One Man

by Harry Connolly

  The landlady took hold of his collar and shook him like a blanket. “Don’t you dare talk about me like a possession! He didn’t steal me. You drove me away with your fussiness and hectoring. He was fun—actually fun!—until he drove me away too. I don’t belong to either of you, and I never have. Now, are you going to help or do I have to get mean?”

  “You broke my heart.” The crooked old man sounded miserable. “I loved you.”

  “But not enough to change.”

  The anger drained out of him, and he studied Kyrioc’s injury more closely. “Bring him in. But you two can’t stay. It’s too painful.”

  He stepped back, and Kyrioc was led to a low couch. The old man fussed about getting a blanket down first, then they all lowered him gently onto it.

  The house was small and cluttered, with few windows to admit light. A pair of weak oil lamps provided the only light, but Kyrioc could see shelves filled with old clay jars, a charcoal grill, and a rack hung with greens several days past their prime.

  “We couldn’t stay even if we wanted to,” the landlady said. Then she turned to Eyalmati. “The whole building knows who robbed you. Your parsu can get most of your money back, can’t they?”

  Eyalmati turned up his palms. “I’m not sure I still have a parsu. Stitches have to tithe.”

  “You’ve paid,” Kyrioc said from the couch. “I made sure.”

  “By the fallen gods, you… Thank you.”

  The landlady straightened Eyalmati’s collar. “You’ve been slipping pretty far this past year, you old boozer. You’re barely aware of your surroundings most of the time. The cosh have been sniffing around about this one, too. We’ll have to think up a story. Come on. You’ll talk to your parsu about recovering your property, and I’ll made sure you don’t accidentally trip and fall into a tavern on the way.”

  The crooked old man closed and latched the door behind them, and quiet settled over the room. He fetched one of the lamps and set it on a table close to the couch. He began to gently probe Kyrioc’s injury.

  “That woman! So infuriating, and yet, when she asks for my help… My name is Pentulis, child of Penfilip.”

  “Kyrioc, child of No One.”

  “Hmf.” Pentulis didn’t think much of that answer. “Who gave you this wound?” When he didn’t get an answer, he asked, “Where did you get the glitterkind flesh, then?” He smirked at Kyrioc’s startled expression. “I worked in a hospital for thirty-five years, young man. You think I can’t recognize the signs of supernatural healing?”

  “It was the last of a supply that I carried with me for a long time.”

  Pentulis grunted and glanced at the left side of Kyrioc’s face. “Not as long as you’ve had that scar, I’m guessing, or you wouldn’t have the scar. Whose hand is that?”

  Kyrioc slipped his left hand under the blanket. “I have a complicated history.”

  “Fine,” Pentulis said. “Be that way if you must. I can show you a dye that will be a much closer match to your natural skin tone. Now the bad news. Yesseni is a charismatic woman, but she’s terrible with a needle and gut. All these stitches are going to have to be redone, and the wound properly cleaned. It’s going to hurt.”

  “Thank you.”

  Pentulis stood and took a pair of shears from a shelf. “Now, that is a proper response.” He cut Kyrioc’s shirt from the hem to the collar, then laid the flaps open.

  And hesitated. He picked up the lamp to show the mass of scar tissue on Kyrioc’s chest. There were old burns, healed slashing wounds, punctures, bite scars, and what looked like claw marks. Pentulis’s expression was unreadable as he took it in.

  Then he sighed. “Complicated history.”

  * * *

  Tin entered the bath with her hammer in hand.

  Two men sat beside the drain. Their chairs were black iron and had shackles for their ankles and their thighs, and manacles for their wrists and upper arms. More treasures stolen from Harl’s hideout in The Folly.

  Both men breathed harder when she entered. The one she didn’t recognize immediately began to plead with her, promising to answer every question or complete any task. The one she did recognize just kept saying, Boss, I swear I swear, Boss, over and over.

