City of Bones

by Martha Wells

  Khat said, "Anyone with real business comes here eventually."

  "They sell valuable relics here?"

  He snorted with mild contempt. "No, nobody sells valuable relics here. They deal relics. It would be crass to produce the merchandise in public."

  Elen shaded her eyes and, not happily, surveyed the growing crowd, the rising dust, and the heat shimmers already bending the air above the pavement in the distance. "Seul still doesn't trust you," she said, with a hint of reproach.

  "That sounds like his problem." Khat wondered if Seul's distrust could have led him to follow Elen, and if it would be wise to try to contact a Silent Market dealer while he was possibly under the other Warder's observation. But no tokens would change hands today, and there should be nothing to tell anyone that the man was anything other than a market idler. Silent Market dealers were thorough professionals, or they were dead at the hands of the Trade Inspectors: there was no margin for error. "I don't think much of Seul either. Somebody had to tell the pirates what wagon you and your relic were on." And those same pirates had supposedly not only left the unconscious Warder for dead, but failed to return later for the body-not a mistake hungry pirates often made.

  "That wasn't Seul; he would never betray us like that." Elen dismissed the whole idea of Seul as a traitor with an unconcerned shrug. "Surely it's no mystery. It must have been Constans. He could have burned bones to see where the relic was going to be, and he gave the pirates that painrod in payment for their services."

  Khat thought she was relying a bit too much on fortune-telling, but he knew Constans hadn't sent the pirates or given them the pain-rod. The Elector's mad Warder had been out there that night killing pirates long before Khat had thought of it. And the only reason to kill the pirates was to distract them from the Remnant. But why hadn't Constans entered the Remnant himself during the night and just taken the relic? He could have been waiting for Riathen to bring the book, Khat told himself. If he's so all-powerful, he would know Riathen would have it with him.

  "But Seul is just too . . . protective," Elen was saying. "I'm not Riathen's pet, or his child. If I wasn't competent he would never have made me a Warder and given me duties and responsibilities." She shook her head. "Who are we waiting to talk to?"

  "Someone who knows something about relics."

  "Do we look for him?"

  "No. If I wait here long enough, he'll find me." Seeing she had another question primed, he relented and explained, "He's a dealer for people who don't want their names known. You can't just walk up to somebody like that; you have to coax him out. If Riathen's right, and the pieces were stolen and sold on the Silent Market inside Charisat, he'll know about it."

  The Silent Market had a presence in every civilized city. It dealt in a variety of goods, from air rifles, which were prohibited to noncitizens in Charisat, and mirage oil, a fragrant essence that gave the wearer the most wonderful waking dreams and with protracted use caused madness, to harmless textiles and incenses from the Ilacre Cities in the Low Desert, which had no agreements with the Fringe Cities and were banned from trade. But in Charisat the main commodity was relics.

  The wait wasn't uneventful. Khat was well known in this area, and people brought him relics to value for the bargain market price of a few copper bits. Some were fragments they had found in rubbish heaps or under the foundations of crumbling buildings on the Seventh or Eighth Tiers; some were treasures handed down through families for generations. In the time they waited, he identified four unworked chunks of mythenin, a tile fragment inlaid with a flower, and pointed out to one elderly man that the "Ancient wooden scribe's palette" he possessed was only about a year old at the most and that he should sell it immediately before the price of teakwood dropped with the return of the Low Season caravans. Then he found one treasure.

  The woman was Elen's age, barefoot and dressed in an undyed kaftan that had turned gray with age, and had two small children in tow. She held out a glittering fragment and Khat took it with reverence. It was only an inch or two long, of a heavy, smoky glass.

  "Some kind of bird?" Elen asked, leaning over it and getting in Khat's light.

  He moved her out of the way with his elbow. "No, a water creature. Those winglike things and the big triangular tail are for moving through water. See, they're smooth, no feathers."

  "Oh, I've read about those. There are some in the Last Sea."

  The woman was looking hopeful. Khat said, "This broke off something, maybe a bowl. It's the only piece you have?"

