by Kirby Crow
He leaned far over the edge, craning his neck and squinting to pierce the morning gloom. If Thorn had sprouted wings and soared overhead, Tris would hardly have been more shocked. He retreated from the sheer drop and sat on his haunches, casting for his next move.
He'd never had an invitation from a killer before, but Mika said such meetings only ended one way. The Archer would not be alone at the Salt Witch, whatever he promised, and he'd promised exactly nothing.
JEAN
Aequora, Ventotto
(Day 28)
Four men had another man trapped between a wall and a mound of old fishing traps, two blocking him on either side. The slight victim was game enough, fists balled and his knees bent.
To name the attackers as men was a courtesy. They were gangers without hope or discipline; starvelings raised on scraps and beatings. Men who'd never see a single wish come true, so they'd settle for blood. They smelled like rotting fish and their clothes were a patchwork of tarred netting, sail cloth, leather and burlap sacking. Jean had known boys like them in the crossbone days, but these weren't boys. They were men grown past dreaming about full bellies, and now there was no Teschio to recruit them or put bread in their mouths, only the graycloaks, who helped no one but themselves.
“Just give us the clothes, pretty man.” The ganger had a brimmed hat made of fish skins pulled down over a head of oily yellow hair.
“And them boots.” Another had a bristly brown beard like a scrubbing brush. The leer that spread over his face reminded Jean of dogs tearing a hedgehog in half. “And maybe we'll let you go. After.”
Jean tapped on the wall with the heavy butt of his bastone. “Enough,” he drawled. “You've had your fun, boys. He'll be pissing those satin pants of his, and who wants that, eh?”
The gangers turned and gaped at him. Scrub was the first to pinch his eyebrows together in a frown. “We ain't yer boys.”
“We saw him first!” Fish Hat exclaimed. “The Silk’s got no business down here, warden.”
He tapped the bastone against the wall. Tink tank. They'd hear the iron weight under the leather. Unless they were as stupid as they looked, and they might well be.
“Well, he's got business now. I've been expecting him.”
Scrub spat onto the cobblestones. “Warden's business, What if I say it ain't?” A hairy arm shot out to make a grab for the victim.
The slight man grabbed Scrub by the meaty part of his thumb, folded his wrist over, slapped the man's elbow down and broke the thumb with an audible snap.
Jean winced as Scrub went to his knees. “Was that necessary?”
To his credit, Scrub didn't wail. Fish Hat looked to his fellows for support, but they were already melting away down the alley.
Scrub's thumb was stuck in an unnatural downward angle. He gritted his teeth—brown, like the beard—and wrapped his other hand tightly around the broken digit.
“I wouldn't—” Jean began.
The high-pitched scream made up for Scrub's earlier silence.
“That's not how you do that,” Jean said, ears ringing. “You've just gone and made it worse. Now you'll need a real dottore to set it.”
“Bugger the dottore right up his bleeding arsehole,” Scrub moaned. “You bastard. I'll slice your balls off for this.”
“Buggers, bastards, balls, and bleeding arseholes. There’s more than one letter in the alphabet to curse in.” Jean strode forward and delivered a kick to the seat of Scrub's threadbare pants. “Off with you. Spin your story at the tavern for a free pint. It’ll dull the pain.”
When Scrubbing brush and his pack had scurried off, Jean grinned at the panting victim and bowed as good as any courtier. “Welcome to the Zanzare.”
“Oh, bugger you.” The man slipped the Volto mask from his face and fixed Jean with a withering glare.
Jean felt the blood leave his cheeks. He'd heard the word dazed before but never really felt it. Not without an accompanying sharp blow to the head. I’m dead, was his first thought, followed by Dominique is going to stab me in the kidney and Kon will filet me like a swordfish.
“Paladin’s fucking cock...”
Tris nodded, cleared his throat, and spat against the wall. A dull bruise bloomed purple on his chin.
Jean would have copied him, if he could have summoned any spit. “What in the name of Hell are you doing down here?”
“Same as you.” Tris stood up straight and brushed grime from his cloak.
