Blood of the City

by Robin D. Laws

  Though the cell admitted no light, Luma could tell it was morning by listening to the music of the city, pushing through the pain and fury of the Hells' inhabitants to the birds outside.

  Soon another guard showed up to push metal bowls of a porridge-like substance across the cell floor. Thaubnis finally stirred, hopping up to grab the fullest bowl. No utensils accompanied the gruel; the dwarf ate by shoving her bony fingers into the concoction and licking them off. Luma tried to eat, but the smell of spoilage overwhelmed her hunger. She shoved the rest over to the dwarf.

  "You sure?" Thaubnis asked.

  "I might regret it later, but I'm sure for now."

  "Midday meal's worse, and dinner more unspeakable still." The dwarf clearly spoke not out of a spirit of persuasion, but of general information: she had already dug into the second bowl. Oat fragments spattered her prominent jaw and clung to the deep creases in her face. Red splotches flared around her pitch-black irises. Empty perforations ran up the outer rims of both prominent ears; presumably, she'd been stripped of her jewelry before they threw her in here. From her head tufted kinky gray hair. As Thaubnis ate, Luma noted that she turned her left arm to conceal a raised area on the inside of her forearm, just above the elbow. She guessed that it had been made by a brand, but could not make out the shape without making her observation obvious.

  Neither could she place the dwarf's accent, except that it originated outside Magnimar.

  "I thank you again for intervening with the orc-bloods," Luma ventured.

  "If I let them beat you, they might get to thinking someone other than me was in charge," Thaubnis said.

  "I can arrange for my family to help you."

  Thaubnis licked her fingers clean. "This might surprise you, but I don't need your help."

  "You have friends who can get you out of here?"

  "Friends? That's a laugh."

  "Then what do you have?"

  Thaubnis took a good stare at her new cellmate. "Nosy one, aren't you?"

  Luma shrugged and backed away.

  Thaubnis scooted closer. "What I got is what gets everybody out of here. Everybody who gets out, that is. Information. There's an entire network of poisoners I can squeal on." She tapped her temple. "Names, locations, who bought the poisons, who ingested them. That cancels out whatever nonsense they might have on me."

  "And what nonsense do they have on you?"

  "I broke the wrong jaw—allegedly. It's piffle. I'll be drinking in the Basilisk's Eye before moonrise."

  Luma cocked an eyebrow. "Truly? It seems like you've been here a while."

  The dwarf crossed her arms. "I didn't say which moonrise. Soon as they come for me, I'll tattle my head off, and that'll be that."

  One of their remaining cellmates, a corpulent woman still savoring her rancid porridge, muttered something about informants.

  "Don't make me come over there, Quaali," Thaubnis said.

  "I've heard they get rough down here," said Luma. "What if they decide to beat it out of you, this information you have?"

  "Rough? That's also a laugh."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, I can tell you about rough, and around here they're amateurs."

  "I don't follow you."

  "You're not meant to," said Thaubnis.

  Quaali chipped in. "Thaubnis is a torturer by trade," she sniped.

  "You shut up."

  Quaali made a grumping noise.

  Thaubnis turned to Luma. "Not a torturer. An inquisitor. Two very different vocations."

  Quaali squinched up her face, then blurted: "An inquisitor's just a torturer for the gods, ain't it?"

  Thaubnis leapt up, ran over to her, and slapped her. Quaali yowled in protest. Thaubnis menaced her a while, then came back to sit cross-legged next to Luma. "Used to be. Used to be an inquisitor."

  "Until they let you down?" Luma asked.

  "Who?"

  "Those friends you mentioned."

  "Let's just say this. When you're an inquisitor, you talk to a lot of heretics."

  "Talk," scoffed Quaali. "Ha!"

  "You have to be careful," Thaubnis continued, "that you don't start agreeing with them."

  "Your colleagues turned on you," Luma said.

  "They gave me this." In response, Thaubnis turned her arm to show Luma her brand. It was the symbol of Magrim, a dwarven god so obscure even Luma had read little about him.

  A door banged open. Luma's arresting officer came to the bars with the female bodyguard and a jailer. He ordered the jailer to open the cell, and waved Luma out. "You're coming with us," he said.

