by John Tristan
“Neither do we.” Caedian leaned toward her over the table. “I swear to you, Edina, I’m not looking to start any trouble.”
“I’d feel better about it if you told me what you were after,” she said, glancing toward Amon; he was sitting beside Caedian in the booth, leaning back against the dry walls of the bar. “I don’t make it a habit to talk to just anyone, you know.”
Caedian breathed out slowly and reached into his coat. He drew out a heavy purse and laid it on the table.
Her eyes widened when she saw the bounty, and she snatched up the purse with a nervous rapidity, as if she was afraid it would vanish if she didn’t keep her hands on it. “Fine,” she said. “If that’s the way you want it. So yes, I’ve heard of an elf who likes to slum in the Rim. Never where I’ve been, but I heard it from someone who knows what she’s talking about. Una’s her name. She runs a—” She glanced back and forth and lowered her voice. “A black house. By the old armory, where they used to let the dragonhunters out.”
By the blank look on Caedian’s face Amon could tell he had no idea what a black house was, but at least he was clever enough not to ask Edina outright. If she didn’t already have her suspicions about him—suspicions she might have been too frightened or too diplomatic to mention—that would be more than enough to clinch them. “Is this Una a friend of yours, then?”
She snorted. “Una is nobody’s friend. We’ve done business now and then, that’s all. And with that elf around, her business was doing well enough.” Edina took another long sip from her bottle. The infusion was working quickly, swelling her pupils and making her jittery and garrulous. “There’ll always be some elves that come down to the Rim for a good time. No matter how nice it is up there in the Tree. And Una’s elf, well, he knew how to have a real good time.”
“What do you mean?”
The infusion had blurred her judgment enough that she missed the ice in Caedian’s voice. She smiled widely. “Ohhhh, she could tell you all sorts of stories. Elves don’t get the constables after, you know. They can do whatever they want. They can have the kind of fun that would get us locked up for a year, or worse.”
“That does not sound like the elves I know of,” Caedian said, a chill hauteur to his tone.
Not like this one, at least, Amon thought. Perhaps Caedian knew his brother less well than he thought he did.
She made a face. “What do I know? I never saw him. Una told me he was trying to keep it quiet he even was an elf, so he probably wasn’t being too outrageous.” She giggled suddenly, and hiccuped; the bottle was nearly empty now. “Not any more than we are on a holyday night!”
“Una,” Caedian said. He tapped his nails against the table in a quick, staccato rhythm. “What is her family name?”
Edina snorted. “She doesn’t have one. They call her Una the Ghost.”
“And if I wanted to find this ghost?”
“That’s easy enough.” She laid her head down on the table, smiling gently at the ancient tablecloth. A trickle of drool ran from the corner of her mouth; Amon wondered how many drops of blackblossom had been drifting in her infusion, amplifying the intoxicating effect. “Go to the black house by the armory, if they’ll let you in. She keeps a close eye on it, so she won’t be anywhere else. You’ll know...you’ll know her when you see her.” Her eyes fluttered closed. One hand was still clutched around the bottle. The other, under the table, fondled the purse that Caedian had given her.
Caedian looked at her for a long while, frowning, as if he couldn’t quite make sense of her. The glowfruits were fading a little; by the night’s end they would go black, leaving the bar as dim as an unlit root cellar.
Amon cleared his throat. “You won’t get anything else out of her.”
“I know.” He put his knuckles on the table and pushed himself up, then slid out of the booth. “Let’s go.”
They left the bar, walking back into the cool, still air. Caedian was looking at him out of the corner of his eye, tilting his head. “How did you know she was lying? You were halfway across the room from us when I asked her, but you knew anyway.”
Amon lifted his shoulders, readying some quick, dismissive little joke, but what came out of his mouth was the truth. “The man who raised me told me that we could smell a liar. It’s almost true. Halfdead like us—like me—there’s some things we do better than normal people. Our senses are sharper. We can see better in the dark, hear more, smell more.”
