I took a piece of parchment from my tellensac and handed it to him. “Maybe this is the right time. Probably not.”
He read it aloud. “wantin and rekless men now posess the citee.” He looked up at me. “Homer?”
“By way of Slyngel Thebes.”
It took a long time for him to read the whole letter, for the grammar was insane, the spellings were inconsistent, and there was that reference: “i cannot protect the geld master an yore cuzin wen the crawling feend finds out she es alive.”
“It’s always about a girl,” I said.
He rose to go, then turned to me. “Clearly I have business with Margaret Thebes. But first, it’s not a coincidence, is it? That this reference—‘wanton and reckless men’—is from the bard Homer and that tale of a great odyssey. Which leads me to believe your da, who wrote it to you, was also revealing your real name. I am pleased finally to know you, Odysseus Thebes.”
The Guildmaster
HIS MAM WAS SMALLER THAN HE REMEMBERED.
“I must know the truth,” he said, standing in her door in the guildmaster’s quarters of Thebes. “If I am to answer the request from the guilds, I must know who I am.”
“And have you forgotten all your manners, in this quest for truth?”
“I’m sorry, Mam,” said Errol. “Greetings and I wish you good work this day.”
“Aye, and the same to you. Tea?”
“Nay. It is too much trouble for you.”
“And have you forgotten who I am?”
Errol smiled at her ease with power. “I’ll have tea, then,” he said, and watched while foundlings materialized to fill the table with cloths and teas and cakes. Margaret poured his cup and put sweets on his plate, and he was surprised she remembered how much sugar he liked, and that he preferred walnut ma’amouls over fig or date.
“All right, then,” said Margaret, setting down her spoon and picking up her cup. “See if you can find the thread that unravels the knot.”
“My questions will cause pain,” Errol said.
“We’ll see.”
It was the first time in his life he noticed how red her hands were from the work of running this great iron tower, this small city unto itself, which teemed with activity even now while the two of them sat at a linen-covered table. There was beauty in those hands, and in her strong bones and in her tired eyes and even in the way she tied up her hair. She put her hands around her hot tea, aware that he was taking her in. He was wondering, and he had no guess, what beast prowled her banhus.
“Were you not bound to the creature Utlag?” he asked.
“Aye,” she said. “Five years.”
“Did you know who he was when you were bound, that he was the parasite, the double walker of the abbot Lugius?”
“Of course not. I thought he was a runner, or later an apprentice.”
“Did you never wonder why he removed the mirrors from Thebes?”
“There are more fears than can be counted in this city.”
“Fenn and Rip: Were they your sons and his?”
“Aye.” She set her cup down. “Wild kelps, like their father.”
“And yet I am the son of another.”
She paused. Then: “Aye.”
“You had another man.”
She hesitated again. “Aye, I did. But I was not unfaithful. Utlag was long banished.”
“Banished by you.”
“Aye.”
Errol knew she was more serious now than she had been at first. That she was waiting for the next question. He said, “The new man was Utlag’s opposite. Not a wild beast but a steady one. Not an outsider but an insider. One you could and can trust.”
“Aye.” Margaret stirred her tea. “You can put it that way.”
“In choosing him, you didn’t choose the one who publicly wanted you, who wanted you more than anything he owned or ruled. And everyone knew it.”
“’Tis true.”
“He was not the regnat.”
She spoke low now. “Nay, ’twas not. And I have paid for the error. I should have allowed that binding.”
Errol leaned over to her. “I have met the regnat in low places and high ones, and I promise you, you made no error. You chose one who could remedy pain, instead of inflicting it.”
“Aye. Except I didn’t choose him. He chose me.”
“It was Woody Thebes, was it not?”
“There you have it.” Margaret put up her hands and moved as if to rise.
Errol said, “Woody wasn’t the beast Utlag was.”
She sat again. “You would think. But he was wild in his own way.” When Errol put up his hands, Margaret quickly said, “Of course you don’t want to know the private details.”
“I definitely don’t. But you had a child together.”
“Aye. A beautiful—kelp.”
Now Errol rose from the table and began to walk around his mother’s sitting room. He stopped in front of the fire. “After the birth, you presented the guild with a third son.” She looked up at him and waited. “There is more to be said about that third son. But we must go back in time first, again to Utlag. You expelled Utlag from the guild three years, or maybe four, before you took to Woody. Even so, Utlag was angry. He came for you, did he not? He haunted this guild with the intent of ruining everything that meant anything to you.”
“Aye, he did.”
“And yet it was the regnat who came for your sons. It was not Utlag. It was the regnat who dropped Fenn and Rip from Fremantle.” Here, Margaret put her face in her hands.
“Aye.”
“The regnat did this to punish you.”
“He had no kelps of his own.”
“The regnat is dead, Guildmaster Thebes,” said Errol. “I have killed him.”
Margaret breathed deeply and said, “I know. It will take time to feel the relief in that.”
Errol nodded and went on. “It was nothing to the regnat to drop two runners when his regular business called for dropping foundlings to the streets, dead or alive. To be preyed upon. To be sent to gaol and trained in the ways of monsters. Assassins.” Margaret nodded. He sat down across from her.
