“We wait for the thief to do something stupid.”
At the time, it was a decisive thing to say. Thieves were fools. They bragged, they gambled, they fenced treasures for trifles. The wharf rat was bound to turn up.
Sage words, and Revel swallowed them whole. Once they’d sloughed off their sodden clothes and scrubbed off the stink of the streets, he crawled into her bed and fell asleep in seconds. With a final sigh for the night that might have been, El Sha La joined him and willed herself to fall asleep. Nothing came of it.
Revel began to snore.
El Sha La stared up at the velvet canopy, unconvinced by her own bluster. The thief could be anywhere by now. An underground fortress, a southbound ship, a dimensional rift, anything seemed possible in the long dark. Worry ate at her. No matter which way she tossed or turned, dread lay in wait.
She breathed deep, she counted sheep, she flexed and released each muscle from her toes to her eyebrows. Nothing helped. Her body was beyond weary, her mind aflame. The war ended in stalemate, a thin half-sleep. Too soon, she woke to a nightmare of her own voice.
We wait for the thief to do something stupid.
El Sha La was alone in her cold bedroom. It was long before dawn, Revel was gone. Her brash words seemed to echo on and on, impossibly conceited.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
El flicked her fingers to light the candle beside her bed. No spark came. Of course, he’d left her. She was only a summer fling. A sheath for a few weeks, and then on to the next. She’d known it all along, so why were her eyes wet?
Stupid!
El Sha La snapped her fingers. A wild flare howled at the ceiling and nearly set the bed ablaze. Wax was spattered on the bedside table. El shook her head and saw she’d wasted half the candle. Some sorceress! Less than an apprentice, fumbling a cantrip she could cast before she could crawl.
This was all her fault. Her head hung under the weight of everything she should have done. What were they thinking, trying to find a lone boy in Lhaz in the middle of a shipbreaker?
“Can’t you scry him out?”
Revel’s critique haunted her. She’d barked at him last night, unwilling to admit she was too high to even try. Divination was decidedly not her strong suit. Still, the boy had left a bloody trail across the entire tower. A drop ought to be enough to tease out an arcane sympathy and track him down.
With new hope, she carried the half-melted candle up the stair to the scene of the crime. She stepped inside Arath’s bedchamber and almost screamed.
The room was spotless. The burned rug was missing, the bed was made. Revel had come up here to cover their tracks. Every trace of blood was scrubbed from the floor. Her eyes fell on the pedestal. The silver talons grasped nothing. The gate orb was gone. Blasted oaf!
On her hands and knees, El Sha La crawled until she found a blotch between two marble tiles. She whispered the sigils, concentrated, and conjured nothing but a headache. She tried another spot and reeled with nausea. All the color seemed to suck out of the world.
Snake lead!
The magebane obliviated all bond between boy and blood. A real diviner might have overcome it, but El Sha La’s unversed sorcery found no purchase. She ought to have known better. All the books she’d meant to memorize were in the library, untouched on the shelves. Summer was gone, smoked and poked away.
Now, she would pay. Arath would wring every detail out of her. The Gate Orb, lost in the throes of passion. The guardian, too high and preoccupied to strike the thief dead on the spot. Too inept to scry him out afterward. Too scared and ashamed to call for help. A complete disappointment. El Sha La wanted to disappear completely.
Alas, she didn’t know that spell, either. It didn’t matter. Arath would find her, anywhere upon the Arc. She wore his mark, a slender chain no blade could break. A golden canary was frozen inside a tiny crystal teardrop. If that drop should shatter, Arath would hear it, no matter how far. El ran her fingernail down the links of the chain. Her eyes fell on the bed. She shook her head.
Rather die.
Decided, she traced the thief’s flight through the tower, hoping to find a spot of blood Revel had missed. Every speck was scrubbed away. When set to a task, Revel was disgustingly thorough. El shook her head, wondering why she’d shacked up with an empty-headed soldier.
If she was honest with herself, it wasn’t as if she’d had her pick of poets and painters. Revel was the only one who wanted her. The only man at court brave enough, or dumb enough, to bed the archmage’s daughter. Of all the flashy, fawning females that flocked around the duke’s second-born son, only El Sha La treated him like dirt. He couldn’t get enough.
‘Til now.
