“Y’always aim to avoid it, of course you do, but sometimes you run into it anyway. What I’m saying here is, we’d best not run into it.” Shallow dropped his voice to a whisper. “You know what the bald boss said last time.”
“You don’t have to whisper. He ain’t here, is he?”
Shallow looked wildly around. “I don’t know. Is he?”
“No, he ain’t.” Deep rubbed at his temples. One day he’d kill his brother, that was a foregone conclusion. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“What if he was, though? Best to always act like he might be.”
“Can you shut your mouth just for a fucking instant?” Deep caught Shallow by the arm and stabbed the baggage in his face. “It’s like talking to a bloody—” He was greatly surprised when a dark shape whisked between them and he found his hand was suddenly empty.
* * *
Kiam ran like her life depended on it. Which it did, o’ course.
“Get after him, damn it!” She heard the two Northmen flapping and crashing and blundering down the alley behind, and nowhere near far enough behind for her taste.
“It’s a girl, y’idiot!” Big and clumsy but fast they were coming, boots hammering and hands clutching, and if they once caught ahold of her …
“Who fucking cares? Get the thing back!” And her breath hissing and her heart pounding and her muscles burning as she ran.
She skittered around a corner, rag-wrapped feet sticking to the damp cobbles, the way wider, lamps and torches making muddy smears in the mist and people busy everywhere. She ducked and weaved, around them, between them, faces looming up and gone. The Blackside night market, stalls and shoppers and the cries of the traders, full of noise and smells and tight with bustle. Kiam slithered between the wheels of a wagon, limber as a ferret, plunged between buyer and seller in a shower of fruit, then slithered across a stall laden with slimy fish while the trader shouted and snatched at her, caught nothing but air. She stuck one foot in a basket and was off, kicking cockles across the street. Still she heard the yells and growls as the Northmen knocked folk flying in her wake, crashes as they flung the carts aside, as though a mindless storm were ripping apart the market behind her. She dived between the legs of a big man, rounded another corner, and took the greasy steps two at a time, along the narrow path by the slopping water, rats squeaking in the rubbish and the sounds of the Northmen now loud, louder, cursing her and each other. Her breath whooping and cutting in her chest, she ran desperate, water spattering and spraying around her with every echoing footfall.
“We’ve got her!” the voice so close at her heels. “Come here!”
She darted through that little hole in the rusted grate, a sharp tooth of metal leaving a burning cut down her arm, and for once she was plenty glad that Old Green never gave her enough to eat. She kicked her way back into the darkness, keeping low, lay there clutching the package and struggling to get her breath. Then they were there, one of the Northmen dragging at the grating, knuckles white with force, flecks of rust showering down as it shifted, and Kiam stared and wondered what those hands would do to her if they got their dirty nails into her skin.
The other one shoved his bearded face in the gap, a wicked-looking knife in his hand, not that someone you just robbed ever has a nice-looking knife. His eyes popped out at her and his scabbed lips curled back and he snarled, “Chuck us that baggage and we’ll forget all about it. Chuck us it now!”
Kiam kicked away, the grate squealing as it bent. “You’re fucking dead, you little piss! We’ll find you, don’t worry about that!” She slithered off, through the dust and rot, wriggled through a crack between crumbling walls. “We’ll be coming for you!” echoed from behind her. Maybe they would be as well, but a thief can’t spend too much time worrying about tomorrow. Today’s shitty enough. She whipped her coat off and pulled it inside out to show the faded green lining, stuffed her cap in her pocket and shook her hair out long, then slipped onto the walkway beside the Fifth Canal, walking fast, head down.
A pleasure boat drifted past, all chatter and laughter and clinking of glass, people moving tall and lazy on board, strange as ghosts seen through that mist, and Kiam wondered what they’d done to deserve that life and what she’d done to deserve this, but there never were no easy answers to that question. As it took its pink lights away into the fog she heard the music of Hove’s violin. Stood a moment in the shadows, listening, thinking how beautiful it sounded. She looked down at the package. Didn’t look much for all this trouble. Didn’t weigh much, even. But it weren’t up to her what Old Green put a price on. She wiped her nose and walked along close to the wall, music getting louder, then she saw Hove’s back and his bow moving, and she slipped behind him and let the package fall into his gaping pocket.
Hove didn’t feel the drop, but he felt the three little taps on his back, and he felt the weight in his coat as he moved. He didn’t see who made the drop and he didn’t look. He just carried on fiddling, that Union march with which he’d opened every show during his time on the stage in Adua, or under the stage, at any rate, warming up the crowd for Lestek’s big entrance. Before his wife died and everything went to shit. Those jaunty notes reminded him of times past, and he felt tears prickling in his sore eyes, so he switched to a melancholy minuet more suited to his mood, not that most folk around here could’ve told the difference. Sipani liked to present itself as a place of culture, but the majority were drunks and cheats and boorish thugs, or varying combinations thereof.
How had it come to this, eh? The usual refrain. He drifted across the street like he’d nothing in mind but a coin for his music, letting the notes spill out into the murk. Across past the pie stall, the fragrance of cheap meat making his stomach grumble, and he stopped playing to offer out his cap to the queue. There were no takers, no surprise, so he headed on down the road to Verscetti’s, dancing in and out of the tables on the street and sawing out an Osprian waltz, grinning at the patrons who lounged there with a pipe or a bottle, twiddling thin glass stems between gloved fingertips, eyes leaking contempt through the slots in their mirror-crusted masks. Jervi was sat near the wall, as always, a woman in the chair opposite, hair piled high.
“A little music, darling?” Hove croaked out, leaning over her and letting his coat dangle near Jervi’s lap.
Jervi slid something out of Hove’s pocket, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the old soak, and said, “Fuck off, why don’t you?” Hove moved on and took his horrible music with him, thank the Fates.
“What’s going on down there?” Riseld lifted her mask for a moment to show that soft, round face, well powdered and fashionably bored.
There did indeed appear to be some manner of commotion up the street. Crashing, banging, shouting in Northern.
“Damn Northmen,” he murmured. “Always causing trouble, they really should be kept on leads like dogs.” Jervi removed his hat and tossed it on the table, the usual signal, then leaned back in his chair to hold the package inconspicuously low to the ground beside him. A distasteful business, but a man has to work. “Nothing you need concern yourself about, my dear.”
She smiled at him in that unamused, uninterested way which, for some reason, he found irresistible.
“Shall we go to bed?” he asked, tossing a couple of coins down for the wine.
She sighed. “If we must.”
And Jervi felt the package spirited away.
Sifkiss wriggled out from under the tables and strutted along, letting his stick rattle against the bars of the fence beside him, package swinging loose in the other. Maybe Old Green had said stay stealthy but that weren’t Sifkiss’ way anymore. A man has to work out his own style of doing things, and he was a full thirteen, weren’t he? Soon enough now he’d be passing on to higher things. Working for Kurrikan maybe. Anyone could tell he was marked out special—he’d stole himself a tall hat that made him look quite the gent about town—and if they were dull enough to be entertaining any doubts, which some folk sadly were, he’d perched it at quite the jaunty angle besides. Jaunty as all hell.