The Verse of Sibilant Shadows: A set of tales from the Irrational Worlds

by JM Guillen

  She stuck out her tongue. “You don’t know everything.”

  “I know enough,” I grinned at her.

  She pushed at my shoulder. “Jerk. Are you going to look at this or not?” She held out a metal container the size of her palm.

  I took it, wincing at the twinge in my ribs. Ely was right, my ribs were hurt. I didn’t think they were broken, however, since if they were broken I would be in agony.

  “Careful,” she cautioned. “It’s pressure sensitive.” She dove into the large box at her feet, pulling out all manner of vials and powders, wraps and tools.

  I peered at the octagonal copper box. It seemed as if it could open in pie shaped wedges on top, but I didn’t see a catch. I started to press on one of the wedges when Ely saw what I was about.

  “Not the red!” She yelped.

  I glanced at the triangle I was about to push. Sure enough, it was a deep, ruby red. I looked up at Ely and pressed the piece next to it. The little triangle clicked softly, but nothing happened. I looked down at it and back to Ely. “It’s broken?”

  She shook her bronze mane and ducked her head. A nonce later the tiny triangle flew open, and white powder flew out, coating my face. I lurched up out of the chair as Scoundrel launched from my shoulder, making me trip over the box at my feet and nearly fall over Ely. I wheeled my arms and just caught myself on her desk before I crushed her. I pawed frantically at my face until I heard Ely’s laughter. Slowly, I looked down.

  Ely was laughing so hard that she was rolling on the floor, unable to get her breath. I glared down at her, stood as straight as I could, and crept back to the wingchair. It, too, was covered in white powder. I ignored it and sat, staring straight ahead, while Ely tried to compose herself.

  “Birdbrain,” Scoundrel croaked as she landed on the back of the chair. This set Ely off again, and she howled with laughter.

  Birdbrain? That was altogether new. Sometimes our ravens picked up a new phrase, but I hadn’t heard that one before. I chose to ignore it. I continued to sit, staring at the giant map of Teredon above her desk. I had found the Masque and Moon, my flat, and the Scarlet Cellar on it before Ely was able to calm herself again.

  “I—I’m sorry, Thom,” she gasped. A single giggle escaped her before she could control it. “I truly am. I should have warned you to press the plate away from you.”

  I turned my head to regard her. “You think?”

  She pressed her lips together tightly and tried to smile an apology.

  I faced front again. “What is it supposed to do?” I probed in a calm tone.

  Ely clambered to her knees and draped herself over the arm of the chair. She pointed to the open triangular chamber. “As you can see, this has eight tiny compartments, each separately pressure-operated from all the rest. You can store various things in each cavity and mark them on top, like I did the red one. Then whenever you wish, you can fling them into the eyes of your… Johns, isn’t it?”

  I sighed. “Jacks. We call the offenders Jack.”

  “Yes, right, right, Jacks. Well, you can fling them into the eyes of your Jacks to blind or incapacitate them. You could use pepper-powder, like I have in the red one, or caltrops, or all manner of tonics! Imagine the variety you could have, Thom!” She beamed up at me, then realized that she had effectively draped herself half into my lap. She hurriedly scrambled back to the floor and busied herself with the bandages and tinctures she’d taken from her wooden box.

  “I even,” she went on, though her head was bent to the contents of the box, “made it so that, if you squeeze the entire thing on the side panels, all of the compartments will open after a three count.” She emerged from the depths and held out a large bread-roll that had been wrapped in waxed parchment. “I filled them with flour so you could practice. Except for the red, of course.”

  I nodded as I tore into the bread. It was slightly dry, so I was grateful as Ely pressed a cup into my hand. I gulped down the sweet juice within and devoured the roll as Ely tended to my various wounds, applying light tinctures and bandages. When I had finished the bread, she took the cup from me and gestured to stand. I did so, cautiously. I towered over the petite mechanic.

  She picked at my shirt. “Off.”

  I sighed. “I’m fine.”

