“Damn your pimple of a brain,” she said. “Keep to my heels and quit making trouble!”
“Not making trouble,” muttered No-Teeth.
“You want to cock this up and go hungry tonight? You want to give some brute like Veslin an excuse to pry out any teeth he hasn’t got to yet?”
“Nooooooo.” No-Teeth stretched the word out with a bored yawn, looked around as though noticing the world for the first time, then jerked free of Beth’s grip. “I want to wear your hat,” he said, pointing at her leather cap.
Locke swallowed nervously. He’d seen No-Teeth pitch these sudden, unreasonable fits before. There was something not quite right in the boy’s head. He frequently suffered for calling attention to himself inside the Hill, where distinctiveness without strength meant pain.
“You can’t,” said Beth. “Mind yourself.”
“I want to. I want to!” No-Teeth actually stomped the ground and balled his fists. “I promise I’ll behave. Give me your hat!”
“You’ll behave because I say so!”
No-Teeth’s response was to lunge and snatch the leather cap off Beth’s head. He yanked it so hard that her kerchief came as well, and an untidy spray of reddish-brown curls tumbled to her shoulders. Locke’s jaw fell.
There was something so indefinably lovely, so right, about seeing that hair free in the sunlight that he momentarily forgot that his enchantment was expressly one-way, and that this was anything but convenient for their task. As Locke stared he noticed that only the lower portion of her hair was actually brown. Above the ears it was rusty red. She’d had it colored once, and it had grown out since.
Beth was even faster than No-Teeth once her shock wore off, and before he could do anything with her cap it was back in her hands. She slapped him viciously across the face with it.
“Ow!”
Not placated, she hit him again, and he cringed backward. Locke recovered his wits and assumed the vacant expression used inside the Hill by the uninvolved when someone nearby was getting thrashed.
“Stop! Stop!” No-Teeth sobbed.
“If you evertouch this cap again,” Beth whispered, shaking him by his collar, “I swear to Aza Guilla who numbers the dead that I will deliver you straight to her. You stupidlittle ass!”
“I promise! I promise!”
She released him with a scowl, and with a few deft movements made her red curls vanish again beneath the tightly drawn kerchief. When the leather cap came down to seal them in, Locke felt a pang of disappointment.
“You’re lucky nobody else saw,” said Beth, shoving No-Teeth forward. “Gods love you, you little slug, you’re just lucky nobody else saw. Quick, now. At my heel, you two.”
Locke and Tam followed her without a word, as close as nervous ducklings fixed on a mother’s tail feathers.
Locke shook with excitement. He’d been horrified at the incompetence of his assigned partners, but now he wondered if their problems could do anything but make him look better in Beth’s eyes. Oh yes. Let them whine, let them throw fits, let them go home with nothing in their hands. Hell, let them tip off the city watch and get chased through the streets to the sounds of whistles and baying dogs. She’d have to prefer anything to that, including him.
7
THEY EMERGED at last from the Mara Camorrazza into a whirl of noise and confusion.
It was indeed unseasonably fine hanging weather, and the normally dreary neighborhood around the Old Citadel, the duke’s seat of justice, bustled like a carnival. Common folk were thick on the cobblestones, while here and there the carriages of the wealthy rattled through the mess with hired guards trotting alongside passing out threats and shoves as they went. In some ways, Locke already knew, the world outside the Hill was much like the world within.
The four orphans formed a human chain to thread their way through the tumult. Locke held fast to Tam, who clung in turn to Beth. She was so unwilling to lose sight of No-Teeth that she thrust him before them all like a battering ram. From his perspective Locke glimpsed few adult faces; the world became an endless procession of belts, bellies, coattails and carriage wheels. They made their way west by equal parts luck and perseverance, toward the Via Justica, the canal that had been used for hangings for half a thousand years.
At the edge of the canal embankment a low stone wall prevented a direct plunge to the water seven or eight feet below. This barrier was crumbling but still solid enough for children to sit upon. Beth never once loosened her grip on No-Teeth as she helped Locke and Tam up out of the press of the crowd. Locke scrambled to sit next to Beth, but it was Tam that squeezed up against her, leaving Locke no means to move him without causing a scene. He tried to conceal his annoyance by adopting a purposeful expression and looking around.
From here, at least, Locke had a better view of the affair. There were crowds on both sides of the canal and vendors hawking bread, sausages, ale, and souvenirs from boats. They used baskets attached to poles to collect their coins and deliver goods to those standing above.
Locke could make out groups of small shapes dodging through the forest of coats and legs—fellow Shades’ Hill orphans at work. He could also see the dark yellow jackets of the city watch, moving through the crowd in squads with shields slung over their backs. Disaster was possible if these opposing elements met and mixed like bad alchemy, but as yet there were no shouts, no watch-whistles, no signs of anything amiss.
Traffic had been stopped over the Black Bridge. The lamps that dotted the looming stone arch were covered with black shrouds, and a small crowd of priests, prisoners, guards, and ducal officials stood behind the execution platform that jutted from the bridge’s side. Two boats of yellowjackets had anchored in the canal on either side of the bridge to keep the water beneath the dropping prisoners clear.
“Don’t we has to do our business?” said No-Teeth. “Don’t we has to get a purse, or a ring, or something—”
Beth, who’d taken her hands off him for all of half a minute, now seized him again and whispered harshly, “Keep your mouth shut about that while we’re in the crowd. Mouth shut! We’re going to sit here and be mindful. We’ll work after the hanging.”
Tam shuddered and looked more miserable than ever. Locke sighed, confused and impatient. It was sad that some of their Shades’ Hill fellows had to hang, but then it was sad they’d been caught by the yellowjackets in the first place. People died everywhere in Camorr, in alleys and canals and public houses, in fires, in plagues that scythed down whole neighborhoods. Tam was an orphan too; hadn’t he realized all this? Dying seemed nearly as ordinary to Locke as eating supper or making water, and he was unable to make himself feel bad that it was happening to anyone he’d barely known.
As for that, it looked to be happening soon. A steady drumbeat rose from the bridge, echoing off water and stone, and gradually the excited murmur of the crowds dropped off. Not even divine services could make Camorri so respectfully attentive as a public neck-snapping.
“Loyal citizens of Camorr! Now comes noon, this seventeenth instant, this month of Tirastim in our seventy-seventh Year of Sendovani.” These words were shouted from atop the Black Bridge by a huge-bellied herald in silk-and-sable plumage. “These felons have been found guilty of capital crimes against the law and customs of Camorr. By the authority of his grace, Duke Nicovante, and by the seals of his honorable magistrates of the Red Chamber, they are here brought to receive justice.”
There was movement beside him on the bridge. Seven prisoners were hauled forward, each by a pair of scarlet-hooded constables. Locke saw that Tam was anxiously biting his knuckles. Beth’s arm appeared around Tam’s shoulder, and Locke ground his teeth together. He was doing his job, behaving, refusing to make a spectacle of himself, and Tamwas the one that received Beth’s tenderness?
“You get used to it, Tam,” Beth said softly. “Honor them, now. Brace up.”
On the bridge platform the Masters of the Ropes tightened nooses around the necks of the condemned. The hanging ropes were about as long as each prisoner was tall, and lashed to ringbolts just behind each prisoner’s feet. There were no clever mechanisms in the hanging platform, no fancy tricks. This wasn’t Tal Verrar. Here in the east, prisoners were simply heaved over the edge.