Full Fathom Five (30 page)

She cut east, away from shore, up the slope. The Penitent followed.

She could have found her way blind, just by following the heat: cook fires and bonfires and torches and drunken bodies mashed together. And after the heat, the stink symphony of drug smoke, spilled liquor, vomit, barbecue, incense, blood sacrifice, and burnt offerings. Noise too, a wash of sitar and swing and contrabass chant, theological argument, hawk and sell, sin and expiation, lust resisted and satisfied. She slid down a drainpipe into the red-lit mess of the Godsdistrikt.

She landed behind a priest selling indulgences out of his open black coat, and snatched a prayer book from his hand. “Thief!” The priest lunged for her, missed, and tumbled instead into the back of a hefty henna-inked cultist from the Gleb, who turned smooth as sunrise and punched the priest in the face.

The fight spread, and Izza slid away through the crowd, skipping, dodging. She risked another glance back, and saw her Penitent pursuer wade into the Godsdistrikt, brawl. The crowd broke like waves against its chest.

A woman by an incense salesman’s cart reached for her purse and found it gone, then turned to see it in the grip of a hapless young monk, who had blindly taken the bundle a young girl thrust into his arms as she ran past. Izza tripped, and poked, and ducked away. She shouted discord into a missionary chorus. The crowd rose from simmer to boil. Fights broke out and merged into a riot like streams merging into a river. At last, she ducked into an abandoned confession booth, hugged her knees to her chest, and listened until she heard the drum swell of more Penitents approaching.

Six pairs of spotlights opened at once on the Godsdistrikt crowd, and Izza, hiding, waited, and hoped.

Penitents did not kill. This one had. Which presented two options: either all Penitents killed, or this was an exception. If all killed, they went to great lengths to keep people from learning of their murders. Preserve the people until Makawe and his sisters return, that was their mandate, and Izza had never heard of them breaking it. Which meant this statue was murderer more than Penitent—and like all murderers, it had to hide its deeds.

Hence, the riot. The more Penitents, the greater her danger of being taken, but the less her danger of being killed.

She waited in the confessional as Penitents cordoned off the street. The smell of cedar boards edged out the incense, sweat, and musk outside. A great shadow passed in front of the confessional door. She tried not to move, but could not stop shaking.

The riot died. The Penitents moved on. Izza slipped from the confessional, crossed the recovering roil of the Godsdistrikt, and from there, unobserved, walked north and west into the Palm.

The moon smiled down and she smiled back. She walked too fast, and breathed too deep. The whole world was velvet padded. She whistled to herself, an old tune from across the sea, a song she remembered a mother singing once. She wasn’t sure if the mother had been hers. There were so many mothers.

The whistle shrilled in her ears. Some god sharpened the streetlights and the stars. The moon’s smile turned wicked. She hid behind a trash bin, gripped her ankles, and thought of Edmond Margot dead.

A broken, tired man, far from home, a deserter of his people, deserted in turn by gods and muses. And anyway, others had died before this. Why weep for him?

She did anyway.

This surprised her.

A while later she emerged onto the street, and moved north and west with dreadful purpose.

She ignored crowds, drunks, and flower-draped tourists. Three skeletons in tie-dyed shirts stumbled past, drinking from silver flasks and singing God Wars songs. Soon the streets narrowed, and yards unfurled from the houses.

She found the priest’s house dark, shuttered. She walked the block twice, casing it from every angle. Once in a while she heard a cry from within, a yowl like a cat would make, or else a person with bad dreams.

Nick had been right: the house was warded. Cross the fence and Izza would wake the alarm. But the house next door was less secure, and in its yard grew those trees Izza didn’t know what to call, the ones like a buried chicken’s upturned claw. A limb of one such tree overhung the fence. The ward was younger than the tree, and rather than cutting back the tree, the contractor must have bent the ward around it.

Izza climbed the claw tree and crept out along the thinning branch. Crossing the ward burned like a bath in cold iron. Spiderwebs of light and lightning spread around her. She pressed herself against the bark, always at least one patch of skin touching. She was one with the tree. The pain built, sharpened, vanished.

She was through.

