…and nearly walked into Sot.
Kug bit down hard on a startled cry even as he flinched in surprise. Sot himself gaped, eyes wide and red from (Kug assumed) soot, and nearly stumbled backwards.
Then he saw Lama, behind her heartfast.
The flites squawked and bickered in their cages, a disharmonious addition to the racket of the bells, although those were finally subsiding.
Kug recovered himself.
"Lama! Sot! What're you doing out here?"
Sot stepped back so Lama could come forward. It was, Kug recognized, always such.
She did not embrace Kug. Her arms seemed a little stiff. She looked exhausted.
"We slipped out during the fires." Her gaze darted to the back door of the Steadfast Capful, to Kug, toward the side yard gate, and back again to Kug.
"Fires? More than one..?" Kug shook his head. "But… why? Why aren't you…" He frowned at her. "Was it an accident? Did you..?" He looked at Sot. "Or did you?"
Sot shook his head and looked at the ground.
Lama said, "No accidents."
Something in her voice put a hard knot between Kug's shoulders. His question was made flat by long-dormant instincts.
"What is happening."
Anxiously, he noticed he'd started martial breathing: in deep through the nose, out slow through the mouth. His body knew a fight was coming.
Lama said, "We need to stay with you for a few days. Discreetly."
"What," Kug said again, "is happening. Lama."
Something… moved? beneath her coat.
"What do you have there?"
Sot said, "Kug, look, we'll stay out of the way. We—"
Lama interjected, "We made a deal. Need to stay here until it's time to close it. That's all you need to know."
"Lama…"
"It's better you don't know anything else, Kug!"
Whatever stirred under her coat had her nervous.
"You're up to something bad, Lama." His shoulders rose toward his neck, and with them, the muscles there twisted like a rag being wrung out. "If you want to stay here, and involve me, then I get to know whatever I want."
She glared at him. He'd weathered that stare since she was no taller than his knee; he could stand it today. Kug met her eyes and waited, taking the opportunity to exhale smoothly and ease his shoulders down and back.
She finally broke her gaze to glance down at her chest.
"What are you hiding there, Lama? Tell me, or you can conceal yourself and your folly among the flites in their pens. I don't care."
That was a lie, the bit about his concern, and a weak one. Everyone standing there knew it.
Nevertheless, Kug tried to walk past her as if he intended to carry on with the morning's chores.
Sot stepped in his path.
Kug scowled up at him. The younger magn had been a head taller than Kug since he was fourteen years old. Even back when Kug still enjoyed the strength and fitness of his caravan town days, Sot had been stronger and broader.
Still, Sot had never been anything more than a brawler. Despite the extra years and extra softness for all concerned, Kug was pretty sure he could drop the kit to the dirt.
He put that confidence into his voice.
"Sot. You've never stood in my way. Is this the morning you try?"
But Sot only seemed despondent, not belligerent. "Please, Kug."
Somehow Sot's desperation was like a bellows on Kug's smoldering anxiety. Smoke from the palace fires tickled his nose even as his insides shrank. He wiped his upper lip on the back of his hand and turned back to Lama.
The mystery beneath her coat made a noise, small and thin and breathy, and Kug instantly knew what she held there.
"Lama..!" Had her mind turned against her? He knew she'd suffered, and never really recovered from her neverborn, but this was…
"You can't..! Whose..?"
Lama looked disgusted. She pulled a cloth from a pocket with one hand and opened her coat with the other.
Kug swayed from what he saw.
They really had stolen a baby.
"Aza and Nza," he swore.
Lama gently, but firmly, put the cloth against the baby's tiny nostrils. It relaxed almost immediately. She closed her coat and narrowed her eyes.
"All right, Kug. You've seen. Now will you shelter us? Four days. At most."
Kug saw Sot go pale, looking past him and Lama. He turned to follow his gaze to the kitchen exit of the Capful.
Prak stood there, confused. "T'yer day, Sot; Lama."
Lama said nothing. Sot, red-faced now, waved once.
Prak frowned.
How long had he been there? Kug spread his arms, turning his mounting dread into what he hoped was a good impersonation of exasperation.
