There was precious little gilt left on Prince Adrian now—a few fragments in his curls, a few more maybe in his fancy belt buckle. His eyes were gone, too. Somebody'd probably made off with them as soon as the news came down that he'd died. Story was that they were matched sapphires, but I checked out Prince Richard one day, when I didn't have nothing better to do, and his eyes were lapis lazuli. I'd've bet, both that Adrian's were the same, and that they sold for the price of diamonds. People will pay through the nose for a good story.
It was too dark to see the statue's empty eye sockets, and I was perfectly okay with that.
"Now what?" Miss Thomson whispered.
"We wait," I said and put my lantern down carefully where neither of us would be liable to kick it. "Dunno how long. 'Til your buyer shows up, I guess."
"Wonderful," she said. We were standing close enough that I could feel her shiver.
"Shit," I said, suddenly thinking of something I should've remembered a long time ago. "She know your name?"
"No. The, um, fence I went to first said not to use my real name, though he didn't say why."
"Be glad he told you that. It's important. Don't give her your real name."
"All right. Don't give her my name. Don't let her touch me. Anything else?"
I took a deep breath and tried to pretend it helped my nerves. "If I tell you to run,
run
. Whether you got the gorgons or not. Whether you think I got a reason or not. Okay?"
"Yes. I'll do what you say. I'd be a fool not to."
I caught myself just short of saying,
It's what you hired me for, darlin'
. That was just nerves, and me getting snarky wasn't going to help us nohow.
There wasn't nothing to say after that, and I think we were both scared of what we wouldn't be able to hear if we were talking. So we stood there, not saying nothing, and after, I don't know, maybe a quarter hour, the lantern went out, quick as winking and not on its own. A voice said out of the darkness to our right—
not
from the Road of Marble—"You are early, and you are not alone."
It was a woman's voice, deep and smooth with an edge on it like a knife. Vey Coruscant, Her Majesty of Blood.
Miss Thomson said, her voice steady as a rock, "I was not aware that either is a crime."
"Neither is," Vey said. She moved to stand in front of Miss Thomson, about a septad-foot back. "I was merely… surprised. I had not understood either to be a condition in the arrangements. Or was my messenger at fault?"
"No. I didn't think it necessary to mention that I was taking sensible precautions. Perhaps it was. I beg your pardon." All stiff and icy and prickly, like she wasn't scared half out of her mind.
Vey laughed. I wished she hadn't. It wasn't a nice noise. "Lay your hackles, foolish girl. Do you have the rubies?"
"Yes," said Miss Thomson. "Do you have the gorgons?"
"Jean-Lundy!" Vey called.
Something rustled in the ornamental hedges, back of where Vey's voice was coming from. I hoped her
Jean-Lundy was getting himself stuck full of thorns. Vey said, "Jean-Lundy has them." It wasn't the most graceful I'd ever seen that done, but it worked. Like I was even thinking about trying to jump Vey Coruscant anyway.
"Who is your silent companion?" Vey asked, lightly—oh so fucking lightly—but with something thin and cold somewhere away beneath it, like the Sim beneath the city.
"Local muscle," Miss Thomson said, and I thought if we got out of here, I should tell her to go audition at the Cockatrice, 'cause she was wasted on the lordlings from up the city.
"Indeed." Vey didn't quite sound like she was buying it, and I was glad Miss Thomson had been dumb enough to agree to a night meet, because Vey couldn't see my face, and that was about the only good thing in this whole fucking mess. "No matter. The rubies, please."
"Gorgons first."
There was a pause, like the pause when you get in a knife fight and the other guy waits just a second, because he knows how much better he is than you, and you know it, too. I heard thunder, way off in the distance, like a giant grumbling, and thought, Oh Kethe, not now!
Miss Thomson said, "You don't really think I'm stupid enough to try running off with your money when the bushes are crawling with your servants, do you? On the other hand, how do I know you'll pay me once you have the rubies? Gorgons first."
"Very well. Jean-Lundy!"