  She scowled up at me. “You’re not. Your ribs need support.” She held up a roll of bandages. “They may not be broken, but they’ve definitely taken a beating.”

  I huffed down at her, but she only gazed up, determination flashing in her dark-green eyes.

  “Fine.” I started unbuttoning my shirt. I in no way behaved like a truculent child, for the record.

  She picked up the box and moved it further into the shop, out of my view.

  “Come back here, I’ve got more food by the sofa. You can, um, just leave your shirt there,” she called.

  I stumbled around the various piles and made my way back to her. She’d managed to keep a corner of her place relatively clutter-free and had wedged an overstuffed sofa into it. Within reach sat a small table laden with the type of food that would keep awhile: cheese, fruit, nuts, bread; it reminded me of my flat.

  I started to lower myself to the couch, but Ely stopped me with a hand on my chest. I looked down at it as thunder grumbled in the city outside. Ely flinched just a touch.

  “You’ll—I need to bandage your ribs.” She withdrew her hand and placed the end of the gauze on my upper chest. “And that will be easiest with you standing.” She walked circles around me, trailing one cool hand along the bandage, keeping it tight. When she reached the end, she tied it off in front, for ease of release.

  “Here.” She shoved more juice at me and another roll, this time topped with a sharp cheese. Then Ely tossed a grape in the air. Scoundrel, who had been bouncing around on the floor, looking at all the shiny objects she could steal, leapt into the air and snapped it up before it hit the ground. Ely laughed and clapped, delighted. She threw a butternut.

  “Yo’r—” I swallowed the chunk of bread in my mouth and tried again. “You’re the reason she’s getting fat, you know.” I gestured with the bread and sat. Oh, the sofa was nice. I practically sank into its loving embrace. It was clear that when it came to comfort, Ely knew a thing or two about sofas.

  “Me?” Ely turned to me with a comically outraged expression as she flopped down next to me. “I only see her once or twice a nine-day. She’s with you every day. If she’s getting fat, then you’re to blame here. You encourage her eating everything in sight just to keep her near you.” She turned to Scoundrel as another peal of thunder sounded. “It’s not your fault, is it, sweetie?” She crooned to the bird and surreptitiously slid a piece of cheese to the floor near her feet.

  “Just to—what? Just to keep her near me? That’s ridiculous. That bird adores me.” Now I turned Scoundrel. “Don’t you, good girl?” I tapped my left shoulder. She tilted her head, eyeing the floor, then snatched up the cheese and leapt to the air, landing on my shoulder. She flipped the square of cheese into the air and gulped it down.

  “Good bird. Good, pretty bird,” she cawed as she nuzzled my ear.

  “Damn right you are.” I answered and snuggled back into the cushions. I shoved at them until it they were in just the right position to support my aching ribs—almost horizontal. I yawned as Ely pressed another juice into my hand.

  “Drink up,” she urged and hoisted a cup of her own.

  I frowned.

  “Ely,” I drawled, “what am I drinking?”

  She took a large gulp from her cup.

  “What?” She asked innocently.

  “What,” I repeated, “am I drinking?” I set the cup resolutely on the table.

  She smiled faintly. “Nothing right now.”

  I frowned. I thought about sitting up, the better to be stern with her, but the sofa was so soft. “Ely. What is in the cup?” I gestured to it.

  “Um, well, sweet red currant is the base, I think. It may be mixed wi—”

  “What
else?” I growled. It would have been more impressive sitting up, but it just seemed like too much effort.

  “O—oh. Well, Thom, you’re injured more than you want to let on, and I know how you are about getting back on your feet as quickly as you can, so I invested in this tonic.” She busied herself with the food, straightening the buns, piling the cheese. She wasn’t looking at me.

  “What tonic?”

  “It’s nothing dangerous! I would never give you something dangerous, Thom, I swear it! I—I never would,” she looked at me and shook her head frantically. “It’ll help you heal. It increases the healing and metabolic processes! You’ll need to eat a lot to fuel it.” She gestured to the food. “You’ll probably want some sleep here in a short bit, but it’ll help, Thom.”