  They moved from corridors she'd seen on the way in to another set of passageways. Under her breath, Luma hummed her invocation to the citysong. Her imagined map of the city shifted in her mind's eye. She beheld the Capital District and the Pediment. Now the view altered, revealing the building's interior as she had seen it so far. Corridors flowed out as she walked them, committing them to memory, adding them to her map. A compass rose manifested, showing her where north was. The orientation might prove invaluable, should she have to attempt escape.

  Luma perceived an alteration in her captors' mood. The day before, they'd comported themselves with crisp professionalism, even deference. Now they gave off a cold rage. What had changed? She wished she'd been able to scrounge up a copper piece to replace the one they'd taken from her. With it as a focus, she could try her thought-reading trick.

  As they turned a corner, the woman shoved Luma into it. She timed the attack so that it did no good to anticipate it. Pain radiated through Luma's arm and shoulder.

  "We found out what you did," the woman hissed.

  They moved her up from the Hells into upper stories, the Pediment itself. Exposed stone gave way to flocked surfaces and gilded ornamentation. The awful smell receded into a faint soapy odor. Functionaries' chatter replaced the groans of the jailed.

  For a moment, Luma thought she sensed the presence of her distant watcher. Then she was in the lord-mayor's office.

  Chapter Nine

  The Pediment

  With a heavy silver pincer, Haldemeer Grobaras cracked into a six-inch lobster claw. The enormous creature splayed before him on a serving plate of translucent aquamarine glass, surrounded by lemon wedges and a lake of melted butter. Also overspread across his desk, on dishware of matching splendor, were a shank of mutton, thick slices of honeyed ham, a bowl of boiled eggs, and an entire deep-fried eel, cut up into bite-sized morsels and arranged in a meandering version of its original shape. Side dishes spilled from pewter bowls: steamed cabbage, roast leeks, and a salad of dandelion leaves and gangava fronds. A half-full bottle of Molthuni wine sat by the lord-mayor's elbow. Two emptied predecessors had been pushed to the desk's outer edge, exiled alongside a pen, an inkwell, and a sheaf of stray documents.

  He hunched over his food, supported by a reinforced chair in the heavy Old Grodhian style. Leering from its high back was not the mayoral seal, but a needlepoint rendition of Haldemeer's personal crest: a pelican, its beak gaping, fishtails lolling from its pouch.

  Grobaras had pushed up the sleeves of his doublet and white tunic, but did not wear a bib or have a napkin in his lap. A glamor on the doublet caused it to sparkle brilliantly, independent of lighting conditions. Sapphire beads lined his cuffs and topped his laces. Intertwined snakes patterned his hose. On his head he wore a pillbox hat of red and gold, topped by a trio of pluming jadebird feathers. Each finger displayed a jeweled ring; no gemstone appeared twice. Medallions hung across his chest, dragging now and then across the food.

  An assortment of tapestries, all recently loomed and garishly colored, hid the room's gray walls. A chunk of myrrh smoldered in a censer. Attendants, some in the drab garb of city functionaries, others wearing gaudy Grobaras livery, lined the back wall, ready for orders. When Grobaras needed a plate pushed toward him, the closest of the latter sprang into action. The bureaucrats, Luma could only presume, waited to fulfill more official duties, should any
arise. Yet a third group, this one well-armed, watched with affected nonchalance from an adjacent chamber. From where Luma stood, she could clearly see a handful of them. The angle of the wall hid at least one or two others.

  Grobaras ran gobbets of lobster meat through the butter slurry and stuffed them into his mouth. A line of juice dripped down his recessed lips and out onto the first of his three protuberant chins. A servant stepped up to dab it from him before droplets struck his tunic; the lord-mayor elbowed him away. He clutched his wine goblet, held it under his cleft nose, sniffed deep, and drank. A rivulet of sweat emerged from his spikes of sand-white hair, tumbling down his shiny forehead. This he permitted his servant to wipe away. He speared a forkful of cabbage and sucked it into his mouth. Still chewing, he said, "Under ordinary circumstances I do not involve myself in the affairs of the city guard."

