Slate, more than ready to fight someone at this point, narrowed her eyes.
“I could have carried the box,” he said.
Slate threw her hands in the air and stalked out.
Damn the man. And damn Learned Edmund for coming in before I could climb him a drainpipe and see what he thought of that.
Twenty-Seven
“I need your help,” said Caliban.
Slate looked up at him from her seat on the floor. “Oh? Need a document changed, or just practicing your looming?”
“Am I looming?”
“Quite effectively, yes.”
He crouched down next to her.
“Still looming,” she said. “Though not as badly.”
She looked faintly amused. Caliban was glad to see that she was no longer aggravated with him over…whatever it had been.
Although she was also not looking at him with naked hunger in her eyes.
Probably for the best. I have demons to chase down, not…not…
“I’m not sure if I can make myself any shorter without lying on the floor,” he said.
Subtle.
Slate lifted one eyebrow very slowly and said “Well, that would be interesting…”
He cleared his throat. Down, boy. You are working.
“I need documents located. I am looking for records on demonic possession. I read well enough, but for actually searching a library…” He spread his hands. “Although we probably won’t need to risk burning this one.”
Slate laughed. “Learned Edmund is undoubtedly better than I am at locating records, although…” She looked over at the dedicate, who had Amadai’s notes piled around him.
“He seems busy,” said Caliban.
“There’s so much here…” said Learned Edmund, not looking up. He turned the papers helplessly in his hands. “All his notes. Notes on everything.”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” said Slate. “Can you crack the codes?”
“Yes! The codes are simple! He wrote the key in the front of the journals—it’s all there—” He waved his hands.
“Hardly important,” said Slate, amused. “The key to everything we’ve been trying to learn, that’s all.”
“But the pages aren’t organized, and they’re barely readable and I don’t know what parts I should be trying to figure out, and…there’s just so much…”
“Very busy,” said Caliban.
“So he is.” Slate scrambled to her feet. “Well, let’s see what I can turn up for you.”
Five minutes later she re-entered the room, wearing the ink-stained cassock of the nameless secretary. “All right,” she said as they left the inn. “You walk in front of me, remember?”
“I don’t know where we’re going,” said Caliban, holding the front door open.
Slate rubbed a hand over her face and sighed. “Tell me what you want and we’ll figure it out.”
“Records on demonic possession,” he said, falling in step with her. “Historical, anyway. I want to see when demons stopped appearing in Anuket City.”
She drew her eyebrows down and chewed on her lower lip. Caliban watched her face and very nearly ran into a lightpost.
“Careful!”
“It’s fine,” he said. “Jumped out at me, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t survive that whole stupid trip from home for you to get knocked out by a post.”
She screwed her face up in thought again. “There wouldn’t be religious records, would there? You don’t have a temple here.”
“No. A fact which strikes me as more than a little peculiar in retrospect.”
“Hmm…”
They crossed a pedestrian bridge over the Falsefall River. Caliban walked on the inside, not looking into the cold water.
“If somebody murders somebody and doesn’t do anything weird, there’s no way to know if it’s demons, right? Without one of you people around?”
“So long as they limit themselves to normal human behavior, yes.” Caliban dipped his head, resigned to elite Knights-Champions of the Dreaming God having been relegated to “you people.”
“Right.” Slate turned sharply at the foot of the bridge. “We’re going toward the stockyards. Now you lead.”
He took his place a step ahead of her. His training tried to rebel and he squelched it firmly.
You will make less trouble for her if you walk ahead. We do not need more trouble.
His overheated imagination attempted to point out that if there was trouble, he might conceivably dispatch said trouble, save Slate, sweep her off her feet, and...
And she would tell me to put her down and try to steal their boots to sell. Let it go.
Their destination helped. Stockyards were not romantic in any way.
“Is there any particular reason we are going to go see cows milling around?”
“Yes,” said Slate. “But we’re not going to the actual cows. Turn here.”
The stockyards, like the tanners and the knackers and all the other smelly, unpleasant parts of city life, were downriver from the main city, on the opposite side of town from the peculiar river bluff where the grave-gnoles went every day. A broad, well-lit street ran parallel to the river, with the counting houses and mercantiles that served the docks on one side, and the similar houses that served the stockyards and other land-based businesses on the other.
Merchants and men of business walked back and forth here, with messengers darting between them like minnows. Caliban felt extremely out of place. Knight-Champions did not end up in counting houses unless someone inside was possessed.
Slate, on the other hand, was in her element. He could tell by the way her eyes widened with interest, the way her gaze flicked back and forth between buildings.
“Will you look at that window…” she murmured, mostly to herself. “Window boxes! They’re footholds are what they are. I could be in some of those file cabinets and gone again and probably water the geraniums on the way out.”
“You’re enjoying this,” said Caliban, amused.
