The Virtu (32 page)

The pillory was in the main square, with the duke’s house fronting it on one side and the jail on another. Very fucking convenient, and I wasn’t a bit grateful. The pillory was up on this sort of platform. Pillories, I mean, because there were four of them, and all the same ugly muddy purple-brown color as the buildings. Only one occupied, and it was Bernard sure enough. He had that look on his face, the one he got when I said something to Mavortian he wanted to strangle me for. It was all over his face that he wouldn’t have asked an Aiaian to piss on him if he’d been on fire. He was too mad to notice me in the crowd, and that was just fine. We went and got something to eat while we waited for it to get dark.

Aiaia had a curfew—no big fucking surprise there. But it wasn’t hard to dodge out of sight if you had a mind to, and two hours after sundown, the main square was as deserted as anybody could ask for. Next door to pitch-black, but I didn’t mind that near as much as I’d minded the thought that there might be guards. Which there weren’t, and I wondered if that was to give any mob that might be hanging around a clear shot.

Bernard heard us coming. He’d been sagging lower and lower, but I saw him get his feet under him, and I knew what he was thinking.

“Bernard,” I said, quick, in that flat whisper kept-thieves learn real young, and I wished there’d been enough light I could’ve seen his face. I did see the way he tried to straighten up, all in a rush, and just about killed himself with the yoke of the pillory.

I swung up onto the platform. I’d noticed earlier that the pillories were held shut with padlocks that looked basically homemade, and I’d got Miss Parr to give me another hairpin. Standing there in the dark in the middle of Aiaia forcing that lock with nothing but a hairpin ain’t nothing I ever want to do again, but it could’ve been way worse. And, powers, that lock was just embarrassingly bad. Probably could’ve pried it apart with my bare hands if I’d had to, but Miss Parr’s hairpin did the trick. I lifted the yoke and Bernard backed himself out of it. And sat down hard, like anybody would after being stood in a pillory all day.

Me and Bernard both quit breathing for a second, but I don’t suppose the noise was anywhere near as loud as it seemed like. Leastways, nobody came to check on what was causing the ruckus, and, powers, that would do to get by on.

Bernard sort of crawled to the edge of the platform, and me and Miss Parr between us got him off it. And then he sat there, trying to breathe quiet, and I tried to figure out what the fuck we were going to do next. Finally, I got myself down next to him, as best I could, and said, real low, “We got to get Gideon out.”

“Yeah. And Mavortian.”

“Yeah, okay. But Gideon first. He’s the one they’re fixing to barbecue.”

Bernard said something nasty in Norvenan, aimed at the Aiaians, not me.

“How’d you get caught?”

“Bribed a guard who didn’t stay bribed. Fucking Aiaians. But I know how to get into the jail.”

“Can you move?” Miss Parr said.

“I don’t have a choice, do I, miss? Come on.”

Short of stuffing him back into the pillory, we didn’t have a choice, neither. So we got Bernard on his feet and headed out. By the time we’d gone a couple of blocks, he’d even quit leaning on us to keep himself upright.

It goes against the grain to say anything nice about the Kennel, but I’d rather be locked up there than in the jail of Aiaia. It stank of piss and shit, which you expect in a jail, but it also had that horrible sweetish smell you get when something’s died and rotted, like the Aiaians didn’t bother dragging out the prisoners when they croaked. The rats we met were the size of small dogs, and they watched us go by like they’d figured out that what People were for was feeding rats. All those little bastards had to do was wait. The hallways were low and dark and probably made the rats feel right at home. The floors were sticky—Kethe might know with what, but I don’t want to.

We’d got in the easy way, by staking out the latrine and borrowing the keys from the first guy unlucky enough to need to take a piss. The jail was either undermanned or sloppy, because we didn’t meet nobody else until we got to the door that led, Bernard told us, to the cell where Gideon was being kept. I figured the guy there was the guy who hadn’t stayed bribed, because Bernard went after him like a gator after a pig and laid him out cold with a broken jaw before he even knew we were there. Bernard busted his knuckles, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Used the second guard’s keys to get through the door. Dragged him in with us and tucked him away in an empty cell, nice and tidy where he wouldn’t bother nobody. Miss Parr stayed to keep watch, because even if they were both sloppy
and
undermanned, there had to be more than just two guys ambling around. Me and Bernard went after Gideon.

