Where had they brought her? They were near Low Market—she could see Suloh’s glowing hip bones—but so far east and south that they were suspended above the empty dirt between the Yth’s ribs and hips, apart from the main decks of the city. But they had approached from—
The drunk man flicked her ear painfully. “Scurry, scurry.”
Riliska imagined herself flicking him right back with so much force that he was flung from the deck and plummeted into the darkness below. But she knew what defiance brought. She fell in with the other children.
They crossed an empty skywood plaza with shuttered businesses in a half-circle around the southern edge. There was a dry fountain in the center. Once, this little platform might have been pretty, but no one came here now.
Then they crossed a long, narrow plankway to another platform nearly two hundred feet away, which was practically invisible in the darkness. It was a large, multi-story building on a miniature deck of its own. It rested on four long stilts, with a long waterpipe leading up into the western darkness. She’d never seen anything like it.
Riliska’s mom taught her to stay clear of unlit buildings because addicts and thieves squatted in them, but her hesitation brought another painful flick on her ear. “The way is sturdy,” the drunk man whispered, his words slightly slurred, “no matter how old it looks. Scurry, scurry.”
He’d thought Riliska hesitated because the plankway was so long, with only a half-collapsed railing…and she would have, if she’d had a chance to notice. But the other kids were already crossing, and there were no wobbles or creaks from the wood beneath their feet. Skywood. No one else seemed afraid. Maybe they had crossed before, or maybe they just didn’t care if they collapsed the plankway and fell into the bottomless dark.
Riliska mimicked them, keeping her eyes on the planks. For the first time in her life, she felt as though a strong breeze might knock her over. One of the girls near the front started crying. No one dared stop walking.
Once safe on the other side, she took a quick count. There were fourteen kids, and all but two were obviously younger than her. The drunk man who kept telling them to scurry was nowhere in sight, and Riliska peeked over the edge to see if he’d fallen off.
There was nothing below them but darkness.
“Let’s go!”
That harsh whisper sent chills down Riliska’s arms. A sour-faced old man stood in an open doorway, lit candle in hand. The children mobbed toward him obediently.
These were the meekest, quietest children Riliska had ever seen. She couldn’t imagine what the grownups did to make them this way, but she hoped she would never find out.
The old man led them into a large entry hall. The dim light of the candle barely touched the walls, but she could hear their footsteps echoing like the inside of a tomb.
“Down that way are the baths,” the old man said, like this was a guided tour. “But they’ve been dry for years, so don’t bother. Down there is the exercise room. The caretaker stays there. He doesn’t like children. Down that hall are the guest rooms. You’ll be sleeping in the beds there.”
A few of the smaller kids gasped and exclaimed, “Beds!”
“But not yet!” the old man said before they could run off. “Come this way.”
He led them down the stairs and through long corridors into a small room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were lined with flat, gray stones. There was no other furniture, just a pair of racks with long sticks set in them, a couple of doors, and a pile of something yellowish and hairy in the far corner. “This is the spa,” the old man said. “Over there is your escape route. Look at it, but don’t get close.”
The children shuffled past it, and Riliska fell into the line at the end. The hairy mound turned out to be a coil of frayed, knotted rope, and on the far side of it was a hole in the floor. The other children had not approached closely, but she went right to the edge. Below was only darkness.
“If someone comes to attack this building, you lot are to come in here, push that coil into the hole, and climb down quick as you can. Get back to the warehouse in Wild Dismal, and warn the Pails’ heavies to come and help. There’s an Undertower lift to the west. Clear?” The only answer was silence. “Fine. Go to the pots or to your beds now.”
The other children ran to the hall and the promised beds. Riliska stayed. “Sir?”
The old man turned toward her, surprised and a little annoyed. She realized that he had probably been asleep when they arrived, and she was keeping him up. “What is it?”
He didn’t hit her, so she dared what the other children had not. “Why are we here?”
“What do you mean?”
“If we’re just to escape and call for help, why do you need all fourteen? Why not just one or two?”
“Well,” he said, looking uncomfortable, “that’s a lot of rope right there, and the coil is heavy. It will take many small hands to push it into the gap. And besides…besides, no one is supposed to know about this place. But should an attack come, well, the more of you there are, the more likely one will make it to Wild Dismal.”
Riliska was not surprised or alarmed. Some hidden part of her had expected to hear exactly this answer. Gangland heavies might come, and if they could, they would turn their knives on her and the other children.
Her next question escaped her without thinking if it was safe to ask. “Is my mommy coming?”
The old man sighed as though she’d made a mess he would have to clean up. “I’m just here to sweep the floors, child.”
He left.
Riliska could hear the other children settling in. Now that they were on their own, they clearly felt free to chatter and talk.
But they sounded very far away. How much warning would they have if an attack came? Not only would the kids have to make it all the way here, then push in the rope, they’d have to reach the bottom, too. Heavies willing to stab her would certainly be willing to cut through a rope while she was still on it.
She decided to sleep closer to their escape route. Inside the actual room would have been best, but odd breezes made the stone room chilly, and the smell of the “dirt” below—always present in the city—was especially strong. She went through a door for no other reason than the children and the old man had not, and found herself in the bath.
