All That Glitters (9 page)

Tyvian grinned. “Of course she will. My plan relies upon that fact, actually.

This time both Artus and Hool spoke in unison.
“What?”

“In fact,” Tyvian said, delighted at their reaction and not quite willing to let them off the hook, “in Derby I sent letters ahead of us to ­people I know to be Defender informants, saying that I and my companions intend to cross into Saldor via spirit engine, and that we will all be wearing shrouds, so they will
definitely
be looking for us, and what's more, I've already furnished them with a description of all three members of our party.”

There was dead silence for a few moments as Tyvian waited for them to catch up. Hool got there first. “There are four of us.”

Artus was a close second. “We aren't
all
wearing shrouds.”

Tyvian nodded. “My mother perhaps said it best: a little misinformation will go a long, long way. Furthermore, by letting them
know
who they think they are looking for, they won't bother to scry the future, since scrying is an inexact science, at best.”

Hool narrowed her eyes at him, which on her shroud Tyvian thought was a very fetching expression. “Explain. Don't make it confusing.”

Tyvian took the teapot from Hool and held it over the map. “When I pour this, which way will the tea go?”

Artus frowned. “It could run in almost any direction, I guess. Whichever way is downhill.”

Tyvian nodded, “And, given the rocking of the train on its tracks, what constitutes ‘downhill' at any moment is subject to random chance. So . . .” Tyvian let a drop of tea fall on the oilcloth map. It beaded up and ran toward Hool. He repeated the process, and this time it ran toward himself. “It could be different every time. Scrying works similarly—­the future is wide-­open, not predetermined. Auguries are not destinies, my friends.
However,
they are pretty good predictors of
likely
events. Somebody unaware that they were being scryed and contemplating murder can be predicted as committing the murder sometime in the future—­that much is easy—­but predicting
when
they will murder and
how
is far less precise, since those things rely on chance as much as planning. Furthermore, if the murderer is
aware
­people are trying to predict his behavior, he can alter it, therefore making it even
harder
to scry accurately. This means that even talented augurs—­such as the ones employed by the Defenders—­will only be able to predict an action with any specificity sometimes less than an hour beforehand. This makes interception a rather dicey proposition.”

“So, I still don't understand what we're going to do.” Artus rubbed his head and stared down at the map as though it might have Tyvian's plan scrawled into a corner somewhere. “Don't telling them where to find us still kinda screw us over?”

Tyvian sighed. “The description I gave in the letters depicts me as a middle-­aged man with a spreading paunch, a nice jacket, and a guild medallion around my neck. Now, Artus, how many such gentlemen are currently aboard this spirit engine?”

“A lot—­at least six or seven, I think.”

“There are seven, and good for you for noticing—­it's those eyes of yours that make me keep you around. It's no accident it's that many either—­what I've just described is at least fifty percent of the fellows who ride spirit engines at any time, day or night. The Defenders know this, too, which is why my disguising myself like that will make perfect sense to them. So . . .”

“So you're gonna make the Defenders think you're some other guy, while we slip right past them disguised as somebody else entirely.” Artus straightened, his face glowing. “I got it, right? That's it, right?”

Tyvian nodded, and motioned to a small box he'd been lugging around since Derby. “You'll find stage makeup and a variety of wigs in that box—­we'll be arriving in Saldor in under an hour, so get started.”

 

T
he Saldorian Spirit Engine Terminal was a massive, gleaming construction of marble, mageglass, and polished brass. Here, spirit engine lines running from Freegate by way of Galaspin and from Akral by way of Camien, Eretheria, and Daventry, both terminated beneath a vast dome inlaid with glittering mageglass starbursts and the bas-­relief visages of every Keeper of the Balance since the dawn of the modern age.