  He left a pause, either to graze on the leeks or to allow Luma to respond. She could think of nothing worth saying.

  Wiping his mouth on the crook of his arm, the lord-mayor continued. "In fact, it has always been my contention that a city thrives best when governed inattentively. So you can understand my dismay when the action of certain citizens interrupts my affairs, forcing me to trundle down to this, my secondary office, what with its paltry furnishings and insalubrious atmosphere. At certain moments, it seems to me that suffering from the Hells below rises up, like vapor from an alchemist's alembic, to suffuse the entire structure. Veritably palpable, wouldn't you say?"

  "I would," Luma said.

  "It is good to begin a discussion with a point of agreement." Grobaras gulped down more wine; an attendant already worked a screw into the cork of a fourth bottle. "Pleasantries thus achieved, let us plunge to the marrow of the thing. Who put you up to it? The paterfamilias, I hear, is unwell. Yet he can still give orders, can he not?"

  "I don't understand your questions."

  "Do you feign ignorance, or am I merely over-eloquent?"

  Luma shifted her weight. "What am I accused of?"

  Grobaras's laugh loosed a spray of egg fragments. "Let us proceed as if all tiresome denials have been already issued, shall we? I speak lightly, but your offense is vast. Khonderian was a good and useful man. I felt an affection for him. That you will die for your crime is a given. That you shall pay reparations on the torture slab is likewise foreordained. The only question before us today is to what degree you care to minimize the duration and extent of your scourging before you are borne to the gibbet."

  "You're saying Khonderian is dead?"

  The lord-mayor banged the table, rattling the silverware. "Tediousness! You know it better than any! It is by your hand that his throat was sliced."

  "You're wrong."

  Grobaras's face went from flushed to erubescent. "We have dispensed with that. Who ordered it? You are the weak link. Oh yes, I've had you looked into, Luma Arcadios Derexhi. It wasn't your idea. Your father commanded it—or your brother Arrus, who seems to give the orders in his place. Or perhaps your wizard of a sister, who is the whisper behind the curtain."

  "If you had evidence you'd have us all in chains."

  "Evidence? You were seen trailing him."

  Luma said nothing.

  Grobaras waved a piece of eel at her. "You deny it?"

  "My family has friends. This is all bluster."

  Grobaras stood. "You were merely the instrument. The Derexhis may be an old family, more pedigreed than mine certainly. But underneath the family seal and the grand balls and the airs you assume, you are hirelings and have always been so. I will know who paid you to kill my man. Who struck this blow against me."

  "We are not assassins. You confuse us with the Red Mantis, perhaps."

  Trailing his sleeve across the food-strewn desktop, Grobaras pushed several of the bowls and plates together, creating a space on its corner. From a drawer, he produced Luma's spell bag, spilling its contents on the desk. The live spider scurried frantically as its vial rolled, coming to a stop against the base of a wine glass. "Tell me the purpose of these objects," said Grobaras. "Which sorceries do they conjure?"

  "No sorcery," said Luma.

  The lord-mayor's face dimpled. "Technically correct, when the term is finely construed. You spellcasters and your narrow distinctions. You think you Derexhi own the only library in the city?" A bureaucrat stepped forward in response to Grobaras's backhand wave. He held a book, which he opened to a marked page and held out in front of his boss. Grobaras scanned for the relevant passage. "Your kind isn't too common, hey?"

  Luma forced herself to stand straighter. "Your Honor speaks elliptically."

  "We found accounts of others like you. You're a street witch, are you not?"

  "I'm not familiar with the term."

  Grobaras glanced back at the book. "Or do you call yourself a cobblestone druid? Streetseer? Or is it citywalker? Ah, that's the one you answer to."

  Luma wondered how she'd given herself away. It must have been one of her flinches. Grobaras was as she had heard him described—damnably skilled at reading people. An oaf he might be, but far from a fool. Thus his dozen years and counting of unassailable power, and his long line of vanquished rivals.

  He continued: "You talk to the city, and the city talks to you. Is that it?"

  "My capacities are modest."

