The Sheltered City

by John Tristan

  The thought surprised him; it seemed to come from another man, one he had never expected to find whispering inside his head. Amon hated people staring at him, for one, and he’d never danced in his life. He grimaced to himself. Not that he was about to begin now. He wasn’t here in order for Caedian to have a slightly illicit good time in the dirtier corners of the Rim—he was here to protect the elf while he looked for his missing brother, and that was all.

  Seoras had been fond of his slightly illicit good times; that much Caedian had confessed, after he had hired Amon. Elves had their own parties and pastimes, but Seoras had roundly declared them all supremely boring. For a while he’d worn his hair in braids like a nomad. He drank with Grieving Men and attended their somber feasts. After that, he’d become a devout templegoer, dressing plainly and cutting his hair laborer short. That was discarded for visits to family feasts in the Verdancy, where he made all the farmers uncomfortable by flirting with their daughters and dancing with their sons.

  His mother, Lady Liléan, and the rest of their elvish clan tolerated his eccentricities even when they extended as far outward as the Rim, where Seoras would feign the identity of a gentleman farmer and drink love-in-darkness into the small hours with whores and thugs.

  Whores like Luba’s roses, Amon thought. Thugs like him.

  No wonder Caedian had come looking for his brother in the House of Dust.

  In truth, though, Caedian had only come because it was a place in the Rim that he had heard of and remembered. It had been near the front of his mind; Seoras had mentioned it, in an offhand way, in the days before he’d vanished. As far as Amon knew though, Seoras had never come to the House of Dust, in any of his guises. If he looked anything like Caedian, Amon would have remembered him. He was sure of that.

  The crowd moved forward with a stuttering jerk. The guard at the door had let in a clutch of laughing women. One of them leaned back out of the door and waved merrily to Amon and Caedian—or to Caedian, at least.

  The guard, a pale, sullen man who looked to be in his forties, stabbed his finger toward Caedian. “You. You can come in. She’s paid your fare.”

  There was a fair amount of good-natured grumbling as Caedian and Amon moved up outside of the line. The sound of cheerily, clumsily played songs wrung from ancient virginals and brass trumpets poured out of the music hall. To Amon’s sensitive ears it was a cacophony, the sounds bouncing off the stones and rebounding back to him. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it. It wasn’t as if anyone would listen to his complaints.

  The guard stopped Amon at the door and threw a dirty look at Caedian. “Not him. The ladies liked the look of you, not this—this man.” He’d almost said halfdead; Amon was sure of it.

  Caedian looked up at the guard and shook his head. “He goes where I go.”

  Incognito or not, he still had the air of someone used to being obeyed—it rang out in his voice, unmistakable. The guard hesitated for a moment, his eyes flickering between Caedian and Amon. Then his mouth hardened into a disgusted sneer. “Fine,” he said. “But he pays the entry fee.”

  Caedian stuck a hand into the recesses of his coat. “How much?”

  Amon groaned inwardly. Anyone who wasn’t fresh-from-the-farm naive would have argued, or at least muttered some mild curse under their breath before reaching for their money. He hovered a hand over Caedian’s shoulder, not quite touching him but close enough to get his attention. “I’ll pay.”

  Caedian looked back for a moment, then shrugged. “Fine.” Of course, he’d reimburse Amon twice over, if Amon asked him.

  Amon squared up to the guard at the door. The man was a hair under six feet tall, and relatively well muscled with it—he wouldn’t have been hired to guard a music hall if he wasn’t—but compared to Amon’s bulk he looked shriveled and anemic. Amon favored him with a slow, toothy smile. “One king will be fine, I think?”

  “Don’t you start any trouble,” the guard said in a low voice.

  Amon shook his head. “No trouble. I’m just here to have a good time.”

  The guard seemed to make up his mind. “Three.”

  “That’s plain robbery, listening to that racket.”

  “I’ll take no less than two.”

  “Two it is.” He fished two kings from his pocket and dropped them into the guard’s waiting hand. “See? Even a man like me pays his debts.” Unnecessary, he knew, but the words slipped out of him nonetheless.