With a scowl, El Sha La she descended the stair to the grand entrance. Everything was scrubbed and set to right. The shattered statue was swept up and disposed of.
Revel hadn’t left! The culprit rose and met her eyes. Revel had waited for her in the foyer, dressed for war. Clean shaven, with a sword belt at his side and a coat of mail beneath his gold-trimmed black cotehardie. He flashed a grin, aware of his effect on her.
“Ready, Princess?”
Her scowl could have melted metal, but beneath, she rippled with relief.
He’s only here to cover his indiscretion, El reminded herself. Or else he just wants his dagger back. The sheath on his left hip hung sad and empty. Whatever the reason, she needed him. Lhaz was too big to search on her own.
The hunt began again. El Sha La had no better plan than to repeat their spiraling search by daylight, but Revel had other ideas. He steered them through the fashionable petty manors of Danatella Rise to Flower Alley. Revel rapped sharply on an arched door inset with a wrought-iron rose.
A woman in a diaphanous nightgown snarled about the hour. Her tune changed presto when Revel asked to speak with the legate of trade. The bleary bureaucrat burst from a bedroom and all but dragged them inside. Revel explained their predicament, and the legate immediately agreed to issue an emergency edict.
Henceforth, every ship that embarked from Lhaz’s docks and every oxcart that rolled across her gates would be searched for a stowaway with a wounded shoulder. A houseboy was roused and sent off with the order before the ink was even dry. As they pair departed, eyes peeked between drapes and down from balconies all over the alley. Revel winked and waved.
“So that’s where they keep the mistresses,” El snickered.
The next stop was Reyson the Red, the flame-bearded Captain of the Quartiere Watch. By decree of the duke, Reyson ought to have turned Revel away without a word. Silent, Revel’s eyes rolled from El to the captain. Then, he turned to face the wall.
“A favor,” Revel begged the bricks.
Reyson tugged at his beard as El Sha La explained. By proxy and circumlocution, they arrived at an agreement. Ten men were to discreetly sweep the upper three districts and turn over all the places a hurt boy might hide. In Tinkerton, they were on their own. The guard would not set foot in the wharf unless they were at least an echelon strong.
Revel gave gracious thanks to the wall, and they left. There were no smiles this time.
“He’s risking a lot for you,” El remarked.
Revel’s expression clouded.
“I did the same for him when I was made watchmaster. There was a great fuss when I sacked the old captain and put Reyson in his place. They said he was too ignoble for such a prestigious post. It was only a smokescreen. The old captain was corrupt, and many a swine dined at his trough. They stopped barking once I had him beheaded.”
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“And the pigs?”
“Next on the block, but the fiasco with the ambassador happened before I could prove it. Someone might have even put Ghel Shimae up to it. My defeat was a great relief to the rotten. I should have been stronger.”
The thought hung over them as they approached the Moiety Mercant. Here, no one cared a whit that Revel was officially ostracized. Coin was the true law in the Mercant. Revel knew nearly all the high-end fences.
He made a great show of introducing El Sha La before he described the missing orb, the generous reward, and the great need for discretion. El Sha La said nothing and let her cold-eyed silence unnerve the middlemen. The message was clear. Any hand the orb passed through would soon face the full wrath of Arath.
Next, Revel hired a scribe to pen forty waybills and pin them all over the upper city. He offered an eye-watering reward, enough to overcome the scruples of any soft-hearted sap who might supply sanctuary to a thief.
Satisfied, they left the Mercant for the sooty rails of the Quarta Foundry. Amidst the blast of bellows and the clangor of hammers, Revel described his stolen dagger to the district’s foremost weaponsmiths. His words were relayed to a host of stokers, cokers, polishers, and apprentices. By morning’s end, word of the dagger would ring out at every smith in Lhaz. If the blade turned up, Revel would hear about it.
By noon, El Sha La was forced to reconsider Revel completely. The Duke’s son had been her dog so long, she’d forgotten it was all an act. A man with wits would have abandoned ship, Revel stayed stalwart at her side.
Their pursuit swept through the upper quarta in a whirlwind of called favors and artful politicking. There was something in Revel men saw and responded to, no matter his present disgrace. He was born for this. But the day was only half-done. They squinted against the noon glare, and a grim look passed between them. They’d done all they could in the upper districts. They had to go deeper.
