Her first sweep disappointed her. No one fit her memory, and she shoved her hands in her pockets and cursed herself for thinking anything would be so easy. People changed. Maybe the kid was wrong. Maybe he lied. Yes, Isaak used to come here to learn from hustlers and work the crowd, yes, he loved chess, made his own set out of rocks and chalk and challenged Izza to game after fucking game, no, he never shut up about checks and mates, sure he’d once, during a break-in uptown, solved a chess problem left out on the house board, but—
Her gaze shifted to an enormous figure seated across from a dreadlocked graybeard.
People changed.
The Isaak she’d known lacked armor plating, had hair, wasn’t nearly so massive. But that croc-toothed monster resting his lantern jaw on clawed fingers thick as a good cigar—subtract the back-alley hedge witch mods and the bandage on his right forearm, not to mention seventy pounds of muscle, add a close-cropped frizz of black hair, replace the armor with dark shining skin . . .
He still worked his jaw the same way as he thought.
And the glasses were the same: tortoiseshell frames fixed across the nose with gray tape. He’d replaced the left earpiece with a metal rod. The armor plates had widened his nose, but the glasses still slid down as he thought. He knuckled them into position, another motion that hadn’t changed. He worked his sharp teeth across his upper lip, and then, with the same urchin swiftness the boy used to grab Izza’s disk, he pushed his rook deep into enemy territory. The graybeard cursed, knocked over his king, passed a silver coin across the table, and retired in disgust.
Izza sat across the table while he reset the board. “Twenty thaums a game,” he said, not looking.
“Been a while,” Izza replied. “You offer a beginner discount, Isaak?”
“I’ll go as low as ten,” he said, then glanced over the glasses rims. The whites of his eyes were black now, but the irises the same soft brown, almost gold. “Do I know you?”
“I won our second game,” she said. “I lost the first bad, then hustled you up to twenty thaums back when we didn’t have twice that much between us, and I caught you in the fool’s mate with the queen. Which leaves our record at one to a hundred or so, I think—”
She meant to play it cool, but when he said, “Izza,” she grinned, and he was around the board faster than she’d thought possible, catching her in a hug, lifting her against the hard plate in which he’d clad himself—then setting her down as fast, apologizing: “Gods and blood, I can’t—Izza. I’m sorry, I mean, I didn’t, I—” and she beamed. “I thought—I mean, you jumped ship. You left.”
“And you stayed.”
“I, uh.” He gripped his arms, claws scraping over armor, and stared at her open-mouthed, which expression, given the double rows of teeth, required some imagination to interpret as the gormless surprise she would have read on an unmodified face. “Wasn’t anywhere else to go.”
She knew how that felt.
He sat, quickly, not looking at her, and gestured across the table to the seat. “Game?”
She opened with pawns to the center and he responded likewise, unconsciously.
“I, gods, tell me everything. Why did you come back?”
“Looking for work,” she said. “The islands were a good place for a kid, but I outgrew them.”
“Yeah, for sure, I mean, you hear things. Those statues. Shit.”
“And you?”
“Oh, man, you know. I just.” She developed her pieces; he developed his better. “It’s the usual. Heavy lifting and living light between jobs.” Was how they put it when she was a kid here: heavy lifting meant muscle, a guy you’d bring in to bend bars that needed bending, smash gates that needed smashing, and scare guards that needed scaring. “You grew up.”
“It happens.” She traded a bishop for a knight, then remembered that was a dumb idea. “You don’t look like the kid I used to know, either.”
“Well, one thing leads to another. I got too big for second-story work. Man’s got to eat, and everyone’s got mods these days, lots of competition—from the Iskari Legion headed south, laid-off mercs headed north, people with serious Craft. And, man, just between us there’s no rush like taking a mod. Hurts to all hells when they go in, but afterward, hoo.” His smile would have been boyish if not for the blades inside it. “I mean, I definitely went too far. But I’m okay now. Mate on board.”
She blinked. “Bullshit.”
“Two rooks against pawns. Another game?”
