Moth and Spark

by Anne Leonard

  “Fine. But don’t dawdle.”

  By the time they reached the Flats, Corin thought he had perhaps let arrogance get the best of him. The rain was not torrential, but it was hard and steady. Paved and cobbled streets were slick, potholes masqueraded as puddles, the lamps could not dispel the gloom. The unpaved streets and alleys had become quagmires of sticky heavy mud. If the men were not thinking curses at him, the horses were.

  In daytime the Flats was a busy loud area full of men loading and unloading barges from up- or downriver, piling goods onto carts to be taken to market or warehouses or wagons to go elsewhere, and laboring on the boats. The boats were not the immense oceangoing vessels that put in at Dele but smaller slower ships that fought the current with oars and noisy steam-paddles. The canal docks had everything that any waterfront did, sawyers and ropemakers and burly laborers, scrawny opportunistic cats, a square neat brick wharfmaster’s house, blacksmiths and their hod carriers. There were plenty of illegal deals made, of course, but not at knifepoint. At night it was another story: the stevedores were gone, replaced by hired thugs guarding the boats and the goods, the taverns and brothels were full, and brawls were common and often large. The rain would quell some of the usual violence and roughness, but only some. Corin usually hated having an escort, though he had long ago conceded to it. It galled him sometimes, to be a man and still subject to the will of his father, but the policy on this had been laid out long ago. He remembered vividly a chastisement when he was fifteen or sixteen. You can risk your own neck and I can’t stop you, Aram had said, but I will stop you risking soldiers’ lives for your own pleasure. He had said, It’s a formality, I’ll go alone, and the king had for the first and only time in Corin’s life struck him. It had not been hard, but the mere fact of it had shocked him into pained silence. You are the prince. You are never alone. The men are not for you but for Caithen. In the Flats it was a necessary precaution, not a formality. If he went alone he faced a good chance of a fight, not because he was the prince but because a solitary man was prey.

  There were not many lights on the streets they went on. The buildings were cramped and shabby, the dirt streets narrow and dark. The rain had washed away some of the usual garbage and rot but reinvigorated the odors of what remained. Wet, skinny, miserable-looking women huddled in doorways. They did not call out to ply their trade; men on horseback probably terrified them. They no doubt expected the city watch to haul them off to prison. Here and there were dark heaps of rags that were actually men in stupors or illness. In the narrow spaces between buildings people had erected miserable little sheds covered with scavenged sheet metal. The rain beat loudly on it.

  They were not going to the worst parts, where the buildings were falling apart, with holes in the roofs and no doors or shutters, the insides thick with filth and refuse. A man might die there and lie unburied on the street for days while the rats and the dogs and the crows worked at him. Many of the houses were abandoned, which had made them into gathering places for young men to rape women and kill one another. A few went up in fire every winter. Fire was the only thing that had a chance to cleanse the place, but it was always stopped lest it spread.

  Every city had such places; it had been that way as long as there were cities. Humanity invariably sorted itself, and some people were the dregs. That knowledge did not make Corin any less ashamed that there was such a place in his city, on his watch. He kept such thoughts to himself. Nothing would divest him of authority sooner than to notice that the poor were people. Charity was women’s work. He was glad of the rain, not only because it drove people in but because it prevented the men from talking to one another, saying things he did not want to hear.

  He led them down to the wharf before going to Liko’s. The black water, pocked with raindrops, lapped against the slimy pilings and stone walls of the quays. Boats rocked and creaked on their lines. Dull light from the lanterns on a few decks was the only illumination. The smiths had banked their fires and shut the doors. It was empty of people; even the mad, who walked disheveled and shouting in the streets, had taken cover from the rain. The birds and rats had all found refuge of some sort. It was still, lifeless. Across the water he saw only the darkness of the river bluffs.

