It dizzied me to stand at the walkway on Al-Razi’s 160th strata and look up into the clouds at her. She rose another fifty strata above that, and to our amazement, ladders ran like streamers up the sides of the tower and led even farther to a temporary loft suspended in the sky, easily twice the width and breadth of Al-Razi’s own roof. Dozens of kites flew under its canopy in the rising heat of a blue fire. Insane swings hung from its corners into the abyss. Snow fell on us as we climbed the last ladder. The flakes lit upon glassy spheres of soap blown from cannons mounted somewhere below us, freezing and bursting in the winter air over our heads, spewing mica dust on us till we shone. We set Thebes’s banner in the mount reserved for us on the north edge and whooped like kelps, giddy merely to have arrived. For once, beauty out-towered the grim weapons and bureaucracy of the regnat.
* * *
—
I closed the visor on the helmet of my costume and set a red plume in the crest.
A throng of thousands was already dancing on the loft, rising and falling to the surge of the drums: heroes, damsels, nymphs, trolls, djinn with their lamps, a set of shatranj pieces, a dozen plagues, hags, Titans, ogres, contortionists. Among us were fire swallowers and aerialists. A fortune-teller said I would find love tonight. Outnumbering all others were the beasts: werebears, steeds, hares, satyrs, rossignols, wildcats, crickets, foxes, peafowl, bears, bulls, mountain goats, wildcats, bonnacons, minotaurs, oxen, unicorns, eels. Costumes sewn and built of real skins and wool, antlers, horns, tails, and hoofs gotten from Pliny House. Beasts from a world none of us would know whirled in a wild play of predator and prey as far as the eye could see.
Over the drums a single ney-player blew into her reed and a lonely pitch rose. A cheer went up, so thunderous I thought Al-Razi’s magnificent silk city would collapse. From out of the cheering came more music, as the other players joined in from surprise points all over the tent. Thebes’s runners danced in a circle, fully aware of our legendary wildness. Marek roared and flipped backward and leapt over our heads. He danced on his hands in his freakish troll costume. Runners from every roof joined us. The music was infinite and everywhere, and I lost my bearings entirely. We were one, and the sky was full of us. Burn the lines? The memory of Beklemek disappeared in a puff of glitter. There would be other nights to die.
* * *
—
The city’s cooks and bakers had been busier in their kitchens than we had been on our roofs, and now sent up everything from grilled sausages to cakelets festooned with perfect candied images of every guild mascot. We were so hungry, and there was plenty to eat.
Sometime after noctis, Grid pointed over my shoulder and said, “Look, Odd. There must be a girl for you in that pretty mob.”
Excitement rose in me. There were the muses, exactly as I had always imagined, each one a beauty with gossamer wings. When the music stopped, they curled their fingers and beckoned. I looked behind me.
Grid gave me a shove. “Go, before they change their minds.”
I adjusted my plume and swaggered toward them, wishing I had oiled my armor. I lifted the visor. “Is there a muse here I can invoke to dance?” They laughed in harmony and made a production of making me guess which of them was which of the nine muses. When I said, “You’re short by one! Where, pray tell, is the muse of the dance?” their eyes strayed to something over my shoulder.
I felt a hand brush the back of my neck and a voice said, “Sir Parsival! What troubles you?”
She was gaunt like I was, from starvation, but with a shape gloriously, precisely, mercifully unlike mine. She was tightly wound in a toga, with gold sandals knotted in Xs up her long legs and her tresses in a huge crown sennit of gold on top of her head. Her eyes were the blue-black of the night sky. Her lips, the red of hot sun on the iron wall. “Terpsichore, I presume?”
She arched an eyebrow. “There is one way to be sure.”
Oh, I did want to be sure. I grabbed a chalice of rosewater from a merman and presented it to her.
Up until this night, I had practiced a kind of solitary existence on the dance floor, a flailing, twitching, jabbing, hips-forward bit, with my eyes closed and my feet flying over my head. This muse knew what she was doing, so I had to modify my routine, by which I mean I kept my eyes open. I was moving around her, sweating in full armor. I started to remove a gauntlet from my hand so I could touch some part of her and was trying to decide which part, when someone backed into me, hard.
