Mortal Consequences (7 page)

Sunbright sat on the grassy bank with his back to a birch. “No,” he told her, “I enjoy talking to you, but you must be powerful sick of my useless chatter.”

That statement struck so close to the heart that Knucklebones blinked. To cover her confusion, she fussed with her brass knuckles, shining them with spit and her thumb. “No,” she said, “it’s just—Aren’t there other tribes of barbarians?”

“One. The Angardts dwell on the plains below Redguard Lake, near the Far Horns Forest, but we split from them ages ago. They adopted magic, taboo to my people. The feud ran bloody and long, and finally they retreated south. Were I to approach, I’d be skinned alive. Funny, considering how I’ve learned to use magic.”

“I thought shamanism wasn’t magic, but—I don’t know—a gift from the gods?”

“From the Earthmother, and the land itself. A little magic is acceptable, such as healing and blessing weapons and homes and crops, but were I to conjure a storm, say, many would take it amiss. I could be stoned to death, or buried alive, or staked out and sacrificed. Still, my father could call the spirits of the dead, even elementals. My grandfather could shapeshift to mimic Brother Seal and Grandfather Walrus … but I ramble.”

“It’s interesting,” Knucklebones insisted. “It’s just— it’s been so long since you talked at all.”

Sunbright nodded absently, plucked grass and sucked the stem, and said, “You bring out the best in me, Knuckle’, though I’ve been poor company lately. It’s just that I need my people. Without them I can’t get on with my life. I’m as dead as an uprooted tree. Not much comfort for you.”

Knucklebones refrained from chiding, just tried to keep them talking. Yet she had no plans of her own, and his were frustrated, so there seemed little to discuss.

Then the man blasted the mood by adding, “Greenwillow was good for me too. She kept me levelheaded and busy, applying and testing myself.”

“I don’t want—” Knucklebones’s temper flared, but she bit her words back. She was tired of his singing the praises of a dead lover. Still, better he talked, and she suffered in silence. “Tell me about her.”

“Well… she was a lot like you.”

“What?” This was news. “How can she, a high-caste elven warrior from the forest be anything like me, an orphaned sewer rat with one eye?”

Sunbright shook his head. “It’s not outward appearances, it’s inner. Greenwillow had courage, not only to face terrible odds, but to face herself too. To force herself into battle, or the dark, or the unknown. As you do. I so admire your spirit. I can face polar bears and ice storms and ice worms and starvation and cold, yet I was raised by my tribe and taught these things slowly, and coddled when I made a mistake. How you managed to survive, abandoned and alone in the underworld of Karsus, I can’t imagine. You must have a core of steel, and an undying heart to boot. Greenwillow was the same way.”

Knucklebones glowed under the compliments, wondered. Maybe Sunbright loved her not as a pale imitation of the elf maiden, but because she had mastered a dangerous environment. For the first time, the thief felt sympathy and interest in this elven warrior she’d never met, but she’d still prefer he concentrate on a live lover. But so did people pine for things they couldn’t have.

Like a tribe. And a home. Or any clue where to go—

“Behold. The geese and the enclaves fly south for the winter.”

“Hunh?” Knucklebones craned her head around, scanned the sky where Sunbright pointed. High overhead drifted an inverted mountain studded with buildings, a floating city. Enclaves drifted north in summer and south in winter. “Oh. That’s Ioulaum,” she said. “It’s easy to recognize.” In three hundred years it hadn’t changed much.

“And in three hundred and fifty-five years,” Sunbright added, “it’ll fall and shatter, scattering buildings and people like an anthill kicked apart.”

Thief and shaman watched the city drift. It went slower than the wind, for the massive mythallar, the dweomer engine, could drive it in any direction decreed by the archwizards and city council.

The pair watched the city-mountain float, and Sunbright mused, “Too bad we can’t get up there. Perhaps we could see the whole world, look down and see my people waving. Or at least shooting arrows at it.” He joked because memories of floating a mile high in the air in Castle Delia, and then Karsus Enclave, set his stomach churning. He’d never been comfortable in the air.

Knucklebones gazed wistfully on the city, for sometimes she found Sunbright’s “groundling” world too wide. She often longed for the cozy confines of the city, its varied buildings and parks and houses, the tangled caves and tunnels and warrens that honeycombed the former mountain.

As Sunbright’s jest penetrated, the woman mused, “That’s not such a foolish notion …”

“What?” Sunbright frowned. “Looking down from the city to see my tribe is impossible. And the guards would never let us board an airboat.”

