by Sam Sykes
I wish I could have told you why I did.
But no one noticed. As the Krikai and their riders flew over the rooftops and disappeared, they resumed their business of being fabulous and happy. They didn’t see me, still looking up at the sky, whispering.
“Eres va atali.”
I wiped my eyes, pulled my cloak a little tighter. Sal the Cacophony didn’t cry. Sal the Cacophony got the fuck on with things.
I needed answers. I needed a drink.
Fortunately, I knew where to find one of those.
FORTY-TWO
LASTLIGHT
If you learn any three lessons from me, they are these.
You never know a person until you see them angry. You never know a weapon until it fails you. And you never know a city until the sun goes down.
Most freeholds—the kind that didn’t have more money than sense—went to bed when night fell on the Scar. It doused its lights so as to not attract predators. It shut its gates to keep bandits out. Its people slept in short, uncomfortable spurts, ready to wake and run.
But when night fell, Lastlight opened its eyes.
Its elegant people became bawdy, trading wine for whiskey and song for laughter. Its fancy shops became dark markets, selling expensive alchemics and dangerous weapons instead of vases and scarves. It didn’t need the moon or the stars. It had its own.
The lanterns lit up the sky as I made way down its raucous avenues. The people who had once ignored me, now made more observant by too much drink, suddenly couldn’t help but notice the tattooed adventurer in their midst.
“My, my, madam,” said one such woman, tipping forward slightly as she approached me. “Look at you.”
“Look at you,” I shot back, grinning. She reached out a hand and I took it, if only to keep her from tumbling headlong into the canals. “Are you well, madam?”
“Quite so,” she giggled through an Imperial dialect. “One cannot say the same of you, can they, darling?” Her eyes drifted over me, eyes lighting up at every scar. “Gracious. You’ve been in the Scar, have you?”
“Quite so.”
“And you survived?”
I smirked a little. “Quite so.”
“How exciting!” she gasped. “We never get anything but merchants and their thugs here and they’ve never seen anything exciting but the dirt on the road. To see an adventurer is so”—her eyes drifted lower, to what I chose to believe was my gun—“dangerous.”
She took my hand and ran a pair of fingers across my tattoos.
“Oh, where did you get these done? What do they mean?” Her attention span was as short as her touch as she found a scar on my wrist. “What beast did this?” Her hand shot out, found a scar on my side, winced. “What about this?”
“Cathama, for your first question.” My scars tingled at her touch, sent me stepping back. Not that she wasn’t still lovely, in the same way a puppy is still cute when they pee on the floor, but I only let a few people touch my scars. “The others are a longer story.”
“Perhaps you’d like to tell me.” Her hand splayed across my side, slid spiderlike across my belly as it eased toward the Cacophony hanging off my hip. “I trust they take all night to tell?”
My body tensed. Hairs stood up in the wake of her wandering hand. The Cacophony burned in resentment of this peasant’s fingers drifting close. I laughed to hide my wince as I took her gently by the wrist and eased her hands back to her own space.
“Oh, what?” Her loveliness turned to sourness in an instant. “I thought adventurers were intended to be… adventurous.”
“One, I’m not an adventurer,” I replied. “Not the way you mean, anyway. Two, you’re drunk and I’m not. And three, it’s generally not considered a great idea to go grabbing strange women’s guns.” I paused. “Or to go grabbing guns when you’re a strange woman.”
“Pfft.” She rolled her eyes. “What is it going to do? Kill me?”
I blinked. “Yes. It’s a gun. That’s what guns do.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“How?”
I glanced around. Even after dark, I could still see them. Their formations had loosened, along with their discipline, but they were still there. Revolutionary soldiers assembled in gangs, scowling at ostentatious Imperial officers glaring from their seats. They hadn’t traded their weapons for wine; rather, they simply decided to have both.
“Have you just not noticed all the people waiting to shoot each other or what?” I asked the woman.
“Oh, them?” she scoffed. “What are they going to do?”