  He remembered a time when he had snuck out of his rooms at university and down to the Liden docks at night with a few other students. They went into a tavern, where he immediately discovered he was more fastidious than he had thought, and he slipped back out. A watchman confronted him while he sat at the end of a pier, legs dangling over the water. You be careful, lad, said the watchman. If you fall in there’s no one going to get you out. He said, I won’t fall. I’m not cup-shot. The watchman lowered the lantern and asked, Have you ever seen a drowned man? Corin had to admit that he had not. He did not tell the man about the deaths he had seen in other forms. The watchman said, There’s no winning against water. Once you tire and slip under, you won’t break free. All you will do is struggle and then die. Come step back.

  That had been before Tyrekh, when he still thought that nothing lay ahead of him except the same rule with a light hand over a placid country that his father had. Both of them had hardened since then.

  He surveyed the docks carefully again. He was not sure what he was looking for. The water seemed menacing, the maw of some ravenous beast that would devour everything. It was ancient, cold, powerful. The boats were flimsy things that would break apart at the first surge. He imagined slipping after all, clutching helplessly at the slick wood of the pier and sliding on into the blackness, a cold weight bearing down on him, terror as his aching lungs gave up. He shuddered and turned his horse.

  Liko’s house was on a corner. It was the only one visible in any direction that had light coming out around the shutters and between the boards. There was not enough wind to move the cracked wooden sign hanging outside the door. Corin dismounted and rapped hard on the door with the handle of his knife. Bron and two other men were beside him, swords drawn.

  The door opened and there was Liko, holding a candle that guttered fiercely in the draft. A few roaches scuttled into a darker corner. “Oh,” he said. “You. Come in, but there’s only room for three of you.”

  A skinny girl wearing only a thin dirty white shift was sitting on a wooden chair, the skirt hiked up to the middle of her thighs, her legs spread. The dark circles of her nipples were obvious through the fabric even in the dim light. She could not have been more than fifteen. Liko gave her a coin and said, “Get out, and keep your mouth shut.” She got out. Bron and Alric did not sheathe their swords, and Corin did not ask them to.

  There was an open flask on the table, but Liko did not appear to be drunk yet. It was hard to tell, but his eyes seemed clear. He was short, dirty, and gamy-smelling, with unwashed poorly cut brown hair and several weeks’ worth of beard. His shirt was stained, and his pants were shiny at the knees and fraying at the ankles. He had been a well-off gentleman before he let the bottle take him. His family had petitioned successfully to have him cut off from the entail. Corin disliked him but did not underestimate him. He was clever, cunning even, and a survivor. He knew everything that happened in the district and in much of the rest of the city, and though he did not control it he knew who did. He made a living of sorts by selling useless medicines and even more useless advice to people more desperate than himself, and information to anyone who would pay for it. Corin tolerated his disrespect because he preferred it to groveling.

  The room was not so much tiny as it was crowded. There were splintering crates stacked everywhere, a table, a bookshelf filled with dirty glass bottles and jars like an apothecary’s, another bookshelf filled with a few books and many more yellowing pamphlets, ragged cloths draping broken chairs, and, unbelievably, a fortune-teller’s glass ball. A few very old skulls, one missing its jaw, were on top of one of the bookshelves. It stank of urine and old vomit, cheap wine and vinegar. A sweet rottenness that was sulfur, and made him think of drago
n. There was another smell too, something acrid. He looked around again and saw a distilling apparatus in one corner. That made this easier. It would give away far too much to ask directly about the blood-dust.

  “Doing alchemy now, are you,” he said, gesturing at the distiller. “Lead into gold? Love potions or poisons?”

  “There’s no alchemy in chemistry. Particulate matter cares nothing of the motions of the heavens. What people want, I supply.” Liko spoke pompously, as though he were trying to sell his wares.

  “What do they want these days?”

  “A little of this, a little of that. Herbs don’t cure everything.” His eyes narrowed. “You don’t think I sold what killed Lord Cade, do you?”

