The Reader (16 page)

T
he east side of Epidram was a maze of shacks and narrow alleys cluttered with old lobster cages and lines of damp laundry. Along the dirt roads, the gutters were filled with small rivers of filth and debris that smelled of rotting food and rank liquids. New wooden fortifications topped the old stone walls on the outskirts of town, and watchtowers had been built along the shore, but the war had not touched Oxscini's forested lands yet.

Sefia and Archer crept uneasily through the streets, searching for signs of the
carved into lampposts or above doors, but there was no trace of the symbol. Earlier that morning, they had watched Hatchet's men slink into the outskirts of town, but now the impressors were nowhere to be found.

“They came this way, I'm sure of it.” Sefia glanced up and down the road and cursed. “I can't track on streets like this.”

A few small businesses were open, with awnings erected
over their wide windows or tables set out on the street. Down one way, a man was puffing a pipe under a tent, and curls of sweet-smelling smoke rose from the gnarled twigs of his beard. He was surrounded by apothecary drawers, separated into little square compartments into which he occasionally dipped his fingers for a pinch or two of pipeweed.

She'd never felt so conspicuous as she stepped out onto the street. Her boots creaked. Her pack rattled. Everything she did seemed too loud, too out of place. She'd never been in a city this big.

In the shadows beneath an awning, Sefia dimly made out the figures of five old people, as thin as skeletons, sitting in rocking chairs. The wisps of their clothing rose and fell with their rattling breaths. She shuddered. She had the eerie feeling she and Archer were being watched.

Archer followed her, keeping a careful eye on their surroundings, glancing up to the rooftops and around corners.

They hadn't gone far past the next intersection when a familiar figure strode out of an alleyway in front of them. The soles of his boots were caked with dirt and there was trail dust on the hem of his long jacket. He had gray hair and a red beard.

Sefia pulled Archer behind a set of crates. “That's one of Hatchet's men,” she whispered, pointing.

He nodded. Redbeard had been carrying the tongs when they attacked the cabin. Archer gripped the handle of his hunting knife.

They waited until Redbeard had gained a little distance on them, and then they struck out after him. He led them up and down the streets, deeper into the city. Sefia and Archer followed
him, ducking into alleys and waiting, half-hidden, behind lampposts or clusters of barrels.

Sefia didn't take her eyes off the back of his head. They were close now. She could feel it.

Redbeard led them to a small street market jammed with people. There was too much to look at. Stalls and shoppers, pickpockets and rag-tag bands of war orphans. The sounds and smells swelled around them in a dizzying cloud. But while Sefia hesitated, Redbeard charged into the crowd without a backward glance.

She raced in after him.

Halfway down the street, he slipped into a building with grimy windows and a swinging metal sign overhead: a frothing mug surrounded by a circle of twisted rope. The mug signified that it was a tavern, but the noose . . .

Sefia staggered backward. She'd seen this place before: dirty windows and flaking green door flanked by a candle-maker's workshop on one side and a kitchenwares stall on the other.

Palo Kanta was supposed to have come here. He was supposed to have sauntered right through that crooked door and into the bar with the rest of Hatchet's men.

Suddenly light-headed, Sefia stumbled sideways into Archer, who caught her by the elbow. “He should have been here,” she said, dazed. “Palo Kanta should have been here.”

He nodded.

“I stopped him.”

Archer didn't look at her. He toyed with the votives on the table outside the candle-maker's workshop. Sefia wondered
what Palo Kanta would have been doing inside. Drinking, probably. But what else? Laughing? Telling stories with his friends?

“Do you think Hatchet is in there too?” she asked.

Archer peered at the dingy windows and shrugged.

The candle-maker paused in his work and sneered at them. Two half-finished candles dangled from his battered hands. “You kids gonna buy something?” he asked.

“What's that place called?”

“The Hangman's Noose?” The man's lips twisted into a wicked grin. “You don't want to go in there. It's not a nice place for little girls and boys.”

Sefia shifted uncomfortably. They moved to the shop on the other side of the tavern, where they fidgeted with some dented pots.

“What can you tell me about the Hangman's Noose?” Sefia asked the vendor.

The woman tucked a dry gray curl back under her bonnet. “They hang folks who can't pay.”

“Does a man named Hatchet ever go there?”

“It's none of my business, girl. All
my
customers pay up front.”

Sefia gripped the straps of her pack and took a few steps to the side. “Where's Redbeard?” she muttered.

Archer tapped his collarbone and shrugged helplessly.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Sefia grew more and more nervous. Jumpy. She started at every loud noise, every sudden movement in the crowd. Again and again, she reached for her knife.

At last she couldn't wait anymore. She crept up to the windows of the tavern and rubbed at the grime with the side of her fist. Cupping her hands against the window, she peered through the glass.

Feeling for the golden streams of history simmering beneath the everyday world, she blinked. Light seeped through the cracks in the floorboards, pooling around the tables, washing against the walls of the tavern until even the dangling ropes were soaked with gold.

