"We're ruined," Blays hissed. "They've played us from the start."
Dante rubbed his ribs. "What are you yammering about?"
"Stand up on those delicate little toes of yours and look."
All the room's attention had turned to a door in the far wall. Dante craned his neck, but couldn't see past the well-fed wall of traders. He shuffled to one side until he found a gap in the quiet crowd. Across the room, a young man with a striking jaw and severely cropped blond hair strolled up to a smiling Jocubs. As if sensing Dante's gaze, Cassinder turned, met his eyes, and smiled.
Fear and fury fought for Dante's heart. Jocubs cleared his throat in a way that was somehow humble yet piercing. The mounting murmur stopped cold.
"Today, we are graced by a man whose name speaks itself," Jocubs said. "We are happy to have him. Honored, too. I introduce Lord Cassinder of Beckonridge."
Cassinder smiled thinly at the floor. "I'm happy to be here. It means good things to know I am welcome. I thought that might not be so." He paused, still smiling. Someone coughed. A glass clinked. Cassinder went on as if there'd been no stop at all. "Turmoil is frightening. I wouldn't have blamed you for questioning the king. But wealth depends on labor. Labor depends on loyalty. You prune an unruly hedge for its own health. This takes work. Sweat. Blood, if there are thorns. But when you are done, the hedge grows back. It takes the shape you have imposed on it." He looked up, smile stretched to the breaking point. "I am glad to garden together."
Light applause accompanied the nodding heads of the crowd. Dante bulled his way forward, shouldering tea-lords and their stately wives until he stood face to face with Jocubs. The merchant buried his smile and nodded discreetly to the door. Dante followed him out to his enclosed deck. Sunlight bounced from the lake, shimmering on the walls. The room was warm and smelled of drying mussels.
"I'm sorry," Jocubs said simply. "Things happened very fast."
"'Things'?" Dante said. "Is that how you pronounce 'betrayal' in Wending?"
Jocubs gazed down on Dante from beneath the lintels of his brows. "This isn't personal. This is a matter of pragmatism."
"It's going to be pretty gods damned personal to all the norren who die!"
"Do you think we gave that no thought? We gleaned the palace intended to enforce the king's will through any means necessary. We used what leverage we could to convince them to take the targeted approach. A barber's knife instead of a farmer's scythe."
Dante closed his eyes. His head hummed. "Everything could have been different."
Jocubs laid a warm hand on his shoulder. "I'm truly sorry. We're all doing what we can."
Dante pulled away and headed through the muffled hallway to get Blays. The banquet hall was a screeching riot of laughter and wheedling and clawing hands. He struggled through the hot crush of people and found Blays watching the room from one of the walls.
He grabbed Blays' sleeve. "We're leaving."
"Sure you don't want to leave our noble friend with a tap to the jaw? You never know. He might like it."
"Only if we follow it up with a stab to the neck."
"Hello," Cassinder said behind them. Dante spun. The lord smiled his thin smile. "You've changed shape since I saw you. Weren't you a Mallish merchant before?"
"We upgraded," Blays said. "How's the home?"
"Rebuilding quickly. Norren backs are strong. Untiring."
Dante jerked his chin to the milling merchants. "How long have you been involved in this?"
Cassinder gave him a glassy look. "Since always. Money makes men forget themselves. My place is to to remind them of theirs."
Dante leaned in until their faces were inches apart. Cassinder's breath smelled of mint and wine. "Funny. I sometimes remind people it is everyone's place to die."
The man laughed softly. "I could have you arrested right now."
"Go for it," Blays said. "If I'm going to the irons, I might as well kill you now and get my money's worth."
"Not while there's better to come," Cassinder said. "I believe in choice. I believe you will choose foolishly. I will laugh when you're hanged."
Dante turned away before his clenching hands found the man's throat. As he knifed through the throng, he found a note in his hand, as if it had always been there. He glanced from side to side. Men laughed in each other's faces. Blays shoved his back, propelling him forward. Dante clutched the note and stuffed his hand into his pocket. Blays didn't stop pushing him until they dropped down the front steps on their way to the docks.