Trouble began before the pair were even past the periphery. The Fringe was a split seam where the ugliest bits of Tinkerton showed through to the rest of Lhaz. The ever-shifting purlieu began at the bad end of the Quarta Foundry where smelters seethed and scrapyards rattled at all hours of the night.
It all went downhill at once. Sooty rowhouses slanted down in deep decline, seedier by the step. Drunkards stumbled from raucous taverns and cane parlors to be rolled in awful brothels, duped in dice dens, and reaped like wheat in dark alleys.
Every morning, the black wagon rolled downhill, laden with a fresh crop of corpses. The Fringe was no place for tourists. The liminal district was home to bloodless moneylenders, heartless pimps, and gluttonous gang lords.
Much as they strived to escape the mess they’d help to create, none could truly break free. They climbed as high as they could and began the slow roll back to the harbor. In their eyes, slow, sinking desperation. When their luck ran out, they were all bound back for the bottom where they belonged.
“Watch where you’re going, shant!”
A scarred man shouldered Revel aside.
Revel’s sword sprang from his scabbard, and his offhand shot reflexively for the missing dagger. The barker wheeled back at the rasp of bared steel. His left eye was a slit sunk in a mass of overlapped starfish-shaped scars.
El took a step back. It was a bad sign, even one bout of bloompox could drive a man mad from agony. By his layers, this brute had survived at least six. He held a black taietor, a local crossbreed of cutlass and cleaver meant for close quarters fighting. Revel took stance, initially at advantage with his rapier. But this was no duel.
Six other men who’d seemed uninvolved threw back their cloaks and closed in. They had arms of their own, scimitars and sabers. The blades were all painted flat black. Revel had blundered right into a gang lord’s entourage.
Two men tried to grab Revel’s arms from behind, but he was faster. In a whirl of motion, Revel whipped the grip of his sword back and cracked his first attacker with the pommel. He carried that motion into a kick that took out the knee of the second man. Both groaned on the ground. Revel raised his rapier at the scarred brute.
“Excuse me,” Revel shot back.
The man with the blown-out knee grabbed at Revel’s ankle. Revel’s boot snapped up and caved in his nose with a wet crunch. The others hesitated; the altercation had lost its savor. Now, it was Revel advancing, eager to fight five to one. But the swordsmen were wary now.
With care, they fanned out and surrounded him. They only had to rush as one to hack him apart. El Sha La racked her mind for a spell to save him, but her thoughts were slow and hungover. She could come up with nothing that would slay them and spare Revel. At a loss, she snapped two fingers. They chimed like a bell, pure and high. It was only a cantrip for children, but all six men froze.
El Sha La cleared her throat.
The scarred man’s good eye flashed with recognition. He clicked his tongue, and the four intact swordsmen stepped back. The man with the broken nose crawled toward an alley. The last was out cold.
“Beg your pardon,” the ganger bowed his head.
“No trouble at all.” Revel lowered the point of his sword.
“Can we go?”
Revel waved him away, but the scarred man’s eyes were on El Sha La.
“You have insulted me with your conduct,” El charged. The scars stayed livid as the color drained from the man’s face. “There is a boy with a dagger wound on his left shoulder. He’s skinny, brown hair, wide-set brown eyes, he stands about this high. I want him alive. Find him, bring him to the Tower of the Unraveller, and your slight will be forgiven. I know his face. Do not maim some urchin to serve as a substitute.”
The man gave a curt nod. His guards grabbed the unconscious man by his arms and legs. The man with the ruined nose rose, a river of red ran down his chin. Revel smirked as they slunk away.
He thinks it’s him, El realized.
The bold, hopeless oaf stood there with a smile, completely unperturbed. There was a cold clench in El Sha La’s stomach. The danger came so fast, but she was so slow, so unprepared. Both of them ought to be face down in the muck with their throats slit. El wheeled on Revel, furious at them both.
“Don’t speak. You stand out like a fleeced sheep. Another moment and you’d have been hacked to pieces.”
“Rabble.” Revel thumped his coat of mail and shrugged. “I was fine. It’s poxy’s fault anyway. He’s meant to make way.”
“Make way for what?”
“Royalty.”
“You aren’t royalty anymore.”
Revel flinched. He had no reply.
