The Past
The air smelled of cold steel. Ice caressed his spine. He was lost, so small amid that endless darkness, hands grown cold, body image fading down corridors he didn't know.
Voices.
Then black fire found the branching tributaries of his nerves and pain beyond anything he had experienced embraced him like a cruel lover.
Hold still. Don't move.
And Maus was there, and Jamila, Dett and Nadi, a hundred faces from the low part of the city where he grew like a fungus, too tenacious to die, sailors and hustlers and whores, where the sky was poisoned silver, and he was a prisoner of his own skull.
Mists damn you, don't move.
The sky faded in a hiss, not to black or white, but a lack of color. The stars were throwing blades, his stars, an assassin's stars.
"Stop it, Oren! I've got to find your vein!" Ava was straddling his chest, a delicate, expensive dart of steel mounted with a glass ampule of liquid in her hand. So this was how he was going to die, assassinated by one of the best. "You don't lie still, I'll slit your fucking throat. You're still full of all manner of crazy shit."
He woke and found her stretched beside him in the dark, sitting up with her back to the wall. His neck was brittle, made of twigs. There was a steady pulse of pain down his back. Images formed and reformed: a flickering montage of Cathena cityscapes, dim figures moving toward him in shade beneath a bridge or...
"Oren? It's Cuvindas, Oren." She moved, rolling over to reach across him. Her breast brushed his arm; she had always aggressively been the opposite of maternal with him. He heard her pouring water, then leaning back to put a cup in his hands. Her hand remained on his to keep them from shaking the water all over himself. It wasn't maternal, though it was as close as she had ever been. Had it been Thioras when he had gone into the clinic? Three days of nightmares, then. "I can see in the dark," she added conversationally. "Soon you will too."
"My back hurts."
"After the Mystic had her way with you, Galeas had some folks in to carve some runes into you. Then he called her back." Ava laughed. "She was pissed. You're in the middle of two kinds of threshold sickness and she had to drill a hole into your spine to put some kind of medicine in there. I suppose even a Mystic has limits to their divine power. Anyway, you're a mess, but the addiction's washed clean. Soon you'll have some magic tricks in your arsenal. The medicines will keep you sober for the job, keep the threshold sickness at bay. Supposedly. Going to draw it out, too. You thought the spanking you got for stealing was bad."
She laughed again. Pain amused her.
"I gotta..." he heard himself saying as he groped for his clothes. Still laughing, she put small, strong hands on his shoulders and easily kept him down.
"Yeah, no. Eight more days of waiting, resting. If not, your brain will melt out your ears. Mystic's orders. Besides, she figures it worked and she'll check on you in a day or so."
He lay back down, too weak to struggle.
"Where are we?"
"Home. Your cheap hotel."
"Where's Galeas?"
"His fancy suite in the fancy part of town. Moving some merchandise, no doubt. We're out of here soon, little man. Couple of places in the Republic, then back here." She touched his shoulder. "Roll over. I give a good massage."
Rather than fight her, he lay on his stomach, arms stretched out, fingers brushing the wall. She settled over the small of his back, the leather of her pants cool against his feverish skin. Her fingers brushed his neck. She could have snapped it deftly, but instead, she gave him comfort. There was something sick about it, or perhaps whatever they had put into his body and etched onto his soul was causing that nauseated reaction.
"How come you're not there with him?" he heard himself ask. It sounded sulking even to him.
***
A thinner weekday version of the crowd went through the motions of the dance. Waves of sound rolled out from the arcades and the casino parlors. Oren glanced into the Hellshouse and saw Nadi watching over her girls in the warm, beer-smelling twilight. Maus was tending bar."You seen Dett, Maus?"
"Not tonight." Maus made a point of raising an eyebrow at Ava, who was amused the place still had her name on it. She had never owned it, but she had inspired the owner.
"You see him, tell him I have his money."
"Luck changing, my friend?"
"Too early to tell."
Outside, Ava stared him down.
"Well, I've got to see this guy," Oren said adamantly. "I've got business to cancel out."
"Galeas won't like it, I let you out of my sight." She stood beneath a strange clock in Edain's vestibule, hands on her hips.
"The guy won't talk to me if you're there. Edie I don't give two shits about; he takes care of himself. But I've got people who'll just sink if I walk out of here cold. It's my people, you know?"
Her mouth hardened. She shook her head. He was used to disappointing her; it no longer stung. He lied about people here, in other neighborhoods, in other cities. He didn't care about lying to her face.
"They'll go down," he insisted. "Five minutes. Just give me five minutes. You can count yourself, all right?"
"Not what I'm paid for."
"What you're paid for is one thing. Me letting my friends die because you're too literal about your instructions is something else." This wasn't the first time since their reunion he had made it clear he thought Galeas was her puppetmaster, not her employer.
"Horseshit," she spat. "You don't have friends. You're going in there to check on us with your smuggler." She rested her boot upon a dust-covered coffee table.
"Ah, Oren... it does look as though your companion there is armed. May I inquire after the nature of your call? Not that I don't enjoy our time together." He coughed politely.
"Hold on, Edie. Anyway, I'll be coming in alone."
"You can be sure of that, son." He chuckled. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
"Fine," she said. "Go. But five minutes or I come in and put your friend down permanently. And while you're at it, you try to figure something out."
"What's that?"
"Why I'm doing you the favor."
"Keeping stranger company than usual, Oren?" Edain asked.
"Edie, she's gone. You want to let me in? Please, Edie?"
The bolts worked. He walked from the vestibule into the ancient elf's office.
"Slowly, son."
"Turn on all your magic devices," he assured him. "I'm clean."
