Changer's Moon (21 page)

Rane shifted in her chair, her leg rubbing against Tuli's arm. Tuli glanced up but could read nothing in the ex-meie's face. “Any chance of that?” Rane held up a hand, pinched thumb and forefinger together, then widened the gap between them, raised an eyebrow.

Fingers smoothing along his thigh, Gesda shrugged. “Don't know how their longsight works. Can't judge the odds they light on us. Here. Now.”

“A lottery?”

“Might say.”

“The artisans' guilds?”

“Disbanded. Plotting and stirring up trouble, the pontifex, he say. Head Agli here, what he calls himself. Me, I'm a silversmith. We don't think we disbanded, not at all. No. Followers like lice in guild halls but we keep the signs and the rules, we do. Friend of mine, Munah the weaver, he … hmmm … had some doings with me last passage. From things he say, weavers same as silversmiths. Guilds be here before the Heslins, yeah, even before the Biserica, ain't no pinchhead twit going to break 'em. They went secret before, can be secret again.”

“Followers in the guild halls, how bad is that? Do they report on you to the Aglim?”

Tuli listened to the voices droning on and on. The raspy, husky whisper of Gesda, the quicker, flatter voice of Rane with its questions like fingers probing the wounds in Sel-ma-Carth. Talk and talk, that was all this adventure was. That and riding cold and hungry from camp to camp. Especially hungry. She stopped listening, leaned against the chair and dozed off, the voices still droning in her ears.

Some time later Rane shook her awake. Gesda was nowhere in sight and Rane had a rep-sack filled with food that plumped its sides and made the muscles in her neck go stringy as she slid the strap onto her shoulder. Tuli blinked, then got stiffly to her feet. “We going? What time is it?”

“Late.” Rane crossed the room to the door. “Shake yourself together, Moth.” She put her hand on the latch, hesitated. “You have your sling with you?”

Tuli rubbed at her eyes, wiggled her shoulders and arms. “Yah,” she said. “And some stones.” She pushed her hand into her jacket pocket, pulled out the sling. “Didn't know what might be waiting for us.”

“Good. Keep it handy. Let me go first. You keep a turn behind me on the stairs, watch me down the halls. Hear?”

Tuli nodded. As Rane opened the door and stepped out, she found a good pebble, pinched it into the pocket of the sling. She peered past the edge of the door. Rane was vanishing into the stairwell. Tuli went down the hall, head turning, eyes wide, nervous as a lappet on a bright night.

At the foot of the stairs she opened the second-floor door a crack and looked out. Rane was moving quickly along the hall, her feet silent on the flags in spite of the burden she carried.

A door opened. A black-robed figure stepped into the hall in front of Rane. “Stand quiet, meie.” There was taut triumph in the soft harsh voice. “Or I'll fry your ears.”

Tuli hugged the wall, hardly breathing as she gathered herself. She caught the sling thongs with her right hand, held the stone pinched in the leather pocket with her left, wishing as she did so that she knew how to throw a knife. The sling took long seconds to get up to speed and though she was accurate to her own satisfaction, there was that gap between attack and delivery that seemed like a chasm to her in that moment. She used her elbow to ease the door open farther, moving it slowly until she could slip through the crack.

“Not meie, Norit.” Rane's voice was cool and scornful as she swung the sack off her shoulder and dropped it by her foot. Tuli crept farther along the hallway, willing Rane to move a little, just a little and give her a shot.

“Spy then,” the norit said. “What difference does the word make? Come here, woman.” The last word was a curse in his mouth.

Tuli started the sling whirring, round and round over her head, her eyes fixed on the bit of black she could see past Rane's arm. Come on, Rane, move! Damn damn damn. “Rane,” she yelled, hearing her voice as a breaking squeak.

Rane dropped as if they'd rehearsed the move. With a swift measuring of distance and direction, a sharp explosion of breath, Tuli loosed the stone.

Rane rose and lunged at the norit. As he flung himself down and back, the stone striking and rebounding from the wall above him, Rane was on him, taking him out with a snake strike of her bladed hand to his throat. Then he was writhing on the cold stone, mouth opening and closing without a sound as he fought to breathe, fought to scream, then he was dead. When he went limp, Rane was up on her feet, sack in hand, thrusting her head into the living space he'd come from. She vanished inside, came out without the sack and hurried back to the norit.

