The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Now who’s the dunce?” Shallow called after him. “The bank’s this way.”

  “Only we ain’t going to the bank, dunce,” snapped Deep over his shoulder. “We’re to toss it down a well in an old court just about the corner here.”

  Shallow hurried to catch up. “We are?”

  “No, I just said it for the laugh, y’idiot.”

  “Why down a well?”

  “Because that’s how he wanted it done.”

  “Who wanted it done?”

  “The boss.”

  “The little boss, or the big boss?”

  Even drunk as Deep was he felt the need to lower his voice. “The bald boss.”

  “Shit,” breathed Shallow. “In person?”

  “In person.”

  A short pause. “How was that?”

  “It was even more than usually terrifying, thanks for reminding me.”

  A long pause, with just the sound of their boots on the wet cobbles. Then Shallow said, “We better hadn’t do no fucking up of this.”

  “My heartfelt thanks,” said Deep, “for that piercing insight. Fucking up is always to be avoided when and wherever possible, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Y’always aim to avoid it, of course you do, but sometimes you run into it anyway. What I’m saying here is we’d best not run into it.” Shallow dropped his voice to a whisper. “You know what the bald boss said last time.”

  “You don’t have to whisper. He ain’t here, is he?”

  Shallow looked wildly around. “I don’t know. Is he?”

  “No he ain’t.” Deep rubbed at his temples. One day he’d kill his brother, that was a foregone conclusion. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “What if he was, though? Best to always act like he might be.”

  “Can you shut your mouth just for a fucking instant?” Deep caught Shallow by the arm and stabbed the baggage in his face. “It’s like talking to a bloody –” He was greatly surprised when a dark shape whisked between them and he found his hand was suddenly empty.

  KIAM RAN LIKE her life depended on it. Which it did, o’ course. “Get after him, damn it!” And she heard the two Northmen flapping and crashing and blundering down the alley behind, and nowhere near far enough behind for her taste.

  “It’s a girl y’idiot!” Big and clumsy but fast they were coming, boots hammering and hands clutching and if they once caught a hold of her... “Who fucking cares? Get the thing back!” And her breath hissing and her heart pounding and her muscles burning as she ran.

  She skittered around a corner, rag-wrapped feet sticking to the damp cobbles, the way wider, lamps and torches making muddy smears in the mist and people busy everywhere. She ducked and wove, around them, between them, faces looming up and gone. The Blackside night-market, stalls and shoppers and the cries of the traders, full of noise and smells and tight with bustle. Kiam slithered between the wheels of a wagon limber as a ferret, plunged between buyer and seller in a shower of fruit then slithered across a stall laden with slimy fish while the trader shouted and snatched at her, caught nothing but air and she stuck one foot in a basket and was off kicking cockles across the street. Still she heard the yells and growls as the Northmen knocked folk flying in her wake, crashes as they flung the carts aside, as though a mindless storm was ripping apart the market behind her. She dived between the legs of a big man, rounded another corner and took the greasy steps two at a time, along the narrow path by the slopping water, rats squeaking in the rubbish and the sounds of the Northmen now loud, loud, cursing her and each other. Her breath whooping and cutting in her chest and running desperate, water spattering and spraying around her with every echoing footfall.

  “We’ve got her!” the voice so close at her heels. “Come here!” She darted through that little hole in the rusted grate, a sharp tooth of metal leaving a burning cut down her arm, and for once she was plenty glad that Old Green never gave her enough to eat. She kicked her way back into the darkness, keeping low, lay there clutching the package and struggling to get her breath. Then they were there, one of the Northmen dragging at the grating, knuckles white with force, flecks of rust showering down as it shifted, and Kiam stared and wondered what those hands would do to her if they got their dirty nails into her skin.

  The other one shoved his bearded face in the gap, a wicked-looking knife in his hand, not that someone you just robbed ever has a nice-looking knife.

