The Bands of Mourning (25 page)

From there, he made a few choice slits on the skirt before rubbing dirt on the bottom parts. He stepped back, tapping his cheek thoughtfully, and nodded.

Marasi looked down, inspecting his handiwork, and was actually impressed. Beyond enhancing the bust, he’d cut along seams, pulling out threads, and the effect wasn’t so much
ruined
as
used
.

“Everyone looks at the chest first,” Wayne said, “even women, which is kinda strange, but that’s the way it is. Like this, nobody will care that the dirt looks too fresh and the rest of the dress ain’t aged properly.”

“Wayne, I’m shocked,” she said. “You’re an
excellent
seamstress.”

“Clothes is fun to play with. Ain’t no reason that can’t be manly.” His eyes lingered on her chest.

“Wayne.”

“Sorry, sorry. Just gettin’ into character, you know.” He waved for her to follow, and they headed up the path. As they did, Marasi realized something.

She wasn’t blushing.

Well, that’s a first,
she thought, growing strangely confident.

“Try not to open your mouth much,” Wayne advised as they approached the hut. “On account of you normally soundin’ way too smart.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He snapped a branch off a tree they passed, spun it around his finger, then held it down before himself like a gnarled cane. Together they approached the glowing building: a small, thatched structure that had a few weathered mistwraith statues sticking up from its mossy yard. The statues—made in the form of skeletons with skin pulled tight across the skulls—were traditionally thought to ward away the real things, as mistwraiths could be very territorial. Marasi suspected the creatures could tell the difference between real and stone members of their species—but of course, scientists claimed that the mistwraiths hadn’t even survived the Catacendre in the first place. So the question was probably moot.

A greasy little man with a blond ponytail whistled to himself beside the hut, sharpening his shovel with a whetstone.
Who sharpens a shovel?
Marasi thought as Wayne presented himself, chest thrust out, improvised cane before him as if he were some grand attendee at a ball.

“And are you,” Wayne said, “bein’ the one called Dezchamp?”

“Dechamp,” the man said, looking up lazily. “Now, now. Did I leave that gate open again? I am supposed to be closin’ the thing each night. I’ll have to be askin’ you to leave this premises, sir.”

“I’ll make my way out, then,” Wayne said, pointing with his cane-stick, yet not moving. “But afore I go, I would like to make you aware of a special business proposition regardin’ you and me.”

Wayne had exaggerated his accent to the point that Marasi had to pay strict attention to make out what he was saying. Beyond that, there was a more staccato sense to it. More stressed syllables, more of a rhythm to the sentences. It was, she realized, very similar to the accent the gravekeeper was using.

“I’m a honest man, I am,” Dechamp said, drawing his whetstone along his shovel. “I don’t have no business I needs to discuss, particularly not at a time of night like this one here.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of your honesty,” Wayne said, rolling back on his heels, hands on his cane before him. “Heard it spoken of from one street to the next. Everyone’s talkin’ ’bout your honesty, Dechamp. It’s a right
keen
topic of interest.”

“If everyone’s sayin’ so much,” Dechamp replied, “then you’ll know I already got plenty of people with whom to share my honesty. I’m … gainfully contracted.”

“That don’t matter none for our business.”

“I do think it might.”

“See, it won’t,” Wayne said, “on account of my needin’ only one special little item, that nobody else would find of interest.”

Dechamp looked Wayne up and down. Then he eyed Marasi, and his eyes lingered as Wayne had said they would. Finally Dechamp smiled and stood, calling into the hut. “Boy? Boy!”

A child scrambled out into the mists, bleary-eyed and wearing a dirty smock and trousers. “Sir?”

“Go and kindly do a round of the yard,” Dechamp said. “Make sure we ain’t disturbed.”

The boy grew wide-eyed, then nodded and scampered off into the mists. Dechamp rested his shovel on his shoulder, pocketing the whetstone. “Now, what can I be callin’ you, good sir?”

