Over the next few days, all of us slowly adjusted to our new living arrangements. Ash hovered in or near the vault and prayed to That Which Hungers more often than his wont, I kept a sharp eye on Sleipnir in case any of the orphans harbored budding psychopathic tendencies, and as for Faith – well, Faith got to play disciplinarian for what was probably the first time in her life.
“No!”
Her voice rang out so loudly in the common room that I heard it all the way across the railcar, where I was busy applying cosmetics to change the contours of my face. Although I personally had no problem with letting the orphans spread out, Ash had already firmly expressed his desire for a child-free haven, and it seemed that Faith concurred. Dropping my makeup brush, I scrambled out of my compartment and sprinted down the hall – a task complicated by Beetle and Mantis fleeing the opposite way and colliding with my legs.
By the time I unentangled myself and skidded into the common room, Spider and Moth were tugging at Locust’s arms while Faith snapped, “Cricket, if any of them are still here in fifteen seconds, you have my permission to possess them.”
At the threat, Moth’s eyes went wide and Spider yanked even harder, but Locust only giggled happily, thinking the whole thing a great joke.
Then a blue glow rose above the bar and swooped towards the children, at which point Moth dove shrieking for the hall, and Spider bodily picked up Locust and carried him kicking and screaming out of the common room.
Once I’d calmed the younger children and reiterated the ground rules for the older ones, I finally finished costuming – but when I tried to leave, Mantis caught sight of me and insisted on coming, Locust started wailing again, and Beetle pleaded with me to stay. Even with the combined efforts of Spider, Moth, Sleipnir, and me, it still took a good twenty minutes to get everyone settled.
It looked like I needed to give myself a much larger buffer from now on if I wanted to make it to appointments on time.
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Thanks to child-wrangling – about which I probably shouldn’t complain since said children were entirely my fault – I was so late to Charhallow that Ash finished our heat-reduction exercise himself. By the time I puffed into the bar where we’d agreed to meet, he was all done and chatting amiably with a group of off-duty laborers. When I collapsed onto the bench beside him, he inquired, “Something come up at home?”
With a moan, I rubbed my temples. “Yes. The children weren’t…happy when I told them they couldn’t come.”
“I see.” Ash grimaced.
He’d already gotten rousted out of bed obscenely early this morning, when Cricket drifted out of Faith’s compartment and into the orphans’ – by accident, we were pretty sure, because contrary to expectations, the ghost showed little interest in the kids. Regardless of her intent, anyone raised (for generous interpretations of the word “raised”) in Six Towers was justly terrified of ghosts, and so our pack reacted with a great screaming ruckus.
“We recently adopted some street children,” Ash explained to the hard-faced, heavily-muscled washerwoman who was nursing a tankard of ale next to him. “They’re quite a handful.”
The laundress’ face relaxed into a chuckle, and she hoisted her tankard. “Cheers to that. Aren’t they all?” Then she noticed that I was still flopped on the bench, too exhausted to move. “You look like you need a drink. What do you want?”
“Anything. Whatever you’re having,” I groaned. As she rose, I added an emphatic and heartfelt, “Thank you.”
Under cover of the pub’s din, Ash updated me on what he’d learned while spreading disinformation about our activities. “Chime got released from Ironhook Prison and didn’t return to the Billhooks,” he reported, which was roughly what I’d expected. “But Ian Templeton’s still in there. Apparently writing a seditious play that incites a riot is a much more serious offense than starting the riot.” (Chime, or rather, the ghost who’d bought his body from Nyryx, had confessed to our Spiregarden crimes.) “Oh, and Mayvin’s house burned down last night. With him inside.”
“Who?” I asked absently. I’d gotten distracted trying to determine whether any of my traps would catch the children by accident. At the very least, I needed to re-design the ones underneath the railcar, given that Beetle, the most inquisitive of the lot, would probably poke any unusual mechanical devices until she figured out what they did.
In this case, nothing good.
