Dangerous Gifts

by Gaie Sebold

  “I am the ‘proper authorities,’” Fain said. “Oh, and I think incitement to murder is something.”

  “You can’t prove it!”

  “No? I think you will have a long and interesting time in prison. Where you will find yourself surrounded by those you have so often described as violent and mindless.”

  “You can’t! I’m a citizen of Scalentine!”

  “Citizens are required to act like citizens,” Fain said. “And they are subject to the laws that govern citizens. However. If you are willing to point out your mentor, in front of witnesses, as the man who financed the establishment of the Builders...” – he glanced at Filchis – “yes, I thought so... and as the man who sent you to Incandress, then perhaps arrangements can be made.”

  “Arrangements?”

  There were guards on the door of the silk warehouse, of course. “Has the Chief been here? Hargur, City Militia?” Fain said.

  “Who wants to know?” one of the guards said.

  I slammed him against the wall. “Me. I want to know. Now.”

  “Yes! Yes, he was! Leggo!”

  I was vaguely aware of Fain dealing with the other guard.

  “He’s not now?” I said.

  “No!”

  “Then where is he?”

  “His friends came for him.”

  “His friends.”

  “Yes, they came and he went with them!”

  I struggled to get the words out. “When? And where did they go?”

  “No more than a minute or so before you got here, and they went that way!” He jerked a trembling thumb to his left, towards a narrow alley between two grain warehouses. “Please...”

  I let him go, and ran.

  “Babylon, dammit!” I heard Fain yell.

  Halfway down the passage something caught my eye. A scrap of red.

  Militia red. Woollen thread, caught on the wood of a small door.

  I stood and tried to calm my breathing. If I went charging in, I could get Hargur killed.

  The others caught up to me.

  “There?” Fain said quietly.

  I pointed to the thread.

  He nodded.

  “Mr Filchis,” he said. “You will be absolutely quiet, until I require you to speak. You understand?”

  Filchis opened his mouth, and Fain’s knife was at his throat. He shut his mouth. “Good,” Fain said. “I hope I do not have to tell anyone else? Babylon. Try not to kill anyone. We need witnesses. Excellent. Shall we?”

  Mokraine had wandered off, to examine something of interest down the other end of the alley. We left him to it, and crept in like mice after the grain. There were a pair of big, trollish thugs just inside the door; Fain, despite still being one-handed, managed to take one out. Laney did that mouth-seal trick on the other that she’d used on Filchis, and I took him down. Bergast looked down at his own glowing hands, all magicked up and nowhere to go, and made a face; I saw, clear as day, his realisation that he was going to have to learn to be a damn sight faster than that.

  Filchis stared down at the unconscious trolls.

  Inside the warehouse was a vast, chilly, echoing place. The grain was stored in huge wooden bins, with steps running up the side of each to a small platform, and a hatch in the base for the grain to be spilled out.

  It smelled of dust and chaff and slightly of mice. A cat slipped quietly in and out of the shadows. We crept among the bins. I could see a small figure standing on one of the platforms; as we got closer, I realised it was Heimarl. I heard Laney gasp, and glanced around. She was glaring and clenching her hands. Heimarl turned and looked down, but not at us. We kept to the shadows, creeping from bin to bin, until we were directly below him. I peered around and saw what he had been looking at.

  Hargur. Leaning against the wall, his arms folded.

  Either side of him were two cloaked figures. Insignificant, dull, irrelevant figures. My eye kept sliding off them. Deglamoured.

  It didn’t stop me seeing the blades they were holding to his throat and gut.

  I drew back, and exchanged looks with Laney. One wrong move, and Hargur could be dead. I tried not to think of Lobik, collapsing and dying before my eyes. I readied the sling, waiting for a chance, however slim.

  “You do realise,” Hargur said, “that people know where I am.”

  “It would be irresponsible for the Chief of the Militia not to let people know,” Heimarl said. “Of course, it was rather irresponsible for you to come alone, but then, you had a personal interest in the fate of that silk, did you not? And a dislike for anyone knowing your business. With which I sympathise.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh, Chief Bitternut, I want many things. Firstly, I want to know what you have heard from Incandress.”