  His eyes popped out at her and his scabbed lips curled back and he snarled, “Chuck us that baggage and we’ll forget all about it. Chuck us it now!” Kiam kicked away, the grate squealing as it bent. “You’re fucking dead you little piss! We’ll find you, don’t worry about that!” She slithered off, through the dust and rot, wriggled through a crack between crumbling walls. “We’ll be coming for you!” echoed from behind her. Maybe they would as well, but a thief can’t spend too much time worrying about tomorrow. Today’s shitty enough. She whipped her coat off and pulled it inside out to show the faded green lining, stuffed her cap in her pocket and shook her hair out long, then out onto the walkway beside the Fifth Canal, walking fast, head down. A pleasure boat drifted past, all chatter and laughter and clinking of glass, people moving tall and lazy on board, strange as ghosts seen through that mist and Kiam wondered what they’d done to deserve that life and what she’d done to deserve this, but there never were no easy answers to that question. As it took its pink lights away into the fog she heard the music of Hove’s violin. Stood a moment in the shadows, listening, thinking how beautiful it sounded. She looked down at the package. Didn’t look much for all this trouble. Didn’t weigh much, even. But it weren’t up to her what Old Green put a price on. She wiped her nose and walked along close to the wall, music getting louder, then she saw Hove’s back and his bow moving, and she slipped behind him and let the package fall into his gaping pocket.

  HOVE DIDN’T FEEL the drop, but he felt the three little taps on his back, and he felt the weight in his coat as he moved. He didn’t see who made the drop and he didn’t look. He just carried on fiddling, that Union march with which he’d opened every show during his time on the stage in Adua, or under the stage, at any rate, warming up the crowd for Lestek’s big entrance. Before his wife died and everything went to shit. Those jaunty notes reminded him of times past, and he felt tears prickling in his sore eyes, so he switched to a melancholy minuet more suited to his mood, not that most folk around here could’ve told the difference. Sipani liked to present itself as a place of culture but the majority were drunks and cheats and boorish thugs, or varying combinations thereof.

  How had it come to this, eh? The usual refrain. He drifted across the street like he’d nothing in mind but a coin for his music, letting the notes spill out into the murk. Across past the pie stall, the fragrance of cheap meat making his stomach grumble, and he stopped playing to offer out his cap to the queue. There were no takers, no surprise, so he headed on down the road to Verscetti’s, dancing in and out of the tables on the street and sawing out an Osprian waltz, grinning at the patrons who lounged there with a pipe or a bottle, twiddling thin glass-stems between gloved fingertips, eyes leaking contempt through the slots in their mirrorcrusted masks. Jervi was sat near the wall, as always, a woman in the chair opposite, hair piled high.

  “A little music, darling?” Hove croaked out, leaning over her and letting his coat dangle near Jervi’s lap.

  JERVI SLID SOMETHING out of Hove’s pocket, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the old soak, and said, “Fuck off, why don’t you?” Hove moved on, and took his horrible music with him, thank the Fates.

  “What’s going on down there?” Riseld lifted her mask for a moment to show that soft, round face well-powdered and fashionably bored. There did indeed appear to be some manner of commotion up the street.

  Crashing, banging, shouting in Northern.

  “Damn Northmen,” he murmured. “Always causing trouble, they really should be kept on leads like dogs.” Jervi removed his hat and tossed it
on the table, the usual signal, then leant back in his chair to hold the package inconspicuously low to the ground beside him. A distasteful business, but a man has to work. “Nothing you need concern yourself about, my dear.” She smiled at him in that unamused, uninterested way which for some reason he found irresistible.

  “Shall we go to bed?” he asked, tossing a couple of coins down for the wine.

  She sighed. “If we must.”

  And Jervi felt the package spirited away.

  SIFKISS WRIGGLED OUT from under the tables and strutted along, letting his stick rattle against the bars of the fence beside him, package swinging loose in the other. Maybe Old Green had said stay stealthy but that weren’t Sifkiss’ way anymore. A man has to work out his own style of doing things and he was a full thirteen, weren’t he? Soon enough now he’d be passing on to higher things. Working for Kurrikan maybe. Anyone could tell he was marked out special – he’d stole himself a tall hat that made him look quite the gent about town – and if they were dull enough to still be entertaining any doubts, which some folk sadly were, he’d perched it at quite the jaunty angle besides. Jaunty as all hell.