“Start shooting and kill everyone, for one.”
“The first to fire a shot loses the favor of Two Lonely Old Men,” the woman replied. “Which means they lose the trade contracts, their garrison, everything that wonderful Freemaker gives. What madman would try that?”
“The kind with a lot of guns.”
“You’ve been out in the Scar too long, darling. Things are different in a freehold like Lastlight. Here, we maintain a slightly higher class of civility.” She licked her lips. “So, are you going to piss on my face or am I simply wasting my time?”
I blinked.
I stared at her for a very long time.
Then I quietly pulled my cloak tighter, turned on my heel, and left.
I walked the streets, taking the right turns until the wealth thinned out and the lantern lights dimmed. The buildings became a little shabbier, the canals grew a little murkier, the scents stopped being nice and started being rank. When I rounded a corner and walked into a vast, sprawling square, the reek of whiskey and the sound of violence met me.
Lastlight was a lovely freehold, but it was still a freehold and this was still the Scar. The streets might be nicely manicured and the people might be their own version of “civilized,” but dig deep enough, and you’ll eventually strike a big shitty well.
And to find Beetle Square, you didn’t have to dig very far at all.
The lanterns were still here, strung up in a tangled spiderweb between the cramped houses, but their wax paper was stained by smoke and their lights flickered and dimmed. The narrow canal running through it had empty bottles and fouler things bobbing in it. The stink of meat on open grills and cheap whiskey replaced the aroma of perfume and wine. The laughter here was cruder, guttural, and heralded by coarse jokes and blood loss. And the citizens here…
“One side, scarface.”
They weren’t here.
On any other night, I might have said something to the hulking, shirtless man who pressed past me on his way into the square. On a good night, I might have forgone with words and just gone straight to fists.
But this was not a good night, I didn’t want to touch anyone as greasy-looking as him, and I was here on business.
Not that anyone else showed the same restraint. Various outlaws, bandits, smugglers, and your general variety of scum rolled around the square, alternating between drunken mobs and drunken fistfights. Holding themselves apart but still close to the violence, hooded Ashmouths lurked under shadowy eaves, observant and heedless of who might know their affiliation.
The tension I had seen on the main streets was strangely absent here. But I supposed that followed. Any Revolutionary or Imperial caught in Beetle Square would find themselves reprimanded. The most damage anyone could do here was limited to breaking bottles and throwing punches.
Not that they don’t try their best, bless them, I thought as I eased past a very large woman trying to force-feed a very large man a very large fist.
The public houses here were teeming with lowlifes, any one of them brimming with secrets that might have led me to my quarry. A few knuckles spent, a few drinks bought, and I’d know the names of everyone who had passed within twenty miles of Lastlight in the past two months.
And I’m sure if I had any desire at all to go into a house that smelled like a bird and a hog got smashed on cheap whiskey and had an evening they’d regret in the morning, I’d have all the information
I needed.
But fuck that. I had just taken a bath.
I pushed my way through the crowds, picked my way past the fights, absently broke fingers that reached just a little too close, until I made my way to a humble little two-story building wedged between an abandoned spice shop and a boarded-up warehouse.
The smell of boiling water and fried dough reached my nose. The din of the crowd dimmed to a chattering burble within. I glanced at the sign over the door and smiled.
Grandma Athaka’s Dumplings.
Same as it ever was.
I started to push open the door, then paused, remembering to take off my hood. My host was big on manners. And I could not afford to offend.
Not with the favor I was going to ask.
An old voccaphone’s music greeted me as I pushed the door open, some old, grainy opera from before my time. A fitting atmosphere for the clientele.
Far removed from the sweaty brawlers, the customers here were old, white-haired men and women clad in well-worn coats and puffing on slender pipes. Most of them sat cloistered around a central table, intently observing a beetle wrestling match.
Others sat at smaller tables and counters, delicately munching on dumplings or sipping soup. Only a few bothered to furrow a suspicious white brow as I entered, but I was a much less interesting sight than the beetles battling, and I was quickly ignored.
