by K. Eason
Veiko was still watching her. And not just Veiko, no, eyes all up and down the street. Shutters cracked like half-closed eyes, some of the bolder faces peeking out open doors. She hadn’t been gone so long that the neighbors wouldn’t remember her. Bet they were whispering now, bet the story would be all over the Suburba by fifth mark. That had been her plan, yeah, get Snowdenaelikk’s back out on the streets and see who came out of hiding.
She grimaced. Locked eyes with Veiko. “This is my mother’s shop. She’s dead, or the sign would be copper, not green, because she’d insist on polishing it. That puts my sisters in charge. And they won’t be happy to see me.”
He blinked. Quick frown, sharp nod, and a hand dropped over his axe.
“Not like that,” she said. “At least, I don’t think it is.”
“Mm.” His hand didn’t move. His eyes did, flickering past her. Marking the placement of windows and doors.
She didn’t say take your hand off that axe. Let the neighbors see him. Let that news travel the streets, too. Might save them some trouble later on, when certain people heard about an armed skraeling in Snowdenaelikk’s company.
Right now, all she wanted was off those streets. Her arm hurt. Every bit of her ached. And as much as she didn’t want her sisters right now, this was the safest place she knew. Fuck and damn, Rata running things in the Abattoir? That made her sisters seem like a basket of kittens.
Snow walked up to the door. Banged the heel of her left hand against the wood. One-two-three, and wait, and again. Listen to the echoes, imagine the startled stare from whoever had door duty this time of day. A child, yeah, bet on that. Some fair-haired bondie brat.
Snow put her face close to the door, so that her breath warmed the wood. Smelled like oil and varnish, smelled like
home
age. She smoothed her hand across the grain. Remembered the bolt and bar on the far side, the black iron lock. Remembered the ring of keys on her mother’s belt that Sinnike would carry now. Not that Snow needed keys. She could pick the lock. Force the door. Scare the hell out of her sisters, too, and the poor brat on the other side.
Who chose that moment to say, all thin-voiced bravado: “The shop is closed. You will have to come back at fifth mark—”
“Tell Sinnike that Snowdenaelikk is here.”
Half a beat, then, “Domina is busy.”
Oh, so that’s how it was. “Then tell Daagné.”
“She is also busy.”
“Listen.” Snow caressed the wood. Breathed the oil and paint smell of it. “If my little sisters are busy, you get Kaj or Paavo and you get this door open. I’ll wait. But not long.”
One beat. Two. And then a scampering sound as the child abandoned his post. She imagined a run for the kitchens to roust whoever might have the authority to open the door, or—if the boy mentioned her name, yeah, and bet he would—who would go and summon the dominae.
A whisper of leather and wool, a whiff of two weeks’ hard travel as Veiko leaned in beside her. He tapped the door with long fingers and cocked his head at the echoes. Nodded as if the wood had whispered something very clever to him.
“It is not very thick.”
“We’re not hacking it down.” But it tempted. Have the whole street turned out to watch, and tales spread halfway to the Abattoir by third mark. And Sinnike’s face. “Kid doesn’t know who I am, is all.”
“Aneki’s newest thralls knew your name.”
“I was more likely to come to Aneki’s door.” Which was probably ash and grease by now if the Taliri had taken Cardik. If Tal’Shik had got her revenge. A hundred motherless ifs.
Logi’s ears swiveled forward. Deep oof, which meant someone’s coming, same time as Veiko’s, “Logi,” that meant stay.
The interior lock rattled. Briel sent an image of the giant cave-toad that made its meals climbing into svartjagr nests. Warty, unlovely, pasty-pale, devouring the pups whole.
Well. Briel had never quite understood the idea of sister. But she had it close enough.
The svartjagr dropped onto Snow’s shoulder as the doors swung inward, her tail slapping across Snow’s ribs and belly, pulling tight. Hard flap as she stopped herself, which sounded like snapping canvas, sending a gust ahead into the opening doorway that made the woman on the other side flinch and gasp.
Except it was Daagné in the doorway, not Sinnike. A very pregnant Daagné, who managed to rearrange the shock on her face into something approximating a smile.
“Snowdenaelikk.”
“Daagné. You’re looking well. What are you, sixth month? Seventh?”