Breathing hard, almost dizzy with the sudden release from tension, Tuli ran down the hall. Rane dropped to her knees by the nor's body. She looked around. “Thanks, Moth.” She began going through the man's clothing, snapped a chain that circled his neck and pulled out a bit of polished, silver-backed crystal, a small mirror no larger than a macai's eye. She threw it onto the flags, surged onto her feet and brought her boot heel down hard on it, grunting with satisfaction as she ground it to powder. Then she was down again, starting to reach for the fragments. She drew her hand back. “Moth.”

“Huh?”

“Get his knife. Cut me a square of cloth from his robe big enough to hold this. Hurry,” she said, her voice whisper-soft.

When Tuli handed her the cloth and the knife, she scraped the fragments onto the cloth without touching them, tied the corners into knots over them, still being careful not to touch them with her flesh. With a sigh of relief she dumped the small bundle on the nor's chest. “Help me carry him.”

“Where?”

“In there.” She pointed to the half-open door. “No one lives there.”

After they laid him on the floor of the small bare room, Rane put her hand on Tuli's shoulder. “Would you mind staying here with him a minute? I've got to warn Gesda.”

Tuli swallowed, then nodded, unable to speak.

“I won't be a minute.” She hurried out.

Tuli wandered over to the shuttered window. Little light crept in between the boards. Unable to stop herself she glanced over her shoulder at the body, thought she saw it move. She blinked, looked away, looked quickly back at him. He had moved. His head was turned toward her now, white-ringed dead eyes staring at her. Tuli gulped, backed slowly to the door. Her shaking hands caught hold of the latch but she scolded herself into leaving the door shut and watching the corpse, ready to keep it from crawling out the room and betraying them. Her first shock of terror draining off, she began to be interested, feeling a bit smug. Anyone else would still be running, but not me, she thought, not realizing that a lot of her calm was due to her gift for seeing into shadow, nothing for her imagination to take hold of and run with; she'd automatically shifted into her nightsight, that sharp black and white vision that gave her details as clearly as any fine etching.

The body humped, the arms thumped clumsily over the uneven flags, the booted feet lurched about without direction or effect. She frowned. That weird, ragdoll twitching reminded her of something. “Yah. I see.” It was just as the Agli had moved when her father and Teras had hung his naked painted body like a clowndoll in front of Soäreh's nest in Cymbank, just as he twitched when Teras jerked on the rope around his chest. “Gahh,” she whispered. “Creepy.” The mirror fragments on the corpse's chest, they were doing that; the other norits, they were calling him. Maiden only knew how long before they came hunting. She started to sweat.

The latch moved under her hand. She yelped and jumped away, relaxed when she saw it was Rane. “Look,” she whispered, “they're calling him.”

Rane frowned, flinched nervously when the body humped again, slapped a dead hand down near her foot. “Shayl!”

“What are we going to do?”

Rane skipped away as the hand started flopping about almost as if it felt for her ankles. She looked vaguely around. “Moth,” she whispered, “see if you can find a drain.”

“Huh? Oh.” Tuli looked about, saw a ragged drape, pushed it aside and went through the arch into the room beyond. Nothing there. Not even any furniture. A familiar smell, though, the stink of old urine. Another curtained arch, narrower than the first. Small closet with assorted holes in the floor, several worn blocks raised above the tiles, a ragged old bucket pushed under a spigot like the tap on a cider barrel. She turned the handle, jumped as a gush of rusty water spattered down, half of it missing the bucket. “Hey,” she murmured, “what city folk get up to.” When the bucket was filled, she managed to shut off the flow. Grinning and very proud of herself, she raced back to Rane. “Through here,” she said.

Rane carried the bundle with thumb and forefinger, holding it as far as she could from her body. She dropped it down the largest hole and Tuli dumped the bucket full of water after it. She filled the bucket and dumped it again. “That enough?”

“Should be.” Rane straightened her shoulders. “That'll be on its way downriver before the other norits can get a fix on it, if what I'm told is accurate.” She spoke in her normal tones but Tuli could see the beads of sweat still popping out on her brow. “If we leave that body here, everyone in the building will suffer for it. We've got to move it.”

