The Book of Swords

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Gilchrist didn’t flicker at the word, but Crane’s eyes narrowed. “The rage drug,” he clarified. “Secreted by a particularly venomous New World toad. Extremely rare.”

  “That’s how I know it was Riker who did it,” Merin said. “Only he’d have access to that stuff.”

  “Describe it.” Crane’s voice was intent, almost eager. “Describe the effects.”

  Merin’s nostrils flared. “Fuck you.”

  “You’ve attempted to deceive us once already,” Crane said. “Why would we accept your word now without—”

  “His veins were like ropes.” Merin paused. Took a shuddering breath. “When he came down the stairs, he was sweating and all his veins were thick like ropes. His cock was hard. And he was talking. Not in any language, just talking. Gibberish.”

  “How did he behave?” Crane asked, folding his arms.

  “Tranced, at first,” Merin said thickly. “I tried to get him to sit down. Then, angry. Like an animal. Like an animal in my husband’s body.” She waved a hand over her eyes. “There was nothing back there. He was gone in the head. I tried to calm him down.” She swallowed. “Tried to calm him down, couldn’t. He got his hands around my throat. I barely slipped him. Musket was on the table. He chased me.” Her gaze raked around the room, seeing ghosts in motion, then came to rest on the hanging rug. “Told him to back up. He didn’t. He grabbed my wrist and I pulled the trigger.”

  Crane nodded with something like reverence. “Ichor is incredibly potent,” he said. “Even in the smallest doses it causes violent hallucinations. Inflames the carnal urges. Occasionally induces a form of glossolalia, as well.” He drummed his long fingers against his elbow. “Little wonder it was considered a myth in the early years of exploration.”

  “Riker helped cover up Petro’s killing,” Gilchrist said. “Told everyone he’d gone south to dodge a debt. That right?”

  “Yes,” Merin said bitterly. “He’ll ask me for another job someday, and he knows I’ll do it if I don’t want to end up imprisoned for Petro’s murder. You see why I hate him. See why I have to kill him. Don’t you?”

  Gilchrist looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “You have to kill him because you aren’t sure,” he said. “You aren’t sure if he gave Petro the ichor. Or if Petro took it himself and misjudged the potency.”

  Merin snarled. “He wouldn’t.”

  “The barflies of the inner city say otherwise,” Crane interjected. “By all accounts, your husband was not sound in mind or in spirit during the months leading up to his disappearance. He experimented with the more exotic narcotics. He spoke often of death.”

  “I know that,” Merin snapped. “I know he wasn’t well. But he would never.”

  “Riker might have spread the rumor of your husband’s debt in order to deflect attention from his own role,” Crane said. “The Dogue would not react kindly to Riker selling ichor to Colgrid’s citizenry.”

  “If you kill Riker without knowing the truth, you’ll wonder,” Gilchrist said. “Forever.”

  Merin’s eyelids dropped shut. “What are you suggesting, then?” she asked, voice cracked.

  “An amendment to our bargain,” Crane said. “You need a confession, not a mere execution. Confessions can be extracted with the proper leverage.”

  “If you think Riker would ever confess to giving Petro the ichor, you’re a simpleton.”

  “Leverage,” Crane repeated. “As of this morning, Riker is storing three barrels of shiver in the south-side factory. That represents a sizeable investment.”

  Merin opened her eyes. “What, steal it?”

  “More take it hostage,” Gilchrist said. “We know someone who can get us inside. Tonight.” He cocked his head toward the sound of a small fist rapping low on the door. “That’d be her.”

  —

  When the night was sufficiently dark, they trooped out of the shop into the cold streets. The girl scampered ahead of them. Her name was Skadi, and the shoulder she always scratched had a messy red gear tattooed into the skin. She’d shown it to them with a mixture of pride and resentment.

  Then, without ever looking at Merin directly, she’d explained how Riker had ordered her to watch the lock shop on the day of Petro’s death, and how after relaying the news to him she’d never returned to the factory how she was supposed to.

