A Discourse in Steel

by Paul S. Kemp

The easterner grinned, nodded, and turned to his cups and the hogshead.

  “Nothing went down here?” Nix asked Veraal.

  “Quiet as a cloister,” Veraal said.

  “Isn’t gonna stay that way,” Nix said.

  Their voices awakened Kiir. She opened her eyes, raised her head, blinked sleepily, and focused on Nix. “You’re back!”

  “I’m like bad luck,” he said to her. “I always turn up eventually.”

  Smiling, she pushed back her chair, ran to him, and caught him up in an embrace.

  “Ugh,” she said, pushing back. “You stink.”

  “Walking the sewers will do that to you.”

  She looked at Egil and her eyes widened at the body he carried, at the blood and bits of gore that spattered his face and arms. Nix did not bother explaining.

  “Go gather your things. You and Lis.”

  “Why?” she asked, still agape at Egil.

  “Just do it. I’ll explain. Hurry.”

  Nix and Egil walked for the bar and Gadd’s ale. Egil tossed Channis to the floor.

  “Merelda’s safe?” Egil asked, stripping out of his mail shirt. “Rose, too?”

  Veraal nodded. His eyes lingered on Channis, on the blood all over Egil, but he said nothing of either. “They’re both upstairs still. Sleeping probably.”

  “We’ll need to get them up,” Nix said.

  Gadd placed foaming tankards on the bar. Both of them drank deep.

  Tesha tapped her pipe on the bar. “I’ll ask again. Why are you carrying a body?”

  “Unfortunately,” Nix said, and slammed back the rest of his ale, which Gadd set to refill, “that’s not a body.”

  “Yet,” Egil added.

  “Yet,” Nix echoed.

  Tesha cocked her head sidewise and kneeled down to look at Channis’s face. “Who is it? And why’d you bring him here?”

  Nix reached into his satchel, found a match, struck it, and offered it to Tesha.

  She put the pipe in her mouth and leaned in. Nix lit the bowl and she took a long draw.

  “That’s the Upright Man,” Nix said, extinguishing the match.

  Appreciative curses from Veraal’s men.

  “You’re serious?” Tesha asked, her words punctuated with smoke.

  “Aye,” Egil said. He seemed to notice the gore covering his arms for the first time. Before the priest could ask, Gadd tossed him one of the rags he used to clean cups. Egil did the best he could to wipe his arms clean, but mostly just smeared the blood around.

  Veraal took his pipe from his mouth. “You telling me you two took the Upright Man captive?”

  “Sounds crazy when you say it out loud,” Nix said.

  “Why in the fak did you do that?” Veraal asked.

  “Yes,” Tesha said. “Why?”

  Nix made light of it. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “A good idea?” Veraal said. “Gadd, I’ll take one of those ales, too.”

  While Gadd drew him an ale, Veraal kneeled down, took Channis by the hand, and examined his tat.

  “Eight blades and no mistake. Shite, boys. You are a pair of crazy gits.”

  “If I told you Nix’s idea about how to help Rose,” Egil said, “you’d think we were crazier still.” He signaled to Gadd for a refill.

  Veraal let Channis’s hand drop. “Do tell.”

  “Best no one knows but us, yeah?” Nix said.

  “Of course,” Veraal said. “Right.”

  Nix looked at Tesha. “We pinched the Upright Man for leverage. If you knew the whole story it’d make sense. Maybe.”

  She seemed to accept that.

  “So,” Nix said to the room. “Since we have the Upright Man and had, uh, harsh words for many other members of Dur Follin’s esteemed guild of rogues, sneaks, and general bungholes, I suspect they’ll be hard on our heels. And that means everybody’s got to get out. Now.”

  Veraal nodded and signaled his men, all of whom immediately started gathering up their gear.

  “Leave? Where are we supposed to go?” Tesha asked.

  “Anywhere that’s not here,” Nix said to her. “You’ve got a quarter hour.”

  “And no one comes back here until we say so,” Egil added, and finished off his ale. Gadd reached to refill it and Egil did not protest.

  Mere appeared at the top of the stairs, still dressed, and called down.

  “Thank the gods you’ve come back. Egil, Rose is—”

  “Get her ready to travel,” Nix called up. “We leave in a quarter hour.”

