by K. Eason
Like spiderwebs, yeah?
Like spiderwebs, no, unless the resident spider was far larger than any Veiko wanted to meet. He looked up in snatches, trying to scope the shape of the place. Some of the bridges overhead were honest rope and planking, swaying as people crossed them. Some of them were what seemed to be stone, arched impossibly across gaps and chasms. He could see buildings clinging to the walls higher up, like some strange fungus, visible as little clots of tiny blue lights. Witchfires, he knew that, but they reminded him of eyes.
“We won’t go up there,” Snow said casually. “That’s highborn territory.” And when he only stared at her, “It’s a joke, Veiko. Highborn, high places. Yeah?”
“It is not a very good joke.”
“No pleasing you.” She guided them past a small collection of goats, driven by a ragged woman and a more ragged dog, who barked from the herd’s far side and would not come any closer.
“Logi,” Veiko said, and glanced down. Logi’s head was up, his nose and ears working madly—but he had not drifted a fingerwidth from Veiko’s thigh.
Snow leaned close. Put her chin on his shoulder and let her voice drop low. “Keep Logi close, yeah? We got dogs in the Suburba, but they’re smaller. Common as rats. People eat them sometimes.”
And then she was moving again, following some instinct he did not have. She seemed to know where the gaps would be in the crowds, and had a disturbing habit of darting and dodging.
Give him wind and a sky, he could find his way. Even in Cardik’s streets, that had been true. Illharek would require a new set of skills. Well. He was a hunter, or had been. He would manage this new, wretched forest.
Follow Snow closely, step where she stepped. That was the challenge. Felt like a newborn takin trailing its mother, all clumsy lurching and graceless steps. At least she was not looking at him. She had eyes on the crowds and the jagged rooflines. They signaled something to her besides noise and chaos. Signs he needed to learn if he meant to navigate this place.
She turned suddenly onto a narrower, steeper street. There were shops on both sides here, shutters thrown wide to show slabs of raw meat hanging from low ceilings. Chopping noises, the wet sound metal made in flesh, the smell of old blood. The buildings went up several levels, what Veiko assumed were rooms and flats, their windows shuttered against the noise from the slaughter pens and the cave-chill, which deepened the farther they descended.
He supposed the shutters would not help against the stench. There were too many bodies in too small a space, cooking smells and peatsmoke and slaughter. At least there was no sewage in the gutters, which parts of Cardik had had. Snow had told him that Illharek enjoyed proper Illhari engineering. Called it plumbing.
Veiko didn’t know the word. Wondered if plumbing was as suspect as those aerial walkways. He cut a glance upward again. They were directly under a bridge now, one of the plank-and-rope variety. It sagged in the middle, where a Dvergir marched ahead of an overburdened Alvir. Easy to imagine a bundle tumbling through the air and landing on some unwary head.
And impossible, while engaged in that imagining, to keep his attention on the street. So Veiko heard the disturbance before he saw it: a ripple of shouts and swearing and stop her and thief. He dragged his eyes off the bridge and down and there, yes, a wrinkle in the forward progress, people crimping aside for a Dvergir child, perhaps eight or nine, running as if wolves were after her. Veiko marked the glint of metal in her hand, and the bulging sash looped around her chest and waist that clearly served a purpose besides holding the too-large tunic on her body. She rabbited through the crowd at apparent random, ricocheting off pedestrians.
Snowdenaelikk had mentioned cutpurses. Veiko put a hand on his beltpouch, shifted his pack higher on his shoulder. Reached down for Logi’s ruff and snatched at empty air.
No dog beside him. No Snow, either. He stomped down on panic. Looked and found Snow’s ice-colored topknot bobbing through the crowd. He squinted down into the forest of legs, and yes, there, a snatch of red fur. A man could feel a little put out that they had not noticed him missing. He resettled the pack again, squared his shoulders, started after her.
A gap in the crowd opened up, suddenly, right in front of him. The child changed direction, came straight for that gap. Veiko took a fast step back and a hard jag sideways, so that the girl cannoned instead into a man of sturdy middle age, carrying a basket of apples. The man toppled. The apples thumped and rolled.
