"At least he sent the pretty ones" was all Stillborn said as they approached the eastern ledge.
Two Maimed Men awaiting them on the rimrock were armed with thick spears of blackened and case-hardened iron. One wore an armored cloak; a half-circle of boiled and pleated leather mounted with coin-sized metal rings that had to weigh at least twenty pounds. The other man wore chainmail that had rusted around the armpits and a wool kilt over wool pants. Both men appeared whole, but Raif knew better than to be fooled by that. Everyone in the Rift was missing something, and experience had taught him that imperfections that did not immediately meet the eye were usually the worst kind.
Some instinct, perhaps fear or simple habit, made Raif stretch out a hand to read the air. The headwind was light and from the north. Updrafts rising from the Rift were fitful and without force.
Shucking off the bag of bones and letting it drop onto the green granite of the ledge, he said to Addie and Stillborn." Take the meat. Go on ahead."
The little cragsman shook his head and was about to tell Raif exactly what he thought of that idea when Stillborn also shook his head. A single, curt shake aimed at silencing Addie Gunn.
"Come on," Stillborn said, somehow managing to clap Addie on the shoulder while still balancing the deer. "Lets make sure our Rift Brothers get the meat."
Addie hesitated. He knew how important the meat was, knew also that the Maimed Men needed to see with their own eyes who had brought it. Finally he asked Raif in a whisper, "Will you be all right, lad?"
Raif stared at the man with the armored cloak as he said, "I'll be fine. If you want to do me a favor find me arrows. Two dozen with feather fletchings."
The cragsman nodded. "If you're not back by midnight we'll come looking." Bending at the knee, he picked up Raif's sack. It was still dripping blood.
As Addie and Stillborn walked ahead, Raif let his right hand come to rest on the crossguard of his borrowed sword. It was a small thing, but it drew the attention of Mole's men away from Addie and Stillborn and to himself.
"You're coming with us to see the chief," said the man wearing the armored cloak. Now that he spoke, Raif saw he was missing front teeth. When Raif failed to move, he thrust out his spear. "Get walking."
He thought they would lead him down to Traggis Mole's cave but they led him up to the high cliffs instead. Ancient crumbling steps cut deep into the rock wound up through the city and out onto the head-cliffs where the Maimed Men maintained their watch. The cliffs bulged above the city like wasps' nests, round-walled and tapering, connected to each other by a series of gangplanks known as the Cloud Walk. Raif had not been up here before and he saw that the rock was older and softer than the ledgerock below. Birds had made and abandoned nests in the potholes, and dwarfed pines had grown and died, leaving skeletons that rattled in the wind.
Both men were well-accustomed to the Cloud Walk and navigated the wood-and-rope walkways with ease. Raif tried not to look down, did look down and began to sway.
"We got a spinner," commented the armored cloak man without rancor. Neither he nor the chainmail man raised a hand to help.
Raif closed his fist around the guiderope. Two ropes suspended at waist height and a foot-wide plank of wood were all that was preventing him from crashing to the rimrock ninety feet below. Wind set the ropes swaying, and the weight of three men on the plank made the wood creak and bow. It would be easy to kill him. A near forceless movement of the hand would be all it would take. Raif tried to calm himself, but the world was tipping, and he was unsure what to do with his body to counter it.
"Walk."
It was both an order and advice. He had been holding too long on to the rope and had begun to lean into it—into thin air. Blinking as if that could somehow help, Raif rocked his weight onto his other foot and eased his hand from the rope. Giddy nausea filled his head. It felt as if his brain had detached itself from his spinal cord and was spinning like a top in his skull. Drunkenly, he took a step forward. More spinning. Seen from above, the city on the edge of the abyss looked like a chunk of driftwood riddled with wormholes. After thinking that bit of nonsense he took another step, followed by another one. Walking.
Two more gangways, a short tunnel, and a drawbridge had to be navigated before they reached the western watch. Raif developed a technique he called "looking at the stray hair hanging down in front of my eye." To know its name was to know how it worked. At some point during the second gangway he realized what Traggis Mole was up to. Yet the knowledge that it was the Robber Chief's intent to throw him off guard and render him weak at the knees was strangely worthless. It didn't make the gangways any easier.
The sun was setting by the time the two men delivered him to the stack of freestanding rock where the Maimed Men conducted their western watch and Traggis Mole stood waiting. Wind and glaciers had carved out the stack, forming a structure that protruded from the cliff wall like a thumb. The top was flat and slightly canted toward the Rift. A fine down of sugar lichen covered the rock.
As the two men withdrew they pulled on the hoist ropes, raising the drawbridge and leaving Raif and Traggis Mole alone and trapped on the stack.
The king of the city on the edge of the abyss stood with his back turned to Raif, looking south beyond his domain toward the clanholds. Dressed in a floor-length greatcloak of horsehide edged with black swan feathers, nothing of his body was visible below the neck. A bricked-in fire was burning close to the center of the stack, and the Robber Chief must have tended it recently for a stick close to his feet gave off a silky line of smoke.
"Night falls," he said in greeting, not looking round.
The sun, no longer aligned with the Rift, sank beyond the canyon-lands sending out a dying breath of red light. Raif looked down and saw the Orrl cloak reflecting the color perfectly, looked back up and saw the sun was gone.
"Right now below us Stillborn is presenting a snagcat to the Rift Brothers, claiming he brought it down with a throw spear." Traggis Mole spun and pinned Raif with his stare. "Does he lie?"
While the Robber Chief was in motion Raif fought the desire to step back. No one he had ever met in his life moved as inhumanly fast as Traggis Mole. The chief's wooden nose was strapped in place above his air hole and as the first dew of dusk formed his breath smoked white.
Raif said, 'The blow that brought down the cat was Stillborn's."
"Brought down and kill are not the same," Traggis Mole replied, whip-fast in his harsh Vorlander voice. "His credit is undue."
"Stillborn's blow slowed the cat. Without it mine would have gone wide."
Traggis Mole made no reply. Minutes passed and silence stretched to the Rift and back before he called it in, "Do you know he took your gold?"
Raif blinked. For a moment he felt just as he had on the first gangway; as if the world were tipping sideways and he was unsure how to right himself within it.
The Robber Chief's small round eyes took in all, and gave nothing back. "The fifteen men who took part in the raid on Black Hole were each given a gold rod to reward their success. Ask Stillborn where yours is."
"I will not." The coldness of those three words surprised Raif. There was a blur of motion, too fast to be tracked wholly by the eye, and then Traggis Mole was standing by the bricked-in fire, his cloak swinging at his heels like a child who could not keep up. "Perhaps he assumed that riches do not interest you."