Bared Blade (10 page)

The Dyad had picked a good temporary refuge, a tall slender corner tower on a much larger building. In addition to the view afforded by the extra height, it had a sloping roof that would discourage any residents from sleeping up there. Vala’s position, lying flat atop the little shack that housed the stairhead, allowed her to keep a lookout while remaining hidden from most watching eyes. She had set herself up facing back toward where they’d last seen me, scanning the rooftops while idly twirling her wands in her fingers.

“Good.” Stel sat propped against the little shack on the side opposite Vala’s lookout and the door, to give them a complete view of the surrounds. Her voice was likewise soft. “We’re better off without him.”

“Don’t start that again,” the Meld said, speaking out of Vala’s mouth. “He knows the area. He took down an Elite. He has resources we don’t.”

“We don’t need help,” growled Stel.

“Said the lady with the broken ribs.” Vala glanced upward as if asking for strength. “If he hadn’t pitched in when he did, there’s a good chance we’d be dead now.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Stel. But she didn’t look it. She had one arm pressed against her tightly wrapped ribs, and was using the other to stay upright. “Just give me a couple of days to rest up.”

“Counting the time we spent tracking the thief here to the city, we’ve been at this for nearly a month.” The Meld again, speaking through Vala. “We don’t have any time to waste. I say we’re taking his help. That’s final.”

Stel’s back stiffened briefly at that, but she shut up. It was fascinating to watch, this three-way argument between the different facets of the Dyad. It sounded more like the kind of back and forth I’d have with Triss than the perfect two-minds-one-body supersoldier of the Dyad legends. I wondered whether that meant my Dyad was unusual, or if they all talked to themselves like this when they thought no one else was around. Maybe the myth and the reality had less in common than I’d believed.

Unfortunately, the Meld’s declaration seemed to have ended the out-loud portion of their conversation. After several minutes passed without another word, I decided eavesdropping wasn’t going to give me anything else. That made it time to make myself known. But not without some setup first. I slipped silently back off the edge of their roof and climbed down to street level to look things over.

The streets were still eerily silent and dark, but I didn’t find any guard presence within the two block circle I checked before returning to the rooftops. Nor, thankfully, given the unusual darkness and quiet, any restless dead. Once I returned aloft, I found a secluded corner and dropped my shroud before releasing my hold on Triss. Then, careful to make a little noise to draw Vala’s attention, I started back
in the general direction of the Dyad’s hiding place. As I went, I made a show of looking for the pair.

I was on a slightly lower roof and just starting to go past their perch when Vala hissed like a cat. I stopped then and glanced up in her direction, and she waved a hand over the edge of the roof. I nodded and jumped across the gap, catching hold of a terra-cotta drainpipe that vanished into the building a few floors below—a supply for a kitchen garden in the courtyard, probably. From there it was the work of seconds to pull myself up beside Vala.

I flattened myself out a few feet away from Vala. Close enough to talk quietly, far enough away to let her know that was all I wanted to do. “Stel?”

“Behind us, against the back wall.” Vala had tucked her wands away before she waved me over, but kept running her fingers through the twirling motions.

“How’s she doing?”

“Grumpy as a manticore that’s stung itself in the back of the neck.” Her smile flashed in the darkness, and I thought of Jax again. “Which means she’s practically her normal self again.”

“I heard that,” said Stel.

“You were supposed to,” replied Vala. “Through my ears, if nothing else. Consider it a subtle hint.”

“Subtle. Right, that’s you all over.”

I slithered around on the roof and stuck my head over the edge to look down at Stel. “Speaking of subtle. What the hell were you thinking back there when you launched yourself up onto the roof?”

She dropped her shoulders a little bit. “I wasn’t and Vala chewed me up real good on that one already. I was in pain and I just wanted to get somewhere that I could collapse in a heap.” Her voice dropped even lower. “This is our first real mission outside of Kodamia. I made a stupid choice. I’m sorry.”

“I couldn’t ask for a fairer answer than that.” Well, I
could
, but not without playing the hypocrite. “It’s not like I haven’t done more than my share of stupid things over the
years.” Triss gave me a quick slap on the back that I took for hearty agreement. “So, how about we get you someplace where you
can
collapse for a bit?”

