Just now, Daikonas Vo couldn’t imagine needing more from life than to serve a powerful patron like autarch Sulepis, but he was no fooclass="underline" he could imagine a time might come when he might wish to be free from this living god. Vo decided that if the autarch didn’t immediately remove the invader from inside his body, he should find his own way to loose himself from his master’s fatal control, just to be on the safe side.
He reached the inn by the Theogonian Gate. Most of the patrons seemed to be out, summoned from their fleainfested beds even earlier than usual by the clamoring bells. He made his way up the rickety stairway and into his room, which was empty now. He climbed under the reeking blanket and listened to the sound of a city woken to war. Everything would change. Death would lay a skeletal hand on thousands of lives. Destruction would reshape everything around him. And Vo would move through it as he always did, stronger, faster, smarter than the others, a creature that lived comfortably in disaster and thrived on chaos.
It was exciting, really, to think about what was to come. He closed his eyes and listened to his blood rushing and buzzing in sympathy with the vibration of the bells.
30. The Tanglewife
Soshem the Trickster, her cousin, came to Suya and gave her a philter to make her sleep so he could steal her away for himself in the confusion of the gods’ contending. But when he carried her away, the stinging grit of the sandstorm woke her and she fled from him, becoming lost in the storm, and his dishonest plan was defeated.
Matt Tinwright stood for a long time in the muddy, rain-spattered street, surprised at his own timidity. It wasn’t going back to the Quiller’s Mint that made him fret so, or even having to deal with Brigid, although he certainly hadn’t forgot her cuffing him silly the last time he’d seen her. No, it was the line he was about to cross that frightened him. Elan M’Cory, sister of the wife of the Duke of Summerfield—who was he to have anything to do with her at all, let alone to meddle in this most profound and dreadful of decisions?
Courage, man, he thought. Think of Zosim, stepping forth to save Zoria herself, the daughter of the king of heaven!
Tinwright had been considering the god of poets and drunkards quite a bit—he was thinking of making him the narrator of the poem Hendon Tolly had demanded. Zosim had acted bravely, and he was but a small god.
God? He had to laugh, standing in the street with cold rain dribbling from his hat brim and running down his neck. And what of me? He wasn’t even much of a man, according to most. He was just a poet.
Still, he thought to himself, if we do not reach, as my father used to say, our hands will always be empty. Of course, Kearn Tinwright had likely been talking about reaching for his next drink.
“Look what the wind has blown in.” A sour smile twisted Brigid’s mouth. “Did they run out of room up at the castle? Or did you leave something behind the last time you were here?”
“Where’s Conary?”
“Down in the cellar trying to kill rats with a toasting-fork the last I heard, but that was hours ago. He never bothers to tell me anything—just like you.” Even the false smile disappeared. “Oh, but of course, you don’t remember me, do you? You were telling your wrinkled old friend just that while he stared at my tits as if he’d never seen anything like them.”
At this time of the morning there were only two or three other patrons nodding in the dim lamplight—all flouting the royal licensing laws, which said that no one might visit a tavern until an hour before noon. Tinwright suspected it was because they had all slept on the straw floor and only recently woken up. Conary, the proprietor, must be getting slack not to have noticed them, but it was fearfully dark in the place with the window shuttered against the winter chill and the fire not yet built up again.
Tinwright stared at Brigid, who had gone back to gathering tankards from beneath the stained benches. He was about to make an excuse for his last visit—for a moment a multitude of explanations swarmed in his head, although none of them seemed entirely convincing—but then, and somewhat to his own surprise, he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Brigid. That was a shabby thing to say, about not remembering your name. But don’t blame Puzzle for staring —you are something fine to look at, after all.”
She looked hard at him, but her hand stole up and brushed a curl of her dark hair away from her face, as if she remembered all the sweet words he had whispered to her only the previous spring. “Don’t try to honey-talk me, Matty Tinwright. What do you want? You do want something, don’t you?” Still, she seemed less angry. Perhaps there was something to be said for a simple, truthful apology. Tinwright wasn’t certain he wanted to make a regular practice of it, though. It would take up a lot of his time.
“Yes, there is something I’d like to ask, but it’s not just as a favor. I’d pay you for your trouble.”
Now suspicion returned. “The Three know that enough men come in here asking if I’ll do the honors for their sons, but I can’t say anyone’s ever come in asking on behalf of his great-grandfather. I’m not going to let your ancient friend poke me, Tinwright.”
“No, no, nothing like that!” It was too disturbing to think about, in fact. People Puzzle’s age were done with the sweaty business of love, surely. It would be indecent otherwise. “I need to find someone. A...a tanglewife.”
“A tanglewife? Why, have you got some castle servingmaid up the country way, then?” Brigid laughed, but she seemed angry again. “I should have known what kind of business would bring you back begging to me.”
“No. It’s not...it’s not about a baby.”
She raised her eyebrow. “A love potion, then? Something to moisten up one of those wooden-shod harlots you’re following around these days?”
He let out a long breath in frustration. Why must she make everything so difficult? Of course, she always had been a woman with her own mind. “I...I can’t tell you, not yet. But it isn’t the kind of thing you think. I need help to...to save someone a great deal of pain.” His heart stuttered for a moment at the enormity of what he was thinking. “And I have another favor to ask, too.” He reached into the sleevepocket of his shirt and produced a silver gull. He had needed to borrow money from Puzzle, money he had no way of paying back, but for once something greater than even his own self-interest drove him. “I’ll give you this now and another just like it afterward if you’ll help me, Brigid— but not a word to Conary. Bargain?”
She stared at the coin in real surprise. “I’ll not help you murder someone,” she breathed, but she looked as though she wasn’t even certain about that.
“It’s...it’s complicated,” he said. “Oh, gods, it is horribly complicated. Bring me a beer and I’ll try to explain.”
“You’ll need another starfish to pay for the two beers, then,” she said, “—one of them for me, of course!—if I’m to be getting that whole gull.”