“That is not like him,” Brenna said, “to go running off like that with a pair of handsome gals. Not that I blame him, after what she said to him this afternoon.”
“Yee women underestimate him,” said Uncle Joe with a chuckle. “He know exactly what he is about. I suspicion he asked Kofi-lad to bring those gals by. Look at she, one eye on the gate. Now she shall wonder all evening what he is up to.”
With radicals plotting trouble. What else might he be up to?
They had been good-looking. Far worse than that, they had looked smart and lively. The kind of gals I might be friends with. That is, if I didn’t have to put a chisel through someone’s eye, most likely my own because I certainly could not succumb to this sort of pathetic jealousy over a man I had to set aside until Bee was safe and I was free. If he would even want me after that.
The hour grew late, and folk went home. We washed up and put the benches on the tables, and I swept. Everyone went to bed, but I was too restless to lie down. I sat in the sling chair under the shelter getting bitten up by mosquitoes and so perhaps that was why sleep did not claim me.
Very late, he came in whistling under his breath, tapping out a rhythm on one thigh. A tincture of cold fire hovered in front of him in the shape of a gas flame burning within a glass lantern latticed by gleaming metalwork in the shape of queen conch shell. He was actually spinning it slowly around, checking to make sure it looked real from all angles. And it did, for I would never have known it for an illusion if it had been stationary. Reflexively, without thinking, I drew threads of shadow around me, to hide myself. He paused halfway across the courtyard, and he chuckled in the manner of a man who, having had a little too much to drink, thinks too well of himself.
“There’s a Landing Day areito tomorrow out in Lucairi District. If you want to go, we can. There’ll be dancing and singing. And food.”
I didn’t want to go. I shouldn’t go. It was a bad idea to go.
“Yes.”
“Then we shall. Good night, Catherine.”
25
In the morning I woke muzzy-headed and furious with myself because Vai had already left for his work so I could not tell him I had to change my mind. I’d become selfishly preoccupied and distracted instead of doing nothing but hunting for a way to save Bee. I dressed, grabbed my cane, and tucked into my sleeve a little cloth purse that easily swallowed my paltry earnings.
“Yee slept later than usual,” said Aunty Djeneba as I came down. The courtyard lay quiet. Everyone had left already.
“I’m going out,” I said as I slipped my cane into a tube of cloth so no troll would spot it.
She frowned but said only, “Be cautious, Cat. The wardens is about.”
“Wardens of one kind or another are always about,” I muttered, spotting a crow on the roof.
Wreathed in shadows, I walked the avenue down to the harbor district. The storm had done a fair bit of damage. Men labored on roofs; women strung up washing. A dwarf mammoth hauled a wagon heaped with broken bricks and shards of splintered wood. Men had dug up one of the gas lines and were fixing its mechanism. The clock tower had lost a hand. But the city’s mood had a cheerful edge, as a person might who has escaped the bite of a tremendous hungry shark.
Yet a taut, anticipatory conversation whispered beneath the work. Something big was up. People stood with heads together. Folk glanced at the sky, as if gauging the weather.
I rang the bell at the offices of Godwik and Clutch. Keer emerged from the back and, with a tilt of her head, indicated that I might enter her office. We drank and ate, and the more we discussed the local batey season the more I thought I was going to have to jump up and start pacing.
When we finished our nuts and raisins and our tea, Keer tapped talons on her desk. “You are impatient to speak of another matter.”
I clasped, unclasped, and clasped my hands. “I am here to inquire if the offer of employment is still open.”
The troll whistled, crest fanning up. “So we open negotiations. I hope you will tell me what you think we might need.”
“You have a printing press out back. Might you need assistance with that enterprise? For instance, I could write a series of reports from Europa. Tales of the people there, and how they do things, and the stories they tell.”
“Exotic lands revealed through firsthand accounts.”
“My father was a traveler and natural historian. I can reproduce his anecdotes.”
“Many foreigners have stories to tell. Yours would need to appeal in a way others do not.”
“He knew General Camjiata. He wrote about him, and his legal code.”
She cocked her head. “Timely! I am intrigued by this proposition. We can arrange for other duties as well. It only remains to bargain over terms and if you will be needing a nest, a room.”
A room. Perhaps my color changed. Certainly I felt all blood had suddenly drained from my body, sucked away by an emotion I had no name for and dared not answer to.
“Yes,” I whispered, all the sound I could manage. All that mattered was Bee. The law offices would surely be a better place to scout out information on fire mages and politics. People would be less fearful and more talkative here. Polite words ticked like clockwork gears in my mouth. “I shall return with my things later today.”
“Such haste!” Keer rose as I stood.
Her gaze made me stiffen. She reacted with a twitch whose flicker made me instinctively grasp for shadows. Yet when I pulled at those threads, the confusing layout of mirrors and shiny objects scattered throughout the office yanked the threads up short, as if they were caught and tangled.
“Interesting,” hissed Keer in a way that made me want to bolt, but I knew better than to run. One had to stand firm, and look bigger than one was.
“Can you see the threads?” I demanded, finding the power of my voice.
She showed me her teeth. “What will you pay me for an answer?”
“What payment do you think you can expect?”
“Do you think I name my price first?”
“Can you suppose I will show my hand by naming mine first?”
She hissed a sound meant, I thought, to be a laugh. “An unusual negotiating technique.”
A hammering rush of excitement flushed my body. I was learning how to use the very binding that trapped me. “Answering questions with questions?”
“Betraying your knowledge of the maze.”
“What makes you think I have any knowledge of it?”
Her crest lifted as a strange crease narrowed the bold, watchful eyes. “As you rats would say, you have scored a point. Custom demands I acknowledge your step upward on Triumph Spire.”
“Triumph Spire, where the young bucks preen,” I muttered, recalling Maester Godwik’s words. I had thought it a physical place, like a rocky promontory, but now I wondered if it was more abstract than geological in the way that males competed for intangible but recognized forms of status. “Tell me, Keer, why would a cold mage from Europa work with trolls?”
Keer gave a hiss I took for an indication of amusement or anticipation. “Next round. Yours now the right to draw the circle and step inside.”
I hadn’t the desire to begin another round. “Mine the right. I will return.”
Trolls did not insist on a long ceremony of leave-taking, perhaps because sometimes one did not take one’s leave but was merely consumed after a loss. I took my leave, hoping to order my thoughts as I trudged home. No, the boardinghouse was not home. It was for the best, anyway, that I move out, because I was putting them at risk by living and working there.
Aunty’s gaze was steady on me as I came in the gate. “I hope yee got done what business yee had a mind for.”
I glanced away, for I found I could not tell her I was leaving. “I did.”