She knocked over the king, taking his word for it. “I am looking for a game,” which had its own meaning in the language of their respective not-quite-childhoods. Gods—weird as she found Isaak’s remade body, this felt good, to chatter in Talbeg with a friend as if nothing had changed. She felt almost home. She could pretend she’d never been burned and broken, pretend she’d never snuck away, pretend they’d spent seven years playing chess here at lunch and embroiling themselves deeper in an underworld that hadn’t yet killed them both. It hurt—the good kind of hurt. “Any leads?”
He reset his pieces. “If you came two weeks ago, I’d have said no chance. It’s been a, you know, fallow period. But there’s something big brewing. Cost me a broken arm, my own fault.” He gestured to the bandage. “It’s fine, woman who did it fixed me nice and straight, but still, a shock, you know! These bones are stress-rated. Anyway, sounds like good game. Risky, but huge upside. If you’re interested I’ll see if we have room for one more on the crew. You’re not quite muscle, I mean, you know what I mean, but I trust you.”
“Thanks,” she said, and tried something with the bishop’s pawn. “Who’s involved?”
“Some sort of joint venture. You remember Vogel?”
“That asshole?”
“But he’s got the backing. It’s a joint venture, anyway, with this serious delver crew, all chicks, I mean, girls, ladies.”
“Women, Isaak.”
“Women.” Knights developed. “Vogel’s a risk, known for fuckery, but word on the street is you can trust Zeddig’s crew.”
“Zeddig?” She didn’t let on that she recognized the name.
“Started delving after you left. Takes her time, but delivers. Lady wills, we’ll muddle through.”
Izza’s fingers froze on a bishop. “What did you just say?”
“Lady wills,” he said, and looked at her blankly. “You never heard that before? I thought this was an island thing. You must have run into it. Blue Lady shelter us who live in shadows? Guide us free of traps and mazes?” Izza’s heart split, rose and sank at once. She chilled in the noon sun, and thanked her Goddess, ironically under the circumstances, that Isaak remained as oblivious as ever. Even so, she almost lost it when he reached for his belt pouch and fished out a blue stone disk. “I never was much for gods. But she’s, I mean. You should hear the stories. It’s people like us, you know, running, chasing, getting caught, getting free. Rabbit stories, spider stories. I traded for this with a deckhand I know—she says she got it from the Prophet herself.”
He looked at her, and she felt pinned. Two rooks to pawns.
Lady. That the stories could have spread so far, so fast—that she should have come here before herself—that all she had to do was tell the truth, open her heart and call on her faith, and her friend would look at her and see a Prophet.
Izza felt sick.
And, thank all gods, not just the one she served, Isaak misread that, too. The disk vanished back into his pouch, and he raised both hands, spread. “Sorry, sorry, I bet that sounds weird. I just get excited. We’ll talk religion later. It’s so good to see you! I’ll chat with the crew, see what we can do, where are you staying? And, um. It’s your move?”
So it was. Mute, she pushed a pawn.
Chapter Thirty-six
SHE’S USED US BOTH, the blade told Zeddig, to get what she wants. And you still have a body to do something about it.
Zeddig didn’t want to remember those words. She wanted to remember Ley on the Iron Shore, spe
aking more openly with her mask than she could bear without it. She wanted to remember running over rooftops; she wanted to remember further back, all the way to the beginning.
They had met through grad school friends, before Zeddig cut ties to the Iskari academy. Ley dazzled: quick with a comeback and a laugh, full of undergrad stories about sneaking into Iskari royal balls, dodging guards and breaking hearts and diving out princesses’ bedroom windows to escape their fathers.
Zeddig saw at once the root motive for all that dazzle: kaleidoscope beads tossed between mirrors to dazzle and distract. She understood. She guarded herself, too, in different ways, with silence, gym time, books, study. Zeddig and Ley moved through the world wrapped in spiked armor, like Knights in old etchings, Zeddig’s thicker and sharper and more forbidding, Ley’s so seamless and glossy even light glanced off. So, when Zeddig found Ley alone one night after a party, on a university balcony overlooking the step-roofed jewel garden city, she suggested they play a game.