Even now, late into the night as it was, the place bustled with activity. Pallets of cargo levitated by, under the guidance of teams of uniformed warlocks fiddling with enchanted rods; guildsmen and traders of every size and description, their guild-­pins and trading-­house livery forming a heraldic structure every bit as complex as the lineage of the Akrallian kings, shoved, jostled, and shouted at one another in their haste to be on with their errands. Then there was the nobility and minor gentry—­floating along the platforms at a stately pace, their retainers and champions and valets caught in their orbit like so many moons, carefully and resolutely aloof from the hustle and racket of the largest city in the West. It was in this last group that Tyvian, Artus, Hool, and Brana arrayed themselves.

Defenders were all over the platform when their spirit engine arrived, searching compartments and patting down merchants and guildsmen with mechanical efficiency. Tyvian, dressed in the finest clothing they could still afford, wore Sir Jenwal's signet ring on his right hand, a fake beard on his chin, and the affected air of placid superiority common to Eretherian nobility on his face. Behind him, Brana wore Chance at his side—­taking on the role of champion—­while Artus, laden with baggage, his hair dusted to look near-­black rather than brown, took on the role of manservant.

Hool lay on a baggage cart. If her eyes were weapons, Tyvian was pretty sure he would have been bleeding. “I hate you.”

Tyvian gave her a tight smile. “Just clutch your stomach and start screaming.”

Hool folded her arms. “That's stupid. I won't scream.”

“Hool, women scream when they're having a baby.”

Hool snorted. “How many babies have
you
had?”

Artus shifted his weight beneath all the luggage. “If you two is gonna argue, can I put some of this down?”

Tyvian grimaced and looked over his shoulder. Two Defenders had spotted them and were drawing close. “Kroth! Hool, just act like you're having twins, dammit—­do it however you like!” He pointed to Brana, “Push your mother and don't say a damned thing, understand?”

Brana wiggled his hips a bit and nodded.

Tyvian took a deep breath. “Everybody ready?”

The lead Defender—­a sergeant, judging by his mageglass armor—­pointed at Hool and Brana. “Sir, I'm going to have to ask your associates to remove their shrouds.”

Tyvian looked at Hool. “Now!”

Hool grabbed the sides of the luggage cart, put her head back, and began to grunt like a ninety pound hog. She then put her knees up and spread her legs and began to thrash and snarl, baring her teeth at the distant, domed ceiling.

Tyvian waved everybody forward and adopted a look of extreme distress. “Thank goodness you're here, Sergeant! We need a doctor at once!”

The sergeant blinked at the grunting, thrashing Hool. “Is she all right?”

Hool glared at the Defender. “I AM HAVING PUP—­” She paused at Tyvian's grimace. “BABIES! ARROOOOOOOO!”

The other Defender made the sign of Hann on his chest and followed it up with, “Kroth's teeth—­she's dyin'!”

The sergeant frowned. “Sir, I need the shrouds to come off, please.”

Hool kept howling. “AROOOOOOOOOOO!”

Tyvian puffed himself up in true noble fashion. “Sir! My wife is in great distress! We must be allowed to pass
immediately
!”

­People from all over the platform were watching them. Hool had her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth now and was breathing so rapidly, Tyvian thought she might actually pass out. The sergeant shifted in his boots. “Yes . . . well . . . surely removing the shrouds would take only a moment, and then you and your wife could—­”

Tyvian stepped close to the man and whispered in his ear. “But then, sir, everyone would see that she is
not
my wife.”

The sergeant's eyebrows shot up under his helmet. “Oh? OH! Oh . . . oh my . . .”

Tyvian nodded even as Hool began to snarl behind him again. “Surely, sir, you can see the
delicacy
of my situation, yes?” The ring was pinching him pretty hard at this point, but Tyvian let the pain work its way into the kind of anguished expression he was hoping for. “Surely there is some manner of arrangement we can reach?”

“AAAAAROOOOOOOGAAAAAAAARAAAAAA!” Hool arched her back and snapped her teeth at the air.

That settled it. The sergeant produced a notepad. “Just . . . just tell me where you'll be staying, sir. We can check in with you tomorrow.”