“Mayvin,” Ash repeated, incredulous that a fellow Slide could forget a name. “Eridan Mayvin. The curate who replaced Kender Morland?”
Oh, right, him. “Was it arson?”
“Definitely. A few vagabonds who hang out near his house spoke with some strangers – Dagger Islanders – just before the fire.”
“Dagger Islanders?” I asked, trying to catch up. if anything, I’d expect a mob of vengeful Tycherosi to murder Church officials. “What do the Dagger Isles have to do with any of this?” Was it time to pay a visit – or urge Sigmund to pay a visit – to their Consulate?
“I don’t know yet. But Mayvin’s sister Lauretta is also in the Church – surprisingly high up for her age, in fact. She’s put out a public statement mourning the loss of her brother, decrying the violence in Charhallow, and making veiled threats about prosecuting the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Okay.” That wasn’t a problem for us. Yet.
“Here you go.” A brimming tankard of ale thudded down in front of me, sloshing its contents across the sticky wood. The laundress sat back down heavily, vibrating the bench, and then eagerly leaned forward on her elbows. “Did you hear about Crow’s Foot yet?”
I swallowed some of the ale the wrong way and coughed and sputtered until she pounded me on the back. When I could breathe again, I demanded, “What about Crow’s Foot?”
Her eyes sparkled with excitement of imparting momentous news. “That fellow yonder – ” she pointed at a burly workman surrounded by drinkers at the bar – “says that the Lampblacks and Red Sashes are having a meet! Right now!”
“A meet?” I squeaked, feeling as if she’d knocked all the breath out of me (which she had). True, Bazso had told me it would happen soon – but I’d assumed he’d alert me. I’d assumed he’d invite me. “The Lampblacks and Red Sashes are meeting?”
“I know, right? No one knows what it means!”
Our conversation was starting to attract a small crowd: “Here now, what’s this about the Lampblacks and Red Sashes?” “Are you sure it’s not a joke?” “Why would they meet?”
Eyeing me sidelong, Ash fished, “How did they even find neutral ground to meet on? Isn’t all of Crow’s Foot a war zone?”
“Tangletown, man,” drawled a thug from the back. “That’s where all them par-lees happen.”
Raising her voice to regain control of her audience, the laundress declared, “Exactly. Bazso Baz and Mylera Klev are having a par-lee in Tangletown.”
As the pub degenerated into a mass of wild speculations about what the gangs were doing and what it betokened for Crow’s Foot and the Docks, Ash and I skillfully detached ourselves and slipped away.
Out on the street, Ash said, “I assume you’re not joining us for dinner tonight?”
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“Don’t wait for me.”
Even though I wasn’t dressed for Crow’s Foot, I took off at a run.
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High above the banks of the canal between Crow’s Foot and Silkshore towered the crumbling smokestacks of Tangletown. Two centuries ago, one of the Strangford leviathan hunter captains – who was either drunk or possessed, depending on the story – was steaming full-speed down the supposedly-dredged canal when he crunched onto a rocky shoal – which had either been overlooked by lazy government contractors or raised by demonic powers to stop him, also depending on the story – and partially sank his ship. By the time the City Council bickered its way to a consensus on how to handle the affair, a horde of dockers, prostitutes, gondoliers, and artists had already swarmed the wreckage and converted it into a miniature floating district. Apparently even the Strangfords balked at the asymmetric warfare required to clear them all out. Since then, the old leviathan hunter had acquired a veritable convoy of houseboats, fishing boats, rowboats, and even tented rafts, on which the squatters lived and conducted business.
Unlike the Leaky Bucket or the Cat and Candle, Tangletown was genuinely neutral ground for all of the Crow’s Foot gangs. In theory, no weapons were allowed past the rickety little “bridge” (a string of retired gondolas lashed side by side) that bobbed up and down on the brackish waters. In practice, because you couldn’t cut off the fists and tongues of every scoundrel who wanted to parley there, the rule translated into “No open carry without just cause,” justness of said cause to be judged by the Mayor of Tangletown.
