When the waiter asked if he would like something else, he regretfully declined. He paid his bill and left a silver whistle on the table. A generous tip, but Wooden had been explicit that he was there to be noticed.
At the edge of the plankway, he stared at the business across the street. It was a workshop for a family of weavers, oddly silent for the middle of the day. If Wooden’s information was correct, one of the few non-Salashi faces on this deck could be found inside—Harl, with a number of his heavies.
Movement in an alley caught his eye. One of the Pails’ beetles crouched there, staring.
“Were you the one who found this place?” The child nodded, his eyes wide. “Fine. You will also have the honor of making a report on the next few minutes.”
Pedestrians backed away as Killer removed his weapon from inside his sleeveless coat and joined handle to blade, but no one challenged him. He crossed the street, pushed the front door of the weavers’ workshop open, and went inside to kill everyone he found there.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tin Pail was annoyed.
“Tell me where things stand with Harl.”
Paper Mouse had put people on all of Harl’s known haunts, and even a few of his secret ones, but no one had spotted him. During the spring, beetles had followed him for two solid months, making note of every mistress, business associate, and host he favored. Now he was in hiding, and he’d run to none of those places.
Even though the cosh missed the man himself, they had obligingly locked up Harl’s top heavies for hours. Stripped of his protection, he should have been easy prey.
Tin didn’t need to hear what Paper had to say. His expression told her everything. “He’s gone to ground and no one knows where. He’s smart, boss. He must’ve had a safe house that he only used for emergencies.”
Should have been easy prey.
It wasn’t his fault. It was hers. She might have picked up Harl right there in Upgarden, while he was fleeing the cosh. She could have put her people on the street corners and plankways, waiting for him. But that would have showed her hand too soon. Harl would know for sure that she’d put the cosh on him, and if her people missed—and she’d have put money on Harl’s heavies over her own any day—he could crush her.
She had planned to take over his organization, not fight it.
Tin pushed past the guard and shoved the iron-banded door wide, stepping into the warehouse doorway. Paper Mouse and a few heavies followed to provide protection, but there was no need. Wild Dismal was her place. What had once been a scattered collection of little gangs were now united under her, because of the blood she’d spilled. The rep she’d built here had caught Harl’s eye and led to more responsibilities, more money, and finally the offer of the package.
She would have been happy to serve as one of his lieutenants for a few years, filling her strongboxes with good Salashi coin, before taking Harl’s life. But then everything tipped into a privy and Harl smacked a fucking hammerball right into her face in front of her people. She had to move against him. He’d given her no choice.
Tin wasn’t delusional. She knew how things ended for people like her. What mattered was how much gold she could grab, how far her reputation would spread, and how many gray hairs she had when some asshole took the point to her.
Fuck it. She’d made her first play and missed. Every moment that Harl still breathed was a loss in her column. So be it. If Harl or his people came for her, she’d be ready. Her hand touched the face of her hammer. When she went down, she’d go down fighting.
She’d make sure no one forgot the way she died.
The front steps creaked as she descended to the streets. No skywood construction here. Most of these buildings had been built from dark woods cut during the clearing of the farmwilds. Most hadn’t even been decorated with carvings. It was just thrown together and done. There was some skywood here and there, mainly in the hanging braces that connected to High Apricot above, and obviously the decking itself, but Wild Dismal was a cheap nothing little pocket in the massive structure of Koh-Salash.
In the street, Wooden Pail twirled and thumped his feet in tune with the music from the platform halls on the deck above. There was no one else nearby—no friends, no women, just him, dancing in the fire-lit darkness, hands above his head.
Tin laughed. When the platform halls of High Apricot were booming out their drum and flute, the sound was inescapable. The poor, the miserable, and the crooked either learned to sleep through it, slept during the day, or they went mad.
But Wooden’s response to that oppressive, unceasing noise was to dance. Why her little brother had saddled himself with a name that meant “stiff and expressionless,” she would never understand. The only thing wooden about him was his head.
