The thought made him sick. No, he wasn’t ready to return to that, and he didn’t need to. There were always knives in a pawnshop. He took two from the three-week shelf. One went into his belt, the other into his boot.
It occurred to him that this was the first time he’d taken anything from the pawnshop that Eyalmati hadn’t explicitly given him. Yes, he’d kept operating cash hidden from his boss, but he never spent it on himself, nor had he taken any of the pawned items from the shelves before.
He would return them when all this was over, if he was still alive. Eyalmati would probably never know. He noted them in the log book anyway.
Kyrioc brought the shutter into the shop, and met the landlady’s nephew as he brought a replacement for their damaged padlock. The boy locked the metal gate. Kyrioc took one of the keys from him, then watched the boy run off to complete his other errands.
He almost gave the key back. What was the point? It was just another thing the man with the steel chain could loot from his corpse. He had no illusions about the sort of people he was dealing with.
It didn’t matter. He would do whatever they demanded, then he’d take Riliska and her mother to safety.
And if the Pails betrayed him, nothing in this cursed world would save them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tin Pail had a lot of work to do, as always. Dumb motherfuckers always thought being a heavy was as easy as a noble’s life: sleep late, do a deal in the afternoon, take the point to someone over dinner, spend the rest of the night throwing dice and whoring.
In truth, Tin hustled as much as any Low Market merchant. More. Arranging deals, bribing cosh, paying off the fucking foreign friends up the slope…it all took careful planning. And if a merchant made a bad deal, all they’d lose was money. Tin gambled with her life. Always.
And then there were the people who worked for you. If a shop employee turned out to be a thief, call the constables. If they were lazy, turn them out. If a shopkeeper hired some asshole who wanted to gut the owner and declare themselves the new shopkeeper…well, Tin had never even heard of such a thing.
But every shitwit the Pails took on was treacherous, lazy, and sticky-fingered. She spent nearly a quarter of her time watching over her heavies, making sure they were so afraid they wouldn’t dare fuck with her.
She had two dozen grown men and women living out of her purse (the beetles didn’t count) and she sort of trusted three of them. Her brother, Wooden, because he was her brother and he was smart enough to know he needed her. Then there was her bodyguard, with the name she didn’t even like to think about, let alone say aloud. He was bound by his barbarian code of honor to do her bidding, and judging by what she’d seen of his godkind magic, if he wanted to betray her, it would have happened already and she couldn’t have done shit about it. All she could do was thank the fallen gods that he was stupid enough to follow his ridiculous code.
Finally, there was Paper Mouse. He wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t a thinker. He didn’t have ambition. What he did have was loyalty and an ability to follow basic directions without getting greedy, a trait that put him head and shoulders above the rest of her crew.
Unfortunately, he’d let pickpockets steal their package. Then he got disarmed by a petal who worked a pawnshop. Apparently, she could trust Paper to be loyal but not to get the job done.
For today’s work, no underlings could be trusted. Tin and Wooden stood alone outside the city wall, beneath the awning of a cart that sold meat pies. Both were drinking hot tea and watching Winter Friend tied up at dock.
The beginning of the year was not a busy time at the trade ends of the dockyard. The parsu-controlled section was a never-ending succession of wheat barges and ore shipments, along with other staples needed to keep the people of Koh-Salash alive, but until the fall harvest, most freelancing ships sailed deeper waters.
But even without a full complement of ships, the docks were full of smugglers, pickpockets, greedy-eyed cosh, and the odd mercenary, all hunting their next coin.
Wooden swallowed the last of his pie and set his empty tea cup aside. “That’s him.”
The pawnbroker was still dressed in funeral clothes, with shaggy black hair hanging in his face. Paper had described a terrible scar on the left side of his face, but she could only see his right side. Tin did see that his left hand was an odd color. His face and right hand were the same rich brown as any Salashi, but his left was a dark orange, as though it had been imperfectly dyed to match.
