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?
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.
“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.”
He couldn’t remember the last time he had visited the neighborhood around Skimmer’s Lagoon in daylight— not that he had come here so many times. It was surprising, really, since the Mint, the tavern in which he had lived and spent most of his time, was only a few hundred steps away on the outer edge of the lagoon district. Still, there was a distinct borderline at Barge Street, which took its name from an inn called the Red Barge at one end of it: except for the poorest of the Southmarch poor, who shared the lagoon district’s damp and fishy smells, only Skimmers spent much time in the area. The exception was after nightfall, when groups of young men came down to patronize the various taverns around the lagoon.
Tinwright turned now onto Barge Street and made his way along it toward Sealer’s Walk, the district’s main thoroughfare, which ran along the edge of the lagoon until it ended in Market Square in the shadow of the new walls. There was no sun to speak of, but Tinwright was grateful for such light as the gray, late-morning sky offered: Barge Street was so narrow that he could imagine Skimmer arms reaching out to grab him from doorways on either side. In reality, he saw almost no one, only a few women emptying slops into the gutters or children who halted their games to watch with wide, unblinking eyes as he passed. There was something so unnerving about these staring children that he found himself hurrying toward Sealer’s Walk, a street he knew fairly well, and where he might find a few of his own kind.
Sealer’s Walk was perhaps the only part of Skimmer’s Lagoon that most castle folk ever visited, fishermen and their women to purchase charms—the Skimmers were said to be great charmwrights, especially when it came to safety on the water—and others to visit the lagoon-side taverns and eat fish soup or drink the oddly salty spirit called wickeril. Many though, especially from outside Southmarch, came for no purpose more lofty than to see