Tonight, as I wobbled across the floating platforms, I immediately noticed the tension. No fisherwomen bawled conversations across deck railings as they gutted the day’s haul of eels. No children ran shrieking and sure-footed over the bobbing boats. Instead, the little watercraft were eerily still, and up on the decks of the leviathan hunter patrolled figures wearing black overcoats or red sashes. Somehow, I didn’t think Bazso’s and Mylera’s security would just wave me through.
So I attached myself to a knot of drunken street performers who were swarming up a ladder bolted to the hull. Once onboard, I queried the locals until I learned that The Parley, as everyone was calling it, was underway in the old mess hall. For a handful of slugs, one of the urchins even led me to the entrance to what he promised was mess hall ceiling crawlspace. After I’d flattened myself on my belly and wriggled along several feet, I began to hear voices from below, oddly distorted by the metal.
Peering down through a crack between two steel plates, I saw a cavernous space lit by a few naked bulbs swinging from the ceiling. In the shadows, security ringed the walls and eyed one another warily while pointedly keeping their hands away from their weapons. (Although the Red Sashes had forgone their swords, each one wore a silk sash, so of course the Lampblacks had countered with revolvers.) Seated on opposite sides of a long wooden table were seven leaders from each gang, arrayed in their finest. Each Lampblack wore a clean black wool overcoat and silk top hat, and as for the Red Sashes – well, let’s just say that I hadn’t seen such a concentration of brightly colored robes since the last diplomatic reception at the Iruvian Consulate.
As I watched, the woman at the center of the Red Sashes turned to her lieutenant and commanded regally, “The map, if you please, Xayah?” before leaning back towards the Lampblacks and saying something in a low, intense voice I couldn’t make out.
“Of course.” Gracefully and unobtrusively, just like her great-uncle on the Anixis Estate, Xayah unfurled a large map of Doskvol across the table and weighed it down with oil lanterns. Another Red Sash lieutenant, Ardashir, produced a handful of red and blue Iruvian chess tokens.
Absently, Mylera – who bore a shocking resemblance to the Ankhayat Patriarch in that moment – nodded her thanks as she might to a servant. Plucking a red pawn from the heap, she positioned it precisely in the middle of the Docks, then leaned back, folded her arms, and stared steadily at Bazso. In the lantern light, her bejeweled, intricately wrought gold necklace flashed bright enough to stun a goat.
Utterly unimpressed by her finery and seemingly immune to her demeanor (come to think of it, I might be responsible for said immunization to ex-noble arrogance), Bazso loomed as patiently and solidly as one of the jet-black mountains around U’Duasha, which had watched over the city since long before the Houses clawed their way to power, and would continue to tower over the caldera long after our memory crumbled and blew away on the desert winds. Almost without glancing at the map, he seized a blue pawn and planted it right on top of the Crow’s Nest. Then he rumbled something at Pickett, who signaled to the guards by the door.
They promptly admitted a slightly nervous, briefcase-toting figure. Plastering my cheek against the steel plates, I squinted through the glare of the electroplasmic bulbs until I recognized Quellyn, a local witch who specialized in ghost contracts.
Right as Bazso stood to pull out a chair for her, a clatter of boots above my head reverberated through the crawlspace. Scowling, I began to press myself even harder against the steel plates – until a man overhead ordered, “Check in there, Bug. Bazso said to patrol everywhere.”
I barely escaped before the Lampblack runner clambered into the crawlspace.
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A couple hours later, I was lounging against a streetlight on the bank of the canal when the exhausted Lampblack leaders strode off the bridge. Straightening and tipping my head slightly so the light fell across my face, I lifted a hand in greeting. At the sight of me wearing rags and getting soaked in the rain, Bazso raised one eyebrow but didn’t act particularly surprised. Without breaking stride, he gestured Pickett, Henner, and the other Lampblacks to go ahead before waving me over. Pickett glared at me ferociously – someday, girl, someday I’ll prove beyond a doubt that you’re a traitor – and trailed behind the others so she could eavesdrop.