“Still,” Caedian said, sounding skeptical, “there’s no way you could have smelled her lying.”
He shook his head. “That’s just—that’s just a way of explaining it. Lies don’t have a smell, but nerves do. Sweat, and sour fear. Over time you get better at it, you learn to know the faces, the body language, that goes along with that...that smell. A good liar can fool me even up close, but Edina wasn’t a good liar.”
“Thank the Great Mother for that,” he said dryly. “Or else we’d have another night of trawling music halls and brothels, instead of having something solid to pursue.”
Amon looked toward the sky. It would turn soon, shutting away the stars. “Do you know what a black house is, m’lord?”
“I told you—”
“I’m sorry.” He held up his hands. “Caedian.” It still felt strange to say his name out loud; strange, and near as intimate as a touch. “Do you?”
He shook his head.
“Most people, when they want to lose themselves for a while, drink love-in-darkness or fallingweed and don’t do much harm.” That wasn’t entirely the truth, but it was close enough. “Black houses are for people who’ve drunk enough that they’d have to suck down an entire bottle of blackblossom to feel something. Someone who keeps the Great Mother’s commandments of clean body and clean mind might still come to a place like the House of Dust, even if they have to make penance afterward. But going to a black house would be blasphemy for them. No one is clean there, in body or mind.”
Caedian made a face. “What do they do then, smoke dream-poppies?”
Amon started. “Sometimes. I didn’t know you knew those in the Tree.”
“What, you think we all drink clear water and eat nothing but cream and honey?” He shook his head. “I am not a complete naïf, Amon.”
He was quiet a moment. I suppose it’s fair enough, he thought. He told me I could say his given name, after all. “Yes,” he said. “Dream-poppies, if they can afford them. Other things, if they can’t. They aren’t pleasant places.”
“You’ve been there.”
“Yes.” His voice came out harsh and too loud. “I have.”
In the end, when Zoran had been a brittle wisp of the man who had raised him, Amon had carried him into a black house. No doctors on the Rim had been able, or willing, to help him in his last days—but as long as you had the money, the proprietors of the black houses didn’t care who was at their pipes. Even if it was an old halfdead like Zoran. He had insisted on wearing his dragonhunter’s uniform to the very last, when it hung off his frame like a thin blanket.
“How far is the armory from here?”
Amon shook his head, clearing the dust of his memories away. “Depends on how you travel. If you could fly you’d be there soon enough, but on foot? There’s little chance reaching it before the sky turns.”
Caedian pressed his hand to his forehead. “All right. All right. We will figure out how to get there after we have some sleep.” He ran a hand through his hair. He’d been wearing it in a loose plait under his hood, but it had come undone sometime during the night, and it spilled around his shoulders like dull gold in the gray light. “How far away from here are your quarters?”
Amon shook his head. “Too far to walk, m’lo—Caedian.”
He turned toward the pale, distant glow of the Tree and smiled. “So are mine. I suppose we will have to find an—an inn?
” He pronounced the word as if it was some exotic creature, never spotted in the wild. “After I’ve had some rest, we can find a carriage to take to the armory and find this...Una the Ghost.”
Again, there was that odd tone to his voice, which seemed to make the ordinary parts of the world into stories, into something grander than they truly were. Do they all speak that way up in the Tree? Amon wondered.
He said nothing and trailed behind Caedian as they made their way down the narrow streets. The lamp-trees here were thin and anemic things, their leaves shimmering with pale light. He hadn’t been down these streets in years; before he had begun working in the House of Dust, he’d had a stint as a courier, but since then he had avoided the more fashionable areas of the Rim.
To Caedian, though, it must have all looked like a crumbling slum, all stone and steel. The elves treasured the natural; Amon remembered hearing once that the entire Tree was real, living wood from its roots all the way toward the sky. He wasn’t sure that he believed it, but that was the myth. That was the reason the young dancers in the music hall had worn clothes scrapped together from old leather and silk—from things that once lived.