I turned to find that I was staring through my visor at the broad back of a Fremantle guard, with the standard-issue sheaths forming an X across his back. He moved as though to draw both swords at once.
“A Fremantle silverware drawer has trespassed into my space!” I yelled from under my visor. Anything to amuse a muse. But when the guard turned around, the grin disappeared from my face. Fremantle’s guards had come tonight in primitive black iron, the most harrowing metalwork wrought by that guild. “Warmonger,” I whispered, unable to stop myself. The helmet was a black cylinder. Where a face would be, there was a narrow row of vertical bars, the guard’s eyes and teeth white behind it. A beast staring out at me from a cell.
“Name?” the guard demanded, his voice an echo in the chamber.
“Isn’t it obvious? What with the grail?” Terpsichore and I both pointed to her drink.
“Guild?” he said.
“Thebes House,” I said, less jovially.
“Thebes,” he said. “Home of that runner. The felon.”
“Aye. And five hundred others who aren’t him. I am one of those.” I reached for Terpsichore, but she had turned to her friends. “I haven’t seen Errol Thebes in weeks.”
“Is that right?” said the guard. His teeth frightened me. I had just lied to him for no reason. “We’ve been told he’s here tonight.”
“You would have to order the removal of all ten thousand costumes to find him.” I glanced over the throng. “No one would turn him in.”
“Aye. The roofs are surprisingly loyal to him. Some call him a legend.” I felt ire rising in me.
“The allegiance can’t be a surprise to you,” I said. “He’s a guildmaster’s son. Have you met Margaret Thebes? Allegiance to her is not really what you would call optional. Or to her son.”
He studied my face from behind his helmet’s bars. “He seems to have allies. Everywhere the fugitive goes, no one will tell us whether he has been there or where he has gone. What does that have to do with his mother?”
“Try this. If he was a foundling, do you think anyone would harbor him?”
I had given him something to think about. He said, “Rumor says he is sacrificing his own future for the future of the city. You’re laughing. Is that humorous?”
“Sacrificing what for what? There’s no need to fix this city.”
“I see.”
“We survived Beklemek, if that’s what you mean. It’s over.”
“And the fact that you citizens are locked in your towers?”
I spread my hands. “So we may as well dance.” Where was Terpsichore?
“We have heard the fugitive believes the uncommon knotting spikes have some power to release the city from a kind of captivity.”
“What?”
“The spikes are uncommon.”
“Please. Tell me the regnat doesn’t believe that. There’s nothing uncommon about a pair of junk spikes or about this dull city or our lives in it. Heroes don’t come from places like this. Errol Thebes, especially. He grew up farting and belching like the rest of us. If he wants to be Beowulf, there’s a bog pot on Thebes that needs a new hinge in the seat. I’m sure we’d all appreciate the hero who fixes that.”
The guard paused. “I imagine Beowulf farted at least once.” We both laughed at the thought of the great Beowulf passing gas, and I felt an affinity for this guard. I could be frank with him.
“If you knew Errol Thebes like
I did, you would see it. He thinks too much of himself.”
“It was our impression he was hidden by his beloved friends, certainly by the runners on his roof.”
I shrugged, my armor creaking. I bowed in mock obeisance. “I’m forced to love him.” The party had moved away from us, and I was distracted by the absence of the muse. My own words made me restless, suddenly. A poison concocted of jealousies and partial truths. At least no one but the guard had heard me.
“‘Forced’?” he said, so low I could barely hear him. “Perhaps you would like to see him dropped.” I looked at him in surprise. “Could I count on you to give him up?”
“No. I mean, yes. If I only knew where he was—”
“Could you lure him, then?”
“Lure?”
“A friend would know how. I don’t think you know Errol Thebes at all.”
“What? I know everything. Ask me anything. I just saw him yesterday!”
“So you lied—” He shoved me backward.
“No!” I had to pretend I had tripped but I was down. I was scuttling around, trying to get up. Armor is an absurd idea. “Leave me alone—”
“We know who you are. You’re the bard of Thebes,” he seethed. His helmet was pressed to mine.
