When I said I wasn’t squeamish, it was because I’d never imagined the sort of carnage I saw on that table. I’d never imagined the smell, faint before, overpowering now that I saw the source. I covered my mouth with my arm and backed a step away from the table and the remains of the body.
Who was it? I remembered asking my father, shuddering at his answer, They couldn’t tell.
Derrin shifted the torchlight over the body and cleared his throat. His face had turned rather grey.
“This is bad,” he said. “We can’t leave this here.”
“Where’d it come from? Who is it?”
“Stars, do you think I can tell that? Folks meet all kinds of terrible fates down in the south streets. They just don’t usually meet them on top of our home.”
“But who would do something like this to someone? It’s…gruesome. Like an animal did it.”
“Some lunatic, someone who didn’t want anyone identifying his victim…I don’t know.” He flashed the torchlight in my eyes, so that I winced and turned my head. “Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Do this to someone?”
I backed a step. “What in hell?”
“Well, it looks fairly recent. Maybe near as you’ve been prowling about. How exactly did you get the name of that supplier?”
“Ask Coins! He was with me the whole time!” I cried, heart pounding.
“I intend to.”
“I’m not a grobbing murderer.”
“And what are you, exactly? Mercenary? Sellsword?”
“I’m just a kid. I’m just trying to find my way.”
Something about the way I said that must have convinced him, because he lowered the torch and studied the table a while in silence. I knew what I had to ask, but the words died on my tongue three times before I managed to swallow my cowardice enough to speak.
“I’ve heard talk on the streets,” I said. “About the Clan. About…sacrifices. D’you think someone there might’ve done this?”
Derrin spun toward me. “No. Not possible. I know every one of those mages. None of them would’ve done something like this. Rivano’s a wild idealist and visionary, but he would never stoop to this kind of…dissection.”
“You’re sure?”
He narrowed his eyes and I shrugged, realizing that pressing the matter would only make me look suspicious. Like I already knew too much.
“Just seems lots of folks around here have secrets,” I said.
“Don’t we, though,” he remarked, his gaze never leaving my face. When I didn’t react, he sighed and said, “Suppose we’ll need to get him out of here.”
My stomach wavered just at the thought of moving the corpse. “How…how exactly do you mean to do that?”
“I’ll get a canvas from the supply crates. We can wrap him in that and carry him down to the river. Maybe if anyone finds him they’ll think some rabbies did it. Can you handle that?”
“Sure,” I said. “I didn’t eat anything for dinner I couldn’t stand to boke.”
He laughed at that, and disappeared to get the canvas. When he finally got back, I’d steeled myself enough to walk up to the body, some kind of perverse curiosity making me want to stare even while everything inside me cringed away in revulsion, like Leon from the fables. Derrin spread the canvas next to the body, and holding my breath, I reached out to grab the battered legs…
And swore, loudly, jerking my hands away.
“What’s wrong?”
I stared at the body, my hands prickling with static. “Stars,” I said. “It was a mage.”
“You’re sure?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
“I can tell.”
“All right, let’s get this done. I’ll tell Rivano about it later. Might be something he needs to know about.”
Somehow we managed to carry out the gruesome task without catching anyone’s attention, and, more miraculously, without either of us losing our supper. I struggled blindly along, carrying our burden by the legs while Derrin carried the shoulders. Every once in a while I heard Derrin drawing a short, ragged breath. It reminded me to breathe, too, because I’d been struggling not to ever since we’d started out. Finally we reached the river and laid the whole bundle down in the ferns on the embankment. I stepped back, shaking all over. Derrin drew the back of his hand across his mouth and bent over his knees.
“God, I never want to do that again,” he whispered, hoarse. “Wish I knew his name.”
“Why?” I asked.
“So we could send him to ride the stars in peace, of course, so he doesn’t have to stay and haunt us here. Don’t you farewell your dead in Istia?”
