“Except you’re a head taller than I am,” the bureaucrat said. “More. Won’t they notice?”
“You’ll be up here, driving the cart. People see what they expect to see.”
The bureaucrat stared up at him. He was obviously still afraid, but he was doing his best to hide it. He hadn’t accepted the cloak. “My name is Fay Nog Fay. What’s yours?”
This again. “Kyrioc, child of No One. But you already know that.”
“I do,” Fay answered. “When all this is over, you’re going to answer for what you did in south tower.”
It took boldness to say that. Kyrioc felt a surge of admiration for him, along with a pang of sorrow. Kyrioc had been bold, once.
“We can settle that after the girl is safe and you have as many of the Pails’ people as you can catch. Deal?”
In truth, Kyrioc had no idea how he would settle anything. As long as Riliska was safe, being arrested and sent to the mines for ten years—or simply hanged—would be a tolerable way to end his life. Or he could use his cloaks to escape the city. Both options seemed equally appealing.
But if he let the constables take him, his old identity might be uncovered. He could not face that. Not now. Not ever.
Kyrioc had no idea what he would do when this was over. Everything after rescuing Riliska was a void. Blackness. He couldn’t return to the pawnshop. He had nowhere to live and no reason to do anything. His future was emptiness.
And that was fine. It didn’t matter.
Fay accepted the dead man’s cloak. “Deal.”
Kyrioc told him about the heavies in the plaza. “They’re here to kill the driver of this cart and recover this asshole alive. Can the constables move in and take them quietly?”
“No,” the bureaucrat answered. “The heavies shout and the constables shout back. They push each other around. It’s always like that. Always.”
Kyrioc was hoping this task could be turned over to someone who would not have to waste more lives. “I’ll clear them out.”
The bureaucrat picked up on his reluctance but misread his reason for it. “Can you? All those thugs? Because I’m risking my life here.”
“Do you want to call a constable to take your place?”
No sooner had he asked the question than Wooden moaned.
The bureaucrat sighed. “It would never work. An honest constable would never hold a gangster for ransom, and a dishonest one can’t be trusted. It has to be me.”
“Then put this on.”
Kyrioc pulled a flat wooden panel from the bed of the broken carriage. It had been part of the roof, with two short, curving pieces of the support still attached. He turned it so the curved supports pointed toward Fay.
The bureaucrat understood immediately. He draped the curving pieces onto his shoulders so the wooden panel hung on him like a chest plate, then tied it in place with the cloak.
“When you see the next patrol come through, do a slow count to twenty, then drive the cart up. The constables should be behind you, but stay out of sight for as long as possible.”
Fay looked down as he tied a knot in his cloak. Kyrioc stepped back and called up his cloak of shadow.
* * *
Cold Sunshine liked this new boss. She was hard, like the thugs he grew up with, and he’d do anything to impress her.
For the moment, that meant patrolling this plaza. The other two men in his team were older, so he was the one who did the extra running, dodging into the abandoned buildings to check on the heavies stationed there. He tried to play it cool—perfectly willing to do the extra work without seeming puppy-dog eager, but the guys acted like they were looking down on him anyway. Like he was the junior.
Which was okay, because someday they would fuck something up, and Tin Pail would decide they needed to have the point taken to them. And she would give that job to Cold.
Wool Cap jerked his thumb toward the plankway. Time for another patrol. The heavies started the night at the edges of the spa platform, staring across the gulf at nothing. Hours later, they looked tired and bored. Only Tin Pail’s endless pacing, hammer in hand, kept them from sitting or wandering back inside.
But not Cold Sunshine. At the jerk of Wool’s thumb, he was on the plankway, heading toward the plaza again. His partners kept up, mostly. Cold was careful not to act like he wanted to show them up, even though he was doing exactly that.
The plaza across the gap was deserted but half the torches were lit. Wool Cap had told them to look for a shadow that seemed out of place—either much darker than it should be or cast by something they couldn’t see.
