The Book of Swords

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “It was unavoidable, Gilchrist,” Crane said, as gangplanks thumped down and the hubbub of debarking grew around them. “You know that as well as I do.”

  Gilchrist made no reply, but his hands clenched more tightly. Under one thumbnail, where his scrubbing hadn’t reached, there was still a sliver of dried-black blood.

  —

  They slipped away from the dock like shades, with the strongbox slung in a makeshift harness between them. The ship’s captain had been paid for his averted eyes, and persuaded even further by the feathery white Guild scar Crane had exposed while adjusting his sleeve—no need for him to know that the criminal organization had been more or less dissolved for months now.

  Tall lampposts lined Colgrid’s streets, topped with the same glowing phosphor as on the dock, lighting a way through thickening smog. A mask vendor was hawking shrilly at the next corner.

  “We should,” Gilchrist said. “Not many gypsies up here.”

  Colgrid’s denizens were pale-skinned and dark-eyed—Crane blended well enough, but Gilchrist’s dusky skin could stick in a passerby’s memory. If all went well, they would have the strongbox opened and be sailing for far warmer climes before anyone could identify them.

  Crane flicked the vendor two silver coins and received two masks from the stall in return, flimsier versions of the bug-eyed creation that concealed her entire face.

  “I’m told they now wear these in the courts,” Crane said, slipping the mask over his mouth and nose. “Fashion is an unpredictable beast, is it not, madam?”

  “Them ones just for show, they don’t have a good filter.” The vendor’s voice came high and tinny through her mask. “Mine have the best filters.”

  Gilchrist kept a hand on the strongbox while Crane adjusted his mask, then swapped places to don his own. They continued on, moving deeper into the city, following the directions Gilchrist had memorized in a small filthy bar on Brask’s wharf. The hour was late and the streets mostly empty. Both tensed when a tall figure emerged from the gloom on impossibly long, skeletal legs, but it was only a lamplighter, using the clicking mechanical stilts that were still a rarity everywhere but Colgrid. Each metal shin was painted with a scarlet circle.

  The same insignia appeared a dozen more times as Crane and Gilchrist wound their way through the twisting streets: sometimes stenciled onto signboards above shops, sometimes painted raggedly straight onto the brick. In the neater versions, they could see it was meant to be a fine-toothed gear.

  “I admit I’m unfamiliar with this particular cipher,” Crane puffed, nodding his chin toward the closest. “What do you make of it, Gilchrist? A mark of allegiance?”

  Gilchrist touched his arm momentarily, where a Guild scar twin to Crane’s own was hidden under his sleeve. The Guild had never had a strong hold on Colgrid, and now, not at all. “Vacuums fill quickly,” he said.

  Crane massaged his shoulder and tightened his grip on the sling. A transient snow was starting to fall, small dirty flakes that didn’t touch the ground. They turned into a narrow alley, not marked by any red gear, and startled a small bundle of rags. The child was bony thin, soot-smeared. He, or maybe she, gave a choked sound of surprise and scuttled backward.

  Gilchrist blinked. He stuck a hand into his pocket and retrieved a handful of crusts from their last meal on board the ship. “It’s too cold tonight,” he said, squatting. “You’ll lose your toes. There’s a heating pipe around back of that smithy two streets over.”

  The child snatched the bread away and forced all of it at once into a scabby mouth, then scrambled out of the alley, darting past Crane’s knees. Gilchrist’s dark eyes trailed after. He took a silver coin from his other pocket and wrapped it in the nest of rags the child had left behind.

  Crane only watched, expressionless, until Gilchrist stood up and hefted his side of the strongbox. They walked on.

  —

  The lock breaker’s shop was small, ensconced in shadows, the nearest lamppost smashed. Smoke coiled from a small stack on the roof and grease-yellow light leaked from slits in the barred windows. No light escaped the door, which was a thick slab of reinforced iron that looked better suited to a gaol or a fortress.

  “A deceiver imagines everyone is out to deceive him,” Crane said, yanking his mask down around his neck. “Perhaps a similar logic applies to lock breakers.”