  "Yes." She wet her lips nervously, and he wondered how close she was to dropping a tier. If she was already on the Eighth and close to being forced out she would look far more desperate than this. "How much..."

  He handed it back to her. "Take it to the Academia. Ask for fifty days, but don't take less than forty. That's fair. It's the material that makes the value. You don't find much of this glass anymore."

  "Forty?" She tucked the bauble away carefully, astonished. "That much?"

  "It's fair. They won't argue that. But ask for fifty, just in case."

  Watching the woman collect her children and disappear into the crowd, Elen said, "If it's that rare, why didn't you trade for it?"

  "I couldn't give her that price. She couldn't afford to take less."

  "But you set the price."

  Sometimes Elen was too obtuse. He gave her a withering look. "There's some people I don't mind cheating. She isn't one of them. How long do you think she'd last in the Waste, or even on the Eighth Tier?"

  After a moment's thought, Elen shook her head and didn't answer.

  Then Khat spotted his quarry. The Silent Market dealer was taking a casual path toward them, stopping to admire the stalls along the way. Khat affected an absorbing interest in the activity at the nearby coppersmith's pavilion as the man drew near. The dealer was eating roasted beans out of a cheap sun-hardened clay bowl, and had the doleful, unreadable face and flat expressionless eyes of a hardened gambler. His name was Caster, and he might not look as if he was just here to enjoy the ambience of the marketplace, but it would be impossible for the untutored to guess what he was here for.

  "Seeing much business today?" Caster asked as he came up to them.

  Khat shrugged one shoulder. "Not much. It's been terrible lately. Nothing but junk on the market."

  "It's a misery," Caster agreed, and sighed heavily. Dealers, even Silent Market dealers, never admitted that business was good. The market was always terrible, the relics available were always junk or forgeries or as common as dust. Cautiously, he nodded to Elen. "Who's this?"

  "My apprentice."

  "You took an apprentice?" His interest quickened, Caster looked almost animated. "Tagri Isoda will go mad. He wanted you to take his son."

  "His son's an idiot."

  Caster nodded agreeably. "But you can't tell him that. Oh, I know you told him, but he doesn't listen. I'm not taking the boy on either, that's a sure one." He looked at Elen with new interest. "Sagai going to teach her too?"

  "He hasn't decided yet. Probably." Khat thought Caster was almost ready to deal, but he wanted the other man to initiate the discussion.

  Caster gazed thoughtfully at the nearby pavilions. "Looking for anything today, or just showing her the trade?"

  Khat shook his head regretfully. "I've got a buyer looking for a good trade, but I can't find anything special for him. And his tokens are upper-tier, too."

  "Really? That's too bad." Caster offered the bowl to Elen, who took one of the beans and bit into it cautiously. "Anything certain in mind? Maybe I can turn something up for you."

  "A mythenin oval, faceted, maybe about so big, with a carved figure, winged, in the center, like this." Lightly, in the dust on the wall, he sketched the shape of the figure. "The other one ..." Khat felt like a fool even describing it, the thing was so unlikely as a relic. If he hadn't seen it pictured in an authentic Survivor text he would never have believed in its existence. "It's a large square block, about four by two,
with incised line patterns."

  Caster's eyebrows went up, but he didn't comment on the dubious possibility of coming across such a relic. He was silent for what Khat thought was a longer time than necessary. Finally he asked, "How particular is your buyer?"

  "Very particular." To Elen, Khat explained, "He was asking me if the buyer would take a forgery."

  "Oh," she said, startled.

  "Got to ask," Caster explained to her helpfully. "Skilled craftsmen need to make their living too." He asked Khat, "Is this a recovery?"

  Some collectors hired dealers to "recover" stolen pieces, whether from their own collections, someone else's, or the Academia. Khat knew he was in luck now. He said, "Call it a rediscovery, instead."

  "I know the oval piece, or one close enough to it to be its twin, but it's not on the market anymore."

  "The offer could go high."

  "I would if I could, but it's not a deal I could arrange. Really. Tell him to look for something else."

  "A private collector?"

  Caster shrugged.

  "We might pay for a name."