Faint ghostlight flickered from the priest’s second-floor window: a nightlight, or a bedside lamp left on. Between that and the occasional moans, she might have suspected the priest was entertaining callers. But she heard only one voice, and the wind, and a creak from the branch beneath her.

Now to find a way down, Izza thought before the branch broke.

She landed hard on the lawn. False stars spun above, in front of the real ones. The limb of the neighbor’s tree now ended in a jagged line above the fence. So much for her clean exit. Fine. Revenge was best served hot, whatever Camlaander playwrights said.

The priest bolted and chained her front door, but used a pushover of a key lock for the back: a rake of pick over tumblers and it gave. Izza locked the door behind her, and stood in the empty kitchen, breathing.

This was the part she’d not thought through.

She’d never killed before, not while meaning to anyway. She hadn’t brought a weapon, but the house offered all the arsenal she needed. Pokers, boards, pillows for suffocation, wrenches and pliers in a toolkit under the sink. This had all seemed so much simpler on the walk over.

Of course it’s simple.

Well, yes, but. When she held the pliers and imagined grabbing fingers and applying torque, she thought of her own fingers breaking. Same with the wrench. And couldn’t people breathe through pillows?

She settled for a knife from the block on the granite counter. The big carvers felt unwieldy, so she chose a paring blade instead: sharp tip, sharp edge, balanced. She only needed a slice or two.

She realized she’d been haggling with herself over knives for ten minutes. The priest killed Margot, or handed him over to those who did. Justice wasn’t some force in the air. Justice was something you do.

She thought about Cat. The cop in her would not approve. But she wasn’t a cop anymore. And anyway:
We’re the Lady’s children, and there’s nobody to help us but us.

She hadn’t meant that when she said it. Thought she was just convincing Nick to help her with a few clever words. But she heard her own voice in her ears now.

So.

She climbed the stairs. The priest’s bedroom door was open, her bedside lamp on. The woman lay sleeping, twisted in cotton sheets, breathing rapidly through nose and mouth. Izza slipped out of her shoes and approached, soundless, over white carpet. The knife weighed no more and no less than any other piece of steel about so long and about so thin.

How did you kill someone in bed? Izza hadn’t done this sort of thing before.

She’d fought. She’d lived through war. She could figure it out.

People get up, when hurt. They fight back. Even weak folk don’t die easy.

Stabbing, then, might not work. Anyway, Izza couldn’t stab her from the bedside: the woman’s bed was the size of a small stage, built for two, and she lay in its center. From the edge, Izza lacked enough leverage to drive the blade in deep. No doubt proper killers knew how to deal with this.

She climbed onto the bed.

The mattress was soft as wet sand. The woman shifted, but did not wake.

Izza climbed nearer on knees and one hand. She straddled the woman, pinned her arms to her sides, and raised the knife.

The skull was hard. Breastbone too. The throat, though, the throat was soft.

Stab, or slice?

Her blade wavered.

She remembered Sophie’s screams when the Penitents caught her. Remembered the Blue Lady’s dying breath. Remembered her mother, and her father, and the fire. The priestess at home, in the village square, and the sound of the knife across her throat. She’d never wondered how it felt to hold that knife, and now she would know. Dying, Margot had sounded like a draining bath.

One death equals one death.

Did it?

Was this justice?

What had she seen? The woman talked to Margot. Talked to the Watch after. A Penitent came, and killed. A chain of events. She imagined Cat asking her: Did you see this woman kill? Do you know she was at fault? Justice is like math: anyone can think she knows the answer, but not every answer is right.

She’d gone this far to make sure of the death. Knife at the woman’s throat, all her weight ready to press down. Why not make sure of its justice, too?

The woman trembled on the edge of waking.

Izza touched the knife to her skin.

Two black eyes snapped open. Swollen pupils sought and found Izza’s face.

“Tell me,” Izza said, “why I shouldn’t kill you now.”

43

Not a woman, Kai realized, but a girl. Fourteen, maybe. Gleblander. Short cropped hair. Thin, gaunt, coltish, angry. Sharp big black eyes, brown skin. Sweat crusted. Brown ragged tunic. Wore a pearl on a leather string around her neck. Wiry legs clamped Kai’s arms to her sides.

