Low Town (30 page)

As for Celia and the Crane, well, I sent letters and so did they. But like everything else in that damned army, communication back home was terrible, so I didn’t get most of theirs and they didn’t get most of mine. It would be more than five years before I set eyes on either of them again. By that time much had changed for all of us—little of it I suspect for the better.

When I awoke I was lying on a bed, staring up at a gauzy overhang and the four carved posts that supported it. Someone had stripped me of my wet clothing and dressed me in a plain white robe. The agonizing cold and terrible sensation of exhaustion were gone, replaced by a warm glow that emanated from my chest into each extremity.

“Am I dead?” I asked no one in particular.

Celia’s voice answered from out of my field of vision. “Yes. This is Chinvat.”

“I wonder what I did to warrant an eternity surrounded by lace.”

“Something wonderful, I would imagine.”

That didn’t sound much like me. “How’d you get me up here?”

“Magic, obviously. A minor use of my Art.”

“I’m a little slow on the uptake. Hypothermia will do that. I assume you hocus-pocused that as well?”

I could see her now out of the corner of my eye as she came to sit beside me. “Just a touch—most of it was getting you out of those wet clothes and in front of a fire. You’ve been sleeping for the last hour or so.” She shifted my head onto her lap. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting. I had an experiment going in the conservatory and foolishly didn’t foresee you coming to visit me half naked and freezing.”

“The second in command of Special Operations was offended by my hygiene. I decided I’d improve our relationship with a quick bath in the canal.”

“I thought you got Black House off your back?” Her charm dangled from the soft of her neck. She smelled of sunshine and cinnamon.

“Apparently I evoke a level of hatred that renders the Old Man’s protection inadequate. Besides, I haven’t exactly held up my end of the bargain. Another child was killed.”

“I heard.”

“And Crispin too.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“How’s the Crane?”

“Not well. He’s in and out.”

“I should go up and see him. After I put on some pants.”

“It’s best if you don’t.”

“I always wear pants,” I said. “I wouldn’t know what to do without them.”

She laughed softly and shifted her body out from under me. “You should rest now. I’ll check on you in a little while. We’ll talk more then.”

I waited till she left the room, then sat up in bed—too quickly, as it turned out. My vision swirled and my stomach clenched. I lay my head back on the pillow and waited for my body to forgive me for this most recent round of bad decisions.

After a few minutes of penance I swung my feet to the floor and slowly pulled myself erect. My gut gave notice of its disapproval, but less forcefully than before. I grabbed my satchel from the foot of the bed, then slipped out the door and into the stairwell, ascending two flights to the top floor.

Inside the room was vacant, the windows shut tight, the fireplace filled with ash. I waited there for a while. The Crane was a man of
boundless generosity and virtually infinite patience, but he was also very private. In the entirety of our relationship I’d never entered his personal quarters. But then I couldn’t very well walk home in the cotton robe I wore.

Feeling very much like an intruder I slipped into the Master’s bedroom. His chamber was smaller than Celia’s, holding little more than a bed and a night table, with a wardrobe in the corner. The wall sconces were unlit, and dark cloth had been stretched over the windows, blocking out what little illumination the gray day would have provided.

Celia had warned me of the Crane’s decline, and seeing him I couldn’t accuse her of exaggeration. He lay twisted on the bed, his body contorted in a fever pose. Most of his hair was gone, and what remained hung in loose tendrils down his neck. His eyes were glazed and unfocused, and his color was nearer to that of a corpse than the hale if aging figure I had spoken to only a few days earlier.

I wished I was wearing pants.

He didn’t react to my entrance, and when he did speak his voice was fractured and strained, in line with the decay the rest of his body had suffered. “Celia … Celia is that you? Honey, listen to me, please, there’s still time …”

“No, Master. It’s me.” I took a spot on a small stool by his bedside. He did not look better close up.

His eyes fluttered, then focused on me. “Oh. I’m sorry, I—I haven’t had any visitors lately. I’m not feeling very well.”

“Of course, Master, of course. Can I get you anything?”—hoping as I asked that he wouldn’t call for the decanter of green liquid that sat on the bed table. Every man has the right to choose the manner in which he meets death, but it was a difficult thing to be complicit in the erosion of the Crane’s fertile and imaginative mind.

He shook his head, more of a shudder really. “No, nothing. It’s too late for anything.”

I sat at his bedside for five or ten minutes while he slipped into a fitful sleep. I was about to get up and leaf through his wardrobe when it occurred to me I owed the man something, and I reached inside my satchel and set the horn Wren had stolen on a table next to the bed.

The Crane’s hand shot out from beneath the covers and grabbed my wrist, and I had to restrain a yelp. “Roan, you were right. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

In his delirium it seemed he had mistaken me for his old teacher. “It’s me, Master. Roan the Grim has been dead for half a century.”

“I tried to keep it out, Roan, tried to ward it off. But it got in—it always gets in.”

“Your wards hold, Master,” I said. “The people of Low Town remember, and are grateful.”

“There’s nothing to keep out, Roan. That’s what you knew. What you knew but what I couldn’t understand. The rot’s inside, it’s already inside.”

I tried to think of something soothing to say but nothing came.

“It’s always there. I understand that now. How do you build a wall to keep out what’s always been there? It can’t be done, it can’t be done!” He was nearly shouting now. “Erect a fence, dig a moat, toss up a barricade, and mine the approaches—it’ll do you no good! It’s already here! At the bottom there’s nothing but blood and shit!” He spat out the last words and I flinched back unconsciously. I had never heard the Master curse before, nor was he much given to displays of anger. I began to wonder how much of his abilities were left to him, and whether in his dementia he might not incinerate the Aerie and everything around it.