“What game would that be?”
“Honesty.”
Which worked, for a while. They removed their armor piece by piece and handed each other their most vicious knives and stood naked, all gooseflesh with fear, testing game theory kink: they could only survive so long as neither would flinch, and gouge.
Now they had grown too dangerous to one another naked. And Ley could only speak behind a mask.
She’s used us both, the blade said.
But Zeddig ignored all that. They had work to do.
Ley wouldn’t share her plan to steal back Zeddig’s blood. The morning after their chat, Zeddig woke on her pallet in Raymet’s office, mouth fuzzy with cigar aftermath, to find Ley seated on the desk, sweaty from exercise, wearing a headband: “I need a detailed list of Vogel’s vices.” Zeddig groaned, and tossed a pillow, but gave her what she wanted.
The next day, Ley vanished. Zeddig spent the afternoon searching for her, dragging Raymet to the Iron Shore and the Wings and Bite and to every asshole fence’s den Ley’d ever expressed interest in, without luck. And when they came back, they found Gal applying an ice pack and a healing touch to the swollen, bruised side of Ley’s face. Ley herself stank of blood and sex. “I went,” she said, “to the Pits.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Well,” Ley said, “I wasn’t kidding you. I wasn’t fucking, either, though there was a lot of that nearby. I had to check your list. There are some arts to which the four of us, alas, aren’t privy.”
“Privy,” Zeddig said, “is the word. You look like shit.”
Ley grinned through bloody teeth.
That night, when they still weren’t speaking—or at least Zeddig wasn’t speaking to Ley, but watching her, bent at the kitchen table over vials of reagents: “Does he sleep?”
“Vogel? He’s mentioned sleeping.”
“Did he mention when?”
“Mornings, I think. He doesn’t like sunlight.”
“It hurts him?”
“He just doesn’t like it.”
“Mmm.”
“Please don’t do that again,” Zeddig said. “Disappear, I mean.”
She ate a bite of a peanut butter sandwich.
“I was worried about you.”
“I had everything under control.” The swelling had gone down, and the bruise faded under Gal’s touch, but a faint purple lace of ruptured capillaries still colored her cheek. “You always were nervous. Come here.” And Zeddig did, was the damnedest thing. Ley did not command—if she had, Zeddig would have slugged her. Ley just assumed Zeddig would do what she asked, and she did.
Without looking up from her work, Ley raised her hand to cup Zeddig’s cheek, and Zeddig could not tame the thrill that ran through her, the infuriating rush of skin on skin. The next second lasted longer than a second. Then she felt a sharp pain in her cheek, and pulled back, clapping one hand to the cut. “Fuck!”
Between her first and second finger Ley held a slip of glass, its edge wet with Zeddig’s blood. “Perfect. All I need.”
“What the rotting hell—”
Ley frowned the glass soft, pinched it. It folded, as if molten, around the blood drop.
Pain faded fast, but anger put down roots. “Don’t we want to reduce the amount of my blood in circulation?”
“I need to be sure I have the right vial. Who knows how many other marks he’s cornered? I’ll destroy it when I’m done.” She turned back to her work without saying the implicit: trust me.
After the house was dark and still, Zeddig crept upstairs to the living room, but Ley slept wrapped around the handle of the knife with the blood, with Vane, at its center.
Soon, the crew assembled to walk through checkpoints and loadouts and timing. It was the summer solstice, Monster’s Day in Iskar, and children and drunk students filled the streets wearing fanged masks and rot makeup and Craftwork sets of false extra arms: the demonic hosts of deep space and their grotesque auxiliaries, rising to beat back the legions of light. The crew fit right in.