That meant magic, and Cold could tell his partners weren’t happy about it. Cold himself thought it was bullshit. Godkind blessings were one thing. They were gifts from the dead gods. They didn’t even count as magic, because they were really real.
Other kinds, though? Witchy-tale stuff for little kids.
He checked for weird shadows anyway, because he wanted to prove he could be relied on, whatever his personal feelings.
He turned right at the platform, hustling along the edge. “Kid,” said one of the others. It didn’t matter which. He was getting too far ahead. They thought he had to be reined in. He slowed down, not to be controlled by them in any way—fuck them—but because Cold didn’t want word getting around that he was careless.
They came to the shop where the first team of heavies lay in wait. Cold headed for the door, taking care to step onto the floor near the walls, where the boards would be less likely to squeak. If he wasn’t allowed to kill anyone, he could at least enjoy sneaking up on them, hand on knife. For practice.
The interior of the shop was dark and quiet. The heavies didn’t react to his approach. Goosebumps ran down Cold’s arms. Had he finally snuck up on them? They were at his mercy. “Anything to report?”
They didn’t stir.
Several things happened at once. Cold realized he could smell blood and shit, and had been smelling it since he passed through the door, but he’d been too excited to notice.
He also sensed someone behind him.
In that brief moment, Cold knew he was never going to get his chance to murder someone, because he was going to experience it from the other side. In this room of corpses, he was the victim.
Just before the iron struck his skull, he felt a powerful sense of loss. What a waste his death was going to be. His killer wouldn’t even see his expression.
* * *
Tin’s restlessness had passed. The jumbled emotions she’d felt when she’d heard her brother had been taken—fear for his safety, rage at the challenge to her authority, worry that her own people would turn on her—had finally run out like water in a cracked tub.
What she had left was annoyance.
The asshole who took her brother was making her wait. She hated waiting. She wanted sleep, another meal, a jug of brandy or a trip to the baths. Anything but this fucking waiting.
It was wearing her heavies out, too. She wanted them alert and dangerous, but their energy was flagging. The ones who liked to drink through the night were sweating, and the others clearly just wanted somewhere to sit.
And her fucking bodyguard was somewhere inside the building, probably sulking over that little girl. He’d turned pale at that order. For a moment, Tin thought she might have finally pushed him too far.
But no. He had his honor, which meant he was hers.
Morale. That was the problem. Their morale was dropping. She told Wool Cap to find a jug of brandy and pour cups out for the heavies. He suggested they set benches against the side of the building so they could relax in shifts. She agreed.
There was a collective sigh when word got around. They didn’t dare complain openly, but they were grateful that she thought about their comfort.
Fuck them. She didn’t give a shit about their sore feet or tired eyes. She wanted them ready to fight.
* * *
Kyrioc took the cloak from the man he’d killed. By the fallen gods, he was so youn
g.
It was a pointless waste of a life, but the only way to Riliska led through a pile of corpses.
He put on the cloak and summoned his cloak of mirrors.
Stolen hood pulled low, he ran into the street. If only he’d had the time to steal the kid’s boots, too, assuming he could make them fit.
The two heavies jogged to catch up, their attention worrying his magic. He focused his will on it.
“Kid,” one of the heavies called. They wanted him to slow down, which meant his cloak was holding. The heavy called to him again, this time with a weary tone, as though he was tired of chasing after a runaway child. Kyrioc didn’t pull farther ahead, but he did maintain his distance as he ducked into the next building, and the next.
The teams were all dead, of course. If there was one thing Kyrioc was good at, it was creeping up on someone in the dark and bashing in their skulls. When he entered each building, he called, “Anything to report?” just as the boy had, because the more he behaved like the kid he’d replaced, the stronger his cloak would be.
Then he came to the edge of the ramp where the bureaucrat was waiting with the cart. Kyrioc dared a glance to the side but saw nothing but shadow.
