“Sicarii?”
“Seems like.”
“Presumably all of these things—petrol, quicklime, gunpowder, tallow—share something in common?”
“Aye, I’ll tell you over a meat pasty,” I said, gesturing toward a cart on the corner opposite ours. “Then we’re on to step two.”
“What’s step two?” Eld called after me.
“After. You’re hungry, remember?” I shouted over my shoulder, working my way through the crowd.
“Say, didn’t we have some of those pasties by Salazar’s before we went in and it all went to shit last summer?” Eld asked when he caught up to me.
“You did,” I told him. “I didn’t.”
“Godsdamn it, Buc! I thought that incident turned my bowels to water.”
“Nope,” I said, unable to hide my smirk. “That was just the mystery meat.”
“I nearly shat myself,” he gasped.
I laughed and Eld cursed and that made me laugh harder. I didn’t want to pretend that things were okay, because they weren’t, not by a long chalk, but … we’d begun as friends and he was still my best and closest friend. So I laughed until Eld’s stern pissed-offedness broke and he laughed, too. For a breath or two, my chest stopped hurting. Turns out friendship is a magic all of its own.
* * *
“What?” Eld shouted, to be heard over the roar.
“I saw the same yesterday, before I came home,” I yelled back at him across the gondola, my voice barely carrying over the sounds of a mob cursing and working themselves up to action.
“Bastard wasn’t lying. Real lamb,” I muttered, taking a bite from the still-steaming meat pasty I’d bought before jumping into our gondola. Wiping my chin, I continued, “I saw a running brawl between rival gangs near as bad as this one.”
Eld’s eyes shifted between the two groups in the street across from the canal, one wearing mostly pale blue, the other a mishmash of greys and browns, steel bright amongst the dull colors. Joffers had us well out in the center of the canal, but a cacophony of gunfire made Eld duck. The two sides clashed, obscured by gunsmoke and buildings. Shouts turned to screams and when we could see again, bodies lay everywhere. It was tough to say which side was winning.
“Brawl, you say—battle, says I,” Eld muttered. “That’s the Constabulary they’re fighting.”
“You’re not wrong,” I agreed. Innocents, dressed in motley that almost made for a uniform of their own, fled from either end of the Foreskin, some diving into the canal’s icy waters when another fusillade of gunfire erupted, its rolling echo loud across the water.
The current carried us around a bend and away from the sounds of fighting. A moment later all was quiet save for the waters lapping against the gondola’s hull and the breeze in my ears. The battle might never have happened, for all one could tell. Servenza seemed as placid as she always was in winter. Save here and there I saw figures with glinting weapons in their hands, marching purposefully in pairs and threes.
“That was the Foreskin,” I said, shivering in the cold wind. “Here in the Painted Rock, they’re barely hiding the weapons they carry,” I explained. “There”—I indicated the Mercarto before us with a nod—“and in the Gilded, it’s a different story, aye, but even the Gilded’s canals are quieter than normal. I haven’t seen any children playing in the streets of Painted Rock, and few in the other Quartos. The ones we saw earlier, running about—they were nearly the only children I saw today.”
“Gang rumbles are escalating, breaking into full-fledged wars,” Eld said, hiding his mouth with his hand as he chewed, “and the canals aren’t safe, which we already knew. I follow you there. What do the children have to do with it?” He looked ahead, into another section of the Mercarto.
“Next time we see some, pick one out and I’ll have them tell you,” I said. I couldn’t trust myself to do so, not when every move I’d made had already been checked. Like the maestro in the Castello. And Quenta. It’d taken me a moment or two to realize it—too long, really—but at least now I knew how to counter it.
Eld frowned. “If you know what you’re looking for, why don’t you grab the one you want to talk to?”
I swallowed the bite in my mouth, enjoying the spices and fat that clung to my tongue. Perhaps I had gone a little too long without eating.
“Perhaps?” Sin hissed.
“I didn’t have need of you, then,” I reminded the shard.
