by Paul S. Kemp
"They will if I ask, Mama."
"I know how you ask, Nixxy."
Nix smiled to hide his concern. He tried to imagine Dur Follin without her, tried to imagine his life without her, and failed. He would've offered to move her out of the Warrens, but he knew she wouldn't abide it. She regarded the Warrens as her home and its urchins as her children. She'd die in her shack and leave only when they carried her out. He dreaded that day.
After they'd eaten and the conversation had slowed, he broached the real subject of his visit. "I have some coin for you, Mama."
She cleared his bowl. "Oh, Nix, I don't need–"
"It's just a bit."
He took a coinpurse from his cloak and dumped fifty commons and ten terns on the table. He'd included no gold because he knew she couldn't spend a royal. Merely holding gold in the Warrens could put her at risk.
Her hand went to her mouth. "Oh my, Nix! It's too much. I couldn't hope to spend it all."
He smiled but held his tongue. She always marveled at a pittance as if it were a fortune. He couldn't buy a decent blade for what he'd put on the table. But he knew she'd never take more, not all at once. He had to provide for her in dribs and drabs.
She looked up from the coin and regarded him across the table, eyes shrewd.
"How'd you come by all this coin, young man? You didn't hurt someone for it, did you? I taught you better'n that."
He felt his cheeks warm. "You did, Mama. And I earned it fair. Egil and I have had a bit of luck of late."
He and Mamabird had an unspoken agreement that he never told her about his tomb robbing explicitly and she never asked in detail.
"You two." She shook her head, chuckling, chins and breasts bouncing. "Good boys, you are."
Ool's clock sounded the hour: nine deep, discordant notes. He reached for her hand as he stood.
"So soon?" she asked.
"I know." He kissed the back of her hand. "I'm sorry, but I'll return as soon as I can."
She sighed, nodded, came around the table and embraced him. She had tears in her eyes. He had tears in his. He fell into her, memorizing her smell, the feel of her arms around him.
"Oh, I need you to keep something for me," he said, and took the rolled piece of vellum from an inner pocket. "This is a deed to some property Egil and I bought."
Mama took it, a question in her eyes. "A deed? What property?"
He nodded. "Just keep it safe for us, will you? If ever I'm… away for a long time, that deed is yours. Understand?"
"I wouldn't know what to do with such a thing. I'll just hold it 'til you come back."
She tucked it into a pocket in her apron.
"Thank you, Mama," he said.
She smiled and walked him toward the door. "You be good, Nixxy. And don't worry about your old Mamabird. I'll be fine."
Her words devolved into a fit of wet coughing that made him wince.
"I know you will," he said, and wished he believed it.
"Send my love to Egil."
"I will."
He exited her shack, the only home he'd ever had. The moment he closed the door, he donned the mask – Nix the Quick, Nix the Lucky, a man fast with a word, faster still with a blade. He drew his falchion and pushed his past down deep.
He had to hurry. Egil would be waiting and Egil hated to be left waiting.
He picked his way back through the avenues and alleys until he reached the Poor Wall, the ancient line of crumbling stone that delimited the border of the Warrens, a binding cross that separated the Warrens' poverty and hopelessness from the rest of Dur Follin. Four lax watchmen in orange tabards manned the Slum Gate. In the torchlight, Nix saw that crossbows hung from their backs, blades and truncheons from their belts. He knew that Slum Gate duty was considered a punishment post among watchmen.
Seeing Nix approach, one of them nudged another and the second stepped forward. He was unshaven, his helm removed and his hair disheveled. "Name and business."
Nix sheathed his blade. "Nix Fall of Dur Follin, and my business is none of yours."
"Nix Fall?" The guard squinted at Nix, looked back at his fellows, back at Nix. "Nix the Quick?"
One of the other guards pushed off the wall and walked closer, attitude in his stride. "Don't you belong in there with the rest of the rubbish?"
He was tall, maybe twenty winters, barely old enough to grow a beard. He stood beside his comrade.
The insult deflected off of Nix's distraction, summoning only modest ire. "More than you know. Better class of people living in there than I see standing before me. Now, go fak yourself and both of you get out of my way."
He knew he shouldn't cross the watch, but he was irritable, and growing moreso by the moment.
"You know what…" the tall watchman began, his hand moving for his truncheon.
The watch sergeant, a towering, fat man Nix knew by appearance from a run-in with the watch years earlier, leaned out of the guard shack to one side of the gate.
"Let him pass," he said.
The men in front of Nix glared but didn't move.
"I said let him pass," the sergeant repeated.
Reluctantly, the guards stood aside. One of them spit at Nix's feet. Nix took care to bump that one as he passed. He nodded his thanks at the sergeant.
"We should arrest that prick," the tall guard hissed to the sergeant.
"Your job ain't to pick fights, boy," the sergeant said. "It's to uphold the law of the Lord Mayor and the Merchants' Council. 'Sides, I probably saved you an unpleasant meeting with sharp steel just then."