Dante scowled against the afternoon sunlight. "Will you quit shoving already?"
"You had that other look," Blays explained. "The one where happy people are about to become sad little cinders."
Dante had too much to say, so he unfolded the note instead. It was short as an oracle, composed of blocky capitals: "COHBEN INN. ROOFTOP. MIDNIGHT."
He handed it to Blays, who a few short years ago couldn't even read his native Mallish, but had picked up the Gaskan script as soon as he bothered to try.
"Someone gave me this on the way out," Dante said.
Blays smoothed the paper against his palm. "Well, we're doing this."
"What if it's a trap?"
"Then we reprimand whoever's trying to trap us."
Dante glanced at the boatmen patrolling the dock with buckets and mops. "It's just like Lolligan said. They were stringing us along while playing the capital on the other end."
"Very rude. Rudeness that should be punished."
"We'll see what our mysterious messenger has to say tonight. Beyond that, it may be time to head home."
Blays grinned ruefully. "This trip didn't go too well, did it?"
"We got the norren some food. No one can speak ill of food."
"Unless it's pickled."
They returned to Lolligan's. Dante gave a brief account to the others. Mourn's face darkened behind his beard. Lira nodded stoically.
Fann looked crestfallen. "These men speak too much, don't they? I am beginning to believe a man only talks at length when he doesn't want you to know what he really thinks."
"I had a bad feeling the last few days," Lolligan said. "I'm sorry it came to this."
Dante's anger had left him too hollowed out for anything to do anything besides take a nap. Blays left to scout out the Cohben Inn. Dante woke in darkness, as refreshed as if he'd had a good long cry. The servants had saved him some supper, whitefish and bamboo shoots in a thick gravy of mashed onions and chilies. The spice drove the last of his sleepiness away.
"Pretty typical inn," Blays reported. "Places to drink and places to sleep."
"How far?"
"Thirty minute walk from the landing. Figured we'd put Mourn and a bow on a roof across the street, Lira in the alley below. You know how I like to be able to run if things turn nasty."
Dante nodded, wiping his spice-dripping nose. "How's the neighborhood?"
"Horrible? Would that be the word? I wouldn't be surprised if the mattresses were stuffed with corpses."
"That's not very practical. You'd have to change them out every month at least."
Blays brushed crumbs from the table. "I think you're overestimating the quality of the service in this inn."
They borrowed plain dark clothing from Lolligan's servants and left a minute after eleven. The city docks were quiet, gentle waves lapping over the pebbles. Blays led them uphill through whitewashed rowhouses and tidily clipped parks. Soon the walls turned unpainted, weather-chapped; the green lawns disappeared in favor of raked stone and individual trees. A three-quarter moon lit snaking alleys and haphazard homes attached to and built on top of much older stone structures. The few windows that weren't shuttered were glassless holes opening on dim rooms. On the corners, men sat on chairs, exposed to the wind, swigging from leather flasks. A whole crew of sailors reeled past, singing a rhythmic song that was either about oars or penises. Torches fluttered from the more ambitious inns and pubs. Otherwise, the streets were dark as a closet.
&nbs
p; The Cohben Inn's only identification was two sticks of bamboo crossed above its crooked doorway. Like everything in the neighborhood, it was wedged between two other unornamented structures, but it stood a floor taller than anything within several blocks.
"Not sure how much use Mourn's going to be as a sniper when he can't cover the roof," Dante said.
Blays shrugged. "We'll stand on our tiptoes. See if we can't convince whoever we're meeting to do the same."
He led them across the street into the kinking alley behind the buildings that faced the Cohben. Washlines webbed the space between the upper floors. Ramshackle decks jutted below shuttered windows. Pots clogged these platforms, sporting yellow sticks of withered plants. The walls were winter-warped wood, poorly chinked.
"Think you can make it up?" Dante said.
Mourn tipped back his shaggy head. "There's a chance I do and a chance I don't."
Blays stared at him. "Is there even a point to saying things like that?"
"You don't think it's important to remember that everything's uncertain?"
