One Man Page 4

  At the market entrance, two groups of boys challenged and insulted each other, their hands on their hatchets. They were fifteen or sixteen, old enough to fight from the walls or rigging but not old enough to understand what was at risk.

  Nearby shopkeepers pulled their goods back into their stalls or closed their shutters. Brawling street gangs were bad for business. The constables who were supposed to be patrolling this part of the deck must have been sleeping off a drunk, and the private guards hadn’t arrived yet. Someone needed to step in before violence erupted.

  Kyrioc kept his head down and hurried up the plankway toward home.

  The shop where he lived and worked was inside a four-story building constructed against the most vertical part of Yth’s last free rib on the eastern side. The structure was mounted on three thick trunks of skywood sawed off at the edge of the foundation and scarred so they could not be sawed further. No door barred entrance to the building atrium, which extended from the floor to the open space in the roof, although there was damage to the jamb where hinges had once been mounted. Kyrioc slipped inside, then climbed the stairs to the third floor.

  As on every floor, three businesses overlooked the atrium, with six small apartments on either side. There was nothing on the northern wall but shuttered windows. Older residents said that, when the building was new, Suloh’s dull orange light shone onto all of Yth’s bones and into their homes, too. Since the deck for Low Apricot had been built above, light had become scarce. The opening above the atrium could have been boarded over for all the good it did now.

  Kyrioc climbed to the third floor. The central shop sold cheap brandy and even cheaper whisky, with a quiet but very lucrative side business distributing white tar. The shop on the eastern side had been shuttered. The former owner sold skewers of roasted meat, but her love of tar made her nod off beside the fire too often. The landlady finally lost patience and confiscated her equipment. It wasn’t legal, but tar heads rarely had the coin to go to the magistrates. Now the shop stood empty.

  On the western end of the building was a pawnshop. Kyrioc wasn’t the owner. He was the sole employee and the occupant of the tiny attached room. The owner kept a cot for himself in the storeroom for the rare occasions when he turned up. More often, he was out in the city on extended benders, drinking himself blind, returning only when his purse was light.

  Which meant the shop was Kyrioc’s to run. Most of their stock came from petty thieves eager to go next door for a jug—or something stronger—but there were also mothers desperate to make their rent, street thugs hoping to buy their way into a better occupation, and gamblers sure their luck was about to turn around.

  Those who came to buy were a higher class of people, or believed themselves to be. They had jobs and clung desperately to Woodgarden’s fading respectability. All they had to do was pretend they didn’t know where their purchases came from.

  Kyrioc unlocked the heavy front door, entered, then shut and barred it. The owner, Eyalmati, lay snoring in the back room. Kyrioc gently shut the storeroom door. Better not to wake the old man if he didn’t have to. In his tiny chamber, he set the bouquet in the remnants of yesterday’s clean water. Then he returned to the shop and slid open the shutter on the barred window. Open for business.

  The first few hours of the day were typically a busy time. Snatch-and-grab thieves and alley thugs liked to unload the night’s loot as quickly as possible, but this was his second summer solstice in the shop, and just like last year, Kyrioc had only one seller.

  It was Riliska. She appeared at his window only a few minutes after he opened, pressing her small, dirty face against the bars. “Good sir, I have something for you. It was a gift from a noble lady!” Her high, bright voice rang in the dim hall.

  “You worked last night?” Despite himself, Kyrioc felt a faint glimmer of happiness at her company.

  Riliska was only nine years old. Her mother, Rulenya, was a talented hand painter in the traditional style, but she’d already been thrown out of three high-end shops in Upgarden and Dawnshine for her drinking.

  Last spring, she had given her brushes, paints, and blanket to Riliska. The girl set up a station near the constables, who were sometimes willing to shoo thieves away from her while she painted people’s hands and nails. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t begging—begging was illegal—but she wasn’t being paid for her sophisticated skills.

  Not that Rulenya cared, as long as there were a few coins to be had at the end of the night.

