The Craft Sequence: (Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, Full Fathom Five, Last First Snow, Four Roads Cross) by Max Gladstone

Author:Max Gladstone [Gladstone, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2017-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

43

Not a woman, Kai realized, but a girl. Fourteen, maybe. Gleblander. Short cropped hair. Thin, gaunt, coltish, angry. Sharp big black eyes, brown skin. Sweat crusted. Brown ragged tunic. Wore a pearl on a leather string around her neck. Wiry legs clamped Kai’s arms to her sides.

All these details tossed under utter panic. Half of Kai’s body tried to buck the girl off, and the other half to burrow into the mattress, away from the blade at her throat. She felt its tip as a coal.

“Stop, or I’ll do it now.” The knife pressed further, and Kai felt her skin tear.

Drowning sailors on the battered raft of her mind threw sacrifices to the adrenaline storm: snatches of poetry, school rhymes half-remembered, and at last, despairing, an image of a beggar girl on the sidewalk in front of Edmond Margot’s apartment. “You’re the girl from Margot’s place.”

The knife kept still.

“Tell me why you did it,” the girl said. Urgent, low.

“Did what?”

The pressure returned.

“He’s.”

“Dead,” Kai finished, seeing the shape of her anger. “Margot’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Why did you kill him?”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t lie to me!” The knife danced over her skin as the girl’s hand shook.

“I’m not. I’m not. Swear to whatever gods you want to name.”

“You don’t know the gods I’d name,” the girl said.

“I tried to save his life.”

Shadow welled through the narrow slits of the girl’s eyes. “You went to the Watch.”

“To protect him.”

“They killed him.” Another coal puncture, below the first. Kai fought to keep still. The blade was too close and sharp for heroics, or for fear.

Think. The girl thought Kai had killed Margot. She wanted vengeance. She could have killed Kai while she slept; either she was a hardened torturer, and kept Kai alive to suffer, or she didn’t want to do the work. She wanted to be talked out of it.

Oh gods. This was a sale, then. Of a sort. Twilling’s acronyms and lists bubbled up unbidden.

“You killed him,” the girl repeated.

“I wanted him safe. I offered him shelter. He refused.” Technically true. “Can we just. I mean.” Step one: identification. “I’m Kai,” she said. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. Kai is my name. What’s yours?”

Scales shifted and gears spun in the girl’s mind. Her face twisted. Hesitation. Sensible. An exchange of names was an exchange of power. Without names you filed other people into boxes: murderer, conspirer, betrayer, lover, friend. The knife at Kai’s throat would kill her, but anonymity would let the girl drive the blade home.

“Izza,” the girl said.

“I only met Margot twice.” The cuts on her neck burned when she swallowed. “He seemed like a good man.”

“You killed him.”

“I didn’t.”

“You sent a Penitent, and the Penitent did.”

“I asked the Watch to arrest Margot, to keep him safe.”

Izza’s weight settled on Kai’s stomach. “A Penitent strangled him to death.”

She struggled to breathe. “Gods.”

“Gods have no part of this.”

“Penitents don’t kill people.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Penitents didn’t kill, but this girl wasn’t lying. Kai’d expected assassins, Craftwork or poison or knife, rough work in a back alley to make the death look like a mugging gone wrong.

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