by K. Eason
There’d been a reason for that.
It was so easy, conjuring in Illharek. She’d gotten used to the tingling threat of backlash, even in Cardik, and the Wild’s pressing menace. But here, Below, it was a matter of will, drawing power from air and stone. There were patterns a conjuror could see. Patterns she could feel, twist, change into new patterns.
Air to fire, stone to water.
Snow stretched her left hand out and pointed at the firedog. Hooked the essence of fire in the banked coals and ripped it out in a burst of light and heat and sparks that hissed where they struck stone floors and damp walls. Those too near the firedog jumped back and swore, slapping at their clothes.
The sparks were an accident. Blame the broken finger. But Hraf didn’t know that. None of them did.
She came off the bench, witchfire coiled through the fingers of her right hand. Her left drew the seax out of its sheath. The black steel gleamed blue on the cutting edge.
“You want the God back, Hraf, you do what Ari says. Shut it.”
“Or what?”
Snow smiled.
Hraf was watching her weapon. He’d drawn by now, too. He’d been a good fighter, Snow recalled. Quick on his feet, quick with his hands.
But it was wits that won fights.
She flung her witchfire at him, a glowing whip that snapped out of her right hand, stretching wire-slim before it let go. Hraf yelped and recoiled as the witchfire wrapped around his seax, slithered like a snake down around his wrist and arm. It didn’t burn. Didn’t do anything except glow. Hraf’s eyes widened, then narrowed as he realized he wasn’t hurt. And widened again when he realized he wasn’t looking at her anymore.
Snow flicked her seax past his guard, a glittering tongue of metal. He tried to parry, tried to move himself out of the way, to retreat. But it was too late. She grabbed him, right-handed, and pulled, same time she pushed the point of her blade into his gut and shoved up. She let momentum push the metal deep, up under his ribs. Hraf gasped and sagged, drove the metal even deeper. His own weapon clattered to the stone floor while he clawed at her left wrist with frail fingers. Stared up into her face, all his toadshit bravado smeared to pain and terror. Tiny noises leaked out of his mouth along with a gush of blood and foam.
She ripped her blade loose and stepped clear before he soaked her with his dying.
Snow stretched her right hand down. The witchfire jumped back into it and settled in her palm like a kitten. She held it up and spun a slow circle. Blue light licked across the other godsworn. She marked the hands hovering over weapons, the shifting, sliding looks between her and Hraf, gurgling at her feet. They were godsworn, but they were young, and scared, and Hraf had been the bravest of them.
She turned to Ari last.
“I was Tsabrak’s right hand,” she said. “The God will answer me.”
Ari opened his mouth. Shut it and shook his head. “Right. Then let’s go.”
Dekklis had intended to leave Soren at his mother’s house. K’Hess was Stratka’s neighbor, an easy walk across the bridge. It should have been easy to deliver Soren to safety.
But K’Hess house wasn’t safe, not now. None of the houses were, after what he’d told her.
Snowdenaelikk would laugh herself sick at the irony, that the Suburba was safer than the Tiers for anyone, much less a highborn male. Then Snow would call her an idiot and tell her what Dekklis already guessed: that she and Soren were obvious, conspicuous, and that reports of their presence had run already from the Abattoir to the docks and into dangerous ears.
Rata’s the rule in the Suburba now, yeah? She’s got from the Abattoir to the docks. You don’t cross her.
Whoever Rata was. Dekklis pictured a very tall rodent, Dvergiri black, with a tail trailing out of her pants. Long snout, chisel teeth, yellow eyes. Dangerous, sure, but something Dek could handle with metal.
That was the reason she hadn’t taken Soren to the third member of their alliance. Bel might’ve given Soren asylum in the Academy. Damn good bet she would after hearing what he had to say. But what happened in there, Dek couldn’t guess. Couldn’t do a thing about it if Belaery flipped sides or couldn’t protect him. No, it was better to dodge Rata and the cartel than trust what went on in Academy walls.
Damn good bet Snow would agree with her reasoning, at least on that front. But equally damn sure Snow would be pissed that Dek was taking Soren to her place.
The Street of Apothecaries, seventeenth shop from the Tano docks.