  They set the strongbox down on the cobblestone with a dull thunk. Crane rubbed his aching shoulder again; Gilchrist studied the door. There was an ornate sort of knocker, shaped like a jaw, that seemed out of place on the otherwise unadorned surface. Crane blew into his reddening hands, then reached for it and took hold.

  A disguised second jaw sprang from underneath and clamped his wrist in place. Crane flinched, but barely. His lips twisted into a smile as he looked down at his trapped extremity.

  “How fortunate it has no teeth,” he said. Gilchrist snorted. The quick-knife had slid from his sleeve into his fist and he was tensed, scanning for ambush. Crane gave an experimental wiggle and shook his head. The metal jaws were tight as a vise.

  The scratch of moving feet came from behind the door, and a slit shuttered open. An eye ringed with kohl appeared in the gap. “Who the fuck are you?” came a woman’s hoarse voice.

  “A man with a great many uses for his left hand, most of which would be severely diminished by frostbite or broken bones,” Crane said. “I am called Crane. My companion is Gilchrist. A mutual acquaintance in Brask informed us you might be able to solve a particularly vexing toy puzzle, for a price.”

  There was a muffled click-chunk from some internal mechanism, and the jaws opened. Crane retrieved his hand, rubbing ruefully at his blue-veined wrist. The cold metal had left a purplish welt.

  “He said someone was going to try hitting the Thule Estate. You pulled it off?” The lock breaker’s eye widened and her scratchy voice carried a hint of admiration.

  “We are gentlemen and I resent the suggestion,” Crane said blithely. “Will you aid us with the puzzle or not? It’s rather conspicuous and we would prefer to have it off the streets, and out of sight, as soon as possible.”

  The lock breaker hesitated. “Show me.”

  Gilchrist slipped the strongbox from its harness and hefted it up to eye level. Its filigreed design gleamed in the yellow light. The lock breaker’s eye narrowed. Then another click-chunk, a series of rattling scrapes as bolts retracted, and the door swung open at last with a slink of steam.

  The lock breaker was wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped, dressed all in black. Her pale hair was slicked backward off an angular face. She had deep-set eyes, made more so by the kohl, that seemed older than the rest of her. There was a gray smudge on her forehead from an unwashed finger.

  “Didn’t think anyone would actually have the stones to rob that place,” she said. “Heard they flay thieves.”

  “Do you greet all your customers so vigorously?” Crane asked, rubbing his wrist again as they stepped inside with the strongbox, smelling gunpowder and old metal.

  “I’m closed,” the lock breaker said. “Been closed three weeks now. And I’m careful.” She turned back to the door and set to locking it again, spinning a brass wheel that drove the bolts into place. From the back, the simple iron door was a patchwork of moving mechanisms. Crane observed it keenly while Gilchrist scanned the shop’s interior.

  Oil lamps provided the yellow light, pulling strange shadows over the objects littering the workbench and hanging from the walls. There were glinting skeleton keys, hooks and thick needles, what looked like a hand-cranked drill. Dissected locks sat beside their intact neighbors in a scattering of pins and springs. A floor-to-ceiling rack contained hundreds on hundreds of keys, large and small, sleek and spiky, cheap copper and ornate silver and everything in between.

  Traces of the lock breaker’s personal effects were scant, but a small table carrying a cracked mug and half-eaten bowl of food was tucked into one corner, and a few shirts dangled from improvised hooks in the ceiling.
A shabby rug was tacked unevenly to one wall and a cylindrical urn sat above the hissing heating pipe.

  The lock breaker picked out a square of space on the bench; Crane and Gilchrist set the strongbox down. She examined it with an almost hungry expression on her face, leaning in close, peering from every angle.

  “Haven’t crossed paths with one of these little bastards for a long time,” she said. “It’s a dead-box. You know that, I hope. You try to force this open with a pry bar, it’s spring-loaded to crush whatever’s inside.”

  “We know that,” Gilchrist said flatly, pulling off his mask.

  “If it was within my abilities, we would not have come seeking yours,” Crane said. “You’ve encountered its like before. I assume you can solve this one as well.”

  The lock breaker’s eyes narrowed again. Her mouth thinned. “I can, yeah,” she said. “For a price, I can.”

