by Gregory Ashe
Chapter Thirty-three
The faintest tug. A hand grabbed at Dag’s pursestrings. Dag spun and caught the would-be pickpocket’s arm. A boy looked up at him, mouth open in a great O, brittle, dull hair falling over his pale forehead. Dag felt nothing but skin and bone on the boy’s arm.
The boy kicked at Dag’s shins and tried to stomp on Dag’s feet. Some of the blows landed, one coming close enough to the bolt-wound in Dag’s leg that he let out an involuntary gasp. Dag grabbed the boy’s other arm, lifted him up in the air, and shook him until the boy’s teeth rattled. The boy’s feet churned the air, but he no longer tried to kick Dag.
Two black-skinned men—Mancs, most likely—stopped and laughed and pointed, talking to each other in their deep-voiced guttural language. Even from this distance, Dag could smell the oil on their skin, the almond-bite of the hahsun cloud they had been swimming in. Sailors, they had to be, and fools to wander the streets of the Gut this late. The moon hung overhead, a sliver of white against the purple of the evening sky.
The Apsians moved on without even glancing over at the dangling boy; this was the Gut, after all. Dag had learned, quickly, that people in the Gut did not see anything unless there was coin to be had. He shook the boy one last time, for good measure.
“Please sir,” the boy said. Tears stood in his eyes. “Lemme go, please. I didn’t mean anything by it, it wasn’t me, I didn’t do anything.”
“I should cut off that hand,” Dag said. “That’s what they do to thieves.”
“I’m not no thief,” the boy said, suddenly angry. “And beside, that’s not what they do to thieves at all. Papa says they give thieves the big manors up the hill. Why would they cut off their hands?”
“That’s what they do where I’m from,” Dag said. “Maybe I should introduce a new punishment.”
He set the boy on the ground and released one of his arms. Then he drew his long dagger and let the blade rest a good inch up the boy’s forearm.
“What do you say?” Dag said. “About here, no?”
The boy twisted, and Dag let him go. He could see the terror in the boy’s pale face as he turned to see if Dag were following. Dag gave a menacing step, and the boy’s head whipped forward and he scurried down a side street.
Maybe that will be enough to teach him to keep his fingers to himself, Dag thought. Even if it weren’t, it was still the most productive thing that Dag had done in almost two weeks. Two weeks of scouring the Gut for Sipir. Two weeks of nothing but bedbugs and constantly changing inns. No point in letting Pontus find him, after all.
Two weeks of frustrated ends. He had heard Sipir’s name only once, in response to his questioning—the matron of a wine-house had told him that Sipir had killed the last two men looking for him. “An Order fool,” the woman had said, “and another fellow. Tricked them into an alley, set his men on them, and they dragged the bodies out that night.” Dag had avoided questions after that; Sipir knew he was in the city. And for whatever reason, Ishahb burn him, he’s avoiding me. That much was obvious.
Dag turned at the next street and the saw the path leading off to the Driptangle. Piles of refuse stood among the overgrown bushes that screened the homes to either side of the trail. Still holding his long dagger in one hand, he started down the path. It was his only option left. Without Sammeen and Bonacore to head the coup and keep the coin rolling, the men down in the Driptangle might have disbanded.
Or they might be waiting for Semença, oblivious to the fact that the larger plan has fallen to pieces. Semença. Two days away? Three? Too close, and Dag had no way to know if Brech’s plan was in motion. And no way to know if I can leave this ash-blessed city. Dag slowed as he turned down the path and kept to the thickest shadows, where the rotting garbage lay under the overgrown bushes. If Bonacore Coi’s men were waiting and saw him, Dag would be lucky to walk away from the Driptangle. The mercenaries would not want visitors.
Halfway down the narrow path between houses, Dag froze. A man, hunched over but running, appeared further up the path toward the Driptangle. Dag slid between a pair of bushes, grimacing at the smell as his boots squelched, and crouched.
The man stopped just a few feet from where Dag hid and turned. He was short, bundled in a cloak, in spite of both fashion and weather. Breath in his throat, Dag leaned forward and parted the branches of the bush. Two, three, then six men were coming out of the pit toward the lone man. One of Pontus’s spies?
A ruddy glow broke the darkness for half a heartbeat, but it was enough to illuminate Trenius Evus’s face. Dag flipped his dagger up. Ishahb burn me, what’s the old fool doing here? The man had dropped into Dag’s lap as though delivered by Ishahb himself. Dag tensed; his resolution to kill Sipir and abandon Brech wavered. This was his chance to remove one of the bloodiest Apsian generals, while winning Brech’s favor at the same time. What does it matter if the city falls to pieces? I’ll be long gone.
Evus’s voice filled the night air with strange words. Dag poised to leap forward. One quick jump, a thrust, and it would be over. He could leave this stinking, rotting dung-hill of a city. Let Sipir and Brech do what they wished.
Flames billowed out from Evus’s hands, recasting the trail in red and yellow light. Dag recoiled, instinctively. Practitioner, his mind screamed. Ishahb burn me, it wasn’t the priest at all. No wonder no one could kill this burning man. He struggled to make sense of the sudden revelation.
His hesitation cost him his opportunity. The flames, which began in a graceful cloud, jerked and hissed, and great gouts of fire began to shoot across the trail. Terror covered Evus’s face, the look of a man holding onto a wild horse for his life. A long ripple of fire broke away from the main cloud and slashed toward the bushes where Dag was hiding.
He stumbled back and threw his hands up, but not quickly enough. The bushes burst into flames, and the heat seared his forearms. Dag fell and landed on his backside, right up against the wall of the house behind him.
The bushes burned like torches, the flames jumping and spreading down the row. Evus was gone, hidden by the wall of fire. Dag picked himself up, sheathed his dagger, and ran. The fire kept pace with him, and by the time Dag reached the street, the path was a tunnel of flame. A heap of smoking bodies lay halfway through the inferno, but Dag could not tell how many men lay there.
He examined his arms—a few blisters, most of the skin pink, as though from sunburn—and then moved up the street. Men and women filled the streets now, screaming for a bucket line, although whatever magic fueled fires seemed to have died out, for the flames did not leap to the houses immediately, the way they had on the bushes.
A flicker of movement, out of the corner of Dag’s eye, caught his attention. Someone pushing his way against the crowd, but in a different direction from Dag. Someone short, bundled in a cloak in spite of late summer air. Evus.
Dag changed direction, pushing and shoving through the mass of screaming people.