The letter. They were waiting on the response to Jassa’s letter.
He and Ashlan had read it over, separately, before dawn. In an awkward, left-handed scrawl that was mercifully comprehensible, the missive was stuffed with knotty, worshipful language that told the Assemblage to expect a wealthy mark at that day’s Meeting for Worship. It hinted of a Gift that would sweeten their relationship with the Man Who Held the Strings. Then it went on, and on, speaking of Rafe’s ascension and many other subjects, rambling as her mind must have been for the past few days.
The inn-keep had sent it to the grubby pub on Lank Street, and they began waiting for word of where that day’s gathering would take place.
There came a pounding at the door.
Rafe jumped, shivering, as if his feverish thoughts had invoked it.
Jassa dashed over, pulling the door open before his paranoia peaked. A boy stood on the other side, his hair combed, his eyes dull, the torn page of a broadsheet in his hand.
A courier. Rafe’s old job, when Rafe had been pretending to be a child himself.
He snatched the broadsheet from Jassa, glaring until she shrank back.
“The inn-keep will pay you,” he said, searching the page for a message.
The boy was as irritated by the snubbed gratuity as Rafe would have been, but Rafe shut the door all the same, finding the letters between the lines—hidden without cunning. He wondered why they’d even bothered writing in code.
“Sulcus Station,” he said. “We’re heading to the abandoned entry to the catacombs.”
Jassa let forth a stream of blearily worshipful language regarding the infinite wisdom of Mother Luck, but Rafe wasn’t listening. He was hurriedly packing up, sniffling and snorting, feeling the sweat trickle down inside his binder.
He laid his hands on the dented metal of the drash’s box.
The scrabbling soothed him, for a moment.
Then his blood answered, scrabbling at his veins.
He lurched to his feet. “Deuce,” he barked. He wanted the thing away from him, until the time came.
“My Ace,” said Jassa, dropping her own belongings to scurry to his side.
“Take this,” he said, passing her the box, “and keep it safe until we’re flush. We’ll take the kiss when we’re paid, to stave off sickness. And then, after the witch restores us, we’ll hole up for a while.” He’d need her, for a while at least, if only to get himself high. He’d have to figure out the rest of his plan from there. “But there’s no need for anyone in the Assemblage to know what’s been done to us.”
“A wise plan,” cooed Jassa, holding the box to her breast, “as befits Fortune’s favorite.”
“Hope you’re up to this, Ace.” Ashlan lurched up, making a groaning, flinching production out of her discomfort.
At least there was no bulge, he noted as she walked past. He was surprised that Hollis fit without protruding, however he’d contorted himself—but then, a mannikin was nothing more than a bundle of processed human guts, give or take a bit of cloth and a pair of tiny shoes.
Rafe turned to lock the door, and stopped, head pounding.
They’d told Tanka they’d meet her here tonight, when the job was done. But the room was empty.
They hadn’t left a single thing behind. When it came down to it, not a one of them had any faith that they’d be back.
The last time Rafe had been anywhere near the Sulcus Catacombs Entry Station, he’d been a courier himself, ferrying messages, meals, and small servings of drugs to the workers in the catacombs below. It was a child’s job, and he wasn’t a child. But the work was steady, and showing any sign of wit earned him enough in tips to make it worth the drudgery. You’re gonna be all right, kid, the supervisor at the Station used to say. Once you’re grown, you’ve always got a place down here. Rafe often thought that he’d rather be murdered than go to work in the innards under this neighborhood—not that it would be an issue, since with his frame, they’d never accept him as a man.
Then the station had closed, after all the workers Rafe used to pester for cigarette money were crushed mid-shift during a dig into the calcified liver of some forgotten deity. The organ of the Gone-Away had shifted enough to tilt the whole of Sulcus, sending shockwaves through Eth early one morning. Now there was no official entry into the catacombs here, and the enchanters who’d ordered the dig—nowhere near the site at the time—blamed their loss on shoddy work practices, moving the operation elsewhere and leaving the building ripe for squatters.
“That’s where the Assemblage is?” muttered Ashlan.