Nix left the guards behind and stepped through the gate into Dur Follin proper. The change was almost immediate and entirely palpable. Street torches blazed at regular intervals, well tended by the city's linkboys. Carriages and wagons moved along the muddy, cobbled streets. Pedestrians walked here and there. Candlelight poured from shop windows, laughter and shouts from taverns and inns.
The first time Nix had left the Warrens, he'd felt like he'd dug himself out of a dark hole and emerged into the light. He wondered if Mamabird had ever seen the light. He suspected not. It saddened him.
He was maudlin, moreso than usual after seeing Mama, and it kept him from playing his part as well as normal. Maybe it was the rain. He consciously pushed the sentimentality aside, and with each step he fell more and more back into his normal persona. By the time he found Egil where they'd agreed, at the corner of Teamsters Avenue and Narrow Way, under the towering shadow of the Archbridge, he felt more himself.
The priest stood with his back to him, hands in his cloak pockets, staring at the huge span of the bridge. Torches and candles and even a few magic crystals lit the shrines along the length of the bridge, illuminating a swirl of colors, languages, songs, and chants. A gong rang from somewhere, the tinkle of bells.
Ebenor's tattooed eye watched Nix approach. Nix put a hand on Egil's shoulder by way of greeting. The priest whirled and had him by the wrist in a blink, the grip painful enough to make Nix wince. Seeing Nix, Egil released him.
"Apologies," Egil said absently.
"None needed," Nix said, rubbing his wrist. "I should've announced myself." He nodded at the shrines on the bridge. "Thinking of switching faiths, are you?"
Egil ignored the jibe. "Is it done?"
"It's done. I left the deed with Mama. Dram license is filed with the guild. We're good."
"So you say." Egil flipped up the hood of his cloak as rain started to fall in heavy drops. "How is Mamabird?"
"Well as can be, I suppose. She asked about you. I told her you remained as surly as ever."
Egil smiled. "Handsome as ever, too, I trust?"
"Alas, I never lie to Mamabird."
Egil chuckled. "So let's go see this thing we bought. Gettin' on to the dark part of night. The ruffians ought to be filling the place by now."
"Indeed. Two more will go unnoticed."
CHAPTER THREE
By the time Egil and Nix reached Shoddy Way, the downpour sounded l
ike sling bullets against the cobbles. The flames of street torches sizzled, smoked, and danced in the rain.
Shoddy Way was a soup of mud and manure and the storm had mostly emptied the street. Only a donkey-pulled cart occupied the otherwise empty road, and it looked stuck in the mud.
The rain thumped like the beat of war drums off the colorful tents and canvas-covered booths of the Low Bazaar, which filled the plaza nearby. Braziers sizzled in the rain, the smoke carrying the smell of roasted mutton into the slate sky. Raucous laughter carried from one of the tents in the bazaar.
"Gods are taking a piss," Nix said.
Egil grunted agreement.
The simple wood plank sign that hung from rusted hooks over the front doors of the Slick Tunnel rattled in the wind. Weather and time had reduced the lettering to The unnel, but left intact the salaciously drawn image of a cave mouth.
"Needs a new sign," Nix said.
Egil harrumphed from the depths of his cowl. "Needs a lot of new things."
"But not new owners," Nix said, and thumped Egil on the mountain of his shoulder. "Got those, now."
"Aye," Egil said skeptically.
They eyed the building they now owned – two stories of crumbling bricks and warped wood, capped with a roof of cracked tiles. A sagging second-floor balcony overlooked Shoddy Way and would give a good view of the plaza and the Low Bazaar, but Nix wouldn't have trusted its worn brackets to hold his weight.
The building had been the home of a wealthy merchant once. But Dur Follin's rich had long ago moved across the Archbridge to the west side of the Meander, leaving the poor to the east and the very poor to the Warrens. Since then the building had changed hands many times, slowly collecting unsavory neighbors until Shoddy Way was a virtual treasure trove of drug dens, pawneries, and all manner of establishments engaged in illicit mercantilism.
A quartet of cloaked men pelted across the street from the bazaar plaza and pushed their way through Egil and Nix.
"One side, bunghole," said the tallest of the men. "It's pouring out here."
Nix resisted the urge to sink his punch dagger into a kidney. Scabbards poked out from under the hem of the men's weathered cloaks, and each wore a boiled leather jack. The mouthy one threw open the door of the Tunnel. Faint lantern light, laughter, conversation, and smoke leaked out onto Shoddy Way.
"I see manners haven't improved while we were away," Nix observed, his hands doing what they always did when someone bumped into him.
"Fak you," the last of the men said over his shoulder, and the door to the brothel and tavern Nix now half-owned slammed in his face. He stared after them, rubbing his nose. He turned to Egil.
"Are you as offended as I?"
Egil raised his bushy brows and his eyes went to Nix's hand.
Nix looked down and saw in his palm the small leather coin pouch he'd taken from the tall mouthy one.
"I had to lift it," Nix said. "He bumped into me. And rudely so. At that point it's a matter of principle."
"Principle?"
