by K. Eason
Soon, she told Briel. And stop.
Sending didn’t hurt like it had before Briel had added Veiko to her pack. There was no blindness, but the headaches were still formidable. Snow wished she could pinch the bridge of her nose, rub her forehead. But it would not do to walk onto Rata’s turf massaging away a headache. The old Snowdenaelikk, the one Rata remembered, admitted no weakness.
I remember that version of you, Snow. I think she’s still there.
Tsabrak’s silhouette, solid dark against the shadows. There for a blink. Snow turned her chin away. So you’re back. Don’t know why. Don’t need your help.
No telling if the ghost heard. But at least he stopped whispering.
Briel got her wish soon enough. The bloated stone overhead retreated as they crossed into the warehouse district. The buildings were lower here, which contributed to the effect of increased ceiling space. Two stories, not the standard three, blank walls unmarked by windows.
Snow cut a sharp left between two of the warehouses. Another left, and then a right, into the alley that cut up behind them. And there, exactly where she remembered it, Rata’s tavern. Cracked paint on the walls, another ten years faded. Another ten years of mold creeping through the seams.
There were two women lounging on the bench outside. One large, one wiry, neither one dressed like a dockhand, neither one sagging drunk. Both armed, although neither reached for her weapons. They wore Illhari steel, same as Snow, the seax meant for quick cuts and murder that wouldn’t last a sustained battle against legion armor.
Snow’s gut clenched slowly. She reckoned for each woman on the bench, there was another two pair of eyes watching. Another blade. Fuck and damn.
“Hm,” drifted down from somewhere above her left shoulder. Veiko’s way of saying look there and I think that’s trouble. He didn’t break stride. But he did drop a hand to his axe. Snow read that in the sudden shift of the two on the bench, straight and suddenly alert.
“Hey,” called the larger of them. Her voice boomed up the alley, ricocheted off the walls. “Tavern’s closed, yeah?”
Snow didn’t answer. Kept walking forward. Kept her own hands clear of her hilt and her knives. Open palms. Fingers wide. Friendly gesture that meant unarmed, unless you were a conjuror. In which case open hands meant going to scorch you to ash, toadshit, if you try me.
Please, let them think that. Please, let them recognize her.
Tsabrak’s ghost laughed a chill breeze across her cheek. Who you asking for help, Snow? You think the God’s listening?
“Hey,” said the wiry one. “That’s far enough.”
Far enough to have a conversation, anyway, that the whole street wouldn’t hear. Snow stopped. “Here to see Rata.”
“What for?”
“Just to talk. That’s what neighbors do, isn’t it? Talk?”
Eyes flicked between her and Veiko. “We don’t want trouble with you, Snowdenaelikk.”
So they did know her name. Maybe the God was listening after all. Snow heard the ghost chuckle. Shrugged him aside. “I don’t want trouble, either. Just talk, like I said.”
The women looked at each other. Stood up and took a step each toward the ends of the bench. “Right. Talk. Come in, then.”
There were a couple ways it could go inside. The first was an attack the heartbeat they stepped over the threshold. That would mean clubs and knives, the odd sword. Maybe even a crossbow. But Snow had her seax, and Veiko had his axe, and there was always conjuring. Even if Rata had allies among Tal’Shik’s godsworn, even if they were already there, that way would be expensive. And loud. And messy.
It won’t go down like that, Tsabrak whispered.
The other way, the usual pattern for business, was that Snow would walk in, and Rata would be there with enough muscle to impress her visitors. Rata would offer them a place on the bench, which would necessitate asking her own people to move. That would put a couple more armed bodies behind her and Veiko, which Snow would pretend not to notice. She and Rata would have a civil conversation, sitting at the table like old friends. Snow would convince Rata that she and Veiko weren’t a danger to whatever Rata had running, and Rata would decide that picking a fight with Tsabrak’s right hand was too expensive.
She will. She’s afraid of you, Snow. Everyone is. That’s my gift. My legacy.
And oh, she wanted to blame woundfever for the voice; but then she turned her head and found Tsabrak, all hipshot arrogance, arms folded to keep his hands close to his knives.