Her mommy had taken her to a bath before, and she knew that there was an open place beneath the tub where fires were lit. She clambered through the stone tub to the far side. The smell of charcoal and old smoke was faint but better than the spa’s sewer smell.
It was only when she remembered that the old man had taken his candle with him, and that there should have been no light for her to see, that she realized there was something shining from beneath the tub. It wasn’t a fire. Firelight was orange.
Riliska carefully crouched beside the slot and peered in.
Deep inside the gap, lying on the ashy skywood, was a little child, even smaller than Riliska herself. The child glowed faintly in the darkness, skin glittering with a hundred colors.
* * *
News had not yet reached Harl’s platform halls that the man was dead. It was inconvenient but not unexpected. Tin Pail and her brother sat in a cafe across the street from The Flute and Thunder with Paper Mouse, a couple of heavies she sort of trusted, and a single beetle. The guards on the back entrance looked bored. They were attentive, because Harl would never trust laggards with a job like this, but they were relaxed, too.
The cafe owner came by their table again and tried to collect their cups, muttering apologetically about closing time. Paper bared his knife and led the man into the back, explaining what would happen if he kept interrupting.
Before he could return, her bodyguard arrived in the cart, chimes in his beard jingling. He climbed down and approached, holding a bundle wrapped in red cloth. When his gaze met Tin’s, he nodded.
They stood from the table and went into the street. Paper hurried to take the bundle from her bodyguard. Tin nodded to the heavies
she’d brought along, and they fell back to watch over the street. The bodyguard opened his long, sleeveless, and now bloodstained coat, drew the two pieces of his ghostkind weapon, and joined them together.
That caught the guard’s attention. They pulled hatchets from their belts, except for the tall, willowy woman in the back who began to string her bow. There were six of Harl’s people—with more inside, obviously—facing Tin Pail, her brother, Paper, and her bodyguard. Harl’s people did not look worried.
The shortest of them stepped forward. He was built like a tree stump and sported long scars down one cheek. “Turn around and jump off the edge of the fucking deck,” he said. “It’ll be a quicker death, and you get to see a glimpse of the night sky before the end. Try to rob us, and Harl will slaughter your whole family.”
Tin stopped just outside the range they would have to engage. Paper said, “Harl has murdered his last Salashi kid.” Then he lowered the bundle and let the cloth fall.
Harl’s head rolled across the planks toward the guards’ feet. The biggest of them, and the only one with the pale Carrig complexion, blurted out, “No. No!”
Tin lunged forward. In one motion, she drew her hammer and slammed it down on the top of the Carrig’s head. He fell back with an expression that looked almost peaceful. The willowy woman in the back shot an arrow, but Tin’s bodyguard blocked it with the flat of his glaive.
“Stop!” the short guard called. “Stop right now.”
He looked like he meant it. Tin glanced at her bodyguard and saw him lowering his weapon. If the Katr thought the guy was standing down, that sealed it. She slid her hammer into her belt. Taking his cue, Wooden sheathed his knife.
Tin said, “With Harl dead, you work for me now.”
The short guard glanced down at Harl’s gaping mouth and gray skin. “All right, I guess. All right.” It wasn’t exactly a pledge of undying loyalty, but it was the best she could expect. He turned toward the others. “Anyone here love Harl Sota List Im so much they want to fight, without pay, for his corpse?” He waved vaguely at the dead Carrig. “Besides him.”
They looked her bodyguard up and down. He wasn’t even standing in a guard position. They did nothing.
Tin sighed. This shit was too easy. The fight she’d expected was already over, because Harl’s people—some of the best he had, assigned to guard his most lucrative setup—had shrugged off his murder. How many of her own people would do the same when the point came to her? The thought made her want to swing her hammer again. “Open the door and warn the guard inside.”
The lead heavy shrugged. “If you’re paying our salaries, you’re making the call.”
“And keep your mouths shut. No one is to hear about this until I tell them.”
The people inside were even easier to convince, if that was possible, and the manager’s wary submissiveness quickly turned into eagerness to please.
These people thought of themselves as regular working folk. The realization startled and amazed Tin, but it was obvious. They worked a shift, doing the same thing every day, and collected a day’s wages. When Tin moved in, they reacted like the staff at a cafe who learned it had been sold. All they cared about was whether they’d lose their jobs. They were practically petals.
It was pathetic.
The manager of the platform hall opened his books for her. The numbers were straightforward and startling. His business earned more than Tin expected, especially since Harl had forbidden prostitution, gambling, or drug trade on the property. The Flute and Thunder was a clean location, except for the sale of human body parts. Suddenly, the endless thump and whine of the music seemed tolerable.
Harl’s black-market surgical fixer was a bland, weedy man with a gray bureaucrat’s scarf. He stood behind a plain desk in a small back office with a pair of rough-looking but respectably dressed heavies.
Before Tin could ask questions, a new customer was ushered in. She was a well-preserved woman in her sixties, wearing an embroidered white robe with a high silver collar that had been in style ten years before and was now considered conservative.