“What?” she said.
“I met Fenn.”
Her mouth fell open. “How is that possible? You mean Rip. Rip is the one who’s alive. Not Fenn.”
“I met him when I was in gaol, in the mines below the streets.”
“Tell it,” she whispered.
“The fall didn’t kill him.”
Margaret put her hands up yet again, let them fall, took her cup. Errol refilled the cup for her, and said, “Fenn was damaged by the fall but survived it. Even in the streets, life was impossible for him. He was never one thing or the other. He had an insatiable appetite for human—”
“His father was the same.”
Errol stared at his hands. “Rip took care of him. They were tender with each other. Fenn brought absurd bits of scrap to Rip every day from the street. Gifts.”
“Did Fenn—” Margaret faltered. “Did he know that I didn’t request his fall? That the regnat lied?”
“I told Fenn you missed him. I took this liberty. It mattered to him.”
Margaret crossed her arms, as though to keep herself in one piece. “I thank you,” she said. “I didn’t know how to be his mam.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m not done. The regnat did not have to come after the third child, the son that, to the regnat’s disgust, also was not his. All he had to do this time was wait for Utlag to discover there was another son, and Utlag himself, assuming the regnat was the father, came for that one. Utlag was the bogle who haunted me all through my kelp years.” She would not look at him now. “You knew that would happen,” he said.
She stared at her cup. “Aye, I did. But I didn’t know it was happening until
you came into my quarters one day with the report of it, and a list of suspects.”
Errol inhaled slowly, his breath catching at the idea of a small kelp positioned to take the full force of the double walker. “So let us clear the records of innocent men,” he said. “Slyngel Thebes, my cousin’s father, was not my bogle.”
“Nay. He watched you like you were his own son. Lived in constant fear of Utlag, who threatened him at every turn. Even fought with Utlag to keep you safe. Lost his thumb in the fight and died of poisoning. The third of Faol.”
“I wish you had told me this before Slyngel died. I wish I had thanked him, rather than hated him.”
“None of us thanked Slyngel Thebes. He was an embarrassment.”
“Also, that foundling Feo was not my bogle.” Margaret put her head back and swore. “Even with your love of foundlings, you sacrificed him to save me.”
“Not only you.”
“And it was not the first time you sacrificed a foundling kelp to save your own.”
Margaret flinched. “You have found the thread. Yank it out, will you?”
Till now, Errol and Margaret had been speaking in the dialect of the guilds. His mother’s tongue. His grandmother’s. The ancient tongue of Thebes House, for the ancient words were always used to discuss such powerful things as were at play here. But Errol ceased now and spoke in the common tongue, for he had already begun to feel like an intruder in Margaret’s guild.
“Here is what I had to ask myself,” he said. “What would I do to protect my third kelp, after the first two were thrown from a mile-high tower? My answer? I would do anything. I would build another tower on this one, to keep Utlag from that baby. Aye, but towers do not keep Utlag out! So I would keep the child as far from me as possible, while keeping it near enough to watch and to love. Perhaps I would have it raised by another—say, by my sister Gudrun. Aye, but a guild house knows no end to gossip, and everyone knows the guildmaster was pregnant and the sister was not. That would not be enough, would it?”
“No it wouldn’t.”
“So where do I hide that baby? In my quarters? In the morgues? Utlag can open locks with his fingers. He can move without footfall. A baby would never be safe.” Margaret was biting her lip. “No, I would hide the baby in a ruse. I would hide the baby in a ruse that only I and the midwife would know. Not even the father.”
Margaret turned her face, unable to look at him. “But the father found out,” she said. “He found me in the morgues holding my own baby.”
“He was suitably enraged at what you had done.”
“He left me because of it.”
“I know,” said Errol.
“Oh, just say it!” Margaret snapped. “I’ll just say it. I exchanged my baby for the baby of a foundling mother who had died in childbirth. I did it. Yes. I paid the midwife to keep the secret. I didn’t drop her, you’ll notice, which would have been easy. And I gave the foundling infant a chance to rise to guildmaster.”
“Or to die, which was far more likely. Especially if he—if I—ran the roofs.”
“Aye.” Margaret stared at her fingers.
Errol pressed on: “The bargain Woody would make was that he would stay away from his own child, his daughter, to keep her safe. He would do it only if he were allowed to train the boy, who was me, with everything I needed, to prepare me for what trouble would come my way. He had a conscience.”
“Aye. Woodwork was his idea. Archery and wrestling,” said Margaret.
“For your part, you had to pretend to dislike me,” said Errol.
“I wasn’t pretending. I hated you as I hated everything I had done, all the trouble I had brought on this guild, on this city.”
Errol winced. This was more than he wanted to know. “I see. Well, suffice to say, you began to pay Thebes’s taxes yourself, rather than in a count of foundlings, to protect your daughter.”
“Aye. I pay in gold.”
“That is a great deal of gold,” he said.
“I run a guild frugally. And I have the respect and gratitude of the foundlings, so they work harder than the foundlings in other towers. They don’t know what I did to Feo.”
Errol said, “And they don’t know what you did to me. Utlag made me something of an experiment, really, to see if he could make fear rise in me to create some rare beast.”
