One Man Page 13

  “Six whistles?” the sullen Katr said. “A copper knot? You would throw away their lives for that?”

  Their lives?

  “Mom!”

  Riliska lunged out of the cart and tried to bite the hand holding the knife.

  The smiling creep was too quick for her. He elbowed her forehead without letting go of Rulenya’s hair, knocking the little girl into the cargo box.

  “Don’t hurt them!” Kyrioc’s back was exposed to the thugs behind him, but he didn’t care. “Don’t hurt them.”

  The braided heavy sighed. “Then get on with it.”

  Moving with a desperation he hadn’t felt in months, Kyrioc unlocked the shop, then pulled Rulenya’s Harken robe out of the five-week box. When he reemerged, the barbarian had attached a short spear handle to the hilt of his sword, turning it into a true ghostkind glaive. Kyrioc tossed the robe to the Katr, who passed it to his companion.

  The little gangster unfolded it with a flick of his wrist, then began to squeeze the fabric along the seams. It took only a moment to find what he was looking for. He tore the cloth apart and pulled out a small, flat leather pouch.

  Kyrioc could not see all of the pale, tiny thing the heavy removed from the pouch, only the top edge. When the gangster lifted the lantern to shine it onto his prize, the light made it glitter in many colors.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The heavy with the three braids shot one last venomous look at Kyrioc, then sprinted down the stairs.

  There was no mistaking what he had. These gangsters had acquired a piece of glitterkind…or, worse, had a whole one hidden somewhere in the city, and they were cutting pieces from it. Large pieces.

  Nothing was more dangerous.

  Someone needed to kill these assholes, but it wasn’t going to be him.

  “You have what you came for,” he said. “You don’t need the girl or her mother anymore. Set them free.”

  The courier reappeared. The Katr bent low so the child could whisper to him. His morose expression didn’t change. He just listened, then shooed the child away.

  With a sudden movement, he lunged into the room and extended his arm, thrusting his glaive into the throat of the big man lying unconscious on the floor. The big man shuddered once, then became still.

  Kyrioc remained utterly still, ready to move if the Katr’s attention turned his way.

  The northerner wiped his blade on the dead man’s respectable clothes, then stepped back, holding his weapon in a relaxed low guard. Kyrioc watched him carefully—eyes, hands, hips—anticipating a second stroke. None came.

  “You have what you came for,” he said again. “Set the girl and the mother free.”

  The barbarian shook his head, making little chimes ring again. “Those hostages have not been ransomed. Not yet. If you want them back, you will have to do more. Stay. You will hear from us again.”

  He stepped back out of the doorway. A moment later, the lantern light moved away.

  Kyrioc summoned his cloak of shadows and, enveloped in darkness, moved silently into the hall.

  The Katr was moving quickly but not running. He’d already reached the first landing. Hidden by his cloak, Kyrioc moved to the top of the stair, ready to leap down and knock the barbarian through the rail. If the fall didn’t kill the man, it would certainly break bones. Then Kyrioc could free Riliska and her—

  The Katr suddenly stopped, raised his glaive, and looked straight at Kyrioc. For a moment, Kyrioc thought the man could see through his cloak of shadows, but no. The barbarian’s gaze was unfocused, his expression confused. He couldn’t see Kyrioc, but he could obviously sense danger, and he knew where it came from.

  Kyrioc kept perfectly still, shrouded in darkness, waiting for the barbarian to lower his guard. He didn’t. The Katr descended the stairs slowly, never turning his gaze away from Kyrioc’s position.

  There was no way to drop down on him without risking the point of that ghostkind steel.

  Whoever this northerner was, he was dangerous.

  Once the barbarian reached the second floor and passed out of sight, his footsteps sped up again. Kyrioc followed silently, cloak in place. By the time he reached the lobby, the front door was swinging closed.

  The barbarian was already in the cart. He snapped the reins. Kyrioc sprinted after, his cloak dissipating.

