Revelers gave him a wide berth as he strode the promenade. A pair of lithe young women in silk vests edged toward him carefully, smiling as they offered him a taste from the jug they carried. He brushed them off. Our boy Second was not easily distracted from his assigned task.
Rueful grins on their faces, the young women headed toward the Sunken Drum, but not without an apologetic glance at Onderishta first. Selsarim Lost! Who trained these people in undercover work?
As Second turned to survey the growing crowd, Onderishta lifted her cup to her mouth to hide her face. Last year, she’d sicced the ironshirts on him once before, had him dragged to the south tower, and interrogated him about Harl’s business. If he recognized her now, he hid it well.
When she looked up, she saw him touch the left side of his vest to reassure himself something was there. Perfect.
He entered the platform hall with little more than a nod to the gate man—prompting a halfhearted groan from those who had to pay—then plunged into the crowd.
Fay Nog Fay went in right behind him.
Onderishta stood. She was already unhappy. Fay was supposed to signal that the exchange had been made by taking off his scarf again, but Second was late and the crowds early. She couldn’t see Fay or Second Boar amidst the dancing bodies.
* * *
Rulenya, child of Rashila, thrust her hands in the air, feeling the pounding of the drums through her whole body. She loved coming to Sailsday’s Regret, loved the bounce in the wooden platform, but most of all she loved the kettledrums. This was her element. This was what she worked all week for.
“It’s like I’m going to fucking war!” she shouted at whatshisname, the guy who was paying for tonight. Haliyal, that was it. Haliyal did as he was told. Haliyal had brought a jug to her stall before the evening began so she could get her wobble going. Only a fool tried to start a drunk on the overpriced swill at a platform hall.
“Sure, baby!” Haliyal shouted back. A boring answer from a boring guy.
As the years wore on, the guys had become less fun. They had less power and more desperation. The really hot ones barely gave her a second glance. Rulenya was still beautiful, but nobody stayed young forever. She just needed to keep whatshisname from getting what he wanted too early, because then he’d stop buying drinks.
“MORE!” she shouted as another boy circled the rail. Haliyal shoved through a circle of girls and returned with two cups. She took both and downed them, to his clear delight. They were stronger than expected. She cheered. He cheered. She threw the cups toward the outer edge of the canvas roof, knowing they’d fall into the pouch at the rim to be collected, rinsed, and filled again.
None of the idiots here were as drunk as she was. She was drunk enough to jump, drunk enough to dance with wild abandon, drunk enough to cheer at the warlike kettledrum beat. When she collided with other dancers, she was drunk enough to risk relieving them of petty trinkets like combs or bracelets, because these people were nothing but helpless petals. She was even drunk enough to fuck this boring guy with the desperate smile, once he’d bought a few more cups. She was drunk enough to feel sure she could give him what he wanted without coming down with another Long Hangover.
What she wasn’t, though, was drunk enough.
A huge, meaty hand landed on Haliyal’s shoulder and shoved him aside. He turned, fists clenched, until he got a look at the man who shoved him. He was dressed in green and black, wearing sash, vest, and long trousers on the sweaty platform, but his bald head and scarred knuckles marked him as one of Harl Im’s heavies. Haliyal raised both hands in a placating gesture, but the big man didn’t seem to notice.
The big guy’s hand pressed the bottom of his vest against his gut. Rulenya had picked enough pockets to know what that meant. He was carrying something valuable.
“Come on!” she shouted, pulling her useless date—her walking wallet—into the big guy’s wake. Haliyal didn’t like it, but she kept him dancing and moving along. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough for him to buy the drinks. They were listening to war music, and if wanted to have her, he would have to plunder.
“I can’t challenge that guy,” he shouted, and she rolled her eyes.
“Of course not! Look!” She turned and rubbed her ass against his hips, and they both saw the big guy pull a folded leather packet from his vest and pass it to a skinny little guy with three rattail braids on his forehead. The little guy passed back a coin pouch. “Him you can challenge. Let’s go to fucking war!”