“Before last night, when was the last time you visited Tinkerton?”
“I’ve crossed the docks many times.”
“Not just the docks. What about the streets? The markets? The places where people live?”
“Last night was the first time,” Revel admitted.
“Your family claims this city as their own. Tinkerton covers more than half of Lhaz, and you’ve never set foot in it.”
“So?”
“So, that’s why everything is like this. You don’t know these people. They don’t know you. They’d stab you if they did. No one is going to make way for you here. So, keep your mouth shut and your sword sheathed unless I say so.”
A dark look crossed Revel’s face. She feared she’d overplayed her hand. She saw a quaver run through Revel’s grip as he sheathed his sword. Something she said got through. He could see he’d been a fool.
“I’ll be more careful,” Revel pledged.
“Thank you.” She set a hand on his arm. Too late, she felt all the eyes upon them. Gossip raced through Tinkerton faster than the flux.
“Let’s go.” She withdrew.
Fully awake now, they searched in earnest. They swept the Fringe block by block. While they walked, El tried to explain the ruthless etiquette of Tinkerton. No eye contact was best, but no avoidance, either.
The trick was to stare through everyone and everything. There were examples all around, empty faces slumped past, numb to all but their own suffering. They ought to stay at least three paces away from the rag-clad unfortunates. They were rife with lice and worse.
Anyone with yellow eyes was smoking cane. In the throes of smoke, they were immune to pain and capable of almost anything. Most men who wore colored robes were different stripes of cultist. Yellow robes would get too close and provoke, and it was best to humor them. Blue robes only wanted coin for cane. Red robes were deadly. They tended to swarm. Tattoos around a missing digit meant a warlock, they were to be avoided at all costs.
Revel learned slow, and he cracked stupid jokes. It drove El Sha La crazy. By the time they reached Ropeman’s Overlook, El wished she could hurl him off it.
They’d reached the limit of the fringe as the sun began to set. Past the grim overlook, a string of stone fangs sheared off the land. Rope bridges connected the three islands. The Lighthouse of Lhaz rose above the tallest to oversee the harbor. Atop the great spiral of checkered stone, the flame was out, snuffed by the storm. Revel visored his eyes with his palm.
“Looks like they’re shouting at each other.” Revel pointed at Lighthouse Isle.
El squinted, Revel’s sight was keener than hers. The keepers were little more than ants. She noticed the bridge was broken; slats rippled in the wind from a single strand. The ants seemed agitated. Their arms waved in exasperation.
“I bet they’re fighting over which one of them will shimmy across that rope for help,” El guessed.
“Ha! Do you suppose we ought to—” Revel stopped short. The larger keeper on the right threw the first punch. By the way the smaller man swung back immediately, El could tell this had been a long time coming. The men pummeled each other with complete abandon until they were exhausted, then they clinched.
The bigger man threw his foe in the dirt, the smaller man hooked an ankle and dragged him down. In the grapple, there was no contest. The smaller man was pinned with knees on his shoulders while fists rained down on his face. In a desperate move, the bottom man grabbed the top’s wrists and twisted to try and wrench him off.
The pair rolled right off the cliff.
Revel and El stood open-mouthed as screams rose above the surf and cut short at the first bounce. It was a long way down.
“Damn. I guess not.” Revel shook his head.
“Divided we brawl, together we fall,” El quipped. Revel nodded, but there was no mirth in it. The day grew darker.
A corpse wind blew. They were downwind from the eight gibbets. Six dead men swung over the cliff in cages gone orange with rust. Two chains dangled free, snapped by the storm. It must have been an awful surprise for whatever wretches dwelt below. Revel and El set their jaws against the stench and made their way to the rail.
Past the condemned, the sky was aflame with a spectacular sunset. Rose-tinted Tinkerton sprawled for leagues of senseless streets. Block after block of unsound buildings scabbed over each other, all of it built on a foundation of sand. The horizon flashed green. The sun’s retreat was complete.
As night stole over the docks, Tinkerton woke. Bells tolled, whistles shrieked, shutters banged open, too many voices cried out, and too few lights burned. Revel and El Sha La watched the slum come alive. Somewhere, down there in all that bedlam was the wounded boy and the stolen orb. They turned to each other, struck dumb by the enormity of their task.
They’d saved the worst for last.