  Right to the heart of the matter. Liko being who he was, it was not unreasonable for him to think he might be suspected of it. That was why Corin had come, after all. “Did you?”

  “Not with knowledge of it. I’m not in the business of making poisons, whatever you may think. But I may have sold an ingredient or two.” He waved broadly at the shelves. “One metal can act in many different ways depending on how it is combined. I can’t answer for what other people do.”

  “What do you know about Cade’s death?”

  “I know only fleet-footed Rumor blazing among us. It’s all the talk.”

  That had a good chance of being true. Few things would make more compelling gossip than murder in the palace. “What else does rumor say? Did he owe Akelon money?”

  “Yes. But he was making payments. Akelon wouldn’t have killed him, if that’s what you’re after. And no, I don’t know where Cade got the money.”

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  A hesitation. No doubt he was hoping to be paid first. “No.”

  Corin put a hand on his sword hilt and said softly, “You’ve heard something, or you guess something. Tell me.”

  Liko swallowed, then said, “I don’t know who killed him. But he was down here too much even for a gambler. He must have crossed someone.”

  That settled one thing. Courtiers never came to this sort of place unless they had been caught in someone else’s trap. They were paying debts or making illicit sales of their valuables to keep the blackmailers at bay. Cade hadn’t been an accidental victim.

  Corin asked, “What was he doing down here?” He wished the room were lighter.

  “Watching. I never saw him talk to anyone. It was peculiar.”

  “Did you ever talk to him?”

  Liko shook his head vigorously. “He came here once and wanted me to put him into a sleep-trance. He didn’t make much sense. I don’t think he really knew what he was talking about.”

  “Do you think he was mad?”

  “No,” Liko said after a brief hesitation. “Desperate, maybe.”

  “Well, did you do it?” Corin asked. He knew little of mesmerism, though it did not surprise him that Cade would practice it. It was a fad among the courtiers.

  “No. I didn’t want to be killed when he came to regret letting me hear whatever it was he wanted to find out. Or when it didn’t work and he looked the fool. All mesmerism would tell him is what’s in his own head.”

  That was prudent, although it was hard to imagine Cade as a killer. “Did he practice the occult?” That was a forbidden practice, not a fad, but a lord who would ask Liko to mesmerize him might well be lunatic enough to turn to the so-called dark forces for assistance.

  “He hadn’t the mind for any kind of science,” Liko said contemptuously. “Not even the dubious ones.”

  “Conjury’s not science.”

  “Tell that to someone who does it and he’ll tell you the laws of magic are more complex than optics.”

  Corin grinned, remembering his university years and the tendentiousness of some of the scholars. Then he brought the conversation back to Cade. “Is he the only one who’s been down recently?”

  “The only one I’ve seen.” Always the careful answer. “I don’t know every retainer of every lord.”

  “And all he did was watch?”

  “I think he wanted to see what was happening, that’s all.”

  “Spying?”

  Liko gave a half shrug. “How would I know?”

  Corin did not say what he thought. He said, “And what is happening?”

  Another hesitation. Longer this time. Corin let himself show some impatience in his movements.

  Liko said, “There’s people leaving. Laborers. Shoremen. Women.” The way he said women made it clear he meant the whores, which was a bad sign. They were the first to come and the last to go anywhere.

  Corin asked, “No work?”

  Liko shook his head. “Plenty of work. They’re scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Don’t know.” He reached for his flask.

  With a quick grab, Corin took it from him. The man tensed, then slackened, obviously reminding himself whom he spoke with. Corin sniffed it. Cheap sweet wine. He tilted the flask and let some dribble out, dark like blood, onto the floor. The odor rose to his nostrils. It smelled more vile spilled than in the flask.

  Liko said, “No more. Please.”

  “Then answer me.” He let a few drops fall.

  “The dead,” Liko said with obvious reluctance. Corin wondered why. Perhaps he feared being accused of practicing the occult himself. Or just being taken for a fool. Anyone as well-off and educated as Liko had been knew that the dead stayed dead.