  As the cart jolted forward, its back doors swung outward, revealing Riliska and her mother huddling in the dark. The girl’s gaze met Kyrioc’s for the briefest of moments before the doors swung shut and the latch engaged.

  Kyrioc ran harder, spurred on by the terror on Riliska’s dirty face and the sound of her fists pounding on the wood. He could still catch up if the horses were slow to reach their gallop.

  They were not. This part of the plankway had a slight downward slope, and the horses responded with a quickness that came from extensive training. Kyrioc watched the cart roll northward on the broadening avenue, moving deeper into darkness.

  The road followed the curve of Yth’s rib cage, then split in two. The larger avenue went down to Low Market, a part of the city that never slept. The narrower path rose toward Low Apricot, and then High Apricot.

  But Kyrioc had already lost them in the gloom. The sound of the hooves was still loud, but the way they echoed made it impossible for him to follow. They could be headed anywhere in the city. Anywhere.

  He couldn’t chase them on foot.

  Kyrioc needed to stop and think, which meant he needed information. He had to find someone to tell him where they laid up overnight and where they might take the girl.

  He returned to find his building empty. The young couriers were long gone.

  Water began to flow through the gaps in the deck above. It must have started raining. Kyrioc fetched a stale fig bun from his room. It was a suitable bribe for a starving street kid. He put it into his pocket and returned to the streets.

  * * *

  Once they were clear of Woodgarden, Killer of Devils slowed the horses. Outside of High and Low Apricot—and Low Market, obviously—the streets were mostly empty at this hour, but it was still illegal to race carts inside the city. Tin Pail hated paying bribes because Killer let her brother get in trouble with the law.

  As if that thought summoned him, the slat opened and Wooden Pail’s eyes glared at them. “What the fuck happened back there? It was just one guy?”

  Killer nodded.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you, Paper? You can’t handle one guy? He’s a fucking petal!”

  “Boss, he—” Paper wiped sweat from his forehead. After the screwup at Sailsday’s Regret, he knew letting himself be disarmed by a pawnshop broker might get him pitched over the edge of a deck. “You should have seen him, boss. He didn’t seem like a petal to me. He was so fast… He took out Second Boar like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  Wooden rolled his eyes. “Psh. Second Boar.”

  Killer had no love for Paper Mouse, but if the little thief took the point, he might be replaced by an even bigger fool. “He did not react when I drew my glaive. He did not flinch when I cut Second Boar’s throat.”

  Wooden Pail did not seem to understand what he meant, and when he did not understand, he suspected he was being insulted. “So, he’s not a pawnbroker, then? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Killer shrugged. “What I am saying is that I do not know what he is.”

  “Fuck it.” Wooden sighed. “Whatever he is, he’s our arrow. I just need Tin to string the bow.”

  * * *

  “Your people fucked it up.”

  Tin glared at the doctor. Didn’t she have enough bullshit to deal with already? And now this…addict talking back to her.

  The doctor wore the traditional white hospital robe. On someone else, it would have been a sign of status, but Elberish tuto-Sienvet glistened with sweat and grime. Her hair—cropped with a dull knife, apparently—sat in a greasy tangle atop her head. A dull expression haunted her like a curse.

  But Tin had learne
d that behind the white tar stains and half-closed eyes was a sharp, practical, and ruthless mind that did not give a fuck what people thought of her.

  Tin glanced at the three heavies leaning against the wall. They were Caps, having come up from a street gang she’d absorbed three years ago. If they were good for anything beyond drinking themselves stupid and swinging a heavy stick, she hadn’t found it. “How did they fuck it up?”

  The doctor shuffled over to the apparatus that Tin had spent nearly a third of her savings to acquire. “I told them the inside of the glass case had to be completely sterile. It wasn’t. I told them that the fire under the distiller had to be kept low to avoid splash contamination, but they stoked the fire anyway. I told them the water they started with had to be as clean as possible, preferably fresh rainwater. I don’t know where the fuck they got this. Maybe they drained it from a privy shop or something. When I told them what was necessary, they rolled their eyes, then half-assed the work so they could get back to throwing dice.”

