“I’m a Nose,” I said. “When I hear dangerous things I don’t like, I go see my boss.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Kells wasn’t at home. More specifically, he wasn’t in Silver Disc cordon, or any of his other territories. He was in Ten Ways, directing the war against Nicco-personally.
“It’s that bad?” said Degan.
“That’s what I hear,” I said. I had come looking for Degan after failing to see Kells, and had found the Arm playing two-man cabbat at Prospo’s with Jelem. Degan was, of course, losing.
“And you need to see him right now?” said Degan.
“I do.” Kells was the kind of Upright Man who worked best from the shadows, pulling strings and spinning plans; that he had taken to the streets, let alone the front lines, didn’t bode well for our side.
Degan sighed and tossed his cards on the table. “Just when I was ready to make a comeback, too.”
“Yes, of course you were,” said Jelem as he raked the small pile of coins from the center of the table toward himself. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Drothe for saving me from my imminent… defeat.”
“Business comes first,” I said.
“Funny how your ‘business’ keeps interfering with my profits,” observed Jelem, stacking his coins. “Especially since I’m still owed monies for working on a certain rope.”
I stood up straighter. “I don’t recall a whole lot of return on that yet,” I said.
“Ah, as to that…” Jelem moved his glittering stacks aside and set his elbows on the table. “Give me six strands of your hair.”
“What?”
Jelem snapped his fingers. “Just do it,” he said, “before anyone comes wandering by.”
I reached up and began plucking.
“Make sure they’re long,” said Jelem as he reached into the folds of his robe and came out with a length of knotted rope. Tamas’s rope-no, I realized, Task’s rope; there weren’t any burned knots on this one.
“Watch for anyone who might notice us,” he said as he took the hairs from me and carefully draped them in his lap.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Keying the magic in this rope to you, of course.”
“ ‘Keying’ it?” I said. “I haven’t used a lot of portable glimmer in the past, but what I have used has never been ‘keyed’ to anything.”
“That’s because whatever you used was either harmless, or something you could physically control or avoid once it was activated. This is a rope. It bends and twists and wraps around things. The runes in it are activated when they strike someone. If you miss that someone, it’s entirely possible it could swing back around and hit you. Unless, of course, you’d rather run the risk of knocking yourself unconscious with your own glimmer?”
“Keying it to me will be fine,” I said.
I watched as Jelem plucked up a single hair and tied it around the first knot in an elaborate pattern. He began muttering to himself and making small pulling actions in the air.
Degan and I took up positions on either side of the table, settling into the casual slouch that is second nature to Kin who are keeping an eye out for something. I waved Cecil off when he came to see if we needed new drinks, while Degan placed himself between the street and the table whenever anyone walked past.
At last, the sounds stopped, and Jelem cleared his throat.
I turned around to find him sitting back in his chair, the rope coiled in his lap.
“It’s done?” I said.
“It’s done,” said Jelem.
Jelem and I stared at each other.
“About the payment,” I said at last.
“Yes?”
Crap. I hated doing this. It was embarrassing. “Nicco’s cast me out, and all my hawks were…”
“You’re broke,” said Jelem.
“For the moment,” I admitted.
Jelem nodded. “I expected as much. But fortunately for you, I’ve thought of a solution that doesn’t involve money.”
“No money,” I echoed. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“A favor,” he said, the word sounding both silky and dirty in his mouth. “Payable… later.”
“What kind of favor?”
Jelem raised his left shoulder a fraction of an inch. “If I knew that, it wouldn’t be a favor-it would be a payment.”
I gritted my teeth and looked at the rope, then at Jelem. I glanced over at Degan.
“Don’t look at me,” said Degan. “That kind of an arrangement makes perfect sense as far as I’m concerned.”
I looked back at Jelem. He was sitting placidly, waiting, knowing he had me over a barrel. I needed any edge I could get right now, and that rope was one nice bit of edge.
“Fine,” I said. “It’s not as if I don’t owe anyone else any favors, anyhow.”
Degan coughed discreetly into his hand, hiding a smile.
“Excellent,” said Jelem. He picked up the rope and tossed it at my head. “Here.”
My eyes went wide. I tried to duck, but the rope uncoiled as it flew, and two of the knots hit my side.
Nothing happened.
“Well, that seems to have worked,” said Jelem as he picked up his deck of cards and began shuffling them. “Good.”
“It seems to have worked?” I said as I gathered up the rope. “You mean you didn’t know if it would?”
Jelem squared the cards in one hand and then rotated them with his fingers so they cut themselves and restacked into a neat pile in his palm. He smiled and said nothing.
“Bastard,” I said as I coiled the rope and tucked it in behind my belt to hide it from casual view. Jelem was still smiling when Degan and I walked away.
Kells had set up his operations base in the northeast corner of Ten Ways, in the remains of a small manor house. Like so many of the formerly fine buildings in the cordon, this one had been subdivided again and again by a succession of landlords and squatters, until it was little more than a maze of interconnected hovels and rooms, with new walls thrown up and old ones torn open, seemingly at random. Guessing by the traces of plaster and lumber I saw in the courtyard, he must have had his people tearing out some of the later additions to make it easier to move-and defend-inside.
“Wait here,” said one of the Cutters who had escorted us in from the cordon. “I need to talk to somebody about you.”
“You do that,” I said. Degan merely grunted and studied the space around us.
It had been easier to get into Ten Ways than I had expected. There was open warfare in the streets now, with both Cutters and Rags running in larger packs. A couple of lone Kin were easy to miss, especially when everyone else was looking for bigger trouble.
And there was trouble aplenty. We’d come across three open street fights-two between different factions of Kin, and one between a small cohort of Rags and a squad of Nicco’s men. Usually, I would have put the odds on the Rags, what with their being armed not only with blades but also with halberds and bucklers; but then, Nicco’s people didn’t usually go hunting with a Mouth in tow. A fistful of nails tossed in the air and a couple of spoken words were all it had taken to turn that battle. We’d found a group of Kells’s men shortly after that and surrendered our steel in exchange for an escort to the Upright Man’s headquarters.
“Good place for a dusting pan,” said Degan after a few minutes.
I nodded. Between the high walls of the courtyard and the even higher windows on the second and third floors, anyone trying to take the place would be walking into a death trap. And that was assuming they made it this far. The piazza beyond the walls was even now being cleared of anything larger than a man’s shoe, to remove any kind of cover or ammunition that could help an attacker.
It wasn’t a good sign. It spoke of last measures and final stands. It spoke of Kells’s losing.
Inside, the siege mentality was even more prevalent. Kin either hurried from place to place, readying themselves, or sat silently, waiting for the inevitable. There was none of the banter, none of the good-natured threats or bellicose bragging I was used to hearing from nervous Kin when a fight was brewing. There was only resignation.