by Paul S. Kemp
“She smells like smoke,” Nix said to Mere.
“What happened?” Egil asked again.
“At the Low Bazaar,” Mere said. “She was reading and…”
Her eyes welled again. Egil drew her close, covering her in his embrace.
“It’s going to be all right,” the priest said to her.
“Let’s get her inside,” Nix said. He tossed a silver to Gadd. “Pay the driver, Gadd. No, wait. I’ll pay the driver. You go clear the bar. Tell Tesha what happened.”
But Tesha was already there. She must have seen Egil and Nix leap the bar and come out to investigate. In her embroidered green dress, she stood with her hand on her hip near the gate, her dark eyes concerned.
“I’ll handle the bar. Is she going to be all right?”
Nix looked at Rose, at Mere, back at Tesha. “I don’t know.”
“She’s been in and out, Nix,” Mere said. “She’s been talking the whole ride back. Sometimes she seems herself, others times not.”
Nix tossed a silver tern to the old, grizzled man who drove the wagon.
“Obliged, granther.”
Nix put his arms under Rose and lifted her from the wagon. Egil offered his aid, but Nix shook it off.
“I’ve got her.”
“Aye,” Egil said.
Nix stepped down out of the wagon, grunting with exertion. He looked down at Rose and her green eyes were open and focused, looking up at him. She looked wan, her eyes pained, furrows in her brow.
Nix swallowed, said softly, “How do you feel?”
“Bad,” Rose said. “My head is just…”
Mere was at their side, brushing her sister’s hair from her brow. “You need to rest, Rose.”
Rose nodded, but winced at the pain even that small motion caused her.
Together, they took her inside, carried her through a now empty bar while Tesha looked on.
“I’ll bring up some warm broth,” Tesha said.
“Thank you, Tesha,” Mere said.
Tesha’s men and women had retreated to their rooms – presumably at her orders – and Nix carried Rose to the small bedroom on the second floor that she and Mere shared. After laying her down on the bed, Nix kissed her on the brow. She seemed asleep, so he covered her in a blanket, closed the door behind him, and gathered in the hallway with Mere and Egil.
“So what happened?” Nix asked her.
“She was reading someone as he died,” Mere said, as though that were an explanation.
Nix looked first at Egil, then back at her, not understanding. “And?”
Heads poked out of doors down the long hallway, Tesha’s workers giving in to curiosity. Nix waved them back into the rooms.
Mere said, “And that’s why she’s like that. It’s dangerous to be in the mind of someone as they die.”
“Dangerous how?” Egil asked.
Mere shook her head. Her short, dark hair was mussed and the makeup she wore to tell fortunes was smeared by tears. She looked lost. Nix wondered how she’d fare in the world if she lost her sister. Probably much as Nix would fare if he lost Egil.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “I’ve never had it happen before. Neither of us have. We’ve just heard that it’s… bad.”
Egil stood behind her and placed his hands gently on her shoulders. His touch seemed to calm her. She took a deep breath.
“Sorry,” she said.
Nix waved it off. “In theory, then, dangerous how?”
She put her hand on Egil’s. “A dying person’s mind… explodes. Things can get jumbled.”
Nix had some experience with the sisters’ mindmagic. “Jumbled? Thoughts get mixed up?”
She nodded. “Thoughts, memories, feelings. Everything. It can overwhelm because it all comes at once. You can become… not yourself.”
Nix flashed on Egil’s words earlier about the sum of past moments making people who they were in the present. Rose had just inherited moments that weren’t her own. What would that do to her? To Mere, he said,
“Maybe you could use your mindmagic to help her? Remove what’s not hers?”
Mere shook her head and looked back at the door to Rose’s room. “I can’t. It would take a real mindmage. I can do what I can do because of… lineage.”
“The only real mindmages are in Oremal,” Egil said. “And we’re a long way from there.”
“We are,” Nix agreed. He knew of another mindmage, though, or at least the rumor of one. But he had no desire to walk that path unless absolutely necessary.