  "So you wish others to believe, with that hangdog demeanor and shuffling gait." The lord-mayor's hand drifted over to the ham. He visibly restrained himself from snatching up another piece. "By what leave do you suckle from my city's teat?"

  "By what leave?"

  He picked up a carving knife. "Magnimar is mine, girl. I tolerate no rival suitors." When she did not rebut him, he went on: "Several explorers write of street witches in the Pathfinder Chronicles. Tell me, can you ask the city to lift you on its vapors, allowing you to walk on air?"

  "If I have asked that, it has never been granted."

  "If," Grobaras growled, tapping the spider vial. "And do you use this to climb like a spider, or become one?"

  "Perhaps that answer is also in your library."

  "Whether you climbed as a spider, or climbed like a spider, you could have easily entered Khonderian's high apartment undetected. As you could have if you ascended on steps of wind."

  "I have never walked on air."

  He pointed the knife at the book. "Here it says that there was a street druid of Katapesh who could reach into that city's memories, and pluck from them a new face for any occasion. How many faces do you wear, girl? Which one did you present to the world when you slipped away from Khonderian's quarters? An anonymous servant? A grubby urchin?"

  "I wear only one face." Luma had not heard of this particular gift. Her magic was mysterious to her. Every now and then she would get a hunch, sense that the city was ready to show her a fresh trick. She'd try it and it would happen. Sometimes it would be a spell, sometimes both like a spell and not. None of the few descriptions she found written in books exactly matched the way it was for her. Maybe every citywalker felt it differently, just as every city possessed its own distinct soul.

  "I can't help feeling," said Grobaras, "that I lack your full attention."

  "You are right. You spoke just now, but my thoughts went elsewhere."

  Luma would not have thought it possible for the lord-mayor's face to grow any redder, but it did. He called into the other room: "Send it in."

  Luma noticed that the cornice at the apex of the door's archway had been removed.

  A hissing noise erupted from the adjoining chamber. A cacophony of clicking and ratcheting followed. From an initial chaos it resolved itself into a tick-tick-ticking sound. The floor shuddered under a weighty tread. With ungainly steps, a figure passed into the archway.

  The unseen member of the lord-mayor's bodyguard was at once a creature and a machine. Its top-heavy design collected copper tubes and globes into a crudely parodied human form. A riveted globe composed its torso. Its hips and pelvis were a wheeled, jointed contraption, from which two
thin tubes protruded. Spindly knees connected them to asymmetrical blobs of molded metal that served as its calves. They terminated in a clawed system of pegs, which looked too narrow to support its obvious weight. Its shoulders were wheels within wheels, wrapped in a gear-like frill. A second set of tubes, even thinner than the legs, protruded from them. Comically enlarged conical forearms flared out from the articulated elbow joints. Their end pieces had been molded into the form of clenched fists. A ball-like head rotated on top of the torso piece. Incised to resembled a helmet, it leaked green alchemical steam.

  Luma recognized the construct immediately. Golems were the city's most outlandishly notable export. Her mind flashed to the conversation she overheard while trailing Khonderian, about the so-called golem rebellion.

  Khonderian commanded the lord-mayor's bodyguard.

  One of his bodyguards was a golem.

  These were pieces of something, all right, but she didn't have enough to fit them together.

  They might not relate at all. It was a curse of the citysong—the hearer perceived the mystical interconnectedness of the innumerable elements that made up Magnimar. But mystical kinships were not the same as literal ones. She couldn't let herself confuse the two.

  An insight hovered on the brink of her understanding. This particular sort of golem had been chosen for a special property, the details of which she strove to recall. She plumbed the depths of memory for whatever offhanded conversation had touched on the lord-mayor and his whirring bodyguard. She maybe remembered someone mentioning the lord-mayor acquiring such a thing, but could dredge up nothing more specific than that.

  Luma had seen all sorts of golems before, and read about the rest. She pictured herself in the library, studying its various volumes on golems and their manufacture. No, not the big one with the red cover. It was all lovely diagrams and blatant falsehoods. The smaller folio, with the list of golems, the history of their creators, the dry enumeration of their various properties ...