"Well? What did you want?"
Prak focused. "Oh. Uh, you've been out here a while. Did you want me to get the eggs while you visit?"
Kug raised a hand. "No. I'll be in soon. Get everything else ready, and thank you. It's going to be a very busy day. Fire at the palace."
Prak squinted at Lama and Sot for a blink, slowly nodding. "All right."
He went inside.
Lama stared at the closed kitchen door. "No one can know, Kug. Best if no one even knows we're staying here."
Kug didn't recognize the dark and unwavering expression on his sistersdaughter's face. "You can't keep the baby, Lama."
The contempt she expressed next, now that, Kug knew well.
"We're not keeping it, Kug. He's the deal."
"He..?"
The fire. The hour. The baby. Something horrible was coalescing in Kug's mind.
"What deal, Lama? Sot? What's this about?"
Lama glanced at the Capful's door again. "Certain… parties… engaged us to deliver the infant. Things didn't go as planned."
Once, long ago, Kug had found himself on his back, ankle twisted, as a herd of stampeding plainshoppers thundered toward him.
This felt just like that.
So that he could hear it; so that he could look directly at the death coming for them, he said, "So that… that is…"
Lama nodded.
"No," Kug said. "I need to hear the name."
Lama rolled her eyes. "Ranith. All right?"
There it was. The gritty, throat-clogging dust. The lolling, panicked eyes. The frothing snouts of the frenzied herd.
Coming for him.
Kug shook his head.
"What 'parties?'"
"You know the sulky one everyone thinks is a magicker? Ulthus?" Lama didn't wait for Kug's acknowledgment. "Whoever he serves."
Sot said, "I'm gonna make sure no one else comes out," and took a position by the back door of the Steadfast Capful.
Kug granted him a wave. "Lama. He is a magicker. And the one he serves is Taghesh Child-Arm. Another magicker. A worse magicker."
He shook his head again.
"How could you do this?"
He paced in a tight circle, grasped the sides of his head with both hands, let go, and then shook them both at Lama.
"You have doomed us, Lama. Do you know that? Could you not see that? You have doomed us."
He studied her face. How it had changed in the years since she'd followed Vadi behind the palace walls. How different from the little girl he'd raised like a daughter since her mother's murder.
He'd given up his life for her.
She didn't even look like her mother.
She didn't even look like herself. So world-worn. So hard.
She said, "Will you help us?"
He couldn't manage more than a whisper. "What could possibly be worth this?"
"Will you," her eyes narrowed, "help us?"
The smoke and soot stung his eyes. His throat itched. He gripped his brow and squeezed his eyes shut.
"It's all I do."
Sot rejoined them. "Thank you, Kug. We won't be any trouble."
Kug stared at him. "Aza take pity on us all. You won't be any trouble, you say." His right hand flexed,
pining for the handle of the ax gathering dust in the back of his wardrobe. "You won't be any trouble."
Kug laughed, short and hard.
Sot looked as though he'd been slapped.
Good.
He took the time to breathe in and out thrice, staring at nothing, deliciously aware of Lama and Sot's growing impatience.
Relatively calm now, he said, "Since you have killed me, you two, you will do this exactly as I say."
Lama nodded.
"Come with me."
He walked them around the yard to the opposite side of the Steadfast Capful, where a staircase led to a narrow balcony outside of his private chambers.
They followed him up and into the apartment.
Lama said, "We can't stay in your—"
Kug's tone was low and sharp. "Say nothing, save to answer my questions. Say nothing, unless it is in a whisper."
Lama glared at him, but obeyed. Sot put a hand over his own mouth.
Kug said, "How are you keeping him asleep? The cloth—magick?"
Lama nodded.
With great care to make as little noise as possible, Kug lifted his bed and angled it away from the wall. Not long after he'd taken over the Steadfast Capful and moved in, he'd hung a thick curtain there, ostensibly to deaden noise from his neighbor. Every room had such a tapestry; he'd seen to that.
He drew it aside, pressed his hand against the bare wall, and let go.
