Blood of the City

by Robin D. Laws

  Boria had gone white. The woman pulled the arrow from the counter, and back through his arm. The poisoner's blood spotted her clothing and then vanished, as if glamored away. He lost consciousness and slid out of sight. "Sleep venom," she said. She beckoned Luma to come around the counter.

  "Are you going to explain who this is?" Thaubnis asked.

  Luma approached the woman, who opened a cupboard door beneath the figurine. Beneath it hung a bellows, attached to a mechanism triggered from within the statuette. "This will be filled with a spore mixture," said the woman, "likely a mixture of lungtaker and green carbuncle."

  From this angle, light shone through a dozen tiny drill-holes, positioned before the bellows' tip. Had Boria succeeded in striking the figurine, the spores would have puffed out into the room, forming a cloud around Luma and the others.

  The woman kicked at Boria with the pointed toe of a soft gray boot. "He'll have taken small doses of both spores over a period of many years, immunizing himself against its effects. A useful precaution, when you want to kill everyone else in a room." Her accent bore the hushed notes of the Vista district. Underneath it hid something from farther away.

  "I repeat my question," Thaubnis said.

  "This is Melune," said Luma.

  "An old friend?" asked the dwarf.

  "Excuse me," said Luma. "The two of us have a matter to discuss." She stalked into the back room, moving behind a stack of crates. Melune came with her. "This time," Luma said, "you must tell me who you serve."

  Melune's features betrayed scant emotion. "I will accompany you," she said, "but in exchange you must agree to not ask."

  "I'm not asking you to go with us."

  "Yet nonetheless I will."

  "And why will I agree to that?"

  Was there humor in Melune's expression? "For one, you must be tired of trying and failing to open locks."

  "You're a burglar?"

  "Close enough."

  "I thought you were a nurse."

  "What it is necessary for me to be, I become. And at the moment, it is necessary that I assist you."

  "Necessary to whom?"

  "To you, for one. You'd all be dead without me."

  "All right. Let's say I want you along. Which I might, since you're another part of this puzzle."

  "That is not the way to think of it."

  "You must at least tell me what parts of this are your doing, so I can set them to the side. It was you who left a key in the Hells for me, yes?"

  "Yes, that you can set to the side."

  "Meaning that you've been watching me for a while."

  "I can assist from afar, but will be of more use close at hand. Which will it be?"

  "I'll need an explanation for the others."

  "Lie to them," said Melune.

  Luma returned to Boria's show room, where Noole helped himself to a few select bottles. "This is Melune. She brings useful abilities, and will be joining us."

  After inspecting a label, Noole snatched up the bottle, swapping it for one already in his pack. "If you trust her," he said, "so do we."

  Priza, squatting, studied Boria's spore-spreader. "I trust none of you."

  Hendregan chortled.

  As they stepped onto the street, heads turned. A ponderous woman in voluminous finery gaped at them, clutching a small black dog closer to her bosom. A courier's bodyguard tightened his stance and interposed himself between them and his charge.

  In a pack, they were too conspicuous. "We'll split up, and meet at the place separately," Luma said. The others drifted away. Luma headed past an expensive cobbler's shop, ducking between it and a store selling gilt-thread cloaks. She walked an unpredictable path of alleyways and side streets until she reached the precipice of the Seacleft.

  Diffuse clouds wafted up from the city below. When they struck the cliff face, they broke up into remnants, which appeared to scale it. They swirled around the upper entrance of the Arvensoar, the tower garrison for which Magnimar was famed. The barracks began in the lower city, hugging the cliff side for three hundred feet, then rose on their own for another hundred. From the pinnacle watchers scrutinized earth and sky. Flashes of reflected sunlight bounced from their massive, copper-mounted lenses.

