“So I clearly can’t be a spy,” Winter said. “I’m too incompetent.”
“You can’t be a Concordat spy,” Abby corrected. “I wouldn’t put it past the Armsmen to send some clueless girl over to the Docks to ask silly questions. Or you could be a very good spy, posing as an incompetent one to get your targets to let their guard down. That sounds more like Orlanko to me.”
“What does this have to do with you?”
“We were curious which it was. Had a little money on it, in fact. So I thought, well, the quickest way to get an answer is always to ask directly.”
“So you want to know if I’m a spy?” Winter said.
“Exactly!”
“I’m not a spy.”
“Ah,” Abby said, “but that’s exactly what a spy would say, isn’t it?”
Winter raised her mug, found it empty, and took a long pull from the new one Abby had ordered. The girl matched her enthusiastically.
“All right,” Winter said cautiously. “I’ve answered the question. Now what?”
“What do you know about the Leatherbacks?”
“Only what I’ve heard,” Winter said. “They stand up to the Concordat and the tax farmers, try to help people. And that the inner circle is all women.”
“Not many people know that last part,” Abby said. “Or else they don’t believe it. So you just decided to come down here and try your luck?”
“I was at the University,” Winter said, feeling a bit more comfortable. This part of the story she’d practiced. “My father owned an apothecary northside. We weren’t rich, but he saved everything he could to send me there. He didn’t have a son, you see, and I was supposed to carry on the family business.”
Abby nodded appreciatively. “Go on.”
“I don’t know all the details. But Father got involved with a tax farmer named Heatherton.” This, Janus had assured her, was a real person. “He fell behind and got into debt, then got further into debt trying to dig himself out. Eventually Heatherton turned up with a warrant that said he owned the shop, and Father went to prison. They tossed me out of the University as soon as my tuition dried up.” She tried to put a little quaver into her voice, as though she were only remaining calm by dint of much effort. “I’d heard stories, and I had a little money left, so I thought. .”
“You thought you’d come and ask for help?”
Winter shook her head. “That would be silly. I know I’m not going to get the shop back, or even get Father out of prison. I just wanted to. . do something. To hurt them. To help someone else, if I could. I don’t know.” It wasn’t hard to feign embarrassment. “Maybe it was a stupid idea.”
“You’d be surprised what can come out of stupid ideas,” Abby murmured.
“Are you one of them, then?” Winter said. “Is it true about the Leatherbacks?”
“Some of the stories are greatly exaggerated,” Abby said. “You might say I’m an associate member.”
“Can you get me a meeting with them?” Winter let a touch of her real eagerness creep into her voice. She thought it would be in character.
Abby sighed. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“I’ve been down here for days,” Winter said. “They have my father. Of course it’s what I want.”
“You know the story of Saint Ligamenti and the demon, right? ‘Be careful what you wish for.’”
“If I remember the story,” Winter said, “Saint Ligamenti tricks the demon and sends it back to hell.”
“It depends on which version you read,” Abby said brightly. “All right. Are you going to finish that, or are you ready to go?”
Winter looked down at the plate, a sudden unease sitting poorly amid the boiled meat and mashed potatoes in her stomach. “Let’s go. I’ve lost my appetite.”
“How did you join the Leatherbacks?” Winter said, as Abby led her away from the crowded River Road and into the dense tangle of plaster-and-timber buildings that housed the population of the Docks. Aside from a few major thoroughfares connecting the market squares, there were no official streets, just a wandering warren of alleys established by consensus and tradition. With the sun well up and no clouds in the sky, washing lines had sprouted from every doorway and window, like fast-growing creepers adorned with fluttering, colorful flowers. They had to pick their way carefully to avoid getting a face-full of someone’s underthings when the wind blew the wrong way.
“By doing a lot of really stupid things and getting very lucky,” Abby said. “Honestly, what I deserved was to be found floating naked in the river with my throat slit. It must be true what they say about God looking out for idiots and children.”
That stymied Winter for a while, conversation-wise. Abby led confidently but apparently at random, taking this turning or that without a second thought, making wide circles when a more direct route seemed available. Winter wondered if it was all for her benefit, to keep her from remembering the way to some secret hideout. If so, it was wasted effort-Winter had been lost the moment they left sight of the river. Maybe Abby is just lost, too.
“I ran away from home, if you can believe it,” Abby said eventually. They separated to pass to either side of a fishmonger gutting his latest acquisitions into a bucket in the middle of the street. “I didn’t even have a good reason. We’re a good family, plenty of money, nobody taking a switch to me or anything like that.”
“What happened, then?”
“I had a difference of opinion with my father. His ideas are. . old-fashioned.”
Winter did her best to sound sympathetic. “Marriage?”
“Politics.”
Abby stopped in a tiny square where five of the little streets came together, and looked around. She selected the narrowest one, a thin dirt lane squeezed so tightly between two houses there was barely room for two people to pass each other. Winter looked at it dubiously.
“Come on,” Abby said. “This way.”
“Where are we going, exactly?” Winter said, hurrying a little to keep up.
“Right here.” Abby turned around, in the center of the alley, and gave her sunny smile again. “One of the things I learned pretty quickly was not to follow strangers down narrow alleys, even in the middle of the day.”
A change in the quality of the light told Winter that there was someone behind her, blocking the mouth of the alley by which they’d come in. Another shadow loomed across the exit. She considered her options. The buildings close on each side meant it was unlikely she’d be able to scramble past an attacker, and she wasn’t a good enough climber to get up the pockmarked plaster walls before someone got a hand on her. The damned dress would make running difficult, too. She had a knife, stashed in her waistband beside her coin purse, but the only thing she could think to do with it was take Abby hostage. That didn’t seem like a good option; the girl looked fleet and spry, and in any case Winter wasn’t sure she could cut her throat in cold blood.
Instead she smiled back and kept her hands carefully at her sides. “I hope it wasn’t too painful a lesson.”
There were footsteps in the dirt behind her. Two men, it sounded like. A quick kick to the groin or stomach might get her past one, but that would leave the other, with no room to get around. A nicely planned ambush, I must say.
“I really don’t know who you are,” Abby said, “but you certainly were never a University student. We have close contact with the people there. At the same time, I meant what I said about the Concordat.”
“That you think I’m a spy?”
“That I think you’re not competent enough to be one of Orlanko’s.” Abby shrugged. “This is your chance to come clean. If you’re working for Big Sal or one of the other dock gangs, we’re not going to hold it against you. Though they ought to know not to mess with us by now.”