“I’m sure they’ll figure it out when they get the message,” Bram said.
Poison made a distracted noise of agreement.
“You’ve been very patient, girl,” Bram remarked as they rode through the streets at dusk. It was quiet now, and Bram had exhausted himself of clients. There were still a few jars left, but he was not worried. They would go to private buyers sooner or later. He was always one of the first wraith-catchers to get back from the marsh after the season ended, and he always sold his stock.
“I told you not to call me girl,” Poison replied. She rubbed the back of her neck, which was aching from slouching on the cart all day. “What happens now?”
“Well, when the season begins again, I collect all my jars once more, and it’s back into the marsh,” Bram replied with a note of faint resignation in his voice.
“I mean, what happens now?” she replied. “I seem to recall hiring you for a purpose.”
He laughed heartily, his moustache trembling. “How could I forget? Let’s get something to eat first. I owe you that much for guarding my cart all day.”
“What about Lamprey?” Poison prompted.
“Ah,” Bram said with a twinkle. “He doesn’t get up until dark.”
“You know him?” she asked, pouncing on Bram’s words.
“I know where he is,” Bram replied. “I wasn’t only selling my wraiths today, you know. Though I suspect I owe one of my wholesalers a favour for the information.”
Poison felt a grin spread across her face. “Bram, if you weren’t swindling me as we speak, I’d hug you.”
Bram harumphed, colouring a little. “You may want to rethink that after you’ve met Lamprey,” he said. “I have a few things to teach you while we eat. Like how not to get killed after dark in Shieldtown.”
It was terribly quiet at night.
Poison had never noticed how loud the marsh insects were until they were not there. Every night of her life she had fallen asleep to the raucous sawing of marsh crickets, jipiriris and reedweavers. A full moon brought the distant booming of krarl as they swung their hairy, starfish-shaped bodies through the trees. At home, there was the lapping of water, the creak of the hut supports, the soft breathing of Azalea in the crib.
In Shieldtown, the quiet seemed louder than anything she had ever heard. The squeak of the cart wheel, the snuffle of the grint as it plodded along, even the rustle of Bram’s hide coat seemed deafening. Instead of the cacophony of insects there was only a dull, heavy drone of some nearby machinery, and the occasional rattle of a gate or incoherent cry from another street. The rest was silence.
They travelled slowly, glancing furtively about as they went. Knots of people turned to watch them, eyeing the cart menacingly. Brightly lit signs above dark dens crackled and popped, sparking as they passed by. Poison and Bram sat up at the front of the cart, their hide cloaks bunched around their shoulders, trying to ignore the stares from all around.
“Don’t look afraid,” Bram had told her. “Don’t avoid their eyes, but don’t meet them for long either. When you break the look – and you’d better be the first to break it, because they won’t – you turn your eyes forward, got me? Not down, but forward. Look down, that’s submission, that’s weakness. You make it look like you’ve every right to be there, but you don’t challenge them. See?”
Poison didn’t see, but she nodded anyway. Now she realized what he meant. She did not dare ignore the surly eyes that followed them, but nor did she dare meet them in case it was interpreted as a challenge. She was reminded of an old story Fleet had once read her, about a prince of an exotic land who had to walk through a cage of hungry tigers. She remembered how she had made Fleet describe over and over the wondrous animals, with their striped fur and lethal grace. Now she thought she knew how the prince must have felt.
The streets seemed to close in around them, and the lights became few and far between. Bram appeared to know where he was going, but she could tell he was edgy by the way his hand clenched and unclenched on the club hidden inside his cloak. They were in the slum districts now, where the haphazard dwellings of Shieldtown had begun to collapse in on themselves. Steam hissed from gratings as they passed by, and rats scurried along the gutters. The cart creaked on, the grint oblivious to it all, but Poison’s skin prickled with the presence of danger.
“. . .must have been a fool to come here in the first place. . .” Bram was muttering to himself, hunched over in his seat.