“That’s the problem with your lot,” he grumbled, “you do need me. All the time. You just don’t realize it.”
Eld looked at me expectantly and I shrugged. “Sicarii.”
“Sicarii?” he whispered, glancing around as if expecting her to appear, conjured up by her name like the sea serpents in old sailor tales. “What does she have to do with it?”
“Sicarii seems to understand my thoughts, my patterns,” I said, scanning the street, but whoever was trailing us had slipped away. Sin had picked up two following me yesterday and I was pretty certain another had been watching the palazzo when we slipped out this morning. At least, I hoped they had seen us, or else my equation wouldn’t add up the way I needed it to.
“She got to that girl I was trying to use as an informant, and Quenta nearly killed the pair of us. She’s been one step ahead the entire time and she seems willing to see Servenza burn.”
I glanced at Eld. “I’m thinking if you pick the child and I have nothing to do with it, maybe that will prevent us from picking up another one of her plants.”
“And what do I do with said child?”
“Give them this,” I said, tossing him a gold lira, “and bring them to me.” I motioned for Joffers to take us to one of the poles jutting out of the canal’s edge that served as a tie-off. The smells from a nearby food cart, carried across the street on the chill winter’s wind, decided where I was heading. “Tell them there’s another in it for them if they speak true.”
“Where will you be?” Eld asked, leaping across the narrow divide of water between the gondola and the street.
“Grabbing another pasty,” I said, licking my fingers before tugging my gloves back on. “I lost my appetite of late.”
“I’m glad you found it.”
I waved a hand, not bothering to tell him I hadn’t, not really, but I had a feeling I was going to need Sin’s magic and I wasn’t ready to die. I hadn’t become some fool of a girl who throws her life away over a fucking man. Not yet.
* * *
“You want to know where I play?” the boy asked, his words slightly difficult to understand due to the deformed lip that kept tripping his mouth up.
“Aye,” I told him, squatting down so I was on his level. “Seems like many places aren’t safe for little ones like yourself.”
“I’m not little,” he said, crossing his stubby arms and pulling his oversized, brown jacket tighter about him.
“’Course you are. You’re a child, but someday you’ll be as big as my friend yonder,” I said, gesturing toward Eld. I gave him a wink. “Then you’ll be bigger than me.” He smiled awkwardly and I knew Eld had chosen right. He’d likely been bullied his whole short life. Children weren’t crueler than adults; they were just more honest. Now I’d made him feel special and he’d tell me what I needed to know. “The streets are rougher this winter, aye?”
“My mem doesn’t like me out,” he said. “B-but she’s out to wash clothes till dark, so I can do w-what I want,” he stuttered.
“Growing up already,” I agreed. “You live close by?”
“On the edge of the Painted Rock,” he said.
“But you don’t play there?”
“Not unless I w-want my head split.”
I nodded encouragingly, making a mental note to check in on Govanti. Eld said he was fine. Still, it’d been a fortnight or more since we last spoke, longer than that since I’d asked Eld to look him up, and he lived in that vicinity.
“I can’t talk prop-per, but I en’t dumb,” the lad added.
; “You speak just fine.” I smiled, drawing his gaze to me so I could see the lie if it was there. “You play here, in the Mercarto, but it’s crowded, hard to play stickball or toss coppers.”
“Oh, w-we toss coppers by the Stem.” He ran a dirty hand through his brown hair, which looked washed and combed, unlike half the other urchins running about, and glanced around before leaning closer. “There’s a few of the Serpentines what give us coppers for running errands.”
“The Stem?” Eld mouthed above him.
“The main bridge that spans the canal between the Painted Rock and the Tip,” I explained. I turned back to the boy. “I’m guessing your mem doesn’t know you’re running with a gang?”
“Not w-with them,” he said quickly. His dark eyes filled with worry. “You won’t tell?”
“’Course not,” I said. “I grew up on the streets. I know how it is.”
