by Sam Sykes
Only one of them was moving.
It was far unlike the others. Its grin was big, broad, and eerily pleased with itself. Its eyes were in the shape of upside-down crescent moons. Where the other masks were hollow, this one brimmed with a life all its own.
A life that still managed to pale in comparison to its wearer’s.
A body, short and dark and lean, slithered out of the shadows of the window. Legs swung out over the frame, and it fell from the gloom to land in a graceful crouch. Kataria’s eyes widened as the body rose up to about her height.
A mass of black braids bundled above the mask, falling in serpentine strands around bare shoulders. Lean arms, trembling with toned muscle, crooked as hands set upon bare hips. The same silk kilt as Thua wore hung off of a spear-slender waist, the leather sandals of the same material entwined thin calves. The only other garment worn was a half-tunic resting over a modestly rounded chest, leaving bare a long, lean midriff.
A woman. Ears long and notched like well-worn blades, standing tall and proud before Kataria as though she had just sprung out of a legend.
A shictish legend.
There was a part of Kataria that said nothing at all, that merely stared, wide-eyed, at the woman. That was fleeting, though, and quickly gave way to another part of her. The part with all the snarls and cursing and stuff.
“And what the hell are you so smug about?” she growled.
“I almost didn’t think you’d fall for it.” The woman seemed heedless of Kataria’s ire; then again, it was hard to read someone through a wooden mask. “I thought ‘she’s going to see the strings, she’s going to use the Howling and realize it’s a trick,’ but nope!” A thin finger shot out, poked Kataria playfully in the chest. “You fell for it, just like they did.”
Kataria restrained herself from biting that finger off long enough to turn her glare over the woman’s head. She squinted and, as the sunlight shifted through the clouds overhead, she could just barely see silken threads holding the wooden masks in the windows. No bodies. No bows. No shicts.
No voices to hear.
Save for the woman’s laughter, obnoxiously light and irritatingly soft.
“That’s not as hilarious as you think it is,” Kataria snapped.
“You’re only saying that because you didn’t think of it first.” The woman laughed. “Don’t worry about it, shkainai. It’s a trick. The fact that you were tricked just means it’s a good one.”
Her long, dark fingers slipped out and gingerly tickled beneath Kataria’s chin.
“I’m so terribly clever, you know.”
Kataria snarled, slapping her hand away. There was an itch left behind, upon her skin and in her ears as the woman snickered.
This woman spoke and laughed in serpents, a voice that slithered through Kataria’s anger and into her ears to coil comfortably at the back of her head. She found her ears twitching, irritably.
“Do not worry about Kwar,” Thua said. “She set up this trick weeks ago and has been waiting for someone to stumble in.” He paused, regarded Kataria carefully through hollow eyes. “Yet, that’s not why you’re upset, is it?” He leaned forward. “You weren’t surprised that you couldn’t hear them, were you?”
The coils tightened around her skull. The air suddenly felt very heavy around her. Thua’s words hung a weight around her as he spoke.
“You can’t hear the Howling.”
At that, Kataria found herself missing the woman’s—this Kwar’s—mocking laughter. That was merely enraging. Thua’s words and the iron silence that followed were unbearable.
She couldn’t stand looking at their masks anymore. She couldn’t stand not seeing their eyes as they fixed her with hollow stares.
They were staring at her like the humans were. She just knew it. Looking at her as if she didn’t belong here, as if she wasn’t welcome here, as if she should go away and never return. She just knew.
Because where else, she asked herself, would she be? Why would she, pale and weak against their dark muscle and bright eyes, be here if she didn’t belong where she had come from?
She turned to go. A hand caught her shoulder. Warm like Thua’s, but not comfortable. Itchy. Tingling. Coaxing fine hairs on her arms to stand on end and ears to go involuntarily erect.
It turned her with a hint of a tug. Kwar stood before her, her free hand sliding up to the back of her head. A quick tug and the mask fell, hanging around her chin by a pair of leather straps.
And Kataria met Kwar’s eyes, wild and dark like a thunderstorm. The khoshict stared, but without judgment, without fear, without anything but the need to look, the need to be looked at.
She only vaguely took in the other details of the khoshict’s face—her pointed chin, her puckish lips, the crinkle at the corners of her eyes—everything was in Kwar’s stare, including Kataria.
“Don’t go, sister,” Kwar said softly. “You are home.”
“I’m not,” Kataria replied. She slipped out of Kwar’s grasp. Her skin still itched afterward. “I don’t know what that word means anymore.”
“You’re not going to find it out there,” Thua replied, gesturing over her head. “The inner city isn’t safe even for normal shicts. And you,” he glanced Kataria over, “from the forests, yes? The…” He looked at her ears, counted the notches. “Sixth tribe? You stick out in the eyes of anyone, let alone the guards that are looking for you.”
“Come with us.” Undeterred, Kwar’s hand seized Kataria’s with a childish eagerness. “We’re just over the wall. Stay with us until you’re better.”
“How am I supposed to know that when I don’t know what’s wrong with me?” Kataria asked. “I can’t hear—”
“You must have,” Kwar insisted. “This city is vast, and yet you found your way to us. How else could you have been drawn to your own kind? Come, stay with us until you figure that out.”