  The guard closed his fist over the coins. “Get in then, and mind I don’t hear any more from you.”

  He followed Caedian inside. The music hall was nameless, set up in what used to be a warehouse or some rich man’s manor. From the outside, it looked as if it had three floors, but once in Amon saw the ceilings had been knocked out, leaving the space hollow and dark as a cave. A plain dais in the center of the room passed for a stage, and dancers elbowed the musicians for space upon it. Failing lightvines were strung together overhead and along the walls, making a motley of dim colors. The air smelled of smoke and cheap fallingweed and sweat.

  A bar was set up at the far end, countless dusty bottles stacked in pyramids behind it. At the edges of the room were great benches, where dancers and drinkers lolled together...some, Amon noticed, in states of disheveled undress.

  All around the dais there was a kind of dance floor: a low circle of dirt trampled by a hundred feet, some bare and some in handmade shoes. The more admired dancers were dressed in scraps of vine-leather, thin cotton and wispy, ancient silk, all carefully stitched together in new designs. The workers and farmers who came to drink and debauch in the House of Dust stuck with plainer wear. Sometimes, one or two might show up in farmer finery, but nothing like this. These dancers were aping the styles of the elves, in their own strange, piecemeal fashion.

  Amon stood out like a sore thumb, not just for his height and the gray, dead color of his skin, but for the simple shirt and pants he wore. Caedian did a little better, though to Amon’s eyes he still looked like an elf wearing a costume.

  He was dressed in a black kilt and a dark, hooded overcoat with a vaguely authoritarian look—like something a king or high officer might have worn in the time before the dragons came. Beneath that, there were gloves reaching past his elbows, and a thin shirt of crisscrossing woven strands that left his chest almost bare. His shoes were leather boots with thin metal soles, gleaming in the subtle colors of the light. Amon suspected they might be real leather, rather than vine-grown, but thankfully in the dim lights of the music hall nobody could tell the difference, or else some of the dancers might have tried to tear them off his feet.

  The shifting lights danced in Caedian’s eyes as he looked around the music hall. Outside he’d been all solid confidence, but the crowd and stench and chaotic music of it had stripped most of that away. He looked more than a little lost and achingly young...though in all likelihood he was five times Amon’s age.

  “Come on,” Amon said, raising his voice over the crowd and the music. To get to the bar on the other side of the music hall, they had to cross the packed-earth floor. Amon gestured for Caedian to go ahead of him, so he could keep half an eye on him as he watched the crowd.

  The dancers moved in a complex tangle, some of them going through a sequence of practiced steps, some of them simply holding on to each other and swaying. A skinny young man with a massive head of curls smiled at Amon in a slow, distracted way, then glanced away quickly when Amon fixed his eyes on him. A woman in a short dress of ragged vine-leather sidled up to Caedian and threw an arm around his shoulders. Amon picked up her wrist and flung her to the side.

  “Hey!” She cradled her arm, thrusting out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout. “Your boyfriend’s mean. I was only playing.”

  “My apologies,” Caedian said with a smile. “He’s a bit overprotective.”

  “I’ll say.” The woman narro
wed her eyes.

  “Harmless, though!” He patted Amon on the chest with a gloved hand.

  Amon froze under his touch—under the casual, proprietary ease of it. The mockery of it, truly, as if he could be something the elf wanted.

  For a moment, the music seemed to come from underwater. He forced a smile and lifted Caedian’s hand away. “Remember why we’re here,” he said.

  Caedian’s own smile flickered, and his eyes went hard. “I haven’t forgotten.” He walked off the dance floor, onto the raised ground where the bar and the couches were, then turned around so fast he nearly collided with Amon. “Don’t order me around, Vraja,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Begging your pardon,” Amon said, “but you’re out of your element. You wanted a guide—so let me guide you. And guard you. Lingering on the floor means more eyes on you. More hands on you. Don’t think that all of these people will be nice and respectful.”

