He used the bathroom. Yisson was, it turned out, being kind.
When he returned to the hall the bouncer ducked into the card room, drawn by the sound of raised voices. Tibs waited, one dead-caterpillar eyebrow arched in question. “Win anything?”
“Pits, no. In fact, we better scuttle before they come out here looking to see if they can squeeze any more out of me.”
“Thought we didn’t have grain to lose?”
“Bah.” Detan slung an arm around Tibs’s shoulder, wiping a sticky substance he’d acquired from the bathroom off his hand onto Tibs’s coat. “Your short-sighted, pocket-pinching ways never fail to distress me, old friend. It was not the proliferation of grains I was after, but the information.”
“Really. And did you manage to lose some information, too?”
“You wound me.” He stepped aside as a broad-shouldered man spilled out of the card room’s doorway into the hall with them. The man staggered, obviously having stomached more ale than Detan could manage, and rammed his shoulder straight into Detan’s chest. With a grunt and a forced laugh, Detan nudged the man upright and steadied him.
“You all right, mister…?”
“Buncha cheats in there,” the drunken man muttered and tugged at his rumpled collar. He pat Detan’s chest with one sticky hand. “You’re all right, though.”
The man dragged his hand free of Detan’s shirt, turning to struggle his way down the stairs, and the harsh rip of fabric tearing filled the hallway. Everyone froze, staring at the spill of cards that Tibs had dealt Detan to keep his hands busy while they were locked in a cabin on the Larkspur, splayed out across the stained hallway floor.
“Err,” Detan said.
“Cheater!” the drunken man roared, and grabbed Detan’s rumpled shirt in both meaty fists.
Detan attempted a protest, but with his feet dangling off the ground and his collar ratcheted up tight around his throat all he managed was a pale imitation of a dunkeet squawk. His back struck the wall and dust rained down upon him, filling his eyes with grit and tears. On instinct he kicked out – more of a flail, if he was being honest with himself – and struck the man hard in, what he was disturbed to realize, was the man’s crotch.
Wheezing and grunting, the drunken man dropped Detan with a thud and staggered back, folding up upon himself like flaccid sail. Detan wanted to harangue the man for his uncalled for assault, but Tibs grabbed him by the sleeve and jerked him toward the stairs.
Shouts sounded from inside the card room. The big man’s cries of cheater must have been overheard. Which was really unfair, considering this had been one of the few times Detan hadn’t had any intention of cheating.
With a weary groan he scurried after Tibs, tromping down the creaky steps and out into the strange streets of Petrastad. A fine mist ensconced the city, bitter cold and obscuring, as night crept in across the waves.
“I blame you for that.” Detan propped his hands against his knees, huffing the chilly air. Tibs rolled his eyes.
“Blame me all you like, you still owe me a new deck of cards.”
“Preposterous! I could not have foreseen that brute’s–”
“There they are!” The singular window of Lotti’s Cards sprouted two heads. One of them hurled a lantern. The glass shattered and splashed burning oil a mere few paces from where Detan hunched. He yelped and jumped aside.
“Now that was uncalled for!”
“Come on.” Tibs took off down a side street, and with a muffled curse Detan sprinted after him, boots slipping on the mist-slick cobblestones.
“Why,” Tibs demanded through harsh breaths, “didn’t you change your shirt?”
“It was clean enough! Do you have any idea where you’re going?”
“Away from them seems the best course,” Tibs replied as he twisted down yet another street. Detan jogged along, beginning to notice a disturbing pattern. This city, just like its rectangular buildings, was laid out in grids. Nice, wide, easy to follow grids. Not a simple city to hide in, not at all. And it didn’t help matters much that their boots smeared mud with every step they took.
Detan sighed. “I hate this city.”
“Didn’t take you long,” Tibs called back over his shoulder.
“Never does.”
Shouts sounded somewhere behind them, echoing off the neat, straight stone walls, and Detan forced his legs to pump a little faster. He told himself it could be worse. It could be the local watchers hard on his heels, but the thought didn’t much soothe when his knees ached and the damned mist was clogging up his eyes.
“Fucking Petrastad,” he said to no one in particular.
Chapter Eight
As the shrill whistle tolled, the guards grouped the sparrows for work details. Ripka caught sight of Enard over by the trestle table they’d taken their first meal on, lumped together with a handful of other male sparrows. They held wire brushes for deep cleaning, and were being handed rusty wrenches. Despite her uneasiness with Clink, she was glad she wasn’t in that group.
“This way,” Clink said, waving an arm toward the edge of the rec yard.
Ripka followed, hesitant but with her head up, waiting for the guards to yell at their little party for moving without permission. To let loose with those too-casual crossbows. Not a one so much as twitched an eyebrow their direction.
Clink stopped at a doorway leading into the dormitory on the western edge of the rec yard. It was huge and arched, thick planks of darkwood banded with iron kissed by rust. She pounded twice on the door with her fist and, after a moment, it swung open. Another guard stood framed by a long hallway, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, her shirt half tucked and a deep scowl on her lips.
“Didn’t you hear the whistles?” Clink asked, a little too firmly for Ripka’s liking. If Clink had been a prisoner in her jail, she’d be scolded for that. Of course, Ripka doubted a scolding would do much good against a woman like Clink, but at least an attempt at decorum would have been made.
“Aren’t you an industrious little bee?” The guard sneered and stepped aside, gesturing them through the door.
“We don’t farm, we don’t eat.” Clink eyed the guard. “And we wouldn’t last long if we were forced to eat the local wildlife. They’re all so spindly.”
The guard snorted and pointed to the wall. Hanging from the grey, unfinished stone were five buckets stuffed with hand spades, claw rakes, pruning shears, and leather gloves. Ripka stared, dumbstruck. Every last piece of equipment could be fashioned into a deadly weapon.
“Grab a bucket,” Honey whispered, nudging her forward. The pale-haired woman hugged her bucket against her midsection with one arm, a spade clutched in the other hand. She brought the spade up to her cheek and brushed the cool steel against her skin. All the while smiling with those big, doe, eyes at Ripka.
Ripka cleared her throat. “They let us use this stuff?”
The guard said, “Only to do your work. Cause any trouble out there and you get thrown in the well. Try and sneak anything back in, you get thrown in the well. Sneak anything back in and use it, you get thrown to the sharks. Clear?”
“As the skies,” Ripka said as she took a bucket from a hook.
“Now hold still.” The rumpled guard jerked a patch from her pocket, spilling a few more to the floor, and kicked the fallen ones aside. Thick stalks of grain were embroidered in the middle of the patch, a gleaming bucket alongside them. Her face pinched with concentration, the guard pressed the patch against Ripka’s arm. She tugged a folded card from her pocket and flipped it open to reveal a set of pre-threaded needles. Tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, the guard leaned over the patch and Ripka held her breath as the woman drew a few sloppy stitches through, then broke the thread and tied off a knot.