“You do know where this Lamprey is?” Poison asked.
“I know what I was told,” said Bram. “And you’d better have a good reason for seeing him. I’ll thank my lucky stars if we drive out of this place alive.”
“Then why did you come?” Poison asked, more to hear the sound of her own voice than because she really wanted to know.
They turned down an alley which bumped and dipped beneath them, making the cart rattle loudly and shaking them on their bench. “I’m a simple man, Poison,” Bram said. “And I think you’re an honest girl, and you’ll keep a bargain once you’ve made it. A silver sovereign is what I earn in a year. You understand?”
Poison did. A year of work. She had a little coin in her pocket that represented a year of work to this man. A swift mental calculation of how much Fleet had given her made her mentally stagger. Either Bram was very poor, or Fleet was very rich.
“Now two silver sovereigns,” Bram was saying in a low, quiet voice. “Two silver sovereigns, and the money I made today . . . that means a lot to a man like me. Maybe I can buy a house with that. Maybe a farm. Sell up this old cart and this stubborn grint and get out before it’s too late. The marsh isn’t a place for people, and I’m getting old, you know. Every year I go back in there, I take a gamble with swamp lung or black rot or any of the other things a man can catch in that place. Every year the odds get a little worse.”
He looked over at Poison, and his eyes were tender and wistful beneath the brim of his hat. “A place of my own, in the mountains where the grass grows and there’s nobody around for miles. That’s a risk worth taking.”
Poison could hear the yearning in his voice. She was always good at reading people, and Bram wore his heart on his sleeve anyway. Now she realized the true weight of their relationship so far. He had known all along that the coins she carried in her pack were enough to make him a rich man, enough that he could live the rest of his life in wealth and comfort. He could have simply taken them off her at any point; she was defenceless against a man his size. But he was a man who believed in earning what he gained, and so here he was, taking her into the darkest alleys of Shieldtown because he had made a deal with her. Even faced with the greatest of temptation, he was no thief.
However, the man who jumped up next to her was.
She yelped in surprise, but he was quick. She had not even seen him slip from the shadows of a cross-alley and duck alongside the wheels of the cart. In one smooth motion, he had vaulted up on the bench alongside Poison, and before she had time to react, she felt the cold steel of a blade at her throat.
“Get away from her, you –” Bram blustered, letting go of the grint’s reins and reaching for his club. The grint ambled to a halt.
“Ah! Ah!” the man cried, pressing the knife harder so that Poison’s head was forced back. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. I’ll give her a bloody smile.”
Her violet eyes were wide with terror, her heart thundering in her ears. She was paralysed, both in body and mind, panic taking her in an ambush. For a few seconds that seemed like minutes, she could do nothing but suck in shuddering breaths and try to lean herself away from the cruel edge that pressed mercilessly into her skin.
Another man clambered up alongside Bram, putting a blade to his ribs. “You behave now,” he said. “Wouldn’t want your little girl getting hurt.”
“Take the cart!” Bram said, clearly as scared as Poison was. “Take the cart and the grint.
Don’t hurt us. Just take it.”
The first thief leaned over Poison to lift up the tarpaulin and look in the back. She could smell his sour breath on her face. There was hardly anything there; just a few unsold jars with wraiths humming inside and their packs and travel supplies. Poison’s pack, of course, had her money in; but she did not even think of that then. All she could think of was the story of the prince and the tigers, and Fleet’s face in the firelight as he recounted it.
“What do we want with a grint and a cart?” he sneered. “Got anything in those packs? Maybe we won’t cut your throats if you’ve got something worth taking.”
“Yes! Yes, just don’t hurt us,” Bram said without hesitation.
“I’ll say who gets hurt here,” the thief hissed.
“You’ll. . .” Poison began, and as soon as the noise had left her lips she regretted it and stopped. But it was too late. The thief turned his attention on to her.