Tuli followed her back to the first room. “Where?”

Rane glared down at the body, put her toe into its side and shifted it slightly; Tuli watched, very glad the pseudo-life had gone out of it when they got rid of the mirror fragments. “Out of here. Somewhere. Damn. I'm not thinking.” She ran her fingers through her stiff blonde hair until it resembled a haystack caught in a windstorm. “Have to get him completely out of the city and far enough away or they'll animate him. No way to burn him. I'm afraid I jammed the panel we came through. Umm. There's another entrance to the old sewerway a few streets down. Maiden bless, I hope we don't have to take to the streets carrying a corpse. Keep your fingers crossed, Tuli; pray I can get the panel open. Let's haul him down to the stable first, then we'll see. Get his legs.” She stooped, heaved the sack onto her shoulder, got a grip on his and lifted.

Rane pushed and pried about with the norit's knife, kicked it again, but the panel stayed stubbornly shut. She came back to the body and scowled at Tuli. With hands that shook a little, she dug into Tuli's jacket pocket, pulled the knitted helmet out and dragged it down over Tuli's head. Then she took a long time gettimg the stray locks tucked under the ribbing. She stepped back and sighed. “Moth, it's dark out there.” She nodded at the windows rimed over with ice. “Might be snowing some, norits snooping, Followers, Maiden knows what you'll find out there. I'd rather do this myself, but your eyes are made for the job, and you'll stand out less. Take a look at the street. I'll stand back-up this time. See if anyone's about, see if it stays clear. Anything looks funny, get back fast. You hear?”

Tuli raised her brows but said nothing. With a challenging grin and a flirt of her hand at Rane's warning growl, she went out.

The big heavy door opened more easily than she expected and she almost fell down the front steps. Of course it's cleared, she thought. Don't be an idiot like Nilis. The norit came through, didn't he? Pull yourself together, girl, and act like you know what you're doing. She put her hands in her pockets and looked around as casually as she could.

The streets had been cleared of snow sometime during the day. The clouds hung low overhead and a few flakes were drifting down, caught for a moment in the fan of light coming from the hall behind her, enough snow to speckle the dark wet stone with points of ephemeral white, promise of a heavier fall to come. She waited there for several minutes, oppressed by the cold and the silence. There was no one about as far as she could see; not even her nightsight could find what wasn't there. If there was danger, it was hidden behind the gloomy façades fronting the narrow street.
I could use Teras's gong,
she thought.
Maiden bless, I wish he was here.
She looked around again and went back in.

Rane was waiting just inside the front door, tense and alert; she relaxed as soon as she saw Tuli, but shook her head when Tuli started to speak. When they were back in the stable beside that cumbersome body, she said, “Any vermin about?”

“None that I saw.” Tuli shrugged. “Late, cold, wet, starting to snow again, who else but us'd be idiots enough to leave a warm bed?”

“Good enough. Get his feet.”

Tuli went shuffling along, panting under the growing weight of the dead norit's legs. She would have sworn that they'd gained a dozen pounds since they'd started. Conscious always of what they carried, she tensed at every corner and that tired her more. The cold crept into the toes of her boots and stabbed needles into her feet; the flakes blown against her face and down her neck melted and trickled into the crevices of her body, the icy water burning like fire. The wind was a squealing blast, sometimes battering at her, sometimes circling round her like a sniffing sicamar when the buildings protected them from its full force. She wondered why the streets were clear of snow, then remembered her own wretched time in the Cymbank House of Repentance where they tried to wear her spirit away by making her scrub and rescrub a section of hallway (until she threw the dirty water over the matron in charge after she'd made disparaging remarks about her mother). She grinned at the memory and felt a bit better. She decided the Followers didn't seem to have much imagination; they probably worked those they wanted to punish in some lesser way than flogging, making them dig up and carry off the snow. She could see herds of sullen folk tramping through the streets filling barrows of the soggy white stuff and wheeling them out in an endless line to dump them in the river. Or somewhere. After a minute, she grinned again as she thought of the Carthise having enough of this endless and futile labor, turning on the Followers and dumping them instead of snow into the river, but the cold sucked away that brief glow and she was stumbling along, miserable again.