Shut up, yeah? Or your legacy dies here.
If it played out right, she would walk out of here with Veiko in less than a candlemark. Rata would need time to sort out what to do about her, and by then, please and thank you, Snow would have some idea what she needed to do about Rata.
You kill her, Snow. Didn’t I teach you that?
You taught me a lot. Now shut up.
But Snow could weight her own dice before casting, couldn’t she? And so she snagged a fistful of shadows—out of the flaws in the pavement, out of the place where the door met its hinges—and swept them ahead of her. It only took a little flex of the finger, a little push, just so, and the darkness flowed through the tavern like fog. Not enough to black the place out, not enough to choke out the candles or the firedog. Only enough for sudden deep twilight, and only as long as it took her to cross two steps inside. Then:
“Blink,” she told Veiko, and released the shadows.
The lanterns flared up, flame boiling against the glass. The firedog belched like a dragon. A heartbeat, two, to assess the room, while everyone squinted and flinched. Snow counted faces like Briel would. One, two, three, many.
Rata sat there, at the main table, an empty bench across from her. She had people behind her, and people ranged on either side of the door, lining the walls. Gert numbered among them. And every fucking one of them was armed, yeah, and bristling metal.
Veiko’s shoulder touched hers, quick as a kiss. Then he shifted out of her periphery, moving to cover their flank and her back, clearing his right arm in case he needed to pull the axe. Damn sure everyone in the room could see that.
Snow smiled wide. “Rata. My good friend. You look well.”
“Snowdenaelikk.” Rata squinted. “I heard you were back.”
“You’re well informed.”
“Huh.” Big woman, Rata. She’d started as cartel muscle up in the Abattoir. Prosperity had padded her silhouette. More than one idiot had mistaken fat for soft.
Rata’s eyes skated sideways. “Is Tsabrak with you?”
Yes.
“No.”
Rata nodded. “I hope he’s well.”
Not exactly.
Snow wished she had some idea what this woman knew already, what she didn’t. Took a chance. “Well enough.”
Rata poked her finger in a lazy circle and picked at a splinter. She was trying very hard to seem nonchalant and failing at it. That was sweat on her forehead, and not from the heat in the room.
“Want you to know. I had nothing to do with what happened to Ari.”
That was pure toadshit. The Abattoir hadn’t just fallen into Rata’s thick-fingered hands. Snow shrugged. “I’m here on my own business, yeah? Me and my partner. Nothing to do with anyone else.”
“Huh.”
Rata cut a look past Snow. Lifted her chin. Bodies moved along the wall, rustling like wind through dead grass. Attack or stand down. Snow made a left-handed fist. If she called fire in here, the whole place would go up, but she’d take Rata first. Damn sure.
Then Veiko let his breath out, not quite a hiss. Shifted back, so that his shoulder brushed hers again. She felt the tension in his muscles. Caught an echo through Briel, of a thumping heart and faint disappointment. Snow let her hands relax.
Rata gestured at the empty bench. “Come sit down. Have a drink. Maybe breakfast? You and your . . . partner.”
Tsabrak
dead, yeah, go away
would’ve taken the invitation, drap
ed himself over her bench and dared Rata to try something. Tsabrak had done that, more than once, and walked out alive—knowing his limits, and Rata’s, and having Snow standing behind him. Tsabrak had had the God, then, too. Snow had only Veiko, only Briel.
Snow gestured at the mud on her boots, the stains on her shirt. “We’re not fit for company. Wouldn’t’ve come like this, except I didn’t want any more misunderstandings, yeah? I’m back. This man here’s with me.”
Calculations swam behind Rata’s mud-colored eyes like catfish. “I appreciate that.”
That wasn’t an apology. Either Rata had taken Snow’s word that she wasn’t here on Tsabrak’s business, or she had decided Snow wasn’t much threat at all. More likely, Rata hadn’t made any decisions yet, except that violence now would cost too much.
Good enough.