  “What? A quarter— Nix, she can’t travel,” Mere said.

  “She has to,” Egil said softly. “Do your best, Mere. We leave soon. The guild’s coming.”

  “Coming here?”

  “Quickly now,” Nix said. “Tell Kiir and Lis to be quick, too.”

  Tesha said something to Gadd in a language Nix didn’t understand. Gadd nodded, eyed Egil and Nix, and retreated to his cellar and out the back. Tesha took a draw on her pipe, exhaled, and regarded Nix with the hard expression he’d come to know well. He held up a hand to cut off whatever she might say and donned his most disarming smile.

  “You don’t need to say it. Could be that we took a bigger bite than we could chew.”

  She frowned. “There’s nothing amusing about this, Nix. These are people’s lives.”

  Nix knew. He looked her in the face. “And I’m trying to save them, Tesha. You…sometimes. Argh! Listen, I jest all the time, yeah? That’s just my way. But never, never, let that make you think that I don’t understand the stakes. I understand them quite well, better than you, I expect. I’ve been running crosswise of bad people most of my life and some of things I’ve seen and done…well, I doubt you’d believe half of them. I know what people like these guildsmen are capable of and I know these are people’s lives. Yours included. So do as I say.”

  She started to speak and he cut her off.

  “No one fakked up here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s not,” she said, but Nix kept going.

  “Certainly not me and Egil. We’re just trying to fix it. It was just bad luck that they clicked the old Upright Man in Rusilla’s tent while she was in his head. But now we are where we are. All of us caught up in it. So we deal with that bad luck and make the best of it, yeah?”

  She stared at him a long moment. “You done?”

  He blinked. “What? Yes.”

  “Then stop talking for once and listen. I agree with you. Apologies for misreading your humor.”

  “Uh. Right, then.”

  She pointed at his chest with her pipe. “But remember who you’re speaking to, Nix Fall. I see through your shite. Now, you said you’ve got something in mind for Rose?”

  He nodded.

  “You don’t want to tell me?”

  “Should I?”

  “No, you shouldn’t. Not in detail. In the city or out?”

  “Out,” he said.

  “And this one”—she nodded at the Upright Man, whom Egil had placed on the floor near his stool—“he’s key to that? Otherwise…”

  Nix nodded. “Otherwise we’d have killed him already. He’s just to ensure the guild doesn’t harass us as we…go where we’re going.”

  She nodded. “Good enough, then. I sent Gadd around back to prep the cart. You can use that to move Rose and the Upright Man. Meanwhile I’ve got some people I can rely on, a place for our workers to stay. That’s where I sent the rest of them. We’ll be fine for a while. It’ll cost though, so that comes out of our profits when we reopen.”

  “Assuming the guild doesn’t burn the Tunnel down.”

  She looked genuinely alarmed, her beautiful eyes wide with concern. “You think they will?”

  He shrugged. “No telling with these slubbers. But if they do, the main thing is that no one’s in it at the time, yeah?”

  She recovered herself. “Yeah. I’ll keep everyone away from the Tunnel until you two send word that things are s
quared with the guild.”

  “If they’re squared.”

  “Don’t say if. Get Rose better and get them squared, then come back.”

  Nix looked at Tesha, at Egil, who smiled and looked away, then back at Tesha.

  “Is now the appropriate time for me to tell you that I love you?”

  “That I already know,” she said, turned, and walked away.

  Nix watched her go.

  Veraal leaned in close. “Tesha’s an interesting lass, I’d say.”

  Egil guffawed. “Hate to be the man who crossed her.”

  “Aye, that,” Nix said, and watched her ascend the stairs. “Like to be the man who made her smile, though.”

  Egil grunted.

  Tesha’s voice carried from the upstairs hall as she barked orders. “Only necessities and small valuables. Don’t bring anything else. Hurry now.”

  Veraal gulped his ale. “That’s a damned fine ale.”

  “Gadd’s a holy man when it comes to brewing,” Egil said.

  “You’ve been sitting here this whole time and didn’t try Gadd’s ale?” Nix said. “You missed out.”

  “So I see.”