“Too easy,” I said. “Too fucking easy.”

“Wait until you’ve seen Gideon before you say that,” Bernard said. “He’s down there.”

There was a trapdoor in the floor of the hallway, with another of those big clumsy padlocks the Aiaians seemed to like so much. “Down
there
?” I said.

“I wouldn’t treat a dog that had bitten me the way they’ve treated him. Why do you think I was caught here?”

Which I hadn’t expected from Bernard any more than Miss Parr had expected it from me. So I didn’t say nothing, just got myself down on the floor and started trying keys in the padlock.

“Hurt your leg?” Bernard said, more curious than sympathetic.

“Long story.” The padlock groaned open in a shower of rust. “Powers,” I said.

“Some kids just don’t look after their toys,” Bernard said, straight-faced, and there was a moment where we both nearly lost it. I got my fingers under the trapdoor and heaved. Bernard caught it as it came up, and we laid it over on the floor quiet-like.

Bernard lifted a short ladder down off the wall and let it down into the hole. We looked at each other. “Can you manage that ladder?” he said.

“Can you?”

I could see it chafed him raw to admit he couldn’t, but he wasn't stupid—least not all the way down. After a second, he shook his head. “One of us better stay up here anyway.”

“Okay.” And I climbed down.

As cells went, it would have made a cramped coffin. The smell was enough to knock you flat, and it was cold and damp, and it was half a second or less before the only thing I wanted in the world was to get the fuck back up that ladder.

It took me a moment to see Gideon. No, that ain’t it. What I mean is, it took me a moment to realize I was looking at him and not just a lump of filthy straw. He was hunched up in the corner with his hands up to protect his face. I didn’t see bruises or nothing, but fuck, what more did the Aiaians need to do to him once they’d cut out his tongue? There was a cuff around one ankle—same fucking blacksmith as made the padlocks. I said, “Gideon? It’s… it’s Mildmay.”

His head came up at that. There was an old story I’d heard from a whore in Pharaohlight about an angel King Philemon had kept chained beneath the Mirador for a Great Septad. That was what Gideon looked like to me, his choirboy face gone to a skull and his hair hanging in dreadlocks around his shoulders. And there was no mistaking the look on his face. He was purely fucking horrified. And it wasn’t because he didn’t recognize me. It was because he did.

“Powers,” I said. “I’m sorry. But, I mean, d’you
want
to let the duke burn you at the stake?”

His head dropped back into his hands and his shoulders started shaking. For a second I thought he was crying, and then I realized he was laughing, just not making no noise about it. And then he stuck his leg out, with that lump of iron on it, and I figured that was his answer.

I wrenched the cuff open, and just barely kept myself from throwing it at the wall. See which one of them broke. But I put it down, and said, “D’you… can I give you a hand up?”

He actually smiled at me. He’d lost teeth. And he pushed himself uptight and took a step out of the corner. His knees buckled, which I’d been expecting even if he hadn’t, and I caught him.

I swear I could feel the shame baking off him. I didn’t know what to say about it, so I just said, “Come on. We’ve still got to spring Mavortian and get the fuck out of town before dawn.”

It was a good thing he wasn’t a big guy to start with and that he’d lost weight, or we’d never have done it. As it was, it took both me and Bernard to get him up the ladder, and we all three almost fell back down it on our heads, because the torchlight was just more than Gideon could stand. He kind of rolled over on the floor with his hands over his eyes, like a mole me and Cardenio had seen once in Richard’s Park. Cardenio’d put his hat over it until it got itself back underground.

