Shadowplay

“It’s not that I have any scruples, boy,” she said. “And I’m not frightened of much of anything, which you can see by me letting you in here in the first place.”

Tinwright shook his head. Soso the gull gave him a baleful look and feinted toward his ear. The bird didn’t seem as fond of the poet as he was of Aislin, and he especially didn’t like it when Tinwright moved—he’d given him a few painful pecks on the ankles and hands already. “What do you mean, letting me in? I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me? Should say not—I’d pop you like a bulb of rockweed, boy,” she said with an evil, self-satisfied chuckle. “No, because you’re a drylander...what was your name?” She stared at him, blinking slowly. “Ah, never mind. Because you’re a drylander, and your kind isn’t much liked around here just now.”

“Why?” There was no resisting the notion, once it had crept into his head, that Aislin the tanglewife looked and sounded like nothing so much as a huge, gray-haired frog in a shapeless dress. It made conversation tricky. That last cup of wine wasn’t helping, either.

“Why? By the Grandsire’s soggy cod, boy, didn’t you see? Big piece of Sealer’s Walk burned down? Who do you think did that?”

Tinwright stared aghast at the goggle-eyed Skimmer woman. “It wasn’t me!”

“No, you fool, and be glad it wasn’t, but it was drylanders from up in the town, a gang of them, young and stupid and hateful. Three of our people were killed, one of them a child. Folk around here aren’t very happy.”

“Why did they do it?” Suddenly he understood the way some of the Skimmers had watched him and a chill swept over him. “I hadn’t heard anything about a fire.”

“You wouldn’t. We take care of our own, and what happens here doesn’t interest the ordinary run of castle folk—not unless the whole place went up in flames and threatened the rest of the town.” The tanglewife settled back again, waving her broad hands as though to waft away a foul smell. “It’s been bad ever since those Qar creatures crossed the Shadowline. We folk are different—they used to call us kilpies and sea-fairies, did you know?—so things go bad for us. It happened when they came the last time, too, in my great-grandmother’s day. Everyone was driven out of Southmarch by them, eventually, but our folk were driven out first—and by our own neighbors.”

“Sorry.” The cursed wine had fogged his brain—how had they started talking about this? “What’s...what’s a Kwar?”

“You’re not quite saying it right, but close enough for a drylander. Qar is another name for the Old Ones living beyond the Shadowline—the Twilight People.” She stared at him for a moment. “You’ve been sitting here much of the afternoon, boy. Better get up and going before it turns dark. I don’t think it’s going to be a good night for someone like you to be wandering around land-legged on Sealer’s Walk.”

“Right, then.” Tinwright stood up, sketched a somewhat uneven bow, and began to bob through the dangling charms in search of the door, doing his best to ignore the black and white gull pecking aggressively at his feet.

“What are you doing?” Aislin called. “Didn’t you come here to buy something from me?”

He stopped, a thought suddenly gnawing at his mind. “Ah. Yes.”

“You have no head for Black Wrack, boy, that’s certain.” She grunted as she lifted herself to her feet. “Let me get to my powders and potions. Don’t sit down again, you’ll fall asleep.”

After she had been gone for no little time (a span during which Tinwright and the gull eyed each other with feigned disinterest) she came back carrying a small stoppered glass bottle no bigger than a child’s thumb.

“This venom comes from an octopus out of the southern seas—a small thing you would never think to be so deadly. Dip a needle in it and use that one drop only. Just that, and her journey will be painless. But be careful with it or you will murder yourself. This poison knows no master.”

Tinwright took it and stared at the thing in his hand. It was hard to know for certain through the blue glass vial, but the fluid inside looked clear and harmless as water. “Careful...” he breathed. “I’ll be careful.”