Assuming she could find it. Assuming she survived the Abattoir. It really wasn’t so different than the Warren in Cardik. You dodged livestock and shitpiles. Same volume. Same stench. Same sort of people.
You mean lowborn, yeah?
She could imagine Snow at her shoulder, crooked grin and acid whispers.
Slouch, can’t you?
Not really, no. Too many years of trying to seem taller, too many years of armored inspections. But she kept her shoulders hunched, as much to keep hands close to beltpouch and dagger as anything else.
You look like a mark, they’ll take you.
And yes, there were eyes on her. Women slouched against the walls, arms crossed. Men crouching in shadows. Paranoia, surely, to think they were all watching her and Soren.
Who was doing better than she was, playing lowborn. Scuffing along beside and behind her, like Istel might’ve. She’d given him her sweater, to hide both the fine weave of his shirt and the ink on his chest. Let someone see K’Hess, consort to Stratka, and it wouldn’t matter how either of them slouched. That news would get wings and fly.
Her own sigil was safe under the shirt she’d borrowed from Istel’s kit. It was a northern cut, high-necked to keep away cold, coarse weave. They’d pass in Cardik’s streets easy.
Not Cardik, is it, Dek?
No. Hell and damn, no. She was half-convinced Soren would cough himself blind on the blood reek and death in the air. Half-convinced she’d take metal between her ribs any moment.
“Just like a battlefield,” she’d told Soren. “Watch where you’re going, breathe through your mouth.”
That advice held the deeper they went, through the Abattoir and into the Suburba proper, where bloodstink turned into fish and dirty water. The noise hadn’t changed. Conversations shouted across the narrow streets, drifting out of open shutters, bouncing off stone and brick. Only the accents shifted, slurred Suburban native mixed with outlander. She heard two Alviri dialects. Heard what she thought was Taliri, too, across the street. She had stopped then, tipped onto her toes and looked and offended the woman behind her, who swore at her in fluent Suburban—
“Toadfucking motherless maggot.”
—and damn near ran her down with a fishcart.
Once she thought she saw Snowdenaelikk, too: flash of fair hair over a dark face, which made her grab Soren and dive through the crowd. But of course it wasn’t Snow. Some other half-blood, shorter and thicker, with dull yellow hair and eyes more green than blue.
No, finding Snow would be too much good fortune. Then Dek could hand K’Hess Soren off and take herself back up to the garrison before someone noticed her absence.
She tried to follow the water smell first, reckoning the docks must be close to that. Ended up on the docks, sure, but on the Jaarvi’s shore, which had led to another plunge through Suburban streets, and an eventual please, Domina to a barkeep who was happy to sell Dekklis both watery beer and directions.
If that barkeep had lied, Dekklis promised herself, she’d go back and gut the woman and feed her eyes to Briel. Not for the first time, she cut a look up, at the hanging black overhead. No svartjagr. No sun, either, and no moon. But it must be close to the sixteenth mark now. The Senate must be out. Stratka would discover she was missing a consort, and then—
Hell. Worry about then when it became now.
“Dekklis.” Soren touched her elbow as if she were hot iron and might burn him. Did not quite flinch when she turned and looked at him. He managed an uneasy ey
elock, one whole breath. Then his gaze skipped past her. His chin tipped toward a cross street. “That way, I think.”
That way, yes, and damn him anyway. Dek grunted not-quite-thanks at him. Shouldered past him and up that street. And then it was a slow progress, with Soren almost beside her, checking the signs. Tarnished copper, Snow had said, shaped like—
“Soren. You know what sweetleaf looks like?” Expecting a no, some point of commonality between them.
“Yes.” And when she snapped round and stared at him. “Dried, anyway.”
Foremothers defend. “The sign we want looks like a bundle. Don’t know if it’s dry or not.”
“That shouldn’t matter. The leaves have a distinctive shape. Kind of jagged on the edges, pronged.” He sketched a shape with his fingers. “It gets its name from the smell when you burn it.”
Rurik’s eyes lit like that when he talked about battle tactics. “You’re an apothecary?”
“Not exactly.” His chin ducked. He developed a sudden fascination with the paving stones. “My mother indulged my interests.”
Damn idiot, Dek.