“I’m certainly all for it.” Vala rubbed her own ribs, and I remembered that Dyads were supposed to be able to feel each other’s pain.

Stel just nodded.

“Where is this place?” the Meld asked via Vala’s lips. “How sure are you that it’s safe?”

“No place in Tien is completely safe for anyone who was involved in what happened at the Gryphon tonight, but my fallback’s as good as you’re going to find. There’s an abandoned brewery about a quarter mile from here. I sealed off one tiny section of the attics. The only way in is to go down an old ruined chimney.” I had an even better fallback, but it was farther away and I wasn’t willing to take a stranger there.

“What’s to keep some other squatter from setting up shop?” asked the Meld.

“The chimney is capped with a ceramic pipe not much bigger around than your arm.”

“So, how do you get in?”

“There’s
a catch down here,” I said half an hour later as I stuck my arm into the chimney pipe.

Out of sight of the Dyad, Triss extended himself down the chimney another three feet to release the latch. Then I pulled my arm out and pivoted the chimney’s top cap aside. The opening thus exposed was narrow and dark, barely big enough to fit a person, especially with a bamboo ladder eating up some of the space.

“I have some surprises set up for unwanted visitors, so I’d better go first.” I slipped off my pack and used a line that I pulled from one of the side pouches to lower it into the darkness before climbing into the gap myself. “The ladder’s on the fragile side and won’t hold two. Wait for me to call up to you before you start down. Oh, and the ceiling’s low. Be careful.”

Stel came second, with Vala following after. Once they were down, I told them to wait quietly just a little bit longer. Then I had to slither my way back up to close and latch the lid. When that was done and I’d dropped a thick light-blocking curtain over the opening I’d cut into the side of the chimney, I finally started to relax.

“Half a minute more,” I said while I dug in my pack for the intense little magelight.

I’d intended to bring it out slowly to give everyone time to adapt, but it tumbled out onto the floor when I moved a shirt, and the light stabbed at my eyes. Vala swore, and even Stel, who had her back pressed firmly against Vala’s so she was looking away, grunted unhappily at the reflected brightness.

The room thus illuminated was long and low, no more than five feet at the midpoint that ran beneath the roof peak, and sloping down from there. It was a sort of secondary storage space above the main attic over the southern wing of the brewery. When I’d first found it, it’d been full of rotting bits of ancient brewing equipment, most of which I’d scattered on the level below. It was maybe fifty feet by fifteen at the floor level.

If you didn’t mind rats and bats and slinks, the complete lack of air flow, and an ever present risk of death by fire due to the nature of the downstairs neighbors, it was actually nicer than my room at the Gryphon had been.

“Is that magelight going to draw attention?” asked a still blinking Vala.

“It shouldn’t.” I picked it up and wedged it into a gap in the bricks of the chimney, which gave us better light—though the chimney itself now shaded a good third of the room. “The ceiling in the room below is plastered over and doesn’t leak light, and the roof is shockingly sound.”

“What about noise?” After carefully helping Stel lower herself to lean against an upended half barrel, Vala started to prowl around the room. She looked into every corner and crevice.

“Noise shouldn’t be a real problem as long as we keep it down to a reasonable minimum,” I answered her.

I crossed to the corner where I’d left a half dozen big amphorae. Sealed properly, the clay jars make for cheap vermin-proof storage. Add a few simple spells and they’ll keep food and other perishables in good condition for years. These days I generally buy mine off the back of a wagon that collects empties from local taverns. There’s always some breakage, so the foreman at the firm that recycles them turns a blind eye to the pilferage as long as he gets a cut.

“Downstairs neighbors?” interjected Stel. “I presume you’ve got ’em in a building this sound. What are they like? Can they get up here?”

I could tell that I wasn’t going to get any peace until I reassured my guests, and that “trust me” just wasn’t going to do it. If our positions were reversed I’d have been the same way. Rather than play twenty questions, I decided to give them the full run down.

“Floor below us is another, much larger, attic. There used to be a ladder up to a trapdoor from there to here. I pulled the ladder—it’s in the chimney now—and nailed the trapdoor shut. I also plastered over the hole from beneath and aged the plaster to match the surrounding ceiling.”