Tris was clad in black velvet and cream lace. The Volto mask alone was worth a small fortune. No wonder the gangers were beating him.
Jean shook off his amazement and grabbed Tris’s arm. “You’re going back to your father,” he growled. “Right now.”
“I can’t go back,” Tris protested, tugging on Jean’s arm. “You have to help me.”
“I am helping you.” Jean began to drag Tris forcibly toward the canal.
Tris hit him on the back of the head with the mask.
Jean snarled and shoved him against the wall. He laid his arm across Tris’s throat. “Stop it or I’ll knock you out and carry you.”
Tris’s gray eyes were wide and scared. His mouth trembled. “Please,” he whispered.
Jean could feel Tris’s body shaking. Fear of me? No. This was another kind of fear.
Tris tried to dart out of his grip. Jean slammed him against the wall and slapped his face, then again for good measure. The explosion of pleasure he earned from the act shamed him, but he held his hand ready to do it again.
“This isn’t a game, boy. If you die in the Zanzare, Kon will burn it to ash. I’m not letting that happen to my people. Not for you.”
Tris held his reddened cheek and closed his eyes as if fully expecting to be hit again. His lip bled. “I know. Just listen for a moment and I will do anything you say. It’s all I ask. Please.”
If he’d been haughty or outraged, Jean would have put the brat’s lights out and carried him home in a sack. Such a meek reaction dampened his fury. “Talk,” he grated out.
“My father...” Tris licked the blood away from his lower lip. “My father is looking for me, and Marion is... I have to find him and I need your help.”
“Marion was with your father, last I saw him. At the Castello Rosa.”
Tris blinked and tears fell from his eyelashes. “Why did he go there?”
“Just to tell Kon what happened at Aequora.”
Tris’s storm-cloud eyes widened, and Jean felt pinned by that stare in some way, as if Tris were reading him like a math problem: a precise, calculating gaze.
“Where is Marion now?”
“I watched the castello until dawn. He walked out with Dominique and they left together.”
Tris sagged in relief. “Then he’s safe.”
“Marion says you’re a smart boy, but if you think I’d leave him in danger, then you don’t know anything much, piccolo.”
Tris laughed, helplessly and silent. He put his hand over his mouth, hiding perhaps, and Jean was touched by the level of his fear.
“Stop,” Jean murmured, gentling his voice. “No need for all this. I’ll take care of you.” He drew the edges of Tris’s cloak together about him. “Come on, lostling. I know a place. I’ll make you safe.”
He put his arm around Tris and led through a maze of close streets and alleys, some swamped with water, others mucky with a layer of slimed filth. Few were dry. None were clean. All stank like the Carcassa at low tide.
Tris was silent and unresisting, allowing himself to be led.
He’s at the end of his rope, Jean thought. He’d get the truth out him soon enough.
They came to a set of iron-banded doors at the end of a long alleyway. The bone-white skulls of cats were nailed on both doors, their fangs open as if yowling in protest at the indignity. No locks on this type of hideout. All one needed in the Zanzare was a pair of skulls. Few men in the slums would steal from a home marked by the prince of cats, even if there was something worth stealing inside.
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Jean shoved the door open on its rusty hinges and pushed Tris inside. There were no torches in the brick-walled cavern, only crates, tarred barrels, and stone steps leading down into a square pool of murky green water below. The water rippled and emitted a faint glow from an unseen source. Jean had followed it once and found it to be ordinary sunlight, reflected from a flooded chamber that led outside. A green-rusted metal door leading deeper into the swampy catacombs was half-submerged in the pool, hung with chains.
Jean closed the outer doors and edged against the wall down the narrow path that ran alongside the pool, motioning for Tris to follow.
Tris glanced warily at the chained door in the water and obeyed.
They traveled through a series of stone arches and dank paths until they came to a wide grotto with a curved ceiling. Spiders wove webs in the dome of the arch. A cracked tile in the ceiling allowed a pinhole of sunlight through.
Jean stopped and turned. “Are you tired of living or something, puss?”
Tris clamped his fine mouth closed and narrowed his eyes. He’d recovered much of his pride. “Don't attempt to frighten me.”
