But Cerise sniffed. “That’s a fine way to pay me back, offering me coin you got unlawfully.”
“What’s unlawful about it? We sell things just like everybody else.” She had gotten to be a pretty accomplished pickpocket, but Cerise didn’t need to know that, and Marceline hadn’t lied—she didn’t offer her sister that money.
Cerise shook her head. “How is it always we? You and that old man! Gods, Marceline, you’re lucky he hasn’t killed you already—or worse.”
Marceline wasn’t sure how anything was supposed to be worse than being dead, but she was used to people being afraid of Tom. Everyone she met, it seemed, was afraid of Tom, even other Sheathers. But it wasn’t themselves they feared for; it was always Marceline herself. Even Morgan Imrick at the Dragon’s Head, who was one of the few people Marceline actually liked, was always saying, Listen here, monkey: if that old rat ever gives you any trouble, you come tell me, all right?
She rolled her eyes. “Would you come off it about Tom? He’s harmless.”
“He carries a knife,” Cerise said—how on earth did she manage to make her voice that shrill? “Didn’t you tell me he carries a knife?”
Had she? Not one of her brighter decisions, that. “I carry a knife,” Marceline pointed out. She’d been practicing with it too, aiming throws at the back of the door—at Tom’s, naturally, because Cerise’d pitch a fit if she did it here. She was getting better—she’d gotten it to stick, most times, although just where it stuck was anyone’s guess. Even when she couldn’t take the knife out, she’d practice the motion during dull times, flicking her wrist over and over.
“There’s no reason for me to be afraid of Tom, and I’m not afraid of him,” she added for good measure. “I can run faster than him, I can pick locks almost as well as he can, and I can hold my liquor better.” When Cerise raised an eyebrow at her, she blushed and muttered, “Well, I can hold it better because I don’t drink any.”
“Thank the gods for that, at least,” Cerise said, throwing up her hands. She let them drop in a moment, though, falling defeated to her sides. “Listen, Marceline, I can’t stay and argue with you; I’m expected at the shop before the hour’s out.” She jerked her chin at the shelves. “If I leave you here, are you going to be content with what you have, or are you going to clean me out and leave me to starve?”
Marceline scowled. “You’re not going to bloody starve.”
“Language, Marceline—”
“I said you’re not going to bloody well starve,” she insisted, gripping her spoils more tightly. “It was never you who got thrown out.”
Her sister fell silent, biting her lip, and Marceline immediately felt guilty. That had been low of her, lower than Cerise deserved. She knew Cerise had tried to get her father to let Marceline live with them when he was alive. She knew he’d hardly been cold in the grave, and the house newly Cerise’s, when her sister had come to find her at Tom’s, even though she must have known how dangerous it was for an ordinary person to venture into Sheath. It wasn’t her fault that their mother had been such a little fool, that she’d told her husband that Marceline was her lover’s child, that she was going to run away and live with him. The lover himself had had other plans, of course, and then Marceline and her mother had nowhere to go. Cerise had just been caught in the middle.
“I know you never threw anybody out, either,” she finally said, because she had to say something. “I’m not … blaming you for what your father did. I’m just saying…”
“He might’ve been your father too, you know,” Cerise said quietly. “Mother said you weren’t his, but she wanted to believe that so badly … I wonder if even she knew the truth.” She squinted at Marceline. “We do look alike, here and there, though maybe that’s just from her.”
Marceline didn’t think they looked alike. Cerise’s nose was straight and elegant, but hers was small and stunted and ever so slightly turned up. Marceline’s hair was the color of dried blood and just about as silky, but her sister’s was gold licked with red, soft and glossy every day of her life. They’d both been given fancy names—they could thank their mother for that—but Cerise’s seemed to suit her. Marceline didn’t feel like a Marceline, and most people seemed to agree; the only people who used her given name were the insufferable ones, like Cerise and that boy Seth from Morgan’s tavern, who was fully sixteen but acted like a boy of twelve. “I might’ve been,” she said at last. “I might’ve been his. That’d be funny, wouldn’t it? Man throws out his own child because he thinks it’s someone else’s?”