  “I did! I did this nice lady’s thumbnails, and after she paid me, she offered me a set of finger chimes as a tip! She had a little box of them, some copper, some silver, some wooden ones that went clack clack. I didn’t like those. Listen to this!”

  She lifted her hand. She had a pair of steel finger chimes, and when she struck them together, they made a high, clear, beautiful tone.

  Kyrioc had heard better. “Pretty.”

  “So? How much will you give me for them?” She dropped the finger chimes into the tray. Kyrioc slid them beneath the barred windows.

  He examined them quickly, feeling a familiar stony gloom returning. It was unlikely that a noble of even the lowest rank would own finger cymbals. More likely they came from a merchant’s daughter with a few cheap gifts from suitors in her pockets. These probably cost three silver beams from a stall in Low Market. Kyrioc could probably get half a beam for them. He set a tiny silver coin in the tray. “One silver whistle.”

  “One?” she protested. “Only one?”

  “You shouldn’t steal things.”

  She didn’t try to correct him. “But these sound great! Try them!”

  Kyrioc snatched up his coin and dropped the cymbals back into the tray. “Your choice.”

  She pouted, then nudged the cymbals toward him. He dropped the coin in the tray, tossed the cymbals into the box of goods he would take to Low Market next week, then recorded the transaction in the ledger. Just one more stolen object circulating through—

  “Good sir, I don’t know why you’re so mean to me.”

  Kyrioc stopped writing. He’d just treated this little girl like one of the snatch-and-grab tar heads who hung on his bars, breathing their corpse breath onto him. She was just a dirty kid in a tattered shirt. A good kid, too, considering the way her mother was bringing her up.

  It wasn’t like she was going to buy herself a twist of white tar with the money he gave her. She’d be lucky if her mother didn’t take it.

  He knew better than this. Kyrioc unwrapped a corner of the loaf, letting the bakery smell fill the air.

  The little girl’s stomach growled loud enough for him to hear. “Do you have fresh bread?”

  Kyrioc stood, unbarred the shop door, and let Riliska inside. He barred the door again and shuttered the shop window—no other customers were in sight—then led her into his chamber. She followed quietly, keeping her hands at her sides, while he set the cloth sack of food on the table and removed the bouquet from the bowl of water.

  “Wash your hands,” he said. “Face, too.”

  “Thank you, good sir,” she said brightly, then did as she was asked. While she scrubbed, Kyrioc fetched two small bowls and filled them with rice. Then he tore the loaf in half and gave her the smaller piece. He also gave her the smallest carrot and one of the crocks.

  Riliska pulled up her chair and sat opposite. The first thing she picked up was the bread.

  “Eat everything,” Kyrioc said.

  “Except that.” She held a flat palm over the carrot. Stop right there.

  “Haven’t you eaten carrots before? They’re a little bit sweet.”

  That made her curious. She held it sideways and nibbled at the middle. Her eyes lit up.

  Once the carrot was gone, she opened the crock and dipped the bread inside. When Kyrioc was her age, he’d hated preserved fish, but he’d been fed by servants and could eat all the meat and salt he wanted.

  She glanced at his discolored left hand, then the scar on his face.
“Good sir, were you a soldier?” He didn’t answer. “Sometimes, I hear people talking about you. They aren’t always nice. Were you a heavy? Some people think you’re in hiding because you killed someone. Are you an assassin? Do you work for smugglers from Carrig?”

  Riliska had asked these questions at his table before. Kyrioc did not eat with her often—Rulenya had forbidden it—but today was a holiday, and he’d suspected the girl would have no one to look after her. It seemed he was right.

  Still, if she was caught here, eating at his table, Rulenya could make a scene and the landlady might demand Eyalmati send him away. Eyalmati himself didn’t mind the girl’s company—only a month earlier, he’d stumbled drunkenly into the room and joined the two of them for a late dinner—but no one wanted to risk pissing the landlady off.