  “Both of you shut up.” They did. Wooden stood beside them, bared steel in his hands, and a bloodthirsty grin lighting up his face. It was only when she saw the knife that she realized the men were bleeding from cuts on their chests. “What have you found out?”

  “Something amazing!” Wooden said, practically singing. “Nobody works for anyone else and no one is planning anything and no one knows anything except that they’re really sorry.”

  Tin sighed and studied the two men. Strangely, they looked somewhat alike. They were both too old for the platform-hall clothes they were wearing and had physiques shaped more by drink than hard work. Both looked ready to do anything to save their own lives.

  “This one,” Wooden said, jerking his thumb at the stranger, “tells us his name is Haliyal, child of Hyordis.”

  “Well!” Tin exclaimed, surprised and a little angry. “A thief who goes by his family name! If you’re so determined to rely on your elders, maybe we should pay them a visit. Maybe we should make them pay the debt you owe.”

  “But I’m not a thief!” the man wailed. “I didn’t know we were stealing something. I mean, that she was going to steal something! I was out with a girl, and she said this guy had grabbed her ass, and that I should do something—”

  Wooden lifted his knife. “It was her tit before.”

  Haliyal stopped blubbering, then broke down in tears. “I just wanted to get laid. I just… She told me to punch a guy and I did. I swear by the fallen gods I didn’t know. I swear by Selsarim Lost.”

  Wooden laid the knife against his throat. “And who do you work for? Who planned it?”

  “I work at a tannery. The girl might— It seemed so spur-of-the-moment!”

  Tin kicked him, and the jolt made Wooden’s knife graze the skin of his throat. Haliyal chirped in fear and tried to keep still. “What about the guy from the pawnshop?”

  The prisoner looked from one face to the other as though he needed more explanation. “Who?”

  “Are you fucking playing with me?” Tin roared. “How does the pawnshop broker fit into your plans? Did he hire you or did you hire him? Was he fucking the girl you were with? We know he arrived in the city a year ago. Where was he before that? Did he mention Carrig at all?”

  “No, never! I don’t know anything about any of that! I swear, I—”

  “Shut the fuck up.” She turned to her heavy, bound up beside him. “What about you, Wet? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Wet Cinder licked his dry lips. He was terrified too but trying his best to put on a brave front. “Magic, boss.”

  “Magic, boss?” She tightened her grip on her hammer. “Is that seriously all you have to say to me?”

  “He used magic, boss. On me. I couldn’t fight him.”

  Tin drew her forefinger across his narrow forehead, then wiped the sweat onto his clothes. “You couldn’t fight him? Why? My bodyguard has godkind magic, and you could certainly fight him.”

  Wet glanced over at Killer of Devils as though he feared it was about to happen. “I’d never have a chance. He’d kill me.”

  “You helped a man break into my headquarters while you were on guard duty. Five lives were lost.”

  “Five? I thought—”

  Tin slammed her hammer onto the top of his head, and by the fallen gods, it felt good. “Maybe now these fuckers will actually do some fucking guarding. As for you…”

  Wooden stepped in front of her. His eyes were wide and his gaze intense, but he wasn’t smiling.

  She sighed. “Fine. Have your fun, but don’t take too long. It’s time we showed our faces in Upgarden.”

  That brought his smile back.

  Tin headed toward the door. If she was going to take control of Harl’s old headquarters, she
needed to dress the part.

  And maybe in the future they should do their interrogating in another room, drain or no drain. The screaming echoed too much with all these hard surfaces.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Over the next three days, Kyrioc ate a lot of soup.

  Pentulis came and went, often at odd hours of the night. He no longer worked in hospitals, but he did make himself available to examine injuries and illnesses. The second morning, after a long night on the deck somewhere, he’d sighed and unburdened himself.

  Every time he was called out, no matter the hour or the condition of the patient, he was there to answer the same implicit question: Should we spend coin at a hospital for this? Whether it was fever, injured leg, vomiting child, or anything, really, they just wanted to know if he could fix it without having to turn their life savings over to the medical bureaucracy.