He looked up as Jassa made a beeline for the crumbling mass of the entry station, riven almost in two by the quake. Ever since, the back half of the building had stood four feet higher than the front. The street itself was empty—except for the pair of Deuces guarding the front door, giving Jassa a hero’s welcome.
“We’re on,” said Rafe, grinning through his queasy terror as he threw an arm around Ashlan’s waist.
She stiffened as the Deuces looked up, and for a moment Rafe felt trapped in a nightmare.
This was Ashlan’s entrance, but she wasn’t speaking. She didn’t move.
Sweat gushed from his every pore, hot and cold at once. He thought he might scream, or run.
Then she laughed—a wild, throaty sound, full of life—and reached down to tousle his hair. Slumping against him, walking like she was half-drunk, she looked up at the Deuces and shouted, “This kid’s a nut!”
Rafe, too surprised to speak, tried to laugh along, but he was blushing so hard he feared he’d already spoiled the effect.
“Would you look at Lickle Dee,” cried the Deuce known as Stankjar. “Would you just look at him! Our boy’s become a man out there in them woods! Who’s the bird, Lick?”
“Wedding bells, huh,” said Yabli beside him, her fingers roving the panoply of sores on her neck. “Congrats seven times. The other six are implied. I’m not saying them.”
Ashlan shrieked right in Rafe’s ear. “Oh, he’s not my boyfriend! You guys are kidding, right? They’re too much!”
“Guess we would be too much,” said Stankjar with a leer, “if you’re used to Lickle Dee’s lickle dee, there.”
“What’s that mean?” said Ashlan, looking blearily from Jassa to Rafe. “Why do they keep calling you Lickadee?”
“Little Dee,” said Yabli. “Stank talks funny. It’s a nickname. Short for Little Diaper.”
Rafe’s face felt frozen in an empty-eyed grin.
“Because, you see,” crowed Stankjar, his eyes already wet with tears of laughter, “because on his first night with all of us, he got so stoned that he—that he—”
“He crapped his pants,” said Yabli.
He had no defense for this—for feeling so small, so young, so full of shame.
At least, he thought miserably, he’d managed to get into character.
“He’s no child now.”
Jassa spoke softly, but her solemnity quieted the others. Her eyes were shining, too, but with worship.
He shivered with relief. She wasn’t too far gone to play her part, probably because she really believed it. He’d never been so grateful for her faith.
“This boy is the chosen of Fortune,” she said.
The Deuces were rolling their eyes from Jassa to Rafe and back again, waiting for the joke.
“Didn’t you get the letter?” Rafe said, confused for a moment.
“We—delivered it,” said Stankjar. “Wasn’t for our eyes, was it, though?”
Of course—it wouldn’t have been shared with anyone so low on the ladder. All this was news to the Deuces.
“Well!” Jassa smiled beatifically. “Now you know. Rafe Davin is my Ace.”
“Guess you really are a man now,” said Yabli, rubbing the side of her chin against her shoulder.
“Won’t call you that again,” murmured Stankjar. “Sorry, Ace.”
“Sooo,” said Ashlan, wriggling into the awkward silence, “my nam
e’s Reena, Reena Greeshom, and if today’s enough fun you might be calling me Little Diaper next!”
They all laughed at this, except for Rafe, who was beginning to wonder if stony silence and the occasional glare might be enough to carry him through the day. Things seemed stable enough now, but he still had a horror of speaking. It was lucky they’d been in the wood so long—his obvious withdrawal gave him a good excuse for all this sweating and flinching, which might well have happened either way.
“Probably just piss though,” Ashlan was saying, “cause we’ve been on the road so long I haven’t eaten enough to crap. You guys got anything to eat?”
“Snake eyes, Jassa, but what happened to your hand?” said Stankjar, kneeling down.
“I noticed,” said Yabli. “But I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s from when we met Reena,” said Rafe quickly, before Jassa or Ashlan could butt in. This much he’d rehearsed, if only in his mind, and he wanted to be sure the details were set out right from the beginning. “Reena and I had gone off into the woods to pray. Her first time, with a drash at least.” The others looked suitably impressed—both that he’d taken the blasphemous step of hooking a stranger, he imagined, and that he’d brought Jassa so far to heel that she, of all people, would forego her kiss. “When we came back, her home was going up in black flame. Whole family died. Jassa barely escaped alive.”
