by Ben Galley
‘Quite.’
Temsa blew a great fountain of smoke as he leaned back into the shadow of his enveloping chair. ‘I believe she is reaching the limit of her usefulness. She’s good for most jobs. Knows her way around a door. But when it comes to the vaults you tors and tals can afford…’ He sucked his lip. ‘Lacking.’
Busk looked up from a small silver toy made of cogs and springs. ‘And why would you be interested in what we tors can afford?’ He felt a prickle along his shoulders; perhaps it was the chill of the shade standing far too close for comfort.
Temsa chuckled again. It was a horrid, scratching noise that did nothing to put a mind at ease. ‘I wouldn’t worry yourself with the details, Busk. These days I find my souls farther afield, outside the main districts. Outsprawls on occasion. I just need a locksmith that won’t disappoint me when it’s crucial. Understand?’
‘For vault-work you’ll need somebody good. And I mean good. Maybe one of the best. There are only a few locksmiths in the Reaches that could lay bare most Arctian locks. A Skolwoman is the best, or so my associates say. Everass, I believe her name is, but she’s in high demand and somewhat picky. Besides her, there are a few Krassmen, Scatterfolk or a duo from Belish.’
‘Have you used any of them in the past?’
‘No.’ It was the truth. Busk’s past as a fence had introduced him to a range of both shady and colourful characters, but no locksmiths of the calibre he had recommended. That was the point. Nobody in this business made a recommendation they couldn’t be held accountable for. ‘I don’t know any of them.’
Temsa waved his pipe. ‘Of course not. You’re “legitimate” now, after all. An art-merchant. Wasn’t that what you were posing as, last time we spoke?’
‘A broker. And there’s no posing.’
‘Still sounds like a fence to me.’
Busk ignored him. He picked up a stone box inlaid with gold and weighed it in his palm. ‘Almost a deben, by my guess. Dozen silvers for that one.’ If he listened carefully, he could hear a scribe hovering behind a drape, scratching away with a reed.
A cloud of smoke blew over him. ‘What about your associates? Is there somebody who could introduce me?’
Busk shook his head as solemnly as he could. ‘Not for what you want, Temsa. There are, however, a few people I haven’t spoken to in many years. They might have better knowledge than I.’
‘Then I’ll wait to hear from you. You’ll be discreet, I assume?’
Busk levelled his eyes at the man. ‘Would you expect anything else from me?’
There was a contemplative puff of the pipe. ‘You haven’t disappointed me yet.’
The tor nodded as he moved on to the next bundle. He found something curious there. ‘What are these?’ he said, half to himself.
‘I was hoping you could tell me.’
Busk turned the tiny shapes of metal and coiled springs over in his hands, peering closely with his lenses. He hummed absently, needing time to think. He recognised the pieces instantly. Not just through their shape or design, craftsmanship or material, but by the minuscule scratch on one strip that looked like half a handle; a scratch with a file-like edge that ground at Busk’s thumb. It was writing, but not Arctian glyphs or Common. These were Krass letters. A small C, followed by a B, if Busk was not mistaken.
‘Writing implements? No. Handles for something. Perhaps clockwork of some kind. Look like old Skol runes…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Where did you find these?’
Temsa clucked his tongue. ‘Now, now. Where’s that discretion, Tor?’
Busk held up his hands. ‘Curiosity got the better of me.’ He placed them back on the desk. ‘Only, it might help me narrow them down.’
The soulstealer worded it well. ‘A leftover from a poor soul that wandered into the wrong part of the docks. Smith of some kind. No longer with us, unfortunately.’
‘Smith? Hmm. Tools, then, I’d guess. Maybe for a jeweller, or sculptor, or some peasant usage. My apologies.’
‘Shame,’ Temsa sighed.
‘If you allow me to take them and give me some time, I’ll find out the answer. At the very least, the metal will be worth something.’
Temsa leaned out of his smoke and scraped all but half a dozen of the metal slivers towards Busk. ‘I’ll keep the rest here, for a time. You go ask your questions,’ he said.
‘I shall, rest assured.’