Good. Fay was well hidden. Or it was bad, because he was not there and was not coming, and Kyrioc would never make it to the spa under the gaze of so many enemies.
It didn’t matter. He would go where he needed to go, do what he had to do, to see Riliska safe.
* * *
Just as Tin thought the patrol was taking too long, a figure appeared in the plaza. For a moment, she didn’t recognize him, but that was the cloak she’d given to the sly, skinny kid who couldn’t stop touching his knife, so—yeah, that was him. The others were close behind.
They made their way onto the plankway, crossing the long, narrow path back toward headquarters. Everyone was watching them now—there was nothing else to look at, after all—and Tin realized the sly kid looked more hunched over than when he left, and maybe it was someone else wearing that—
“There!”
Wool Cap pointed to the western edge of the plaza, where a cart driven by two horses came slowly into view. She recognized the horses and their rigging, even at this distance. They were the ones that went back and forth to Harl’s supposedly safe tar cookery in Mudside, but it was all fucked up.
Her patrol crossed onto the spa deck, mixing with the rest of the heavies, but she wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. No one was. Her people had gotten off the benches and moved toward the edge of the deck, watching the slow progress of the wrecked carriage, with the sound of the horses’ hooves echoing across the gap.
She couldn’t see the driver clearly. He was wearing the same sort of cloak her people wore when they wanted to be anonymous, probably stolen from one of her brother’s useless guards. She should have sent Killer of Devils with him, despite Harl’s security arrangements. It was fucking Mudside.
And there was something piled in the back.
She pushed through the crowd to her archer and found him straining to string his bow. His arrows lay on a little table beside him. Some had broad, barbed heads. Some had slender points. Some had oil-soaked rags tied just behind the head.
“Tell me what you see.”
The archer finally got his bow strung, then peered across the gap. “Two horses, one driver, three bundles in the back. The driver looks like a little guy, but with a quiet wind I could hit him square in the chest from here.”
Tin was glad he sounded so confident. “Tell me about the bundles.”
“They’re wrapped in blankets. Tied to the support posts. Maybe man-sized.”
Her brother.
“Good,” she said. “Be ready.” He picked up the arrow with the broadest head and widest barbs, then kissed it.
Tin snapped her fingers and moved to the edge of the plankway. Wool Cap was ready. He removed the flag from his belt and handed it to her. Tin unfurled it slowly, watching the horses make their inexorable passage across the plaza. God, they were slower than her own people. She’d intended to wait for the carriage to reach the mouth of the plankway, but fuck it. She hated waiting.
It was time for her teams to move against this asshole. She raised the flag above her head and waved it back and forth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When Fay saw the waving flag, an icy shiver ran through him. The Broken Man had promised to clear the plaza, and although Fay had no reason to trust him, he had.
No one rushed at him. No one shouted at him to stay where he was. Kyrioc, child of No One, had done it.
Still, it gave him goosebumps to see someone give the order to kill him.
After a few more moments of nothing, the crowd on the deck in front of the spa became uneasy. Someone’s plan hadn’t gone off, and Fay wasn’t keen to find out what they would try next.
He pressed the wooden shell against his chest. Only constables were entitled to a steel breastplate, but maybe he should have borrowed one.
“Hey, asshole!”
For one absurd moment, Fay wanted to protest that he was just standing in for the asshole. The voice came from the middle of the crowd, and there was no way to tell who was speaking. It was a woman’s voice, though, harsh and raw.
“Send over the girl!” he shouted. “Let’s make this trade!”
“Tell me who you work for!” the woman called back.
Fay was stymied for a moment. It hadn’t occurred to him that the Broken Man, as he called himself, was working for someone. Had Fay been tricked—once again—into doing some ganglord’s dirty work? The thought made him flush with anger.
Fuck it. He had a role, and he was going to stick with it. “I work for Riliska, child of Rulenya.”
There was a murmur from across the way. They didn’t like his answer, but it wasn’t Fay’s job to make assholes like him.