  Elberish tuto-Sienvet was used to throwing her weight around. Before she’d been stripped of her credentials and turned out to feed her addictions on the street, the doctor had been a star surgeon in a clinic down in The Folly. Clearly, she was used to people who craved her approval. “My people take orders from me,” Tin said.

  “And therein lies the problem.”

  Tin looked at the glass tank the doctor had said she needed. It brimmed with water, along with the first of the humankind donor organs they’d collected. “It looks clear enough to me.”

  “This,” Elberish said, pointing to a minuscule spot of grime on the rim of the tank. “And this. And this. And more besides. That speck of green fuzz floating in the corner would be enough to ruin everything you’d collected so far.”

  “Would be? Are these organs being preserved?”

  The doctor looked astonished. “No, they certainly are not. Not in this setup. I don’t know who you have slivering portions for this broth, but tell them to enjoy a night off, because this shit isn’t ready.”

  More delays. Tin laid out a lot of money to set up this scam, and it was going to take a while to show a profit. If it took too long, she wasn’t going to be able to pay her people, the cosh, or her suppliers. She had expenses. “When? When does this start to earn?”

  “Not tonight,” was the doctor’s only answer. “Look, you are never going to run out of idiots who burn the skin off their backs or get stabbed in the kidneys. But you will, someday, run out of this.” She pointed at the oiled leather packet that contained Tin’s glitterkind ear. “I’m not going to waste my time and your money on contaminated parts.”

  Tin nodded, running the calculations in her head. She could afford to lose tonight’s profits, even if nothing else she was planning worked in her favor. But life was made out of catastrophes, and a new one could come any time. Money and influence were the best shield against them, and it made her a little sick to know that she was bleeding both for a project that might not pan out.

  She turned to the three Caps, still waiting by the iron-banded door. “You three are going to fetch three buckets, and you are going to scrub them cleaner than you’ve ever cleaned anything in your life. Then you’re going to pass the buckets to the left, and scrub them again.”

  “With soap?” the one called Crooked asked.

  “Yes, with fucking soap. What the fuck do you think? Then you are going to fetch clean water in those buckets, and not from a barrel in a fucking Spillwater tannery. Understand? Take it from someplace upcity. When you get back here, you”—she pointed directly at Crooked—“will scrub that entire tank, inside and out—with soap—while you two scrub the still and the pipes. When you’re done, you’ll switch up and do it again.”

  “Yes, boss,” they said.

  “Check each other’s work. Before we start up that fire again, this pain in the ass will check it. If she complains, I’m gonna have a fucking complaint. You don’t want that.”

  While they set to work, Tin strode to the table in the corner. A little wooden shingle with a smear of white tar rested on it. It had the familiar greasy sheen and stank like rotten tomatoes.

  Like most criminals trying to climb the slope, she preferred to keep the tar itself away from her heavies so she wouldn’t lose too many to addiction—and away from herself in case some captain of the cosh was overcome with ambition and raided her. But she needed the doctor, and the doctor needed the high.

  Tin took the shingle and headed for the door. She didn’t have to order the doctor to follow. They crossed into the main part of the warehouse, then down the ramp to the front counter where they did business with the public.

  “Get in.”

  She gestured to the tall iron cage beside the counter.

  Elberish’s expression changed from worry—no addict liked to see someone walk away with their drug—to near panic. “But I’m doing everything you—”

  “Get in the fucking cage.”

  The doctor hurried inside. Tin slammed the door shut, then locked it, placing the padlock key on the counter. Then she set the shingle on the floor and rested her hammer on the corner. One of her people might be stupid enough to pass the shingle to a prisoner, but not one of them would fucking dare move her hammer.

  “I don’t understand,” the doctor said, forehead beading with sweat. “I was only warning you that you were going to throw money away.”

  Tin Pail leaned close. “It was the way you warned me. Remember back when you were a hot-shit doctor? Remember the way the cleaning staff talked to you? That’s how you talk to me.”