  “Of course,” Crane said. “An expert of your caliber demands suitable compensation. With that in mind, we might be willing to negotiate up to—”

  “A third,” Gilchrist cut in.

  Crane’s face soured. “Yes. That.”

  The lock breaker was silent for a moment, considering. A muscle twitched in her cheek. “No,” she said.

  “No?” Crane echoed, a needle tenting the silk of his voice.

  “Without me, that box isn’t worth a pig’s shit,” she said. “Without me, you did that job for nothing, so I figure I get to name my own price, thanks.”

  Behind her, the quick-knife rippled down Gilchrist’s sleeve again.

  “But I don’t want money,” she continued. “I want something else. I want the pair of you to do something for me.” She looked across the room, to the gray urn, and came slightly unfocused. Her thumb drifted up to her forehead, where the ash stained her skin. “How we mourn a lover, in the north,” she said. “A little every day until the ash is gone. I want you to help me avenge him.”

  —

  The lock breaker dragged a pair of splintering stools over to the heating pipe where Crane and Gilchrist were warming their hands, and told them, like an afterthought, that her name was Merin.

  “A pleasure,” Crane said.

  Merin squatted down, nodding her chin toward the urn. “And his name was Petro. He was my husband. More or less. He’s been dead eighteen days now.”

  “We extend our sincerest condolences,” Crane said warily. His gaze flickered back toward the unattended strongbox. Gilchrist, by contrast, was rapt.

  “I bet you do.” Merin snorted. “I don’t need you to care. Just need you to understand the situation, is all.” She folded her arms on her knees. “Do you know who runs Colgrid?”

  “The Dogue, officially,” Crane said. “But I imagine the balance of power now shifts in favor of the merchants and industrialists. The same change has begun in Brask.”

  “Men of business.” Merin’s voice was thick with contempt. “Brutes, all of them. They worship money and see the world all in numbers.” She clenched her teeth for a moment. “Here in Colgrid, we have the very worst of them. He calls himself Papa Riker. He’s nearly as rich as the Dogue himself now. Ten times as ruthless.”

  “How did he attain his wealth?” Crane asked.

  “The New World,” Merin said. “Same as the rest of them. He was with the trading companies. Mostly narcotics.”

  Crane and Gilchrist exchanged a glance that did not go unnoticed.

  “You know the trade?” Merin asked.

  “A brief foray that proved ill-fated,” Crane said. “For a variety of reasons.”

  “There was a fire,” Gilchrist said.

  Merin nodded, tonguing her teeth. “You know shiver?”

  “Not my preferred vice,” Crane said, but his eyes brightened. “But yes. We’re quite familiar. Distilled powder from the xoda plant. Hones the nerves to a razor’s edge.” He tapped the side of his nose.

  “Riker is the one who introduced it to the factories,” Merin said. “They use it to keep the workers from falling asleep. He owns almost half the city, now. Competition is bought off or killed off. He’s ruthless, how I said. Always looking for a new advantage.” She looked at the urn again. “Twenty-six days ago, he wanted me to do some work for him. Petro set up the meeting.”

  “Sabotage?” Gilchrist guessed.

  “Security,” Merin said. “Not to keep anyone out. To keep the little imps in. Wanted me to rig up a design for adjustable manacles. Their wrists are too skinny, see. And some of them lose a hand altogether in the machinery.” Her nostrils flared. “I told him to go fuck himself.”

  Crane looked over to Gilchrist. “This Riker employs children in his factories?”

  “Sweeps them off the streets and puts them to work, yeah, mostly on the south side,” Merin said. “Always looking for an advantage, how I said. As close to the devil as you can get. So I refused.”

  “And there was retribution,” Crane surmised.

  “Not the kind I was ready for.” Merin glared at the urn. “My husband was a strong man in many ways. Weak, in some ways. When it came to drink, or to drug, Petro was weak.” She blinked hard. “The last few years, it was shiver. Never too bad. Never bad enough to make me put a stop to it. I even did it with him, every so often.” Her voice turned fierce. “A week after I refused the job, I found Petro in our bed, pale as snow. Dead. With shiver smeared around his nose. I tested some of the powder on a rat the next day, and it was how I thought. Someone gave him a tainted pinch. Laced it with cyanide.”