Cerise looked horrified. “Funny? For him to have torn our whole family apart for nothing? I told him so many times how much he’d regret it, if it ever came to light that you were really—”
“Well, he’s dead now,” Marceline said, “so he doesn’t have to worry about that, does he?”
Cerise bit her lip again, and for a moment Marceline thought she was going to pursue it, but she only said, “Listen, I wouldn’t leave you here, but I wasn’t joking about the shop. Just … take things, if you’re going to. And lock my door.”
And that made her feel guilty again, to remember the weight of the spare key in her pocket, which Cerise had given her even when Marceline refused to come live with her. She almost wanted to pick the lock next time, just on principle.
* * *
For a moment the light filtering through her bedroom window looked almost pretty—muted, soft, faintly blue, the way light often looks in dreams. Morgan stretched slowly, curling and uncurling her fingers as if grasping at it. It had been, all things considered, a decent afternoon.
“Getting restless already?” Braddock asked, and she was sprawled against him enough that she could feel his voice as well as hear it, resonating and immediate, with that slight amiable lilt he never used when they were in company.
She sat up slowly, brushing the hair away from her face. “Mm … I’d better start setting up for this evening. Customers won’t wait.”
“Fair enough,” he said, rolling out of bed and to his feet in a single motion, then casting urgently about for his clothes.
She smiled—he got so uneasy over appearing naked in front of her, as if he worried she’d compare him to someone else. “I didn’t mean I would race you,” she said.
He stopped, looked over at her, only one leg in his pants. “Oh,” he said. “Right, then. My mistake.”
The light drifted along his jaw, and Morgan had to hold back a wince as she looked at the still-forming bruise. “Does that hurt?”
“Not as much as you think, I’m sure.” He shook his head. “If I’d seen you, you never would’ve landed that punch. Not a chance.”
“But you didn’t see me,” Morgan said.
He snorted. “Aye, aye. Teach me to turn my back on you.”
He still stood awkwardly by the window, though, and Morgan asked, “Is something bothering you?”
“Agh, it’s”—he scratched at his stubble—“stupid worries, old worries, but … I heard something today. Imperator’s men’ve been poking around, asking about … deserters.”
Morgan grabbed her clothes from the floor, shaking them out before she started to put them on. “If they are, it’s some recent affair, no doubt. Nobody’s going to care about what happened years ago.”
Braddock snorted. “Elgar cares about whatever he’s decided to care about, and that can be anything from what the witch-queen’s plotting over in Esthrades to what you and I ate for breakfast this morning. If they start offering gold…”
Morgan tried not to smile. “Well, who else knows about it?”
He looked startled. “What, besides you? No one I know of.”
“And I’m not one to gossip—nor to take anything Elgar’s creatures have to offer. So there you have it.”
That wrung a chuckle out of him. “I know it’s a foolish thing to fret over. I said it was, didn’t I?”
“You did.” She reached over, gripping his shoulder gently. “Sheath isn’t the place for
their kind. It’s not a place to order or sift through—you can’t pick one piece of information out of a hundred thousand others. Roger’s family has a history too convoluted and ancient for anyone but him to make sense of, and Deinol’s father could be a king for all we know, and Lucius—I’m afraid to wonder what on earth Lucius’s secret might be. And I own a tavern, and you were in the army once, a long time ago. And nobody cares about any of it.” She released him, carding fingers through her hair to try to straighten it. “We’re all not quite right, and we’re all running from something. That’s why we’re here.”
He craned his neck to get a better look at her, and almost smiled. “What’re you running from, then?”
She smiled back. “These days? Nothing more exciting than the poorhouse, I’m afraid.” She patted his back, half amazed he let her get away with it. “Speaking of, will you help me set up? I’d certainly appreciate it.”
“I suppose I could see my way to doing that,” Braddock said, after only a slight pause. “Might as well get the place looking nice before the usual lot roughs it up again.”