Nix hefted the purse and put the weight at twelve or thirteen coins. "Principle indeed. I'll say twelve. Terns and commons only. Not a royal to be seen, not from those jackanapes. Take odds?"
"From you? On that? Do I look like a fool?"
"I won't answer that so as to spare your feelings." Nix fingered open the pouch and examined the contents. "Nine terns and three commons. Scarcely worth the effort."
They had no need for more coin, so Nix sloshed through the mud over to the donkey cart and driver. The cart was sunk halfway up to the axle in mud. The donkey, ears flat, coat steaming, seemed to have given up trying to pull it, despite the entreaties of the cloaked driver, an old man with a creased face and a wispy beard. Three sacks of grain and a barrel lay in the back of the cart. The old man looked fearful as Nix approached. Nix donned his best "I'm harmless" smile.
"For your trouble, granther," Nix said, and tossed the coins onto the bench board of the wagon. Two silver terns spilled out and the old driver seemed dumbstruck.
"What is this?" the old man said, his voice cracked with age. The donkey shook the wet from his fur.
Nix winked at the man and gestured at the slate sky. "Must be raining coin. Best collect what you can before it stops."
The man looked up at the sky, then colored, perhaps realizing how silly he must have looked. He gathered the coinpurse, hands shaking. "Are you mad, goodsir?"
"I wonder sometimes," Nix answered. "The gods only know. Goodeve, granther."
"Orella keep and preserve you, goodsir."
"That's well done," Egil said, when Nix walked back to him. "I never made you one for alms, much less grace."
Nix's mind turned to the Warrens, the coin he seeded there, but he kept his thoughts from his face. "Pfft. I know nothing of alms or grace. I just know that an old peasant can use the coin better than us, and certainly better than that hiresword who bumped me."
"That's truth," Egil said, and thumped Nix on the shoulder. "I'm thinking maybe you should've joined me in a priesthood."
"I didn't want to shave my head," Nix said. "It would foul my looks."
The great water clock of Ool rang the tenth hour, the deep notes audible across the city even over the rain.
"On the hour," Nix said, and gestured at the Tunnel's door. "Shall we?"
Egil shouldered open one of the double doors and they ducked inside.
The cavernous common room, originally a dining hall no doubt, opened before them. Blue smoke fogged the air, gathered in clouds near the ceiling beams. Heads turned and looked up at their entrance, though the loud thrum of conversation and clink of tankards did not so much as pause. They stood there for a long moment, Nix expecting a raucous greeting, hearty congratulations, and instead…
Nothing.
His smile fell down to his boot heels.
"Do they not know we own it?"
"Seems not," Egil said. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked around, disapproval in his furrowed brow.
A roll of thunder shook the building, summoned a collective "ahh" from the patrons, and dislodged a rain of plaster flakes from the walls.
"It seemed nicer before we bought it," Egil said.
Nix ignored him. "How could Tesha not tell anyone? We rescued this place from the Lord Mayor's revenue men. They should be applauding or something. Don't you think?"
"Tesha's a madam, Nix, not a street crier." His nose wrinkled. "What's that smell?"
"I know what she is," Nix said in a surly tone. "Even so, she should have told someone. And it's the eel stew."
"The stew? Really? How'd I not notice it before?"
"Maybe it was nicer before we bought this place, too."
Perhaps thirty patrons sat at the sturdy, time-scarred tables that dotted the wood-planked floor of the common room, all of them hard-eyed slubbers of one ilk or other. Small lanterns hung from the cracked walls or sat on the rickety tables, lurid light for a lurid crew. The stink of stale incense, sour sweat, and hasty sex clung to the warped floorboards.
A wide, sweeping staircase, probably once grand but now decrepit, led to the second-floor pleasure rooms. Three of Tesha's girls and one of her men lingered on the stairs, their poses professional and seductive, the dim light hiding the ragged hems of their threadbare clothing. Nix could not recall their names, though he knew their faces.
Morra the serving girl danced through the crowd, her face puffed and red under the tight bun of her brown hair, the tankards she bore sloshing with Gadd's ale. Her simple dress swayed on her thick legs. She saw Egil and Nix and acknowledged them with a tilt of her chin.
"Greets, loves," she said, as she hustled past them.
"Milady," Nix said, offering a half-bow, and Morra smiled sweetly over her shoulder.
Loud laughter sounded from one of the corner tables, where a group of teamsters in tell-tale green guild armbands huddled over their beers. The fattest of them gesticulated wildly with his pipe as he made a point about this or tha
t.
In the dim corner near the raised stage sat the four hireswords. They were just sitting down, speaking quietly among themselves, the mouthy one wearing a sour expression and patting at his cloak. Perhaps he realized he'd "dropped" his coinpurse somewhere. Morra set the ales down before them and danced away to another table.
"I need a drink," Egil said.
Nix's eyes went to the curved bar, behind which Gadd ruled. To Nix's knowledge, the willow-thin, tattooed tapkeep spoke but a few words of Realm Common, but his subjects – tankards, cups, jiggers, and hogsheads – obeyed his every command.