“I’ll see you,” Snow said, and pulled the shadows close again. Turned around, never mind the itch between her shoulders that said knives and murder, and walked out, dragging the dark behind her. Walked past Veiko, who pivoted to watch Rata this time. But he didn’t back up, no, didn’t retreat with her. Planted his feet and stood there, in the middle of the tavern, until she got to the doorway. Then, as Briel’s report of
empty streets
flowed between them, as the shadows rolled toward him like fog, he turned and came after her. Back straight, head up, as if there were no one at all in the room. Past her and out while Snow leaned in the doorway. She flashed Tsabrak’s smile to Rata, the one that meant you’re dead, yeah? And you won’t see it coming. Flipped a wave and took all the light with her, left total darkness and
“—hell was—”
“—toadfucking conjuror—”
“—see the size of—”
raised voices behind her.
“We’re making friends,” she muttered sidelong.
Veiko grunted. “I did not think that your intent.”
“No.” She couldn’t hold it much longer. There was a range on conjuring, unless you were very skilled or very talented. She had just enough of both to know her limits. She let the darkness go before they’d even got to the corner.
Many, Briel sent, and an impression of people spilling out the doorway. Bet they were cursing at her, yeah, but no one followed.
Come on, she wished Briel, and careful! when Briel imagined skimming over the many, keening like a whole pack of svartjagr.
“Briel’s trying to get killed,” Snow muttered. “Picking a fight.”
“I understand where she learned the habit. Did you get what you wanted?”
“Rata will think twice about coming after us, so yeah. And.” Gravel in her gut, her chest, her throat. “She killed Ari, or she knows who did.”
“Mm. And what does that mean?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ve kicked over the rock. Now let’s see what crawls out.”
It felt strange, wearing no armor. Felt stranger to go without the sword on her hip, only a knife, to go without the bow. To go around without Istel, hell and damn. That left a hole at her back that felt more like naked than missing leather and steel.
Dek looked down, checked the folds and drape of her robe. Damn stupid costume, what the highborn wore. Silk and lovely. Long and heavy. Belted and arranged and impractical. Couldn’t dodge a stray dog in that thing.
Not that there were stray dogs in the upper Tiers, or many animals at all. Livestock got only as far as the Abattoir. Dogs roamed throughout the Suburba. Cats might make it this far up, to hunt rats and mice in the street. But they wouldn’t live in the household. Live animals were for farmers and outlanders and the poor who needed to keep down the vermin. It was different in Cardik, where dogs and cats ran all over the city and people didn’t notice. Didn’t mind. Kept them as pets, as companions, as help.
She tried to imagine Logi clicking along on her mother’s stone floor. Tried to imagine Veiko behind him. Bring them along and she could wear a general’s plume on her helmet and her mother would never notice. Bring them along, hell, she’d scorch any chance to make her mother hear her.
Dekklis could have gone with full legion armor and sword and her partner in attendance. There was no protocol against it. The fourth daughter of House Szanys could come to her mother’s house, under the Senate’s law, with her scout-partner or an honor guard out of the garrison or, foremothers forbid, a half-blood Academy-trained conjuror-chirurgeon heretic if she so chose. Her mother’s staff would not deny her entrance. But her mother had not been happy when her youngest daughter had gone to the legion. And while her mother would never say get out, Dekklis, she would look somewhat askance at armor and sword.
So why not wear your scout’s kit, yeah? Come on, Dek. It’s not like you’re infantry.
Damn Snowdenaelikk, anyway. Even imagined, she looked for trouble. Dekklis tried not to imagine herself wearing a legion scout’s greys and browns, with the short bow on her back and the hood pulled up over her hair. Tried not to imagine herself creeping through the long hall from doors to parlor, past the blind jet stares of the busts of her foremothers. She would dodge behind their pedestals, blend herself with the shadows, dash across the bright tile spaces.
She caught herself grinning at nothing, like an idiot. Caught the servant’s sliding stare. He was a young Dvergir, some unwanted son whose prospects were better as servant in a senator’s household than as some fourth husband down in the Suburba.
That, or his mother indentured him. Think of that, Szanys?
Snow wouldn’t approve of either option. Snow would curl her lip and sneer about how far the Reforms had got, wasn’t that admirable, to let the boys stay uncut so they’re stronger servants, fine planning on the Senate’s part.