  I let my head flop back to the pillowy cushion and cursed the women of the world inwardly. How many times was I going to get dosed with unknown tonics in one day? A yawn nearly split my skull.

  “I only wanted to help, and you wouldn’t go to a dociere. What was I supposed to do? Let the borough’s best judicar wander around half broken?” She was nattering on.

  “The—” I yawned again. “The best judicar, huh?” I asked, closing my eyes. They were so heavy.

  “Oh,” she sounded surprised. “Um, well, yes. The best I’ve known, anyway. I mean, it’d be between you and Wil, wouldn’t it? So…” I let her voice float away and snuggled back into the cushions. I wondered how many nights she herself had spent right here. She did know a thing or two about comfort, after all.

  Sleep was a sweetness I had not afforded myself the night before. As frustrating as it was to have Ely hovering over me like a nanny, I knew I was exhausted. Perhaps she actually was serving me here. If this tonic could actually get me up and going again…

  “Send your good girl on to the Rookery, Thom. You need to get some rest.”

  Go. Home. I gestured to my good girl, and Ely fussed over me a bit more.

  You always take such good care of us. I smiled at the thought.

  It was my last thought before I drifted into blessed darkness.

  Iron and Ice

  Shrouded Week, Riddling

  First Bell, Dawning

  I woke up in the middle of the night, fuzzyheaded but a little more rested. I had to admit that my bruised and battered body felt leagues better. I laid on that little sofa, staring at the ceiling. It must have been long bells after Ely had gone to bed.

  As I laid there, I wondered and fretted.

  I had seen the Warren’s Spider.

  The ramifications were too wide to contemplate. On one side of the path, it was easy to get caught up in the fact that it was possible, that maybe, the Warren’s Spider actually existed.

  On the other, if she did exist, that made my situation seem bleak indeed.

  As I had told Bryana, the Warren’s Spider was practically mythological. When Legate Jarviin reported that a family heirloom—an heirloom from before the Shroud fell mind you—had somehow been lifted from his manse in South Teris, there were people who whispered her name. When the Guildmaster of the House of Wind and Flowers had his daughter taken, taken to lost gods knew where and never found, again it was the Warren’s Spider who was blamed.

  If it was an unsolved case in our fair city, then chances were someone believed it was the Warren’s Spider.

  This was why I was contemplating whether or not the Warren’s Spider actually existed. Obviously, the young woman I had fought in the alleyway existed. She was masterful at her craft, and possessed poisons or toxins beyond my usual experience. When one added to this the fact that she was absolutely lethal in a fight and more than willing to deal out pain to a judicar, it was easy to believe that the Warren’s Spider might exist.

  But did she?

  Was this just some street rook out to make a name for herself? After all, it would be just as possible for me to have spent my youth learning exotic fighting forms and creating the kinds of contacts one needed for exotic poisons. Wouldn’t it be simple for someone to step into the face of the Warren’s Spider and immediately gain an amount of reputation and prestige?

  There was just no way to know.

  No matter who she was, the thing that truly mattered was that there was an unknown who was somehow involved in my case—an unknown who was masterful at what she did and had absolutely no fear of the judicars’ long arm. The only time she had even blinked at me was when I had set Scoundrel upon her, and even though she had captured my good right hand, it was obvious that she considered the birds a force to be reckoned with.

  “More than me anyway.” I scoffed softly into the darkness. The woman claiming to be the Warren’s Spider had handled me like a truculent child. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that if we ever crossed as again, she could school me like a governess.

  The thought was sobering.

  I cannot say how long I lay there thinking these thoughts before I finally drifted back into a numb, slightly tingling sleep. I know that I didn’t rest well; I was harried by haunted, wispy dreams. This was fairly typical. The serum would never stop singing in the place behind my mind, not until it had run its course. Until then, it gave my dreaming mind a voice of its own, an almost childlike, intuitive voice that would almost never let me be.

  I had no idea which bell Dawning it was when I woke up in the darkness. I was unable to breathe. It was like a full grown man was standing on my chest.

