by Kirby Crow
He found Federico Cervo next to the staircase. The old man’s vest was soaked with his blood. It ran in sticky rivulets across the floor to the toes of Tris's boots, witnessed by the banners of great houses and the ruby eyes of the stag. Cervo’s throat was cut, one hand curled on the seat of his favorite comfortable chair.
Tris had seen the dead before. Kon made a point to attend state funerals, formal viewings, the wakes of wardens and guardiers, but Tris had never seen violent death, and never a man he'd known so well.
Cervo's eyes were open, his mouth a round hole of shock, a thick fold of pale skin curled back from the wide gash in his neck.
Tris shuddered and thanked Paladin he hadn't hired the bodyguards yet. If they'd escorted him here and witnessed him enter the shop, he'd be a murder suspect. All they would have was a description of a man in a fine mask and cloak, but Marion would be the one tasked with solving the crime.
He quickly looked over his shoulder, checking the door. The shop was silent and empty. If it was a trap, it was a rushed and haphazard thing. No, this had the feel of desperation, maybe to silence the old man from telling what he knew?
The books had been a present from Marion, but Tris had never in his life expressed an interest in archery. It had to have been Cervo who chose the titles. Cervo, who'd said that in his youth he held off a party of Solari raiders with only a hatchet. Tris knelt and touched the man's arm in pity, careful to avoid the blood.
“I hope I was not the cause of this, Federico. For what it's worth, I'm sorry.”
He drew the window shades and locked the door.
Cervo's desk yielded old pen nibs, reams of inventory written in a thin, sketchy script, gum erasers, ink wells, and tobacco pouches. Like Kon, the old fellow liked his pipe. Tris rummaged through several wooden boxes stacked under the desk and then started to count bookcases. There were twenty-two on the first floor.
Tris leaned against the desk and put his mind to work. A careful man would have a careful hiding place. It took no skill to search the desk, the books, under the carpet. Any thief could toss a room, and Federico had been well-read, intelligent.
He looked up, wondering if there was a hidden compartment under one of the banners, but his eyes kept returning to the ruby orbs of the stag.
“A stag for a stag.” He climbed on the desk and stood. In the center of the chandelier was a turn-screw that would allow it to be cranked lower or higher on the chain suspending it from the ceiling. He experimented a little, finding he could lower the antlers low enough to look down into the center of the fixture, if he tilted it sharply. Below the turn-screw was another housing, spherical like a metal globe, but it looked like it might come apart. He grasped it firmly and the upper half of the sphere popped off. Inside, like a rose resting in a cup, was a frayed silk purse. He leapt down and weighed the purse in his hand, finding it too heavy for silver. The fabric was shiny with age. Loosening the drawstring revealed the glint of gold inside.
Far too much gold for a simple clerk. Cervo certainly did not earn so much selling books, even rare ones. Tris recognized the mint from etchings in old books, but he had never held Cwendi money in his hand before.
He turned a coin between two fingers and glanced at Cervo's body. “Dangerous business, old man. You should have done what old men do, and retired.” Mika had taught him to know men at first glance. Some people could read such things in the wrinkles of a face, the turn of a wrist or looseness of a stance. Federico had once been a force to reckon with. Age must have been difficult for him.
The stamp on the coin's face was of the mural crown of the Cwen mainland. On the opposite was a figure with the upper body of a human and the lower talons of an eagle. He knew it to be a golden harpy, worth one hundred and fifty silver coins. There were thirty harpies in the purse. A fortune.
Was the purse a bribe from the Cwen? If the Cwen wanted to ruin Kon's name and destroy the stability of the city, there were surer methods, more direct ones. This business of hidden paintings, telegraphs, and bribery seemed terribly clumsy. Was it poor plotting or deliberately inept, attempting to throw hunters off the scent of the real trail?
Tris dropped the purse into his pocket and went into the back rooms, where he pried open a shutter swollen with damp. Before he could slip into the alley, he heard a door close. He knelt down and froze, listening.
Raised voices penetrated through the wall. More than one. They were not afraid of discovery.