  Kyrioc listened silently, thinking once again about the glitterkind ear Rulenya had hidden in the pawnshop. There was only so much healing magic to go around, and what they had was given to those who could pay. That had seemed like a perfectly reasonable solution when he was a boy in one of the richest families in the city.

  “They’re looking for you, you know.”

  Kyrioc waited for a clarification, but when none came, he had to ask. “Who?”

  “Who? The ironshirts. The city constables,” Pentulis said. “A shaggy-haired man with a scar on his face who injured half a dozen of their own. When Yesseni brought you here, I assumed you’ve been attacked by criminals.”

  “I was.”

  Pentulis chuckled. “Complicated history, then? Fair enough. You’ll be safe here as long as you keep indoors. Another few days and you should be safe from infection. Oh, and I brought you this.”

  He set another crock full of broth on the table by Kyrioc. As before, it was a dark broth, but this one had rice and small bits of meat in it. Goat, by the smell. Kyrioc had hated goat as a boy.

  The old man groaned as he settled onto his bed.

  “Can I ask a question about hospitals? About donated parts?”

  Without opening his eyes, Pentulis said, “If you like.”

  “How often do you get donations from children?”

  The old man’s eyes snapped open. “Why are you asking me that?” he snapped.

  Kyrioc hadn’t thought of it as some sort of accusation, but Pentulis seemed to have taken it as one. “A woman was murdered and collected. Her daughter might have been too, but I haven’t seen evidence of it. Do hospitals take transplants from small children?”

  “How small?”

  “She was nine, I think.”

  Pentulis shook his head. “Too small. For children that young, their livers, hearts, and other parts are too small for anyone except other children, and glitterkind flesh doesn’t always work correctly for them. The only parts that transplant well are the eyes and skin, but most people don’t want to walk around with the skin of a child on their face, especially considering the history there.”

  Kyrioc had no idea what that history was, but he knew enough about people to assume it was ugly. “So, her eyes and skin would be of value, maybe, but little else?”

  The answer, when it came, was little more than a grunt. Then: “You think she’s been murdered and her parts have been sold?”

  Kyrioc’s eyes closed. At this early hour, he could hear nothing but his own breathing and the passage of the wind through the bare branches outside. He could remember so many things with terrible clarity—pain, fear, grief, helplessness at the death of someone close.

  And Riliska’s eyes lighting up after a bite of carrot.

  The idea that she was dead now, cut up to patch some rich man’s balding head, filled him with a fury he could not contain.

  The iron staff he’d carried out of the pawnshop lay beside him. Taking it up, he felt the heat growing inside it. He was not going to give up on her. He would never give up on her until he knew for sure.

  And if he had already failed her, Kyrioc would have to start killing and never stop until there was no one alive who remembered the Pails’ names.

  * * *

  Fay raced around the city, visiting each of the towers at least once a day. He even crossed the river to the Salashi living outside the gods’ corpses to the north, checking in at the constable stations beyond the city.

  Harl Sota List Im had vanished. Either the rumors were true and he was dead, or he had fled Koh-Salash.

  Onderishta hoped he was hiding out somewhere, but Fay didn’t believe it. A man like Harl had a reputation to protect. His only options were to fight to hold on to power or to run.

  Extra constables watched The Docks, and while the risk was always there that they might be paid off to look the other way, he’d told them Harl would be fleeing the city with trunks full of coin. If there was one thing Fay had learned to rely on, it was the greed of his own constables. So far, though, nothing.

  Fay sat in the high room of the south tower, thinking. Where else could he search for a rich Carrig?

  “The bastard really is dead, isn’t he?” he asked the empty room.

  A tiny voice answered. “I think he is, yes.”

  Fay started. Mirishiya sat in the corner, a list of addresses on the table before her. It contained all of Harl’s properties the bureaucracy knew about. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in. I thought you were still downstairs watching the interrogations.”

  “I spent the morning there, good sir. None of the prisoners talked, and the interrogator said the same thing each time. He seemed sort of bored by it all. Is he trying to make a personal connection with the prisoners?”