“Sooner than I expected,” she admitted. He must have come straight to The Docks without trying to enlist the help of a friend or hire a bodyguard. She wasn’t sure what that said about him. Was this really the guy who spooked Paper? He looked like a petal.
The broker found Winter Friend easily enough, then tracked down the bosun. Dry Wave had clearly just woken up—he liked to drink while in port—and did not immediately give the man what he wanted. It was better that way, to make it seem as if they were haggling. The cosh wouldn’t think there was anything suspicious about haggling.
“He doesn’t like that,” Wooden said, as though teasing a child. Tin saw it too. The broker’s body tensed and his hands clenched into fists.
Then Dry pointed to the cart, and the man in black walked away from him.
Then, like a fucking moron, the bosun turned and looked directly at Tin. As though he’d quickly realized his mistake, he let his gaze wander this way and that, as though he wasn’t looking at anything in particular. The shitwit.
One of the beetles sat in the cart. When the broker approached, the boy climbed down. Tin and Wooden were too far away to hear them, but their beetles knew to say what they’d been told to say, or else: They were being watched. The boy wasn’t to be touched. Take this cartload of potatoes to Low Market and find a Carrig fishmonger named Unt Fal Nam.
The beetle started to run, but the man motioned for him to stop. Tin saw that the courier was skittish, but he waited. The broker spoke briefly, then the boy nodded and ran off.
The beetles knew better than to scurry directly to their boss, so the Pails would have to wait a while to hear the broker’s message. While they refilled their teapot—and Wooden spiked it with a shot of brandy—they watched the man in black walk a circuit of the cart. It had tall sides and was sturdy, but it didn’t have the roof and locks of the secure cart they’d used last night. Those made the cosh suspicious. Burlap sacks full of potatoes had been piled all the way to the rail, and the man shifted a few at the top to make sure there were more potatoes beneath. Then he climbed underneath to examine the undercarriage. Finally, he tied down the canvas cover to protect the cargo.
After that, he went to the front and petted the nag in her harness. He took a carrot from his pocket and fed her while gently stroking her flanks and murmuring a few words. Then he climbed onto the cart and flicked the reins gently, steering the nag toward the ramps to Low Market.
“Yes!” Wooden hissed, grinning like an idiot. “The arrow leaves the bow.”
The skin on the back of Tin’s neck prickled. Not once had the broker looked around The Docks for a familiar face. He hadn’t brought a bodyguard. Maybe he’d sent a spy ahead to track the movements of the beetle who’d spoken to him?
Tin couldn’t see anyone who looked likely to be a spy, but she was still antsy when the courier crawled out from behind the cart and sat at her feet.
“What’s his message?”
The beetle wiped his nose. “Boss, he said he wants the next courier to tell him where and when he can pick up the girl and her mother.”
Wooden let out a guffaw. “He’s got a lot of balls, making demands of us!”
Tin slid a copper knot off the edge of the table. The beetle snapped it out of the air and scurried away. “He’s being careful.” She didn’t like careful people.
* * *
Kyrioc kept the cart in the center of The Freightway, passed through the city gates, and turned sharply to the right.
Not fifty yards insid
e the outer wall was a second, smaller wall. Behind that was Mudside, the most dangerous district in the city, where natural light was rare and constables even rarer.
Between those walls were numerous stairs and plankways that led up into the city. Kyrioc stayed on the largest, The Freightway, which hugged the outer wall and led north to Low Market.
It had been more than a year since Kyrioc had been outside the skeletons of the gods. Selsarim Lost, they were big.
The city wall itself was a hundred feet high, and while it was the highest city wall in the world—built as it was of skywood rather than stone—it was nowhere near high enough to block the view of Yth’s massive wooden skull. The back of her head was sunk partway into the mud, but the edge of her eye socket still stood more than fifteen hundred feet above the ground. It wasn’t a human-shaped skull, not really, but it was close enough to be unnerving.
From this angle, most of her head was concealed by her humerus and collarbones, as well as the glowing crystalline ulna and radius of Suloh’s left arm, where it rested beside her shoulder.