She caught hold of Paper’s sleeve and pulled him close. “Where is his bodyguard?”
“There,” he answered nervously.
She spotted him then, in a shadowy doorway nearby. Here in Wild Dismal, there was no trouble about carrying his glaive openly, with the full handle attached. Tin Pail wanted him to go around armed, and the few constables who wandered through were happy to look the other way in exchange for a little copper.
She’d heard that the Free Cities had adopted the glaive for their armies, but there was no way to copy that good ghostkind steel. No one in all the nations of humankind knew how it was made. All they knew was that they didn’t want to face an enemy wielding that edge.
Tin shivered just a little bit. Very few people who made her nervous, but her bodyguard was one of them, even when she was surrounded by her own heavies. The Salashi had godkind magic of their own—not that anyone ever saw the effects of Yth and Suloh’s gifts, because they were hoarded by the priests and the nobility—but the talent that the Katr people took from the dead god in the north operated on a whole other level.
“Where have you been? You’re supposed to be guarding my brother.”
Her bodyguard glanced at Wooden.
“Me. Me. Me,” Wooden said. “I sent him away. It’s not his fault. It’s mine. I needed him to fetch something.”
“Well, we don’t have time to fuck around,” Tin snapped. “We have to find Harl’s new hiding place—”
Wooden held up his hand, and she stopped speaking. Few could do that without risking a cracked skull, but her baby brother had special privileges. He turned to the bodyguard. “Show her what I sent you to pick up.”
The bodyguard shrugged and picked up a cloth sack from the alleyway behind him. He opened it.
Inside was the severed head of Harl Sota List Im.
“Shit,” Tin blurted out. “Nice. Hold on to that. I have need of it. Paper, let’s get moving. It’s time to make some money. The rest of you, keep those lanterns bright, and clear out these fucking alleys. Treat every drunk you see as a spy for the cosh. Don’t kill them, but get them out of here. And double the watch on this block.”
It was time to open shop.
* * *
Nothing good had come out of Cold Sunshine’s trick with the bucket of piss in Sailsday’s Regret. Nothing bad, either. He didn’t know High Apricot as well as Spillwater, but it turned out that he didn’t need to. The cosh had run out of breath after only a few minutes and given up the chase. Cold backtracked far enough to see them slip into a public bath, and he knew Second Boar was safe.
After, he went back to running the errands for Nal At Isp, only they had been moved from the platform halls of High Apricot to the brothels of Low Apricot. That was a step down the slope for Nal, and he was sour about it. Apparently, Cold’s trick had emptied the cafe, and Nal caught shit for it.
Not from Harl, obviously. The big boss was feeling heat from the eye, and he’d gone into hiding along with some of his most trusted people. Still, his organization had enough lieutenants and sub-bosses that things could run smoothly. For a while.
Like most of the foreign friends, Nal was under Pol Sota Lim Ilt, the only one of Harl’s four lieutenants who was of C
arrig descent, but even he was too far up the slope to give a shit. Nal took his orders from the managers of the businesses they protected, and from the plank bosses that kept order in the surrounding blocks. And Cold took his orders from Nal. For now.
Sometimes, Cold imagined the two of them straying near the edge of a deck. One quick shove—that’s all it would take—and he wouldn’t have to take the point to Nal. The fall would do the work for him. Cold wouldn’t be able to touch the blood, which was disappointing, but he might still see Nal’s final expression if he was facing the right way. Cold could imagine that mix of surprise and terror—
“What the fuck are you laughing about?” Nal snapped.
“I was laughing?” Cold replied, which was exactly the wrong thing to say.
Nal shook his head. “Gimme that.” Nal snatched the jug of Carrig wine from him. His eyes were already bleary. If Nal got blind drunk, Cold would have another chance to recoup his expenses from his boss’s purse.
“Got a job for you,” Nal said. “There’s a petal down in The Shivers buying cups of wine for beetles and heavies. He says he’s a pickpocket out of the farmwilds, but I say he’s working for Gray Flames. See that he’s shoved off, and don’t take the point to him.”