“You did not.” His lip curled. “I en’t—”
“Dumb, aye, I know.” I laughed, sharing a false smile with Eld. “I’m not putting one over on you, lad. But running with gangs isn’t something you start and stop as you please.”
“It’s not like that,” he protested.
“Then what’s it like?”
“They said we could p-play on either side of the Stem, they’d keep the other gangs away from us—the ones that want real runners.”
“And in return?”
“What’s that mean?”
“What did they want you to do for them?”
“Oh!” His grin split his face. “Keep w-watch,” he said. “It’s a game. If we see other gangs or the Constabulary, or a short girl and a big pale m-man with lots of blades, we run, and tell Enri and he gives us a copper.”
“Pretty good hustle, lad,” I said, rising quickly onto my tiptoes and motioning Eld away with my head. I reached down and tousled the boy’s hair. “Well, you satisfied my curiosity. I’ve been away from Servenza for a long time, but I remember the streets. Not always good memories, mind, but there were some fun times. I wondered if that were still true today.”
“It was more fun b-before the Burnt Eye came,” the boy said. He shrugged in his overlarge jacket. “But then, w-we didn’t get coppers.”
“Burnt Eye?” I asked, hearing my breath catch.
“The one protecting the Serpentines,” he said. “The one they say has a dozen hands and a burning eye that they use to see if you’re lying or not. And”—his voice dropped to a bare whisper—“if you lie to the Burnt Eye, they fill their dozen hands with blades and chop you to m-mince!
“Sicarii,” Sin whispered. I nodded mentally.
“That sounds scary,” I said.
“It is! But I don’t lie. Mem says that the Gods will make my lip stay like this forever if I do,” he said, touching his mouth. “She’s saving soldi to fix me an’ I can’t lie or it w-won’t work. My friend Cali had a limp that a mind witch fixed—for free, even! I did’na believe her but Mem said it was true. Also said we can’t trust mind w-witches, not when we pray to the Dead Gods. It’s them we’ll pay and they will know I en’t lying and heal me proper. S-so I don’t think the Burnt Eye will hurt me.”
“Of course they won’t,” I assured him. Not after I’m through with her. “Well, lad, I promised you a lira and I’m going to do you one better.”
“Signorina?”
“I’m going to give you two.” I reached into my jacket and paused. “Does your mem treat you well? Answer me true.”
“She makes me eat greens,” he said with a shrug, “but she doesn’t beat me. And she did give me a cup of hot kan on my birthday.”
“Give your mem this.” I bent down and slipped a third gold coin into his palm. “And tell her to take you to a physiker tomorrow to get that lip fixed.”
“The Sin Eaters’ healing would be painless. And better,” Sin suggested.
No Gods. No magic.
“It’s going to hurt, lad,” I told him, “what they’ll do, but your lip will heal fine and you’ll be speaking just fine soon enough. Aye?”
“Signorina.” He whispered the word like a prayer. “This is too much!”
“I think it’s enough,” I said, staring him full in the face. “Because you’re not going back to the Stem after today.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” I said, turning him toward where Eld stood a dozen paces away, “if you do, then you’re going to have to lie and if you lie the Burnt Eye will know, won’t they?” He opened his mouth to protest and I arched my eyebrows and flicked my eyes to Eld and back.
“You said you weren’t dumb,” I reminded him.
“I w-won’t tell,” he whispered.
“I know.”
I hoped I wasn’t lying. I didn’t think he’d tell on purpose, but children are creatures of whim and there was no saying what he might do without thinking. I was counting on the surgery to keep him laid up long enough for me to settle with Sicarii.
“That’s why you’re keeping him from the Sin Eater’s healing,” Sin growled. “Noble, my arse.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I can hear your thoughts, Buc.”
“That was one reason I didn’t tell him about the Sin Eaters,” I countered. “Your foul magics soiling an innocent like this child was another.”
“Now run off and find your mem and tell her the good news,” I said out loud.