I hesitated. I’d never studied anything about Istian funerary rites. I only knew that in my world, Tarik’s world, death was a cold, somber thing, where the families and acquaintances of the deceased wrote farewells in a book that was closed and burned with the body. And that was the end. Because no one in my world believed the dead would ever ride the stars…or linger in the world in the place of their death to haunt those who remained behind.
“Of course we do,” I said. “But I’ve never seen a rite where the dead man wasn’t known.”
He nodded and turned to the ferns, shifting uncertainly. “Nameless soul, find peace and leave the shores of this world for a better place, and pity the one who did this to you. We are not your enemies here, so go and do not trouble us with your sorrow.”
“Be it so,” I murmured, because it seemed like the thing to say.
It must have been near midnight when we’d finally gotten back and cleaned up. My nerves were gradually beginning to calm, but images of that terrible murder kept flashing before my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to go to the barracks and try to sleep, so I wandered the dark halls a while in silence, thinking, trying to work through what had happened.
Even more than the sight of the body, the notion that I’d found it in the building over the Hole had me torn up. I realized with some surprise that I almost wanted my father to be wrong about the murders. Somehow I didn’t want to discover that anyone in the Hole, or even in Rivano’s Clan, had been responsible for all those deaths.
And yet, I’d just stumbled on the sixth of the year, right here at the heart of my father’s suspicions.
Did that mean someone here had done it? Or had someone done it here, never knowing about the Hole that existed underground, figuring that they’d found a safe and hidden place where the crime would never be discovered?
And more than that…
Should I tell Kor?
I didn’t want to think about it. That in the end was enough motive for me to head back to the barracks and the pathetically thin mattress of my cot—I just wanted to sleep and forget about bodies and Kor and the price of my betrayal.
* * * *
By the time morning came, I’d decided not to tell Kor, because he’d warned me once already about bringing him incomplete information. With some smug satisfaction, I mentally ticked off all the things I didn’t know about the murder. I didn’t know when it had happened. I didn’t know the victim, or even if it was a man or a woman. I didn’t know who had done it. Stars, I didn’t even know how it had been done. All I knew was that the person had been a mage, but that could have been pure coincidence. So, I really had no information at all that would warrant a visit to Kor.
Instead I spent the day with Coins and Hayli. Coins had promised to teach us some of his tricks, but then he refused to show us anything except how to roll when we landed from a jump. But we practiced it for hours, leaping off a bench in the middle of high society’s favored Wardin Park, much to the scandal of the few people who were out braving the drizzle and the cold. By the time we got back to the Hole, we were all wet and bruised and laughing, and I thought that somehow, strangely, I’d never enjoyed myself quite so much.
Hayli disappeared as soon as we arrived, and suddenly I was back to being the cold and quiet Shade that I’d almost let myself forget about in the park. I ate dinner
alone in the mess, leaning against a wall with my plate and watching the other kids as they shoveled in food with their fingers and climbed over the tables and shouted at each other across the room, trying to convince myself I loathed it all, trying to believe that I didn’t care how I stood there by myself.
When Hayli finally came in, she took one look at me, forehead all puckered up, and waved me toward the table she’d claimed. I hesitated. I knew I should leave, that I should go without a word and not care about her disappointment, but all I wanted was to go and sit with her, to laugh about jumping off benches in the rain…to get her to smile, because her smile was the most dazzling thing I’d ever seen.
A sudden warmth crept into my cheeks. I turned sharply, adding my plate to the stack at the end of the food line and leaving the mess hall in agonizing silence. I was being stupid, so stupid. When had I ever decided to look at Hayli and see anything but a means to an end?
Of course, I hadn’t decided. It had just happened.
But it’ll stop there, I told myself, slamming my head against the wall in the storage room corridor. It has to. I won’t let myself think about her…I’ll avoid her if I have to.