“Mister Coins will do,” Wayne said. “And I’ll be callin’ you Mister Smart Man, for the decision you just made right here and now.”

He was changing his accent. It was subtle, but Marasi could tell he’d shifted it faintly.

“Nothing is set as of yet,” Dechamp said. “I just like to give that boy some exercise now and then. Keeps his health.”

“Of course,” Wayne said. “And I understand completely that nothing has been promised. But I tell you, this thing I want, ain’t
nobody
else goin’ to give you a clip for it.”

“If that’s so, then why are you so keen for it?”

“Sentimental value,” Wayne said. “It belonged to a friend, and it was really hard for him to part with it.”

Marasi snorted in surprise at that one, drawing Dechamp’s attention.

“Are you the friend?”

“
I don’t speak skaa
,” she said in the ancient Terris language.
“Could you perhaps talk in Terris, please?”

Wayne winked at her. “No use, Dechamp. I can’t get her to speak proper, no matter how much I try. But she’s fine to look at, ain’t she?”

He nodded slowly. “Iffen this item be under my watchful care, where might it be found?”

“There was a right tragic incident in town a few weeks back,” Wayne said. “Explosives. People dead. I hear they brought the pieces to you.”

“Bilmy runs the day shift,” Dechamp said. “He brought ’em in. The ones what weren’t claimed, the city put in a nice little grave. They was mostly beggars and whores.”

“And right undeservin’ of death,” Wayne said, taking off his hat and putting it over his breast. “Let’s go see them.”

“You want to go
tonight
?”

“Iffen it ain’t too much a sweat.”

“Not much sweat, Mister Coins,” Dechamp said, “but your name had better match your intentions.”

Wayne promptly got out a few banknotes and waved them. Dechamp snatched them, sniffed them for some reason, then shoved them in his pocket. “Well, those ain’t coins, but they’ll do. Come on, then.”

He took out an oil lantern, then led them into the mists.

“You changed your accent,” Marasi whispered to Wayne as they followed a short distance behind.

“Aged it back a tad,” Wayne explained softly. “Used the accent of a generation past.”

“There’s a difference?”

He looked shocked. “Of
course
there is, woman. Made me sound older, like his parents. More authority.” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe she’d even asked.

Dechamp’s lantern reflected off the mists as they walked, and that actually made it harder to see in the night, but he’d probably need it when digging. It did little to dispel the eeriness of gravestones broken by the occasional twisted mistwraith image. She understood, logically, why the tradition would have grown up. If there was one place you wanted to keep scavengers away from, it would be the graveyard. Except that the place had its own set of human scavengers, so the statues weren’t working.

“Now,” Dechamp said, and Wayne caught up to listen, “I’ll have you know that I
am
an honest man.”

“Of course,” Wayne said.

“But I’m also a thrifty man.”

“Ain’t we all,” Wayne said. “I never buys the fancy beer, even when it’s last call and the bartender halves it to empty the barrel.”

“You’re a man after my own heart, then,” Dechamp said. “Thrifty. What’s the good of lettin’ things rot and waste away, I says. The Survivor, he didn’t waste nothing useful.”

“Except noblemen,” Wayne said. “Wasted a fair number o’ them.”

“Wasn’t a waste,” Dechamp said, chuckling. “That there was
weapons
testing. Gotta make sure your knives is workin’.”

“Indeed,” Wayne said. “Why, sometimes the sharp ends on mine need
lotsa
testin’. To make sure they don’t break down in the middle of a good killin’.”

They shared a laugh, and Marasi shook her head. Wayne was in his element—he could talk about stabbing rich people all day long. Never mind that he himself was wealthier, now, than most of Elendel.

She didn’t much care to listen to them as they continued to laugh and joke, but unfortunately she also didn’t want to get too far away in this darkness. Yes, the mists were supposed to belong to the Survivor, but
rusts,
every second tombstone looked like a figure stumbling toward her in the night.

