“He ain’t, and he won’t be. Not for you.”
That told me something: Rambles had heard I was in Ten Ways, and had given orders that I was to be kept away. Interesting.
I tilted my head back and met the Cutter’s eyes. He smiled, showing yellowed teeth. Try me, the smile said, please.
“You got a name?” I said.
More teeth.
“Any idea when he’ll be back?”
Teeth again.
“Should I be talking slower?”
He scowled and squeezed my hand. I winced as I felt the bones rub together, but I met his gaze. After a long moment, he let go. I resisted the urge to snatch my hand back and instead let it fall casually to my side.
“Get out,” he said.
I stood there just long enough to make him wonder if he’d have to haul me out on his own, then turned and left.
The sky was a deep blue going on black when I stepped outside. Behind me, one of Rambles’s people stepped through the door and leaned against the wall beside it. Another one joined him. The second one smiled and waved good-bye. I got the message.
Four blocks later, when I was sure I wasn’t being followed, I doubled back and took to the roofs. It was a clear night, with a waning moon that wouldn’t be up for hours. Between the early darkness and my night vision, I wasn’t worried about any high watch Rambles may have stationed above his building. As it turned out, it didn’t matter-the roofs were empty all the way to the milliner’s shop.
That gave me pause. Either Rambles was being incredibly confident, or incredibly stupid. And since he wasn’t a stupid man, that meant he thought he was safe in Ten Ways-safe enough to not bother putting even one person on the Dancer’s Way. This ran counter to the grumblings I’d heard on the street.
That, or it was a trap. Either way, though, I wasn’t going to find anything out staring at his shingle-covered peak.
Six dormers, three on a side, poked out from the roofline of his building. A quick investigation showed the windows boarded up on five of the dormers. The sixth, however, had had its boards pried away. It was dark inside, and my night vision showed me signs of squatters from sometime in the past. Judging by the dust and bird nests, no one had been up here in a while.
I slipped inside and crept along carefully, worried as much about finding a rotted board as about making noise. The damp odor of mold and bitter scent of bird droppings filled the place, tickling my nose. Below me, I could hear the shouts and curses and clatter of the gaming room coming up through the floor. Farther along, the noises faded to a murmur, then a hum. I knelt and put my head close to the floor. The faint buzz of two people in conversation came to me.
It occurred to me as I knelt there, trying to make out even a fraction of what was being said, that I didn’t know for sure it was Rambles in the room below. I was just going on instinct, a shadow beneath a doorframe, and the Cutter’s bad attitude. And even if it was Rambles down there, he could just as easily be spending the evening with his whore as talking about anything I cared about. Hell, odds favored the former, to be honest.
I smiled to myself in the darkness. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I got a face full of dust and dried bird droppings on my clothes while Nosing. Creeping around on long shots was part of the job.
Nothing-or, more precisely, not enough of something came to me through the attic’s floor. The conversation was tantalizingly distinguishable, just not understandable. I drew out the listening cup I kept in my herb wallet-a short, fluted tin tube I’d had since my days as a Wide Nose-and looked around more carefully. Seeing a faint sliver of light shining up through the floorboards, I crawled to it, then laid myself prone, my ear to the cup and the cup to the light.
Better.
“… the damn cordon,” Rambles was saying. “I’m supposed to be getting things in order here, not taking them over the edge.”
“Funny,” said another voice. “I could have sworn you were trying for the exact opposite.”
I started to take an involuntary breath, then stopped myself before I ended up with a mouth full of dust. I knew that voice-deep, gravelly, with the mildest irreverence riding beneath the surface. Last time I’d heard it, it had been coming down through a sewer grate rather than up through a crack in the ceiling. I didn’t have a name or a face to put to it, but I recognized it from the conversation Degan and I had overheard beneath the street outside Fedim’s.
What the hell was he doing here with Rambles?
I heard Rambles make a noise, maybe a laugh or a cough. “And your people have nothing to do with it, right?”
“Her people aren’t the problem here,” said the other man. “Yours are. They’re thick on the street and leaning hard. People expected Nicco to react, yes, but not like this. Ten Ways Kin are spitting when they speak his name, lad; that, or spitting on their steel as they hone it. What you’re doing, it’s too-”
“Too much like him?” said Rambles.
“Too heavy, too fast.”
“Then it’s just what he’d want,” said Rambles. “Nicco likes results, and I’m not about to put my neck on the line for your timetable. You’re the ones who stirred things up in the first place-don’t blame me if the locals aren’t playing the tune you set out. As far as my boss is concerned, as long as I don’t start a war, he’s happy.”
There was a pause. “You do know it might well come down to that?”
“What-my starting it, or a war happening?”
“Either way.”
This time I did take an involuntary breath and barely kept from choking. A Kin war in Ten Ways? The blood would flow in rivers. In most other cordons, a gang war could be kept among the Kin, leaving the Lighters out of it. The empire might notice, but, as long as we spent our time putting knives in one another, it didn’t really care.
Ten Ways, though, was a different animal. The local gangs would take a full-scale war as an excuse to settle old scores, even if they weren’t directly involved. Nor would they make as fine a distinction between Kin and Lighter; any slight, real or imagined, would be cause enough for vengeance. And it would only spiral out from there.
Too many riots had begun in Ten Ways for the empire to ignore a gang war in the cordon. At the first hint of anything larger than a turf battle, the empire would send the legions in, all Black Sashes and swinging swords. And if the legions couldn’t handle it, well, then the White Sashes would wade in, just as they had when they threw down Isidore, the Dark King.
I shuddered. No, best not to think about the Whites.
I let out my breath slowly, suppressing a cough. My mouth tasted like dust and bird droppings; dry, gritty, with acid and vinegar mixed in. I grimaced, tried to summon up enough spit to move some of it out, and failed. I wanted nothing so much as a long drink and a good coughing fit, but neither was an option-not while Rambles and his friend were talking below.
“I thought it wasn’t supposed to come to a war,” Rambles was saying. I noted he didn’t sound terribly surprised at his visitor’s announcement.
“Aye, well, there’ve been some new… considerations… brought into the mix. It’s not just a matter of playing the locals off against one another anymore.”
“You mean you aren’t the only ones trying to manipulate the Kin in Ten Ways,” said Rambles smugly. “You’re having to deal with other players now.”
“Down, lad. It’s not what you think,” said the other man. “We wanted some of the other Upright Men and Rufflers to take notice. Nothing against your boss, but even he’s not a big enough threat on his own to motivate a cordon like Ten Ways. We needed the Kin here to feel threatened, to have a reason to start acting like a single entity, rather than a bunch of warring gangs. But you’re going too far. Kin on the edge of Nicco’s territory are getting anxious. They’re looking for protection from other Uprights when we want them to come to you.”
“I can’t offer people protection if I don’t have a stable base, damn it! ” said Rambles. “Nicco has to have enough clout in the cordon to be seen as a refuge. That’s what I’m working on. You’re the ones who’ve been pushing Ten Ways from every direction, prodding gangs into turf wars and playing with local politics. If you hadn’t put the Kin here so on edge, they wouldn’t be trying to cut my damn nose off every time I stuck it out.”