Just as well. I was only interested in the attentions of one old person.
She sat behind a counter at the far edge of the restaurant, veiled in clouds of steam rising from pots full of boiling water. Gray hair tied up beneath a bandana, squat body wrapped up in a shirt and apron, wrinkles exacerbated by the deep-set frown in her face, she didn’t even look up at me, her attentions fixed on mincing meat and vegetables and folding them into dumplings to drop in her pots.
I pulled up a chair at the counter. Her assistant, the only other person here under fifty, came trotting up.
“Welcome, weary traveler!” His exuberant smile at finally seeing someone not wrinkled was unabashed, but the patrons didn’t notice. “I hope you’ve come with an appetite. You’ll not find a better dumpling in the Scar than in Grandma Athaka’s.”
I smiled at him. It was nice, this kind of attention, the one when I could pretend we were just a young woman and a young man exchanging winks and smiles. I had forgotten the last time I had done this.
I had forgotten I ever did this.
“I’ve heard as much,” I said. “And I’d like to know what’s on the menu.”
“Ah, you’re in luck,” he replied. “Tonight, we’re making a special dumpling out of cabbage and peppers, a spicy treat that’s—”
“If you don’t mind…” I hated to interrupt but did anyway. I cast a glance toward the old woman. “I’d like to hear from the master.”
The boy looked positively wounded at that. But my eyes were on the old woman as she shot me a sidelong glare, sizing me up through dark, rheumy eyes. For a moment, she looked like she was about to spit on me. Then she returned to mincing the meat.
“Spicy dumpling,” she grunted. “Peppers, cabbage, pork.”
“I prefer chicken,” I said.
“Out of chicken,” she replied.
“Beef?” I asked.
“Out of beef.”
I paused, looked at her intently. “How about rothac?”
She shot me a curious look. “Rothac tastes terrible.”
“But it sates any hunger.”
The old woman paused chopping at that. Her sidelong glare became a full-on stare for a moment. She let out a low and ancient hum.
As she turned back to her chopping board, she accidentally knocked over a jar of spices and sent it rolling across the counter. I caught it, moved to return it to her. Her hand rested upon mine, and through thin lips, I heard her whisper, too low for anyone to hear:
“Ten minutes. Upstairs.”
I nodded. She released my hand, replaced the jar.
“Going on break.” She took her apron off and tossed it to her assistant, who caught it with a fumble. She gestured at me. “She gets a plate of dumplings. And some water.”
“Whiskey,” I corrected.
“Water.” She narrowed her eyes at me before turning and disappearing behind a curtain. “Be back whenever.”
The assistant cast an exasperated sigh at her back before pulling some steaming dumplings from the pot and arranging them on a plate. He offered it to me, along with a cup of water and an apologetic smile.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’d still give you the whiskey, but she doesn’t even keep any.” He awkwardly fumbled with his hands for a moment before giving me a shy look. “If you want, I could… run to one of the public houses and get a bottle?”
I smiled, waved a hand. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’m sure whiskey would only ruin the taste.” I plucked up a dumpling, dunked it in some sauce. “But thank you for offering.”
“Anything,” he replied, grinning. He coughed, looked nervous. “Uh, I mean anytime, and if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know, okay?”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Thrish,” he said, beaming. “Thrishicataca, if you’re formal. My parents were, uh, from the Imperium.”
I popped the dumpling in my mouth, chewed. “You serve a damn fine dumpling, Thrish.”
He smiled so hard his face damn near split in half. He gave me a brief nod, turned to mincing meat and preparing more dumplings, though I could tell he was trying to hide a blush so bright you could have seen it from a mile away in the dark.
I was tempted to sit there and talk to him some more. Not that I was after anything, mind—he was cute, but too young. It just felt nice to… you know, talk. Not negotiate, not lie, not threaten, just talk to a nice boy who made a nice dumpling. Sometimes it was hard to remember what that was like. And every time I opened my mouth to tell another lie or curse another name, it got a little harder.