  “What about the dead?”

  “People say they’re waiting. Opening doors that shouldn’t be opened.”

  The phrase opening doors made Corin chill despite his own wealth and education. He put the wine back on the table but out of Liko’s reach. Scornfully he said, “You don’t mean that. People don’t give up money because of ghosts.” He was aware that he was also scolding himself.

  Liko said, “You haven’t heard these stories.” He stopped abruptly.

  “Go on, tell them to me.”

  “They say they look in the water and see the dead all pale and blind. Not bodies. There is a woman who comes up to you and touches your shoulder and you freeze like ice and she sucks the blood out of you while you stand there. Then she turns into a bird and flies away. At night there are cold spots you can’t walk through and they herd you down to the water and the next thing you know it’s morning and you smell like river water and your clothes are sopping. And sometimes you walk and turn and turn and you can’t get anywhere, you keep coming to the same corner, or you’re standing in a courtyard that’s all white stone and nothing is alive and there’s no way out. You come back somehow and your shoes are worn to shreds and you have scrapes and bruises all over your hands and arms.”

  It was more convincing than it should be. It rubbed at the edges of the blankness in his memory. There were drowned things in that water by the docks that would emerge white and swollen and blindly searching if they had the chance.

  He glanced at Bron and Alric. Thankfully, neither of them looked persuaded. It reassured him. He said, “You know better, you’re not a peasant. I wager there’s not a person you’ve spoken to who can actually say any of it happened to him and not to the friend of a friend of a friend.”

  Liko shrugged again. “Of course it’s false, but what’s it matter what I think? That’s what they think. So they go.”

  That was true. And useless. “What about Cade? Had he heard those stories?”

  “Probably.”

  There was an answer in that somewhere, but it would not come to him. Nor was he sure of the question. Liko seemed just a bit too off-handed about it to be telling the truth. He decided not to push further in that direction. “If the dockworkers are leaving, what’s happening to the cargo?”

  And then, an additional nugget. “There are plenty of Myceneans, they don’t seem to care.”

  It took
effort to keep himself from swearing. That was bad. There were always a few Myceneans about, but not many. The ones who were poor enough to work as laborers were usually too poor to leave Mycene. If there were many, that had to be Hadon’s doing too. He would give odds of ten to one that the Myceneans were the source of the stories, preparing a place for themselves to do whatever it was the Emperor—or his sons—wanted. Dragons in the north, spies in the capital. Hadon could be sending in soldiers to prepare a strike at Aram much worse than taking Tai hostage. But why, what was the threat?

  At any rate, Cade had probably talked to the Myceneans even if Liko hadn’t seen it. He had got himself in debt, turned spy for Tyrekh or Hadon, and then something had gone wrong. He became a weak link in someone else’s chain.

  Corin said, “Are there enough Myceneans to do the labor?”

  “Yes.”

  He did not want to put Liko on the track of thinking that was important. He said, “Akelon is taking advantage of the situation, I presume.” Akelon controlled the canals and docks and the other lawless pockets of the city, and had for more years than Corin had lived. He loaned money to young foolish gentlemen who had lost too much gambling, and they were in his power before they knew it. He was a king of thieves and had eluded capture so many times it was mythical. The watch was paid well so they would not be easily corrupted.

  “Of course. So are the docking fee collectors.”

  In other words, the Crown. Corin let the jab pass. “Who else owes him?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Granted. But enough to really fear?”

  “Brice, Ricard, Larron.”

  The names were not a surprise. They were young men who cared only about impressing young ladies and one another. Cade had been part of that set. They might be traitors with him. “If Akelon catches anyone else in his net I want to know. Anything else notable?”

  “No.”

  He was lying, Corin was sure of it this time. He frowned. He was cold, and he pulled at one shoulder of his cloak. The candle flame flared high with the movement, brightening the room for an instant.