  Caedian pressed his hand to his forehead. “Fine. But don’t assume I’m forgetting why I’m here. This isn’t some holyday for me, you know. I was perfectly happy to keep my nose out of the Rim.”

  “That’s obvious enough.”

  He looked as if he was about to say something, then thought better of it and turned away. “We should find whoever runs this place. I would have liked to ask the guard at the door some questions, but...”

  Amon shook his head. “Too many people. Wait until things quiet down outside, then slip him five kings or a bottle of love-in-darkness, and he’ll answer whatever questions you have.”

  Caedian sighed and looked around the room. His eyes seemed to pass over everything with an oddly familiar distaste—familiar because Amon recognized himself in it. A smile twitched at his lips. Who knew I had the look of an elf? “Why in the world Seoras made it a habit to frequent these places, I’ll never know.”

  “Probably for the same reason all of these people are here.” Amon shrugged. “Because they enjoy it.”

  Caedian snorted. “Well, to each his own.” He looked back down over the dance floor, but this time there was no distaste in his eyes. “Seoras would enjoy it, I suppose.”

  Amon followed his gaze and had the odd, momentary feeling of somehow thinking his thoughts as well: he was hoping to see his brother out there on the dance floor, dressed in scavenged silk and vine-leather. To end the search before it truly began. “The Rim’s a bigger place than you think,” he said. “If your brother doesn’t want to be found, it’s not going to be easy to track him down.”

  The elf looked back at him, his eyes narrowed. “I know that much. How stupid do you think I am?”

  Amon’s shoulders tensed. “My apologies—”

  Caedian waved a dismissive hand. “We have work to do, don’t we? So...who do we ask first?”

  “Your brother never mentioned any friends of his?”

  “Friends?” Caedian shook his head. “No, he never mentioned any friends. I have only the vaguest idea where he spent his time in the Rim. Which is why I hired you.”

  Amon shut his eyes for a moment and ran through the first three numbers of the counting song. The melody tried to rearrange itself in his head around the screech and shiver of the music. When he opened his eyes, Caedian was staring up at him with a kind of odd, fearless curiosity—a curiosity that had wiped all the contempt from his face.

  Amon hated curiosity, in the normal course of things. On Caedian it looked almost appealing—almost welcome.

  “Am I that infuriating?” the elf asked.

  Amon looked away to hide a sudden smile. “The first person you’ll want to speak to is the one behind the bar. They see everyone in here, especially the ones with a taste for love-in-darkness.”

  He nodded. “Fine. Come on.”

  The bar was crowded with people jockeying for position, some of them rattling their coins at the servers. Amon spotted three of those: two women and a man, none of them much older than twenty, all of them looking harassed. He caught Caedian’s eye and shook his head. “You won’t get much out of them now.”

  Caedian bared his teeth. “So what are we supposed to do? Have a nice little dance?”

  Amon looked around for a moment. “Yes,” he said after a while.

  “I beg your pardon?” Outrage crackled in Caedian’s voice.

  “With her, for one,” Amon said, cocking his head toward the woman who’d waved Caedian into the music hall. “She’s had her eye on you since she saw you, and she looks like she comes here a lot. Convince her you’re friendly, and her tongue will probably loosen. Hers, and anyone’s she may know.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Still...won’t it draw more attention to us than you wanted?”

  “You’ve already drawn attention.” Not that Caedian could help it, the way that he looked. “Best they think you just another partyer. I wasn’t suggesting to dance with you, m’lord.”

  “Great Mother’s sake!” he whisper-hissed. “Don’t call me that here!”

  Amon could have kicked himself—the honorific had slipped out without any thought on his part. The truth was, though, he had no idea what to call the elf while he was feigning normality.

  Caedian seemed to notice as much and subsided a little. “Call me Caedian,” he said softly. “It’s not so unusual a name, is it?”

  Amon shook his head. Long years had hammered the languages of lost kingdoms into a single harsh alloy—even nomad kin spoke the bastard tongue of the City now—but half the children born in the Verdancy were given names from the elvish tongue, with its smooth, rolling vowels, in tribute to the lords of the Tree. “No. Not so unusual.”