“—told you I don’t give a shit. A crossbones has got a right to line his pockets from a job.”
“We ain’t crossbones, Granchio. And this ain’t the job. Like that warden in the Mire weren’t the job. When Himself finds out what you did—”
“What we did!”
“You done it, not me!”
“Aw, shut yer wailing.”
“You ain’t done one thing right yet. You got shit for brains, Crabby. Casterline’s still free.”
“Not for long.”
A thumping of muted sounds, as if books were toppling from the shelves, then a heavy sliding of wood upon wood.
“L’arciere said to leave it. Doesn’t give orders without a reason, him.”
“The Silk will pocket it, and what good’s that to us, huh? Whoever heard of givin’ coin back to the Silk! Archer ain’t even a proper pirate.”
“You know what he is. He wanted it left here for a reason. You take that and he’ll have your balls hanging from the Reed Gate, wait and see.”
The other man—Granchio, Tris supposed—merely laughed. Something breakable smashed to the floor. Glass.
The stag, he thought. They would find the purse gone and search the shop.
“Not here. It’s took! The rotten sons o’ whores!”
The other man cursed and his boots drummed on the floor. “Now we’ll get blamed for it anyway and not a penny richer. I’m gone from here! I told you!”
The door slammed, and Tris listened for several long, agonizing moments as the remaining men tore the shop apart. He slipped one of the daggers from his belt as he knelt in the dark, hardly daring to breathe. If they come back here...
He might have surprised a single man, but there was more than one. He was no fighter. He had no skill with his weapons, only the element of surprise.
After smashing what sounded like every piece of glass in the shop, Granchio argued with the men who remained about burning the shop, his voice rising to a torrent of rage and obscenity, and then they were gone.
Tris counted his heartbeats to one hundred, the point of his dagger shaking. When he was sure they were not returning, he crouched below the window and listened. The alley was silent. Holding his breath and praying, he edged over the windowsill as stealthily as a cat.
He headed west, following light and noise. The clamor from the Alley of Sparrows was a muted chorus interspersed with shouts and laughter. He could have doubled back to lose any followers, but the wisest direction was away from Cervo's. If he didn't want to be seen on the canal, he had no choice but to cross the Colibri.
As he wended into the jubilant crowd, one man smelling thickly of wine threw a brawny arm out to catch him in a bear-hug. He endured it for a moment, then kneed the fellow in the groin when he wouldn't let go. While the hugger was rolling on the ground, Tris ducked into another alley lined on both sides with copulating men.
The narrow space echoed with moans as he walked the damp cobblestones, seeing writhing figures splashed with gaslight, some standing, others kneeling in rut.
He deliberately slowed his step and was careful not to appear hurried, not to draw attention. No man tried to stop him.
He came to the Canal Fiore. The Gaol was just across the water, but he couldn't go there. He could not go home, either.
Casterline’s still free, he’d overheard. And Not for long.
All this, Aequora attacked, Yves murdered, just to lure one more man to his death? It made no sense. Why throw papers from the Gran Consiglio when arrows flew truer and deadlier? This wa
s something else, something much larger and more complicated. The whole thing felt more like reconnaissance than a plot: a probe to test the weakest parts of the city machine, using the bluntest tools, dismantling the most vital gears. Kon has used such moves in their chess games; skillful feints designed to draw out his knights and priests, while leaving his king unprotected.
Tris stared up at the lights of the Gaol tower.
“Pawns,” he murmured.
***
Caution and fear cost him hours reaching the Island of Thieves. He changed his sandolo three times, crossing bridges on foot to reach adjoining canals, glancing behind him. He was as careful as he knew how to be, and still he was certain that he’d been followed.
There was no evidence of it, no pursuers in sight, but the tingling at the back of his neck told him much. He trusted that feeling more than anything his eyes could tell him.
He paid his sandolier at a bridge he recognized from his maps as the Archetto, deep on the southern end of the Zanzare. Tris pulled his hood down over his mask and moved up the steps of the canal, into the crowded slum. The men in Cervo’s had mentioned the Reed Gate, so he headed north, his shoulders brushing with those of men who wore sacking shirts crawling with lice.