“But you can see the world from up there,” Knucklebones insisted. “Not directly, but some ways, and getting up is no problem. Every door has a key. Trust a sewer rat.”

“No! No, I say!”

But it was too late, Sunbright saw the floating enclave reflected in Knucklebones’s one eye. He wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

“I can’t get my head out!”

“Let me help.”

With small, strong hands, Knucklebones grabbed Sunbright’s chin and forelock, and jerked. The barbarian yelped as his ears scraped between stacks of grain bags.

“Aggh! Lady of Silver, I could have done that!”

Gingerly he felt his ears, testing for blood.

“Cheap bribe, bad ride,” she told him flatly. “Now hush up.”

“I can’t hear you. My ears are shredded. How do we get out of here?”

Knucklebones pointed to a tiny sunlit window high up in the deserted warehouse. “Scale the wall,” she said, “slip through, and hope there’s something soft to jump on outside.”

“Pandem’s Pain, what fun. Go ahead.”

Sniffing, Knucklebones led the way. She felt cocky and happy now that they’d made it onto a floating enclave. Home, for her. Asking in Quagmire, she’d found a tavern, then a boatmaster with a shipment of grain bound for Ioulaum. There were many shipments as the city stocked up for winter before drifting south. The tipsy boatmaster had agreed, after haggling over the “fare,” to pack them in a hollow behind sacks of rye. Sunbright had clamped down on his stomach as the airboat lifted into the night sky, drifted, tacked, dropped and lurched in capricious air pockets, and finally docked, a mile in the air, at the spidery airdocks of Ioulaum. After his boat was towed into a warehouse, the boatmaster wandered off—after finishing the requisite paperwork—leaving the boat temporarily “deserted.”

The thief scaled the wooden wall with fingers and toes, chuckling at how easy and familiar it felt, slid out the window, and circled to open a door so Sunbright could walk through. “Sissy!” she teased.

“Sewer rat!”

“Hush up! I smell guards.”

Then she was flitting down damp, dark alleys like a moth while Sunbright splashed and stamped and huffed to keep up. As she listened at a corner, he asked, “You’ve never been here before, correct? So how do you know your way around?”

“There are maps of all the enclaves in the libraries. When things got hot we studied them, trying to decide if moving was practical.”

“But where are we bound?”

“Thieves’ Quarter.”

“How do you know there is one?”

She laughed, low and melodious. For all the aggravation, Sunbright was glad to hear her happy. It had been a long time since she’d laughed. Regrettably, that was his fault. He’d have to make up for the grief he’d caused her. For now, he plodded along without complaining.

It was dodgy, though, to stay calm. He was a creature of the earth, a groundling, and being a mile in the air unnerved him. Too, he couldn’t banish the picture of Ioulaum shattering to fist-sized chunks from his mind’s eye. True, the island wouldn’t be destroyed for over three centuries, but still he felt it hung by a thread.

Through the warehouse district they tripped, avoiding city guards and night crews and dogs, sometimes skirting so close to the city’s edge that Sunbright felt the yawning gap kiss his quaking knees. But finally they turned inward where lights and roistering marked taverns and food shops where workers wended after hours. Knucklebones told Sunbright to sit tight while she scouted. The barbarian propped his rump in a niche, folded his arms, but left his ears awake, and napped.

Cat-quiet, Knucklebones faded through shadows, circling buildings, and hunting the darker spots. Her part-elven night vision was sharper than a human’s, and since mostly humans inhabited the enclaves, she had an advantage. Sure enough, she spied prime targets, two sailors drunk and lurching. They passed an alley perfect for ambush and, as she expected, were hooked into the shadows like dazed trout. Scanning for onlookers, Knucklebones skittered along a building front, down the side and around, to catch the assailants in the rear.

The thieves were good, she noted. They’d dumped the sailors in the alley, smacked them with sacks of wet sand just hard enough to stun them—killings roused the city guard—rifled their purses and boots in seconds, then charged down the alley, quick to flee before anyone sought missing comrades.

Knucklebones would have been plowed under if she hadn’t hissed from the dark, “Heads up, fasthands!”

“Eh? Split, Littledark.” The thieves, a husband-and-wife team, plastered themselves against the walls lest this was a trap and crossbow bolts came flying. They rattled Thieves’ Cant so fast Knucklebones could barely grasp it.

“Just hatched, turtles,” Knucklebones whispered. “Where pillow?”