“Now you’re thinking like me,” Morgan said, and followed him downstairs.
* * *
“Afternoon, monkey—or evening, rather, I suppose,” Morgan said, a damp rag wrapped around one hand. “It can’t be a drink you’re after, can it? Or did that old goat send you to fetch something for him?”
It was too early for the Dragon’s Head to be full, but there was a decent crowd, especially at the tables: a group of regulars laying claim to their usual spot and enjoying a more or less quiet dinner; what looked like a passel of apprentices shirking work, giggling over somebody’s last trip to the Roses; and about a half dozen fellows in the far corner who had decided to get drunk earlier than normal and were stumbling their way through a chorus of “The Rose’s Thorn and the Bloody Boar.” Morgan winced at every wrong note, but her rule was that you could be as loud as you pleased as long as you kept the peace, so she said nothing. There were only a couple of people at the bar, both nursing tankards and sulking, so Marceline had plenty of space. And that mercenary, Braddock, was sitting by the window as usual, though he was only drinking water.
Seth ducked into the room, winced and stiffened the way he always did when he saw her, as if he thought she were going to hit him. “Er, Marceline,” he said. “Hello.”
Seth wasn’t precisely an idiot, but he was irritating, so Marceline ignored him and turned back to Morgan. “No, Tom doesn’t need anything. I just dropped some supplies at his place, but he wasn’t in, and I don’t feel like going back to my sister’s.”
“Well, pull up a stool,” Morgan said. “How is Cerise these days?”
“Cerise? Cerise is always the same—always annoying,” she added, for good measure.
Morgan smiled. “Probably good I never had a sister.”
“You wouldn’t want one. They never do you any favors, and they always complain.”
She was going to say more, but then the door banged open, and Roger Halfen strode in, breaking out into a grin when he saw her. “Ah, that’s where the monkey’s got to! I just dropped in on your old man.”
“He isn’t my father,” Marceline said, just as she always did.
“Didn’t say that, did I? He’s certainly as grubby as ever—I’d recommend getting him to clean his fingernails once or twice a decade if I were you.”
Marceline ignored that. “What did you want from him, then?”
He wagged a finger at her. “Now, now, monkey, that’d be telling.” He turned to Morgan. “Can’t stay long, my dear, but I thought I’d down some ale before I set off.” He set two copper coins on the counter, and Morgan slid a full tankard across to him.
Tom hated Roger Halfen, and Marceline tried, out of some halfhearted sense of loyalty, to agree with him, but she’d never quite been able to manage it. Roger could be self-satisfied, certainly, and he talked far too much about the line of legendary thieves he was supposedly descended from, but he was talented, whether or not Tom was willing to admit it. He preferred swindling to outright stealing, usually, but his schemes were so clever his fellow Sheathers were all in a rush to imitate him—at which point he always exposed his own deception and moved on to the next one, of course.
“Where are you going?” Marceline asked him. “Is it a new trick?”
“If it were, monkey, I wouldn’t tell you. Nothing personal against you, of course, but I’m not about to pass my inventions on to Tom Kratchet.” He set down the empty tankard, then wiped his mouth and stood up again. “Thanks, Morgan. I’ll be back in tomorrow for another round, if all goes well.”
Marceline wasn’t about to be put off so easily, though, and she followed him into the street. The sun had set while she’d been inside, and the two of them stuck to the shadows easily, falling into step. “Roger, come on. Are you going to work?”
He sighed. “Not hardly, all right? I’m just on the trail of something.”
“On the trail of what?”
“I’m not going to tell you, my dear. Either run off to Kratchet’s or head back inside.”
Marceline sniffed at that. “I can go where I like.”
Roger threw up his hands. “So do that, if it pleases you. Just leave me to my business. I’ve no need for an apprentice.”
“An apprentice?” Marceline scowled. “I wouldn’t be your apprentice even if you asked.”
“Monkey, you would be even if I didn’t, and we both know it. Even you must know you couldn’t find anyone better.”