“How do you know me?” I grabbed at the air trying to find anything to hold. When had we come this close to the abyss? His hand was on the strap of my breastplate. If he let go, I would be gone.
“Which do you prefer?” he demanded. “Are you friend or foe of the runner Errol Thebes?”
“Whichever answer will save me!” In a panic, I threw up my visor and grabbed for his legs. I thought we were both falling, but he pulled me back in a shriek of metal and I fell into his arms.
“My hero,” I said, panting. Terpsichore was coming toward me through a pack of wolves, and a crowd had gathered.
And then.
Then the black-iron guard, with his back to the crowd, facing only me, reached up and tipped his visor back. I felt my mouth open, then close, but I uttered no sound.
“Parsival, am I right?” said Errol Thebes. “Grail knight? Pure in heart.” He dropped his visor and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me at the edge.
An Odd Mistake
IT GETS WORSE.
From a distance I watched him work his way around that party. In that iosal disguise he danced with Talwyn, Grid, Mirembe, Eluned. I wondered whether those girls had any idea who was judging them from under that disguise, or how they would feel if they knew that he was only measuring them against his memory of a girl he had once met in a night kitchen.
I resented that he had let that false interview go on so long, forced me to say all I had said. I turned my back on him and talked with Terpsichore. Talked and danced. Recklessly I put up my visor and kissed her in a way I had never dared to kiss any girl. She touched her tongue to the inside of my top lip, and my body lit up like a flare.
“Do that again,” I murmured.
I wanted to forget Errol Thebes. In faith, I wanted to forget Odd Thebes. We danced on and on.
Marek, his voice full of odd cheer, made merry with someone in the crowd. I turned away from Terpsichore, curious to see what could elicit such glee from our grim troll of a roof master.
Jamila Foundling was barefoot on the dance floor. She had plaited her black hair in tight rows, exposing the naught symbol on her neck. She was thin as thread, after Beklemek’s starvation, dressed in the drab gray wools of a foundling. I had never understood Marek’s interest in Jamila or in the other foundlings who came to the roof of Thebes. Roof masters went where they were assigned and as a rule had little contact with the underbelly of guild life. But I was as thrilled as he was that she was here. I felt loneliness lift at the sight of her.
The muse raised her chalice in high spirits. “You should dance with her! Go ahead!”
“What? No! I don’t know her. I just . . . Why is a foundling here?” I said. “It should stay in the morgues.”
Terpsichore laughed. “Costume party, right? Unless, wait, are you the real Parsival?”
I had never seen Jamila dance. Suffice to say, there was nothing gray or dull about her, despite the rags she wore. If I couldn’t hear the music, I would have felt it from watching her move. Here was this foundling, dancing in the open at a runner’s party, uninvited, unwelcome. Nobody notices what’s out in the open, she had said. At the moment nobody could do anything but notice her.
When had I crossed the floor? How had I gotten next to her? I unhinged my gauntlets and dropped them and put my hands on her hips. She looked up at me, velvety with sweat in the cold winter air. I could feel the bones under her skin. I ran my finger inside the belt of her leggings. My mind exploded with the feel of her body in my hands.
“Odd Thebes, the Grail Knight,” she said. “How many pages have you turned?”
I put my visor up. “You knew me?”
She put her hand inside the sleeve of my armor and swayed her hips playfully in rhythm with mine. I ached with longing. I danced, my body moving with hers. All the chaos in my head, my agitation with Errol, my idiotic efforts to keep the attention of that muse, were gone. I pulled Jamila to me and kissed her.
She pulled away and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Ow,” she said. Everyone around us had their eyes on me.
“Ow,” I said. “What were you thinking?”
She backed away from me and into the Fremantle guard, who stared at me with his white eyes from behind those bars.
“Stop harassing this runner,” he said to me.