Her head swam. There was so much to see—bar fights and broken glasses, cockleshells collected by a broom, whispered words, drunken songs, and among it all Palo Kanta, standing by the bar, raising a glass, slapping someone on the back—but none of it would remain still long enough for her to get a good look. Someone crossed her vision—
Redbeard
?—and she whipped her head around to follow him, but the world spun with her. She couldn't see where he'd gone. The light was a vortex, thrashing, bellowing, threatening to swallow her whole.

Sefia blinked, and the world again became dank and brown and foul.

Her own saliva tasted sour. She couldn't do it. Her magic had failed her.

Gently, Archer squeezed her arm.

Meeting his gaze, she shook her head. It was all there, the information she wanted, but she couldn't find it. She wasn't good enough.

“We have to go in.” Sefia stood, staring down at the dirty glass. With tiny strokes of her pinkie finger, she traced the
letters in the grime of the windowpane, mouthing the sounds as she wrote. Just a few marks in the corner, so you'd barely notice, unless you were looking for them:

Palo Kanta

He couldn't be there—she had made sure of it—but his name could, at least for a while. At least she could give him that. Sefia wiped her finger on her pant leg.

“His name,” she said.

Archer nodded again. Together they entered the tavern.

It was a grubby sort of place with dark stains and bits of shells and sawdust on the floor. The walls were hung with orange lamps, old rusted anchors, and thick ropes. There were a few other patrons in the tavern—a hooded woman nursing a glass of amber liquid in the corner, a man with one arm sitting at the bar, picking at peanuts—and they glanced up as Sefia and Archer entered, but Redbeard was nowhere to be seen. Sefia searched the darkened corners for a back door. Where had he gone?

Polishing glasses with a soiled rag, the bartender was in no better shape than the rest of his establishment; there was dirt under his fingernails and his hair hung around his shoulders like the braids of a wet mop. His face, however, was the most distinctive: his left cheek was marked with a row of four star-shaped scars, white and puckered around the edges.

Those scars meant something, the kind of marks that showed who you really were. Sefia had heard about them, or maybe even read about them, somewhere. But she couldn't quite remember.

The bartender grinned when he saw Sefia looking at him, and his teeth seemed oily in his mouth. “Now, now, children,” he said, “what are two upstanding young creatures like yourselves doing in a place like this?”

As Sefia approached the bar, the man with one arm tipped toward her. His eyes were unfocused and he had the sickeningly sweet smell of liquor on him. His fingers scrabbled with the peanut shells on the bar top. Her lip curled in disgust.

“We're looking for a man with a red beard,” she said. “Have you seen him?”

The bartender's smile was a crooked, wily thing that made the scars wrinkle in his cheek. He tilted his head and tapped his chin with a dirty forefinger. “Perhaps, perhaps,” he said, smiling, “but I see lots of folk. Hard to remember them all.”

“He was here not fifteen minutes ago. We saw him come in.”

Archer shifted behind her. She could sense him glancing around, searching for threats.

“I suppose my memory just isn't what it used to be,” the bartender said. “Sometimes all it needs is a little something to get it going.”

Nin had always said that there were four ways to get information out of someone who didn't want to give it: bribery, fear, force, and trickery.

Clenching her jaw to keep herself from snapping at him, Sefia took her coin purse from the inner pocket of her vest and withdrew the uncut tourmaline. Holding it up, she let the dingy light shine through its watermelon reds and deep greens. Then she plunked it down on the bar top and stuffed the purse back in her pocket.

The bartender shrugged.

“Are you kidding? That stone's worth more than a little information.”

“Doesn't look like much to me. It isn't even shiny.” He shrugged again, but the deadness in his eyes told her he was lying. He wanted more.

Gritting her teeth, she reached for her purse again.

Then Archer pulled out the piece of rutilated quartz she'd given him.

“Archer, no,” she said, trying to push it away. “Let me do this.”

But the bartender nodded and licked his lips. “Well, well, now we're talking.”

Archer gently brushed her hands aside and deposited the stone on the bar. Even in the low light, the streaks of gold and black seemed to spark. The bartender touched an edge with a dirty fingertip and rocked it slightly back and forth.

“This is something,” he said, “but it won't buy you much.”

She glared at him with a look that could have liquefied burning blackrock. If bribery wasn't an option, she'd have to outwit him.

“Then how about we play a little game?” Sefia snatched the quartz from under his fingers and grinned with a confidence she didn't feel. “I'll give you the tourmaline just for playing.”

“What's the game?” He looped his greasy hair back around his ears and leaned forward eagerly.

It was a foolish gamble. Her vision was fickle and wild as the sea, and it had already failed her once today. Nin would have told her to find another way.

But Nin wasn't here. And Sefia had to know where Redbeard had gone.

She took a deep breath. “You ask me one question—any one question—about your life. If I answer correctly, you tell me what I need to know.”

He grinned. “And if you answer incorrectly?”

Sefia held up the rutilated quartz. “You get this.”

The bartender crossed his arms. “Now, now, that doesn't seem fair. Anyone can get a lucky guess.” He looked slantways out of the corners of his eyes. “Make it
five
questions, and you've got yourself a deal.”

“Two,” she countered.

“Three.”

Sefia stuck out her hand and placed the quartz back on the bar top. “Don't lie to me when I get them right.”