  The three men tapped tankards, finished their ales, and stood.

  Veraal regarded Egil and the smeared gore that covered him. “How many’d you end?”

  Egil shrugged, so Nix filled in.

  “Somewhere between a dozen and a score, all told.”

  “And this one,” Egil added, nudging Channis with his toe. The guildmaster groaned.

  Veraal whistled. “You hit ’em hard. But still they’re coming?”

  “We’ve got the Upright Man, now,” Nix said. “They have to.”

  Egil ran a hand over his tattoo. “They’d be coming anyway. Zealous fakkers.”

  “We underestimated that,” Nix allowed. “Going to be hard to square this up without it ending with either us dead or all of them dead. And I’m rather fond of me. Egil I could take or leave.”

  The priest smiled, as did Veraal.

  “You boys manage to step in shite no matter where you walk,” Veraal said.

  “Now and again scraping it off gets old,” Nix said.

  “Aye, that,” Egil said.

  “If it matters, I think you were in the right, here,” Veraal said. “They were going to keep coming for Rose until they got reason enough not to. You made your play and bloodied their nose and pinched their Man. They don’t learn a lesson from that…”

  “We cut their fakking throats,” Nix finished.

  “And that’s why you two are my boys,” Veraal said, and thumped the bar with a fist. “And look here, me and my men will escort your people to wherever they’re going. I’ll check on them, too.”

  “We’ll owe you for all this when we come back,” Nix said. “We already owe you for the mail. Those things saved us more than once.”

  “Owe me you do and will,” Veraal said with a smile. “Feels right to be deeper in the game a bit, though.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Nix said with a smile.

  Egil’s dice appeared in his hand, rattled while everyone gathered their things. Gadd returned from the back of the inn.

  “Cart set,” he said.

  “What’s with that blade, man?” Nix said, nodding at the tulwar. “It’s as long as your leg. I don’t think the guild has any giants in its employ.”

  “Big steel,” Gadd said, playing dumb.

  Nix smiled. “We weren’t going to play this game anymore, remember?”

  Gadd’s expression turned serious. He looked around to see that no one else was listening. “It was my father’s. It’s a special weapon.”

  “You know how to use it?”

  Gadd smiled, his teeth making him look like a predator. “Yes.”

  “Good,” Nix said, extending his arm. “Luck to you, Gadd.”

  “And you,” Gadd said, taking Nix’s arm.

  “Help Tesha, yeah?”

  Gadd nodded and headed upstairs. After he’d gone, Nix looked down on the Upright Man.

  “I’m going to check this fakker.”

  “For what?” Egil asked.

  Nix hopped off his stool, grabbed the Upright Man under the armpits, and heaved him atop a table. Veraal’s men watched him curiously.

  “I don’t know,” Nix said. He checked Channis’s arms, feet, legs. He opened Channis’s shirt—the man’s torso was as scarred as his face—but saw nothing unusual. Throughout, Channis didn’t make a sound.

  “Check his eyes,” Egil said.

  “What?”

  “Like with Drugal. Check his eyes.”

  Nix peeled back Channis’s eyelid. The eye had vertical slits, like a snake’s, and the whites were black as pitch. Nix cursed and shared a look with the priest while holding Channis’s eye open.

  “See this?”

  “I see it,” Egil said.

  “Thoughts?” Nix asked.

  Egil shook his head. “It got to him somehow. Same as with Drugal. He’s a dead man.”

  It’s beautiful and it wants me and I’ll help it.

  Free us.

  Nix pried open Channis’s other eye. It was normal, the pupil dilated, and Nix swore he saw terror in it. He smacked the guildmaster on the cheeks.

  “Can you hear me, Channis? Channis?”

  The Upright Man’s mouth opened wide, as if he would scream, but no sound emerged. It was all the more terrible for the silence.

  “This isn’t good,” Nix said.

  “This hasn’t been good for about a day and a half,” Egil said. He nodded at Channis. “But if he goes out ugly, I’m not going to feel bad about it.”

  “Nor I,” Nix said, though going out filled with whatever was in Blackalley seemed a hard way to go for anyone. “But we still have to bring him. He’s all we’ve got. He keeps the guild off us until we get Rose help. And if we’re to get square with the guild, it’s going to be through him.”