  But if she was hungry, he fed her. If she was dirty, he gave her water to wash. If she had questions, he listened. It was nothing, almost literally the absolute least he could do to interact with the world around him in a way that didn’t involve the exchange of coin. She spoke to him, and he could answer without having to hold his temper in or startling in fear or rushing away with his skin crawling.

  It was the only part of his day—of his entire life—that he actually enjoyed.

  But these were the only questions that he didn’t answer, for her sake.

  “It doesn’t matter what the neighbors say,” he said. “What do you think? Do you think I’m a heavy? Do you think… You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  It surprised him how much he cared about her answer.

  “Well…” She hesitated, and Kyrioc had a sudden awful certainty that she would say yes. Instead, she said, “You don’t exactly look like a respectable person.” She put extra emphasis on the word to show her pride in it. “That’s why you’re here in Woodgarden, right? Because there are some respectable people here, but they’re the worst. But that’s okay. Mom says we’re not respectable either.”

  Riliska smiled at him, and he felt a sudden, absurd rush of gratitude toward her. He glanced down at his bread and tore off a piece.

  “Is this the place where glitterkind come from?”

  A chill ran down Kyrioc’s back. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, some kids were saying that glitterkind are kept in gardens so they’ll grow.”

  “And?”

  “Well, the name of this deck is Woodgarden, which makes it sound like it was a really nice place once, and those kids said that before the upper decks of the city were built, glitterkind were just lying around where anyone could take a nibble. Do you think that’s true?”

  “What I heard,” he said, “is that glitterkind need sunshine and grass to grow. There’s no grass in Woodgarden.”

  That disappointed her, but her mood rallied quickly. She held up her left hand. “I’ve learned to make yellow.” The nail of her pinky had been painted yellow, with a few slender red lines. It took him a moment to realize the lines suggested the face of a wise, smiling cat.

  “I didn’t know yellow was possible,” Kyrioc said.

  Riliska’s eyes were bright and her smile broadened. “It’s a very rare color. A shop in Upgarden started offering it weeks ago, and everyone wanted to know how it was made. Her competitors offered her gold, or even the means to sell her color overseas, and some people had her followed everywhere, or even tried to have her collared. Do you want to know how I worked it out? I watched. I snuck into her shop while she was arguing with the soldiers about her warrant. Her rafters were full of clutter, so I hid up there and waited. Before she went to bed, I saw her at her bench. Everyone thought she was buying mushrooms because she liked to eat them, but only I figured it out.”

  “She was making the color from mushrooms?”

  “Yep! A special kind.”

  “Where did you get the mushrooms to make your own?”

  She looked cagey for a moment as she tried to think up a likely story. “I bought them, of course. With tip money.”

  “You shouldn’t steal.”

  There was a loud rapping against the shop shutter. “It’s probably no one,” Kyrioc said. He went into the shop, leaving the door to his room ajar, then slid the shutter back.

  It was Rulenya, still drunk from the night before.

  “Why aren’t you open yet? Does your boss know you’re still sleeping in? Well?”

  “There’s no business on the solstice holiday,” Kyrioc answered wearily.

  “There’s me,” she snapped. “I have business, but I suppose I’m nobody.” She passed him a Harkan wedding robe, made of bright red silk with a pleated flannel lining. “You be careful with that! No stains.”

  She surprised him by accepting his first offer. He gave her a claim token. She had five weeks to buy it back, or he would take it up to Low Market and get a nice price for it. Although, considering the seam work and the fabric, Dawnshine might be more appropriate. It would be worth the trip. “Five weeks,” he said. “Is that all?”

  She began to lay things in the tray: A jade comb. Two steel knives, one with a spiked knuckle cover. Bangles made from copper and cheap, cloudy glass. A bronze ring. A tin flask.

  Plucked from those too drunk to protest, no doubt. She’d had a productive holiday.

  “Where’s Riliska? Didn’t she come by here yet?”

  “You saw the shutter was closed.”