“Such a chore that would be. You were wetting your pants back there. Good thing I came along to save you.”
“You did not—”
“Oh, I did,” Jean broke in. “Those boys were ready to crack your skull. Sweet fathers know what they would have done to you while you were out.”
“Boys?” Tris echoed “Those were no boys. They were gangers. Teschio.”
Jean smirked. “Aureo Marigny was the Teschio. Without him, they're just thugs. Not even very organized thugs.” The new gangers boasted like they were giants, but the heart had gone out of them eight years ago. They weren't trained fighters anymore. Some of them were too young to even remember Aureo, the older ones having gone the way of all useless things in the Zanzare
Jean pointed to the dark mouth of arch against the far wall. “If you leave by that passage, you'll come to a shallow canal. Follow it north until you reach a wooden bridge on the outskirts of the slum. From there you can hire a sandolo to cross over. You’ll be safe.”
“I'm not leaving.”
Jean grabbed Tris by the front of his cloak. “We put the fear in them for now, but they'll go to a tavern and drink some courage into their bellies. Then they'll come hunting for us.”
“Let them. I can have a hundred guardiers here in an hour.”
He could. One message from Tris and Kon would invade the Zanzare like Paladin taking the Arsenale.
“And start a war. No. That won't fucking do at all. I’ve already got one fire to put out down here. Be a good boy and go home.” He put a hand on Tris's shoulder and pitched his voice low to soothe. “There’s no shame here. You were beaten because you were outmatched.”
“I wasn’t beaten.” Tris shrugged his hand off. “And don't play charming with me.”
The brat was not going to be soothed by any subtle method. Jean seized Tris's face between his hands and dragged him to his mouth. Tris chirped like a startled bird at first. Then, when Jean wouldn't let go, Tris sighed into his mouth and submitted. His body turned yielding, soft. Jean felt the muscles in Tris's shoulders relax, the pent anger and fear bleeding out of him, and he slipped his tongue inside Tris's mouth playfully, his fingers wending through the soft hair curling at the nape of his neck, hands slipping down his body.
Tris's abruptly pushed him away. “Stop,” he gasped. He glanced around him as if searching for help, and the look he turned on Jean was of someone utterly lost. “Please don’t do that. Not now.”
Jean felt a little lost himself. Tris felt so right in his arms, like he belonged there. Kissing him was the best feeling he’d had in a very long time.
“I can’t go back,” Tris whispered. “I’ve learned a terrible secret. It was meant for Marion to discover first. To harm him, I think, or to drive him to harm my father. The author of that message is here, in the Zanzare.”
“And you’re here to take him on, are you?”
“If need be.”
Jean was tempted to put the Tris’s fear down to boyish dramatics, but the terror in his gray eyes was real. “Tell me what you know, and I’ll decide whether or not to help you.”
Doubt flitted over Tris’s features like a shadow.
“That’s the deal, puss. Take it or leave it.”
“All right,” Tris said. “But I can’t tell you here.”
Jean had a hundred questions. He briefly considered getting the answers here and now, using methods that would doubtless get him killed if Tris’s fathers ever heard of them. Instead, he grabbed Tris's arm and shoved him back the way they had come.
“I hope your boots are waterproof.”
***
The chained door in the water led to a cavern of many halls, some blocked, others leading up to hidden alleys and to the warm room where Jean lifted the lid of a metal bucket to dip boiled water for himself. He poured a beer for Tris.
Soaked to the waist, Tris sat on a wooden stool and glanced at the tiny fireplace, the bed and chairs, the thick folds of black warden coats hanging on a row of nails.
Scavenged wood made up the walls and low ceiling of the room, gleaned from ships, crates, broken sandoli, pallets, tables, headboards, and whatever else the Lion Sea had to offer.
The room was the Zanzare equivalent of the Black Keep. The wardens could not build a real tower in the Zanzare, complete with well-fed men in good boots sparring in a manicured courtyard. Such a place would be an unwelcome reminder of Citta Alta power. Jean billed the Consolari yearly for the rooms he rented for his wardens to hole up in if there was bad weather or trouble. That detail hooked two fish with one worm: injected coin into the slum and earned his men the only goodwill they'd ever get in the Zanzare: the kind you pay for.