  Caster looked away, disinterested. "I'll ask, but don't count on anything." Khat knew that for a good sign.

  The dealer's eyes narrowed suddenly. "Huh. What company we're keeping."

  A litter had appeared at the edge of the market, a gaudily expensive one with colorful silk curtains and much ornate golden bright-work. It was Lushan's litter.

  Caster faded into the crowd, and Khat wished he could follow him. He still had a headache and was in no mood for an encounter with Lushan.

  A man in a stained and threadbare robe had been hovering nearby, politely out of earshot. He had the distinctive look and smell of the gleaners who made their living unblocking the sewage outlets down on the Eighth Tier. Now he came forward eagerly, upending at their feet a damp sack of somewhat sticky junk, probably collected out of the sewer flow. Elen gripped the edge of the wall and rocked back at the aroma.

  Khat leaned over to look at the pieces. At least the smell would blot out the odor of Lushan's perfume. "Relics," the man said, grinning up at him toothlessly.

  "Does this happen often?" Elen managed to gasp. She did look sick.

  "You can find some interesting things this way," he told her. He separated out some pieces of broken clock innards, which the unsophisticated were always mistaking for bits of Ancient arcane engines.

  "That's not a relic, and that's not a relic." Out of the corner of his eye he was watching Lushan, who had struggled out of the litter and was lurching toward them. He wore a gold silk overmantle that gleamed in the harsh light, and one servant cleared the way for him while another held a tasseled shade over his head, as if it were possible for the sun to penetrate all the elaborate layers of veiling. Two muscular enforcers were loitering with the litter bearers. Lushan came to all the different markets in turn, to oversee the dealers who worked for him and to frighten his competitors. It was Khat's bad luck he chose today to come to this market.

  Lushan reached them as Khat finished sorting out the few fragments of mythenin from the gleaner's pile. "I see you have a new boy to help you," the broker said. "Is the trade in sewer leavings so brisk, then?"

  Elen blinked at being mistaken for a boy without her disguise, but wisely said nothing. The gleaner peered up at her, confused. Flies and gnats were gathering, attracted by the stains on the man's robe.

  "Am I taking business away from you, then? Isn't this how you started out?" Khat said. The rumor was that Lushan had been born on the Eighth Tier, and fought his way up. The broker hated to hear it repeated.

  The veils trembled in irritation, the only reaction visible. "You'll beg to work for me again, krismen. They always do." Lushan gestured angrily at his servants, and the whole procession moved off.

  That's nice, Khat thought, watching the bulky figure depart, but you're the least of my worries. Elen owed him enough to pay his debt now, and Lushan was too easy to bait.

  "That awful person thought I was a boy," Elen said, sounding indignant.

  "That was Lushan. He's blind in one eye," Khat told her. "And it's probably just as well he thought you were a boy." Lushan's reputation among the women relic dealers was anything but lovely.

  "Is a girl," the puzzled gleaner said, pointing at Elen.

  "We know," Khat assured him. "Eight copper bits for this lot."

  "Done!"

  As the man took his copper bits and his sack and hurried off, Elen asked, "Why did that Lushan want you to work for him?"

  "He's a greedy bastard, and nobody's told him no before." Khat squinted up at the sky. He had felt the rain coming out of the east since early this morning, and now a few dark gray clouds dotted the brilliant blue. All around the marketplace, people were beginning to regard the clouds hopefully, to wipe off pots and bowls and set them out just in case.

  "Well, what Caster said was promising," Elen commented, wiping brick dust off her hands onto the skirts of her kaftan. "Do you think he knows something?"

  "No, but I think he'll find out something before too long."

  Abruptly the rain started. The clouds were sparse, so the sunlight was still bright, and though the raindrops were big they were far apart. All commerce stopped in the general scramble to get outside, to catch the meager fall of water in pots and basins or on bodies. Khat leaned back on the wall to absorb as much of it as he could.

  The downpour stopped as abruptly as it had started, and activity resumed in the central square. The frenetic mood of the market had lightened considerably, though this probably hadn't been enough rain to drop the price of water today.