“I’ll harass anyone I want,” I said. I wiped my mouth. “How dare you protect a foundling from me?” I grabbed the bars of his helmet and yanked the white eyes close. “From one knight to another, Cousin,” I whispered into his cage. (And, oh, I must defend myself here. I had already been fooled once on this night.) “How to lure Errol Thebes? Just put any damsel into distress and he’ll come running.” He and I glanced at Jamila. “Aye. Even a thieving, contagious damsel foundling.”
Jamila’s eyes went wide with surprise, or more likely pain, now that I think of it. Terpsichore said something I can’t remember at all and pulled me away.
And here it comes.
Three strides from Jamila and that blackguard, I stopped in my tracks. I looked back at the two of them, and then ahead of me. A second guard stood twenty yards away, at the archery range. His visor was down, but I could see that he was chatting with Marek Thebes. Marek reached to a waiter’s platter and took an eyroun from it, one of those sweet almond desserts piped into an eggshell, and handed it to the guard.
I pointed stupidly. “That’s Errol Thebes! Over there.”
Terpsichore pushed my hand down. “Of course it is, but maybe you should keep that quiet.”
I whipped around and saw that the other guard—the one I had been so sure was Errol, the one I had just told to put a damsel in distress—oh, he had the edge of his dagger at Jamila’s neck and was scraping the naught brand. Jamila was twisting from his grip.
Gea
SHE MUST HAVE TRIED to get away from that guard. Jumped from the loft to the nearest fly, to head for the safety of Thebes. But there she hung, utterly still, in the middle of the line. Stalled? Why wouldn’t she just drop the makeshift rag and go, hand over hand. Get over the abyss, across that fly.
Runners had gathered at the edge of the Al-Razi. I could hear a frantic search for lines to throw her. Someone said, Just go. She shook her head no.
I saw the reason. There stood the real black-iron guard, where Jamila’s fly met the loft of Al-Razi. He had slipped his sword around the sheath of the silk, leaving nothing but a thin core of invisible thread. Even silk had its limits. Any movement now on the line—if she just shifted to grab the fly itself—would snap it.
Jamila saw me at the edge of Al-Razi and mouthed, Get help. The fo
rce of just that much motion caused the fibers near the cut to pull farther apart in a spray of moonlight. The crowd gasped. Halfway across the abyss, Jamila dropped silently, two feet more. She was the lure.
There came the sound of a scuffle in the mob and a yell to get out of the way. I was run over by a Fremantle guard, charging full-on, jettisoning the swords from his back, the knives from his belt, his gauntlets, the visor of his helmet, as he built momentum toward the edge. Bee Wolf. No one in this city ever leapt untethered from an edge. Even as I write this, I feel my pulse throbbing in my hands. Halfway across the abyss he crashed into Jamila. The shred of her fly-line snapped. Fremantle was one strata lower than Al-Razi tonight. Still, too far. Fifteen feet down, fifty out. Chances were none in a million.
When they hit the roof, they lay still in the snow. She stood up; the crowd cheered from Al-Razi.
Errol walked to the edge of Fremantle to pull up the broken fly. He had never seen such a thing. He examined the break and saw what I had seen: the clear cut of blade work. He turned fast, for now he understood—
He knew her, this foundling who stood before him, holding his helmet out to him. He had played a game of preference with her in a tufuga’s tent, and she had known more than she should have, about him and about his mother.
“What did they pay you?” he yelled.
“Pay me?” She wiped blood from her face.
“Was it your freedom? Did you exchange your freedom for this?”
She saw the guards coming down the lines from Al-Razi, coming from all around the roof of Fremantle, running toward the fugitive. She said, “Wiltu hem to ganganne mid thu?”
“What?” Before she could say it again, the guards were upon him.
“Wiltu? Wiltu hem to ganganne mid thu?” She was yelling it now. She pointed to the edge, speaking his mother’s mother tongue.
He looked at her as if she was insane, and then he, too, looked to the edge, to the abyss. He understood then, and shook his head no, as the guards bound his hands and forced him down, with his face in the snow. He struggled for a moment but there were so many of them. He looked up and yelled at her: “Gea.” And she turned and ran. No one cared about the lure now, or cared what she did next. They had their fugitive. The foundling was nothing.
City of the Uncommon Thief Page 10