“But how do I—”
“If you finish that sentence,” Kwar interrupted, “my next reply will be ‘stay with us while you recover from that nasty injury I gave you rather than listening to more self-important self-doubt.’”
Amazing, Kataria thought, she even smiles when she’s threatening bodily harm.
Maybe that was why she herself couldn’t help returning Kwar’s smile.
Maybe.
“Come, then.” Thua had turned and begun walking toward the wall of splinters. “I don’t trust the humans not to return with more. They are more clever than we give them credit for.”
He moved with a thoughtless confidence, up the shattered timbers, over the jagged stakes, across the smashed wood, and to the top of the wall of ruin. Not so much as a moment’s hesitation, not so much as a splinter as he hopped off the edge and disappeared down the other side.
Kwar gave Kataria’s hand a squeeze before moving to follow. She had just leapt up and seized one of the jutting stakes when she turned to look at her new, pale companion.
“What are you waiting for?”
It was at that moment Kataria became aware that she was looking over her shoulder, down the sandy road. It was at that moment she realized she didn’t know the answer to Kwar’s question.
No one was coming.
“Nothing,” she muttered.
She approached the pile of splinters with the same vigor, laying hand upon one of the timbers and testing it for sturdiness. With a cry, she drew back her hand and beheld the long sliver of wood embedded in her palm. A lance of pain shot through her hand as she pulled it out and watched a bright red blossom form on her skin.
They did it without even trying, she told herself. A shict could do this easily. A real shict could—
“Hey.”
She looked up. Kwar’s hand was before her. A thin scar adorned the heel of her palm. A bright smile was on her face, teeth bright and bare.
“It takes a little help to get it right,” she said, “unless you’re terribly clever.”
Without thought, Kataria reached up. Without sound
, she took Kwar’s hand. Without a word, she was pulled up onto the pile and felt the itch as Kwar’s hand left her.
And without knowing why, entirely, she felt herself smile.
SEVENTEEN
ACCORD
The stories were all the same.
Somewhere in the heart of a city—any city, so long as it had shadows and scum—lay an ominous, shrouded fortress. Sometimes it was a wooden stockade laden with spikes and skulls. Occasionally, it was a vast, iron fortress with warning signs and black plumes of smoke rising over spiked walls. The vast majority of the stories seemed to think it was an underground labyrinth—usually a sewer or other water-themed deathtrap—haunted by traps, guardian monsters, and pits full of spikes.
Spikes were a recurring theme in any good story about thieves. Any told by the common man, at any rate.
And if that common man—or woman or child, he supposed; everybody loved a good thief story, after all—were here right now, he might find The Oxbow rather unlike what the stories described as a proper thieves’ guild.
It was neither ostentatious nor destitute. A humble building of stone and brick and wood sitting comfortably between the Souk and Silktown, quite content to dwell in the shadows of elegance and live forgotten on a road that saw only the mildest traffic of strolling grandmothers, weary laborers, and shy children. And any of those people would have been more interesting than the middle-aged, graying woman sweeping sand from the steps beneath a swinging sign depicting an old ox pulling an older plow.
Her broom wasn’t even spiky.
Pity, that, Denaos thought.
Denaos could have handled spikes. Spikes, at least, had the promise of a swift death. Whatever happened to him once he stepped through those doors would be something slow, something total, and something a long time coming. Because whoever was beyond those doors had been waiting a long time to see him.
No sense in delaying, then.
Well, at least in delaying any longer than the three hours he had already spent staring at the inn, wondering whether it might just be nicer to go walk to the harbor and jump in.
He tucked his hands in his pockets and walked to the woman, casting a glance up at the windows.
“Cats?” he asked.
“Pardon?” she replied, not bothering to look up.
“You got any cats in there?”
“Just two,” she replied. “Cats kill rats.”
“Prefer dogs, myself.”
She glanced up at him through the creases of her crow’s-feet before looking back down to the steps.
“Who?” she asked.
“Rezca,” he said.
“Business?”
“Always.”
“Important?”
“I wouldn’t know his name, otherwise.”
She stood up, looked meaningfully toward the house across the street and stretched, knuckling the small of her back.
“Back left corner,” she said. “Order the curry.”
He pushed the door open, pausing briefly in the frame and looking at her. “Is it any good?”
“What?”
“The curry. Is it any good?”
“Wait,” she said, “did they add a new bit to the code?”
“No, but… I mean, I still have to eat it, don’t I?”
She didn’t bother replying beyond a snort as she returned to sweeping the steps. He didn’t press the issue as he slipped inside.
Inside, The Oxbow had all the markings of a world in transition. The tables were still unvarnished, splintering wood but had been rearranged into the booths and privacy-curtain-ringed style that had been all the rage in Silktown when he still knew the city. Wine was served in cups made of cheap glass, curry was dished out on cracked porcelain to the clientele of Souksellers and unpatronized artisans, and every stain was strategically placed to lend to the carefully cultured air of mediocrity.
