threw it in the man’s face. The man sputtered and blinked awake. He had small eyes, too close together, a large nose, and a narrow chin speckled with a day’s growth of whiskers.

  He eyed Nix, Egil, the cellar, and swallowed hard. Nix could see thoughts moving behind his eyes.

  “Yeah, you’re in a bit of it,” Nix said. “I’ve been there.”

  “It was just a burn job,” the man said, his voice nasally. “I do it, I get paid, and I don’t know nothing more than that.”

  Egil harrumphed and Nix tsked.

  “Burn jobs don’t call for barring doors, now do they?”

  The man colored but his expression remained defiant.

  A symbol hung from a leather lanyard around the man’s neck. Nix grabbed it, yanked it off, and eyed the charm: a stiletto with a coin balanced on the tip. Aster’s symbol. Nix shared a knowing look with Egil.

  “This here’s a guildboy, Egil.”

  “Fakkin’ sneak priests and fools,” Egil said.

  “I don’t know nothing about a guild,” the man said.

  Nix tossed the charm at the man and hit him in his overlarge nose. “Not too smart, are you?”

  “That’s just something I found,” the man said, pointing with his chin at the charm. He looked up at Egil’s head, at the Eye of Ebenor. “But speakin’ of fools and priests.”

  “He’s a funny one,” Egil said, and glared. “I don’t like funny ones.”

  “And speaking of tattoos,” Nix said. He pushed the man prone, rolled him over, checked the man’s hands, his arms, cut off his shirt to bare his chest.

  “You at least gonna buy me a drink first?” the man said. “You don’t even know my name.”

  “Your name’s slubber, and that’s clear enough,” Nix said, and pulled him back into a sitting position. “No magic ink, which makes you too dumb for the Committee, yeah?”

  “The what?” the man said, all innocence.

  “Who gave the order?”

  “Order? I was offered coin. That’s it. I don’t even know the names of them others I was with.”

  Egil said, “The one burned alive on the street is named ‘pig meat.’ ”

  “Hard way to go,” the man said, shaking his head.

  “There are harder ways,” Egil said, his tone ominous.

  “I’d ask you why you put a flame to the inn—” Nix said.

  “Our inn,” Egil said.

  “Our inn,” Nix corrected. “But I already know.”

  The man sneered. “Let me tell you something, slubbers. This ain’t no inn. This is a shop for running slags and all-fours boys.”

  Nix cuffed him on the head, hard. “Mind your tongue, prick. You’re already on the blade’s edge.”

  The man glared up at Nix, his rat nose twitching.

  “What do we need from this slubber?” Nix asked Egil.

  “Ask him where the guildhouse is,” Egil said.

  The man guffawed.

  Nix faced the guildsman. “You heard the big, intimidating, ill-tempered man. Where’s the guildhouse?”

  “I don’t know nothing about a guildhouse.” The man’s rat face turned sly. “But I wager that’s not something safe to know ’less you’re supposed to. I wager knowing something like that when you shouldn’t might, I don’t know, get your place burned down. Lot o’ things like that.”

  Nix grabbed the man by his hair. “I find it best not to anger the priest.”

  The man glared and seemed inclined to keep talking, so Nix released him.

  “As you will, then.”

  “I hear the guild,” the man said. “They keep coming and coming until things finish up like they want them finished. And they come back for those that hurt their men. That’s what I hear.”

  “Nobody’s coming for you,” Egil said.

  The man jutted out his chin. “We’ll see.”

  Egil approached the man, and despite his superficial insouciance, the man quailed at the priest’s approach. But Egil only turned him roughly around so that his back was to the door. Nix looked a question at him. Egil mouthed the word “Mere” and Nix understood. He nodded and Egil exited the cellar to get Mere.

  After he left, Nix said, “I always heard guildboys were competent. Then I see a cock-up like this and have to wonder.”

  “Fak you. You got lucky.”

  “Tell you something else,” Nix said, his tone serious. He grabbed the man by the hair, jerked his head back, put his lips to his ear. “There were twenty people in this inn and I care about all of them. You and your crew will answer for that.”

  “You have no idea what you’re doing here, bungholes.”

  Nix punched him in the head, knocking him on his side. He struggled to keep his voice under control. “I know exactly what I’m doing. The guild is shite to me.”

  The man winced at the pain, blinked, licked his lips. “We’ll see.”

  “There’s only one thing saving you, slubber, and that’s that I’ve had enough of regrets in recent days. Hard to say with the priest, though. He’s not as forgiving as me. Strange in a priest, don�
�t you think?”

  The man grinned. “No. I know a few priests just like that.”

  The cellar door creaked open and Egil walked in, Merelda small behind him. Nix eyed Egil, who nodded, then Merelda, who eyed the prisoner. Nix gave her a nod of encouragement. Egil came around to look down at the guildsman.

  “Where’s the guildhouse?” Egil asked.

  The man spit. “That again? I told you—”

  Merelda closed her eyes, furrowed her brow. Nix imagined her reaching into the guildsman’s mind.

  “What is this?” the man said, blinking rapidly. “What is—”

  “Where is the guildhouse?” Egil said. “Tell us.”

  “I don’t—” The man’s words slurred. His eyes rolled. “I can’t—”

  Mere put a hand to her temple. Nix imagined her reaching in his mind, grabbing at his thoughts, unspooling them like weaver’s thread.

  Egil leaned over him. “Where. Is. The. Guildhouse?”

  The man screamed, shook his head, rocked back and forth.

  Merelda took a step closer to him, her pale face wrinkled in concentration. A drop of blood leaked from one of her nostrils but she seemed not to notice.

  “No, no, no!” said the man.

  “It’s on Mandin’s Way,” Mere said, her voice cold, her eyes still closed, her face still twisted up with effort. “Used to be an inn called the Squid. I can…see the layout.”

  “I know it,” Nix said.

  “Who is that?” the man said, trying to look over his shoulder. “Is that the bitch faytor?”

  Merelda took another step toward the man. Blood flowed from both her nostrils.

  The man shrieked, long and loud, and Nix hoped there were no Watch patrols on the street outside.

  “There are many guards there, always. There are two levels under it, a chapel, training rooms, safe rooms, a torture chamber, cells. The sewers near Mandin’s Way and a guarded tunnel in the bank of the Meander give access to the lower levels.”

  She took another step closer to the man, who now moaned and writhed on the ground, blood coming from his own nose. Merelda’s nosebleed worsened but she showed no sign of stopping.