“What? Oh! Yes, a little.” She grinned sheepishly. “Well. You know how it is.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Oh, come now…” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “If somebody’s got a levitating cow that needs the demon chopped out of it, you can’t tell me that you don’t enjoy…oh, maybe not the chopping bit, but having done it, anyway.”
Caliban considered this. “It’s not really enjoyable work. But knowing you did a good job and the world’s a little better...yes, all right. I understand that.”
“Well, there you go then. We’re not that different. Only swap out ‘crooked accounting’ for ‘levitating cow.’”
“Yes, those are certainly very similar.”
“See? We’re practically twins.”
She poked him in the ribs while he was still shaking his head. “Over there. Livestock Historical Society.”
“A what?”
“They keep the studbooks for the horses and the cows and everything. Very important. They also keep records about diseases, breeding, droughts, prices of grain…” She steered him toward the door.
“And you think they’ll know about demons?”
“I think they’ll have a record on every levitating cow in a hundred miles.”
Caliban smiled down at her. “That’s honestly rather brilliant.”
“I have the occasional moment.”
“More than just occasional,” he said.
He knew there was too much warmth in his voice when she flushed. Probably most people couldn’t have seen it, as dark as her skin was, but he could see the minute change in her color. She glanced away, embarrassed, and he…regretted nothing, actually.
Oh, I should be careful…or something…but…
Without Brenner’s watchdog presence, he felt free.
We have an assassin for a chaperone. Is it any wonder things are strange between us?
“Come on, then,” said Sla
te. “Let’s go see what the studbooks say.”
* * *
They emerged from the Livestock Historical Society three hours later. The sun had begun to sink and the sky was turning hazy violet, lit with red from underneath from the lights of the city.
“Well,” said Slate. “Huh.”
Caliban nodded.
“Not a single levitating cow in all of Anuket City’s records.”
“Lots in Archenhold, though,” said Caliban. “And in the outlying farmlands.”
“What does that mean?”
Caliban shook his head. “I have no idea.”
They walked slowly back in the direction of the inn. Merchants going home streamed past them, jostled in the other direction by merchants only starting the day’s work. A place like Anuket City never truly slept.
“So there’s never been demons,” said Slate slowly. “But we know they have records of demons from outside the immediate area.”
“Which implies that whatever is trapping them has been here as long as the records have been kept,” said Caliban.
Slate gnawed on her lower lip. “And we know they’re being trapped, not just driven away?”
“I do not believe that the goddess I spoke to would lie.”
She groaned. “From anyone else, that would be such a weird statement…”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Do you not believe me?”
It had not occurred to Caliban that she might not believe him. It certainly hadn’t occurred to him how desperately he would need her to believe him. If she doubted the gods, she doubted the very core of his being.
He could see her thinking about it, read the conflict in the way her eyes met his, the furrowed eyebrows. In a way, it was comforting, because when she sighed and said, “No, I believe you,” he knew that she was not lying. Reluctant, but not lying.
“It sounds nuts,” she added. “But you’re you. And if you’re delusional, you’re certainly pulling it off well.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “Truly a heartfelt endorsement.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
They paused at the bridge. Slate leaned on the railing. Caliban steeled himself, looking over the water instead of at it.
The oil lamps had been lit along the bridge. Insects swirled around the lights and nighthawks had come to catch them. The air was full of their high-pitched, nasal calls.
Slate shivered and rubbed her arms. The acolyte robes were more notable for their drabness than their warmth.
Caliban instinctively slung his cloak off his shoulders and started to reach toward her.
“Caliban…” She gave him an exasperated look. “Knights do not give their cloaks to acolytes.”
“The decent ones should.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Are knights allowed to do this?” he asked, daring to step closer and put his arm around her so that the cloak covered them both.
Slate stood very still. Caliban could feel the tension in her shoulders. He had a sense of everything balancing on edge.
One moment. I will wait one moment, and if she steps away, so will I.
Then she sighed and leaned against him. “Only one of them,” she said.
Twenty-Eight
They returned to the inn walking exactly as a knight and an acolyte should. Caliban led and Slate followed, a pace back, invisible as she wished to be.
He still didn’t like it, but it was probably for the best that she couldn’t see the helpless smile plastered across his face.
He could still feel the weight of her body against his. For once he could be sure that she had been there because she wished to be, not because she couldn’t stand up or couldn’t get onto her horse by herself.
He wanted to dance around and laugh hysterically and howl at the moon. He wanted to kiss Slate passionately and yell to random passersby, “She probably doesn’t hate me!”
He did not do any of these things, because for one thing, he was approaching forty and more importantly, Slate would probably roll her eyes and then punch him as high as she could reach.
He had not dared to do more than stand with his arm around her for several minutes. He had a sense that the connection between them was fragile enough that one wrong word would shatter it.
And let’s be honest, I say a lot of stupid words.