“It could fix itself,” Mere said, a flash of hope in her eyes. “I think we just need to let her rest.”
“Aye,” Nix said, nodding slowly as his thoughts turned. “Let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
“I will.”
She turned to go back into the room and tend Rusilla but Egil first asked her, “How’d he die? The man she was reading.”
“He was shot. Veraal–”
“Veraal was shot?” Nix said, thinking of their old friend.
“No,” she said.
“Veraal shot someone?”
“No,” she said. “Veraal said the dead man was shot through the throat. A professional job, he said.”
“Uncle Veraal,” Nix said, shaking his head and smiling. He hadn’t had dealings with Veraal in years. “What’s he doing there? In the Bazaar.”
“He sells smoke leaf. Next to our tent. He said he knew you two, but he didn’t say he was your uncle.”
“He’s not,” Egil said. “An uncle is… He was our fence for a long time.”
“Oh.” She looked surprised, her lips pursing. “Well, he was nice.”
“He’s all right,” Nix said.
“Selling leaf?” Egil said, and looked to Nix and both of them said at the same time, “Cover for his coin.”
Mere looked confused. “What?”
“The leaf stall is just cover for his fencing operation,” Nix said. “It covers his coin, should the Lord Mayor’s taxman come knocking.”
“She doesn’t need to know all this,” Egil said.
“I’m not a child, Egil,” she said, hands on her hips.
Egil’s ears colored under her reprimand. He ran his palm over his head. “That’s not what I meant, Mere.”
“Yes it is.”
Nix changed the subject. “Tell me more about the dead man. If Veraal said it was a pro click, then it was a pro click. Maybe someone we knew.”
“I didn’t see. I wasn’t in the tent and don’t know any more about him. Rose was babbling in the wagon on the way from the Bazaar. She was talking about coin and clicks and naming places. A committee. And eight of something? And she said something about a tattoo, blades and a circle.”
Nix looked sharply at Egil. “Committee?”
“Describe the tattoo in detail,” Egil said.
“Was it on the back of his hand?” Nix asked.
“Doesn’t have to be there,” Egil said. “They move around, I hear.”
Mere looked from one to the other, trying to follow their conversation. When they stopped, she said. “Rose said it was an eight-pointed figure. Like a compass rose you’d see on a map. That’s what she said. Like a rose, like her name.”
“Shite,” Nix said, disbelieving. “You’re sure she said that? Eight points?”
Mere nodded, a question in her eyes.
“And it had a circle in the center?” Nix pressed. “Like a coin.”
“She just said a circle and I didn’t see it so–”
“Shite,” Egil said, and ran his hand over Ebenor’s eye. “Gotta be.”
Merelda’s expression was growing alarmed. She looked very much like the young girl she denied being. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Maybe a little, maybe a lot,” Nix said.
“What’s the tattoo mean?” she asked.
“It’s a badge of office,” Egil said.
“And it’s more magical sigil than tattoo,” Nix added. “I
t shows membership in the Committee.”
“And that is?” she asked.
Nix remembered that Mere wouldn’t know the power groups in the city. She’d been imprisoned in a manse outside Dur Follin most of her life.
“The Committee is the group of eight Archthieves who run the Dur Follin Thieves’ Guild.”
“Nasty slubbers, all,” Egil said.
Merelda blinked. “So the man who was killed was a member of this Committee?”
Egil chuckled, but there was no mirth in it.
“No,” Nix said. “Each member of the Committee has a different sigil that shows their rank. The lowest ranking has one blade pointing up from the central coin. The highest has eight.”
“The Upright Man,” Egil said. “Eight blades means the head of the guild.”
Merelda’s mouth hung open for a moment. “The head of the thieves’ guild was murdered in our tent?”
“So it seems,” Nix said.
“Shite,” Merelda said.
“Well said,” Egil said.
“What was he doing there?” Mere asked.
Nix shrugged. “You didn’t see the assassin? And Rusilla didn’t either?”
“I didn’t. I don’t think she did.”
