“A’Meer,” he said. “I don’t have a weapon other than my pathetic little knife.”
She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. “Just how prepared are we, huh?” She drew a long, thin blade from a scabbard at her hip and handed it to him. “Listen to me, Kosar. I know you can take care of yourself, but this is a Shantasi blade. It’s not charmed or cursed, but it is hungry. And it’s sharper than anything you’ve ever seen.” She was unlacing the scabbard as she spoke, slipping the leather cord out through other knots that held her own weaponry. She removed it in seconds without disturbing anything else. “If you draw this, you draw blood.” She reached out and touched her hand to the sword he held, wincing as a line of blood appeared across her palm.
“Don’t!” Kosar said, shocked. He stepped back and held the sword to his side, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. There were several people watching, too interested to let their fear drive them away.
“It didn’t hurt,” she said, smiling. “Believe me, once drawn, the sword won’t settle until it’s wet.”
He looked down at the weapon, expecting it to curl around his hand like a snake. He touched one fingertip to its flat surface and a drop of A’Meer’s blood slicked across the metal, catching the morning sun.
“You speak as though it’s alive.”
“No.” A’Meer shook her head. “Of course not. Not alive, not magical, just… hungry. The Monks’ swords are the same, but fed by their owners’ madness so that the effect is magnified. With me it’s more tradition, I guess, something that was drummed into me by the Mystics in Hess. But every tradition like that has some root cause.”
As Kosar strapped on the scabbard-it was uncomfortable, as if molded specially for A’Meer’s hips and not his own-he asked where they would go now.
“The woman I mentioned,” A’Meer said. “She’s a madam. Works out of an old machine a little way from here. Five girls, a couple of them fledgers. She even has a fodder. Novelty value, I guess, although I wonder how she stops men from biting her.”
“You know the most charming people.”
“Hey, I work in a tavern full of criminals, wrongdoers and misfits.”
“Where you met me.”
“That’s right, thief.”
They smiled at each other, not knowing what to say next. Banter did not feel right given the circumstances. Things were winding up, like a sling spinning and ready to release its shot. The direction it fired in depended wholly upon what happened over the coming day. By evening they may be on the run from Red Monks, taking with them the boy from Trengborne. Or perhaps they would be burying his remains, A’Meer mourning the magic that might have been. Or maybe they would both be dead.
“How did this happen?” Kosar said, not sure exactly what he meant.
“These things do.” A’Meer stretched on tiptoes and planted a kiss on Kosar’s lips, and then she turned and walked on.
THE WOMAN WAShuge. Her name was Slight-a misnomer if ever there was one-and Kosar had no idea how she could move. Her arms rested on massive hips, her legs were all but hidden beneath rolling waves of fat, and her eyes were tiny beads in a face that looked like a ball of pasty dough.
“A’Meer!” she screeched upon seeing them. “You’ve decided to come to work for me after all, then! But what’s with the blades, vixen? You know I don’t cater for that side of things.”
“Slight,” A’Meer said. “It’s good to see you. Been cutting down on the fried sheebok fat, I see.”
“I weigh almost as much as all my girls combined,” she said proudly. “Who’s the cock? He want some? You want some, cock?”
Kosar shook his head, unfeasibly embarrassed in front of this mountain of a woman. The inside of the great machine was unrecognizable, hung as it was with drapes and curtains. It was an assault on the eyes, so much color and form stealing concepts of up or down, left or right. Someone passed by on the other side of a drape wall, but they were little more than a shadow. Someone else snored gently nearby. From elsewhere, he thought he heard the muted sounds of lovemaking.
“Slight, I’m looking for someone,” A’Meer said.
“Someone other than him?” the madam said, nodding at Kosar. The movement sent her whole bulk shaking. Her loose breasts, each almost the size of a small sheebok, quivered as if possessing of a life of their own.
“A boy,” A’Meer said. “Slight, it’s important. This boy is precious to me, and his life is in danger.”
“Precious to you, or precious to New Shanti?” A’Meer did not reply. Slight looked her up and down. “And you all tooled up.”
Kosar did not like her. She seemed too casual, too ready with a witticism, and all the while he sensed a wily mind working behind her button eyes.
“There are a few things about me I’ve never told most people,” A’Meer admitted.
“I’ve heard about Shantasi warriors,” Slight said, shifting her weight to one side and moving, slowly, toward a wall of curtains.
A’Meer looked at Kosar and shrugged. He frowned, trying to communicate his distrust.
“Girls!” Slight called. “Slight wants a word!”
“I’m busy,” a voice said, sounding as if it came from the next street.
“When you’ve finished, then, Honey. Don’t rush the gentleman; he’s paid his way.”
Shadows came first, appearing on curtains and drapes from different directions, slowly manifesting as women. They pushed through into the central room where Slight, A’Meer and Kosar waited. One of them was beautiful. One was fodder, fat and scarred with bites. One was with child, another looked half dead from rotwine and bad fledge, and the last was a fledger, tall and yellow-eyed.
“The boy a stranger?” Slight asked, and A’Meer nodded.
“Girls, my friend here’s looking for someone. A boy. You won’t have seen him before. Maybe he was on his own; or if he’s a stranger, someone in the districts may have picked him up. You seen anyone with a stranger? Anyone we know?”
“Hope,” said the fledger. “That mad old fucking witch-whore threw a sac of poison spiders at me. She had a boy with her, filthy little bastard farmer boy, scared.”
“When was this?” A’Meer asked, but the fledger stared through her.
“When was this?” Slight rumbled.
“Yesterday.”
“Where does Hope live?” A’Meer asked Slight, and the fat woman asked the fledger, and she told them.
“Street down south, Fifthborn Circle. Not too far from here.” The fledger addressed A’Meer directly for the first and last time. “When you find that old witch-whore, are you going to slit her throat?”
“No,” said A’Meer.
The fledger raised her eyebrows at Slight. The big woman nodded and her girls disappeared back through the curtains, their movement sending a whisper in every direction.
“Thank you, Slight,” A’Meer said.
The huge woman smiled. “And yet again, you owe me. You’ll have to come and work for me soon, Shantasi.” She eyed A’Meer’s weaponry, and through the fat Kosar could not be sure of her expression. Perhaps being inscrutable served her well.
A’Meer nodded, performed a low bow and then nudged Kosar out of the old machine ahead of her.
THEY HEADED SOUTH, moving as fast as they could through the serpentine streets. Kosar kept one hand on the new sword at his belt. It banged his leg as he ran, uncomfortable and yet reassuring with its presence. He could not shake the feeling that they were rushing headlong into trouble.
When they reached Fifthborn Circle A’Meer strolled quickly along the street, looking at doors as if she would perceive a witch’s abode by its appearance.
“We’ll have to ask,” Kosar said.
A’Meer had stopped in front of a building, the door closed tight, windows shaded and mostly still unbroken. She stood back slightly and looked up at the facade, down at ground level, back to the front door again. “This is it.”
“How do you know?”
“A witch marks her ground,” she said, offering no more.
Kosar followed her gaze but saw nothing.
“She’s in the basement rooms,” A’Meer said, kneeling to take a look at the narrow slits piercing the building just above ground level. “Her signature is Willmott’s Nemesis root, I can smell it.”