The boy took off like a shot, nearly bowling Eld over despite the size difference between him. Catching himself against Eld’s arm, he gave us both a quick bow and a wave, and then ran off, legs windmilling as he cut through the crowd.
“That was well done,” Eld said quietly when he reached me. “I’m glad to see you’re taking a care for the little ones again.”
Sin snorted.
“Eh?” I shook myself out of my thoughts and grunted. “I needed information, Eld, and now I need him to keep that little trap of his shut for a few days.”
“Buc—”
“Eld, I’ve told you before, but you don’t listen.”
He cocked his head.
“I’m not going to save that boy by giving every lire in the world to him and all his brothers and sisters.” I shook my head. “You want to save him? Let me do what I do best.”
“And what’s that?” he asked, his voice thin, whipcord tight.
“Find things and stab them.” I brushed past him. “Now come on, that’s two down and the third’s waiting.”
“Does it involve stabbing things?” Eld called after me.
“Give the man a prize!” I shouted back.
Eld, Salina—none of them understand. Perhaps it came from the streets, perhaps I’d just read more than either of them combined, but it was writ in plain language to me. Power is usurped or overthrown. I had no desire to be a God, so I was usurping the power of others to overthrow the power of the Gods. Stopping to help every child along the way would ensure I helped none of them in the end. I was going to make sure the Burnt Eye never hurt anyone again. And then I was going to pull the Chair down by her braids and use the Company to cut the throats of the Gods. And I was going to do it alone. Sin made a noise. You don’t count. You’re in my head, so we’re already one.
“Lucky me,” he muttered.
40
Hours of walking later, we stood on sore feet in the Painted Rock Quarto, two streets back from the canal. The thoroughfare was the quietest I’d seen in weeks, people moving in as orderly a flow as could be expected when factory workers mixed with dockworkers mixed with budding merchants and store clerks. No one was carrying weapons here, unlike where the Quarto bordered the Tip. If the Serpentines were around, they were keeping a low profile. Taken together, I’d a feeling we’d come to the right place.
“Show me again, Sin,” I said, and a map appeared in my mind. “Can you rotate it to match my direction?”
“How’s that?” he said, suiting the action to the words.
“Better,” I said, motioning for Eld to follow me down a sid
e alley that ran between two older, would-be palazzos that now had small storefronts on their ground floors and a hodgepodge of tenement rooms above. The store on my left, nearer the canal, seemed to run the length of the building, while the one on the right was only half the size; probably one or two families were crammed into the remaining space. This close to the canal, the sewers drained properly, so it didn’t smell like the Tip, but I was surprised at the lack of trash in the gutters.
“What are we doing here, Buc?”
“Gathering clues.”
“Clues?” Eld cleared his throat. “To what?”
“To Sicarii’s lair,” I said.
“Sicarii?” He reached for his sword hilt, stopping just short of it. “She’s here?”
“Aye. In this Quarto.”
“How can you be sure?”
I sighed.
“I know how you love explaining yourself,” he said with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Those supplies we were asking around about this morning?”
He nodded.
“They’re part of a formula, known in some texts on the alchemy and chemistry of elements as Serpent’s Flame.”
“Serpent’s Flame?” Eld scratched at his stubble. “But dragons are extinct. The last were hunted down centuries ago—if they existed at all.”
“Don’t blame me for the lack of imagination of whatever crazy elementalist brewed up this concoction. It really should be called liquid fire.”
Eld’s eyes widened. “That’s what was in the grenado? What’s been behind all those explosions?”
“Conflagrations,” I corrected. “Aye, I think so. Anyway, the formula’s been lost for at least a hundred years. The last record I could find was of a warlord in what is now the Cordoban Confederacy, who used it to burn the shit out of her rivals until they banded together—and in so doing, indirectly created what would become the Confederacy. That and some mythical leader from the north who helped unite them and then disappeared, if the tales are to be believed. My point is, while the exact formulation isn’t known, some of the key ingredients are.”
The Justice in Revenge Page 29