She did know that, but that didn’t mean she had to admit it. Besides, what would Tom say? “If you won’t have any apprentices, then what’s the point in asking?”
He chuckled. “Well, you’d best be someone’s, if you hope to go far in the craft. Tom hasn’t obliged you?”
She shook her head. “He thinks he might as well be my father, even though he isn’t, and he says it’s bad luck for a thief to apprentice his own children.”
Roger nodded. “He’s right about that, at least. My own father refused to take me on, as talented as we both were—I suspect that had more to do with his promise to my mother that he’d go straight than with any old superstitions, but he always claimed that was the reason.” He laughed again. “Gran hated that. ‘If I’d wanted you honest, I’d’ve raised you honest, you bleeding ninny. Are you really going to let some woman order you around like that?’ Course, he just pointed out that he’d been letting her do it for years. I think she liked my mother for all that, though.”
Marceline huffed. “You’re ready to talk everybody’s ears off about boring things, but you keep all the interesting bits to yourself.”
“And what about old Tom, eh? He sells his information. Least I’m not that greedy.”
“Well,” Marceline said, “well, he’s better at it than you, anyway.”
Roger laughed. “I wouldn’t need to pay him if he weren’t.”
Marceline looked out over the tops of the buildings, to where the Citadel’s shadow loomed vaguely through the dusk, obscure behind its black walls. “Roger,” she said, “is Elgar bad?”
Roger scratched his cheek. “Well, I never met the man myself, monkey. I think he probably is, though.” He smiled slightly. “Course, if you asked me the same question about your old man, I expect I’d say the same thing.”
Marceline didn’t know what to say to that, so she ignored it. “If he’s so bad, then why do so many people like him?”
“It’s not him they like,” Roger said. “It’s his dream.”
“His dream?”
“Aye,” Roger said. “Elesthene.”
* * *
That night, after even the last customers had gotten turned out and been sent stumbling on their way, Seth stopped Morgan before she went upstairs. “Can I ask you a question?”
Morgan turned, leaning against the edge of the bar. “Another one, you mean? Go ahead.”
Seth shuffled his feet. “Why is it … Why does no one ever go
to the Ninist vestries anymore?”
Whatever she’d been expecting, it clearly wasn’t that. “Because Ninism is dead.”
“Yes, I know,” Seth said, “but why?”
“Because it’s a stupid religion,” Morgan replied. “You need me to tell you that?”
“But what makes it stupid? All religions are … fanciful, aren’t they?”
Morgan sighed, shutting her eyes for a moment. “You don’t talk about where you came from, Seth, and I don’t ask. But for those of us who grew up here, who’ve lived in the shadow of the Citadel our whole lives … we could never get away from the stories. Our parents were always telling us the stories, but it wasn’t really their fault—their parents had never stopped telling them. And the stories were always the same: Elesthene, Elesthene, Elesthene. An empire that covered the whole continent, from the White Waste beyond the Howling Gate to the red cliffs at Issamira’s southern edge. All of it was ours, and all of it was glorious, and this city was the best of it all. It wasn’t just the Citadel—the very streets used to sparkle, or so they said. And back then everyone was a Ninist.” She laughed. “You had to be, or it would be your head. Ninism had more rules than even Elgar could dream up, and the citizens of Elesthene had to follow every one. But it didn’t matter, because Ninism was God, and Elesthene was God, and the glory of the one would increase the glory of the other, until the earth had become a heaven fit for even God to walk.”
Her lips drew together, and she scratched at the bar. “What do you see of that empire now? It ate itself from the inside—those fools who came before us fucked it all to nothing and left us with this. They made us what we are, and we have to scrabble for our bread in the ruins they left. So it’s not so surprising that nobody wants anything to do with their god anymore.” She shook her head at him. “Go to bed, Seth, all right? There’ll be time enough to turn to religion when you’re old, and then maybe you can pick a better one.”
He hadn’t meant he wanted to be a Ninist, Seth wanted to tell her, even after she had gone. He just didn’t understand how people could care about a thing so much and then just stop.
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