  “Why should I have heard anything from Incandress?”

  “Don’t play the fool with me.”

  “I’m not in the habit of playing the fool, Mr Heimarl. I’ll answer your question if you’ll answer mine. Why do you want me dead?”

  “It’s nothing personal. I simply prefer a Chief I can work with. We could still come to an arrangement.”

  “An arrangement? Like the one we had?” Filchis said, his fury overcoming his fear of Fain’s knife. Fain, grimacing, slid back into the shadows before Heimarl’s gaze could find him, leaving Filchis to stagger out into view, his hands still tied.

  “Filchis?” Heimarl said.

  “Why did you send me to Incandress?” Filchis said, looking up.

  I couldn’t see Heimarl’s face, but I could hear the warm, entirely false smile he had plastered on. “Why, Angrifon! Because I trusted you. Tell me, how do you come to be here?”

  “You mean, how do I come to not be dead?” Filchis jerked his head at the troll lying by the door. “A brute. In your employ! You liedto me. You lied to me. You told me you believed in our cause, but you didn’t, did you? You sent me to Incandress to die. For this.” Filchis kicked out at the hatch at the bottom of the bin. It couldn’t have been very firmly fastened; the hinges creaked, and the door fell open. Grain began to pour out in a whispering rush.

  It was enough to distract one of the figures guarding Hargur. I managed, more by luck than accuracy, to catch his shoulder with a slingstone, and his blade spun away. Hargur dropped and rolled; I saw the flash of a blade, dulled suddenly with blood. His blood. Hargur.

  I drew steel. The first man went for his dropped sword, but a flicker of pink around his feet made him stumble to his knees. Laney, good girl. I slammed my hilt against his head as I went past and faced up to the next. He was slight, but damn fast; I felt a sting across my leg.

  Fighting a deglamoured opponent is nasty. It messes with your concentration. I missed a couple of easy hits and got another blow to the shoulder before the deglamour suddenly lifted, and I found myself facing a pasty sort with hair of an unnatural red and a shorter reach than I’d thought; I got under it, caught his blade with mine, and punched him in the gut with my other hand.

  He folded.

  I whipped his blade away and kicked him in the head, just to be sure. ‘Disable anyone you’re going to turn your back on’ is a good rule.

  I spun round. Hargur was on the floor, breathing hard, Laney next to him.

  Running footsteps. More of Heimarl’s men, appearing around the bins. Ten or so, some human, some not.

  “I really wouldn’t advise that,” Fain said.

  “No, I don’t suppose you would,” Heimarl said. “Kill them.”

  “Boss...” His men looked at each other. Then they looked at Laney. She was concentrating on Hargur, but she glanced up and glared. Those nearest her backed off.

  Bergast raised his hands. “Come on then!” he said, blue-green light flickering around his fingers. More of the men backed away.

  “Magic can’t kill you here, you fools!” Heimarl said.

  “I can, though,” I said. “Over here, boys.”

  Two more ran for it, out the door we’d come in.
>
  The rest took the challenge. I found myself back to back with Fain. I tried to concentrate, not to glance over at Hargur. Downstroke opened one across the chest, sent him staggering back against the one behind him. Bergast behind me; a green flare and one of the men squealed and stumbled, briefly blinded. Got him with a straight kick, and he went down wheezing and gurgling.

  Filchis, trying to run, hands still tied, skidding on the loose grain, going down hard.

  Heimarl, looking down, exasperated, turning to come down the steps.

  We were on the docks. If he got away, he could go anywhere.

  “Fain, cover me!”

  The smooth weight of the stone in my hand, slipping it in the cup, aim. Loose.

  It clipped his shoulder. I heard the crack, and he yelled, and slipped, overbalancing the low rim of the bin, and disappeared.

  Dammit. Well, it would take him a minute to scramble out.

  The rest gone or down.

  “Hargur.” I dropped beside him. He was pale and panting. Laney had her hands pressed to his side, pink glimmer around her fingers, her cloak trailing in his blood.