“Nice one!” called Stankjar, clapping Jassa on the back. Yabli, too, made sure to touch her, as she’d have laid hands on anyone who’d had a close call. Luck is contagious—that was one of the Seventeen Tenets written by Gast the Foundation in the Ecstasy of her First High, and very possibly the least nonsensical of the bunch.
“It was bad,” drawled Ashlan, her eyes half-lidded. “Everybody burnt. Everybody I ever knew. But you know what I saw, up in the smoke? The Lady Fortune was holding up Mister Rafe, like a baby. And Mister Rafe was rolling a pair of golden dice, and the dice said—” She closed her eyes, wrinkling her brow. “Seven—nine—two—four—aaaand three.”
Stankjar began mouthing those numbers to himself, striving wildly to memorize them. Yabli, meanwhile, reached deep under her collar to scratch. Noting her discolored skin, Rafe wondered if she’d let drashes prowl her entire body by now. She was known as the Public Deuce—hiring herself out to take the poison-heavy first kiss for tlak tourists all over Eth—and Rafe was amazed she was still alive. For most of the faithful, two kisses in an hour were enough to risk death, but Yabli’s tolerance seemed bottomless.
“That’s tough,” she said. “Your lucky hand, wasn’t it?”
“It’s even luckier now,” said Jassa, raising her right arm with a bright smile. “The Lady cares more for change than for charms.”
“Ha!” cried Stankjar. “I can see now why the Lady saw fit to give Rafey the Ace-hood, if that’s your line of thinking these days.” Stankjar had pulled out his namesake, rattling the dice at its filthy bottom. “Ask anyone. I’m far luckier using the same charm every time—that of nature’s lubrication.” He spit forcefully into the jar, then shook it and rolled.
Yabli looked down at the gleaming dice. “Not that time.”
“But on average, though.”
“Actually,” said Jassa, pulling out her notebook and flipping through its lead-darkened pages. “I kept extensive notes during our time in the wood, and what I’ve found—praise Fortune!—amounts to a new truth, revealed through the doings of my Ace.” She gazed at him with such peace that he wondered if her own shivering and sweating even bothered her. “Charms are useful, yes. Blasphemy is useful, too. But these are but tools in the kit. The kit itself—that is, what Fortune really favors—is change itself. Perpetual revolution.” She lowered her eyes. “It’s been the start of a new chapter for my Lady and I. Now I begin again, at the bottom.”
Rafe frowned, wondering why she was going on so damn long. “In any case,” he said, stepping toward the door, “I’m sure that, ah—that Reena is ready to meet the others. She’s been hearing about this Meeting for Worship, and she’s eager. Aren’t you, love?”
“I sure could go for a kiss, I’ll tell you that for free.”
Yabli turned to the heavy doors and tugged them open, one after the other. “Right, right. Yeah, you all are the last ones. Head on in.”
Shivering with relief, to say nothing of his anticipation, Rafe led the way into the dim-lit warehouse. The place was echoing with voices—somewhere under this ruptured ceiling, the rest of the Assemblage was preparing their daily Meeting for Worship—but the entry itself was choked with rows of dusty crates rising all the way to the ceiling. Behind these boxes, the wide floor and its collapsed tunnel were hidden from view.
The noise only increased as the doors shut behind him.
Someone threw the bolt. “What’s your sermon going to be, Lickle—I mean, Mister Rafe, sir?”
Rafe froze, staring at the leavings of the Sulcus Catacombs operation. “My—sermon?”
“Sure,” said Yabli. “You’re today’s incentivizer.”
“Newest Ace and all.”
“He’s a wonderful speaker,” purred Jassa.
Rafe’s mind was racing.
He’d have to speak, to demonstrate his faith and authority, or they’d know this had all been a ruse.
“I was—thinking of—”
He was thinking of nothing.
He was thinking of shitting himself on stage.
He had no faith. How could he have hoped to fake this?
“—of blasphemous steadfastness in times of adversity.”
He didn’t even know what the words meant, but he was already racing to work out his opening remarks.