Eventually the gravekeeper led them to a freshly filled grave tucked away behind a few larger mausoleums. It was unmarked save for the sign of the spear, carved in stone and set into the dirt. Nearby, a few other new graves—these open—awaited corpses.

“You might want to grab a seat,” Dechamp said, hefting his shovel. “This’ll go fast, since the grave is upturned, but not
that
fast. And you might tell the lady to watch the other way. There’s no tellin’ what bits I might toss up.”

“Grab a seat…” Wayne said, looking around at the field of tombstones. “Where, my good man?”

“Anywhere,” Dechamp said, starting to dig. “They don’t care none. That’s the motto of the gravekeeper, you know. Just remember, they don’t care none.…”

And he set to it.

13

I
have to accept their rules,
Wax thought, crossing the room to the informant.
They’re different, no matter what Steris says. But I
do
know them.

He’d decided to stay in the Basin and do what he could here. He’d seen the dangers on the streets of Elendel, and had worked to fight them. But those were a lesser wound—it was like patching the cut while the rot festered up the arm.

Chasing down the Set’s lesser minions … they probably
wanted
him doing those things. If he was going to protect the people, he was going to have to gun for more important targets. That meant keeping his temper, and it meant dancing and playing nice. It meant doing all the things his parents, and even his uncle, had tried to teach him.

Wax stopped near the alcove the informant, Devlin, occupied. The man was watching the nearby fish tank, which stood beneath a depiction of Tindwyl, Mother of Terris, perched on the walls during her last stand against the darkness. In the tank, tiny octopuses moved across the glass.

After a moment’s waiting, the informant nodded toward him. Wax approached and rested his arm against the glass of the tank beside Devlin, a short, handsome man with a hint of hair on his upper lip and chin.

“I expected you to be arrogant,” Devlin noted.

“What makes you think that I’m not?”

“You waited,” Devlin said.

“An arrogant man can still be polite,” Wax said.

Devlin smiled. “I suppose he can be, Lord Waxillium.” One of the little octopuses seized a passing fish in its tentacles and dropped from the side of the tank, holding the squirming fish and pulling it up toward its beak.

“They don’t feed them,” Devlin noted, “for a week or so before a party. They like the show they provide.”

“Brutal,” Wax said.

“Lady Kelesina imagines herself the predator,” he said, “and we all her fish, invited in to swim and perhaps be consumed.” Devlin smiled. “Of course, she doesn’t see that she’s in a cage as well.”

“You know something about that cage?” Wax asked.

“It’s the cage we’re all in, Lord Waxillium! This Basin that Harmony created for us. So perfect, so
lush
. Nobody leaves.”

“I did.”

“To the Roughs,” Devlin said, dismissive. “What’s
beyond
them, Waxillium? Beyond the deserts? Across the seas? Nobody cares.”

“I’ve heard it asked before.”

“And has anyone put up the money to find the answers?”

Wax shook his head.

“People can ask questions,” Devlin said, “but where there is no money, there are no answers.”

Wax found himself chuckling, to which Devlin responded with a modest nod. He had developed a subtle way of explaining that he needed to be paid to give information. Oddly, despite the immediate—and somewhat crass—demand, Wax found himself more comfortable here than he’d been with Lord Gave.

Wax fished in his pocket and held out the strange coin. “Money,” he said. “I have an interest in money.”

Devlin took it, then cocked an eyebrow.

“If someone could tell me how this could be spent,” Wax noted, “I would be enriched. Really, we all would be.”

Devlin turned it over in his fingers. “Though I’ve never seen the exact image on this one, coins like these have been moving with some regularity through black-market antiquities auctions. I’ve been baffled as to why. There is no reason to keep them secret, and it would not be illegal to sell them in the open.” He flipped the coin back to Wax.

He caught it with surprise.

“You didn’t expect me to answer so frankly,” Devlin said. “Why do people so often ask questions when they’re not expecting answers?”