Full Fathom Five (11 page)

No Nick.

The third balcony was the smallest, a hundred feet across at most but positioned so those seated there could see no other balcony, only the ocean a long way off and the city a long way down. Two narrow staircases led up to that level from the ground floor, each in clear view. Only an idiot would try to sneak up those stairs, or someone who thought the safest play was the play nobody saw coming.

Which was just another way of saying, idiot.

Izza picked up a slick pamphlet of hotel activities—5:42
A.M.
sunrise tantra, accompanied in the brochure by a reproduced watercolor of a white woman with honey-colored hair twisted into some sort of Dhisthran exercise posture and smiling as if she enjoyed it. 8:30 complementary diving lesson, 10:00 beach golf, which who knew what that was, 11:15 crossbow skeet. Izza paced in front of the girl with the dustpan, lips pursed as if she were trying to decide between Traditional Kavekanese Woodburning and Ocean Water Polo Tricks and Tips for tomorrow afternoon, then shrugged, crumpled the pamphlet, and let it fall. The girl with the dustbin slid in behind, swept up the pamphlet, turned without a word, and retreated toward the cream-colored rear wall, and through a door Izza hadn’t seen at first.

Izza followed the girl into a windowless hallway painted the off-white managers painted places where they wanted work done. The girl turned right, headed for a large trash can at the end of the hall; Izza turned left into a stairwell and sketched around a corner out of sight. She heard the door open and close again—the girl, presumably, returning to the courtyard and patrol.

No more footsteps in the service hall. Good. Towel still wrapped around herself—no sense abandoning a fitting disguise—Izza climbed two flights of stairs and reached a hallway that smelled of fire and kitchens and knives. A stenciled label opposite the stair pointed left to Level Three Restaurant, and Izza retreated to the turn in the stair as a tuxedoed waiter rushed down the hall above, cursing, a decorative white towel draped over one arm and a large domed tray teetering on the fingertips of his white-gloved hand. Another door opened, and closed; she waited a breath, climbed back to Level Three, and turned left.

She almost ran into Nick.

He wore the hotel grays, and carried a pink purse slung over his shoulder, obvious and obviously not his. He froze when he saw her, then double-took when he recognized her, face pale with the fear of the discovered. He pulled back, hands raised, warding, but too slow. Izza grabbed him by the purse strap and tugged him down the hall to the stairs.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed.

“That’s my line.” They rounded the turn of the stair, and, safe for a second, she shoved him against the wall, hard. “Are you crazy?”

“I’m helping.” Fire and fear sparked from his eyes. “Helping us when you won’t. Let me go.”

“You’re stealing things people will notice gone, and bringing Plaza keys straight back to the warehouse. They can trace those, Nick.”

He blinked. “I didn’t—”

“You almost led them to the altar. Because you didn’t think this through.”

“You were stocking up,” he said. “I wanted to help.”

She ripped the purse off his shoulder. “And you think someone who came to a restaurant with a purse won’t notice their damn purse is gone? What’s with you?”

“Like jumping into dreamdust dens is smart?”

“That doesn’t get the Watch after you. This will.” She opened the purse, dug through its silver sateen guts, found the wallet and the room key. “You really work here?”

“Yeah. They trust me to open doors and stuff.”

“Trust you to be an idiot.” She shoved wallet and key into his hands. “Take this. Five seconds. You run up, say you found this in the hall, saw someone running off with the purse.”

“You can’t—”

“Listen to me. Steal what you want, but bring nothing to the warehouse until I say.”

A man’s voice from the upper hall: “Nick?” And again, nearer, “Nick? You here?”

Izza gaped. “You told them your real name?”

The fire left Nick’s eyes, and only the fear remained.

“Nick?” The waiter from before, dark hair and tuxedo and white gloves and towel, peered down the stairs, turned. “Who the hells is that?”

Sorry,
she mouthed.

Nick nodded, and said, “Thanks.”

She hit him in the face as hard as she could, and ran.

He fell, sprawled across the stairs, the wallet still in his hand. Izza vaulted over the railing, landed unsteadily one level below, and lurched down. Behind her, she heard the waiter stumble over Nick’s body, curse, and shout, “Thief!”