The two gangsters turned away from each other. The big guy continued moving away toward the rail, but the little guy pushed his way right toward them. Haliyal did just as he was told. He danced and spun until the gangster with the little braids had just passed him, then he punched him, hard, behind the ear.
The man staggered against Rulenya and she righted him quickly, turning him so his back was to Haliyal, who had already disappeared into the crowd. Rulenya glanced at the big gangster, but his back was to them. As the big man moved away, he revealed a pale, foreign-looking little guy who was flinging his blue scarf into the air in time with the beat. He looked like an idiot, but something about his expression made her wary.
She tucked the folded leather packet into her trousers and vanished into the crowd.
* * *
Onderishta needed stilts.
Her second had vanished in the crowd. She approached the entrance with the captain and a pair of constables, glaring up at the gate men. They glared back. During business hours, the platform hall could deny entry to anyone they pleased, even the city constables. This was one of Harl’s places, and he was the only gangster in the city with a parsu’s protection. If Onderishta ordered her soldiers to push through that gate without cause, she would have to answer to the High Watch.
A third gate man had come to reinforce the usual pair, and all carried hatchets in their belts. Harl’s people were usually smart enough to leave their weapons alone when dealing with ironshirts, but her own people kept their hands on their truncheons, just in case.
Tiptoeing, Onderishta tried to peer through the crowd, but it was pointless. The dance floor was three steps above the promenade. She couldn’t have peered over the heads of those revelers if she’d stood on a chair.
Just then, the tail end of Fay’s blue scarf appeared above the heads of the crowd. It snapped upward as though he was aiming at a fly, then it snapped upward again.
The captain saw it too. She quirked her head at Onderishta. “Is he signaling, do you think?”
“He must have taken it off to fling it into the air, right?”
“So,” the captain said uncertainly, “that’s the signal?”
Onderishta suppressed her irritation. “Let’s move. And there’s our boy.”
She pointed to the hulking figure of Second Boar as he emerged from the crowd. At the same moment, the captain blew her whistle and her ironshirts surged forward.
The gate men were smart. They left their hatchets in their belts, extended their arms and shouted in protest. They wouldn’t fight constables, and they wouldn’t threaten them—no one wanted another Downscale War—but they could stall so the criminals they protected had a chance to get away. If they did anything more than that, the ironshirts could treat them like belligerents and start breaking bones.
The constables formed a wedge and pushed through, slapping the gate men’s hands aside with leather gauntlets. The music faltered and stopped. Dancers spilled over the railing like a flood breaching a seawall, fleeing in a panic. More ironshirts left their stations around the promenade and rushed toward them.
Second Boar walked to the rail and stopped. People were watching, and running away was undignified for such a big man. He had a rep to consider. The dance floor was nearly empty, and Second strolled calmly toward the gathering ironshirts.
The constables lowered their shoulders and tried to knock him down, but Second braced and cast them aside. The screams of the panicked revelers mixed with the shouts of her ironshirts.
The ironshirts leaped on him—three, then four, then five—all shouting at him to drop to the ground. Instead, he planted his feet and twisted his body like a wrestler, slamming constables against each other and pitching them to the floor. He did not give a single fuck about being labeled a belligerent.
Enough. Onderishta took two running steps, leaped upward, then brought her considerable weight down on the back of Second Boar’s left knee.
He toppled sideways, bringing the constables with him. They knelt on his arms and ankles, and he finally gave up the struggle.
Onderishta stood over him. “Hello, Second. It’s been a while.”
His only answer was to glower at her. Fine. The pocket on the left side of his vest bulged a bit. A coin purse. She opened it.
There were five golden Harkan regents inside. The diameter of each was longer than her middle finger. One of the ironshirts whistled. This was enough for Onderishta to buy the city block that she lived in.
“Never knew you were a thief,” Second Boar said, “Onderishta, child of Intermala.”