It took Jean-Lundy like fucking
hours
to come thrashing out of the bushes to give Vey the money. I knew she was stalling, drawing this out just as far as she could before she sprang the trap, letting the rain come toward the city, toward whatever nasty thing it was she'd got planned. There was another rumble of thunder. I would have sold my soul for the hour of clear weather me and Vey both knew we didn't have. If I'd dared, I would've told Miss Thomson to hurry up, but that would be telling Vey I'd caught on to what she was doing.
"Here is the money," Vey said then. "Where are the rubies?"
"I have them," Miss Thomson said. I felt her shift her weight, and she stepped forward. "Let us trade."
I moved forward, too. Not much, just enough to keep more or less in range. The wind picked up, whispering and rustling through the leaves. We had maybe a quarter hour—probably less—before the rain hit. I heard the trade in the dark, heard the click of Miss Thomson's heels as she stepped back, heard Vey say something in a curt undertone. Then, all at once and with no noise at all, two fucking enormous hands grabbed me, one around my upper arm, the other over my mouth. I was twisting as I felt their heat, part of my mind howling, Where'd he
come
from? But even as my elbow went backwards for his floating ribs, he was moving away again. He was only there to keep me busy while the others attended to their real business.
Miss Thomson shrieked, "Dennis! Hel—" And bang went that safe name. I hoped I was going to live long enough to worry about it.
"If you move, whoever you are," Vey's voice came out of the darkness. She wasn't where she'd been standing, but now I wasn't sure where she was. "If you move, she will be dead some moments before you reach her. Do you believe me?"
"Yeah," I said, not adding that we all knew Miss Thomson was going to be dead in an hour whether I
moved or not. Good going, Milly-Fox. Some bodyguard you are.
"Good," Vey said. "Claudio, if he so much as twitches, kill him."
"Yes, madame," a deep, rough voice said from somewhere behind my left shoulder. And he could do it, too. It wasn't that he was faster than me from a standing start, but he knew right where I was, and I was having a fuck of a time getting him placed. Way too late, I remembered the stories about hocuses and the spells they could cast to make people think that left was right and down was up and shit like that. You never know how much to believe about hocuses in stories, but my feeling about Vey Coruscant was that she could probably do anything she damn well pleased.
"Brandon," Vey said, "bring me the girl."
Sounds of movement, a grunt of pain. "She bit me, the bitch." At least Miss Thomson was still conscious.
"Take her gloves off," Vey said. "And hold her!"
"Yes, madame," Brandon said, just like Claudio.
"Now, girl, what is your name?"
"Lucy," Miss Thomson said. Her breath caught in a sharp gasp of pain. I didn't need the light to know that Vey had cut her across her palm.
Now, I don't know shit about blood-magic, and I don't want to. And besides, it was pitch-black. So I can't explain what Vey did. I don't know if the words I heard her saying, in some weird language like an iron box falling down a flight of stairs, were a spell or instructions to her goons or her recipe for ginger cookies. I know that she hadn't been going long before I felt the rain start, little cold finger touches on my face and arms, and she wasn't done before I was soaked to the skin. And I could feel the ghosts around us, crowding close. I could feel them watching, the same way I could feel the lightning up in the clouds, just biding its time. Whatever she was doing, they were interested.
When she stopped, about a decad after the end of the world from the way I felt, there was this weird, flat pause, like when you ask somebody a question who's not in the room. I knew something was fucked then, fucked bad.
Vey shrieked—and I mean that, it was like the noise tomcats make when they fight, not nothing human at all—"
Where is he
?"
There was a voice. I thought it was coming from the statue, but I couldn't swear to it or nothing, although I still hear it sometimes, in those dreams you get where you wake up sweating and scared to move. It said, "I am afraid, madame, that he is not among us. You bound your search with the iron fence of the… Boneprince"—and, Kethe, the disgust in the voice when it said that word, like it was talking about somebody eating their own shit—"and within those bounds… within those bounds, madame, your nets have come up empty."
Vey was whispering frantically under her breath, more words in that ugly language I didn't know. Behind me, somebody really really big was being laid, really really quiet, on the ground. Shit, I thought, 'cause I couldn't get nothing more useful through my head, 'cause I suddenly had a pretty good guess about what happens when you call up a dead guy who ain't there. And then it felt like my heart slammed into my ribs, and I could breathe again, and I yelled, "Lucy, run!"