Cold’s desire to stay and pluck some silver from his boss was like a heartache, but he couldn’t shirk when he had a direct order. He set off.
In many ways, Low Apricot was like its older sibling. It was filled with platforms, cafes, and taverns. There were even a few platform halls.
But the streets were narrower, the buildings smaller, and the venues seedier. Less of Suloh’s light found its way to the people. In its own way, Low Apricot was more dangerous than a place like Spillwater.
Downslope in the city, young criminals were organized into gangs. When they aged out, as Cold had, they either went to work for one of Harl’s lieutenants or they got themselves regular jobs and became petals. Once you joined Harl’s organization, you were organized. You took orders.
But Low Apricot, with its brothels, shitty platform halls, and cheap booze, was like a magnet for young men working in trades or just off the ships. They roamed the deck in packs, getting drunk, looking to get laid or start a fight. They were petals, yeah, but they might beat the shit out of you for the way you looked. Or for no reason at all. And that was the problem. They didn’t understand that there were rules.
But it was a little too early for those packs to be roaming around, and it was certainly too early for the beetles to be drinking, even the cheap, watered-down piss that was served in The Shivers.
The tavern was exactly the same as the week before, when Cold had delivered lunch to his boss. There were benches along the wall, and battered tables in the center, with little wobbly stools around them. The place smelled of sawdust, sweat, and vomit. In one corner was a group of seven young men huddled around a jug, roaring with laughter. Scattered throughout were beetles, old men, and hard drinkers.
And there was the petal Nal wanted him to roust. He was just a boy, barely more than thirteen, a Salashi kid with close-cropped hair like some kind of servant. Well, that would explain where he stole the money to stand all these drinks.
Cold realized he’d laid his hand on his knife. If there was anyone in the world he would like to take the point to, it was that kid. He didn’t even know why. He just didn’t like the way he looked.
But not now. Orders.
First, he’d let the kid buy him a few drinks but without really telling him anything. Then, he’d put the fear of steel into him and take whatever coin he had left.
But before Cold could move in, a beefy guy with a green cloth tied across his face pushed through the door and approached the boy’s table. Cold didn’t like the look of him and kept his distance.
The kid and the beefy guy talked for a long time.
* * *
By the time Kyrioc reached Wild Dismal, heavies were clearing drunks out of alleyways. The noise and upheaval helped him locate the building with two buckets above the door, but the street was well lit by lanterns and the building well guarded. Men and women circled the property and patrolled the nearby streets. Kyrioc withdrew, then crept forward again.
The lantern light was too bright for his cloak of shadows—he would have looked like a dark cloud floating along the deck. His cloak of mirrors worked in crowds or in spaces where he could pass as someone who was supposed to be there, but this was a nearly empty street patrolled by gangland heavies. They’d even driven off the back-alley drunks. The only cloak Kyrioc would be able to wear was his cloak of iron, and that meant fighting his way in.
For Riliska, he would chance it.
He should have stopped at the pawnshop. The weapon he’d brought back from Vu-Dolmont—but hoped he would never take up again—waited for him there. He could return to Woodgarden right now to fetch it.
But it would be morning when he returned, and Riliska… Anything might have happened to her in that time. Anything at all.
The knife he’d taken from that ironshirt would have to do.
Kyrioc felt heavy with purpose for the first time since his return to Koh-Salash, and a small part of him was overjoyed. Rage had returned. Spark. It felt like a living thing inside him, curling and thrashing.
Now all he needed to do was infiltrate that building and find Riliska. Rousted drunks and homeless, hopeless beggars shuffled past him, muttering resentfully. Kyrioc glanced down the alley and saw one of the heavies moving back into the fire-lit street.
Just as Kyrioc was about to follow, the heavy was joined by another. They muttered to each other, and the new one glanced down the alley at him. Their gazes met, and Kyrioc quickly looked down and backed away. Criminals often pursued and robbed anyone who appeared submissive—they didn’t even think about it, they just went—but not this time. They were too busy clearing the neighborhood.