The child pinwheeled for balance. Caught it not an arm’s length from Veiko. Looked up at him and smiled. It was, Veiko thought, the same look a weasel might give to a chicken. And then she spun and dove into the crowd.
Flicker of motion off to his left. He started to turn to meet it. Heard, “Grab her!” and then a body much larger than a half-starved child slammed into him. His bad leg tweaked from dull ache to deep burn and did not, thank the ancestors, give way. He gritted teeth and caught the woman who had hit him by the elbow. Kept them both from going down, somehow.
The woman shoved at him. “Let go, yeah?”
He did. Held his hands up, empty. Aware, peripherally, of the crowd making room around them. Of someone shouting and someone else swearing and the smell of bruised apples.
The woman glared at him. Average height for a Dvergir woman, average build, in trousers and a scarred leather apron. Working clothes, worn and patched. Youngish face, narrow-eyed and thin-lipped. Veiko marked the long seax on her hip, which looked just like Snow’s. Marked the second knife in her left boot.
“Hey,” she said loudly. “Why’d you grab me? I almost had her. You a thief? You working with that girl?”
Veiko blinked. A pinch of heat bloomed under his ribs; that was anger, followed by a spreading cold that was not quite fear. He had played this game before, in Alviri towns and villages, when he came in to trade. Then he’d had both dogs and a ready story—
My brothers are camped in the hills nearby.
—and there had been sensible villagers who did not see a profit in fighting when a man had things to trade. Now, here—no visible goods, no sign of dog or partner. A whole forest of Dvergiri around him.
“No harm,” he said in his thickest accent. Stared at her with what he hoped was a convincingly blank expression.
The Dvergir’s eyes lit like lanterns. Her face bent into an expression that reminded Veiko of Briel before she snatched a flatcake off someone’s plate. “You all alone, skraeling?”
“No harm,” Veiko repeated. He wished he dared turn a shoulder and walk away. Wished he dared take eyes off this woman and look for Snow. Do that, and he might catch a knife in the back. The woman had that look. Smile going stiff on the edges.
“Come with me. I’ll help you.” She made a grab for his wrist.
Veiko dropped his hand to the axe without thinking. Knew his mistake in the next heartbeat. Hard glint in the woman’s eye now, rising mutter through the crowd. She loosed the seax at her belt.
“Give you ten on the skraeling,” someone said, and another, “Motherless outlanders.” A third voice called out, “Take him down, Gert!”
And then, suddenly, it got darker. The shadows seemed to rise up out of the seams in the paving stones, out of the creases and folds in clothing, from the edges of everything. Like a black wind, dimming torches and lamps to mere flickerings.
Sudden witchfire bloomed, running along the street. The air shivered, and then Snow appeared out of apparent nothing, trailing a snarling Logi, as Briel swooped overhead and keened like the angry dead.
A man could laugh at the look on Gert’s face. A man could make fists of both hands, too, and hold very still. No little fear in the crowd. No little anger, if he understood the hiss and whispers well enough.
“—toadfucking conjuror—”
“—half-blood—”
“That’s Snowdenaelikk.”
Snow ignored them. Ignored him, too. Looked only at Gert and said softly, “Skraeling’s got friends, yeah? He doesn’t need you, Gert. A
battoir’s out of your district, yeah?”
Gert’s eyes were huge. “Snowdenaelikk. I’m sorry. I thought—”
“I know what you thought.”
Veiko believed he’d seen every shape Snow’s face and mood could take. Had seen arrogance, yes, had seen pride—but not this cold-eyed stare that sliced past her curved blade of a nose. He didn’t know her in this moment. Did not want to know her.
“Apologize to him, not to me.”
Spreading quiet around them, growing empty as the crowd began to peel away. Gert looked around her. Licked her lip. She made a little bow at Veiko. “Apologies.”