Suloh’s skull, of course, could not be seen from down here.
After half a mile, he rose above the wall that caged the residents of Mudside. Kyrioc glanced down into the district and saw the back of Yth’s rib cage sunk so deep in the mud that only fifty feet of wooden bone was still visible. Between the ribs he saw hovels in the black mud. No people were visible. No bloodkind, either.
The city wall continued north for three miles, following the curve of the landscape and the gods’ bones. But the wall was only a hundred feet high, and Yth’s skeleton, even sunk into the mud, was many times that. And of course, lying atop the wooden bones of Yth were the glowing crystal bones of Suloh. Those rib cages loomed over him like a gigantic cliff, three-quarters of a mile high.
Legend said that, someday, the gods would awaken. Or the Ancient Kings would return. Either way, doom would finally come to Koh-Salash and its people.
But that was not today.
The nag trudged up the ramp. Once the midday heat arrived, many Salashi would seek a shady place until afternoon, but Kyrioc couldn’t risk that.
The largest portion of The Freightway turned away from the wall and angled up to the top of Yth’s arm. Once there, some seven hundred feet above the earth, it turned northward again.
The nag balked as they neared the first equestrian fountain, so Kyrioc led her to drink. When she finished, he gave her another half-carrot, and the horse nuzzled his cheek. He patted her flank, then took up the reins again.
When the sun was fully overhead, many servants and trades folk crouched at the edge of The Freightway and draped a cloth over their head. Others kept trudging uphill, sweating beneath their burdens. A few walked along with water jugs and little cups, selling a few swallows of clean water. The road crossed Yth’s elbow joint and arced upward toward the place her pelvis met Suloh’s.
The road passed through the entrance to Low Market, and Kyrioc was inside the gods’ bones again.
The gate was made of pennants, ribbon, and slender poles. All were welcome. There were no weapon checks and no one was turned away because of the way they dressed.
There were armed guards, though, a great many of them. Most were ironshirts, but a good number sported the orange and black of the merchants’ private corps, a crowd of bullyboys who kept the poor in their place and sent the sticky-fingered away with cracked skulls and shattered wrists.
Kyrioc held the reins lightly as the nag passed beneath the white ribbons, then the nag took the upper passage. It seemed to know the way better than he did.
In Low Market, progress was halting and maddeningly slow. Cart drivers stopped in the center of intersections, cursing at anyone who blocked their path. Pedestrians wandered blithely through traffic, forcing drivers to pull up short. Hawkers in shop doors—some at the very edge of the road, some leaning over the platforms above—bellowed into the crowd about the astonishing quality of their wares, and the ruinous prices at which they were offered.
The road led upward through decks, mini-decks, and platforms toward Salash Hill at the western end of the city.
Since Kyrioc started working at the pawnshop, he’d made many trips to Low Market, but he preferred to come after sunset. The stores were still open and their cashboxes were full. Also, there were fewer people and they were more cautious. There was none of this jostling and cursing, with each person demanding everyone else make room.
Kyrioc breathed deeply and thought about Riliska. She needed him, and he would not turn away again. Not for anything.
He glanced upward and saw Suloh’s massive hip bones looming above them, glowing even in sunlight. God’s shining asshole. If he had endured seven years in exile, he could endure this.
Traffic was so slow, Kyrioc had time to study each shop sign minutely as he searched for Unt Fal Nam’s name, but it wasn’t until he’d reached the upper western end of Low Market, where shops had been constructed outside of Suloh’s skeleton on the actual rocky ground, that he found it.
Kyrioc turned the nag toward the front counter, forcing their customers to make way. Then he climbed down and told the elderly woman roasting eels over a coal bed that he had brought her potatoes.
“Get the fuck out of here, shitwit!” she screeched. “We don’t serve potatoes. I’m not paying—”
A cry came from the back room and she stopped speaking. An old man hurried out of the back and offered Kyrioc a small sack. “Please, good sir. Here, good sir. As requested. Always happy to do a favor for the Pails. Your joke about the potatoes was very clever, good sir.”