So he knew her full name! She was sure he meant it as a kind of threat, but she wasn’t impressed. “Second Boar”—best to pretend she didn’t know his real name—“you’ll get these back if you come along peacefully and we don’t charge you with a crime.”
“No law against carrying coin, is there?”
“That depends on what you just sold.” The platform was almost completely empty now. The band gathered around the hat they used to collect their tips, muttering over the contents. By now, Fay should have had the courier—and the item Second had been carrying in the left side of his vest—in hand.
She didn’t see him, and that made her nervous.
To the captain, she said, “Take him to the south tower. I’ll want to talk to him there.”
One of the constables hurried toward her. “Your boy says there’s a problem.”
Of course, Fay Nog Fay was no boy. He would turn thirty in less than a month. His small, lithe body, not so different from the tray boys selling cups at the rim of the hall, made people underestimate him. Also, he did not have Salashi blood, so the constables were not inclined to treat him with respect. At least they no longer called him “good sir yellow,” which had been intolerable.
As Onderishta hurried toward him, she could see that he was very angry.
“I lost the courier and the package both,” Fay said, his fists clenched at his side. “I was right there for the exchange, but the big oaf turned suddenly and knocked me into the crowd. By the time they stopped shoving me around, the courier was gone, like a fucking ghost.” He shook his head. “I wrecked the whole operation.”
Although Fay kept his chin up, his cheeks were flushed. His pale Carrig complexion—how was his skin tone supposed to be yellow?—showed embarrassment so easily.
“The fault isn’t yours,” Onderishta told him, and she meant it. The fault was hers. The operation needed more bodies, but who could she have recruited? More young women who shrugged apologetically at her?
Fay was the only one she trusted to perform his duties competently, and soon he would be promoted to lead his own unit. In fact, it would have happened already if he’d been of Salashi heritage. Where he would find qualified people of his own, she had no idea.
“I’d recognize the courier if I saw him again,” Fay insisted. “I saw his face.”
Onderishta moved to the rail. She had a decent view of the promenade, but nothing immediately caught her eye. Some of the revelers who had been driven from the hall lingered nearby, watching. Others moved to other platforms, or food stalls, or privy shops.
But she saw no furtive movements, no little clusters of people excited about what one of them was holding, no crooked grins of contemptuous triumph.
The new Safroy heir had given her this assignment, and he’d stressed its importance multiple times. He’d wanted that package, whatever it was, intercepted.
He wasn’t going to get it. Not tonight.
“Fuck.”
* * *
Somehow, Haliyal seemed to know where Rulenya would slip out of the platform hall, because he was there, waiting. Or maybe he was just lucky. Fine. It didn’t matter. Rulenya was willing to share the score, whatever it was. She swung both legs over the rail and gestured at the nearest tray boy. Haliyal bought again, but this time he kept one for himself. His hand trembled as he drank.
They moved with the crowd, putting Sailsday’s Regret far behind them. Haliyal clutched at her arm until she showed him that she’d snatched the leather packet.
“That was—”
“Bold,” Rulenya said. If she’d let him finish the sentence with stupid or risky, it would have ruined the mood. They’d faced the enemy and triumphed! They’d robbed a gangland heavy like he was a pretty little petal waiting to be plucked. Shouldn’t they celebrate?
“You have very deft hands,” he said, absentmindedly checking his own purse.
She laughed. “Of course!” Raising one hand, she pretended to hold a slender brush. “How else do you think I paint such intricate designs?”
There was a paper lantern at the entrance to a privy shop, and they strolled toward it. A smart thief would wait until they got home to open the packet, but then Haliyal would want her right then and there, without spending another knot on her wobble, and the Long Hangover would still be sniveling in her bed.
Besides, she was drunk enough to take a risk.
Standing very, very close together, Rulenya opened the leather pouch.
Inside was an ear. It was the most perfect little ear you could imagine, like the ear of a child. Smaller even than her daughter’s, maybe.