“I’ll what?” he snarled.
She had started now. To retreat would be a weakness she could not afford. “You’ll be the ones who get hurt,” she said.
“Really?” the thief leered, pressing closer to her. “And who’s going to hurt us? You?”
She was set on her course now, and she had to follow it through. “Lamprey,” she said.
The thief was not fast enough to hide the flicker of fear in his eyes, nor did Poison miss the way he withdrew his knife for a moment.
“Never heard of him,” he said.
“You’re a liar,” Poison replied, with as much conviction as she could muster. “Everyone’s heard of him here.”
The thief drew back with a wild menace in his eyes. Poison quailed inwardly, but she forced herself to meet him with a steady gaze. What she was doing went against every instinct she had; and if she was wrong, she had very probably just signed her own death warrant. But to back out of her bluff now would certainly mean that neither she nor Bram would live to see another sunrise. Fleet had professed to know very little about Lamprey beyond his name, and that he would know the way that Poison should go if she wanted to get to the Phaerie Lord’s palace; but he had also warned her to be very, very careful. The things he had heard about Lamprey were enough to make him afraid for her. She was gambling that Lamprey’s reputation was even stronger this close to his home.
He glared at her for what seemed like an age, a vein pulsing at his temple. Had she gone too far in calling him a liar?
“Talk fast, little witch,” he said. “Before I scoop out those eyes of yours with the point of my knife.”
Bram was watching her with a combination of disbelief and terror on his face. She could feel her scalp prickle with dread, but she forced herself to speak with a mouth gone suddenly desert-dry.
“This is Bram, best wraith-hunter in the realms. In the back, in those jars, are his finest marshwraiths. Lamprey wants to buy some for his lanterns, and he trusts me to find the best.”
“He trusts you?” the thief sneered. “And who are you?”
Poison steeled herself. “I’m his niece.”
The thief did not laugh, as she had expected. Instead, he looked uncertain. He glanced at the other one, who gave a barely perceptible shrug.
“Lamprey doesn’t have a niece,” he said, but it was too late to be convincing. Poison seized the advantage.
“And you would know, is that it? You’re a close friend of Lamprey’s? You’re just another gutter thief, not even worth my uncle’s notice.”
The man’s eyes blazed and blackened teeth bared in a snarl. “You should watch what you say,” he growled. But the knife was no longer at her throat.
“If these wraiths don’t get to my uncle soon, I assure you he’ll be very angry,” Poison said, her voice calm though her insides were a mass of thrashing butterflies. “I’ll be sure to describe the two of you to him.”
The first thief muttered something foul under his breath and reached over her to snatch up one of the metal jars from the cart behind her. “In here, are they?” he said. “Wraiths? Well, let me just have a look. We’ll see if you’re telling the truth.”
He twisted the cap of the jar, but he turned it too hard. Instead of springing up a little way to allow him to see inside, it came right off. The marshwraith was out in an instant, a sparkling trail of blue and purple that arced into the sky and disappeared over the rooftops, headed unerringly back towards the Black Marshes.
The thief looked for a moment like a boy who had just smashed his father’s favourite plate.
“Are you satisfied?” Poison challenged. “By all means, open them all. Lamprey will take the compensation out of your hide.”
“You’ve got a mouth on you, witch,” the thief warned, but all the strength had gone from his voice. “One day it’ll get you killed.”
With that, he motioned to his companion, and they jumped down from the cart and were gone.
Bram whuffed out a huge breath that he had been holding throughout the conversation. He looked over his shoulder, then at Poison, then shook his head and picked up the reins. The grint, who had been patiently waiting the whole time, took up the strain again.
“That was a stupid risk,” he said angrily.
Poison brushed her long hair back behind one ear and felt her throat, where the knife had left a mark. “You were willing to let them walk off with all my money. And all of yours. What about your dream being ‘a risk worth taking’?”
