"Yes?" she said.
"I love you."
She closed her eyes then opened them again, not saying anything. I said, "Do you have the weapon?"
"Weapon?"
"The Easterner who was killed. Was the weapon left there?"
"Why, yes, I suppose someone has it."
"Get it."
"Why?"
"I doubt whoever it was knows about witchcraft. I'll bet I can pick up an aura."
Her eyes grew wide, then she nodded. "I'll get it," she said, and reached for her cloak.
"Shall I go with you?"
"No, I don't…" Then, "Sure, why not?"
Loiosh landed on my shoulder and Rocza landed on Cawti's and we went down the stairs into the Adrilankha night. In some ways things were better, but she didn't take my arm.
Is this starting to depress you? Heh. Good. It depressed me. It's much easier to deal with someone you only have to kill. As we left my area and began to cross over into some of the rougher neighborhoods, I hoped someone would jump me so I could work out some of what I was feeling.
Our feet went clack clack to slightly differing rhythms, occasionally synchronizing, then falling apart. Sometimes I'd try to change my step to keep them together, but it didn't do much. Our paces were our usual compromise, worked out long ago, between the shorter steps she was most comfortable with and my longer ones. We didn't speak.
You identify the Eastern section first by its smell. During the day the whole neighborhood is lousy with open-air cafes, and the cooking smells are different from anything the Dragaerans have. In the very early morning the bakeries begin to work; the aroma of fresh Eastern bread reaches out like tendrils to gradually take over the night smells. But the night smells, when the cafes are closed and the bakeries haven't started, are the smells of rotting food and human and animal waste. At night the wind blows across the area, toward the sea, and the prevailing winds are from the slaughterhouses northwest of town. It's as if only at night can the area's true colors, to mix a metaphor, come to the surface.
The buildings are almost invisible at night. Lamps or candles glowing in a few windows provide the only light, so the nature of the structures around you is hidden, yet the streets are so narrow that sometimes there is hardly room to walk between the buildings. There are places where doors in buildings opposite each other cannot be opened at the same time. At times you feel as if you were walking through a cave or in a jungle, and your boots tramp through garbage more often than on the hard-packed rutted dirt of the street.
It's funny to go back there. On the one hand, I hate it. It is everything that I've worked to get away from. But on the other, surrounded by Easterners, I feel a tension drain out of me that I don't notice except when it is gone; and it hits me again that, to a Dragaeran, I am an other.
We reached the Eastern section of town past midnight. The only people awake at that hour were derelicts and those who preyed on derelicts. Both groups avoided us, according us the respect given to anyone who walks as if he was above any dangers in a dangerous area. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't pleased to notice this.
We reached a place where Cawti knew to enter. The "door" was a doorway covered by a curtain. I couldn't see a thing inside, but I had the feeling I was in a narrow hallway. The place stank. Cawti called out, "Hello."
There were faint rustling sounds, then, "Is someone there?"
"It's Cawti."
Heavy breathing, rustling, a few other voices mumbling, then flint was struck, there was a flash of light, and a candle was lit. It hurt my eyes for a moment. We were standing in front of a doorway without even a curtain. The inside of the room held a few bodies that were stirring. To my surprise, the room was, as far as I could tell in the light of single candle, clean and uncluttered except for the blanketed forms. There was a table and a few chairs. A pair of beady eyes was staring at us from a round face behind the candle. The face belonged to a short, very fat male Easterner in a pale dressing gown. The eyes rested on me, flicked to Loiosh, Cawti, Rocza, and came back to me.
"Come in," he said. "Sit down." We did, as he went around the room to light a few more candies. As I sat in a soft, cushioned chair, I counted a total of four persons on the floor. As they sat up, I saw that one was a slightly plump woman with graying hair, another was a younger woman, the third was my old friend Gregory, and the fourth was a male Dragaeran, which startled me. I studied his features until I could place his House, and when I identified him as a Teckla I didn't know whether to be less surprised or more.
Cawti seated herself next to me. She nodded to all present and said, "This is my husband, Vladimir." Then she indicated the fat man who had been up first and said, "This is Kelly." We exchanged nods. The older woman was called Natalia, the younger one was Sheryl, and the Teckla was Paresh. She didn't supply patronymics for the humans and I didn't push it. We all mumbled hellos.
Cawti said, "Kelly, do you have the knife that was found by Franz?"
Kelly nodded. Gregory said, "Wait a minute. I never mentioned a knife being left by his body."
I said, "You didn't have to. You said it was a Jhereg who did it."
He grimaced at me, screwing his face up.
"Can leaf him, boss?"
"Shut up, Loiosh, Maybe later."
Kelly looked at me, which means he fixed me with his squinty eyes and tried to see through me. That's what it felt like, anyway. He turned to Cawti and said, "Why do you want it?"
"Vladimir thinks we might be able to find the assassin from the blade."
"And then?" said Kelly, turning to me.
I shrugged. "Then we find out who he worked for."
Natalia, from the other side of the room, said, "Does it matter for whom he worked?"
I just shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me. I thought it might to you."
Kelly went back to staring at me through his little pig eyes; I was amazed to discover that he was actually making me uncomfortable. He nodded a little, as if to himself, then left the room for a moment, returning with a knife wrapped in a piece of cloth that had probably once been part of a sheet. He handed cloth and weapon to Cawti. I nodded and said, "We'll be in touch."
We walked out the door. The Teckla, Paresh, had been standing in front of it. He moved aside as we headed toward the door, but not as quickly as I would have expected. Somehow that struck me as significant.
It was still several hours until sunrise as we made our way back toward our part of town. I said, "So, these are the people who are going to take over the Empire, huh?"
Cawti gestured with the bundle she held in her left hand. "Someone thinks so," she said.
I blinked. "Yeah. I guess someone does."
The stench of the Eastern area seemed to linger much further on the way back to our flat.
…black tallow from left…
Down in the basement under my office is a little room that I call "the lab," an Eastern term that I picked up from my grandfather. The floor is hard-packed dirt, the walls are bare, mortared rock. There is a small table in the center and a chest in the corner. The table holds a brazier and a couple of candles. The chest holds all sorts of things.
Early in the afternoon of the day after we procured the knife, the four of us—Cawti, Loiosh, Rocza and me—trooped down to this room. I unlocked it and led the way in. The air was stale and smelled faintly of some of the things in the chest.
Loiosh sat on my left shoulder. He said, "Are you sure you want to do this, boss?"
I said, "What's that supposed to mean?"