Daagné smoothed her hands over her belly. Pregnancy suited her. Smoothed out their mother’s jagged features, rounded her cheeks and plumped her lips. Always the prettiest of them, Snow thought, and the worst at hiding her feelings. Daagné’s eyes jumped from Snow to Veiko. Lingered there, checking for collars, as fear chased across her face like clouds in a summer wind.
“Seventh.” Off balance, the smile slipping. “We didn’t get word you were coming.”
“I didn’t send any.” Her finger ached. Her arm throbbed. Briel’s excess of sending had shoved a hot poker through the back of both eyes.
Feel like toadshit, sister, we’ve been running most of the night, you mind letting me in?
She strangled that. Knew damn well why Daagné wouldn’t invite her inside. That was the domina’s privilege, and that title was Sinnike’s, wherever her place in the birth rank. And that begged the question:
“So where’s our baby sister? Surely not still in bed.”
“She. Um.”
“Asked you to come out here, yeah? See if I was real? See what I wanted?”
“I.” Daagné threw a glance sideways, past the lip of the door. So there must be someone else standing back there, listening. Logi was proof of that, with his shuffling paws and both ears pricked forward. So was Briel, who snaked her neck out and hissed.
“Fuck and damn, Snowdenaelikk, leave her alone. I’m here.”
If Daagné had softened, then Sinnike had hardened into their mother’s double. That same skin-stretched-over-bone tightness to her. Same way of looking past her hatchet nose as if she had a highborn’s sigil under her collarbone instead of a citizen’s glyph. But she, like Daagné, was full-blood Dvergiri, so she had to look up at half-blood Snow. She did, glaring, sharp as javelins.
“Can’t say this is a happy surprise. Why are you here?”
“Never promised I’d stay away, did I?”
“No. You didn’t.” Sharp cut to Veiko. Appraised him, up and down. “And look what you’ve brought with you. I don’t see a collar.”
Veiko shifted. Temper came off him like heat from a forge. Briel caught it, sifted it through her own understanding.
Nest-stealer, egg-eater, more vividly, so that Snow’s vision hazed at the edges. Snow took a handful of Briel’s tail where it wrapped hard round her ribs. Squeezed warning. Peace, she wished at her. Thought of the night sky in winter, spangled black that went on forever. Peace.
Briel’s claws relaxed a notch. Veiko did. Which left Snow wishing peace at herself to far less effect. Heard her own anger, cold and quiet: “This is Veiko Nyrikki. My partner. And that’s Logi. I’m sure you remember Briel. She remembers you.”
Sinnike’s nostrils flared. “What do you want?”
“Last time I checked, I had rooms on the third floor.”
“What, here?”
“You put someone else in my flat?”
Headshake, which might mean no or fuck you. “Where’s Tsabrak?”
“Not with me. We want to have this conversation on the street?”
“You don’t need my permission to come into this house. Eldest sister.”
“Call it courtesy, then, that I am asking.”
“Courtesy.” Sinnike snorted. Folded aside, drawing Daagné with her, and dipped a neat little bow. “Welcome, then, sister, to your mother’s house. You and your . . . partner.”
Snow went throug
h the doorway first. At least the interior hadn’t changed much. The stone bench with its ceramic tile surface. Bundles of herbs hanging above it from a wrought-iron grid. The set of shelves on the back wall ran floor to low ceiling, studded with jars and bottles. The firedog squatted in the corner, its door sagging open. Fresh coals glowed inside, tiny newborn flames battling the damp.
The curtain between household and shopfront fluttered. Snow guessed everyone else was clustered back there, bondies and husbands alike. Guessed that whispers of Snowdenaelikk had run through kitchen and chambers by now. And yeah, there, the other face she’d
dreaded
expected, standing in the shadows by the curtain. Fair-skinned man, gone pallid in sunless Illharek. No collar on his neck now, only the Illhari citizen’s glyph, inked black where the metal had left a scar. Dvergiri wore their citizenship much lower, in the hollow nearest the shoulder, where a shirt would hide it. Non-Dvergiri didn’t dare, freeborn or freed. There was no difference under the law between the marks, no, every citizen was equal. But Dvergiri were assumed to be Illhari, and everyone else was assumed bondie or outlander unless they wore the ink visibly. This man had been all three, but he’d worn the citizen’s mark longest of all, almost the whole stretch of Snow’s life.