Bram scowled darkly, hunching his broad shoulders forward. “What possessed you to try something like that anyway?”
“The prince and the tigers,” she replied. “An old story Fleet used to tell me back in Gull. The prince had to walk through a room full of hungry tigers. He did it by pretending to be a bigger tiger.”
Bram snorted. “That’s just a story,” he said. “He’d have been tiger food.”
Poison shrugged. “Story or not, the point is the same. People don’t know how to react if you don’t do what they expect. It doesn’t matter what you are, it’s how you appear.”
Bram’s expression made it clear what he thought of that idea. “Well, we know one thing about Lamprey, at least,” he said. “People are afraid of him. So we should be too.”
The encounter with the thieves seemed to have taken the sting out of the streets, and they reached Lamprey’s den unchallenged after that. It was an innocuous door in the middle of a dimly lit terrace, hunkered beneath enormous lintels and buried under a mass of balconies. Bram recognized it by the insignia on the door, a mark with two circles interlinked by a slash. There seemed to be nobody outside. The street was eerily quiet.
“Here it is,” Bram said uncertainly, drawing the grint to a halt. He felt terribly exposed out here on the street.
“You should stay by the cart,” Poison said, picking up her pack. “We can’t leave it here unattended.”
“You can’t go in there on your own!” he protested.
“And you can’t afford to lose your cart and your grint,” she said. “I don’t think anyone will bother you outside this Lamprey’s place.” When Bram still looked doubtful, she said: “You’ve earned your second sovereign. You don’t need to do any more.” Then she smiled wanly at him. “I would appreciate it if you’d give me a ride out of here when I’m done, though.”
She was clambering down from the cart when she felt him lay his massive, gloved hand on her shoulder. “Be careful,” he said.
She put her fingers over his in thanks, and then she went to the door of Lamprey’s den and knocked on it.
The door was unlocked and unlatched. It swung ajar on the first rap. Poison looked back at Bram, who was watching her from beneath the brim of his hat. Then she pushed the door open and looked inside.
A long set of wooden stairs led downward, with soft lanterns illuminating framed paintings all the way along. The paintings were of underwater coral, or fi
sh, or storm-lashed seascapes. Poison voiced a cautious “Hello?” down the stairs, but there was no response. There was a curtain of beads and glass crystals at the bottom of the stairs.
Well, she had come this far; she could not very well turn back now. Slipping inside, she shut the door behind her and went softly down the stairs. She called again midway down, but once again she was met with nothing. Not knowing what else to do, she pushed aside the bead curtain and looked through.
The room inside was surprisingly plush, rich with reds and purples and golds. Stuffed sea creatures were mounted on plaques high up against the lacquered walls, squids and sharks and other creatures that were too outlandish for Poison to recognize from Fleet’s descriptions. A great bulb-shaped, brass-coloured stove had a fire glowing in the grate, and an exquisite armchair was placed before it with its back to her.
“Ah,” said a voice, soft as a whisper and yet seeming as loud as if the speaker were right next to her ear. “Poison.”
Poison jumped involuntarily, looking around the room. A slight movement in the armchair, and she saw an elbow robed in deep purple shift into view.
She was about to ask how he knew her name, but she knew from stories that the question was always met with some vague and enigmatic response, and she was determined not to be predictable.
“Lamprey,” she said evenly. “If you know who I am, I assume you know why I’ve come?”
“Of course,” Lamprey replied. “Do sit down.”
Poison noticed an armchair next to the one that Lamprey sat in. She wondered how she could possibly have failed to see it before.
She moved closer to him. The eyes of the stuffed sea creatures seemed to follow her disconcertingly. There was something wrong about this, she thought; something very wrong. She halted a few steps behind him. Apart from his elbow, he was entirely obscured by the back of the armchair.
“I prefer to stand,” she said.
Lamprey wheezed in what might have been a laugh or a catlike hiss of anger. “I insist,” he whispered.
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