  But she still knew how to get back in without anyone seeing her. She knew where the guards patrolled and half of their names. She knew the third smokestack was no longer in use. She’d hovered over Gilchrist’s shoulder, chewing dates from Merin’s larder, as he sketched out the factory’s dimensions.

  Their shadows stretched long and slender as they passed under the first phosphor lamppost. Gilchrist carried coiled rope and the improvised grapple Merin had put together. Crane’s long fingers toyed with the phial he’d mixed over the heating pipe. Merin was strapped with her lock-breaking tools.

  All of them wore filter masks, and Merin had dug out one for Skadi, too, after the girl emptied her pockets of all the keys she’d filched while they were sketching out the factory’s dimensions and arguing about entry and egress.

  They stopped a street behind the south-side factory. Crane took out the glass phial and tapped one frayed fingernail against it. Tendrils of luminous yellow swirled inside. Skadi watched with undisguised fascination as he capped it with a tiny pipette.

  “I want to use it, too,” she said, yanking her mask down.

  “Lamprey extract requires successive doses to be effective,” Crane said, tipping his head back, peeling back an eyelid. “I’m afraid you would see only a blur.” He squeezed a drop into one eye, then the other. When he finished blinking his pupils were swollen wide with a silvery gleam to them. Gilchrist took the phial from him and did the same.

  “What do you see?” Skadi asked.

  “The light human eyes miss,” Gilchrist said. “You ready, Merin?”

  Merin pulled down her mask. Her face was drawn, but her voice came steady. “Haven’t done a break-in for about a decade,” she said. “Always feel a bit sick until the entry. Let’s get on with it.”

  One of the night watchmen was sauntering along the back of the factory, singing hoarsely and occasionally tapping his truncheon against the brick for percussion. They watched from the shadows until he rounded the corner, then Skadi led the way to the wall, almost skipping.

  “See the cracks?” she whispered. “You should be able to see ’em. I can barely, but I know where they all are anyways.”

  Crane and Gilchrist looked up the brick wall to see where the mortar had eroded, leaving the cracks Skadi used for her climb. Large enough for a child’s hand- and toeholds, nothing more, but they’d anticipated as much. Gilchrist unspooled the rope and handed the grapple off to Crane. He judged the distance to the carved gutter that rimmed the roof, made two practice swings, and cast it.

  The grapple sailed up through the dark, rope ribboning out behind it like a startled snake. Its hooks clattered against the angled surface, sliding, scraping, finally catching. Soot caked on the roof softened the noise, but they still waited, breath bated, for watchmen voices. A moment passed. Another.

  Crane tugged the rope taut and offered it to Merin. She dusted her hands with chalk from her pouch and stretched her arms, then started to climb. She was barely over the top when Skadi followed, quick as a cat. Gilchrist reached for the rope next, but paused.

  “Why’d you agree to hit the factory?” he asked.

  Crane snorted. “Your sketch of the exterior was remarkably detailed, considering it was done from memory,” he said. “You would have ended up here whether I agreed or not. In order to liberate a cadre of orphans.”

  Gilchrist fixed him with a long look. “You came to skim some of the shiver,” he said.

  “I suppose we are each in our own way predictable.” Crane paused. “Will this balance your ledger, then? Will you be satisfied?”

  “More than the drug ever satisfies you.”

  “Two entir
ely different matters,” Crane said, but quietly, as Gilchrist churned up the rope with his feet barely grazing the wall for support. Crane followed, coiling the rope up behind him as he went.

  From the top, they could see Colgrid’s crooked roofs and belching chimneys spilling into the distance, dotted with the green phosphor blaze of streetlamps. They only lingered long enough for Crane to unhook the grapple before making their way along the factory’s spine, to the disused smokestack Skadi had pinpointed on Gilchrist’s crude map.

  “Rungs on the inside for when we used to go up to clean it,” the girl said. “Nice and easy for you.”

  Crane cast again, but this time the grapple bounced, clanging off the rim of the smokestack and back to the roof. Merin had to hop backward to avoid its impaling her foot. She hissed a curse; Crane only gave an irritable shrug. He retrieved the grapple, measured, and this time found the edge of the smokestack.