“Who can keep it out?” he asked, flecks of spittle catching in his tattered beard. “Who can burn it out?”

I wanted to comfort my old mentor, and I spoke without thinking. “I will. I’ll take care of it—you can count on me.”

He laughed then, and I had the terrible certainty that his mania had broken and he’d recognized me, that his cackling was no mad reflex but an honest assessment of my character—and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

That was the end of it, though I waited a few minutes to make sure. The Crane returned to his shallow sleep and showed no signs of waking. I raided his closet, returning in an ill-fitting pair of breeches and a dress shirt that dragged down to my knees and was tight across the chest. I grabbed a pair of boots from a trunk in the hall and went down to the kitchen.

Celia was busying herself above the stove, setting a kettle to boil, her dark hair bobbing up and down. “Remember that time you and I tried to make hot chocolate and almost set the Aerie on fire?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t be up. If you’d gotten here five minutes later I’d be picking out a grave site rather than making dinner.”

“You didn’t mention that earlier.”

“I was trying not to worry you with the extent of your injuries. Given your difficulty distinguishing foolishness from bravery, I ought probably to have exaggerated it.”

“Everything’s always clearer in hindsight. If I had the day to do over again, I would try to avoid getting my ass kicked.”

There’s only so long one can maintain disapproval faced with the devastating and continuous onslaught of my humor. The kettle whistled, and Celia poured herself a cup, then added some loose leaves.

“I spoke with the Master,” I said.

“I assumed that was how you got your pants.”

“He thought I was Roan the Grim.”

“As I said, he’s fading in and out.” She sighed. “Sometimes he calls me by his mother’s name, sometimes by the names of women he’s never mentioned before.”

It was strange to think of the Master as having had a past before
he was the Crane, of his acne-ridden adolescence or the escapades of his youth. “How long do you think he has?”

Celia blew softly over the tea. “Not long,” she said, and that was enough.

We sat together silently. I reminded myself I had too much in my head to start spending energy on the Crane’s impending demise. It was cruel, and true, like a lot of things. “I’ve been digging,” I said finally.

“And?”

“You know anything about a practitioner named Brightfellow? He would have been around your class in the academy.”

The rim of the cup masked her mouth, and the eyes above it were dark. After a moment she set the porcelain against the table. “Vaguely,” she said. “Not a lot. He was part of Adelweid’s clique, always pushing into areas best left unexplored.”

“Seems like you remember more than you think.”

“Try to follow along,” she said. “I told you, it was a small class. I didn’t know him well … didn’t want to. He came from one of the provinces, I don’t remember which. His people were peasants, and he never seemed to get over the idea that the whole world was laughing at him for being raised in a barn. Walked around looking for someone to hit. He was close with Adelweid, though. Thick as thieves.”

I couldn’t imagine the vainglorious prick I’d met during the siege of Donknacht having much to do with Brightfellow. But apart from that, everything Celia had told me jibed with what I knew of the man.

“Do you think the Blade and Brightfellow are working together?” Celia asked.

“They’re into something. I’m just not sure what it is yet.”

“And the talisman still points to the duke?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what more do you need? Can’t you just …” She made a
motion with her hand meant to indicate either imprisonment or assassination.

I chose to assume the first. “Based on what? A stolen scrap of evidence, hinting at the culpability of an individual loosely affiliated with a powerful noble? Crispin’s information went a way toward confirming my suspicions, but as far as Black House is concerned …” I shook my head. “I don’t have anything.”

She chewed at the tip of her thumb. “There might be something I can do to help you.”

“You know me. I’m too proud to ask for help but not too proud to take it.”

“I could perform a divination on the duke’s home—it might shed some light on his activities, or at least show you where to look to find more evidence.”

“Whatever you can do,” I said, wondering why she hadn’t thought to try it earlier.

“It’ll take a day or two. I’ll send a runner over when I’ve got something.”

“Thanks,” I said, meaning it. Celia nodded, then poured herself another cup of tea, spooning a pair of sugar cubes in after it.

“I had a meeting the other day with one of Black House’s scryers,” I said.

She twirled a stretch of black hair around her index finger. “I’m surprised to hear that Black House would allow you access to their resources.”

“You mean given that one of its operatives just tried to kill me? Funny thing about these clandestine organizations, one hand tends to be ignorant of its partner’s activities, even when they include murder.”

“Were they able to pick up any signs from the body?”

“Nothing on the killer. But the scryer saw signs that the girl had been sacrificed.”

“I suppose it’s what we feared. We knew the duke was dabbling in the shade. It makes sense he would go the whole way.”

“Assuming it is the Blade.”

She waved dismissively. For her it was already a settled issue.

I’d rather have left it at that—Celia’s was too kind a heart to involve in such a dirty business. But there were things I needed to know, and no one else to ask. “What can you tell me about it?”

“About human sacrifice? I’m afraid I don’t have much to tell—they didn’t teach that sort of thing at the academy.”

Why not? They’d taught Adelweid to summon fiends from the outer darkness, draw horrors into the world, and set them upon his fellows. “I’m not trying to re-create the mechanics of it, I’m just trying to suss out motive. What would be to gain from such an act?”

Celia paused before answering. “Most workings are powered by the innate strength of the practitioner, filtered and directed by his will. For larger workings, energy can be tapped from places of power or from items crafted for that purpose. In extreme cases, a practitioner might even cull the essence of a lower life-form and use that to form a spell. In theory the sacrifice of a human would offer the same opportunity, though on a much greater scale.”