But this hadn’t come from a child of humankind. It was not brown, but bluish-white, and the skin reflected the lamplight with dozens of tiny flecks of color.
“Oh, fuck,” Haliyal muttered.
Then she realized what she was holding. It was an ear from one of the glitterkind.
“Selsarim Lost,” Rulenya said. “We’re fucking rich.”
CHAPTER THREE
There were no gardens in the Woodgarden deck, and as far as Kyrioc could tell, there never had been.
Nestled snugly inside the midpoint of Yth’s rib cage, Woodgarden was a long crescent that connected both free ribs by way of the collarbones, and it was one of the oldest decks in Koh-Salash. Once the refugees from Lost Selsarim discovered the properties of the skywood growing out of those bones, they must have fallen on it like starving children on a long-abandoned larder. That first harvest must have made them rich, even if they were still learning how best to exploit this godly treasure.
But those days were long gone, and the wealth created from those early harvests had found its way elsewhere. All that remained in Woodgarden were the ancient plankways, decks, and buildings built to accommodate those original workers.
There was still skywood to be cut, still growing just as slowly as it always had, but now it was chained off. Private guards made sure that only the approved woodcutters, working for the approved owners, harvested the bounty of a dead god who had once benefited all.
As the fortunes of Woodgarden shrank, so had its dignity. There were still hardworking men and women living in the cramped apartments built upon the ribs, but they were fewer every year, just as there were fewer tea shops, bakery stalls, private tutors, and buskers. Every year saw more elderly folk sleeping on the planks, wild kids no one could control, and jobs for private guards willing to dole out bruises and broken bones with glee.
Control of the skywood that grew here had been seized by a few noble families, admir-Something and defe-Nobodycares. Wealth flowed uphill to them, and the only thing that trickled back down was sewage.
Kyrioc, child of No One, had learned Woodgarden’s secrets well over the past year. He had returned to Koh-Salashi quietly, like a criminal. In truth, he would have preferred to go anywhere else: the disputed Harkan plains, the Free Cities, the lavish Carrig ports. He couldn’t. He’d made a prom
ise.
So, he’d wandered through Mudside, the darkest part of Koh-Salash, which the light of sun—and of the murdered god of the sun—rarely touched. In this city, the poorest did not even have a right to see the sky. If someone else had the money, they could just build a new neighborhood over yours, replacing day-, star-, god-, and moonlight with a network of sewer pipes that were supposed to be sealed against leaking. And if they built it from skywood, you couldn’t even daydream about burning it down.
Kyrioc had settled in Woodgarden. Down in Mudside and other low places, people lived in an inescapable shadow economy of crime and exploitation. In so-called respectable parts of the city, Salashi lived and worked under the watchful eye of the city bureaucracy. Woodgarden fell in between. There was honest work to be done, but it meant living among thieves.
Horizontal shafts of golden light shone between the buildings. Downcity, sunrise was the brightest time of the day, because the sunlight slanted from the east and reached far into the interior. As the sun rose, the shadow of the decks above threw people into gloom.
Kyrioc walked down the broad plankways to the market. He preferred the early hours, when vendors were too busy setting up their stalls to chat. He bought three buns, a triple order of boiled rice, and a bundle of purple carrots. After a moment’s hesitation, he spent extra for a loaf of fresh bread and two small crocks of preserved fish.
The florist was next. Red poppies. Thirty of them, which he was buying a day early to make sure she had plenty in stock. She was startled by the order. She muttered that the next day would be Mourning Day, yes, and she’d ordered extra poppies and daisies and lilies and roses, of course, but if her very first sale was thirty, well my goodness, she wasn’t sure if she was truly prepared for the season, and…
Kyrioc endured her nervous chatter without meeting her gaze and she quickly lost momentum. He paid, then waited while she tied the bouquet into three equal bundles. When she handed the flowers to him, he accepted them with his left hand. She glanced down at his discolored flesh and offered a rote condolence. He was already walking away before she could finish.
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