“It’s about my child, you see,” the woman said, looking down her nose at the fixer. “He needs a skin transplant, and not a single legitimate facility will perform it. Of course, I’m willing to pay a reasonable surcharge, but—”
The fixer interrupted her with the stoic deference of a funeral director. “May I ask, good madam, what condition he suffers from?”
“Does that really make a difference? I suppose you must know. He’s going bald. In fact, he’s going bald in the most appalling fashion, and I don’t see how I’m ever going to have a grandchild at this rate.”
“Of course, we have dealt with such concerns before. Our usual business involves working with those who are gravely ill, but we can accommodate your son’s…condition. How old is he?”
“He’s thirty-nine.”
An unbearable urge to laugh suddenly came over Tin, and she slipped out a side door into a long dark hallway. The old woman’s chattering was still audible through the door, which meant the laughter that was about to burst out of her would be heard inside and spoil the deal.
She sprinted—something she hadn’t done in years—down the hall until she was right beneath the stage. There, in the shadow of the stairs, she laughed long and hard, releasing years of tension she hadn’t realized she was carrying around.
After so much worry over the failed handoff, framing Harl, and hunting him down—after all the risks that came with taking on the most powerful criminal in Koh-Salash—she realized she’d risked her and her brother’s life for the coin in the purse of that pampered old woman at the end of the hall. This was where her ambition had led her.
She laughed, and it felt good.
Soon, she began to feel embarrassed and took deep breaths until the laughter subsided. The whole situation was absurd, and a surge of giggles ran through her when she imagined cutting off Harl’s scalp for that woman’s middle-aged child. Maybe she would have wanted to inspect it first, like a fish in Low Market, so she could approve the hairline.
A flicker of shadow from above finally stifled her laughter, and she glanced up to see a figure in black gliding down the stairs. The music was too loud to hear him, of course, but he descended so smoothly that she suspected she wouldn’t have heard him even without the band.
He reached the bottom step. Tin immediately recognized his shaggy black hair and the vicious scar on his face.
She was face to face with the asshole from the pawnshop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tin’s first thought was that the pawnshop asshole should be dead. Her second was that he should be chained in a tower while the cosh beat him into jelly. The image made her grin. “Looking for the staff privy, huh?”
He glanced at her, then looked away. “Yes.”
“I’m the same way. I had to pay to eat it. Why should I pay to shit it, too? Right? Don’t bother with that hallway,” she said, pointing back the way she came, “that’s for the women only.”
“Thank you.” His voice was as soft as a serpent’s hiss. He rounded the corner toward the far hall.
Time to go.
Tin hurried up the stairs into the narrow, cluttered backstage. Two women, either dead drunk or so tired by the late hour that they could sleep through the thundering music, lay unconscious on heaps of canvas. Tin came to the edge of the stage and looked out.
Her brother was out there flailing his arms and wiggling his hips. As usual, he seemed to have attracted a small crowd of young people. In places like this, someone always found his flamboyant abandon irresistible.
Their bodyguard was not on the dance floor with him, but that head full of wild red hair was easy to spot. He stood at the rail, still blood-spattered but empty-handed. Beside him was one of her heavies, a lean young guy who went by Dry Rain. The heavy was soaked through with sweat and breathing heavily, as though he’d run a long way. She approached them.
“Boss!” Dry h
ad to shout over the music. The nearest musician gave them a look, but Tin had her hand on her hammer, and he turned away quickly. “Someone hit the warehouse!”
That made no sense. “Which one?”
“Yours! The one in Wild Dismal!”
Someone was moving against them. No one was supposed to know what had happened, not yet, but they were already responding. And it couldn’t have been anyone working Harl’s…no, her black-market medical hustle, because they would have had to execute the hit before she showed them the head. “What did they take?”
“As far as we could tell, nothing.”
Bullshit. Tin hurried to her bodyguard. “Remember the flunky from the pawnshop?”
The Katr nodded, ringing the chimes in his beard. “The one who did not flinch.”
Tin noticed the lone beetle crouching outside the platform, his arms wrapped around his knees for warmth. She signaled for him and he jumped up. “He’s supposed to be locked in one of the towers or dead, but instead, he’s here right now. Someone sprung him.”
“I will kill him.”
“No.” To the beetle, she said, “Find Paper Mouse and bring him to me.”
Selsarim Lost, who could be moving against her? The only people who knew she’d planned to come here were the people she’d brought.
It had to be one of Harl’s other lieutenants, and if they were coordinated enough to hit her warehouse and send this pawnshop broker to The Flute and Thunder at the same time, they were all in danger.
To her bodyguard, she said, “Stay with my brother.”
They both looked at Wooden, and he noticed. Tin saluted to him, and the signal had its intended effect. He pushed through his throng of admirers toward them.
Tin noticed the manager standing expectantly at the foot of the stage. She drew her hand across her throat and he signaled the musicians to stop playing. They did.
She got a full report from Dry. It didn’t make sense. Only three dead, one missing, one beaten unconscious. Nothing stolen or burned. There wasn’t even an attempt, as far as he could tell, to enter storage where the white tar and glitterkind ear were kept.
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