And a deep, aching twinge tugged at my heart, but I closed my ears to its complaints, because I had to. I escaped into the large warehouse room where I’d told Derrin Alby Durb’s name, hoping for a bit of sanctuary among the towers of crates and boxes. I was getting the feeling that peace and quiet was hard to come by around here.
But my optimism was short lived. Only a few minutes after I’d settled onto the crates, a few kids wandered in with a deck of Tozkorol cards. A little later, a whole noisy group spilled through the door and scattered onto the empty floor in the middle of the room, shouting each other’s names as they split into teams. After a while, it felt like the whole motley group of skitters had made its way into my sanctuary, including Hayli and little Pika, and Coins and another kid about my age whom I hadn’t met yet.
I sighed and abandoned the idea of solitude, instead leaning back and stretching out my feet so I could watch the game unfolding on the warehouse floor. Ten minutes later I still couldn’t make out the rules, or the goal. They tossed a slim brass ring between them, and every once in a while someone would pitch it toward a spike mounted up on the wall, while everyone else screamed and scattered and ducked out of its downward path. Some kids shouted and others cheered, and I hadn’t the faintest notion why.
Finally I gave up trying to understand and let my attention drift to the other groups. Hayli sat up on a stack of crates across the room from me, talking to Pika and a small, round boy with the biggest smile I’d ever seen. Anuk was destroying a red-faced Link over a game of Adurac in the corner. Everyone had someone to talk to, to be with. And somehow, I knew I was only lying to myself when I imagined I wanted to be alone.
After a moment I realized that I’d been watching Hayli a little too steadily, a little too long. I cursed myself for my idiocy, and when she suddenly glanced at me I jerked my gaze away, flustered and confounded.
“Shade, isn’t it?”
I started in surprise. One of the Hole’s more glamorous girls leaned against the wall beside me, studying me with unabashed curiosity. I’d seen two of them prancing about that morning, the two oldest girls in the group. Coins had told me at breakfast that they mostly ran special errands for Kantian. The way this girl dressed—in a mildly faded version of Samyr’s day-to-day wardrobe—suggested she was likely a spy a cut above the rest of the crew. I imagined she had the face, and probably the attitude too, to get whatever information she wanted from whomever she wanted.
I tucked my hands behind my head, watching the kids with their metal hoop. “That’s right.”
“I’m Gem,” she said.
I shot her a sidelong glance, surveying her from head to toe as if I could glean some explanation for why she was standing there, watching me, smiling. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do. Her dark eyes danced, coy.
“How are you liking life at the Hole?”
“I hardly know,” I said. “Don’t you ever get bored?”
“I love this place,” she said, the flirtatious veneer dropping away. Maybe she didn’t even realize she’d been wearing it. She pulled herself up onto the crate beside me, watching the kids fondly. “These kids are my family.”
“You all think of each other as family?” I asked, skeptical. “There seems to be a lot of in-fighting going on here.”
She snorted. “You’ve obviously never lived in a real family. We bicker, we fight, and sometimes we hate each other, but we stick together. Watch each other’s backs. Stand against the world.” Her gaze darted to me. “No offense, but that’s why we’ve given you such a hard time. It’s hard to adopt anyone in who wasn’t brought in the same way the rest of us were.”
“As children.”
She nodded. “Most of the kids don’t remember their birth families. Guess I was lucky. I had a real family until I was about six or seven, I guess. Lost them in a fire.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m not the only one here with that history. But at least I haven’t forgotten where I came from.”
She speared a dark glance across the room as she said it. I frowned and followed her gaze, and found Hayli pinioned at the end of it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She twitched her head to study me, her dark curls swinging around her face. “I’m not the only one who had a good start to life. Some people try a little too hard to fit in with the foundlings.”
“You mean Hayli.” I stared at my hands on my thighs. “She came from a good family?”
“Noble born,” Gem said. “Not that you’d ever be able to tell. Stars, she’s such a gam.”