The old man seemed anxious to be rid of whatever was in that sack. Kyrioc accepted it. The old fellow bowed several times, retreating slowly without turning his back.
Nothing on or inside the sack suggested where he should go next. As far as Kyrioc could see, the sack contained nothing more than a roasted salmon fillet wrapped in seaweed, with onions and apples. The old man smiled fearfully, anxious for Kyrioc to leave. If he had additional instructions—or news of where Riliska and her mother would be released—Kyrioc thought he would have volunteered it.
He led the nag to the fountain at the southward turn in The Freightway.
There were no child couriers in sight. Kyrioc set the sack on the bench beside him and dug through it. He removed the apples and broke them apart. Nothing. He tore the roasted onions open, too, but they were also empty. He offered both apples to the nag. The onions he threw away.
Then he peeled the seaweed off the salmon. The meat was charred in the Carrig style.
Pulling it apart, he found a small leather packet, well-oiled and carefully folded, no longer than his little finger. Kyrioc picked at the knot until it came loose.
Inside was a pale, viscous substance that stuck to the oiled leather like glue. Kyrioc lifted the sack to smell it, and his suspicions were confirmed. It was white tar.
He closed the packet and tied it carefully with a knot that would be easy to undo, then slipped it into the inner pocket of his vest.
The salmon looked delicious, but Kyrioc wouldn’t have risked a single bite, not if there was a chance it was tainted by the tar. He suddenly remembered the apples, then leaped from the driver’s seat to check the nag. The beast had no signs of trembling and its eyes looked normal. Good. Tar was dangerous enough when smoked. The nag might have dropped dead if she’d eaten too much.
Kyrioc purchased a fig bun from a walking vendor with a tray full of them hanging from his neck. He ate it slowly. No couriers approached. He moved the cart away from the fountain and sat quietly on the driver’s bench, reins in hand. He waited.
It was two hours before full nightfall when the next courier appeared. This time, it was a little girl. “Deliver the cart and the meal to a man in Upgarden. He spends his afternoons in the hammerball courts at the edge of Cloud Square—”
“I know it.”
That surprised her, but she continued. “His name is Harl Sota List Im. Mak
e the delivery at the dinner hour, just after full dark. Don’t be late.”
“What about my friends?”
The girl slowly backed away. “They said… They said I should answer if you ask.”
“I’m asking.”
“Two hours before midnight, you will find your friends at a tea shop across from Sailsday’s Regret. Do you know where that is?” Kyrioc shook his head. “It’s in High Apricot. It’s easy to find. The tea shop is a favorite with bureaucrats and the cosh, so your friends will be safe while they wait for you. Don’t be early to meet them, and don’t be late with your delivery.”
Kyrioc nodded. She sprinted away.
* * *
Fay Nog Fay had developed a taste for bone broth a few years back while his mother was sick. Now he thought about her, and how long it had been since he last visited, whenever he drank a bowl.
He’d been scouring Low Market for hours, trying to track down someone, anyone, shopping glitterkind flesh. He’d already spoken to everyone he thought were the most likely buyers, then to their competition.
Next were the people only a fool would approach, but that was a long shot. But first, he’d checked with his auntie across the plankway to see if any Katr warriors had come to visit. No such luck.
She noticed him staring and waved. He waved back.
So, Fay sat alone in this broth shop, drinking from his bowl. Did he really think the stolen package would just be handed to him like—
A boy in tatters sprinted toward Shah’s shop. Children rarely approached his aunt. They preferred to beg for food, not carpets.
Fay watched them speak briefly, then Shah pointed directly at him.
Lifting the bowl to his mouth, Fay drank the rest down quickly. Whatever message this child was about to deliver, he wouldn’t have time to linger.
* * *
Kyrioc did not have much time to get to Cloud Square. Upgarden was well above them, and the poor nag had already done a heavy day’s work. Kyrioc climbed out of the cart and walked before her to lighten her burden and urge her onward.
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