A section of the wall swung out; a hidden door.
"You'll stay in there today." Whispering hurt his irritated throat. "It's close, and dark, and you'll probably have to soil yourselves because there's not enough room in there to do otherwise. I don't care. You have to stay in there, because no one knows about it. Prak doesn't know about it, Ressa doesn't know about it. Your mother didn't know about it, far as I know.
"And the palace guard will almost certainly not look for it when they come here today and search every room looking for you."
Sot blanched. Kug knew the big magn was going to be very sore in there. Again, good.
If Lama was surprised by the secret room, her face didn't show it. "After today? After they've decided we're not here?"
"I'll put you in the room next to mine, where you will stay until that magicker comes to collect his prize," Kug said. "Assuming we're not all found out and slaughtered before that."
Lama nodded again.
"You can keep him quiet? Because if you can't…"
She said, "The cloth works well."
Of that, Kug was deeply, probably terminally, skeptical.
Apparently this was how his road ended.
"Get in there and keep your mouths shut," he said.
Chapter Seven
Kug
Kug went out the way he'd come in. He gathered the eggs and brought them to Prak, waiting in the kitchen. When Prak asked about Lama and Sot, Kug told the boy they had left.
"What'd they want? Strange, them coming around so early if they weren't going to stay to eat."
"Family things," Kug said. "Not important." He made the effort to put some humor in his voice. "Especially," he laughed, "to you. Your concern is making sure we're ready to fill the bellies of our first guests. We're opening soon."
Prak grunted, seemingly placated.
As Kug passed into the common room, Ressa said, "I missed Lama, I hear?"
"Ah. Yes."
Ressa looked at him, clearly expecting more.
Kug shrugged. "You know how she is. Her troubles love my ears."
Ressa frowned and tsked. "Kug. You know what she's been through. Be kind."
Kug hoped the way he stretched his lips resembled some kind of smile. "You're right, Ressa." He couldn't maintain it. He turned away from her and strode for the main doors of the Steadfast Capful. "You're right."
"Indeed I am," she said lightly. "Opening?"
"Opening."
He unlatched the doors and threw them open.
Old Haekka waited outside, just as most days. "T'yer day, Kug," he rumbled as he passed. Kug heard Ressa hail him within.
So begins, he thought, the end.
It was all so ordinary.
And so it was for nearly a mark, as half a dozen of the usual Shadow District folk trickled in for firstmeal. They all knew one another; they often ate together, and today, they all speculated and gossiped about the palace fire.
Ressa and Prak could handle things. Kug lingered just outside the door, as he sometimes did when the morning was slow. This morning, he knew, he should do no different, despite how badly he wanted to check on Lama and Sot and…
He shook his head. Don’t even think the name.
Even though his balcony wasn't visible from where he stood, it was difficult to resist the urge to repeatedly glance in that direction.
Instead, he gave his attention to the palace tower. The smoke had diminished, so he could assume the fire was under control, or even extinguished.
Kug knew that meant the palace guard would soon turn their attention away from the fire and toward those responsible.
Indeed, a few bits later, he saw them marching down the avenue toward the Capful.
Their leader broke ahead. Kug had seen him in the Capful before, so he raised a hand to hail him.
"Dunak, isn't it? Is all well at the palace? Talk of the fire is on everyone's tongues."
Like the guards behind him, Dunak wore full hide and bone armor. A display of authority, Kug assumed, since they were otherwise rarely seen in more than quilted, tanned hide.
"Things are not well." Dunak met Kug's eyes, assessing; accusatory. "Two fires. Two dead magn." He stood close enough Kug could smell the smoke on him. "And… four… missing, tavern keeper. Including your Lama, and the one called Sot."
Kug shrank away from Dunak and let himself stumble until his back met the wall. "No! My Lama… you're not telling me she's one of the… the dead?"
Why had Dunak hesitated in his inventory?
The rest of the guard crowded into the Steadfast Capful. Kug could hear them ordering everyone out.
Dunak's bloodshot eyes narrowed. "Ever seen a burned body, Kug?"
He had, but shook his head.