All these details tossed under utter panic. Half of Kai’s body tried to buck the girl off, and the other half to burrow into the mattress, away from the blade at her throat. She felt its tip as a coal.

“Stop, or I’ll do it now.” The knife pressed further, and Kai felt her skin tear.

Drowning sailors on the battered raft of her mind threw sacrifices to the adrenaline storm: snatches of poetry, school rhymes half-remembered, and at last, despairing, an image of a beggar girl on the sidewalk in front of Edmond Margot’s apartment. “You’re the girl from Margot’s place.”

The knife kept still.

“Tell me why you did it,” the girl said. Urgent, low.

“Did what?”

The pressure returned.

“He’s.”

“Dead,” Kai finished, seeing the shape of her anger. “Margot’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Why did you kill him?”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t lie to me!” The knife danced over her skin as the girl’s hand shook.

“I’m not. I’m not. Swear to whatever gods you want to name.”

“You don’t know the gods I’d name,” the girl said.

“I tried to save his life.”

Shadow welled through the narrow slits of the girl’s eyes. “You went to the Watch.”

“To protect him.”

“They killed him.” Another coal puncture, below the first. Kai fought to keep still. The blade was too close and sharp for heroics, or for fear.

Think. The girl thought Kai had killed Margot. She wanted vengeance. She could have killed Kai while she slept; either she was a hardened torturer, and kept Kai alive to suffer, or she didn’t want to do the work. She wanted to be talked out of it.

Oh gods. This was a sale, then. Of a sort. Twilling’s acronyms and lists bubbled up unbidden.

“You killed him,” the girl repeated.

“I wanted him safe. I offered him shelter. He refused.” Technically true. “Can we just. I mean.” Step one: identification. “I’m Kai,” she said. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. Kai is my name. What’s yours?”

Scales shifted and gears spun in the girl’s mind. Her face twisted. Hesitation. Sensible. An exchange of names was an exchange of power. Without names you filed other people into boxes: murderer, conspirer, betrayer, lover, friend. The knife at Kai’s throat would kill her, but anonymity would let the girl drive the blade home.

“Izza,” the girl said.

“I only met Margot twice.” The cuts on her neck burned when she swallowed. “He seemed like a good man.”

“You killed him.”

“I didn’t.”

“You sent a Penitent, and the Penitent did.”

“I asked the Watch to arrest Margot, to keep him safe.”

Izza’s weight settled on Kai’s stomach. “A Penitent strangled him to death.”

She struggled to breathe. “Gods.”

“Gods have no part of this.”

“Penitents don’t kill people.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Penitents didn’t kill, but this girl wasn’t lying. Kai’d expected assassins, Craftwork or poison or knife, rough work in a back alley to make the death look like a mugging gone wrong. The Grimwalds were powerful, but could they subvert a Penitent? The concept barely made sense. “You’re serious.”

“I am.”

Step two: needs assessment. “You’re here because your friend is dead, and you want revenge.” She saw a drowning face in a deep pool. “You can kill me to make yourself feel better. But that won’t get you what you want, because I didn’t kill him, and I want to know who did as much as you.”

“Tell me,” the girl said, through clenched teeth. “Everything.”

Step three: the solution. “No.”

“I will hurt you.”

“You cut me, and I’ll tell you something, sure. Maybe I’ll even tell you the truth. Or maybe I’ll tell you what you want to hear, just to make the pain stop.” She could hear Twilling’s voice in her head. “I want to tell you what I know. If he’s dead, I want to help you find his killer.” And step four: the price. “But I need to know you’re not lying to me, first. Think about it from my point of view. I don’t know you. You might be lying. You might have killed him.”

“I didn’t.”

“I believe you.” She didn’t, exactly, but the girl didn’t need to know that. “But I need proof.”

Izza’s lips thinned to a line. Kai closed her eyes and waited for the cut.

It did not come.

The knife lifted from her neck.

“You walk with a cane,” Izza said.

“Yes.”

“You’ll walk with me instead.” She rolled off Kai’s chest, and waited by her bedside, knife out between them. “Get dressed.”

As Kai sat up she felt a sharp-edged, rectangular piece of paper under her left hand. She palmed the business card and, when she risked a glance down, saw Ms. Kevarian’s name flashed in gold.