"Always on," he replied, chuckling. "You don't live to be my age otherwise." His tone was mild, though he took a firearm from the wall and pointed it carefully at Oren. It was a stripped-down, altered bit of clockwork engineering and probably magic as well, knowing Edain. It looked strange in his elegant hand. "Just taking care, you understand. Nothing personal. Now tell me what you want."
"I need a history lesson, Edie. And information on someone."
"What's moving, son?" Edain's shirt was finely striped silk, the collar stiff and white as porcelain.
"Me, Edie. I'm leaving. I'm gone. But do me a favor for old time's sake?"
"Information on whom, son?"
"Galeas. Staying at a fancy inn."
Edain put the firearm down. "Sit still, Oren. It seems you know as much as I do now. That gentleman has been a big name in Cathena City before, though he has been moving around for some time. Keeping his interests mobile. Favored of Nazam, if you ask me. He's got a temporary arrangement with the local powers that be. But I'm more gray market to their black markets so they have ways of screening their allies from the likes of me. I wouldn't have it any other way. Now, history. You said history." He picked up his firearm again, but didn't point it directly at Oren. "What sort of history?"
The smell of his ginger candies suddenly made Oren's stomach roil. He squinted at Edain, saw him shine with a light that made him look almost royal, felt the weight of the elf's years on his own shoulders.
"The war," he croaked, sitting down without an invitation. "You were in the war, weren't you, Edie?"
"The war?" he asked, surprised. "What's there to know? It was before your time. Lasted three weeks."
"You knew him then."
"Ah..." Edain's face was unreadable, but his light changed. Aurin blinked hard, trying to make it go away. "Don't they teach you history these days? Political chess, gone to all hells and back. Gangs. Magi. Entrepreneurs. Warlords. Politicians. Some great people, but mostly not. Just the right pieces fall into place at the wrong time. That's why it ended so early. Galeas was involved. He wasn't Galeas then, though. One of many who embarked on suicide missions."
"But he made it out."
"Mists," Edain said, "it's been bloody years... Though, I think a few did. Galeas' did, but he was the only survivor when they got caught in friendly fire." He sniffed. "Bloody Mists." He paused, clearly deciding to think on happier things. He set his weapon down. "I spent the war in Afsos, you know. Lovely place, Afsos."
"Did you see action there?" Oren asked, confused. From what he understood, the conflict hadn't spread that far.
"Hardly. Well, I did see some action." He smiled. "Wonderful what war can do for one's markets."
"Thanks, Edie. I owe you one."
"Hardly, Oren. And goodbye."
Outside, Ava turned on him, mouth opening to say something. Then she stared hard at him. And then, she realized that what she was seeing wasn't real. She took him by the arm and hustled him into a dark alley. Then she backhanded him.
"Get those glamours under control or so help me..."
He laughed around his split lip.
The Present
Ashoka had planted some words in the right ears and Elwes had manipulated some situations in the Low-City that brought the guard where certain people wouldn't want them. Arry had been left out of this one since one of the moving pieces was part of the Golden Peacock Theater and the young actor's neighbor. Torin, too, had been left to focus on finishing his apprenticeship and prepare for the big changes coming for him next season. Even dread Okzair might have been impressed by how things were playing out, but Aurin put that thought out of his mind.
Darus of Haqs clinked champagne flutes with Celisa, whose relief made her look ten years younger.
"I can't believe you managed it," she said, not for the first time that evening.
"Your lack of faith would be distressing if I didn't so enjoy working behind the scenes," said Darus, whose face and form were masks that Aurin wore well now. He had been Darus in Antiris when he had first met Arry, but he hadn't assigned this magical costume yet. He would have to be leery if he played the role in Antiris again, though he hadn't thrown the name around much.
"My debt..."
"Cancelled," he agreed. "At least, it died with the man you owed. Some strategically set fires will make any sort of paper trail impossible to follow. Whoever inherits the cartel. It's a warzone in the Middens, though in the Low-City the struggle stays mostly under the surface. I imagine several people will claim to be king or queen of the mountain before someone fills the power vacuum, and by then, with no documentation, you will be safe."
"I can't tell you... I mean..." She was about to weep. "Thank you."
He sipped the champagne.
"Of course, love," he said, chuckling benevolently. "I told you I was excellent at finding win-win solutions to problems. Your debt is forgotten. You leave a job you don't enjoy. I get a man in a unique position in Kalzasi who can help oversee my investments."
"You get a woman, too," she averred, flushed from her hairline down to her bust.
He smiled. "An unlooked for gift."
"I'll talk to Yserloo and Elric tomorrow, tell them I plan to resign, and put forth Aurin Kavafis as my replacement. You made a good choice, I think. Lunaria might be angry at you for stealing him away, though, were she to find out. He's been with her for years and she hardly complains anymore."
"You don't think he'll be a hard sell?" Darus asked.
"No," she said thoughtfully, sipping her champagne. "Yserloo can be a prig, but the Velvet Cabaret has enough noble clients that he'll see the wisdom in it. Elric will be concerned about having someone who will support his Vision." She scoffed. "Aurin keeps Lunaria and all those clients and courtesans and artists happy. He'll know how to take care of Elric and make sure the Theater puts out work that will make Yserloo proud. After all, neither of those assholes care about the job as long as it gets done."
"Excellent." He smiled. "I'm glad you approve."
"You're some sort of guardian Serath or something?" she asked. "You appeared right when I needed you most."
"Perhaps your tempting Djorin," he replied, his smile sharpening as he reached between her legs with a purpose. "Now finish your wine. I want to fuck you a few more times before I must return to Haqs."
"Again?" she squeaked, though she spread for his fingers.
Joy begat joy, and she was terribly grateful.
"And again," he promised, or threatened. "If you didn't want more, you should've covered up after the last round."
"Fuck," she gasped. "Fuck."