Dunak scowled. "Hard to tell who they are, enough to say. So you have not seen Lama, or Sot? What about anyone else from the palace or palace yard?"
Kug wished he'd had more time to hear the whole story of Sot and Lama's adventure last night, and that Prak had not seen them.
He made a decision.
"Today? No… and that's why I'm concerned, Dunak."
The six customers filed out the door. Following them, Ressa and Prak had confused looks for Kug.
He said to them, "The guard is concerned for Lama and Sot. I was just telling Dunak I hadn't seen them."
Ressa locked eyes with him for a fraction of a blink. "I'm sure they're fine, Kug. Much confusion in a fire."
Kug saw Prak's eyes widen before the lad looked away quickly, grousing, "How're we supposed to run the place with all this going on…"
Dunak said to Kug, "My guard will question them, and then we'll be searching through this place. What will we learn? What will we find?"
Kug massaged the back of his own neck. "I'm just worried for Lama. And Sot, too, of course. Oh, and there are no guests, so the rooms are unoccupied right now."
"We'll be going into them, all the same." Dunak indicated the interior of the Steadfast Capful with a tilt of his head. Kug went inside, and Dunak followed.
Once in the empty common room, Dunak abandoned his marginal civility.
"I ask you again, Kug. What do you know about the fires? Where is Sot?"
Kug allowed himself to display a bit of irritation. "Fires? More than one? All anyone here knows is that the Alwardendyn tower was ablaze, because we could see it. Where else?"
"The launderer's warren," Dunak growled. "And it started in Sot and Lama's quarters."
"What?"
"Which is also where we found one of the dead, Kug."
&nb
sp; "Shaper's hand…"
"The warren ward says he sent Lama and Sot to gather dirt to fight the fire, and that's the last anyone saw of either of them. No one remembers them being there to fight either fire."
Kug shook his head. "This is troubling."
"Yes. It is." Dunak circled Kug. "I know you were more than a tavern keeper once. Where do your allegiances lie, Kug of the Khal caravan town?"
Kug acted affronted. "My allegiances? With Aenik, of course. I was born in this city… but what does that have to do with anything?"
Dunak stopped pacing. He studied Kug, then made a decision he seemed unhappy to make.
"This won't be a secret by tahigh, so I'm going to tell you now, because I see as the Shaper sees when I say this to you, Kug: I know your people are involved in this. And if they are, why not you as well?"
Kug shook his head. "Involved in what? I don't understand."
"The fires were a distraction. And in the midst of that confusion…" Dunak's face twisted; it was clear he was loath to say what had to be said. "Ranith was taken."
It didn't take Kug any effort to appear genuinely appalled. It was his most natural state today.
"What?"
"Your sistersdaughter, and that worthless brute she lives with, are missing. A palace servant, Vadi, who some say was a friend of theirs, is missing. As is another palace servant. And I have two bodies: one in your sistersdaughter's quarters, and the other in the tower."
Kug put a hand over his mouth. "This is… I can't…"
"What conclusion would you make, tavern keeper?"
Kug shook his head again.
Dunak said, "Didn't Lama drop a neverborn, not long ago?"
"It was years ago. Many years."
Dunak raised an eyebrow.
Kug's laugh was incredulous. "Come on. You couldn't possibly think they would take the Alwardendyn's child? How would they even manage such a thing? Surely Ranith is never without a guard..?"
Dunak darkened at that, then covered his apparent irritation with a harder press. "You need not concern yourself with how, if she did not. Did she, then, Kug? What do you know?"
Kug's authentic feelings bolstered his lies. "Dunak. Hear me. If I had known anything about this, I would have argued against it, because it's folly that can only end in death."
"Indeed." Dunak licked his lips as if he were tasting blood even now.
"Surely you know my tale," Kug continued. "I surrendered my own life's path long ago in order to care for Lama when her mother died. I have dedicated… everything…" He spread his arms to take in the common room. "…to her care and the memory of her mother. If I knew anything about this… Why would I sanction anything so… bewilderingly senseless?"
Light of the Outsider Page 5