Detaching myself from the lamppost, I squelched over and fell in step beside Bazso. When he didn’t utter a word, I slanted a glance up at him and feigned a casual shrug. “People talk.”
Cast into shadow by the brim of his top hat, his face remained inscrutable. “I figured people would know this was going on.”
Since that was the way we were playing it, I matched his neutral tone. “Yes,” I agreed conversationally, as if I were observing that it was raining in Doskvol. “It’s quite the talk of the underworld. How is it going?”
Shooting me a warning glance, he replied flatly, “It’s going well enough.”
“That’s good.” I kept my voice light and pleasant, as if we were exchanging small talk in a tea room. “So what did you think of Mylera personally?”
“Mylera?” Whatever question he’d expected, that was not it, and he had to take a moment to consider his answer. “We still don’t get along, but…I’d rather share the district with her than with Djera Maha.” He pronounced the name in much the same way Mylera spoke Lyssa’s. Then, clearly fishing for information, he added, “She’s certainly suspicious of you.”
Still in a careless tone, I inquired, “What makes you say that?”
“Well, shortly after we started the conference, she mentioned that she wanted to ensure that all the proceedings occurred ‘free from any Anixis plots.’”
Annoyed out of my act at last, I complained, “I thought we talked about that. What did you tell her?”
“Uggggh, Isha! I told her that if that were the way she wanted to do the conference, then that was the way we would do the conference!”
So much for hoping he’d defend my integrity. Once I’d gotten my voice back under control, I asked coolly, “So what’s the plan now?”
“We continue to negotiate,” he replied curtly. “And then I – that is, we – probably have a job for you and your crew.”
“Really? What sort of job?”
He raised a significant eyebrow. “Are there multiple kinds of jobs that you do?” he asked, dry almost to the point of sarcasm.
Fair enough, but the entire day – and this conversation in particular – had put me in a testy mood. “We’re versatile,” I informed him. (Which was even true: Two Slides, a Whisper, a pack of juvenile delinquents and juvenile-delinquents-in-training, the ghost of a murdered juvenile delinquent, plus a three-legged dog could wreak a great deal of havoc.)
In any battle of grumpiness, I held the upper hand. Caving first, Bazso clarified, “We need you to kill someone.”
“I figured as much. Who?”
“Isha,” he scolded. “Let the negotiations finish first!”
There was another long, surly silence. Up ahead, Pickett’s smugness polluted the very air around her.
At last, Bazso confessed in a low rumble, “She is more reasonable than I expected her to be. If this goes through, and if she holds up her end of the bargain, it will be good for us. All of us.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you all along,” I informed him tartly.
Unsurprisingly, conversation died again after that. When we were only a few blocks from his townhouse, I finally worked up the resolve to ask my other question. Hesitantly, not certain any longer that I wanted to hear his answer, I probed, “So…the last time we talked, you said you needed time to think.”
Stiffening, he began to walk faster – not a particularly encouraging sign. “I did.” I trotted to catch up, and he said without looking at me, “I still do. I need to take care of this first. This is – ” He cut off the rest of that sentence and finished with, “I need to take care of my people.”
I noted that he did not include me among “his people.”
Glancing down at me, he registered my expression and said patiently, “Isha, you know that if someone were trying to kill you, I would be right there – but that’s not what this is about.”
Whatever “this” even referred to at this point. “I understand,” I replied in a low voice.
He, of course, caught the tremble in it but chose not to react. In a business-like manner, he told me, “Like I said, you can expect a runner. Probably tomorrow, actually.” Not trusting myself to speak, I jerked out a nod. “And now, it has been a very long day and I think I am going to try to get some sleep.”
“All right. I will talk to you soon.”
He nodded absently, caught up to Pickett, and vanished into the darkness.
After standing in the rain in the middle of the alley for a long moment, I spun around and marched straight into the nearest second-hand clothing shop. Based on the social calendar Sigmund’s footman had provided, my brother was currently attending a dinner at the Skovlander Consulate. After that, whether he knew it or not, he had a date with me.