Neither me nor Bernard had anything that would make a good blindfold, so I went back to the guard Bernard had coldcocked. He was still out. Small favors. I stripped him quick as a Losthope thief. Didn’t figure Gideon would want his underclothes—and I didn’t want to touch ‘em anyway—but shirt, jacket, trousers, and boots were all clean enough, and that way we could turn the ratty sort of nightshirt thing Gideon was wearing into a blindfold.

Gideon was trying hard not to go to pieces, but he wasn’t doing so good at it. Me and Bernard basically manhandled him into the guard’s clothes on account of not having time to be nice about it, and I know I knotted some of his hair into the blindfold. But, powers, we were doing the best we could. And he didn’t complain or nothing. I just knew we were hurting him.

“What about the trapdoor?” Bernard said when we’d got Gideon fixed up about as well as we were going to.

“I’ll get it,” I said. Anything to buy us time. I hung the ladder back on the wall and heaved the door closed. Locked it, too, and I hope it confused the fuck out of them.

We collected Miss Parr and got back out of the jail about as quick and easy as that makes it sound. Not even any close calls. Got the blindfold off Gideon again. Scrambled over the wall, with Bernard boosting Gideon and me dragging. And then we just kind of stood there, Bernard leaning against the wall, me holding Gideon up, and Miss Parr looking cool as well water, waiting for us to get our shit together. She was the one who said, “What now?”

There always comes a point on a job where no matter how fucked up things are, no matter how much you wish you weren’t doing this, you just don’t dare stop, because you know where the pieces are
right now
, and they ain’t going to stay put while you sit down and think things over. You just have to keep going and hope like fuck you can dodge faster than Lady Fate can throw things at you. That was where we were. We had to keep going, or the whole fucking thing was going to come crashing down around our ears.

But Gideon was in terrible shape and Bernard not much better. And this next bit seemed all too likely to turn around and bite us. In which case, we wanted Gideon out of the way, where they maybe couldn’t get their hands on him again. I said to Bernard, “Can you get Gideon out of town?”

“What about—”

“I’ll go after Mavortian. But I want Gideon gone.”

He wanted to argue, but didn’t. “All right. Mavortian’s in the duke’s house. In a bedroom and everything, like a guest instead of a prisoner. You’ll want to use the smugglers’ tunnels to get out—nobody watches them because it’s half the damn economy. The safest one is in the city wall, two blocks south of the west gate. It looks like a bricked-up gate itself. You press the fifth brick up from a bright blue brick.”

“Right. You take Gideon and get the fuck out of here. Find someplace safe along the western road and wait. If we ain’t there by sunrise, go to Julip. Felix’ll be in a hotel near the eastern gate.” I hope, I added, but not out loud.

Miss Parr said, “Do you want me to go with them?”

I just about swallowed my teeth when I realized
she
was asking
me
what to do. “No,” I said. “Unless…”

“I can manage,” Bernard said. “And you may want backup.”

“Yeah.” I hoped I wouldn’t, but, well, I wasn’t feeling like trusting my luck.

Gideon was shivering like an overworked horse, and I said to him, “I’m sorry. I know this ain’t no great rescue.” His hand found mine, and he squeezed, which I figured for
it’s okay
. And it was the best we could do.

Bernard pushed himself off the wall and said, “Come on, Gideon.” There was a pause, and he said, “Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

And they went off one way, and we went another, and I just hoped we’d all see each other again, and not on a bonfire, neither.

The duke’s house was a three-story affair with gilded pillars and marble facing, and it was as ugly as a gator in a pink satin ball gown. Our business wasn’t with the front, and I was just as glad. We worked our way round to the back, climbed another fucking wall, and found ourselves in the duke’s private garden.

He had trees trained against the walls and rosebushes fucking
everywhere
. Miss Parr’s dress kept snagging, and my hands got scratched up pretty bad from saving myself at the last second from taking a header into the biggest bush. We didn’t make much noise about it, at least, so we fought tree to the clear space along the back of the house without nobody sticking their head out to see what the fuck was up.