Tyvian smiled. “My servant will fill you in on the details. For now, we must go with haste.”

The sergeant looked pale. “Welcome to Saldor, sir. And . . . and congratulations.”

Tyvian didn't stop to respond; he, Brana, and Hool rushed from the station like any expectant parents should. A few brief lies later, Artus wasn't far behind.

T
yvian spent one of their last silver crowns to hire a cab. It dropped them in a densely populated neighborhood. He and Artus left their disguises inside and they all got out. “We walk from here,” Tyvian announced. He tipped the driver a copper.

The street was narrow and claustrophobically so. Wood-­and-­stucco houses were piled upon one another, each building cantilevering itself with its neighbors, the result a series of buildings that looked like blind men holding hands on a long walk home. As Artus followed Tyvian through the labyrinth of tunnels, narrow alleys, and oddly placed gardens, he marveled that this mess was considered the greatest city in the world. It felt more like a rat's warren.

“Where are we anyway?” he asked, looking up at the seemingly interminable series of laundry lines strung across the street, impeding any ability he had to see the stars or the moon. Were it not for the healthy orange glow of the feylamps set into the lampposts on nearly every corner, they would have been wandering in pitch-­darkness. Even at this time of night ­people were about, walking in twos and threes here and there. Unlike Derby, where the only reason the streets were filled so late was due to wanton merrymaking, these ­people seemed to be busy somehow. They had places to go, ­people to meet. Artus spotted a man calling for a carraige, dressed as though he were about to attend a duke.

Tyvian stopped to pump a few swallows of water out of a brass pump built into the side of a building. “This is New Crosstown. It's been technically part of Saldor since the Akrallian Wars about two centuries back, but you'll still find a few throwbacks who see this section less as a part of the city and more as the moss that grows on the true city's arse.”

Artus peered at the buildings in the dark, trying to figure out how tall they were. Each had to be four stories, at least. Many windows glowed with candlelight. “How many ­people live here?”

Tyvian shrugged. “Most of them.”

Hool and Brana stuck close behind Artus. They were still wearing their shrouds, but Artus could tell that it was wearing on them. They had abandoned all pretense of human posture and stalked behind Artus on all fours as much as on their two feet. Weirdly enough, this didn't seem to attract any attention. Hool sniffed the air. “This is a bad place. I can't breathe here. How do all these ­people live so close? How do they not go crazy?”

Brana yipped his agreement. “No space.”

Tyvian shrugged. “They get used to it, I suppose. The civil infrastructure here is marvelous—­pumps or wells everywhere, magically purified to prevent disease, we've got parademons that eat the trash in an elaborate sewer system, we've got specters that clean the streets, feylamps everywhere. Honestly, I'm surprised
more
­people don't live here.”

“Does your mother live here?” Artus asked.

“Goodness gracious no!” Tyvian led them through a small garden festooned with various sculptures, mostly surprisingly life-­like figures in a variety of bizarre poses. “I strongly suspect my mother has never set foot here in her adult life, which of course made it a very attractive place to go when I was a boy.”

Artus frowned, trying not to look too hard at a statue of a man with his hands outstretched and his face contorted in a grimace of either anguish or anger, though it was difficult to determine which. “Are we going to see your mother?”

Tyvian snorted. It sounded a bit like a laugh. “It's very possible. Not yet, though—­one does not simply walk into my mother's parlor and say, ‘Hi, Lyrelle, what's for dinner?' ”

Artus couldn't quite wrap his mind around a statement like that, so he tried to forget he heard it. His own mother would lose her mind if he walked in the door. Artus could only imagine how excited his sisters would be, too. If his ma found out he had snuck into town and not come to her straightaway, he was fairly certain he'd get paddled. He decided to change the subject. “What's with these weird statues anyway?”