"When I'm climbing a roof, I want to be convinced there's zero chance my brains wind up slopped all over the street."
"Well, to each his own," Mourn said. "I will do my best. If I don't make it, I'll yell. Involuntarily, I suspect."
This was good enough for Dante. He watched the rooftops as they moved to the alleys behind the Cohben, which were more or less the same as the backstreet they'd left Mourn in, except they smelled somewhat worse of urine. Recessed doorways stood in the faces of nearly every building, as if the passage had been specifically designed to hide armed lookouts. Lira chose one halfway down the alley and disappeared into its shadows.
"I can't imitate a bird call to save my life," she said. "Or your life, for that matter. So if there's trouble, I'll yell, too."
"Works for me." Blays stepped toward the inn's back door, then glanced back over his shoulder. "And thanks."
Her teeth flashed in the darkness. Blays tried the door, which opened with a squeak and a shudder. The public room was smoky, the product of a chimney that hadn't been swabbed in ages. A group of men rattled dice at a table. The walls were scrawled with carved initials and symbols, mostly animals and body parts. Dante rented the last available room on the top floor and clumped up the stairs.
His room was tight-walled and all too redolent of the alley's stink. He locked the door behind them and swung open the shutters. Blays poked his head out the glassless window and gaped upwards. "These are the stupidest roofs I've ever seen."
Dante leaned out the window. Above, the eaves flared away from the roof's edge. "Maybe they were built to discourage people from walking on roofs. No one has ever walked on a roof for a socially acceptable reason."
"We're not committing a crime here."
"Yes, but if we're meeting at midnight on a roof in the shitty part of town, chances are we'll be conspiring to do so."
"Right now I'm more interested in conspiring not to break my leg." Blays pulled inside and knelt to paw through his pack, emerging with a steel hook and a line of rope as thin as his finger. He lobbed the hook up at the roof, hanging onto the rope's loose end. The hook screeched over the clay and fell down, banging against the shutters below them. Blays swore, then repeated this exact sequence a half dozen times while Dante gritted his teeth and listened for the angry thump of the innkeeper's boots on the stairs. Finally, the hook secured with a clink. Blays yanked to make sure it was secure, then knotted the loose end around the shutter's lower hinges. As casually as if he were hopping off a step, he swung into the open air and scrambled up the rope. Dante gaped up after him.
"Come on, you sissy," Blays stage-whispered from the roof. "What's the worst that could happen?"
"Dying?"
"Only if you have overcooked-noodle arms."
Dante reached for the rope. "I wonder what's killed more men over the years. Wild animals? Or masculine taunts?"
It looked worse than it was. Though he lacked Blays' natural athleticism, years of travel and sporadic sword-practice had left him honed and lean. He pulled himself up hand over hand. When his elbow cleared the eave's lip, Blays grabbed his sleeve and hauled him in. There, the upturned edges of the roof proved beneficial, giving them something to bang into and grab hold of if they were to slip on the dew-slick tiles.
Blays leaned forward and headed up the steep roof on all fours. On the other side of its peak, the roof plateaued in a shelf some three feet wide. Blays slid down to it and Dante followed, seating himself. The flat stone street waited sixty feet below. The midnight bells tolled while he caught his breath. He squinted at the roofs across the street, but it was too dark to see if Mourn had made it to the top.
The bells rang a final time, were overtaken by silence. Blocks away, a man cackled and whooped, his voice bouncing down the streets.
"Think Cassinder's pranking us?" Blays said.
"I don't think he has the imagination."
"Right?" Blays laughed. "He talks like a dead person trying to remember how it felt to be alive."
A voice murmured behind them. "He's more dangerous than you think."
Dante whirled, tipping. He flung out a palm and caught at the roof. A figure crouched just behind the roof's peak, dressed from head to toes in midnight blue. Eyes peeked from two diamond-shaped cuts.
"My gods," Blays said. "Have we been ambushed by a towel?"
The fabric over the figure's mouth puffed with a single laugh. The laugh was a woman's. "This is no ambush."