Still. He had changed. There were lines she didn’t remember collected at the corner of his eyes and mouth. His braid seemed thinner, silver shot through the ice blond.
“Snow,” he said, and the smile might’ve blinded her. Same one he’d turned on her mother a thousand times. It made her stomach hurt.
“Kaj.” She shrugged her bag off her shoulder. Handed the strap to him. Ignored the are you all right? in his eyes. Blue like the summer sky at midnight, yeah, damn near black. She had a pair of her own, to stare out of mirrors.
She turned a shoulder and cut his stare off.
“Veiko. Kaj can show you where we’ll be staying.” Snow looked at Kaj again. “The third floor, yeah? Both of us.”
Sinnike twitched. “There’s room for him in the men’s quarters.”
“No. My flat.” Draw the syllables out, shape each letter. “And don’t be such a motherless prude. Who cares where he stays? What are we, highborn?”
Sinnike scowled. Not proper hung between them, unspoken. So did like our mother. She sliced her hand down and sideways. “Kaj. Show Snow’s partner to her flat.”
Kaj bowed to Sinnike, then to Veiko. “Please,” he said, and took two loud slapping steps on the tile. A small herd of feet pattered behind the curtain. Kaj took a strategic pause before he tugged it aside on an empty hallway. “This way.”
Snow felt Veiko’s stare on the side of her face. Felt his unease prickling through Briel, tangling with the svartjagr’s own.
“Take Briel,” she said. “Will you?”
You forgot how strong a svartjagr’s tail was, how sharp her talons, until you had one stuck to your shoulder and determined to stay there. Tough battle on a healthy day. Beyond a broken finger and a mangled arm, yeah, going to lose the fight right here.
Veiko saved her. Bigger hands, stronger, he could have peeled Briel off. Didn’t have to. Briel worried for Veiko’s good opinion. Uncurled her tail with no more resistance than a kitten’s. Quick hop and she settled onto Veiko, draped herself across his shoulder like a careless arm.
Fickle little wretch.
Another time Veiko might’ve made one of his arid jokes, might’ve let a smile leak from eyes to lips. Now he only gazed at Snow, with the set to his mouth that said he did not approve of her sisters, her household, the whole toadfucked city.
Both of them, then, in agreement.
“It’s all right,” she told him. “I won’t be long.”
He nodded. Called Logi and followed Kaj and didn’t look back. Kept his hand on the axe, yeah, and didn’t limp, although she knew damn well his leg ached at least as much as her arm.
Sinnike watched him, too. Snow knew what she saw. Long ice-colored braids, frayed and slipping across his back. A man who had to duck to go through the doorways, wearing
skraeling
hunter’s kit. A man with a svartjagr balanced on his shoulders, her svartjagr, when Briel had no good reputation for liking people. A man who looked too much like Kaj.
Sinnike’s scowl got deeper, more corrosive. “Daagné,” she said, “you go, too.”
Daagné almost argued. Spark of protest in her eyes. She squared up and opened her mouth. Wilted the instant Sinnike looked at her, and fled as fast as her melon belly would allow.
“She might’ve stayed,” Snow said mildly. “This is properly her household, yeah? Unless the law’s changed.”
“The law hasn’t.” Sinnike crossed to the curtain. Twitched it aside and peered behind it and grunted. “But our sister’s an idiot. You know it. Our mother did. She does.”
“I’m sure you’ve told her so often enough.”
“You think she should run the shop? Deal with the cartels and the Academy and everyone else who comes through that door? All Daagné wants is babies and the fucking that comes first.”
“That’s nothing new.” Snow dragged her eyes around the room. Took a lungful of herbs and household. “Place looks good, Sinnike.”
“We’re pleased that the domina—”
“Oh, cut the toadshit, yeah? I’m not here to claim it.”
“Then why? You come back with some uncollared skraeling, insist he sleeps where you do, what am I supposed to think except you’re pregnant and back for your rights?”
“Careful.” Snow didn’t raise her voice, didn’t look at her sister. But she stretched her left hand toward the firedog. Crooked her fingers, all but the littlest. It was easy, so easy, to shift the fire’s patterns just so.