Tyvian glanced at the figure Artus was looking at—­that of a young woman hugging herself, her head bowed in sorrow. “This is a penitentiary garden, Artus. These ­people are criminals, though with sentences short enough that the transmuters didn't bother altering their original form.” He kicked back some of the ivy that had grown around the statue's base. There, just barely visible in the faint lantern light, was a brass plate. It read:
Annika Morosten, Arsonist.

After sounding out the words, Artus whispered, “Saints alive. Are they . . . are they really in there?”

Tyvian nodded. “Until a warlock utters the Rite of Release specific to the prisoner in question, yes.”

“This is a bad place,” Hool growled, pushing Artus along. “Stop looking and move.”

Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Hool, to you
everywhere
is a bad place.”

Tyvian led them to a cul-­de-­sac at the end of which was a taller building than most, with a painted facade that must have once been green, but the years and weather had led it to peel and crack, revealing a pale, bone-­white beneath. In the flickering lamplight the paint looked like black flesh, rotten and cracking off the bony carcass of some long-­dead animal. The silhouettes that moved behind the thick red curtains were indistinct, but numerous enough for Artus to get the sense there were a lot of ­people here. It wasn't until they got closer that he made out the sign—­a weatherworn wooden thing in the rough shape of a cook pot with the words
The Cauldron
painted on by a shaky hand.

“A tavern?” Artus asked, walking toward the front door.

Tyvian grabbed his arm and steered him toward the alley besides the building. “The classiest dive bar and whorehouse this side of the West Mouth, and a favorite spot for the young gentry to slum it from time to time. For many of my teenage years this was my home away from home. Now, everybody mind your manners; I was popular here once, but it's been almost fifteen years since I've been here, so . . .”

Artus had been in enough dive bars to know what this meant. “No eye contact, hands on the purse, knife at hand.”

Tyvian smiled and slapped him on the shoulder. “Good boy. Now, follow my lead.”

The alley had a brick stairway that sunk into the earth and terminated in a heavy, iron-­studded door. Tyvian trotted down the stairs with a spring in his step and knocked with the kind of force one usually reserved for occupied outhouses in emergency situations. After a second an eye-­slot slid back, spilling yellow light onto Tyvian's face.

A pair of black eyes with black, beetly eyebrows blocked that same light a moment later. “What?” The voice behind the door was heavy and sluggish. Artus conjured up images of every thick-­necked bouncer at every bar he'd slummed around in Ayventry. He thought it was amazing how they all seemed to be the same.

Tyvian smiled. “It's been a long time, so I don't remember the password.”

The bouncer grunted. “Then go—­”

Tyvian cut the bouncer off before the slot could be closed. “I do remember
you,
though, Maude. A man never forgets eyes like that—­they haven't aged a day.”

Those same eyes narrowed for a moment. “Kroth damn me. You're Tyvian Reldamar, ain't you?”

Tyvian shot Maude a wink. “That entirely depends on whether or not you've got a troop of Defenders hidden under your skirts, darling.”

The slot snapped closed. Artus grunted. “Maybe they're mad at you or something.”

Tyvian ignored him and spent a moment straightening his jacket and taking a deep breath. The second he'd finished, the door-­bolt snapped back and the door swung open. From it emerged the largest woman Artus had ever seen—­as broad and thick and tall as an arahkan war-­priest—­wearing a studded leather jerkin, iron bracers, and a big, snaggle-­toothed grin. She snatched Tyvian up like he was a daisy and gave him a hug that probably could have broken his back had it been given in anger. Maude spun Tyvian around, which was when Artus noted that she was, in fact, wearing a skirt. And heavy black boots with spiked steel toes.

Hool grunted approval. “Let's go in. I like this woman.”

Maude set Tyvian down. There were tears in her eyes. “We heard rumors you was coming back but never believed it. Been talk about how the mirror men would pay a hundred marks for giving you up. Kroth's bloody teeth, boy, it's good to see you. Look at you, all grown!” Maude giggled, “I remember you when you was hanging around with that skinny fella—­the Verisi, whatsit . . .”