The ledge led into a plenum space less than half an arm’s length tall. Better suited to urchins and vermin than a grown woman. She slid along in the near darkness, lit from the outside wherever the polyboard was not evenly adjoined.
This is an incredibly bad idea. The thought repeated itself with every elbowed inch she gained in the tight passage. She could feel dirt and the dried husks of dead insects beneath her palms, and her hair snagged on the underside of the boards above her. The thief moved easily ahead of her, not quite able to crawl on all fours but certainly having an easier time of it than she was.
Her breathing quickened and an invisible hand clamped around the base of her throat. She was not made for cramped spaces. Only her rage and frustration moved her forward after the child. Everything else inside her clawed to go back. She half hoped that the boards beneath her would collapse under her weight, dump her through into the shop below, and give her an escape from the darkness.
There were children who were pickpockets and children who were assassins. Others just did whatever it took to survive. Talis shimmied after the child, wondering which variety it was she followed. And what she was following him into.
At the far end of the plenum space she saw the child crouch, then disappear upward again. Talis rolled after him, not keen on being left behind with only her claustrophobia for company.
The ascent was a narrow shaft at the corner of whatever levels they were scrabbling between, and the crawlspace she left behind was a ballroom compared to the tight vertical climb.
There was a brief increase in the light level as the child pushed through a hatch above. Then it was dark again, and Talis was alone.
Awkward in the narrow space, she managed to climb in tiny steps, squeezing her arms tight against her sides so she didn’t end up wedged against the opposite wall of the shaft.
At the top, she found the hatch locked from the other side. Not really surprising, though she was no less panicked by it. She pounded against it. She tried to run back over the route from the streets in her mind, to hazard a guess as to where the boy had led her.
She’d been reckless. And now she was lost, crushed into a tiny space barely big enough for the bony child she’d chased after, faced with retracing the squeezing path back to somewhere familiar. Faced with returning to Wind Sabre penniless and outsmarted by a child. And without a buyer for the ring. She gave the hatch one last half-hearted pound with the side of her fist.
Defeated, she let the back of her head drop against the wall behind her. Only the panel swung outward before her head could thud against it. She stumbled out backward, falling without grace. Someone caught her and gently propped her back on her feet. The hands that supported her were pale and three-fingered.
“Ah, good,” said a melodic voice. “We have been expecting you, Captain Talis.”
Chapter 12
Talis had never met Zeela, the Vein merchant woman from the Platform District, but without question that was who stood calmly to one side as a younger Vein woman helped Talis out from the crawlspace behind the wall in the corner of a softly lit shop.
The businesswoman, in contrast to her plainly-dressed assistant, was an exotic and elegant vision. Almost nothing utilitarian about her appearance. She was dressed like a queen among the starving thieves of Subrosa, radiating the confidence of someone who could do so without fear of being mugged or otherwise harassed. The tales of her people’s sixth sense undoubtedly augmented the air of mystique she wore as openly as the silks of her gown.
Zeela was slender, her frame delicate. Her nose was narrow and long, with a petite button tip. Her eyes were large shining moonstones in a pale cream face shadowed with purple undertones. Her thin eyebrows arched like the antennae of a moth. Small gemstones sparkled from where they had been glued to the skin around her eyes. Amethyst, topaz, and citrine spilled across her temples, down across the arches of her cheekbones. Her thick, shining, colorless hair was elaborately styled: first braided into tiny individual strands, then gathered together and piled about her head like a pale corona. Silver bells, strands of pearls, and shimmering sheer ribbons in lavender and orange threaded in and out of the braids, shifting as she moved. A single fall of straight unadorned hair, dyed in a gradient from pink to lavender, fell from the nape of her neck down her back to end in a perfectly straight line at her hips.
Layered in sheer tones that mixed their own colors, her clothing appeared weightless, a remarkable feat considering how much she wore. A full skirt tied beneath her bust fell to sweep the floor. It was embroidered with patterns of colored silk thread hand-stitched into the delicate silk fabric. Swirling colors conveyed no image or pattern that Talis could see, though from what she knew of Vein fashion, she was sure there was a design to its texture that the wearer would feel when brushing a hand across it. A short jacket covered Zeela’s bust, shoulders, and two longer arms, with full sleeves that enveloped the limbs in shining silk. The sleeves fell beyond her hands, not to hide them from sight, but to convey that Zeela was so completely at ease in her space, and so well-served by her maiden clerks, that she did not require the manual labor or spatial guidance for which the outer pair of arms were intended.
Her second, smaller pair of