Nix stared at Egil. The priest said, “If they wanted no witnesses, she’d have been dead in the tent.”
Nix thought it through, nodded. “Right. Whoever clicked him didn’t mind witnesses, maybe even wanted it visible enough so that those with eyes could see.”
“A power play, probably,” Egil said. “Another one of the Committee.”
“Aye,” Nix said. “Probably none of our concern, then.”
Mere said, “So one member of the Committee killed this Upright Man, who leads the Committee? Is Rose in danger?”
“I don’t think so,” Nix said. “All’s game in guild business, is what they say, but the trick is that you click or cross another Committeeman, you can’t get pinned with it. If you do…”
“You die ugly,” Egil said.
“That’s why we never joined,” Nix said. “Among other reasons.”
Egil harrumphed. “If we’d have joined, we’d be running that crew of slubbers by now.”
“Truth,” Nix said.
“None of that makes any damned sense,” Merelda said.
“It’s religion, is why,” Egil said.
Nix added, “A guildthief isn’t just a thief, Mere. He’s a member of a religious order and their organization and rules makes about as much sense as any other order of zealots. They worship a nasty aspect of Aster. They’re like priests, but priests who steal and kill, even from each other, provided they don’t get caught.”
Egil snorted contemptuously. “Priests! Dolts the lot.”
Merelda’s eyes went to the tattoo on Egil’s head and her face crinkled with a question, but she kept the words behind her teeth.
“I’m a different kind of priest,” he said, inferring her question.
“Egil’s god is dead,” Nix said. “Gives the doctrine a certain fluidity.”
Egil chuckled.
Mere’s gaze went the door of Rose’s room, back to Egil.
“She shouldn’t be in any danger,” Egil said again. “If they’d wanted to hurt her, they’d have done it then. Ill place, ill time, is all it sounds like.”
Tesha came up the stairs, a wooden bowl of broth in her hands. Despite himself, Nix smiled. He had never expected to see Tesha, with her form-fitting, beaded and embroidered dress, coiffed hair, and meticulous makeup, carrying a bowl of soup. She caught his look.
“What?”
“What what?”
“I can take this to her or you can wear it. Which do you prefer, Nix Fall?”
“I wouldn’t look good in soup,” he said with a wink.
She harrumphed and walked past him. “I sent for a saint of Orella. We’ll split the expense.”
“Aye,” he said, still smiling.
Mere opened the door to Rose’s room for her.
“See to your sister, Mere,” Nix said. “We’ll be downstairs if you need anything. Maybe the saint can do something.”
Mere looked doubtful but nodded, and she and Tesha disappeared behind the door.
“We need to talk,” Nix said to Egil.
“Aye,” the priest said.
“Downstairs.”
“Yeah.”
Nix called down the hallway, “We’re opening back up. Everybody out of your rooms. Come drink and eat and copulate, preferably as separate activities.”
“Copulate,” Egil said. “Nice.”
Nix gave a little bow. “Come on! Out, out!”
As the doors started to open down the hallway, the two friends headed downstairs to the bar, where Gadd already had foaming tankards waiting for them.
“You’re my kind of priest,” Egil said to the tapkeep.
Gadd smiled, showing his sharpened fangs.
“Rose all right?” Gadd asked.
“Not sure,” Nix said. “We hope so.”
Gadd nodded. After sticking his pipe between his teeth, the easterner turned away to give Egil and Nix privacy, tending to his tankards and cups and plates the way a priest tended relics.
“It’s this jumble bit that bothers,” Egil said, taking a long pull on his ale. “This is good, Gadd,” he said. “Very good.”
Gadd glanced over his shoulder, nodded.
“My thoughts ran the same way,” Nix said. “But how would they even know about that? The assassin probably shot, saw it sink, and bolted. To him, Rose and Mere are just common buskers. He’d have no reason to suspect anything else.”
“Truth,” Egil acceded, then, “But if they did.” He left the thought unfinished, then said, “Guild slubbers.”
“Aye, that.”
“You ever really think of joining?” Egil asked.