Busk got to the task of examining the other items, and within ten minutes he was done. The scribe produced the total and soon the tor was counting silver pieces across the desk.
When his business was concluded, Busk stood and slid the metal pieces into an inside pocket. Temsa stayed in his chair. His pipe had died, and now his face was almost invisible in the smoke and gloom.
‘Well, then. A good day to you, Boss Temsa. I will have my shades pick up the wares. Let me know when you have more to buy.’ He bowed before heading for the door.
‘Locksmith.’
The word stopped him, foot hovering over the threshold. ‘Beg pardon?’ Busk looked over his shoulder. Temsa hadn’t moved. He wondered if he were even making eye contact.
‘A locksmith. You’ll find me one, yes?’
Busk tried a smile. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘That’s all I ever expect.’
Busk said no more and took the opportunity to leave. The big shade lit the way down the stairs and escorted him to the doorway. Ani still lurked there, on the lookout for more men to catapult into the road.
They bade him no farewell, only silence and stares. Busk kept a stately pace until he rounded a corner. It was then that he hurried homeward as quickly as his old hips would allow him.
Though the mist had still yet to burn away under the morning sun, it wasn’t his dagger he clutched close to him now, but his pocket, and the metal strip that lay within it.
Chapter 12
Motivation
There are many ways to deal with a recalcitrant house-shade without damaging them permanently. Many shades can continue to work just as well without certain appendages. Hanging by copper-thread rope for several hours is also highly recommended. Or a good old-fashioned beating with a thin rod can work wonders!
From ‘You and Your Shade’, an Arctian scroll on the training of house-shades
Ignorance is bliss, so they say. In my opinion, whoever said that must have been deaf, mute, blind and most certainly a fucking moron. They might have been happy knowing nothing, but unanswered questions plagued me, along with a boredom that stretched with the hours. Bliss was a foreign creature in the house of Horix.
I’d been confined to my alcove since the accident beneath the widow’s tower. Not a word, not a whisper, not even a fleck of spit in my direction. The fact I had not suffered alone was small comfort. Almost all the house-ghosts had been stuffed into their hollows and told not to move. A scant handful of others shuffled about their duties, passing us occasionally with scowls, as if we had been given a holiday. It felt more like punishment to me.
For the duration of our penance, all manner of hammering and crashing carried on below us in the roots of the tower. It was something to do with the accident, and the nine dead guards who had been dragged out into the sun, bloody and crushed and bent at odd angles.
Curiosity had always run hot in my veins. Questions such as how does this work? and what’s behind there? had largely run my life before now. It was the foundation of my occupation, why I had fled my home at a young age in search of greater things, and never looked back. Kech’s knife might have taken away my body, but my soul and all its foibles had survived. I stewed in a state of agitation, burning with desire to know what was happening below and yet unable to find out.
Prisons work on a similar principle. It isn’t the company that punishes the incarcerated, or the squalor or ill treatment. It’s the fact the world still churns on beyond the walls, and the prisoner is no longer a part of it. I hadn’t felt more like a prisoner since being locked away in Temsa’s cages, and
I have seen my fair share of cells in my time.
In truth, wanting to know what Horix was up to was all a distraction. The voice of the dead guard had disturbed me deeply. Not simply because it had come from beyond the grave, but because it imbued on me a responsibility I did not want. I currently had enough weight on my shoulders. I did not need some jabbering nonsense about floods and chaos weighing me down. And yet, when I closed my eyes, all I could see was a dead man with half a skull, staring at me with bloodshot eyes. I could hear that voice between every flurry of hammering. It underlined all my twitching, all my fidgeting, and gave my angst a dark shadow. Responsibility had been chasing me my entire life, and so far I’d managed to outrun it. I refused to let it catch me in death.
Bela had become fed up of my agitation. Every noise brought my head snapping around. Every muffled shout caused me to nibble at my cold, vaporous lips.
‘Will you give it a bloody rest, Jerub?’ Her eyes glowed like a gas flame.
‘Aren’t you curious to know what happened to those men? What’s going on down there? What all that noise is?’ I asked her.
‘No.’ She looked away, hiding her lies. ‘Not curious about any of it.’