"That's good, because we've prepared an elaborate counter-ambush that would wreak terrible harm on any real ambushers."
She shook her head. "This is a proposal."
"But we just met."
Dante almost shoved Blays off the roof. "Propose away."
The woman slipped over the peak of the roof, joining them on the narrow shelf. "Do you know what happened at Jocubs' today?"
"Sure," Blays said. "We got royally screwed."
"Jocubs represented the view of a slender minority," the woman said.
"Then what does the fat majority say?" Dante said.
Behind her cloth mask, the woman's look was unreadable. "That he struck a deal. One that will benefit him and those with him at the top. Everyone below will have to scramble to avoid the coming flood."
Dante shifted his weight across the wet tiles. "Then what are you willing to risk to divert the flood altogether?"
"That depends on what you're willing to risk to help us."
"Easy answer. We've already risked everything."
"Support for the capital hinges entirely on Jocubs' ability to whip the others in line." Her eyes were as gray as a winter sea and steady as the streets sixty feet below. "But no one likes the lash. Jocubs doesn't look out for our interests any more than he manages yours—he used you, leveraged your presence to get Setteven's financiers to give him everything he asked. I'm sure the terms were fat, too. But he favors his friends. When a road charges a new toll, he doesn't pay. The taxes on whatever blend of leaves he happens to be growing never rise. Whatever deal he's struck with Moddegan and Cassinder, most of us will never see it. Our words and our votes don't matter. As long as he's in charge, they never will."
"Is this going where I think it's going?" Blays said.
"What's the solution?" Dante said.
"Very simple," the woman said. "If you want the merchants' backing, all you have to do is kill Jocubs dead."
14
A cold wind flowed over the roof. Dante rubbed his mouth. "Why don't you kill him yourselves?"
The woman's mask shifted in a smile. "So you'll be blamed."
Blays laughed. "Well, that's honest."
"Who do you work for?" Dante said.
"Change," she said. "That's all you need to know."
Blays sniffled against the cold. "Generally, I prefer to do a little thinking before committing to an assassination. How can we reach you?"
"Hang a flag from Lolligan's roof. Whit
e for no, black for yes. Our offer expires at this time tomorrow."
"We'll let you know," Dante said.
She nodded and vaulted over the roof's peak, disappearing with a single clink of tiles. Dante climbed up the roof, slid down to where their hook still clung to the eaves, and shimmied down to the open window. Half an hour had passed since they'd taken their room. On their way out into the alley, the innkeeper gave them a funny look.
Lira's silhouette emerged from a doorway. "Someone vaulted across the rooftops a few minutes after you climbed up. They left the same way less than five minutes later."
"Sounds right," Dante said. He cut across the main street and back into the alley where they'd left Mourn.
"So what happened?" Lira said.
"Bad things," Blays said.
"But you look fine."
"Oh, not for us."
"All this coyness is getting old." There was a sharpness to her voice Dante hadn't heard before. "The less you let me know, the less I can help you take your goals."
"You'll hear it when we explain to Mourn and Lolligan." Dante cupped his hands and hissed up at the dark walls of the alley. "Mourn!"
"I exist," Mourn replied faintly. A foot scuffed high above their heads. Mourn lowered himself from a high balcony, stretching his toes to meet the deck a story below, clinging to a clothesline for support. He reached the ground, nodded to himself, and joined them without a single question. Dante headed toward the docks, staring down every man who glanced his way, looking over his shoulder at every scrape of foreign feet.
At the island manor, Lolligan opened the front door himself, too bright-eyed to have slept. He sent a servant for tea and bread and fish spread.
"The later the meeting, the more interesting it tends to be, eh?" The tradesman smiled, beard ruffling. "Now spill it before I drop dead of anticipation."
For a moment, Dante considered lying, or claiming it was too sensitive a matter to discuss—he'd only met Lolligan a couple weeks ago, and there had always been an eagerness to the old man that suggested he was pursuing submerged angles of his own—but right now, he had no choice. He needed Lolligan's knowledge. He had to trust him.
The Great Rift Page 32