The flames in the firedog guttered a sudden blue, warm orange gone to cold witchfire. Grim satisfaction at the sudden silence, yeah, and what she knew was a Tsabrak-shaped smile on her lips. “I’m not pregnant. And Veiko’s not some gelding who’ll dip his chin and yes, Domina anything with tits. Putting him among your men would be like putting a wolf in with dogs. You’d have a rebellion by the end of the week.”
“So you’re protecting this family now, is that it? By causing scandal?”
“What scandal? You think anyone but you cares who sleeps where?” Snow crossed the room. Selected one of the bottles off the shelf behind the counter. Tipped it toward the firedog and examined the contents. “What is this?”
“Tincture of mossflower.”
“It’s the wrong color.”
“I added rasi.”
“Rasi?” Snow pulled the stopper out. Sniffed. “Why?”
“Mossflower stops pain, but it makes you stupid. Rasi lets you carry on conversation, yeah? Keeps you alert. I’d’ve reckoned you knew that.”
“Where are you getting it?”
“My business, yeah?”
“Rot that. You buying from Stig?”
Sinnike frowned. “Stig washed out of the Tano right before Festival. Kjotvi disappeared right after. Ari went missing last month. Now Rata runs everything from the Abattoir to the docks. I thought that’s why you came back, yeah? Settle Tsabrak’s toadshit out for him.”
“No.” Fuck and damn, that was a pile of answers. Told Snow why Gert was running up in the Abattoir. Told her that Rata was probably pulled pretty thin, too. But she still didn’t know who had Rata’s back, because no way that toadfucker had the brains or the bodies to throw Ari, Kjotvi, and Stig off. They had the Laughing God on their side. They were godsworn, same as Tsabrak.
And Tsabrak was dead, wasn’t he? Tsabrak and the God had made deals with Tal’Shik and her godsworn. Snow’d seen how that had turned out. That same thing might be happening here, too, if Tal’Shik had fingers in the Suburba, too, and not just among the Taliri.
And if that were true, then those agents could be anyone. Anywhere.
Fuck and damn, we’re too late, Szanys.
Snow tilted the bottle again. Studied the blood-thick swirl at the bo
ttom. “You know who’s helping Rata drop the God’s people?”
“I don’t know. I don’t ask. I buy rasi from her, that’s all. You leave your heresy in the streets where it belongs.”
“Who’s talking about heresy? This is smuggling. Senate banned rasi after the Purge, yeah?”
“No one will know.”
“No one except any competent herbalist.”
“It’s medicine.”
“It’s addictive. Guaranteed repeat customers. It’s a good idea. Brilliant. You could sell the recipe to the Academy and walk away. Let them make it legal.”
“Since when are you worried for legal? I got this shit from your friends first.”
“I’m worried about you. Rata’s dangerous because she’s stupid. Stig wasn’t.”
“Stig’s dead, yeah? So Rata does something better.”
“All that toadshit you spouted about how I brought shame on this house, how I put everyone in danger, and now you’re in bed with a cartel.”
“You did all right. Say I learned from you, eldest sister. Besides. You always said you didn’t give a motherless shit for running the place. So. Now you care how I do it?”
“No. You’re right. Your shop.” Snow put the bottle back with insincere gentleness. Turned and looked at her sister again. “Daagné’s on her, what, second? How many do you have?”
“One. A girl.”
“Congratulations.”
“Huh. Daagné tell you her first was a boy? She insisted on keeping it. He’s oldest.”
“He’s no threat to your daughter’s inheritance.”
“Way the Senate’s been voting lately, he might be. A lot of Reforms coming down. Eldest child inherits, not eldest daughter—that’s the rumor.”
Old argument, worn smooth between them. Snow rolled her eyes. “The day the Houses let men run them, we all turn Alviri. What’s her name, your brat?”
“Aina.” Sinnike stabbed at the firedog’s guts with a poker. “Fuck and damn, will you put the fire back?”
Snow uncurled her fingers. The witchfire warmed, changing back to orange. She came around the counter and propped her hip against the edge of it. “Listen. I’m not here for you, or for this place.” She took a breath. Told exactly as much of the truth as Sinnike needed, leaving out heresy and godsworn and toadshit her sister didn’t need, might not believe, might tell the wrong pair of ears. “The Taliri are moving south. Raiding.”