Any kinship in being both caught and sold by Temsa had vanished in the first days of entering Horix’s tower. She was no more helpful than the others.
‘I am,’ ventured the waif of a ghost several alcoves down. He was a new and wide-eyed arrival; a victim of an accident involving a salt barrel being hoisted into an attic and a rat-nibbled rope. An honest ghost, the Krass called that: one who hadn’t been escorted into the afterlife by cold steel, but by simple accident alone. It still counted as turmoil under the Tenets. Honest ghosts had their downsides, however. Accidents can be messy. The young Arctian man was a zig-zag in shape and half his previous height. His spine was bent savagely in several places, and his head skewed to one side. He wore a heavily-patched smock – which was more like a blanket with holes in – to hide whatever bones had burst through his body before the barrel was done with him. He must have been sold cheap.
I jabbed a thumb at him. His name refused to stay in my mind. ‘See? Whatshisface is.’
Bela snorted. ‘It’s pointless to wonder. We’re house-shades. It’s none of our business.’
‘It’s every bit our business. There’s something dangerous in this tower, and Vex and Yamak and Kalid are hiding it. Didn’t you see the bodies that came out of the widow’s cellars?’
The eastern blood erupted in her. ‘Scared of dying twice, Krassman? Are you that weak, fitja?’
I tried to match her eyes. I was normally the sarcastic or quietly brooding kind of debater, but death had changed my flavour, turned me bitter.
Before I could school the Skol bitch on the particulars of her pigsty of a homeland, or inform her of the crossbred slurry that ran in her veins, something held me still. Silence can be just as loud as cacophony.
The hammering had stopped cold, no sputtering out. Nothing but motes stirred in the tower. I held my breath even though I had none to hold. ‘They’ve stopped.’
Bela turned her back on me in a huff. I flicked my fingers at her as I stepped forth. The crushed ghost followed suit, poking into the corridor.
‘What do you suppose they’ve been doing?’ he said in his gargled voice. He was Arctian, judging by his accent.
‘Fixing whatever broke, I’d wager. Something important.’ Something secret. This was my mystery, not this newcomer’s, but as I looked over my shoulder at the young chap, all bent and limp, I remembered the words of my long-dead master, Doben, the man who had taught me ways to break a lock Never do a job alone. If you get caught, the other man makes an excellent decoy.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Konteph. Well, that was my life-name. Can’t remember what they call me now.’
‘I’ll call you Kon.’
The man shrugged at an angle. ‘Fine.’
‘Do you fancy a walk, Kon?’
The man seemed fond of shrugging. Taking it to mean ‘fine’, I took the lead and let him shuffle behind me. Bela tutted at us, once for every step we ignored her. She resorted to hissing threats.
‘You’ll be sorry!’
Kon wavered, but I beckoned him along and together we crept to the mouth of the corridor. We hovered there behind silk drapes and listened for sounds. There were none, and it emboldened me. My last foray had been useful, after all. It had got me in front of Widow Horix.
My feet fell as softly as shadow on the stone steps. Even my glow diminished, as if my tense posture took up too much energy for light. I took it as a bonus, and sucked in my belly a little tighter.
‘What were you, Kon? Before all this?’ I asked of him in a whisper. Something to distract myself from the aching silence.
‘Worked for the Chamber of the Grand Builder. I was a minor acolyte. Was working my way up though, slowly but surely.’
‘Doing what?’
He scratched his head, as if memories of his life were fuzzy. His vapours around his shaven skull stirred. I saw the faint mark of a glyph tattooed in dark blue on the back of his head. ‘Carrying plans about, mostly. Fetching the teas. Drew a spire once.’
‘I see. What happened?’
‘Was wanderin’ back to the architect’s office when I heard a shout from above. Something real heavy hit me from above and behind. I felt something in my back pop and then my face hit the flagstones. Next thing I knew, I woke up in some dark room as a shade, dripping with Nyxwater. So I’m told, this barrel of salt was being hoisted in a tal’s tower. The old rope snapped and down it came on yours truly. Before I could say a word, I was on a wagon and off to the soulmarket. All very sudden.’ He blew a sigh. ‘And you?’