Mosquitoes swarmed around his masked face. The sun, when it rose, would rout some of them, but not nearly enough. And the smell, dear gods, the smell...
Tris was used to the odor of the swampy air that occasionally gusted through the Myrtles from the direction of the Mire, but the fetid stink of the Zanzare was clotted with greasy smoke and sewer, mildew, fish-guts, cat piss, garbage, drying seaweed and rotting timber. It lingered in the back of his throat, sickly-sweet on his tongue.
He swallowed hard against nausea and kept walking. The sky lightened to titian gray as he dodged alley cats and side-stepped men carrying packed crates and baskets of fish from a hundred open doorways. The streets between the canals were narrow and broken, their stones damp, though it had not rained. Everywhere, men gaped at him. Some men laughed openly, others merely spat at his boots and muttered Silk under their breaths, like a curse.
He kept his head down and walked until the dawn was red in the sky.
The Reed Gate was a thirty-foot tall arched structure of stone blocks adjoining a high wall that protected the oldest and most wretched part of the Zanzare slum from the harsh winds of the sea and the creatures of the marsh. The reddish blocks were ornamented with ancient heraldic symbols etched into the stone, worn away with time, and the gate itself was barred with iron as thick as a man's arm. Tris recognized it only from drawings.
The gate was open, the massive pulley ropes used to operate it coiled on their cable spools. Clustered north and south of the destroyed gate was a line of crumbling insulae, rent-free housing now that there was no Teschio to collect coin on even the meanest of hovels.
A makeshift tavern near the Reed Gate sold beer from a wooden tub, requiring men to bring their own mugs or drink from a dipper. A lanky guardian rested on his haunches by the open door, a spiked club propped against his knee. Midges swarmed and mosquitoes bit, the place stank of latrine and a pall of smoke hung stubbornly over the huts.
Tris lurked in the shadows under the roof of a pigeon coop and swiped his hand over a pigeon crate coated with red dust. He rubbed the dry dust between his fingers. It had not rained in days, and yet the ground was sodden, his heels sinking into a puddle with every step.
The Zanzare was sinking. In only a few years, perhaps two, the sea would reclaim much of this island.
Six men in ratty garb sat on worn benches near the gate, a barrel table between them. They were playing Hazard for pennies with wooden dice. A man in a tattered checkered shirt threw the dice. They were dressed like water rats, but they were well-fed. Tris’s eyes narrowed as he stole glances at them. Few in the Zanzare could afford to keep that much muscle on their frames.
He heard a scuffling coming from above and saw one of the ratty men glance upward and nod. Someone on the roof?
Tris put his head out of shadow and scanned the haphazard lines of the rooftops. A cowled head popped up and then down again fast. Where there was one, there'd be more.
He backed away, keeping close to the line of buildings, one hand on the brick, tracing the uneven lines of rubble. The mortar was rotting, timbers eaten away, not a speck of attention paid to the structures in a decade. They'd been falling down for a century before the Teschio were defeated. Now they'd be dust in a few more years.
Tris had to admire the man on the roof, whoever he was. It took courage to climb when the building under you could collapse. A man could be buried under tons of wood and rock with no one to give a damn about digging him out.
He ducked between the buildings and tramped though a rill of foul water to find the iron ladder on the eastern side. All ladders faced east, when they could. Most fires happened at night or early morning. If you had light to escape by, the sun would guide you. He tugged on the rungs. Dust sifted down but the anchors were driven deep and held. He was more worried about the rungs folding. He swung a foot up and climbed.
He had played stealth games with Mika, and knew there was no one right method of sneaking up on a man. Too many variables. The direction of the wind, the terrain underfoot, the slant of the sun or the moonlight.
The man on the flat roof wore a hood, dirty black faded by sun and salt. Not argenti. No graycloak would be employed running rooftops. A paid man, then, in need of coin enough to hazard a broken spine. The hooded man crouched with his back to Tris, still peering over the side to watch the gate.