After half an hour’s wandering they found an inn. It was a slim building on a quiet street, advertising its rooms with a sign woven from blue lightvines. The proprietress was an ancient woman with hair dyed a violent yellow; when they tried to pay for adjacent rooms, she shook her head sadly. “One,” she said, holding up an arthritic finger. “One room left.”
Caedian looked at Amon over his shoulder, then shrugged. “We’ll take it.”
The room was about half the size of Amon’s quarters, though far more comfortably furnished. The bed was recessed into the floor, a wide expanse of mattress and blanket, and there was a hollowed sink that dispensed real water. The lightvines were woven in a kind of crisscrossing pattern on top of the ceiling, casting a gentle light on the scene. Caedian looked around, his hands on his hips, seeming neither pleased nor perturbed—he was simply taking it in, a traveler in a foreign place.
“Where will I sleep, m’lord?”
Caedian turned toward him and raised his eyebrows.
Amon spread his hands. “No one is here to listen to what I call you.”
He made a face. “Fine. As to where you’ll sleep, well, there is only one bed. I suppose we’ll have to share, no?”
Amon glanced down at the bed. It would fit them both, he supposed, but not comfortably. It was made for lovers to share, not some slumming elf and his halfdead bodyguard.
Caedian didn’t seem to have the same reservations though. He was taking off his clothes, shrugging off the overcoat and taking off the shirt of crisscrossing threads. All he had on now were his gloves—he hadn’t bothered to put on any underclothes.
Amon looked away, but not fast enough. The image of Caedian persisted in his vision, like a light stared at too hard: long limbs, a silver shadow of hair between his legs, the suggestion of a scar on the small of his limber back. He could feel his heart beating too loud in the hollow of his chest. It felt almost like the start of a rage, dark and irresistible...but only almost.
Rage spurred him to act, without any thinking, to move and fight carried by a black momentum. This—this froze him in place, his hands clumsy clubs, unable to even unfasten the buttons of his shirt.
“I’m telling the lightvines to dim,” Caedian said. “I can’t sleep with them this bright.” He touched one of the vines, and the room went dark as slate, with only a few edges of light still showing from the narrow window; the glow above them was nothing more than a faint echo.
Caedian slid beneath the sheets and turned on his side with a sigh. Amon looked back toward the bed; Caedian’s back was turned to him, his bare shoulder showing over the top of the sheet.
Amon swallowed and closed his eyes. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and slipped it over his head, setting it down on a low, cushioned chair. He slid off his belt but kept his trousers on. Then he stood in the center of the room, almost paralyzed. The sky must be near to turning, he thought. Outside the City the sun might be rising.
Caedian turned toward him, blinking sleepily. “Are you getting in bed or what?”
“I could—I could sleep on the floor.”
“Don’t be a fool.” He threw back the covers. “Get in.”
It was an order from an elf. He had been taught not to disobey them.
He slid beneath the covers, staying on the far edge of the bed. The sheets were thin and cool, but warming swiftly. The heat from Caedian’s body was palpable. The last time Amon had slept beside anyone he’d still been a child, but he was sure they hadn’t been this warm. He wanted badly to turn on his back—he hated sleeping on his side—but if he did, he would be bare inches from his bedmate. It would only take the merest motion for them to be skin to skin.
He was on the edge of the bed, one arm dangling off. A few minutes after he’d gotten in, Caedian’s breathing had gone soft and regular. The elf was already asleep, as trusting as a newborn.
You’d only need to reach out. The soft, dark voice that usually spoke the counsel of his rage was whispering a different appeal now, though equally dangerous. Reach out and take him. Feel the warmth of him. Grab him and don’t let go.
Amon bit his lip hard until the voice stilled. In the silence, he forced himself to keep his eyes closed, even though he knew there was no chance of sleep coming.