  Wooden scaffolds clung to the sides of the tower like vines to a wall. Workmen scrubbed and scoured its stone, clearing off decades of salt-crust, stained by the sooty exudations of the Golemworks. Luma vaguely recalled a mayoral initiative to spit-polish the tower's outward surfaces. The anniversary of its construction was imminent, or had been declared to be so. Historians said that Haldemeer Grobaras had jiggered the dates as pretext for a festival. Overruling the objections of pedants, he and his allies would spend city money and reflect the celebration back upon themselves.

  Martial drumbeats pervaded the citysong, as they did whenever Luma approached the Arvensoar. Today she took them in, incorporating them into her own determination. She would borrow their relentlessness, use it in pursuit of her goal.

  She cut back into Vista, avoiding the open boulevard of the precipice until its last slope drew near. Once deposited in the bazaar, she cut a diagonal across the city, paralleling the Avenue of Sails without exposing herself to its traffic. Dusk settled on the city as she reached the Marches and headed for Bent Rib Alley.

  Priza was waiting for her at its mouth, emerging from behind a pile of construction rubble. "Time to relocate," he muttered, stepping into pace alongside her.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Temporary quarters. Your unexplained friend, Melune, is here; she'll direct the others to it. It wasn't so foolish, to pick a bolthole here, where the law doesn't go."

  "But ...?"

  "But locals left to shift for themselves learn vigilance. As strangers, we stick out like fish in a field."

  "What happened?"

  "The nightsoil carters here are Varisian, and thus my brothers in oppression," said Priza. "I asked them if they'd seen anything, and they said Hellknights down Bent Rib Alley. Would your family enlist them?"

  "A few weeks ago, I'd say never. Now I can only guess."

  "Or the lord-mayor went to them, to get you for killing Khonderian."

  "I didn't touch Khonderian."

  "Where we're going, you should say you did."

  "And that would be ...?"

  "There's places the law doesn't bother itself with. And then there's where it dares not go."

  The barbarian took her east, to a spot west of the lower city's gate. There he entered a low-slung tenement, its lobby guarded by a half-sleeping Varisian swaddled in a moth-eaten wool cloak. In what sounded like Shoanti-accented Varisian, Priza issued apparent instructions. When he mimed the height of a gnome and a dwarf, she guessed what they were: Priza was telling him that the others were on their way, and were to be allowed through.

  Priza opened what looked to be an apartment door; it instead revealed a square of exposed earth. The room had been gutted from the floorboards up, and a hole dug down into the ground. A precarious brick staircase granted access to a tunnel below. Luma followed Priza down.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Woods

  The staircase led into a cramped, ill-supported earthen passageway. Luma followed Priza through it and up an equally treacherous set of stairs at its opposite end. They emerged in the midst of a gorse stand. She oriented herself, thorns plucking at her cloak. To the east stood the city gate, with its parapet of sentinels, prepared to challenge comers and goers.

  "We tired of bowing and shuffling to them," said Priza.

  "So you made your own gate," Luma nodded.

  A wooded plain surrounded the city. Priza plunged south, and soon its walls could not be seen for trees.

  The citysong dwindled, then fell away entirely. This would have troubled the old Luma. The new one chose to embrace the silence. Her power might or might not withhold itself from her, outside the city's bounds. If it did, and trouble came, she would find some other strength.

  Eart
hly music replaced the singing in her head. Low- and high-pitched drums combined in a complex, twisting rhythm, overridden by discordant fiddles. Nearby flame-light flickered across tree trunks. Priza led her into a hollow, where dozens of Varisians camped. Tents and wagons circled a central clearing, a bonfire burning at its heart. Men and women sat on blankets, children dashing around them. Among the colorfully garbed Varisians mingled a few dour Shoanti. Some of these wore the standard tunics and leggings of city folk, while others had thrown them off in favor of breech-clouts. The wild-garbed men went shirtless, or adorned themselves with ruffs of fur. Their female counterparts covered their breasts with armor pieces, or leather bodices covered in the colorful feathers of ark-ark birds.

  A tipsy line of Varisian revelers wove blithely around them. The barbarian presence in their midst concerned them not a jot.