Veiko dipped his chin. Would not say it is no matter, because clearly it was. Not that Gert was looking for any response out of him. Her eyes were on Snow, who said nothing. But she flipped her wrist, and the witchfire faded. The shadows soaked back to their corners and edges.
Snow turned her back on Gert. Walked away, long loose strides that looked nothing at all like retreat. He guessed he should follow her, without fearing Gert still behind him with her seax and her boot knife. He guessed that he should not mind having to follow Snow, like a dog or a bondie, as if he had no choice.
Do you?
At least Logi was waiting for him this time, ears back and guilty. Fell in at Veiko’s heels just as Veiko fell in behind Snow. They made a little train, Snow and he and Logi, for the remainder of the street. Then Snow took another left and down and dropped back. Let him draw even with her.
“What were you doing?” she snapped before he could say anything. “Logi went after a rat, I grabbed for him, I thought you were behind me, I swear to—” She clipped teeth together. Hissed through them. “Going to put a leash on you both, yeah?”
“You knew that woman.”
“She’s motherless cartel, yeah? Street gang. What passes for the local law in the Suburba.”
“Like the Warren.”
“Not by half. Tsabrak owned Cardik. Nothing happened in the Warren he didn’t know and wasn’t running. Here it’s not like that. The Suburba’s a lot bigger. More factions, more politics. More enemies. You have a territory, you keep to it, or you start a war.” Snow was angry now, which meant that he’d scared her. “Damn lucky there was only Gert and not Rata’s whole toadshit gang. You’re not local, yeah? You got to stay close. Gert probably figured she could get you alone, shake you out—”
“Sell me?”
“Maybe. Don’t look at me like that. Warned you that could happen.”
“There is no—” He shook his head.
“Law? Order? Honor?”
Safety, but it was not danger that bothered him. It was feeling like a fool. It had been the same in the ghost roads before that. New terrain, new enemies, new rules. At least in the ghost roads, Helgi had been the only witness to his mistakes.
And Tal’Shik. And the God.
He had been lucky then. Lucky now. Best he learn the rules before that luck ran out.
“Gert was afraid of you.”
“She was afraid”—Snow ran her fingers across the dusting of hair on the bottom half of her skull, tugged the end of the topknot—“of this. And down here, afraid means polite. You’re lucky that witchfire worked. My little finger still doesn’t bend all the way.”
“That is because it is still broken.” His heartbeat was steadying out again. Deep breath that strained the tightness in his chest.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Listen. Gert shouldn’t be here. That’s why I came through the Abattoir in the first place. These are Ari’s streets. If Gert’s here, then either Rata’s moved up or spread her territory. And either way, means something’s happened to Ari.”
“Ari.”
“Tsabrak’s man. Godsworn. This was our—his—territory.” He watched the anger run out of her, watched quiet fill in behind it. Thinking again, ancestors defend them.
Veiko left her to it. Concentrated his efforts on staying beside her as she led them down twists of street and alley. The streets coiled in on themselves like the narrow guts of a strange stone beast. The buildings took on alien shapes, odd bulges and angles that looked as if hands had squeezed them out of raw rock. He caught himself looking up more and more often at the city brooding above them. The distant bridges, slim as wires, on which he could no longer see moving shapes.
A bundle might fall a very long way indeed.
On his lips to ask how much farther? when he smelled the lake. Cool, wet, with the peculiar smell of still water, and a great deal of it. He sifted through memories of maps made of fruit and flatware. Of Snow’s voice, naming rivers.
The Jokki is the biggest, comes out the main mouth. There’s a handful of smaller ones running out of the lake into side tunnels. Not much citizen traffic through those, traders, mostly, who don’t want to deal with the Riverwalk’s traffic. You ever need out fast, you take one of those passages. Then there’s the Karas, the Tebir. You want the Tano, though. It’s closest to the docks, and it goes Above.
So that must be the Tano there. Actual torches studded the tunnel opening, braziers throwing orange light off rocks as pale as a twilight snowfall. A wooden platform extended over the edge of the lake. There were fair heads on the dockside, moving too straight to be bondies, shouting and laughing and visibly male. One Alvir, two Taliri. A trio of Dvergiri women stood on the docks, one marking a tablet, the others watching the unloading with folded arms.