The sky turned outside, but with the window shut day was nothing save a soft green rumor. Subtle lights flashed through the lightvines now and then, surges of color that twinkled like stars. Though he was sure he would stay awake all through the day, Amon started slipping in and out of sleep about an hour after he’d lain down. Now and then he’d shoot awake, his heart hammering, and remember where he was. Across the bed, Caedian slept in unbroken peace, his breaths a whispering rhythm. When he shifted in his sleep, Amon came awake, every time, and moved just enough to keep the distance between them.
There was a chunk of black time, a piece of dreamless nothing sliced out of the night. Then there was a sense of warmth, of sleepy peace—and finally there came the deep and itching certainty that he was being watched.
Amon woke up in soft light. The lightvines had been turned up, just a little. Caedian was still beside him; sometime during the day Amon had rolled onto his back, and the elf had slept tucked up against his side. His hand lay on Amon’s stomach; he was still fast asleep.
A sudden rush of blood made a blurred heartbeat noise in Amon’s ears. Caedian’s touch was warm silk against him, his breath almost wet in the hollow of Amon’s collarbone. Amon kept statue still, the feel of Caedian’s weight as hypnotic as the counting song. The white fall of his hair was against Amon’s shoulder, and if he turned his head just so he could brush his lips against it—
A quiet cough from across the room made him start; there was someone watching them. The sudden movement made Caedian wake up. For a moment he blinked up at Amon, his eyes guileless and thick with sleep. Then he removed his hand and shuffled upright in bed. “Amon. What’s—?”
“Great Mother preserve us, Caedian. Of all the people to find you in bed with! One would think I had taught my son better taste.”
The figure stepped closer. It was a woman, tall and willowy, with white hair in a severe fall over bare brown shoulders—Lady Liléan. She wore a long dress of subtle pastels, its true shade unseen in the dim light.
Caedian made a face. “Good morning, Mother. Have you tracked me down again, then?”
“What do you think, my dear?” She sighed and shook her head. “I would have expected this of your brother, but you? You’ve always been such a reliable boy.” She tsked, clicking her tongue against her teeth. “I was speaking to Lady Mohan not a week ago about setting you and her youngest up for a connection, but if you are going to be picking up stray halfdead in Rim
hotels, well...I’m not sure if she will remain keen on having your strain in her family.”
He made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “We aren’t Verdancy farmers, Mother, and I am not your livestock.”
Her mouth lifted in a genteel sneer. “There is a carriage waiting outside. I suggest you be in it shortly.” She turned on her heels and walked outside.
Two men were waiting for her in the hallway, tall and broad-shouldered, in identical white suits. They peered into the room for a moment, then—after making sure that Caedian wasn’t being held against his will, Amon supposed—quietly shut the door.
Caedian got up and pulled his kilt back on. He looked back at Amon, who was still sitting dumbstruck in the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Amon rolled over and got up; he felt as if he was moving through the world at a quarter speed. With clumsy hands, he pulled on his shirt and his shoes. Caedian left his shirt of ribbons lying on the chair and pulled his overcoat on over a bare chest, then put on his gloves and boots.
“Here,” he said, and he took a step forward—then hesitated. “Look.” He dropped his voice. “I’ll have to go with her now. But I want you to go to that black house. I—I want you to try to find my brother, Amon.” He closed the final distance between them and put his hand palm down on Amon’s chest. “How much do you want?”
It took Amon too long to figure out what Caedian was talking about. “You mean money?”
He drew back, grimacing. “Yes, money. Of course I will handle all the expenses, but—”
The sudden absence of his touch felt almost like a slap. Amon tightened his fists. “My lord—Caedian—”
“Please, Amon. I need to find him. My mother might not think it worth the trouble, but I do. I think—” He hesitated. “I think something might have happened to him, all right? That he might be in trouble.” He dug into the pockets of his overcoat and extracted another swollen purse. “This is all the kings I have on me. We don’t use them in the Tree, you see.” He stuttered a laugh, and his voice cracked on the end note. “Please.”