I paused, wondering which lie to tell today, the force of old habits, but something in Kon’s eyes made me choose the truth. They had a simple faithfulness in them, like the eyes of a puppy. I found it easy to confide in him, and it felt good to.
‘A thief. And a damn good one at that. I came to Araxes for work but got my throat slit instead by a soulstealer gang. All very sudden indeed. And I’d had high hopes for this journey.’
‘You’re Krass?’
‘I am. From Taymar, a place between the mountains and the sea.’
‘Then why’d you come here, to the Arc? Wasn’t there any work for you at home?’
I paused, my hand idly passing over a vase sat upon a pedestal. I watched my cold fog its surface. ‘Not for me.’
‘Wh—’
Several floors below us, there came a clank of a heavy door handle and the stairwell shone bright green, ghost and lamplight intermingled. Kon’s eyes grew so wide I thought his vapours might tear.
I was already making for an adjacent corridor. ‘Here!’
Kon hobbled into the dark behind me. There were shelves of dinnerware and pottery, but no alcoves nor cupboards besides a small niche for discarded smocks. We ducked amongst the hooks, making them jingle, and tried to cover our glow with cotton. For a second time that night I held a pretend breath as I listened to the scuff of boots and faint trudging of the many dead.
There were more tonight, or so my ears told me. Guards as well as ghosts. It only served to stoke my curiosity. If more ghosts were needed, why had I not been picked? It served them right for me to resort to sneaking, or at least that’s what I told myself in an effort to curb my jealousy.
A house-guard traipsed into the hallway, brass oil lamp aglow and waving about. Fortunately, he wasn’t a thorough employee, and after five paces he decided he’d looked hard enough and went back to the stairwell.
Kon and I waited for an age, face to face, with me matching his buckled posture to fit into the narrow space.
‘I think it’s time,’ I said when I’d had enough of his blank staring. Even for a ghost, the young man seemed pretty soulless.
Another shrug. ‘Fine.’
I wondered what he was getting out of this besides company. He looked more afraid than excited. N
o doubt my wraithlike face wore the same narrow-eyed impassive look I’d favoured in life. I had no reflection to check, after all, but I was well-versed in creeping about towers in the darkness. It felt pleasurable to be doing it again.
Going back to the stairs, we kept to shafts of moonlight and lamp-glow as the floors came and went. Although the lower levels glowed with lamps, I spotted only a handful of guards keeping watch below us. They patrolled around the spiralling atrium in pairs, and near the ground floor, we hovered on the stairs to watch their movements. All we had to do was wait and pick our moment to dash across the marble. I fixed my eyes on the tall, triangular doors to the cellars, on the far side of the atrium.
When our opening came, we scuttled down the remaining stairs with haste. Kon was slower than I was, and kept trying to stick to the shadows. He was still fresh, dead gods bless him. Ghosts are fainter in bright light, especially in the orange glow of whale-oil. Step by step, he fell further behind me.
By the time I’d pressed my hands to the cellar doors and inched one half open, he was only halfway across. A shout came ricocheting across the soaring hall. He froze, as any guilty man would, and I chose my moment to act, swiftly ducking through the door. Kon’s eyes were wide and begging in the brief moment I met them before shutting the door with a soft click. Without hesitation, I scurried down a curving flight of steps, dark and lampless.
When you’re in the business of breaking into things and profiting from their contents, guilt is like mould. It is either a fungus that slowly withers away through starvation, or a rot which grows into a beast that consumes you. It all depends how much you feed it. By the time I’d reached the bottom of the stairs, where the air had grown cool and heavy with dust, I’d forgotten Kon almost completely.
A bang from above had me running faster, down a sloping corridor that opened out like a funnel. I found myself in a room clogged with dust and little light besides my own. All the lights had been snuffed bar one: an oil lamp on the far side of a sea of wooden barrels. I walked amongst them, trailing fingers over pickaxes and hammers and the bent heads of nails. Everything was clogged with rock-dust and damp sand. I felt like choking, despite my lack of lungs and the particles wafting through me.