  Yes, everyone had their eyes on Sifkiss.

  He checked he weren’t the slightest bit observed then slipped through the dewy bushes and the crack in the wall behind, which honestly was getting to be a bit of a squeeze, into the basement of the old temple, a little light filtering down from upstairs.

  Most of the children were out working. Just a couple of the younger lads playing with dice and a girl gnawing on a bone and Pens having a smoke and not even looking over and that new one curled up in the corner and coughing. Sifkiss didn’t like the sound o’ those coughs. More’n likely he’d be dumping her off in the sewers a day or two hence but, hey, that meant a few more bits corpse money for him, didn’t it? Most folk didn’t like handling a corpse but it didn’t bother Sifkiss none. It’s a hard rain don’t wash someone a favour, as Old Green was always saying. She was way up there at the back, hunched over her old desk with one lamp burning, her long grey hair all greasy-slicked and her tongue pressed into her empty gums as she watched Sifkiss come up. Some smart-looking fellow was with her, had a waistcoat all silver leaves stitched on fancy and Sifkiss put a jaunt on, thinking to impress.

  “Get it, did yer?” asked Old Green.

  “Course,” said Sifkiss, with a toss of his head, caught his hat on a low beam and cursed as he had to fumble it back on. He tossed the package sourly down on the tabletop.

  “GET YOU GONE, then,” snapped Green.

  Sifkiss looked surly, like he’d a mind to answer back. He was getting altogether too much mind, that boy, and Green had to show him the knobbyknuckled back of her hand ’fore he sloped off.

  “So here you have it, as promised.” She pointed to that leather bundle in the pool of lamplight on her old table, its top cracked and stained and its gilt all peeling but still a fine old piece of furniture with plenty of years left. Like to Old Green in that respect, if she did think so herself.

  “Seems a little luggage for such a lot of fuss,” said Fallow, wrinkling his nose, and he tossed a purse onto the table with that lovely clink of money. Old Green clawed it up and clawed it open and straight off set to counting it.

  “Where’s your girl Kiam?” asked Fallow. “Where’s little Kiam, eh?”

  Old Green’s shoulders stiffened but she kept counting. She could’ve counted through a storm at sea. “Out working.”

  “When’s she getting back? I like her.” Fallow came a bit closer, voice going hushed. “I could get a damn fine price for her.”

  “But she’s my best earner!” said Green. “There’s others you could take off my hands. How’s about that lad Sifkiss?”

  “What, the sour-face brought the luggage?”

  “He’s a good worker. Strong lad. Lots of grit. He’d pull a good oar on a galley, I’d say. Maybe a fighter, even.”

  Fallow snorted. “In a pit? That little shit? I don’t think so. He’d need some whipping to pull an oar, I reckon.”

  “Well? They got whips don’t they?”

  “Suppose they do. I’ll take him if I must. Him and three others. I’m off to the market in Westport tomorrow week. You pick, but don’t give me none o’ your dross.”

  “I don’t keep no dross,” said Old Green.

  “You got nothing but dross, you bloody old swindler. And what’ll you tell the rest o’ your brood, eh?” Fallow put on a silly la-de-da voice. “That they’ve gone off to be servants to gentry, or to live with the horses on a farm, or adopted by the fucking Emperor of Gurkhul or some such, eh?” Fallow chuckled, and Old Green had a sudden urge to make that knife of hers available, but she’d better sense these days, all learned the hard way.

  “I tell ’em what I need to,” she grunted, still working her fingers around the coins. Bloody fingers weren’t half as quick as they once were.

  “You do that, and I’ll come back for Kiam another day, eh?” And Fallow winked at her.