She reached the ground floor in a blur. Probably some quick and easy exit through these service hallways, but she’d just as likely lose herself in a maze of dirty linen baskets and industrial dishwashers and boilers as find the out. Better to take the way she knew led to the street, which had the only drawback of walking her past about a dozen possible concerned bystanders, not to mention hotel staff.

Nothing for it.

She emerged from the hidden door onto the second-floor patio between Fabrice’s and Escalier, purse clutched tight to her chest. Left turn down the long hallway past reception to the entrance. Don’t run. People notice when you run. Keep smooth, keep cool, chin up, proud, a young woman who just had to get her purse to buy some dumb thing from the hotel shop. Breathe. Walk. Steady.

You just promised Cat you wouldn’t steal anymore. Promised her you wouldn’t get caught. You promised, and here you are, bearing a big fat neon-pink “arrest me” sign out of a luxury hotel. Because you couldn’t let an idiot take his own fall.

Nope. Bad line of thought.

She made it halfway down the hall to the front desks, a row of them, only one staffed and that by a woman with dark circles under her eyes and a steaming mug of coffee by her hand. The receptionist did not look up from her paperwork. Good. A few more meters to the street.

Behind her a door slammed, and she heard running footsteps. No cries, not yet, of course not. No sense alarming the guests. But she walked faster. Reached the doormen, two towering guys in flower-print shirts, necklaces of carved nuts, mountains of muscle topped with that same service sector smile. She nodded to the nearest one—don’t look down, don’t look down—beyond the arch of the front gate, carriages rolled along the street, open-air wagons bearing West Claw middle-management types on an evening bar crawl. Did they call it a bar roll when people drove you from place to place? A bearded partier stood to make a toast, but tripped and spilled his beer onto the woman beside him, and everyone laughed.

Freedom.

“Stop her!” came the cry from behind.

And the doorman looked down.

Saw the purse, which by itself didn’t mean anything, and the towel, and, more important, the frayed cuffs that stuck out from under the towel, and Izza’s legs, scarred and grimed, and her ragged sandals, which no guest of the Plaza would deign to wear.

He glanced up, smile faltering, and reached for her in slow motion.

Izza swept off the towel, threw it in his face, and ran into traffic.

A horse neighed and reared beside her; she ducked beneath pawing hooves, and dove through the gap between the party wagon and a golem cart. Cries of “Thief” from behind and “Stop!” mixed with street noise, with the roll of wheel and the jangle of tack and the laughter of the wagon’s drunks. Almost there, almost gone. An alley ahead gaped, a gullet to swallow her to safety.

Then the light struck her.

That was all, only light, no Craft to it, but the light was enough. Red and bright, like a poisoned sun. She knew this light, its color and texture, knew the sharp shadows it cast. She knew better than to look left, toward its source, but did anyway, couldn’t help herself. Ruby eyes shone from the apex of a towering stone statue made in mockery of a man. A massive head swiveled to face her. Rock ground rock. And beneath that gravel-grind, she heard a woman weep.

The Penitent took a step toward Izza. Inside, its prisoner screamed.

Try to help people, and look where it gets you.

No. Don’t accept this. Move, she commanded her legs, her body. Feet, fly. Don’t stand here. Don’t wait for them to come for you with the knives and hot irons. This isn’t fate. There’s no such thing. Go. Now!

Izza fled down the alley, and the Penitent followed her with earthquake strides.

11

The night wind outside the Rest cooled Kai’s brow and her world stop spinning. Tourists splashed in the ocean under the Penitents’ watchful gaze—tourists, or else pilgrims enjoying a night off. Islanders knew better than to swim this late. The sun watched the sea by day, but after dark monsters emerged. Mainlanders ignored local superstition and riptide warnings both to swim naked in the surf, and acted surprised when a gallowglass dragged one off to eat. Kept lifeguards in business, Kai supposed. Not to mention the men the Watch hired to dredge the harbor.

She hadn’t been thrown out of the Rest, she told herself. Not quite.

It made a difference.

She knew what she had heard in the pool, in the idol’s cry, in the poem. She thought she knew. Maybe the words had not come from the idol, but from her—heard in passing and projected into the idol’s mouth. How much did a person read in a day and ignore? Newspaper headlines and magazine quips and menu items and shop signs and graffiti and manuals and comic books and gossip columns and upbeat slogans sponge-printed on cafe walls, not to mention conversation overheard and misheard: small talk, street corner buskers’ music, and the small talk of cashiers.