His name was Thrish. He was cute and he didn’t talk to many women. And he served a damn fine dumpling.
Had I known I was about to ruin his life, I probably would have felt bad right about then.
FORTY-THREE
GRANDMA ATHAKA’S DUMPLINGS
Once, a freehold hired me to clear out a bonegrinder. Big, ugly thing, looks like a crab with a shell made out of skulls, it gets its name from the bones of its victims, which it grinds into a paste and makes into a new shell when it gets ready to breed. It lurks around carrion fields and graveyards, digging up rotten corpses to pry the bones loose. It was a hell of a fight, too much of one for what they paid me, if I’m honest.
But I digress.
The point is that, having adequate comparison, fighting something that ate and spat out corpses still did not smell as bad as this fucking attic.
Upstairs in the shop was a mess of worn pots, broken pans, and jars of preserved vegetables on rickety shelves. Normal enough for a dumpling shop to have, but amid the cooking debris were a couple of old portraits of men with important clothes, a broken voccaphone, a trunk of old clothes, and basically every other piece of crap you’d expect an old woman to have.
I wasn’t mad. It was, after all, the point.
I picked my way through the musty debris, sparing a glance for the old walls every few steps. My nostrils quivered as I did. The wood reeked of retained rain and age, but one spot, right in front of a box of single boots, smelled just slightly less weird than the rest.
I reached out, rapped my knuckles against the wall.
Behind it, someone scurried across the floor, paused to spit out a particularly nasty curse, then grunted. Old hinges groaned. A false door swung open, prompting me to step back. Warm light flooded out from behind the door, painting irritated shadows across the wrinkles of the old woman scowling at me from the doorway.
“I said ten minutes,” she grumbled.
“I was eating.”
“It’s been twenty.”
“Well,” I said as I pushed
past her, “make a shittier dumpling next time.”
“Language,” she hissed as she pulled the door shut behind me.
Far from the reeking corridor it hid behind, the room was a pinnacle of class. A lamp bathed it in warm orange light, painting the carpeted floors and leather furniture in a welcoming glow. Doors led off to a fancy, if small, bathroom and bedroom. The odor of wealthy things—fine tobacco, old leather, and even older liquor—filled the room.
It would be the kind of place I’d dream of owning one day, if only it had a window.
But, then, that would kind of defeat the purpose of a spy’s secret lair, wouldn’t it?
“This would imply I am capable of anything less than perfection.” The old woman stalked into the room, her gait a little swifter, her back a little straighter. “One is not elevated to my particular position without performance unerring.” She paused, cast a glower over my shoulder, her eyes suddenly keen. “Hence why you seek me out every three months.”
She pointedly cast a glower at my cloak as I rolled my eyes, tossed it off. “Has it been that long?” I asked.
“You are rather like a clock in your machinations, Salazanca.” The old woman shook an ache out of her withered hand. When she stopped, her fingers were thick and masculine. “At regular junctions, you can be trusted to make a tremendous racket, shoot things up, and generally make my life harder.”
“That metaphor doesn’t quite work,” I replied. “Age getting to you, huh?”
She sneered at me with teeth that were no longer yellow, nor rotten. “You are well aware this is simply a disguise.”
“My mistake.” I grinned the sort of half-cocky, half-cringing grin that I knew she hated. “I just figured you’d been wearing it so long you actually became an old woman.”
She straightened up to an imposing height she hadn’t been before. Her hands, now strong and broad, clenched into fists. Her skin rippled like the waters of a disturbed lake.
And, faintly, I heard the Lady’s song.
It happened so quick I could barely keep track of it, even as she changed before my eyes. Her arms grew long and elegant to match the spidery hands. Her torso stretched out, back stiffened, chest flattened to lean muscle. Her legs unbent themselves, face unwrinkled itself, bones un-olded themselves—and I’m aware that isn’t a word, but really I had no idea what else to call it.