Of course he wasn’t an apothecary. But he might’ve been had he been born low and female. Might’ve been able to practice that trade as a bondie, even, if he’d shown aptitude. But he’d never gotten his hands into dirt or gotten anywhere near a real teacher. All his knowledge, his maternal indulgence, would’ve come from K’Hess’s library.
That’s a crime, Szanys. Or it should be.
“You’ll like Snowdenaelikk,” Dekklis said. “Ask her about plants, she’ll talk you earless.”
A sidelong glance. Soren knew about Snow what she’d told him: half-blood conjuror, no friend of Tal’Shik’s, who’d once tried to save his baby brother, who had a skraeling partner. Dekklis had left off heretic and criminal. Soren was smart. He’d figure that out. And if he were anything like Istel, he’d probably stitch himself to Snow’s shadow a candlemark after he met her.
Dekklis turned away before he saw her expression. Spent the scowl on signs and buildings. And there, yes and finally: a copper sign gone green, shaped like a bundle of jagged leaves.
She lingered a moment. The shop had both doors rolled back. Witchfire glowed in bowls, crowding out the firedog’s more honest, sullen orange. The blue seeped onto the street, spots of cool to draw eyes and customers. Witchfire was neither cheap nor common in the Suburba. That the shop kept bowls of it like candles spoke well for its prosperity.
Unless you knew that the shop’s owner’s sister was a conjuror, and in residence, and the shop’s clientele included at least one Adept. In which case you smiled to yourself and ducked inside and waited, at the back, for your turn at the counter. Dekklis tried to imagine Snow in this place, caught up in legal domesticity, and choked on a laugh.
And then it was her turn.
“Help you?”
Dekklis knew Snow’s sisters weren’t half-blood. But still, it startled her, seeing a pure-blood Dvergir behind the counter. She’d’ve passed this woman on the streets and never looked twice. Medium tall, unremarkable eyes.
“You’re Sinnike?”
For a moment Dekklis thought she’d misremembered the name. Then the woman’s eyes narrowed. “I am. Who sent you?”
“Your eldest sister.”
Sinnike’s brows shot up. Then her eyes flickered past Dekklis. Settled on the door. She said, more loudly, “A moment, Domina, what you want is more complicated. Let me help this other person first.”
Dekklis nodded. Folded aside as another woman came up to the counter.
“Toadskin,” the woman said to Sinnike. “Do you have some?” But she was looking at Dek when she said it. And kept looking, even after Sinnike turned and pulled down a jar of suspicious grey powder and began tapping its contents onto the scale.
Dekklis pretended to study the jars and powders. Dizzying rows of them, stretched up the walls. She wondered if Sinnike could read. Guessed she could, hell, Snow would’ve taught her, which left Dekklis wondering why none of the jars had labels. Dek drifted toward Soren to ask if he knew what they were. Her eyes caught movement at the room’s edge, a fluttering of the curtains that must lead back into the family’s quarters. A man came out who looked like Veiko at first glance and clearly wasn’t when he stepped into the light. Same coloring, but older, his hair silvered and bound in an Illhari queue, the citizen’s mark inked black on his neck.
The skraeling caught her staring. Bowed. That was a shadow of Snow’s crooked smile on his lips.
Dekklis turned and pretended great interest in a bundle of something drying over the firedog. Some kind of fungus, lacy-edged and impossibly purple, and better than staring like a child. It hadn’t been obvious which of Elia’s three consorts had fathered Dekklis. But everyone with working eyes who saw Snowdenaelikk and this man together would know something that only a mother should properly know.
You could condemn the mother for that indiscretion. You could even pity the daughter. But you couldn’t be at all surprised if that daughter turned heretic and criminal.
The tall man drifted into her periphery. Waited, proper and diffident, until Dekklis turned to face him. And oh, you’d never see that kind of deference on Snow’s face. Probably not sincere, not if Snow got anything but looks from him; but sincerity didn’t matter. No highborn would care as long as he seemed polite. No highborn would come farther down than the Abattoir unless she was—what, an idiot? Desperate?
Word you want is traitor, Dek.
“Domina.” He peeled a smile. “Perhaps I can help you.”