  “Scratch,” he panted. “Get Heimarl.”

  “I’ve got him,” Laney said. “Go catch my yrrkennish client.”

  “Your...? Never mind.”

  I ran up the stairs alongside the grain bin.

  The dust of the corn filled my nose and mouth; the grains had dipped in the middle as they ran out through the hatch, and there he was, Thasado Heimarl, only his head and arms still visible. His expensively-cut hair oddly blond with dust and spiked with grains, his face and desperately reaching hands dusted yellow, grains stuck to the sweat. “Help... me...” he wheezed. The weight of it was crushing the breath out of him.

  “Help you. Help you?”

  “Help...”

  “You were willing to murder millions of people, and you want me to help you?”

  A retching groan, his eyes beginning to bulge. “Huuh...”

  Oh, I wanted to let him choke. But unlike some, I’m no fucking murderer.

  And Hargur, not to mention Fain, would be furious if he escaped questioning. I hooked an arm around the rail, and reached out.

  But I couldn’t reach. He was too deep. His waving, sweating hand didn’t even brush my fingers. I pushed myself further out, horribly aware of the rushing sound of the grain still pattering out on the floor over the shouts and yells and sounds of the law being enthusiastically enforced. If I slipped, I’d follow him down.

  The grain was up to his chin, then over it.

  His mouth was open, taking shallow, gasping breaths; the grain crested, poured in.

  I felt my hand slipping on the rail, and someone grabbed my belt.

  The last glimpse I had of Thasado Heimarl was his hand, that soft merchant’s hand, reaching and grasping above the choking mass. Then it was gone.

  I scrabbled my way back onto the platform.

  Fain let go of me and stood back. “Well,” he said, looking down.

  “Is it?” I stood up and brushed myself off as best I could.

  I didn’t hear his answer; a cry from below went through me like a spear. “Hargur!”

  I almost broke my neck getting down the steps.

  The place was full of Militia. They were lifting him onto a stretcher.

  I pushed through them. “Hey,” I said.

  “Heimarl?” he said, and coughed, which obviously hurt.

  “Fell in the corn. Dead. Stop talking.”

  “Babylon...” His mouth was tight at the corners. Pain, or something else. He met my eyes briefly, looked away; not like him.

  “Sssh. Let them stitch you up, then we’ll talk.”

  “We’ll look after him,” one of the Millies said.

  “You’d better,” I said. They carried him away.

  “WHERE’D ALL THE Millies come from?” I said.

  “I sent a message by the harbourmaster,” Fain said.

  “Oh. Right.” I stared at the cobbles. Grains lay scattered between them. “I didn’t know you could drown in corn,” I said. The remaining Millies were still trying to get Heimarl’s body out of the grain bin. The others had taken Filchis off with them, as he gabbled names and details with a kind of furious fervour. How useful any of it would be, I didn’t know; I just hoped they put the little scrote in a cell with a couple of pissed-off weres and an Ikinchli or two.

  “It was Filchis kicking open the hatch that did it,” Bergast said. “If the corn hadn’t been running out, it wouldn’t have happened.” He looked up at the astonished faces. “I grew up on a farm, all right?”

  “Ah,” I said. “Well, you made a decent show in there.”

  He flushed. “What should I do now?”

  “You should go home,” Fain said. “And write out for me a list of everyone with whom you have had a connection. Everyone who might have had an interest in getting you sent to Incandress, everyone you have ever met who had any awareness whatsoever that you were interested in joining the Diplomatic Section, and anyone at the Section you have ever spoken to, and what was said. You will discuss this with no one. You will go nowhere. You will wait for me. You understand?”

  “But...” Bergast said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Scholar?” Mokraine said.

  “Yes, First Adept?”

  “When Mr Fain has finished with you, you will bring what is left to the old chapel on the corner of Fishpond Alley.”

  “Wh...”

  “The existence of such an incompetent in the Noble Arts offends my soul. If you wish to learn, if you wish to leave the rank of Scholar behind, you will come to me.”