  So this, Luma realized, is where the Shoanti gangsters went when the city grew too hot. She and her siblings had wasted more than one fruitless day in pursuit of Shoanti thieves and kidnappers. They'd never thought to search the Varisian camps outside the walls. It made perfect sense, now that she saw it. One disregarded minority would naturally find common cause with the other.

  A trio of wrinkled Shoanti, streaks of dye brightening their white beards, saw Priza and gestured for him to halt. "Don't talk yet," he told Luma, and went to meet them. She watched as they exchanged words in the barbarian tongue. One of the elders directed the questioning, with the others interjecting now and then. At length, they departed, arguing among themselves.

  "We're unwelcome here?" Luma asked.

  Priza watched the old men wander away, splitting up to return to family groupings around the fire. "They can't turn you away. We are as much guests here as you are. If hospitality is to be withdrawn, it's for the Varisian headman to say."

  "So what was that all about?"

  The barbarian crossed his arms. "Their objections have been heard and overruled. An old warrior may advise, but when his arm is no longer strong enough to strike his enemies, his authority has ended."

  "They wonder if I can be trusted."

  "I wonder that, too," said Priza. "Come and meet my wife."

  A woman sat on a blanket, sharpening a knife against a whetstone. Around her gamboled three children: a boy about eight, a girl a year younger, and another boy, perhaps four years old. The eldest boy had snatched a flute from his sister's hand; the girl chased him as the youngest jumped up and down, clapping. The sister tripped the boy, sending him tumbling into the grass. To the laughter of her younger brother, she grabbed the flute. Her older brother got up, fists balled, ready to leap on her. The woman barked a command; the three children halted in their tracks. The mother and daughter wore bright, tight-fitting shirts over flowing, bangled skirts in the Varisian style. The boys wore next to nothing and had painted themselves as diminutive Shoanti raiders.

  Gray streaks accented the woman's flowing hair. Lines of hard living scored her forehead and the area around her mouth. As she caught sight of Priza, her handsome features softened, and her green eyes took on a shocking warmth. She wrapped her arms around him, pushing herself into his chest, as if a fear had been lifted from her. He spoke to her in Varisian, his voice striking Luma as altogether changed.

  The children stood by, reining themselves in, until their father acknowledged them. Then they rushed into him, the eldest boy and girl wrapping themselves around his legs. He scooted them momentarily aside to lift the youngest onto his shoulder. They chattered at him, talking over one another, until he decided enough was enough and set the young one down. The children ran a few yards away, then flung themselves onto the ground. They lay on their bellies, chins on hands, drinking in his presence.

  A hand on her shoulder, Priza brought the woman to Luma. "Luma Derexhi, this is Zhaana."

  Zhaana performed a dancer's bow. In return, Luma tightly nodded.

  "There are others coming, too?" Zhaana asked.

  "Yes."

  Zhaana broke from her, calling out to others among the women. The Varisians readied an impromptu feast, hanging iron spits over the fire. They filled iron pots with water and dangled them from spits. Luma saw lentils, onions, and thumb-sized red root vegetables thrown into the pots. The women softened salted fish in pans of water.

  As they worked, Luma noted sharp elbows and sunken cheeks: neither hosts nor guests were well fed. They could ill afford this display of hospitality. Yet no matter what mix of Varisian and Shoanti rules of hospitality applied here, she understood the affront she'd cause if she declined to eat her fill. Nor would it do to offer help.

  As Varisians cooked, the younger Shoanti gathered around Priza. Doubtful intonations provided all the translation Luma required. She settled herself cross-legged on a lush tuft of grass near the firepit. Custom supposedly protected guests from harm. Still, she did not let her hand stray far from the grip of her sickle.

  The heat soon made her drowsy. She risked lying down, then letting her eyes shut. The various fragments of her situation whirled through her head, refusing to cohere: Hellknights, Hermit's Breath, Khonderian, the lord-mayor.