  “He is,” Fay answered, “but the fact that it doesn’t work is no excuse to stop trying over and over and over.” She smiled, showing those crooked teeth. Fay shrugged. “The principle works if it’s applied properly.” The problem was the interrogator himself. He liked his position and he had the connections to keep it. Only Onderishta could move him to a new position, and she didn’t know he’d lost the knack.

  “Sir, they’re marshaling the constables.”

  Fay and Mirishiya rode the lift to the bottom of the tower. They found ironshirts rushing onto the Spillwater deck in full armor and shields.

  “Captain!” Fay called, catching the commander’s attention just as he was about to reach the door. “What’s going on?”

  The man smelled of spilled beer, but he, too, was well connected and impossible to oust. “Pirates, good sir,” the captain bellowed. “Filthy Carrig pirated a ship right out of the dock.” He immediately blushed and looked abashed. “Sorry, sir. No offense.”

  “We’ll go together,” Fay waved for his apprentice to follow, and they raced into the streets of Spillwater.

  People came out of their homes to jeer or glare. Fay hated this neighborhood, and the locals hated the constables and anyone who traveled with them.

  It was a short trip to The Docks, but Fay didn’t have the patience to wait for the others. He ran ahead, crossing onto The Freightway, then down the stairs.

  The sharp clanging of the bronze bell rang out. The navy was being called up. Fay pushed through the milling crowds, but they were all taller than him.

  A stack of crates had been left on a cargo platform, and Fay clambered atop them. The ship, as expected, was tacking south into the wind. The Salashi flattered themselves a water-going people, but the naval yards at Vu-Timmer did not show any activity. Their spyglasses were probably pointed southward, watching for an invasion. A ship stolen in broad daylight…who could have expected that?

  Of course, he himself had assigned extra constables here to make sure Harl didn’t flee the city. He hoped they’d have a good reason why they let this happen.

  There was a jostling mob on one of the quays, where a line of constables held the crowd back. Fay glanced down to make sure Mirishiya was close by, then plunged into the crowd, saying, “Government business, let me through,” over and over.

  People became harder
to shift as he got closer to the front of the conflict. When he caught his first glimpse of a constable’s helmet, a wiry shirtless man seized him by the arm.

  “Here’s another one of them! Another pirate late to the crime!”

  “I’m an investigator,” Fay snapped. “Stop acting like fools and—”

  “He’s trying to steal another ship!” a gravelly voice shouted from behind him. “Stop him!”

  Fay was about to shout for them to get out of his way when he heard a high voice yell, “NO!”

  He turned. Standing behind him was a weathered old sailor wearing what looked like salt-stained rags. He was holding bared steel, a short-bladed knife that was as broad as two thumbs and serrated partway down the spine. A working man’s knife, not a fighting knife.

  And the only thing between that blade and Fay was Mirishiya, standing with her arms splayed.

  “No!” she shouted again. “Stop!”

  The sailor looked bewildered by her. Fay grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her behind him. “Don’t you dare cut that child!”

  At this, another sailor clasped his comrade’s knife hand. Then it was over. The column of ironshirts had arrived. One glimpse at Fay’s expression and the knife in the sailor’s hand, and the captain’s eyes narrowed.

  To Fay, he said, “Something I can do for you, sir?”

  “Clear this quay before these people do something stupid. You there”—Fay pointed at the man who had nearly killed him—“did you crew on the ship that was hijacked?”

  “I did, good sir.” The last two words seemed to have slipped out accidentally, and the sailor made a sour face.

  “Is the captain here?”

  “He’s up in the city.” No good sir this time.

  “Well, maybe someone should go and tell him?”

  Fay hurried away toward the end of the quay, and now the crowd made way. There were four bodies on the boards. Three were dressed as sailors, while the fourth wore a sensible blue tunic and trousers, like a merchant.

  Two constables moved toward the fourth man as though they were about to pitch him into the water. The injured man protested weakly, clutching at his bloody stomach.