The woman called again, “All right, little petal. All right. At least tell us your name.”
“Broken Man,” he shouted back. “Let’s make this trade! Send over—
Fay heard a whistling sound.
* * *
Tin saw the driver reel and tumble backward out of his seat.
“Center apple,” the archer said proudly. Whatever she was paying him, he’d earned it.
“All right,” she said to Wool Cap. “Let’s get a team of six and—”
Wool pointed toward the plaza. “Shit.”
The man across the way was climbing to his feet. His hood had fallen back, and even at this distance she could see he wasn’t Salashi. He had a Carrig’s complexion. One of Harl’s people. That’s who the scarred asshole had been working for all along—the foreign friends.
Fine. No, actually it was better than fine, because now she wasn’t annoyed. She was pissed off. And that made her strong.
“Hey!” the carriage driver shouted. “Try that shit again, and I will burn your brother alive! I came here to make a trade! Send out the girl, and no more bullshit!”
Tin gritted her teeth. No more bullshit, he’d said. To her! No more bullshit.
“Boss,” the archer said nervously, “he must be wearing armor. I have arrows that—”
“Shut the fuck up,” she snapped. “Time for Plan C. Send the girl.”
* * *
Kyrioc’s heart leaped. Send the girl.
He’d taken a space in the back of the crowd, as far from the lanterns as he could get. He glanced at the spa’s front door, but it stayed closed. Riliska should be stepping through it any moment now.
In that moment, it became absolutely clear what he should do. The void he’d imagined once Riliska was safe suddenly wasn’t so black anymore. He could picture it as easily as he could picture the coming dawn. Riliska would walk across the plankway to the bureaucrat, who would scoop her up and carry her away. Then constables would surge out of their hiding places.
When they did, Kyrioc was going kill Tin Pail so she could never do this again. After that, he’d murder as many of these
assholes as he could.
And if that meant that Kyrioc took the point or was thrown off the platform, so be it. It would be better than returning to a life that meant absolutely nothing to him.
Was this happiness? Was this relief? Had he fought and killed until he finally redeemed one of his many mistakes?
Still, the door didn’t open. The heavies were turned toward the plaza. At the back of the crowd, Kyrioc couldn’t see what they were looking at, but he thought he could hear the scuffle of soft footfalls.
Riliska was already on the plankway. Tin had kept her close, where no one could see her in the press of bodies.
That was a smart move. If Kyrioc had realized she was there…
Not that it mattered now. He straightened to see over the crowd, holding tight to his cloak of mirrors. A woman beside him with a scar across her face glanced at him, then looked away.
Kyrioc could see nothing. He climbed onto the bench, standing well above the others.
A little girl walked with a shuttered lantern in both hands. She was almost to the far side, scurrying along with quick, tiny, furtive steps.
He’d never seen Riliska walk that way before.
For a moment, he considered shouting to Fay that they’d sent an imposter, but he supposed it didn’t matter. If they weren’t sending her across the plankway, she was somewhere in the building. While the heavies were wasting time out here, he’d find her and free her.
“Can you see him?” one of the heavies asked. “I can’t see that far. Can you see him?”
The tall woman beside him said, “Fuck, yes.”
“Tell me,” the squinting man said. “Tell me what he does when he finds out.”
Goosebumps ran down Kyrioc’s back, and the emptiness inside him swallowed all happiness and hope.
* * *
Fay felt as light as smoke. The thin trickle of blood running down his belly was proof the asshole had tried to kill him. If their broadhead arrow had struck with the grain of his wooden panel instead of across it, he would have suffered more than this pinprick. Much more.
Still, he was alive, and he wasn’t even angry. It seemed odd that he would feel nothing more than a vague amazement. Was there something wrong with him? Why wasn’t he filled with righteous outrage, anger, and bloodlust? He was pretty sure those were the normal feelings people were supposed to have. He hoped they’d show up soon.
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