  “Hello, Judicar.” The voice was a leering, barbed whisper. Someone’s hands were around my collar, clutching my shirt closed around my throat.

  I could not move.

  “I’ve had some reports concerning your activities of late.” The words were clinical, almost musing, even though the tone was sharp enough to cut skin. “I’m afraid we decided, as citizens of this fair city, that your services will no longer be required.”

  I blinked, trying to peer at the face over me. It was simply too dark. It was a man, that much was certain, and he was strong enough to make me fight for breath.

  Why can’t I move?

  It wasn’t like it had been before. This wasn’t the pins and nails of the Warren’s Spider’s toxin. No, this was a lead weight. As I thought, I realized that I could move a bit, but it was the meandering, slow movement of being in a dream, the kind of movement that feels like pushing through cold honey.

  “What?” Just getting out that one word was a cascade of pure willpower. I peered upward at the figure, trying in vain to make out anything, anything that could tell me something about the man.

  No. Nothing.

  “You were told to mind your betters, Judicar.” The voice was positively leering. “I hope that whoever replaces you has a better mind for his own health and safety.”

  That was when I heard the front window, the stained-glass window crafted by Ely’s mother, shatter.

  In a nonce, several things happened at once.

  It seemed as if the moment the window shattered, the man was gone. I could breathe. No one was standing on my chest.

  “Where…?” I sat up, bleary and confused. The serum pulsed in my mind.

  I see the stranger shuffle the cards into another deck. The card on top of the deck has a blade made of ice upon it.

  Then, I heard a second shattering of glass.

  “Thom!?” Ely’s voice sounded equal parts inquisitive and terrified. “What’s happening down there?”

  I stumbled in the darkness, all feeling of lead weight gone from my limbs. I kicked my way through some pile of metallic bits I was certain that Ely must have carefully sorted and set aside. I heard something crunch and break underneath my feet.

  “Bill the city, Ely.” I stumbled forward, reaching for the table where I knew the small gaslamp sat next to a box of sulfur matches.

  I smelled something. It was sharp, clean. It was like the air before a storm rolls in off the ocean.

  I struck the match, touching it to the wick of Ely’s lantern. I heard her thumping through the wooden ceiling. />
  The hatch opened, and she peered at me from atop her ladder.

  “Did you break something?”

  I shook my head, holding a finger to my lips in a shushing motion. My eyes narrowed, focusing upon the door to the front portion of her shop. If I listened carefully, I could hear a strange hissing noise accompanied by something crackling.

  Someone stepping on the broken glass? Maybe.

  I glanced around in the dim light. Ely had set my shirt and stave to the side of the couch. I slipped the shirt on; if there were undesirables in the next room, I did not want them to think I was hurt. Reaching for my stave, I crept to the door. I held my left hand toward Ely, one finger pointing up. Were she Scoundrel, she would have gotten what I was saying:

  Wait.

  Cautiously, I eased toward the closed the door. I pressed an ear to its roughly hewn wood, trying to understand what I was hearing.

  Nothing. Nothing save that strange crackling sound. It was exactly like someone walking on broken glass or perhaps it was the sound of an iced over pond that someone was walking across.

  It made no sense.

  I glanced at Ely, who was easing down the ladder. I frowned at her. That wasn’t what I had wanted. If there were an undesirable on the other side of the store, I knew that Ely was the last person who would be able to handle herself in a fight.

  “What?” Her voice was a sharp hiss. “You think some Warren rats can break into my Da’s shop, my shop, while I stay at the top of the ladder like some pretty little flower?” Her eyes looked like they could cut. “Throw again, Thom Havenkin. The dice don’t like your chances on the first one.”

  I sighed but nodded. There was no talking to Ely once her mind was made up.

  Setting my hand against the door, I slowly cracked it open, trying to peer into the darkness in the next room.

  I heard the rush of air.

  A fist of raw, savage cold punched through the door. It slammed me in the face and knocked me backward, through the detritus on Ely’s floor. I fell flat on my arse, the wind knocked out of me. The lantern fell from my hand, and the glass crashed on the floor.