  Silence seeped into the cramped space. Crane glanced to Gilchrist again, but Gilchrist was staring at the urn almost as intently as Merin. “And in what manner did the rat die?” Crane asked.

  The lock breaker’s face darkened. “Badly,” she said. “So that’s my price. That’s how Riker has to die. Badly.”

  “Vengeance is a natural proclivity,” Crane said. “I indulge in it myself from time to time. But we are only three, and of the three, only you are familiar with this Riker and with the general environ. Gilchrist and I are strangers here.”

  “Better that way,” Merin said. “Walls have ears these days. Don’t know who to trust. That’s why not another soul in Colgrid knows what I’ve got planned.”

  “To speak frankly, Madam Merin.” Crane picked a piece of lint from his knee, peered at it, and cast it aside. “You would do better to open the strongbox and use your more than generous allotment of the contents to hire an assassin. We may even be able to put you into contact with one.”

  Merin’s gaze was defiant. “If you got into that estate, and out in one piece, you can do this job easy. The price stands.”

  Crane opened his mouth to riposte.

  “We’ll do it,” Gilchrist said. His black eyes were gleaming. “You have a plan?”

  Merin exhaled a long breath. She looked more closely at Gilchrist, then nodded. “Yeah. Haven’t thought about much else since Petro.” She turned to Crane. “You’re the talker, he’s the doer. Is that it?”

  “Such things are never so simple as they first appear,” Crane said flatly. “But if no other payment can satisfy you, then Mr. Gilchrist speaks for us both. We will aid you in your revenge.”

  “Good.” Merin rose and went to the urn, hesitating only a moment before she dipped her fingers inside. She turned back to them. The ash was smooth and cool against Gilchrist’s hand, then Crane’s, as they shook.

  —

  The queue of workers stretched from the factory gate all the way around the corner, ragged men and women stamping their feet and rubbing their arms against the cold. Some of them pulled their filter masks down long enough to puff at the clay pipe being passed from hand to grimy hand. Crane and Gilchrist kept theirs on as they tacked themselves to the end of the line.

  “A rather ghastly piece of architecture, isn’t it?” Crane remarked, tipping his head back to observe the factory. Its high brick walls were stained jet-black from soot and displayed no windows, the wrought-iron gates were topped with wicked-looking s
pikes, and the scaly roof was dominated by several enormous smokestacks already leaking their ink into the sky.

  “Not many points of egress,” Gilchrist said.

  They stepped out of the queue and reinserted themselves farther along, aided by Crane opening the tin of snuff from his coat pocket and Gilchrist delivering a winding elbow to the gut of the one worker who protested. Up close, they could see the gate itself, guarded by a pair of scowling watchmen with truncheons. The red gear was painted on their chest plates.

  Both guards snapped to attention as the clockwork clatter of a strutter echoed up the cobblestones. One of them made his way along the line, brandishing his truncheon, snarling for single file. The workers shuffled themselves; so did Crane and Gilchrist. All of them turned to watch the strutter clack up the street like a massive black insect, limbs churning in perfect synchronization, pulling a black carriage behind.

  Whispers traveled up and down the queue as the carriage passed with curtains drawn. The top of it was racked and loaded with three squat barrels, all of them secured tightly by cables. The strutter shuddered to a halt at the gate and its driver dismounted, yanking off her grease-stained gloves before opening the carriage door.

  The man who descended was massive, thick-shouldered with a broad chest and sizeable paunch only somewhat disguised by the precise tailoring of his black-and-scarlet waistcoat. His fine clothes were at odds with his bulk, and with the boxer’s hands, gnarled and scarred, that escaped his sleeve cuffs. The wide ruff splayed around his neck might have looked affected on another man; on Riker, it gave him the look of a cannibal lizard from the New World. The impression was strengthened by his ornate filter mask, angled like the snout of a beast and inlaid with silver teeth locked in a razor-sharp grin.

  Riker adjusted his cuffs while a pock-faced porter started unloading the barrels from the top of the carriage. When he wobbled under the last of them, Riker gave a snort of impatience and took it from his grasp, setting it on one bow-broad shoulder as if it weighed nothing at all.