  —

  The descent was cramped and slow, the rungs all slippery with soot, the cloying smell of chemical leaking through their masks’ filters. Crane and Gilchrist led the way, their augmented vision painting the pipe with silvery brushstrokes, letting them see the accumulated sediment scabbing the walls and pass up whispered warnings of the rungs that were rusted weak or missing entirely.

  Before the bottom, where the shaft connected to the boiler, they found a small metal door in the dark as Skadi had promised. It came open with a sharp creak and Gilchrist squeezed through, twisting his wide shoulders. Crane next, easily as an eel, then Merin contorted herself to follow. Skadi levered herself through last.

  It was a short drop to the base of the boiler, and after the tight confines of the smokestack the vaulted factory interior felt the size of a cathedral. Rows of spiky black machinery stretched from back to front, looming out of the dark like mechanical monsters, their bared cogs grinning teeth. Skadi’s shoulders hunched at the sight; she rubbed furiously at the left one.

  “Storeroom’s back there,” she murmured, pointing with her whole hand. “Locked up good.” She looked around the factory again and shook herself. “I hate this place lots.”

  She led the way down the row, and as they walked, soles scuffing on soot, pale faces poked out from the machinery. Some of them whispered; one called Skadi’s name in a wavering question. Crane put a bony finger to the place where his mask covered his lips. There was straw spread out underneath the machinery, moth-eaten blankets, too. A few of the children huddled alone; most tangled together for body heat or for comfort.

  “Hush, hush, hush,” Skadi said. “How asleep is the nanny?”

  “Two and some,” one of the children whispered. “Amalia took the some.”

  They found the nanny slumped up ahead in a carved wooden chair, three empty bottles lined beside him, grizzled chin resting on his chest. Crane paused long enough to pour laudanum into his half-open mouth, to make sure he stayed that way. More of the children were waking, now, and there was a sound of scraping metal as they shifted.

  Merin pointed down at a foot that wasn’t tucked under blankets. The child’s ankle was cuffed in a heavy iron attached to a long cable that ran the length of the factory floor. “Bastards,” she said softly. “Looks like an easy pick, though.”

  They moved on to the storeroom, which was bricked into the back corner of the factory and secured by a heavy wooden door.

  “Go faster with a bit of light,” Merin said, running her fingers over its thick lock. “I don’t have lamprey shit in my eyes.”

  Gilchrist turned. “Skadi. Get a candle.”

  The girl vanished and returned a moment later with a burned-down nub of wax. She crouched, watching intently as Merin laid out her tools on the floor in a neat line. The lock breaker held out a few simple picks. Gilchrist and Crane took one each, then went back down the row. Gilchrist worked one side and Crane the other, rousing the children who were still asleep, muffling the occasional startled yelp, pointing to the ankle iron, jiggering it open.

  They’d made it nearly all the way down when voices came from the factory entrance.

  “See if the old drunk’s got something for us, too,” a watchman coughed. “Go on, just check. Fucking dull out here.”

  Crane and Gilchrist exchanged a look. Crane motioned the children to cover their ankles and be still, then swept toward one side of the entry, pulling on his gloves. Gilchrist took up position at the other, moving like a shadow. The quick-knife was in his hand, the blade telescoping and clicking into place. His jaw clenched.

  The iron door swung open, and the watchman’s lantern pierced the gloom. In the same instant, Crane sucked in his breath, pulled a burnt-orange pellet from his pouch, and crushed it between his palms.

  The watchman took a few steps inside, then hesitated. He fumbled with the strap of his filter mask. Motes of powder from Crane’s stained gloves were clouding into the air, a foul peppery smell accompanying. One of the children started to sneeze. Crane’s eyes were leaking tears and mucus was spotting his mask. He still hadn’t breathed in.

  The watchman took another faltering step, then spun. “Ask him yourself, you sheepfucker,” he said, hauling the factory door shut behind him, his voice turning faint. “You didn’t tell me there was a spill today. Smells like the devil in there.”