“You are rare,” she whispered. Errol put his hands up. He neither wanted the compliment from her nor could he live without it.
He continued, “I’m very much afraid that Feo was my brother. The only family I had left.”
“Your mam died incoherent in childbirth and took her secrets with her. But yes.”
“I thought there were no secrets in this tower, kept from you.”
“You were mistaken.”
Errol moved Margaret’s cup and his so that nothing sat between them. “Have you never told Jamila Foundling who she is?”
“I have not and I will not.” Margaret wiped tears away.
“I will tell her.”
“She’ll certainly die, if she knows. If she appears to be anything but a foundling, Utlag, wherever he is, will come for her. And you won’t know what form he will take or how she will die. And that will haunt your nightmares forever.”
“Her choice, not ours.”
“Don’t talk to me about choices. I have lost sons. I can’t bear to lose her. And while we’re declaring such truths, you can’t be foolish enough to think that the guilds will let you rise, if you’re just a foundling. You now have a secret to keep as well.”
“I didn’t ask to be regnat. I have no such lack.”
“Then you must weigh the third risk, that Jamila will not love you, if she rises and you fall.”
Errol drew back in surprise. How did she know anything of his relationship with Jamila? “I’ll be gone in any case, before she has a chance to leave me.” He closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet smell of tea in the guildmaster’s quarters. It was the last time he would be here, he knew. “If you will not tell her, then I will.”
“I forbid it.”
“I’ll take that into consideration.” Errol stood and put his napkin on the table. “Incidentally, I noticed you abstained from the vote in the guildhall. I wondered why you were not chosen to be regnat.”
“I had already written to the guildmasters to say I would not take the position. There are too many skeletons.”
“Why not Rip?”
“Utlag’s son? The guilds would never permit it.”
“Would you want me to rise over you, when you knew in truth who I am?”
“I was the one to bring the discussion to a vote when I did. I know my fellow guildmasters. I knew they would choose you then and there. We none of us know what to do with those black-iron spikes that burgle the rib cages. You do seem to know.” She looked around at the empty remains of the tea they had drunk. “And now you’re leaving yet again and where will you go?”
“To make a tellensac for your daughter.”
“Here, then,” she said, pulling her own tellensac from her belt. It was heavy with relics. She picked out a wad of paper and handed it to him. “This belongs to her.”
Errol kept his hands from shaking as he read. Afterward he said, “I respect what you’ve done for Jamila, and even for me. You have been her mother and mine as well. Now I must bind myself to the work of the city for I am at the very least this city’s son.”
Margaret stood. “You’ve brought honor to this guild, runner.”
“Foundling,” he corrected her, and left.
Paperwork
I MET JAMILA in the kitchen in Thebes House after midnight and pushed the tellensac across the table to her.
“This is from Errol,” I said. “It’s yours.”
“Foundlings don’t have tellensacs.”
“Like I said. Yours.
”
Errol had made it for her, with an ornate carving of the winged crow on one string-pull, the winged horse on the other. When Jamila tipped it over, a tiny wad of paper fell from it. She peeled it open.
“A page from the midwife’s book,” she said.
“Aye.”
“It gives the date, DCXCVI viiiR. It says, ‘Born to unknown foundling, a son, at four bells. Mother perished. Father unknown.’” A crease formed between her eyebrows. “Here it says, ‘Born to the guildmaster, Margaret Thebes, half an uur after dawn, a daughter. Father: Not given.’” She looked at me and said again: “A daughter.” I waited for her to take it in: A boy, born to a dying mother. A girl, born to the guildmaster. She inhaled, fast. “Errol was sacrificed,” she said.
“No! You were sacrificed! And, here’s something else.”
It was another scrap of parchment:
Jamila Thebes—As it happens, you are a high creature living in low places, and I am another lie told in a city of secrets. I must leave the wall and will head downriver. My stories are half-truths, except those that are between us. You will rise, and I wish you a tellensac full of marvels. I cannot hope you will remember me, but I will remember you forever and am in your service, and in the service of your city, always.
Signed, Errol Foundling
I expected her eyes to be red with tears. Feh. Mine were. But she said, “Who does he think he is, writing a letter like this?”
“What do you mean? He’s sparing himself the embarrassment of being sent away.”
“But I may do what I want!”
“Don’t you understand, Jamila? You have everything now. You can choose anyone. Anyone! Why would you choose a foundling? Anyway, Errol is dropping to the streets. He’s nearly gone. What is the point of hanging on to the idea of him when I am here? What? Cousins have wed! You might remember I was willing to wed you as a foundling. Why are you making that face? Certainly Terpsichore would not stand in our way, given your newfound status. And you could—”
“Nearly gone?” she said. And then she ran, up the stairs, up the ramps, one hundred sixteen strata to the roof. She leapt from the edge of Thebes, soared across the abyss, slammed against the side of Bamako, turned, and sprang back toward Thebes. Down, down, she went, zigzagging across the abyss, dropping into the fog. I flung my pack onto my back, clipped my long-line to the fly, and dropped to catch her.
City of the Uncommon Thief Page 40