Zeddig stood at the rear of the room by Ley’s side, and while Vogel explained rendezvous, insertion, recovery, she memorized the faces present. More women this time around, which reassured her slightly. The hulking armor-plated guy whose arm Gal broke had brought a friend, a lean sharp young woman with tight braids. The job’s scale seemed impossible: two delver crews, thirty people. (She’d avoided acknowledging Klieg, because fuck that guy. They might be working together, but she didn’t have to like it.) In a crowd this large, someone would be on the Wreckers’ pay, or drunk enough to mention the scheme to someone who was. But maybe Vogel had blood or dirt on everyone. At least the crowd clapped at appropriate moments, and listened, and when the meeting ended, they streamed out to the Wings to drink together.
Zeddig and Gal and Raymet, by custom and discomfort, started to head home. Zeddig searched the crowd for Ley, only for Ley’s hand to settle on her shoulder from behind. Ley’s voice, darkened by the mask, said, “I’m going out. Don’t wait up.”
She, reached out to catch her, but Ley’s arm slid from her grip, and she was gone, red hair into the thrum of the crowd. She started to follow, but Gal stopped her. “I think she wants to be alone.”
“You call that alone?” Ley flowed out with the rest of the crooks, laughing, talking too fast, saying nothing.
“Yes.”
Klieg shouldered past her on the stairs. “Looking glum, Hala. Couldn’t hold on to your date?”
She showed him her middle finger, and he laughed, and vanished into the city.
She’s used us both.
She waited for Ley in the kitchen, thinking about the knife, turning an empty glass on the table and watching the use it made of light. When she woke, there was a cushion beneath her cheek on the table, a drool-stain on the cushion, and Ley, still wearing her mask and that high-slit dress, absurd heels kicked off onto the carpet floor, lay asleep on the couch, holding her blade.
Chapter Thirty-seven
“TELL ME ABOUT THE two things,” Kai said when the precise man settled into his chair across the table. Fontaine, leaning against the wall, tried to hide her grin with the back of her fist.
“Excuse me?”
If Kai tried to paint an aggregate portrait of all the nightmare artists she’d met in the last week, she’d have settled, after faffing about with pigments, on a hairy, twitchy individual of generally male persuasion, flannel-clad, uncomfortable in a bank conference room, phrases and gestures polished but brittle: the social skills of folk who navigated conversations by maps drawn far in advance.
The painting would look very little like Eberhardt Jax.
He was older, for one thing, and darker, and he looked good in a suit. He wore his hair short, a simple, expensive cut, jet black. He laced his fingers in his lap, and when he raised one eyebrow, his skin did not wrinkle. His features flowed to accommodate. “I’m not sure I understand the question.” His accent sounded vaguely Schwarzwald, polished smooth, matte and deep
as the shoes he wore. “The two things?”
“Everyone I’ve seen so far,” she said, “started with a two-things pitch. Two things are happening at once. More people are eating hazelnuts than ever before, and more people are eating chocolate than ever before, so we’ve founded ChocoNut to combine hazelnuts and chocolate.”
Jax laughed. “I haven’t heard that one in a while.”
“You have no idea what you’re missing.”
“I do,” he said—so smoothly that, even though he had just contradicted her, she didn’t feel contradicted. “These fashions pass every few months, in and out, easy as a knife between the ribs.” He mimed with his hand flattened into a blade, lazy and slow, and when he drew the blade-hand out, he inspected his glistening nails as if for blood drawn from the air. “Especially among people who believe themselves ignorant of, or insulated from, fashion. Imagine: five years ago, every job posting for a designer requested a ‘design ghultha.’”
Kai blinked. “What do sacred assassins have to do with design?”
Jax opened his arms like an orchestra conductor. “I stopped asking a long time ago. The answer tends to be, ‘like, it’s cool, man.’” He did a good imitation of a Kathic college kid stoned. The accent disappeared entirely. She liked this guy and hated him at once. “At any rate, I know I’m making a hash of this meeting. I haven’t been on the market for funding recently. I’m generally sitting in your seat.”
Fontaine giggled this time, though she tried to cover it with a cough afterward.
Was this a practical joke? Jax carried himself like a player, and now Kai was paying attention, she could tell his suit cost more than anyone should ever pay for a suit. Who had Fontaine booked her with?
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