“How?” asked Vala from somewhere off in the dark beyond the chimney.

“Trade secret.” I wasn’t willing to admit to magic yet, though I knew they figured me for a mage. “Anyone who looks up from below and actually thinks about it will know there’s a void up here, but a couple of factors play against them bothering or doing anything about it.

“First, the floor of the main attic below is thoroughly rotten and likely to drop anyone wandering around up there onto the main brewery floor. The fall’s thirty feet and there are enough uneven surfaces on the old brewing gear to make that a fatal height. Second, the ground level of the brewery houses a caras seed-grinder. She keeps her little band of skull-crackers well and truly dusted up, which makes them paranoid, intermittently homicidal, and pretty damned slow on the uptake. It also keeps everyone but her dustmen the hell away from the building.”

“Sounds like the perfect neighbors for something like this.” Stel nodded approvingly, and for the first time she sounded something other than hostile and suspicious of me.

“Pretty much. As long as we don’t make any more noise than can be easily explained away by the rats, bats, slinks, and nipperkins, plus the various critters that hunt them, they won’t give us any trouble.

“Now, who’s hungry?” I’d just finished cracking the spelled seal on two of the amphorae to expose the rations within, mostly salted pork wrapped into neat bundles in the one, and bags of rice cakes in the other. “It all tastes like the inside of an amphora, of course, but it’ll keep skin and bone together in a pinch.”

“Sounds …delightful,” Vala said in a tone that suggested she was trying to convince herself. “We’d love some.”

I tossed her a bag of rice cakes and slid a greasy bundle of pork over to Stel, then went on to the next amphora. It held blankets and a large bottle of Kyle’s, the six year. It was drinkable but nowhere near as good as the fifteen I kept at my main fallback—a necessary economy given the state of my purse. I set the bottle aside and divided up the blankets.

“You won’t really need them in this heat, but they’ll give you some padding against the floor. I tried keeping a straw pallet up here for a while, but it didn’t work out. Even a good strong mix of fleabane and worrymoth won’t keep the rats and nipperkins away after they’ve gotten into the caras seed.”

The next amphora held water skins, and I passed one to Vala to carry back to Stel. There were more supplies in the remaining amphorae, but I didn’t want to breach the spelled seals if I didn’t have to. Both for convenience’s sake and to keep them preserved against future need.

Reluctantly, I left the Kyle’s unbroached as well, both the six and the smaller fifteen from my pack, and grabbed myself a water skin instead. The salty pork and bone dry rice cakes needed a lot of washing down. Now, with basic amenities taken care of it was time to move on to other, more dangerous, necessities.

Moving casually, I crossed to another broken-down half barrel and took a seat. It lay midway between the magelight and Stel, and my shadow fell across the lower half of her body—a deliberate choice on my part. I might like the Dyad, but I was still a long way from trusting her, and putting Triss there made for cheap insurance.

“We need to talk,” I said quietly.

Somewhere behind me, Vala stopped her inspection of the room. I half turned, so that I could look at both halves of the Dyad. Vala’s farther hand was out of sight, concealed behind her hip, though I guessed that it now held one of her battle wands. I didn’t blame her; casting my shadow across Stel’s legs was a very similar tactic, though they didn’t know it. Or, at least, I hoped they didn’t.

“Yes, we do.” The Meld spoke through both of her mouths. “Why don’t you start.”

Though in this case it was quite obvious, I’m not entirely sure how the Meld made it so clear when she was speaking instead of Vala or Stel. Something about body language as much as tone perhaps? Certainly, Vala moved less in those moments when the Meld came to the forefront, but that didn’t explain the obvious differences in Stel’s demeanor. It was clearly much more complicated than the stories had led me to believe.

“It’s pretty clear that you have a problem,” I said. “A big one, and one that puts you in opposition to Tien’s charming authorities. I’m a shadow jack. My job is helping people with exactly that kind of problem.…”

Stel frowned and Vala sighed. Then, the Meld spoke. “Something was stolen from us. We need to recover it. How much would you charge to help us find it?”