On the wager’s third day, Caleb left the office before eight for the first time since Bright Mirror. Rather than hopping an airbus home over the mountains, he ate a quick dinner at an expensive Sansilva bistro and headed downtown to the glowing neon strips of the Skittersill.
As he traveled east from the pyramids, streets narrowed and buildings hunched low to the earth. Lamplight flickered in the mouths of painted demons in shop windows. A pair of eyes sculpted from glowing transparent tubes glared down from an optician’s billboard. Sour smoke wafted from an open club door. A blind man played Quechal airs badly on a three-string fiddle. Far above, Wardens circled. Their mounts’ wingbeats thudded in Caleb’s breast.
Drunks crowded the sidewalk. An airbus landed on a nearby platform and unleashed a deluge of students: sharp young men with slick hair, eager women in halter tops and short leather skirts, their smiles all printed by machine.
Dresediel Lex had been one of the first cities liberated in the God Wars, but not all the city’s rulers perished with their gods. Priests poured out their blood on battlefields, true, but some noble Quechal families laid down arms. They were neither rewarded nor punished for their surrender. They sunk into the earth—and into the Skittersill, where they thrived, feeding off the city’s sin.
Teo’s family came from that stock. These days they owned manufacturing and shipping Concerns, but her grandfather had been a slumlord, and worse. And when his children went straight, others took their place.
Caleb came here to play cards, when he wanted easy money and didn’t mind extra risk. A careless winner in the Skittersill was as likely to leave his table dead as wealthy.
Tonight, he had a purpose. Mal claimed to be a cliff runner, and her skills bore out her boast. Running was a select hobby. Even in a city the size of Dresediel Lex, most runners would know one another. So he had to find a runner.
Caleb knew little about the cliff-running community, but runners were addicted to risk. That addiction should carry into other arenas.
His usual tables were too rich for players who jumped off rooftops in their spare time. Cliff runners needed every thaum they could scrounge to buy charms of speed, strength, and balance from booze-tinged back alley Craftsmen—and to buy doctors when those charms failed. A cliff runner who gambled would look for cheap, vigorous action.
He tried six bars before he found the right game: four angry children in spiked leathers, and a woman with a long white scar running from the crown of her skull down past her ear. The skin around the scar looked slick from recent regrowth. She played with contempt for her companions; she did not smile, or laugh, or even speak. She wanted to be anywhere but here.
She wasn’t the only one. The goddess above their table listed from player to player, a staggering, tired jade.
Caleb bought in. The players suspected him at first—he handled the cards well—but he drank more than they did, and played with careful abandon. His soulstuff flowed freely, and the others relaxed. Over an hour he dared his companions into riskier play, and the goddess quickened in the table’s center. She touched each player with a chill like cold water on skin; she demanded worship, and they knelt.
Flames quickened in the scarred woman’s eyes.
Caleb lost several small hands, doubled up through a member of the leather brigade, and rose at game’s end slightly richer than when he sat down. When he thanked them all and made his way to the bar, the scarred woman joined him. She bought his drink, and waved off his protests. “I’m Shannon,” she said.
Caleb introduced himself. “You play well for a newcomer.” He raised his whiskey to the light, and watched the room through its amber lens.
“What’s to say I’m new?” She knocked back her shot, and ordered another.
“You’re comfortable with risk in general but you’re not used to poker. You took a ten and a seven to the flop, but you scared off three hands better than yours.”
“A woman has to get her thrills somehow,” she replied with a crooked smile.
“Where did you get yours before you started to play cards?”
“Cliff running.” She leaned back against the bar. “I was a good runner. Skill matters to a point and after that it’s how much you’re willing to bleed. Three months back, I bled too much.” She swung her hand through a plummeting arc, and turned her head to show him the scar.
“Looks bad.”
“It was bad,” she said. “I was out for almost a month, and when I woke my balance was twisted. I train when I can. During the week I come here, and hope the game will keep me from growing scared.”
“Doesn’t it bore you, after what you’ve done?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes, it surprises me.” She shivered as she downed her second shot. “What do you want with a washed-up runner?”
“Pardon?”
“This isn’t my game, but it is yours. I can tell. Even this dive has two tables that play for higher stakes. When I ran, I never went to a course that wouldn’t challenge me. You joined our table for a reason, and I don’t think it had anything to do with those kids.”
“You’re not a humble person.”
“Humility is a vice of which I have never been accused.”
“I’m looking for a runner,” he admitted, “named Mal. Malina, maybe. Quechal woman, short hair, about my height. I hoped you could help me.”
Shannon sucked air through her teeth. “Crazy Mal.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She’s good. You won’t know what to do with her when you find her.”
“I’ll worry about that when I do.”
She laughed, a blunt sound heavy with alcohol. “I can’t help you much. Mal keeps apart from the rest of us, and I’ve been away too long to know where she runs now. The courses change.” She finished the drink. “Walk me home,” she said, and limped through the crowd toward the door.
He escorted her down long straight streets below signs ghostlit in colors no god ever made. They turned off the Corsair Parkway onto a lane of small clapboard houses nestled against the foot of the Drakspine. Craftsmen’s palaces gleamed on the mountain peaks, and clouds and skyspires shone with the city’s light. Shannon’s house was dark. As they reached the stoop he heard within the sound of laughter and muffled conversation.
“Roommates,” she said. She laid a hand on his arm. Her eyes reflected the city like still pools. “Do you want to come inside?”
“Yes.” He didn’t move.
She sank onto the stoop, and looked up at him. “But.”
“I’m on a quest, I think,” he said, not having realized this before. “Or something like one.”
“Those went out of fashion a long time ago.”
“Maybe. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m sorry.”
She bent her legs, crossed her arms over her knees, and let out a long-held breath. “It’s better this way. I’m drunk.”
“You’re strong,” he said. “You’ll be running again soon.”
She smiled.
“Where can I find her, and when?”
“She used to run on Sixthday, in the border between Skittersill and Stonewood. You’ll find a trace of her there, if anywhere. Look for the fire. Balam can help you—he’s a fat man, with a smiling face.” Shannon tapped the back of her head. “Here. He trains runners. He’ll know more than I do.”
She uncurled back against the steps, and waited below him, considering. A carriage passed on a side street. The jangle of tack and harness faded, and so did the laughter inside the house.
“Go, then” she said at last. “If you won’t stay.”
He thanked her, and left her there, and wondered at himself the whole way home.