  Elen used her dampened scarf to scrub the dust off her face. "Can we go see Riathen now?"

  She had sat through her first lesson patiently, for the most part, Khat decided. Time to play by her rules, for a while, anyway. He smiled at her. "After you buy me breakfast."

  ***

  On the way up the ramp to the Third Tier, Khat fell in behind a party of respectable Fifth Tier tradesmen who were probably going to a Patrician's home for a private showing of their wares. The gate-vigils passed Elen and him without comment.

  The tier gates were all built along the same design. A ramp climbed the tier wall, zigzagging back and forth so the incline wasn't too steep for handcarts, and bridged the top of the rail wagon's corridor to reach the level of the next tier. At the top two massive pylons supported the iron frames of the gates.

  "I thought we might have trouble," Elen confided when they were several yards past the gate and on the central street of the Third Tier. "Patricians' homes on this tier have been entered by thieves during the past few tendays." The Third Tier allowed entrance during the day, but closed at sundown to anyone but Patricians and their retinues. The gate from the wagon docks into the Eighth Tier was the only lower-tier gate with guards, and even it had stood open so long the metal had rusted into place.

  Khat shrugged, too interested in looking around to make a reply.

  His previous forays onto this tier had been after dark, when entrance from the lower tiers was forbidden, and the necessity of making those trips only during moonless nights had kept him from seeing much of it.

  The Third Tier didn't seem too different from the better residential areas of the Fourth. The shops were smaller and sold little else besides luxury goods. There were sellers of mint and rare herbs, book dealers, and weavers who spun precious metal into thread, all industries that catered only to the wealthy. There were few peddlers and fortune-tellers, and no crowding of loiterers in the alleys. The artisans that took the imported raw materials and gave Charisat its trade goods worked mainly below the Fourth Tier.

  The lower Patricians had their homes here, large manses set back from the cleanly swept streets, with high walls and gates enclosing private courts. Every house boasted wind towers, tall narrow chambers projecting above the roof that caught the wind in slatted vents and drew it down into the structure. Through the few gates that stood open for visitors Khat
caught glimpses of fluted columns, fountains, and potted flowers.

  "Why do you need a partner?" Elen asked him suddenly. "Doesn't that just mean splitting up the profits more?"

  Khat snorted, thinking, Profits? You're an optimist, Elen. "Sagai studied in the Scholars' Guild in Kenniliar. He should be at the Academia, but they won't allow foreign-born scholars."

  Surprised, Elen considered that. "Then why does he need you?"

  "The other dealers look at him and see gray hair, and they think, here's an old man who's an easy target. He's harder to take than he looks, but he was always having to prove it. He doesn't like to hurt people." He looked down at her. "I don't mind it as much as he does."

  "I'm trembling," she assured him, straight-faced. "Is everyone afraid of you?"

  "Everybody needs someone to watch their back." He shrugged uncomfortably. "I was jumped by bonetakers down on the Eighth Tier once. Sagai found me just as they were about to cut my throat. He was almost too late. I've still got the scar."

  Bonetakers would take anybody and say they were kris, or an executed murderer, or a child with a caul. They operated mainly on the Eighth Tier, where poverty was intense and, if they took a child, the family was more likely to feel guilty relief than to pursue them with a howling pack of relatives and neighbors. Many takers sold lizard or rat bones as human, or stole already dead bodies from charnel houses before they could be burned. But they all knew where the real profit was.

  The takers who had trapped Khat hadn't killed him immediately because they knew they could get more from their buyer by proving he was really kris, and they had disagreed over whether this was best done when he was alive or dead. He had come back to consciousness facedown on the blood-soaked floor of a charnel house, head pounding and sick, bound too tightly to move and choking on a gag. The one who thought he could be shown off just as well dead had just won the argument. He had lifted Khat's head by a handful of hair and put the point of the hooked skinning knife at a corner of his throat when Sagai had come crashing down through the overhead trapdoor. Neither of the takers had survived the experience, and since then Khat and Sagai had had no more trouble when venturing down onto the Eighth Tier.