And then I bolted.
I cut back behind the statue, crashing through them damn bushes with their brambles like grappling hooks, staggering across the graves of murderers and heretics, tearing both knees out of my trousers on some fucking wicked tombstone like this big granite bed—it had spikes, too, like the bushes—and I had a fucking
putrid
moment, thinking it had me, that I was never going to get free, and when the dead people were done with Vey and Brandon and Jean-Lundy and Claudio, they'd come find me. But then I tore loose, and staggered upright, and kept running, toward the only section of fence around the Boneprince that you could climb from the inside.
Then I heard her calling, "Dennis! Dennis, please!"
I had about half a second where I wondered if it was really her, or if one of the dead people was smarter than I wanted them to be, but then she got closer, and I could hear her breathing and the wet weight of her dress dragging across the ground.
"Here!" I called back.
"Oh! Oh, thank the powers! Oh, Dennis, please!" I caught her, her heat and weight, and I could feel the life in her like it was a fire.
"Got to run," I said, my breath sawing. "Got to get out."
"Oh,
can
we?"
"Yeah,
now
." I kept hold of her hand, and we ran.
We ran like kids in a story, like I'd been thinking earlier, only this was a different story and we had the Iron-black Wolves on our heels. I couldn't hear nothing behind us—though I wasn't sure I would—and nothing caught us before we got to the fence. Maybe nothing was chasing us. Maybe they were all busy with Vey and her goons. But I wasn't gambling on it. "Fence!" I warned, caught Miss Thomson by the waist, and tossed her upward. I heard her dress tear as she grabbed the top rail and pulled herself over, but I didn't give a fuck, and she didn't, neither. I swung over after her, drew this huge, hoarse, gasping breath, said, "Pennycup." And we were off and running again.
It was pouring rain. By the time we reached my rooms in Persimmony Street—the rooms I used when I was looking particularly not to be found—water was running out of our clothes and hair in rivers, and we were both starting to shake with the cold. We kind of dragged each other up the stairs, and I picked my own damn lock.
"I knew it was a useful skill," Miss Thomson said. She sounded punch-drunk, and I didn't blame her.
"I could teach you. Sometime." Then I pulled myself together. It was like trying to collect water in a fucking sieve. "Wood. For a fire. Powers." I pushed my hands through my hair, hard, feeling the water squish out and run down my back. "Fire should be laid. You light it, and I'll find the blankets."
"Please." She went dripping across the floor and settled in this kind of puddle, mixed cloth and water and mud, by the hearth. The skirt of her dress was torn practically into streamers.
I went into the back room, opened the cedar chest. There were the blankets, plus some dry clothing. I was just about drooling at the thought. I gathered it all up together and went back into the main room. She'd got the fire lit and was feeding it kindling with a look on her face like it was the most important thing she'd ever done.
"Oughta get out of them wet clothes," I said. I sorted out the blankets and the clothes on the daybed I'd kited when Anna Margolya and all her girls were evicted from the Hourglass just down the street. "Think I've got some things should fit."
"That would be marvelous. I'd like to burn this damn dress."
"Okay by me. Won't your boss be upset?"
She laughed. "Maybe I'll quit my job. I could. I didn't lose the gorgons."
"Fuck," I said, and I was staring at her like she was a lion with two heads. "For real?"
"Yes," and her smile was pure sunshine. "Her lackey didn't grab me until after I'd got them safe." She pulled the little wash-leather bag out of her skirt pocket. Then her face fell. "Or do you think… I mean, could they be counterfeit?"
"Dunno. But my understanding is if you don't want to fuck up your witchery, you don't get Ver-Istenna mad at you right before you start."
"Oh. Oh, of course. Then I really
could
quit."
"Think about it tomorrow. Here." I handed her one of my older shirts and a pair of secondhand trousers I'd been meaning to take in for a half indiction or more. "Change in the other room if you want."
"Thanks." She dragged herself up. I could almost feel how heavy her dress and layers of petticoats were, just watching her plod across the floor. I'd thought she'd take the other room, good little bourgeoise that she was.