When she finally straightened and grumbled something about how they should probably go back to the inn, he let her go. But he looked down at her and whatever he saw in her eyes made her flush again and shove her hair out of her face with the hand that wasn’t trapped between them.
That was enough. For now, it was enough.
They went back to the inn. Learned Edmund looked up when they came in, looked past Caliban, and said “Mistress Slate…”
“Hmm?” She padded over to him.
“Can you decipher this?”
Slate picked up the sheet of paper he handed her and stared at it for a bit, her head tilting to one side. “Ah…uh…huh. Brother Amadai’s handwriting is something else, isn’t it?”
“That is an understatement so vast as to border on inaccuracy.”
Slate snorted, clearly only half-listening. “One of your cascading codes?”
“I can’t even tell. The code does not require such dismal handwriting.”
“Is this about the wonder-engine?”
“I have no idea,” said Learned Edmund. He leaned his forehead against the heel of his hand. “It might be. It might be a recipe for boiled cabbages. Nothing is organized. I am going old before my time looking at these.”
“You’re nineteen.”
“Each of these pages is taking a month off my life.”
“When you get to the bottom of the box, you’ll still be younger than I am.”
He sighed. “Were your investigations successful?”
“I guess.” She waved vaguely at Caliban. “You talk. I’ll see if I can write this out in readable language.”
Caliban outlined what they had learned about the occurrences of levitating cattle in Anuket City and environs.
“Hmm.” Learned Edmund tapped the table. “If it is, indeed, the wonder-engine trapping them, then that would make sense. The wonder-engines have been here for a very long time, since the ancient civilizations passed.”
“I thought they had to be activated in some fashion,” said Caliban. “By putting something in.”
Learned Edmund shrugged. “Possibly? But we do not know if they have passive effects on the environment either. It is possible that it has been quietly collecting demons for—how long has Anuket City been here, Mistress Slate?”
“Probably a good thousand years,” said Slate. “They just didn’t call it that beforehand. It’s not like the Dowager’s city where somebody went and planted a flag and said, “Here I shall build my city!”
“Jon Wedoff,” said Learned Edmund absently. “The great general. He said in his memoirs that he was tired of fighting in places that were less defensible than nearby trees, and that he would build a city that could hold out until the army invading died of old age.”
“Pity he didn’t figure on the Clockwork Boys.”
The dedicate nodded. “Though I suspect that had he not made such a city, the Dowager’s city would have been overrun long ago.”
“And had not some genius a few thousand years ago decided to build a wonder-engine, we wouldn’t be overrun now,” said Slate, with some asperity. “We’re living with decisions made by people so long dead we can’t even piss on their bones.”
She put the page down. “I don’t think this one’s going to be helpful. I could be wrong, but he seems to have burned his left hand and is using different treatments on each finger to see which one works the best. I’m not seeing code markers.”
Learned Edmund looked up, eyes narrowing. “You’ve cracked the code?”
“It’s not as hard as you people think it is. I can’t read it, but I can at least see where it starts and ends.”<
br />
Learned Edmund groaned. “If only there was an index!”
“We can’t all be Ashes Magnus.” Slate sat down across from him. “I’ll help, though. If you want me to sort out the ones that obviously aren’t related, maybe we can narrow things down.”
“That would be an enormous help, Mistress Slate.”
Brenner draped his arm over her shoulder. “That would be an enormous help tomorrow,” he said. “Darlin’, we got a date with your informant tonight. That Sparrow woman.”
“Oh, her. Right.” Slate sighed. She rather liked Sparrow, but she also suspected that Sparrow worked very hard to make herself likable. It was a useful job if you were a person who bought and sold information. Still, with Blind Jenny gone, Sparrow was supposed to be the next best thing…and she didn’t know Slate on sight, which was a great benefit for all involved.
“Is it dangerous?” asked Caliban.
“Yes,” said Slate simply. “For us and her. We’ve been doing a dance for a week where we both hint around what information we might want and what we might have and how much we might be willing to pay for it. And then we both retreat to our opposite corners and wait to see if the whole thing was a trap and a bunch of angry men with clubs are about to land on our heads.”
“How unpleasant,” said Learned Edmund.
“It’s not my favorite activity,” Slate admitted. “But with the information from Ashes Magnus, we were able to skip asking a lot of stupid questions. Now we’re down to who owns the clocktaurs, no, really? and who’s paying for all this?” She spread her hands. “I’m not saying it’ll help in the long run, but if there’s one or two key individuals running the show, we’ve got targets and then Brenner’s magic fingers can do the rest.”
Brenner cracked his knuckles in a suitably murderous fashion.
“Must we really assassinate people?” asked Learned Edmund, a bit sadly.
“Well, it’s that or this ink chews my arm off, so forgive me if I’m feeling a little expedient.”
“Oh.” Learned Edmund stared at the page. “Yes. I had forgotten.”
“We hadn’t,” said Slate, and suspected that she spoke for all of them.
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