The sound of Ashlan grunting, then sighing, stopped him.
Skin crawling, he turned.
The Deuces were standing over Ashlan’s limp body, grinning at him.
Her neck was obscured by the backs of three sleepy drashes.
This wasn’t the plan. Rafe was meant to drop her later, thumping her in the head with the collection plate in front of them all.
It was his moment. Why had Jassa taken it?
“Now, Deuce.”
She was walking toward him, head held high.
“It’s time we completed your education.”
Eyes wide, he turned to run.
Right into the swinging truncheon of the Ace behind him.
There was blood in his eyes, blurring his vision. He was barely tied up—loose ropes, desultory knots—but the pain made any hope of escape laughable.
It hadn’t come from being beaten, but from his blooming withdrawal. The sun was low, a dim, red light trickling through the door from the open windows of the warehouse. Hours must have passed while Rafe had been unconscious. His limbs responded to his urgings, vaguely, but even if he’d managed to stand, he couldn’t have hoped to outrun Hollis, much less his captors.
He dragged his head up. Ashlan lay beside him, belly-up on a plank of wood, her face swollen from an overdose of drash poison. Someone had folded her hands neatly on her stomach.
He could hear voices in the warehouse beyond, rising in a roar that threatened to split his skull, then plunging into moaning and grunting. Rafe laid his head down, his mouth uncontrollably flooding with spittle as he pictured the Meeting for Worship.
They were getting high without him, he thought in panting desperation.
He was still wrestling with his ropes, thinking without much conviction about dragging himself hand over hand and begging for a crumb of tlak, when two figures stumbled in.
“Lickle Dee’s up and sloppy,” said Stankjar, his eyes glazed. “Living up to your name again, are you?”
“Eh,” said Yabli, a fresh welt on her spotted neck, “happens to the best of us. I mean. If there was a best of us.”
She stood over Rafe, and he braced for the blow—only to find her yanking the ropes from his ankles and wrists.
He looked up, blearily.
“Don’t get excited,” she said. “You�
��re gonna die. I’m just not carrying you there.”
“Still confused, eh, Licks?” Stankjar leaned against the doorway, inspecting his cuticles. “I say we deserve an award for advanced thespianism. Shoo-ins for Ace-ing, after winking his hood like that! You never suspected we was in cahoots with your Jassa, didja?”
“Course he didn’t,” said Yabli. “When you’re that green, you think everyone is.”
“But we been at this for years.” Stankjar squatted, leering in Rafe’s face. “I joined up myself when she was just a baby Widow. Barely older than you, we was. And even then, Jass was thinking ahead, talking about pushing over the doddering leadership of the Assemblage, and that. Why should we forever slob the knob of the Puppeteer when we could be running them catacombs ourselves, and et cetera. Always planning, in that grotty little notebook, isn’t that right, Yabs?”
Yabli, who’d nodded off halfway through, snapped to attention. “Always,” she said, once Stankjar had repeated the question, “always planning. That’s our Luce.”
“Luce?” Rafe whispered. His face rumpled in confusion, and the very expression seemed to burn his sodden skin.
“Why, sure, Left-Handed Luce,” said Stankjar, wiping a thread of drool from Yabli’s chin. “That’s the Widow’s name now, fuck Fortune in the good ear. Goddess in the flesh, you know? She’s ascended, so She has!”
Rafe stared.
Jassa’s arm. The carving.
Her madness had been an act. And he’d clapped right along.
“You don’t believe that,” he grunted. “Even you can’t be that stupid.”
Yabli laid a hand on his face and let it sit there, limp. It was worse than being hit.
“Just saw Her chomp on a ball of tlak the size of a grapefruit, hon. Your girl wasn’t even buzzed.”
“Turned to candy when it passed Her lips,” breathed Stankjar. “That’s avatar power, right there. And we took the leadership down for Her this morning. A proper coop, top to bottom. This dead one over here, this—what was her name, Stank?”
“Y’mean Aslan Loo?”
“Right,” said Yabli, patting Rafe’s sweaty cheek. “She’s gonna earn us a heap of tlak tonight. The golden goose, with the endless guts. He’ll pay out the nose.”
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