Too bad. Kyrioc could have made good use of the hatchet the man was carrying.
The patrol circled eastward, and when their backs were turned, Kyrioc sprinted across the narrow street into the next alley. There was too much trash—broken crockery, shivered barrel withies, and more—for him to move quickly in the darkness, but he didn’t need quickness. Not yet.
When the gangsters had set their lanterns, they’d put them in the middle of the street, to cover as much of the block as possible. That meant the light struck the mouths of the alleys at an angle and only lit the very ends. Kyrioc crept forward slowly, using the reflected light to avoid the trash. The ever-present thump and whine from the platform halls above faded slightly. If the platform halls were closing, dawn must have been near. He edged toward the mouth of the alley and peered out.
The warehouse was there. It took up the whole block, and the sign above the door was freshly painted. The front door had two big, intimidating Salashi heavies standing beside it, and there were two more in the middle of the street. Two civilians pleaded with the heavies at the door for something, but whatever it was, they weren’t getting it. They handed over a purse and walked away.
A patrol rounded the block while another approached from the opposite direction. A pair of lookouts peered over the edge of the roof, but Kyrioc couldn’t see their hands. Bows were absolutely illegal inside the city for anyone but city and temple guards, but if Tin Pail had control of the neighborhood, that was the place to station archers.
The warehouse looked sturdy, with no windows except slender vents near the roof to let out lantern smoke. The streets were narrow, but not narrow enough to jump from roof to roof, even if he thought he could squeeze through one of those vents.
But everyone was moving in pairs. For his cloak of mirrors to work, he was going to need someone to walk beside him.
Maybe—
“Psst. You there, good sir.” A silhouette leaned out of a broken window above and behind him. He couldn’t see her, but was an old woman’s voice. “That’s not a safe place for you to be. Quickly, before they see you. Quickly.”
Kyrioc gripped the windowsill and pulled himself up and through, sliding smoothly into the darkness of the room above. No sooner had he settled in than he heard footsteps among the alley trash. Another patrol must have been approaching from the side of the street where he couldn’t see them.
He wasn’t worried about fighting a heavy or two, but taking them on without a plan meant he might have to fight all of them, and that would give them time to bar the doors. “Thank you.”
“Come along,” the shadowy figure said. “There’s light by the front.”
Light from the street shone through dirty windows—she had no lanterns of her own—revealing a rack of iron pots and cooking equipment on one side of the room. The rest was filled with small round tables and low benches. Once, this had been a cafe.
The room smelled like rancid oil and spoiled meat. As the old woman settled into a bench near a window, Kyrioc got a good look at her. Her gray hair was disheveled and dirty, and her skin was sallow. Her grimy arms were so thin, they were nearly skeletal.
He stayed back, in the darkness.
“Are you the reason they increased the guard?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Pity. I don’t think I could quite manage to stick a knife into one of the Pails, but maybe you could.”
He asked the obligatory question. “Why do you want them killed?”
She looked up at him. He must have been little more than a voice in the black to her. If she thought he might harm her, she didn’t show it. Perhaps she had moved beyond fear to an acceptance of death, a state Kyrioc had spent many years searching for but had never found. “Me and my daughter had a cafe once. My husband served fifteen years as a loyal stitch of some High Slope big shot, and managed to brown-tongue his way to a loan. We did well, too, because my daughter created a special kind of chewy bun. It was a big hit.”
“But then Tin Pail took notice.”
“No, it was her brother Wooden. The crazy one. He came every day for a week, stuffing himself and complaining that he had to walk from Wild Dismal to High Apricot for them. One day, his big sister fixed it for him. Her heavies showed up at the start of the day and took everything out of the cafe—the aprons, benches, kettles, everything—and brought it down here. Now her precious little brother only had to cross the street to buy his favorite food, and the Pails’ thugs were our only customers.
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