Dekklis glanced at Sinnike. She’d finished with the powder. Was scraping it off the scale’s tray and into a scrap of cloth. The cant of her neck said she knew what was happening in her shop. Her shoulders said she didn’t like it. She wouldn’t reprimand her own household in front of strangers, and this man clearly was household. Damn sure he knew that he’d just crossed a line. Bet that he made a habit of it.
Easy to see where Snow learned that, too. Well. It wasn’t like Dekklis held too closely to protocol anymore these days.
Dek turned her back on Sinnike and the other customer. Dropped her voice. “You know what I’m looking for?”
“Yes.” He bowed. “Though I regret to say that we don’t have that which you seek on hand.”
“Where might I find it?”
“I am unsure.”
“And your mistress? Is she unsure?”
A second bow, a hair too shallow for manners. “I regret—”
Dekklis took his elbow. Spun and steered him away from the counter, into the corner, and hell with the stares she’d just got. “Where’d she go?”
“I cannot say.”
“Cannot. Not will not. All right. When will she be back?”
She heard the edges of accent on that so-proper Dvergiri. “Again, Domina, I am unsure.”
“You don’t know much, do you?”
His eyes were darker than Veiko’s, a murkier blue that collected the shadows. “I do not know you. Domina.”
Dekklis tied down her temper. At least Snow hadn’t been waving her name around. “What about Veiko? I can talk to him.”
Blink. “He was here briefly. Where he stays now, we do not know. Regrets, Domina.”
Hell of a time Snow picked to go visiting. She jerked her chin sideways, at Soren. “Fine. Then you take delivery. You need to keep this man. Can you do that? He knows things she needs to hear.”
“He is highborn,” the skraeling said flatly.
“So am I.”
“That is obvious. But—” The skraeling clipped his teeth together on what he meant to say next. Watched instead as Sinnike walked her customer to the door.
“—mix that with water, yeah? Or tea. Only a pinch.”
The woman was nodding, agreeing, looking, too, between Soren and Dekklis. “I will, Sinnike, thank you.”
“My pleasure.” Sinnike did not quite push her through the doorway. Waited an indecent heartbeat, then dre
w the shutters and turned to look at Dekklis.
“Who are you?”
“First Scout Szanys Dekklis, Second Legion, Sixth Cohort. And this is K’Hess Soren. Yes. That K’Hess. As I’ve been telling your man here, you need to keep him. For Snow.”
Sinnike shook her head. “Fuck if I do. This is highborn toadshit. Doesn’t belong in my shop, yeah?”
“As may be. But it’s legally your sister’s shop, not yours, and this is her business.”
Dekklis was glad this sister wasn’t a conjuror. Sinnike’s look would’ve turned her to ashes right now, a smoldering pile of former trouble there on the tiles. “Get out.”
“No. This man dies if I do. Maybe Illharek goes down, too. You savvy that?”
The skraeling made a small, pained noise in his throat. “Sinnike—”
She held up a single finger, shut up, and never broke eyelock with Dek. “Take him to her yourself.”
“I would if I knew where she was. But I don’t. And if I don’t get back up to the Tiers, people might come looking for me.”
“People. Huh.” Sinnike looked sideways through the slatted shutters as if there were already troops on the street. “So who comes looking for him?”
Godsworn. Stratka House agents. Mostly honest to say, “I don’t know.”
“But someone will.” Sinnike peeled an echo of Snow’s crooked smile. “Will they want him alive or dead?”
Soren flinched. The skraeling winced. Dekklis shrugged. “Depends who it is. But I’ll tell you: he needs to stay alive.”
“I reckoned. Tell me. He have something to do with the Taliri in Cardik?” A cut-glass smile. “I see he does. —Easy, woman. No need for metal.”
Dekklis looked down at the knife on her hip. Uncurled her fingers, one by conscious one, from the hilt. Said, through her teeth, “Snow told you, then.”
“Not much. Not everything, damn sure. My sister keeps her own counsel.” Sinnike blew a breath. “All right. Fine. Leave him. Not the first time I’ve handled Snow’s toadshit.”
“Thank you.”
Flat stare. Flat lips. Sinnike turned a shoulder and pushed the door open. The Suburba spilled back in, light and noise and stench.