  If Bergast’s mouth had opened any wider, he would have fallen into himself and disappeared. Once he managed to re-hinge his jaw, he said, “Yes, First Adept. Thank you, First Adept.”

  “Don’t thank me. I have taught you nothing yet.” Mokraine walked away, leaving Bergast staring.

  “Don’t you think you’d better get started?” Fain said.

  “Oh, yes, I will, right away!” He scurried off.

  “Laney, you recognised Heimarl, didn’t you?” I said.

  “Oh, yes. Remember I had a new client, just before you left?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, I did. That was him. I was talking to him about the new curtains and he was the one who advised me to buy the silk!”

  “Oh.” I’d forgotten about the silk, again. “Crap, the silk. I hope it’s still there.”

  “Don’t worry,” Fain said. “I sent a message by the harbourmaster about that, too. If it is still there, it will be very well guarded.”

  “Thank you,” I said, vaguely feeling more was required but not able to dredge it up. “Laney, did Heimarl suggest some of the people you should borrow from, by any chance?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “He really didn’t like being turned down, then,” I said.

  “I didn’t turn him down!”

  “No, but I did.”

  “It seems you have good instincts,” Fain said.

  “Bollocks. I’m an idiot. I almost got Hargur...” I had to stop.

  “Come on,” Laney said, grabbing my hands. “I’m taking you home. Mr Fain, will you join us for a meal?”

  Fain bowed. “I don’t think so, Lady Lanetherai. I have to deal with that woman, Suli. The little opio. A key, indeed. A key to the Section. I really must examine our hiring procedures.” He bowed over her hand. “Thank you all the same.” He stood in front of me, took my hand, bowed. Briefly, he pressed my fingers. “He will be fine, Babylon. Hargur is exceptionally tough.” He turned away.

  “Hey, Fain.”

  “Yes?” He didn’t quite turn back.

  “Thanks.”

  He touched his hand to his brow, and walked on.

  We walked back along the familiar streets, with their noise and their colour and their dozen different races and their smells and their sheer, furious life. />
  I thought about going to The Swamp,to see Kittack; but I’d leave it a while. Let things settle out. I felt a small hollow in my chest at the thought they might not, a bigger one at the thought of Hargur.

  We turned into Goldencat Street to see someone lounging in the doorway of the Lantern, talking to Jivrais, who beamed and waved.

  “I know you, don’t I?” I looked at the stocky, tusky female with the polished skin who was standing just inside the door, with a slightly embarrassed grin.

  “This is Gornack,” Jivrais said. “She’s looking for work. She wants to be a doorguard. Say yes, do!”

  “I’ve seen you somewhere before,” I said.

  “There was a bit of trouble, by the gardens,” she said. “Some scrote who wanted to kick out half the city for being the wrong shape. Anyway. Heard you were looking for someone. I could do with some work, only I’d need to bring my lad with me. He’s no trouble. Well. Not much.”

  “Your lad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Seven.”

  “You know what sort of place this is?”

  “Yeah. He knows, too. He heard about you. He wants you to teach him.” She looked at my face and roared laughter. “Fighting. He wants you to teach him fighting.”

  “What, he can’t learn that from you?” I said, looking at her rippling muscles and extremely well-used looking weaponry.

  “I’m his mother. He doesn’t think I know anything worth knowing.” She rolled her eyes.

  “I don’t know if we can hire,” I said. “We may be broke. But come eat, anyway,” I said. “Flower?”

  Flower poked his head out of the kitchen. “Hello, Babylon.”

  “We got enough food for one more?”

  “Oh, I think I can manage that.”

  I fell into bed after I’d eaten. I was so exhausted I could barely see, but still I couldn’t sleep. The thought of Hargur, injured because I’d been stupid. Because I’d used Fain’s damned device even though my gut had been yelling at me not to. The hells with the silk; the stuff was bad luck from beginning to end. The way Hargur had looked at me, or rather, not looked. Eventually I fell into a thick, dream-riddled doze, in which over and over I saw the blade go dull with Hargur’s blood. Familiar faces, drowning in grain. Heimarl. Kittack. Laney. Hargur. Me.