Tris’s boots were noiseless enough on cobblestones. The roof was strewn with litter, fish bones, bits of wood, bent nails. His heel slid on the merest edge of refuse, and the man turned. He froze, expecting a thrown knife, a shout. Then he saw the face.
Paladin save us. On the streets of the Citta Alta, he’d seen jeweled cortigianos with less beauty. A sharp pang, pain and not-pain, imaginary and real, struck him between the ribs, and he stared. He licked his lips.
The man gave him a ghost of a smile and tugged down his hood. “Boy, this is no place for the likes of you.”
A strange accent, the words precise as a nobleman’s speech, but with a rough, unfamiliar burr, like scraping every vowel with a rusty blade before letting it go. The man still knelt, wrists draped loosely over his bent knees. Tris saw smooth skin tanned to bronze, a wisp of beard below a tumble of auburn curls, a pink rose of a mouth, eyes green enough to tempt a devil. He looked closer and saw the breadth of shoulders, the length of limb, and the wide, capable hands. A bit skinny, but if the man stood he’d tower over Tris.
“I’m not a boy,” Tris answered.
“You won't be getting much older if you take such risks.” That pale mouth curled into a bow and the man covered his hair again, his movements exaggeratedly slow, giving Tris no reason to panic. “My master commands me to say that he waits for you at La Strega di Sale. He says there's no need to skulk and poke into corners like a tinker grubbing for tin. He has what you seek, and he will be pleased to speak with you.”
“And what is it he believes I seek?”
“Answers, messere.”
Tris hesitated. “That place... I don’t know that where it is.”
“It may have had another name in the past. The Gaffed Whale.”
He did know that name, from a map over two hundred years old, recalled with perfect clarity. “And I'm simply expected to walk in there on the word of L'arciere? Why should I trust him?”
“My master has given you no word to trust.”
The man unfolded himself from kneeling and rose. He was leggy, with big feet, long hips, and a deep waist. With that hair and skin, he reminded Tris of a moving statue molded from copper. Then the man smiled gently and was a boy again, but with a face that could make an angel weep.
Tris heard himself asking the man’s name.
The hooded man sketched a bow, arm folded across his waist. “You may call me Thorn,
and I can tell you that while my master makes no promise for your safety, he has no wish for your death. He has what you seek. You have only to come claim it.” Thorn tilted his head and ran the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. “Unless there's something more you desire?”
“If I did,” Tris said icily, “I wouldn't trust my balls near a crossbones’ mouth.”
Thorn laughed, and the laugh was like his words, edged and full of threat. “I'm no crossbones.”
“You're no graycloak, either.”
“We did borrow their name, I admit. Like the day we gave Aureo Marigny's necklace to your promessa.”
Tris was shaken to the bone. Marion had not told him who the necklace had belonged to. “To spook him and send him chasing after shadows,” he asked harshly, “or to force the wardens to move against the graycloaks?”
Thorn shrugged gently. “Either would serve our purpose.”
“You put the Consolari on the scent of the argenti again, made life hard for them, cost them money. I'll bet your new friends didn't like that.”
“Indeed not, but since they lack the numbers to retaliate, it hardly matters what they care for. It seems they're lately short of good men.”
“Because they're all working for you.” Paris had known that much, but Paris only had pieces of the game, never the whole board. A pattern was beginning to form. Tris could almost glimpse it; a clever, twisting path full of subtle maneuvers and false trails, a single thread of power linking one incident to the other, on and on, a master design.
The man in front of Tris was part of that power. “Why are you gathering lettered men, in particular?”
Thorn only smiled.
He stared Thorn down bravely. “Don't smirk at me, thief. My family has been thinning your kind out since I was born.”
“You’ve never met my kind, little maestro.” Thorn turned, placed the flat of his hand on the lip of the roof, and vaulted his long legs up and over the low edge.
Tris gasped in shock and hurled himself forward. He dropped to his knees at the edge, expecting to see the man shattered in the alley below, but there was nothing, no sickening sound of flesh hitting brick, no body. Thorn had thrown himself off the roof and there wasn't a trace of him. No, not thrown. Glided. Tris had never seen such grace.