  She had to save her father. The last time, she'd gone to Derexhi House alone, and could only flee. Now she had allies. Granted, they had never run an operation together. Not against serious opposition: the invasion of the poisoners' tenement hardly counted.

  These considerations paled against the urgency of her father's condition. Were Boria to be believed, he was as good as dead already.

  That didn't matter either. She couldn't stand by and let it happen.

  Sitting up, Luma grabbed a stick and sketched out a map of her house in the dirt. Plans of attack formulated themselves, then dissipated. Too many variables applied. It would all turn on how many of her siblings happened to be present when they staged the assault. She ran through scenarios, considering ways of drawing them elsewhere.

  Noole made a wary appearance on the encampment's periphery. Luma thought about letting her companions in on the planning. But then, she knew so little of them. Their capabilities were largely unknown to her, their reasons for throwing in with her ambiguous at best. The gnome had come along on a lark. Priza had his own agenda, which might turn Luma into a traitor if she wasn't alert enough to head it off. Melune was lying by omission and served patrons unknown. Thaubnis had been drawn along like a leaf on a stream, by nothing more than inertia, or perhaps the lure of comradeship. And the magician was insane.

  Still, when you have only a rock, you fight with a rock. Luma would figure it out, and find a way to use them.

  Thaubnis and Hendregan showed up in short succession, about half an hour after the gnome. When the eating began, the drumming stopped. Luma ate as sparingly as she could without rejecting the gift her hosts bestowed. Tight-chested Varisians, clad in bright red vests and voluminous pantaloons gathered at the ankle, passed her bowls of sharp berry wine. As she finished one, then another, she discovered a new capacity for drink. Hendregan passed out early. Her other allies proved themselves prodigious, outlasting Varisian and Shoanti alike.

  Noole raised a bowl in toast: "When drinking in earnest, always side with the dwarf and the poet."

  Finally unsteady as predawn came, Luma, led by Priza and Zhaana, swerved toward a wagon painted with both a Varisian sigil and the emblem of Priza's Axe Clan. This, she presumed, belonged to his own family. His children already slept under the stars. Luma and Thaubnis arranged themselves on one side of the wagon, a row of pillows separating them from Noole and Hendregan. As sleep enveloped her, Luma realized that Melune hadn't made it to the camp.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  A slim hand slid aside the wagon's back curtain, exposing Luma and comrades to the scattered light of an overcast day. Luma stirred; the others grumped and pulled blankets over their faces. She blinked; it was Melune. Once again her appearance struck Luma as altered, though not in a way she could pinpoint.

  "Let's go," said Melune.

  Luma groaned, a hangover bouncing
in her skull. "What?"

  "There's somewhere you'll want to be."

  Luma shook off her grogginess. "And the others?"

  "Just you."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cenotaph

  Worthies in formal regalia milled by the hundreds on a cobblestone plaza around another of the city's famous monuments. This stone cylinder stretched up for ten stories, dwarfing the structures bordering the square. A frieze of heroic figures struggled and fought their way up its stone surface. From Luma's vantage, atop the roof of a nearby workshop building, the friezes appeared only as a rough, pebbled texture. She'd spent many an hour studying it, though, and could easily call to mind the tale the carved pictures told. They depicted the most popular of Magnimar's founders, Alcaydian Indros. The images cast him as a man stern of jaw and thick of hew, forehead tilted ever upward, gazing to the future. They showed him slaying a dragon with his sword, laying stones at the foot of the Seacleft, and presenting his fellow founders with the city's credo of freedom and opportunity, as represented by a flowing scroll.

  Over the years, Luma had come to associate Alcaydian Indros with her brother Arrus—perhaps because he practiced striking those marble stances in the mirror.

  Various other founders appeared in a few panels each, though always off to the side and never as large as Indros. A bearded battler, his helmet beaked like a hawk, a falcon on his shoulder and a spear in his hand, showed up as often as any. Randred had always pointed him out when taking Luma there as a child. He was Aitin Aioldo Derexhi, the first of their line.