Nix guffawed. “The only priests I want to associate with are bald, tattooed, and stubborn, yeah?”
“Stubborn?”
“A mule looks on you with envy, Egil. Stubborn.”
“Fair enough,” the priest acknowledged.
“Besides,” Nix added. “Those guild slubbers aren’t square in the head for the most part.”
“That’s truth.”
They drank in silence for a time while the Tunnel refilled behind them.
“New Upright Man and shifts in the Committee,” Nix said. “Should make things interesting for a while.”
“We’ll see,” Egil said.
Rusk passed five bodyguards, hard-eyed and bristling with steel, on his way to see Channis. Rusk found the new Upright Man in a well-appointed waiting room in the southwest wing of the guild house, along with two more bodyguards. Rusk didn’t even know their names, but their eyes never left his hands. Channis must have prepared for his rise for a long time. Rusk reminded himself never to underestimate Channis. He also cursed his lot as Seventh Blade.
“Lot of muscle,” Rusk said.
“Prudence pays,” Channis said.
A throat wound from years earlier had made the Upright Man’s voice as coarse as gravel. Channis was said to have more scars than even the most holy of Millenor’s self-mortifying priests. Rusk had heard many fellow guild men say over the years that Channis could not be killed. Too mean. Too thick a hide.
“Like coming to see a king in his court,” Rusk said, irritated at himself for the nervous twinge in his voice.
“Is it?” Channis said, and Rusk heard a smile in his tone.
The new Upright Man stood before a window that overlooked the guarded grounds that abutted the slow, murky waters of the Meander. The sun fell behind the Archbridge and the huge structure painted a shadow across the guild house and the river. Channis, tall and blocky even in his fitted cloak, admired the tat on the back of his hand the way Rusk might admire a woman’s thigh. A short, wide blade hung from Channis’s hip. A few daggers hung from his belt, too, like the bastard children of the short sword.
Channis turned and dismissed
the bodyguards in the room with a wave of his hand. They closed the doors behind them.
“He’s down,” Rusk said. “But you already knew that.”
Channis smiled and approached him. Scars lined his face, a script of past battles, and he wore his long hair pulled back in a horse’s knot. For a moment Rusk flashed on the idea of clicking Channis, driving a blade into his chest, testing just how tough was his hide, but put the idea out of his mind. Clicking a Committeeman – much less the Upright Man – had to be done without witnesses and with a great deal of discretion. Suspicion of clicking a Committeeman was one thing. Evidence of doing so was something else again, and got one sent to the tunnels below the guild house for a visit with Zren the Blade and his many pointy metal objects.
“Did he suffer?” Channis asked.
“One shot and down. He gurgled some.”
“That’s a job done well, Rusky. And now let’s have a little talk.”
He gestured Rusk over to one of the chairs that sat before the window. Rusk walked with him, but did not sit. Neither did Channis.
“So there are two men, and only two, who are in on this, yeah? And they’re both standing in this room.”
Rusk flashed on the faytor, the words she’d shouted, but he said only, “Yeah.”
“So if there was ever a loose tongue about this here, well, then the person without the loose tongue would know it was the other of the two was yapping, yeah?”
“I don’t yap, Channis. And even if I did…”
“Even if you did,” Channis said, his voice like a blade over a whetstone. “I’d deny everything and there’s no evidence and you’d go visit with Zren for… discipline.”
“Right.”
“Right, then.” Channis put one of his huge hands on Rusk’s shoulder, squeezed, then turned and walked away. “That’s clear as good glass, then. We can help each other, you and me. I’ll be calling the Committee together later, then we’ll have chapel down below, say thanks to Aster, throw a few prays. I’m just waiting for Trelgin to show. He shoulda sprouted a seventh blade by now. He’s not going to be happy how this goes for him.”
Rusk winced. “About that…”
Channis turned to face him, his right-eye half closed due to scarring, and so stuck in a perpetual glare.
“There was a problem,” Rusk said, and shifted on his feet. “Well, two. Though one is not so much a problem as a surprise.”