“You had better.” Her laugh was sharp and raw. “There’s enough in there to kill a dozen strong men. I don’t like handling it, myself. I had an accident once.” She sat down heavily. “And it goes without saying that from here out, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I’ve no qualms about much of anything but I don’t want trouble with the Tollys. So remember, if someone comes down here asking about me and blue glass bottles, someone will come looking for you in turn. Understand?”

“Yes.” Those Skimmer men testing the blades of their fishgutting knives as they watched him pass was a picture he wouldn’t soon forget. The Black Wrack in his stomach seemed to sour and bubble. He hesitated for a moment before carefully putting the little flask into his sleeve pocket.

“Grandsire’s sake, boy, wrap it in something,” she said, disgusted. “Here, take this bit of kelp leaf, that’s thick enough. If you fall down and break the jar while it’s sitting in your shirt like that, you’ll never get up again.”

When he was finished Tinwright was feeling ill indeed. He stared at Aislin for a moment, swaying, then swiveled toward the door.

“Didn’t you forget something?”

“Pardon?” He turned back. “Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“No, you daft herring, my money. That’s a gull and two coppers you owe me.” She smirked. “And I’m giving you the lovesick poet’s rate.”

“Of course.” He fumbled out the money, handed it to her. After a moment’s assessment, which seemed mostly to consist of running her thumb around the circumference of each coin, she whisked them down the gap in her shiny, wrinkled bosom, an expanse which looked like nothing so much as a well-worn saddle. “Now be on your way. And remember what I said. Better you drink that whole jar right now than breathe a word to anyone of where you got it.”

Feeling as though some poison had already taken away his powers of thought and speech, Tinwright nodded and staggered toward the door, then out into the cold gray day, or what was left of it.

When he reached Silverhook Row he turned to look back down the alley. Aislin the tanglewife stood in her doorway beneath the great length of pale horn, staring at him. She lifted a hand as if to wave him farewell, but her strange, pop-eyed face had gone cold and remote. She turned and went back inside.

Matt Tinwright hurried out of the lagoon district as fast as he could, acutely conscious of both the fast fading afternoon light and the tiny jar full of treason and murder concealed in his shirt.

Opal came back from market with her sack mostly empty and her face full of worry.

“You look terrible, my old darling,” Chert told her. “I’ll only be gone up to the castle for the day. I’m sure there’s nothing to fear.”

“I’m not worrying about you,” she growled, then shook her head angrily. “No, of course I’m worried about you, all caught up in this big-folk madness again. But that’s not what’s bothering me. There’s nothing to eat in this house and scarcely anything to be had even at the market.”

“Why is that?”

She snorted. “You are a dunderhead, Chert! Why do you think? The castle is surrounded by fairy folk, half the merchants won’t send their ships here to Southmarch, and there’s no work for the Funderlings. Surely in your time loitering around the guildhall you must have heard something of that?”

“Of course.” He scratched his head. She was right: it wasn’t as though there were no ordinary problems. “But Berkan Hood, the new lord constable, promised that he’d put two hundred of ours to work repairing the castle walls, so Cinnabar and the rest are saying not to worry.”

“And what are they going to pay them with?” She had her shawl off now and was washing her hands vigorously in a bowl of water. “The Tollys are already spending money hand over fist trying to lure merchants to bring in food and drink for Southmarch, not to mention the ships they’ve had to buy and mercenary seamen they’ve had to hire, all to protect the harbor.”

“You heard all this at the market?”

“Do you think we spend all day talking about vegetables and sewing?” She dried her hands off on her shapeless, oft-mended old dress and Chert felt a pang that his wife had nothing nicer to wear. “Honestly, you menfolk. You think you do it all yourselves, don’t you?”

“Not for years, my good old woman.” He laughed ruefully.

“Not since I’ve had you around to keep me straightened out.”

“Well, just go and talk to the boy before you disappear for the day. He’s had a bad night and I have a hundred things to do if I’m going to make a meal out of these sad leavings.”

Flint was sitting on the bed, his white-gold hair disarranged, his face distant and mournful.