  His evasion only seemed to anger her further. “You better not be keeping her in that room of yours. If I find out you’re messing with my little girl…” She craned her neck to the side and saw that the door to his little room was slightly open. “Who’s in there with you? Open that!”

  Kyrioc moved toward the door and opened it slightly. Riliska was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the meal. He pushed the door open all the way, letting Rulenya see the tiny table with a single bowl.

  He closed it partway again and returned to the window. She seemed mollified, and a little resentful that her accusations had not been born out. “If you touch my daughter, I’ll slash you. You won’t even know it’s coming.”

  “I’ll give you five silver whistles for the lot.”

  It was an insulting price, but she surprised him again by accepting it. As he was marking the items in the ledger, Rulenya made smacking noises. The booze must have been wearing off.

  She offered him a crooked smile. “You look like you can handle yourself. I like that in a man. Why haven’t you picked up some of the silver in your boss’s drawer and bought me a drink or two? I don’t mind a scar if the brandy’s flowing.”

  He paid her, slid the shutter closed, and sorted the items.

  The sound must have stirred Eyalmati, because he stumbled out of the storage room and rummaged through the cash box. “Where’s the rest?” he demanded, his words slurred.

  Kyrioc stared at him. “It’s Last Day. The solstice. You know how business is on Last Day.”

  Eyalmati shrank away from that look, then grumbled as he shuffled toward the hall. He’d left one whistle and three knots in the cash box for Kyrioc to finish out the day, and there was no telling when he’d be back.

  Once the old man’s wooden heels had thumped down the stairs, Kyrioc opened the bottom drawer, lifted the false bottom, and took out enough money to see him through the morning. Then he placed the Harkan robe into the five-week box at the back of the store room.

  Everything suddenly seemed extraordinarily vivid—the glittering edges of the knives, the faces of the tiny statuettes, the rough steel surfaces of the tools on the shelf. It all seemed to be closing in on him, and he could hear the sounds of a faraway jungle. Human screams mingled with weird shrieks and—

  No. No. Those were just memories. He was safe now. He was alone, with barred windows and doors—not to mention an entire city and miles of open water—between him and that place. He’d left those dangers behind.

  But not their echoes. Kyrioc took deep breaths until he was able to unclench his fists.

  He found Riliska standing at th
e table, the bundle of red poppies in her hand. A tiny flower was tucked through one of the ragged holes in her tunic. Her smile was bright and cheerful. “Don’t they look pretty next to my skin?”

  Before he could think about it, Kyrioc snatched them from her. “Don’t take other people’s things.”

  His hand trembled, and he felt sick to his stomach. He crossed the room and set the flowers back in the bowl of water.

  Riliska followed. She slid the flower from her tunic and put it in with the rest, her tiny face downcast.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Onderishta interrogated Second Boar through the night, but it was pointless without the package—whatever it contained—to hold over him. The sun had barely risen before upcity advocates battered at the gate, warrant for his release in hand. Harl’s parsu had moved quickly. Second Boar must have been higher in the organization than she’d thought.

  The warrant had been signed by Rueljun parsu-Lorrud ward-Lorrud defe-Lorrud admir-Lorrud hold-Lorrud, a respectable head of a respectable—but mostly apolitical—noble family. What’s more, he must have been awakened in the middle of the night to do it. Not that she needed yet another fucking reminder that Harl wielded power beyond his station in life, but there it was, nonetheless.

  Fay suggested they hold on to Second by pretending there was an error in the warrant, but the tower captain would not hear of it—especially, as she said, since they had no actual evidence of a crime. When Second Boar left, she looked relieved to be rid of him.

  Onderishta followed Second out onto the Spillwater deck. She’d switched from her multicolored vest to a gray one and had put on a low, square cap. Uniforms were their own kind of armor.

  “I had no idea you were so high up the slope,” Onderishta said lightly. “Harl must think a lot of you to get you pulled so quickly.”

  “The eye must think a lot of me, too, to collar me for no reason.”

  Was this banter? Onderishta didn’t think the big thug had it in him. “How did you win his trust?”