“A what?” I asked, but all I could think was, Hayli was nobility? Which family?
“A gam. You know how she is. Dressing like the boys, acting like the boys, trying to fit in with their crew. It’s embarrassing. And now she’s got Pika mimicking her.”
I frowned, feeling irked though I didn’t even know why.
“Maybe it’s her choice what kind of person she wants to be.”
“She doesn’t know what she wants to be. That’s her whole problem.”
“Maybe she would be more confident if the people around her treated her better,” I said, a dangerous edge to my voice that I didn’t intend.
“You mean me?” she asked, genuinely surprised.
I just gave her a pointed look, and she sighed.
“She’s a good kid. I even like her.”
“But everyone else pushes her away so you do too?”
“Don’t judge me,” she snapped, getting to her feet. “Hayli’s odd. She’s got secrets. It’s hard to warm to people who keep secrets.”
I grinned, faintly. “If you say so.”
She didn’t have a chance to reply to that, because at that moment Derrin came up and shooed her away with a glance.
“Can I get a word?” he asked me, and jerked his head toward the door.
I followed him to a small office next to the warehouse. It was a bare, dreary room, with just a desk and a chair and not much else besides, though I spotted a long black feather in the corner and wondered if it had belonged to a crow.
“I talked to Coins,” Derrin said, leaning against the desk and folding his arms. “Pretty quick thinking between the two of you.”
The way he frowned as he said it, I knew it wasn’t just praise. Something else was coming, so I didn’t reply.
A long minute dragged past, then he leaned over his knees and said, “Trouble is, what are you going to do about it now? What’s your plan?”
I hooked my thumbs in my belt loops and studied the floor. “What did you want his name for?” I asked.
“That’s my business, not yours.”
“So, basically, you’re trying to see if I mean to do something that will get in the way of your plan, right?”
“Something like that,” Derrin said. “
Here’s the problem. If something was supposed to happen to Alby Durb, it would have happened quiet, anonymous, no publicity, no comment. Most folks would likely just think he got crosswise to a bad bullet, or rode the rails for better opportunities elsewhere. But now you’ve gone and told grobbing Vanek Meed that you are going to get rid of his problem. See where this gets difficult?”
I thought about that for a moment, but I couldn’t quite make myself care about what it might mean for me. I just kept thinking about Zip and Tam and that poor girl Liza. So I asked Derrin, “What happens to the Bricks if Alby Durb is out of the picture?”
“With Alby Durb gone, the Bricks won’t have a hedge. A supplier basically funnels money through the crew to the coppers, to keep their attention turned the other way, see? Usually he does it in exchange for drugs or goods or other services. So, the coppers don’t have any loyalty to the people they ignore. Soon as that money dries up, they will sweep in and clean house.”
He paused as someone passed outside the door, then as the footsteps faded I asked, “But aren’t all these buildings down here abandoned? Why does anyone care if people live there?”
Derrin sighed. “The Bricks and other crews hide out in buildings that belong to the city. They don’t have any right to be there. If the coppers come down on them, they’ll have to scatter. Find somewhere else, or risk getting shipped to prison or to the mines. A good supplier keeps the coppers off, but only if the crew stays underground. The coppers won’t stand to have those places look like they’re being lived in by hordes of the poor, no matter how much tainted money they get fed.”
“I see,” I said, feeling a bit overwhelmed.
“Anyway, Rivano’s been worried for some time about the poor in the city…about the poor in the city being divided. United, they could be so powerful.”
“Rivano does have anarchist leanings, then?”
“I didn’t say that,” Derrin said. “Just because people are united and find strength in brotherhood doesn’t make them treasonous.”
“But he wanted them kicked out, why? To encourage them to get shelter here, and march to his fife?”
Derrin slanted a dark, hard look at me. “But why would they ever choose to do that, if they knew that one of ours was the reason they got kicked onto the streets in the first place?”
The Madness Project (The Madness Method) Page 28