  “Whatever you want,” said Green, “whatever you say.” She was bloody well keeping Kiam, though. She couldn’t save many, she wasn’t fool enough to think that, but maybe she could save one, and on her dying day she could say she done that much. Probably no one would be listening, but she’d know. “It’s all there. Package is yours.”

  FALLOW PICKED UP the luggage and was out of that stinking fucking place. Reminded him too much of prison. The smell of it. And the eyes of the children, all big and damp. He didn’t mind buying and selling ’em, but he didn’t want to see their eyes. Does the slaughterman want to look at the sheep’s eyes? Maybe the slaughterman don’t care. Maybe he gets used to it. Fallow cared too much, that’s what it was. Too much heart.

  His guards were lounging by the front door and he waved them over and set off, walking in the middle of the square they made.

  “Successful meeting?” Grenti tossed over his shoulder.

  “Not bad,” grunted Fallow, in such a way as to discourage further conversation. Do you want friends or money? he’d once heard Kurrikan say and the phrase had stuck with him.

  Sadly, Grenti was by no means discouraged. “Going straight over to Kurrikan’s?”

  “Yes,” said Fallow, sharply as he could.

  But Grenti loved to flap his mouth. Most thugs do, in the end. All that time spent doing nothing, maybe. “Lovely house, though, ain’t it, Kurrikan’s? What do you call those columns on the front of it?”

  “Pilasters,” grunted one of the other thugs.

  “No, no, I know pilasters, no. I mean to say the name given to that particular style of architecture, with the vine-leaves about the head there?”

  “Rusticated?”

  “No, no, that’s the masonry work, all dimpled with the chisel, it’s the overall design I’m discussing – hold up.”

  For a moment Fallow was mightily relieved at the interruption. Then he was concerned. A figure was standing in the fog just ahead. The beggars and revellers and scum scattered round these parts had all slipped out of their way like soil around the plough ’til now. This one didn’t move. He was a tall bastard, tall as Fallow’s tallest guard, with a white coat on and the hood up. Well, it weren’t white no more. Nothing stayed white long in Sipani. It was grey with damp and black-spattered about the hem.

  “Get him out of the way,” he snapped.

  “Get out of the fucking way!” roared Grenti.

  “You are Fallow?” The man pulled his hood back.

  “It’s a woman,” said Grenti. And indeed it was, for all her neck was thickly muscled, her jaw angular and her red hair clipped close to her skull.

  “I am Javre,” she said, raising her chin and smiling at them. “Lioness of Hoskopp.”

  “Maybe she’s a mental,” said Grenti.

  “Escaped from that madhouse up the way.”

  “I did once escape from a madhouse,” said the woman. She had a weird accent, Fallow couldn’t place it. “Well... it was a prison for wizards. B
ut some of them had gone mad. A difficult distinction, most wizards are at least eccentric. That is beside the point, though. You have something I need.”

  “That so?” said Fallow, starting to grin. He was less worried now. One, she was a woman, two, she obviously was a mental.

  “That is so. I know not how to convince you, for I lack the sweet words, but it would be best for us all if you gave it to me willingly.”

  “I’ll give you something willingly,” said Fallow, to sniggers from the others.

  The woman didn’t snigger. “It is a parcel, wrapped in leather, about...” she held up one big hand, thumb and forefinger stretched out. “Five times the length of your cock.”

  If she knew about the luggage, she was trouble. And Fallow had no sense of humour about his cock, to which none of the ointments had made the slightest difference. He stopped grinning. “Kill her.”

  She struck Grenti somewhere around the chest, or maybe she did, it was all a blur. His eyes popped wide and he made a strange whooping sound and stood there frozen, quivering on his tiptoes, sword half-way drawn.

  The second guard – a Union man big as a house – swung his mace at her but it just caught her flapping coat. An instant later there was a surprised yelp and he was flying across the street upside down and crashing into the wall, tumbling down in a shower of dust, sheets of broken plaster dropping from the shattered brickwork on top of his limp body.