  Egil grunted.

  “Why didn’t it get us?” Nix said.

  “It did,” Egil said.

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  Struck by a sudden fear, he checked his hands, arms, chest, and legs. No sign of Blackalley’s touch. Egil took his point and checked himself, too. No sign.

  “Must have been something in them,” Egil said.

  “Must have,” Nix said. “We have to get moving,” Nix said. He hollered up the stairs. “We about ready?”

  Presently Kiir, Lis, Tesha, and two of Veraal’s men descended the wide staircase, each burdened with a sack or small chest filled with their things. Mere followed, with Rose leaning on one of Veraal’s men.

  Egil and Nix hurried forward and Nix took Rose from Veraal’s man. She leaned against him, smelling of sweat and sick.

  “Hello, Nix,” Rose said with a wan smile. She looked as pale as marble, her sweat-dampened red hair pressed against her head. Mere fell into Egil’s arms. He embraced her in return, putting guildsmen’s blood on her cloak.

  “We’re going to take care of you,” Nix said to Rose. “I have an idea.”

  “Nix with an idea. There’s a frightening thing,” she said, and winced at some pain.

  “I’m going to get you fixed,” he said.

  “Applause,” she said softly.

  He kissed her on the brow and she closed her eyes.

  “We ready?” he said, looking about.

  Nods around.

  “That’s it, then. Everyone out the back. Right now.”

  Rusk and Trelgin, each with four of their trusted, hardened men, hurried through the predawn streets. All wore boiled leather jerkins and bore steel and crossbows.

  The street torches had burned down to piles of charcoal embers and the moons had both set. The streets were quiet and dark. Guildsmen called them “killing streets,” the hours when the streets were bare of Watchmen and civilians, when clicks went down in dark alleys or rival gangs met on empty streets to sort differences with knives and truncheons.

  Rusk wou
ld’ve clicked the old Upright Man during the small hours if he’d been able, but the whoreson had been so careful that a click in the Low Bazaar had been Rusk’s best chance. And that one decision had fakked up the works. Somehow the faytor had learned guild business, Channis had ordered a torch job on her that’d been botched, and Egil and Nix had hit the guildhouse and pinched Channis in return.

  And now the guild had to hit them back, and in the process Rusk had to appear as though he wanted Channis back alive, all while praying to Aster that the tough whoreson died. What a cock-up.

  He considered sending a private word to Egil and Nix, suggesting they kill Channis, but then they’d have something over Rusk. And Trelgin was watching, always watching. The Sixth Blade would figure it out if Rusk didn’t play things square. So Rusk reasoned it was best just to let matters proceed, maybe drag his feet a little, and hope at the end of it that Channis ended up dusty. That’d solve a host of problems.

  Rusk surreptitiously checked his tat as they crossed the city. No change.

  To keep up appearances and deflect suspicion, Rusk had put a pair of men on every gate out of the city. They ought to have been in position by now. Pairs also scouted the streets, all eyes. Dur Follin was a big city, though, and a pair like Egil and Nix could go dark if they really wanted to.

  “Why’d they pinch the Upright Man, you think?” asked Varn, a hulking man who’d lost two fingers on his right hand in a knife fight.

  Mors, a small, twitchy man they called “the bald mouse” said, “Could’ve just killed ’im, yeah?”

  “They want him for something,” a third man said. “Torture, maybe. They was talking payback in the guildhouse.”

  “They’ll get their own payback,” said Varn, and the others nodded.

  “They strike you as the torturing type?” Trelgin asked, his words punctuated by slobbery inhalations. He didn’t wait for an answer. “They pinched the Man for leverage, probably to bargain for the faytor’s life. If the torch job hadn’t been botched, we’d all be sleeping right now.”

  Ayes around.

  “We’re past bargaining,” Rusk said. “They attacked the guildhouse and left a score of our men dead. They’re dust and the faytor’s dust and that’s that.”

  Not even Trelgin disputed with him over that.

  “Dustmen,” said Varn, nodding.

  “But whatever happens,” Trelgin said, speaking slowly to avoid drooling. “The Upright Man comes back alive. Ain’t that right, Rusky?”