Tris looked at the ceiling. “This must be what it feels like to be inside a coffin.”
“Brick is sturdy, but it holds the damp in. A fire helps.”
“What do you burn?”
“Do you ever stop asking questions? Curious as a cat, you.” He shook his head. “Seaweed and hemp. In a tight room like this, an oil lamp will drive the wet away, unless it's raining. But we're all fucked down here when it rains.” He tipped the cup to his mouth and drank.
Tris tried the beer and succeeded valiantly in not spitting it out. He put the cup from him with a nod of thanks.
The boy had grace, Jean had to give him that. “So,” Jean crossed his arms. “You learned that Kon is the blood-son of a pirate lord and you ran away.” He didn’t mention the missing woman to Tris. Compared to the rest of it, she was the least of his problems.
Tris picked at the lace on his sleeve. “I didn’t run away. I’m not a child.”
The sheer danger of the knowledge Tris carried was dizzying. One thing bothered Jean. “Why did you let Paris into your house?”
“I didn’t. He forced his way in.” Tris ducked his head. “Sort of.”
“Ah. Then why did you go to the Arsenale with him?”
“Because it reassured him. It made him confident that I would follow his lead.”
“And you needed him to feel secure so you could pick his brain and then get away from him.”
Tris nodded.
Like he needs me to feel. “You’ve told the truth, but not all of it.” Jean waved his hand when Tris would have protested. “It’s fine, boy. I’d do the same in your boots. Isn’t that always the way? One man has a page of the story, another man two pages, none of us holding the entire book.”
“Incomplete parts of a whole need a strategic mind to fill in the blanks and piece them together,” Tris said urgently. “Paris was not that man.”
“Neither am I,” Jean said bluntly. “I don’t know why Yves is dead. I don’t know what Cervo’s murder or the kidnapping of the boys has to do with Kal Nera. So why come to me?”
“Because I heard you the night Marion was shot.” Tris smiled wanly. “You called him beloved. That ma
kes you my best ally in this. You wouldn’t let any harm come to him, not for any reason. I know you wouldn’t.”
Such faith should have warmed Jean, not annoyed him, but it was damn near impossible not to be annoyed with Tris. He swiped the back of his hand under his nose impatiently. “I told you to stay away from Paris,” he muttered. “I said he was trouble.”
Tris gave him a wry look. “He’s awake by now. My guess is that he’s already here, searching for me.”
“No doubt.” Jean sighed heavily. “Kon Sessane, a Starless Man. The Citta Alta will eat itself when that’s known.”
“That can’t be known. Not ever. My father bore the name of Avakon Nera, once. That doesn't make him a Starless Man.
“It sure as hell doesn't make him one of us.”
“If blood makes a Malakhan, then I’m not one of you either. Don't let the past cloud your judgment. Were your people better off with Aureo? Kon has served the city for thirty-five years. He brought down the gangs and gave us the Peace. If you still think he's planning to take over the city after all that, then maybe he deserves to rule it.”
“Maybe he does,” Jean admitted.
The water tasted flat. Wine would be welcome. He had a tin flagon of strong spirits in his jacket, but if he started drinking now he wouldn't stop until his eyes crossed.
What was Tris thinking, coming down here alone? Damn the little brat. Jean was beginning to regret kissing him. The boy was reckless. A thrashing would do him good, even if his mouth did taste like honeysuckle.
Jean enjoyed the comparison and scaled down his plans of violence. A good spanking wouldn't go to waste, though. Whatever made Tris think he could hold his own against real men? God save them all if he was harmed in the Zanzare.
Jean swirled the water in his cup, though that wasn't going to make it taste any better. “Marion's not in danger from Kon. Paris was wrong to put that fear in your head.”
“His conclusion wasn’t illogical, given the information he had. I didn’t figure it out myself until I found Cervo dead. He was a spy, yes?”