Gods, but she was drunk.

She began the long climb home. Her family’s house was near—the ghostlight
POHALA SHIPYARDS
sign flickered over a West Claw pier a half mile’s walk down the shore—but she hadn’t wanted to see her mother in months, and didn’t now. Stupid body. Stupid spinning room. Stupid bouncers and stupid poet and stupid Mako and most of all stupid Kai.

She walked north and uphill. Her palm hurt from the cane. Trumpets and drums receded, and the tide of natives and rum-soaked visitors ebbed to leave her alone on the sidewalk. Driverless carriages rolled past. A large roan pulled a wagon packed with drunks up the slope: head down, shoulders and flanks rippling with strength. No wasted energy in those steps. Each move a single sweep of a calligrapher’s brush—only calligraphers did not have to fight to draw a line.

There were no horses on Kavekana before Iskari traders first arrived four centuries back. No need for horses, either. Kai’s sister always complained of the stench of horse dung in the streets, of the animals’ filth and of the laziness they invited, as if they hadn’t been a part of island life for four hundred years.

As the carriage passed Kai tipped an imaginary hat to the roan. Craftwork bound and directed the horse. Did it know it was born to a life of service? Did it know how its world was made?

The horse bowed to her in turn. She stood still, and told herself she’d imagined the pointed pause, the dip of head. Anything was possible. The wagon rolled on.

Tropical night folded her in thick warmth. She sweat beneath and through her linen suit. After two blocks Palmheart crossed Epiphyte, and the shoreside party gave way to cafes and food stalls and shuttered boutiques. A woman fried coconut milk curry under a palm frond awning while her children served bowls of the stuff to lined and haggard men who played dominoes on wicker tables. A kid, maybe fifteen, juggled mangoes beside a fruit stand. Six men and two women, thickened by middle age, wearing ragged shorts and stained multicolored shirts, sat on the sidewalk in front of a closed jewelry store, passing a bottle of palm wine.

The earth shook, and Kai heard screams and fast footsteps. A dark girl in torn clothes ran onto the street from an alley. She clutched a purse to her chest, bright pink leather, obviously not hers. Wide black eyes reflected torches and streetlights both. Kai watched the girl run past, and did not move to stop her or to help. No one did. It was too late for the girl already.

A Penitent stepped onto the road, an earthquake gone for a stroll. One drunk dropped the wine bottle, and milky liquid spilled into the gutter. The Penitent stood ten feet tall, a barrel-chested almost-human carved from stone. Gem eyes burned with inner fire. The street fell silent save for the fleeing girl’s footsteps, the sizzle of oil in the wok, and the Penitent’s muffled sobs. Kai watched.

Light burst from stone joints. The Penitent gathered its several tons’ bulk and leapt. It shrieked as it flew huge and horrible overhead, cry broken by its landing crash, three feet in front of the thief. Cobblestones splintered beneath graven feet. The girl skidded to a stop, scrambled back. A stone hand lashed out before she could flee, snared her around the waist, and lifted.

The girl’s bare feet kicked at empty air. The Penitent’s grip pressed her arms and the purse against her chest. She struggled to breathe. Kai heard a woman weep beneath the stone.

The Penitent turned, prisoner held in one hand, and strode off west, bearing the girl to justice, or anyway to punishment.

The cook fried on. The drunks retrieved their wine, and drank, and retold stale stories of their younger days when Kavekanese sailors had been prized from the Pax to the World Sea. Days past, but not past remembering.

Kai climbed away from drunks and dominoes and shop window mannequins.

The girl was young to be a thief. Too young, Kai hoped, for Penitence, but maybe not, if she had priors, or the victim pushed for vengeance, or the moon was in the wrong phase or the wind too heavy in the west.

Kai had jumped into the pool to save the drowning idol. To save Mara. She’d thrown herself on Ms. Kevarian’s sword for the Order’s sake. And in return, she had been thrust to the sidelines, even her sanity questioned. Why should she have risked herself for that girl?

Not that she could have helped, not wounded and weak, and anyway the cases weren’t at all alike. The idol was her business. (Though not really.) The girl was not. (Mankind is my business, didn’t someone say that once? Or else it drifted to her out of a mist of dream.) The idol was not at fault; the girl was. (What fault? She looked hungry. Could you blame a hungry person for stealing to eat?)