The thieves exchanged the lowest murmur, then decided to entrust Knucklebones—whose cant was correct—with the location of a den, but warned her not to follow. “Toe to Elkan’s, hooks and hods, Blue Cobbles, west, two, one, two, Kibbe. Fog.”

“Misted.”

And like fog, Knucklebones faded away in the dark, stamping unnaturally loud so they heard her leave.

Sunbright jerked awake at her touch. “Whoa!” he grumbled. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Piffle. If I were noisy, I’d have died at two. Come, I know where to go. Elkan’s, hooks and hods, Blue Cobbles, west, two, one, two, Kibbe.”

“Those are directions?”

“Elkan’s must be an ironmongery, selling pothooks and bricklayer’s hods, in the Street of Blue Cobbles on the west side. Knock twice, then once, then twice, and say Kibbe sent you.”

Sunbright scratched his sore ear and asked her, “How do we know we won’t drop through a hole in the earth? Or as a joke we’re sent to knock on the city guard’s barracks?”

“We don’t,” she said casually. “That’s what makes thieving so exciting.”

Sunbright straightened his tackle and followed her tiny, dark form through more alleys. They traveled light in summer, with Knucklebones in her laced leather vest and breeches and no shoes, her black elven blade at her waist, and only a thin blanket roll with her comb and such tucked inside. Sunbright wore a long yellow shirt and iron-bound boots of moosehide, his back scabbard holding Harvester and a longbow and four arrows beside, a blanket roll and canteen and haversack of rations. Ever since returning the dwarf’s warhammer, he’d had no other weapon except a long knife on his wide belt.

He opined, “Spearing killer whales through the ice before they can burst through and eat you is exciting too.”

“Belt up, country mouse,” she whispered over her shoulder.

“Yes, milady.”

Flitting through dark streets, Knucklebones occasionally touched a wall, setting it aglow with her cold light cantra—everyone born to the empire knew some magic—to study how paint had faded on public buildings. From this information, she figured out which was the western side of the city.

Sunbright objected, “But if the city engineers rotate the island, how can there be a west side?”

“Silly. They rotate it at varying speeds. The Netherese consider it lucky to view the dawn, so nobles favor the eastern side to build their homes. So the western side is less prosperous, and houses are smaller. The paint fades at a different angle and rate. There are signs in a city, same as a forest.”

“I’d need another lifetime to learn them.”

“No need” she said. “You have me.” From the dark, she squeezed his craggy, calloused hand with her small, cool one.

Knucklebones found the ironmongery by the smell of rust, lampblack, and grease. Crouching along the foundation and sniffing, she whiffed sweat and wine and moist earth. “A deep cellar.”

Hunting found the entrance, a building away at the end of an alley. Sunbright had to crouch to negotiate a wet-walled passage that Knucklebones said was guarded; lined with murder holes with cocked crossbows behind. At the end she knocked twice, once, twice, and whispered, “Kibbe!”

A greased door yawned open, cool air hinted of wine. A doorman closed the portal, pointed to a turning, downward-sloping passage, twinkling with light. The fearless Knucklebones tripped on. Sunbright had to stoop because Harvester’s pommel scraped on stone overhead. He groused, “Why not take an hour and raise the ceilings?”

“If guards come raiding, they have to bend over. Slows them down.”

Or maybe all thieves were short, Sunbright supposed. Living in caves must stunt them. The big barbarian didn’t know what to expect, but was surprised to arrive at a table with a clerk behind it. Knucklebones had already warned him to keep mum, so he listened to a conversation of gibberish.

By candlelight, the clerk was old and gray, and his palsied hands shook. A retired thief employed by the guild. He nodded at Sunbright and said, “Purse?”

“Blood,” Knucklebones replied. “Fisted or palmed?”

“Palmed. Ferrets sent some flying home. Half up front, half after. Cutty?”

“Latch booster, mostly. Peeler with bigarm here.”

“Bones’re clean, but suit,” the old man said. “Clink.”

Knucklebones demanded of Sunbright, “Give me your purses. All of them.”

“I only have the one.”

“Shut up and give!”

Meekly he handed over his lean purse: Knucklebones usually carried their money anyway. The thief produced three purses from her leather vest and breeches, and dumped out a meager pile of coins. Methodically, the old clerk sorted them, weighed some on a small scale, bit others, then returned exactly half. Asking for names, Knucklebones gave “Butterfly and Ten Pound.”