  “There you are, then.” He sighed and turned his back to Amon, looking down toward the dancers. The woman who had paid his fee smiled up at them and twirled her hips to the beat of the music. Caedian squared his shoulders, as if he was preparing to wade into a fight rather than a flirtation. “Keep an eye out,” he said, and he headed out to meet her.

  Amon lingered near the edge of the dance floor. There was no need to actually join his employer; if anyone bothered Caedian, he’d be able to leap over the railing separating it from the rest of the music hall and pull the unfortunate off him in three seconds. Five, at the most.

  The woman undulated around Caedian, touching his waist and his shoulders, pushing herself against him as they danced. Caedian was plainly unused to the Rim’s styles of dance, but he acquitted himself well enough—he had a natural grace that would carry him through most physical pursuits. Amon wondered if that was a trait shared by all the elves or unique to Caedian.

  Jealous eyes flickered toward the woman, who had by now wrapped her arms around Caedian’s neck. Everyone had wanted a turn dancing with him—dancing, and possibly more. She leaned over to whisper in his ear, then; he smiled at her and shook his head. She pouted a little but continued her dance.

  Amon gripped the railing, leaning forward so he could have a better view. The crush of bodies on the dance floor moved like oil swirling in water, and now and then the dancers positioned themselves so that Caedian and his dance partner were momentarily blocked from his view. They always whirled back into view a moment later, loose strands of Caedian’s hair shining like wet gold under the motley lights, but it still unnerved him. Five seconds’ grace he’d given himself to come to Caedian’s rescue should he need it, but he could not help but think of what could happen in a second or less: a foot smashed against the back of a knee, a knife slid in between the first and second rib, a sharp punch to the back of the neck that left its victim insensate and shaking. He’d seen it all, and done some of it himself.

  Finally the song came to an end. When the musicians started up again, it was a softer tune, and the crowd thinned, moving toward the bar and the benches. Caedian had the woman’s elbow held in his gloved hand, in a light touch—he wasn’t holding her there, merely punctuating
his point with the gesture—and leaning to whisper urgently in her ear. The woman’s face was blank and shuttered now; when she shook her head and spoke again Amon knew instantly that she was lying.

  It was an instinct, unquestioned as the urge to fight or flee. He vaulted onto the dance floor with a quick, clumsy motion, coming down hard enough to draw the eyes of all the remaining dancers. He ignored them, plowing through the crowd until he reached Caedian and his dance partner.

  “What did she tell you?”

  Caedian looked up at him, anger flashing in his eyes—but only for a moment. Whatever he saw on Amon’s face gave him pause. He still had his hand on the woman’s elbow; she was trying to pull away now, with halfhearted motions. She was smiling, but her smile looked so false it seemed painted on.

  “Look,” she said, “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

  “Then you had best answer his question—and honestly, this time.”

  She grimaced, turning toward Caedian and pulling her elbow out of his grip with a decisive jerk. “Fine. But tell your halfdead boyfriend to back off. And for the Great Mother’s sake, if you want honesty from a girl, have the courtesy to buy her a damned drink first.”

  Chapter Seven

  The woman’s name was Edina; she took them to a quieter place, not far from the music hall. It reminded Amon a little of the House of Dust; it had the same semi-subterranean architecture and array of infusions locked behind a metal grate. It was no bawdy house, though; it was a place the dancers came to after they’d exhausted themselves, to drink and to avoid going home.

  Second-rate glowfruits were hung from baskets in the corners, their rotting light making nearly everyone’s skin, even Caedian’s, seem near as gray and unhealthy as Amon’s. Edina herself, who’d been dark and appealing in the music hall, looked like a badly maintained basalt statue. The resemblance wasn’t helped by the stony expression on her face.

  “I’m not keeping any secrets,” she said, sipping from the expensive bottle Caedian had bought for her. “I just don’t want to get anyone in trouble, that’s all.”