“That converthation can wait. Blint doethn’t need to be here for that,” Corbin Fishill said. He turned his heavy-lidded eyes to Blint. “You didn’t kill tonight.” He let the statement hang, unadorned.
Durzo looked at him, refusing to take the provocation.
“Can you thtill do it?”
Words were useless with a man like Corbin Fishill. He spoke the language of meat. Durzo walked to him. Corbin didn’t flinch, didn’t turn aside as Durzo came toward the platform, though several of the Nine were clearly nervous. Under Fishill’s velvet trousers, Blint could see his muscles bunch.
Corbin kicked at Durzo’s face, but Durzo had already moved. He slammed a needle deep into Corbin’s calf and stepped back.
A bell rang and a moment later, Bernerd and Lefty burst into the room. Blint crossed his arms and made no move to defend himself.
Blint was tall, but his mass was all lean muscle and sinew. Lefty charged like a warhorse. Durzo merely extended both hands, unclenched, but when Lefty crashed into him, the impossible happened. Instead of crushing the smaller man, Lefty’s sprint ended instantly.
His face stopped first, his nose popping against Durzo’s open hand. The rest of him continued forward. His body lifted parallel to the ground, then crashed to the stone floor.
“Thtop!” Corbin Fishill shouted.
Bernerd skidded to a halt in front of Durzo and then knelt by his brother. Lefty was moaning, his bleeding nose filling the mouth of a rat carved into the rock floor.
Corbin pulled the needle out of his calf with a grimace. “What ith thith, Blint?”
“You want to know if I can still kill?” Durzo put a small vial in front of the basher. “If that needle was poisoned, this is the antidote. But if the needle wasn’t poisoned, the antidote will kill you. Drink it or don’t.”
“Drink it, Corbin,” Pon Dradin said. It was the first time the Shinga had spoken since Blint entered. “You know, Blint, you’d be a better wetboy if you didn’t know you were the best. You are—but you still take your orders from me. The next time you touch one of my Nine, there will be consequences. Now get the hell out.”
The tunnel felt wrong. Azoth had been in other tunnels before, and if he wasn’t exactly comfortable with moving through the cloying dark by touch, he could still do it. This tunnel had started out like any other: rough cut, winding, and of course dark. But as it plunged deeper into the earth, the walls got straighter, the floor smoother. This tunnel was important.
But that was different, not wrong. What was wrong was one step in front of Azoth. He squatted on his heels, resting, thinking. He didn’t sit. You only sat when you knew there was nothing you’d have to run away from.
He couldn’t smell anything different, though the air was as heavy and thick as gruel down here. If he squinted, he thought could see something, but he was pretty sure that was just from squeezing his eyes. He extended his hand again. Was the air cooler just there?
Then he was sure he felt the air shift. Sudden fear arced through Azoth. Blint had passed through here twenty minutes ago. He hadn’t carried a torch. Azoth hadn’t thought about it then. Now he remembered the stories.
A little puff of sour air lapped at his cheek. Azoth almost ran, but he didn’t know which way was safe to run. He had no way to defend himself. The Fist kept all the weapons. Another puff touched his other cheek. It smells. Like garlic?
“There are secrets in this world, kid,” a voice said. “Secrets like magical alarms and the identities of the Nine. If you take another step, you’ll find one of those secrets. Then two nice bashers with orders to kill intruders will find you.”
“Master Blint?” Azoth searched the darkness.
“Next time you follow a man, don’t be so furtive. It makes you conspicuous.”
Whatever that meant, it didn’t sound good. “Master Blint?”
He heard laughter up the tunnel, moving away.
Azoth jumped to his feet, feeling his hope slip away with the fading laughter. He ran up the tunnel in the dark. “Wait!”
There was no response. Azoth ran faster. A stone grabbed his foot and he fell roughly, skinning his knees and hands on the stone floor. “Master Blint, wait! I need to apprentice with you. Master Blint, please!”
The voice spoke just over him, though when he looked, Azoth could see nothing. “I don’t take apprentices. Go home, kid.”
“But I’m different! I’ll do anything. I’ve got money!”
But there was no response. Blint was gone.
The silence ached, throbbed in time with the cuts on Azoth’s knees and palms. But there was no help for it. He wanted to cry, but crying was for babies.
Azoth walked back to Black Dragon territory as the sky lightened. Parts of the Warrens were shaking off their drunken slumber. Bakers were up, and smiths’ apprentices were starting forge fires, but the guild rats, the whores, the bashers, and the sneak thieves had gone to sleep, and the cutpurses, cons, sharps, and rest of those who worked the daylight were still asleep.
Usually, the smells of the Warrens were comfortable. There was the permeating smell of the cattle yards over the more immediate smells of human waste glooping through wide gutters in every street to further foul the Plith River, the rotting vegetation from the shallows and backwaters of the slow river, the less sour smell of the ocean when a lucky breeze blew, the stench of the sleeping never-washed beggars who might attack a guild rat for no reason other than their rage at the world. For the first time to Azoth, rather than home, the smells denoted filth. Rejection and despair were the vapors rising from every moldering ruin and shit pile in the Warrens.
The abandoned mill here, once used for hulling rice, wasn’t just an empty building the guild could sleep in. It was a sign. Mills on the west shore would be looted by those so desperate they’d break past whatever bashers the mill owners hired. It was all garbage and rejection, and Azoth was part of it.
When he got to the guild home, Azoth nodded to the lookout and slipped inside with no attempt at stealth. The guild was used to children getting up to piss in the night, so no one would think he’d been out. If he tried to sneak in, he’d just draw attention to himself.
Maybe that was what furtive meant.
Lying down in his usual spot next to the window, he slipped between Doll Girl and Jarl. It got cold here, but the floor was flat and there weren’t many splinters. He nudged his friend. “Jay-Oh, you know what furtive means?”
But Jarl rolled away, grunting. Azoth poked him again, but Jarl wouldn’t move. Long night, I guess.
Like all the guild rats, Azoth, Jarl, and Doll Girl slept close to each other for warmth. Usually Doll Girl got the middle because she was small and got cold so easy, but tonight Jarl and Doll Girl weren’t lying close to each other.
Doll Girl scooted close and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing tightly, and Azoth was glad for her warmth. A worry gnawed at the back of his mind like a rat, but he was too tired. He slept.
5
The nightmare started when Azoth woke.
“Good morning,” Rat said. “How’s my favorite little guttershite?” The glee on Rat’s face told Azoth that something was seriously wrong. Roth and Harelip stood on either side of Rat, almost bursting with excitement.
Doll Girl was gone. Jarl was gone. Ja’laliel was nowhere to be seen. Blinking against the sunlight streaming through the guild home’s torn roof, Azoth stood and tried to orient himself. The rest of the guild was gone, either working, scavenging, or just deciding that now would be a good time to be outside. So they’d seen Rat come in.
Roth stood by the back door, and Harelip stood behind Rat in case Azoth ran for the front door or a window.
“Where were you last night?” Rat asked.
“I had to piss.”
“Long piss. You missed the fun.” When Rat spoke like that, totally flat, no affect in his voice, Azoth felt a fear too deep to shiver out. Azoth knew violence. He’d seen sailors murdered, had seen prostitutes with fresh scars, had a friend die from a vendor’s beating. Cruelty walked the Warrens holding hands with poverty and rage. But the dead look in Rat’s eyes marked him as more of a freak than Harelip. Harelip had been born without part of his lip. Rat had been born without a conscience.