Hell and damn. The boy was new, anyway. He hadn’t recognized her on the doorstep. Had looked at her and bowed and invited her inside, please come in, Honorable.
That simple. She could’ve been anyone. A fishmonger out of the Suburba.
Don’t smell bad enough for that, Szanys.
Until she said her name, and then it was all bowing and bobbing and Domina, the titled inflection instead of simple courtesy, a boy embarrassed that he hadn’t known who she was.
Afraid, Szanys. That’s what he is. He doesn’t want the whip.
That thought wiped her idiot grin away. Szanys Elia didn’t, as a rule, beat her servants or her bondies. But Dekklis had three older sisters, and how they dealt with house staff, well. The boy was certainly anxious.
Dekklis hauled a deep breath through nose and mouth and followed the servant into the atrium. Memory hit her like a fist. She remembered that bloodthorn when it had been two stalks in a clay pot. Now it had creepers as thick as a woman’s wrist, studded with its namesake. She paused beside it. Looked at the remains of its latest meal at the bottom of the pot. Only bones. Her favorite tapestry was still hanging on the long wall: Szanys Tukku and her spear besting an Alvir chieftain. The chieftain looked a little bit like a toad on a spit.
No need to ask where she’d gotten her notions of joining the legion.
“If domina will wait here.” The servant bowed.
He didn’t wait for her answer, turned and light-footed down the servant’s passage. Quick gust as the door opened, swirling incense and morning bread and sweet lamp oil. Dekklis heard laughter, high-pitched and child-hysterical. Her sisters’ children, no doubt. There had been only Jikka’s daughter alive when Dek left, whose name she could not recall. Maja had been pregnant; probably she had several by now. Disar, too. They might’ve kept the boys, even, for making alliances later on.
Dekklis prowled the room’s perimeter. Wished she could damn the rules and just go through the main doors, there at the atrium’s end. Her mother’s offices were just on the other side. But the servant had to announce her, had to return and fetch her—through those doors, when it was her turn. That was propriety when one was a visitor. And she was. Damn sure. This wasn’t home. The motherless servants didn’t even know who she was.
She look
ed up finally. The ceiling had changed. A new sculpture hung where the old twisted wire lanterns had been. Some silvered steel and glass confection that threw torchglow back in rays of yellow and orange. It looked like someone’s conception of sunlight, if that someone had never actually been Above.
The servant’s door cracked and snicked. Dekklis turned toward it, expecting the boy again, and found her second oldest sister staring back at her, having just come out of a doorway where only staff should go.
“Dekklis! It is you.” Maja crossed the room in two long strides, pushing chairs aside, and gripped Dek’s arms. “I thought Veli was lying. He said there was a woman claiming to be you but that she wasn’t dressed like a trooper. I suspected trouble.”
“And you came to meet it unarmed.”
“Trouble in this house means a client Mother doesn’t want to see. Sometimes they’re stupid enough to lie about who they are. I thought I’d come check.” Maja winked. Let go Dek’s arms and stepped back. Looked her over. “You weren’t expecting any trouble, little sister. Not dressed like that. Where’s your uniform?”
“In the barracks.” Maja’s hair was loose, which was not proper for receiving guests. Nor was her belted silk robe, or the slippers. Downright indecent for strangers.
“You must have known it was me. You wouldn’t’ve come out like that otherwise.”
“What? Ah.” Careless shrug. “Worst I’d do is offend some stuffy old woman. Mother might thank me for it.”
“Has she changed that much?”
Maja laughed out loud. She was the tallest of them, long boned and strong featured. The one who’d always drawn their mother’s disapproval, until Dekklis had gone down to the garrison. It was her laugh, Dekklis thought. Too loud. Too long. Too wild.
“Mother doesn’t know how to change.” A second shrug. “I hadn’t heard the Sixth was back in Illharek.”
“It isn’t.”
“So you’re on leave, then?”
“No.”
“And I know better than to ask if you’ve resigned your commission. So what, then? You’re here on legion business, forgot how to write a letter home to tell us, and decided to visit without the uniform because you think our mother will forget what you are if you dress like that?”