  They waited another heartbeat, another. They waited for the sound of boots to disappear. As soon as the watchmen were gone back to the gate, Crane darted over to the barrel of drinking water and plunged his face inside. He emerged with a curse that made the children’s ears prick up as Gilchrist picked the last few cuffs.

  “Rather more potent than my previous recipe,” Crane muttered, stripping off the stained gloves.

  “Good.” Gilchrist used the ladle to splash water into his bloodshot eyes. Then they moved back down the row, the freed children trailing after them, murmuring to each other, some of them knuckling their eyes still from the pellet. When they got to the storeroom, Merin was lifting her mask to wipe sweat off her forehead.

  “Close thing, that watchman coming in,” she said. “Good work. Whatever you did.”

  She shoved the wooden door and it swung open smoothly on its hinges. Inside, among the crates and stacked metal, the three barrels of shiver stood clustered together.

  “They look heavy,” Merin muttered.

  “Then let’s not waste time,” Crane said, eyes gleaming. He tipped the first barrel and Gilchrist caught it from the other side, lowering it to the floor to be rolled. The three of them worked quickly, moving the barrels into position by the smokestack. Skadi and a few older girls managed to herd the children into a group, quieting the talkers with hissed admonishments or smacks up the head.

  When all three barrels of shiver were in place, Crane gingerly fished more of the orange pellets from his pouch and passed them out among the older children. “These are intended to be thrown, not crushed in hand, and certainly not ingested,” he said. “Not for eating. Understood?”

  A few nods.

  “I have a query, children,” he continued. “What happens when one pokes a ball of cave spiders?”

  The children looked at each other for a moment. “Go everywhere,” one of the boys finally mumbled. Others made scurrying motions with their fingers.

  “Yes,” Crane said. “So, when we open the factory door, all of you must be little cave spiders. Scattering in all directions.” He lifted one of the pellets between two fingers. “And should a watchman move to grab you, these are your stingers.”

  The children nodded, every single one of them, and Skadi’s grin gleamed in the dark.

  —

  Morning over Colgrid. The rising sun drenched the sky red outside Merin’s window. The lock breaker was boiling a pot of tar-black coffee; Crane and Gilchrist were sitting by the heating pipe, the blankets they’d slept on briefly now piled at their feet. During the chaos created by the fleeing children, they’d gone back up the smokestack and down from the roof. The last they’d seen of Skadi was her leading her little band in
to the streets, whooping and shrieking.

  “Bet he’s flogging the watchmen,” Merin said. “Bet he thinks they helped us.”

  “All the better,” Crane said, tapping a pen against his cheekbone as he considered the letter lying in midcomposition across his lap. “Ambiguity is our ally. How does this strike you both?” He stroked out the final sentence and raised the parchment to the light. “My dearest Mr. Riker, you are cordially invited to join me at the Corner of the Four Angels at midnight, unaccompanied and unarmed, so that we might negotiate an exchange of goods and services. If I sight anyone in your employ within a block of our meeting point, or sense any threat to my person, your barrels will burn. Signed, your loving thief.”

  Merin snorted. “Won’t think it’s me, that’s for certain.”

  “Seal it,” Gilchrist said. “With a pinch of the shiver.”

  Crane grudgingly opened one of the tiny bags he’d filled from the last barrel. He tapped a bit of powder onto the flat of Merin’s kitchen knife, then held it over the heating pipe until it bubbled and melted to a distinctive tarry brown Riker would recognize. It smeared like hot wax over the fold of the letter.

  “He won’t come alone,” Merin said, taking the letter as it cooled and stiffened. “Or unarmed.”

  “You won’t, either,” Gilchrist said.

  Merin hesitated for a moment. Then she set the letter aside and reached under the workbench, hauling the strongbox out into the light and lifting the rough-spun shroud overtop of it. The locking grooves were pinned with calipers and a tiny section of metal had been peeled back, exposing part of the mechanism where two skeleton keys speared inside.

  “Had it cracked yesterday already,” she admitted. “Once you know the trick to them, they’re not so bad.” She pointed at the keys. “That one clockways, the other opposite. You can do the honors, if you like.”