“Oh no.” Snow hooked his elbow. “No gawking. No stopping.” She drew him against the wall, out of the trickle and flow of passersby. Rocked up on her toes, so that their shoulders touched, and looked where he had. “What, never seen a boat unloaded before?”
“In Cardik,” he said, “the Taliri burned villages.”
“Cardik’s near the border, and the Taliri burn villages this far south, too. But some of them settled after the war. Took the ink. That’s the difference down here. You look on any of those folk, you’ll see the Illhari mark. They’re citizens.”
“Ink solves old grudges?”
“Business solves old grudges. You’ve got people with enough to eat, reasonably safe—they don’t want to ruin that. Besides. Cardik caught a bad case of godsworn. That’s always a problem.”
“Tsabrak was godsworn.”
“And he’s dead, too, isn’t he?”
“And Ari?”
“Also godsworn, and cartel. But he wouldn’t have gone after an outlander in the streets. The God never liked slaving.”
Veiko thought about the girl and Gert, the naked stares from the onlookers, and felt the tweak under his ribs again. “It seems that this might have been a wiser path to take into the city. There are far fewer people to see either of us.”
“True. But down here, you and I aren’t the problem. Istel can slouch. I don’t think Dekklis knows the word. Walks like a highborn, yeah? Not who I want in my company.”
“And I am?” Wished the words back as he said them. Too much like complaint and self-pity, and she had warned him.
But Snow cocked one of her real grins at him. “Look at me, Veiko. It’s a family custom for our women to keep company with foreign men.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The copper sign still hung over the shop door. Corrosion had crept across most of it. Only a few bright metal patches remained to catch the lamplight off the docks. Snow’s mother had insisted on polishing that toadfucking thing, but Sinnike and Daagné had never liked the bright metal. Had hated polishing it even more. But they would do it anyway if her mother still lived to command it. So her mother was dead, then. Not a surprise. She had not been a young woman when Snow left Illharek. Had been full of disapproval for her eldest daughter, any pride she’d had for Snow’s Academy topknot scrubbed away by Tsabrak and the cartel. They’d barely been speaking at the end. Relief on both sides when Snow went north.
So there was no reason at all for the twinge Snow felt under her breastbone. She dropped a step. Stumbled and waved Veiko’s concern away with a gesture that sent fire stitching up her arm
.
“Motherless fish guts,” she said. “In the gutter. Didn’t see ’em.”
Veiko looked at her sideways. “It does not smell like fish.”
“So just say, ‘Toadshit, Snow,’ and have done.”
“I do not see any toads, either.”
Took a lot of practice to see what passed for his sense of humor. There, in the little creases at the corners of his eyes. Most times she’d grin back, try to encourage those moments. Foremothers knew Veiko didn’t make many jokes. He knew something was wrong with her. He was clever enough to see it, even without Briel’s help. But she felt his concern, through the svartjagr’s link, prickling through her chest.
Damned if she wanted to explain.
My mother’s dead, yeah? Didn’t think I’d mind so much.
She shook her head. Looked elsewhere, fuck and damn, found herself staring at the sign, at the shopfront. Fresh paint on the street-level shutters, a god-blinding yellow and orange that wouldn’t be cheap. A more modest blue on the second floor, where the men and the bondies lived. The third-floor garret had no streetside windows. Only a double-wide, shuttered door that opened on an iron balcony clinging like a vine to the stone beneath it. Her flat once. Might still be if Sinnike and Daagné had kept any part of their old agreements.
All of the store’s shutters were still closed, her mother and sisters having never believed that an apothecary need open early.
First candlemark is for bakers and farmers.
For bondies, too, and husbands. The house had never kept many of either. The ones it had would all be awake now, moving behind those walls. Snow took a deep breath. Imagined the chaos in the kitchen. The smell of baking bread.