  Elberish tried to reclaim some of her dignity. “You can’t do this without me.”

  Tin actually laughed aloud. Fucking petals. “I keep you by holding your tar for ransom, but I could do the same with another doctor by ransoming their kid, and that new doc wouldn’t stink like a fucking flophouse. Open your eyes, or one of your old colleagues is going to see their six-year-old child thrown into that cage with your bloated corpse. Because nobody cares about you. Nobody cares about anybody.”

  * * *

  In the hours that he searched, Kyrioc could not find a single courier. He did find a pair of constables stationed at the high point of a plankway from the lower decks. He tried to explain that he’d seen a woman and her daughter kidnapped by gangsters, but when he mentioned the piece of glitterkind flesh, they snorted in disbelief, drew their truncheons, and threatened to throw him into a cell for the night.

  The constables were not going to help him.

  He returned to his rooms. Eyalmati was not there, but the corpse was. Kyrioc tried to imagine what his name had been and why he’d been killed.

  But he couldn’t force himself to think about it. All he could think about was Riliska and the look on her face as the doors closed over her. It had been a look of acceptance, as though she knew it was her fate to be chewed up and spat out by this city. Frightened but not surprised.

  He barred the doors and windows, then sank to the floor in the darkness. The coppery smell of drying blood wafted over him. The sound of rainwater draining through the city in little waterfalls droned incessantly.

  Another trance came over him, a dreamlike parade of past sins and terrible violence that slowly became an actual dream of the horrors of Vu-Dolmont, although in his dream, Riliska, child of Rulenya, was with him in the ruins of Childfall. He tried to convince her to flee into the jungle, but she assured him that when Death came, she would gladly sacrifice her life for his.

  He woke with a start at the sound of pounding on the barred door. It was the landlady. She’d found the shutter in the street and was shouting that she would not be paying for repairs. Kyrioc did not respond. Eventually, she left, cursing at the ingratitude of tenants.

  A glimpse through the broken window showed that the sun was shining on other parts of the city. He immediately grabbed the fig bun—which had been stale yesterday when he bought it—and devoured it like an animal. The habits he’d learned wh
ile he was “dead” were returning. Food was fuel for his inner fire, and he couldn’t let it burn low, not if he was going to ransom Riliska.

  Soon, the northerner—or one of his couriers—would contact him. If running their errands meant the release of Riliska and her mother, he would run them gladly. You have something that belongs to us. Rulenya had been stupid enough to steal from gangsters. It was bad business for criminals to forgive someone who stole from them, but Kyrioc was prepared to do whatever they asked, and keep doing it, until mother and daughter were free.

  Maybe, while he was working for them, he’d learn where Riliska was being held. Then, all he’d need were his cloaks.

  He glanced at the panel that covered his secret hiding place. No, just the cloaks. Nothing more.

  Kyrioc filled his belly with water that tasted like dust and food that had no taste at all, and he crouched in the darkest part of his apartment. He did nothing but quiet his breathing and quiet his mind and quiet the sudden jolts of anger that made his skin prickle and his heart race.

  The knock, when it came, was light but insistent.

  Kyrioc went into the shop and slid back the shutter on the cage window. A little boy of about seven stood against the far wall, putting as much distance between himself and the window as he could. His clothes were better than Riliska’s—someone was looking after this child—but his eyes had a hunted look.

  “I’m being watched. If you do anything to me, the Pails will see that you won’t get what you want.”

  Kyrioc nodded. The Pails.

  “There is a ship called Winter Friend docked beyond the wall. Speak to the bosun. His name is Dry Wave.”

  The child sprinted away. Kyrioc closed and barred the shutter. He moved the cash box behind a hidden panel that Eyalmati knew about, leaving the money he’d set aside for his employer for any thieves that might break in. The landlady ought to have the lock replaced by morning, but just in case…

  He touched the hidden panel that only he knew about. Would he need the weapon within? Was he ready to be that person again?