A few of the standard glances from all the people one would expect to throw the standard glances were thrown. The man standing at the bar offered a brief, courteous nod, as such a man would. He sat down in the booth in the back left corner. The girl in the silk dress with the patches one would expect on a woman with a low wage and three dresses to her name showed up after he had waited just long enough to be slightly annoyed with her, as one would with any serving girl.
“Welcome to our humble establishment, sir,” she said, rehearsed. “What may I offer you today?”
“Curry.”
“What kind?”
“Just curry.”
A crack at the edges of her face; she hadn’t expected that answer, but showed no real surprise. She hadn’t been working here long, he deduced, but long enough to know what happened to those who screwed up.
“Half an hour,” she replied curtly.
“For curry?”
“For business. Curry will be out shortly.”
“Is it any good?”
“About as good as you’d expect.”
He sighed and leaned on his hand. “Of course.”
She walked away to the man behind the bar and whispered a few words. The man behind the bar nodded once and disappeared behind a door. The door remained closed for thirty breaths before he came back out.
And Denaos started to wait.
The average talk of the economy and the whores and the foreigners was talked. The Karnerians and Sainites were a menace; this footwar was trouble; the fashas were greedy swine. The same talk anyone would hear in any other bar. The wine was poured and the glasses weren’t cleaned. The curry came and went.
It wasn’t good.
He had been waiting for far over half an hour when another plate of curry was set in front of him. Then one more dish across from him. No explanation was given before the girl walked away. None was needed; the explanation came walking in a moment later.
A tall, pale man entered. A northerner with a stocky build and big hands and a head shaved meticulously clean. His clothes were made for a man who didn’t belong in this place, made for someone smaller, wealthier. The spectacles he wore would look silly on such a big man if they hadn’t been set over such cold eyes.
The big man sat down without a word, delicately folding a napkin over his lap and arranging his cutlery carefully on the table. He placed both hands upon the tabletop. Denaos did the same. They stared deliberately into each other’s eyes for a long moment.
“Rezca,” Denaos said respectfully.
Rezca was not this man’s real name.
“Denaos,” the big man responded politely.
Denaos was not that man’s real name.
But there was enough civility between murderers to afford them the courtesy of lying to each other.
And their only words were those two lies for a long time as Rezca quietly shoveled forkfuls of curry into his mouth.
“How is it?” Denaos asked.
“Good.”
Three lies seemed adequately civil before business.
But before Denaos could open his mouth, Rezca held up a finger. He reached into a satchel at his hip and produced a small idol carved of black wood. The image of Silf the Patron, with his familiar grin and hands clenching a bowl, was familiar. So much so that Denaos could but sigh.
“Are we still doing this?”
“Rules are in place for a reason.”
“When we were kids, sure.”
“Silf doesn’t tolerate deals He’s left out of.” Rezca fished a copper coin out of his pocket and dropped it into Silf’s bowl. “A bargain’s a bargain.”
He looked expectantly to Denaos, who muttered in reply and produced a copper of his own. A meeting more dire would call for silver or gold, but this was, after all, just lunch. He dropped it into Silf’s bowl on top of Rezca’s.
“A bastard’s a bastard,” he continued the rhyme.
“Luck for the worthy.” Rezca tossed in another coin.
“Coin for the master,” Denaos finished with one more of his own.
Satisfied, Rezca nodded and pus
hed Silf’s idol off to the side. To look at him, one wouldn’t think someone like Rezca would be so superstitious. But, then, as businesslike as he might appear, he was still a thug.
But, Denaos noted, a thug with answers.
“How long have you known I was in town?” he asked.
“Exactly one day before you came into it,” Rezca said.
“That’s impressive.”
“Not really,” Rezca replied. “All the ship manifests are available to us and I was there when you chose your latest alias. The only thing truly remarkable is that you haven’t chosen a new one in all these years.”
“I like the sound of it,” Denaos replied. “It’s romantic.”
“Mm.”
“I guess it’s too much to hope you know I didn’t come here by choice, then.”
“You arrived with five other people.” He covered his mouth, swallowed his food. “Pardon. Three people, a shict, and… was that a dragonman we saw yesterday?”
“Yeah. That’s Gariath.”
“Interesting. I thought they only came in the one size.”
“So did I, until I met him,” Denaos said, shrugging. “We’re… they’re adventurers I hooked up with on the outside. Once we get what we came here for, we, including me, will be on our way.”
“Hence why you’ve called for me.”
Rezca had not been Denaos’s first choice. He was far too like-minded to be his first choice.
He, too, was an outsider among the dark and vibrant Djaalics, being tall, pale, and possessed of stern angles and a serious face. He, too, had come from the north owing to circumstances beyond his control and found a modicum of respectable success through disrespectable means. And he, too, was a man who owed every coin, sin, and nightmare to the Jackals.
In a lot of ways, Denaos thought that he and Rezca would be excellent friends, and he suspected Rezca also thought that the two of them were a very good match for each other.
That was probably why they usually tried to avoid each other.
“I called for you because no one else would answer me,” Denaos said. “I can’t reach Yerk or Sandal and the Scarecrow—”
