Chương 4: 1.3. Slow and Silent

"Grig." Seth smiled and, behind his back, wiped his thumb on his shirt.

"Evening." Grigori took in the great pale horse, its black leather tack.

"This big bastard's not yours, surely?"

"Lady who just walked in," Seth said, and pressed three solitars into Grigori's palm.

"The works for her horse, she said." Grigori scanned the coins for clippings, found none, and pocketed them.

"Fuck're you doing here, Seth? Didn't you get fired?"

"Quit this time, actually," Seth said.

"That's not what Esza said."

"She's mixing up this time and two times ago." Seth stuck his hands into the pockets of his overalls.

"And the carrying-on earlier. The banging and the yelling." Grig squinted.

"Was that you?"

"Nope," Seth said.

"Heard about it, though. Thought maybe you could use someone to climb onto that roof, patch that hole."

"What hole?"

"Whatever hole." Seth shrugged.

"Or if there's anything else you need. Anything seasonal going on. Still in the high times, y'know. Deathspell's holding strong. Months until the roads get real bad." Grigori's mouth twisted under his scruff.

"I'll put in the word, man. You go on and get now, right?" Seth pretended he couldn't see through the other man's transparent lie.

"Course, Grig. Course." He headed for the evening and wiped the straw from his feet.

"And thank you. I'll see you around."

"Sure." Seth strolled down the hill from the Sidewinder, back to the river that abutted it. Second time in one evening. Might as well get a dip in before the job. He'd changed into his other set of clothes, the set that hadn't been waterlogged and bloodied, but there was still some dried blood in the furrows of his nose, and the shallow cut on his arm where Polecat had tested his claws. Annalise must not have noticed. No big surprise. He was not the sort of man a woman like her noticed.

He stripped down and waded into the river. It carried the cold from the slow souring of the season in the north. Talk of high times aside, it wouldn't be so long now. At least working for Rohan would put some walls up around him at night. Keep some rogue seraph from dragging him off once the winter war started. Maybe running could wait. Maybe he could just sit by and let someone else call his shots, for a while at least. It wasn't like he was doing a wonderful job belonging to himself.

The sun was setting; its light reflected in tidal ribbons across the distant deathspell roof. Seth had heard once that beyond that dome the sky was actually blue. Odd to think about. The last lit kindred who remembered it as anything but green had long since gone back to the dirt and the turning wheel. He stuck a thumb in his ear and listened. Annalise was eating something, by the sound of chewing and clinking cutlery.

So he waited, and felt the night grow colder, and felt the passage of time toward the bad months and the bad jobs, his thumb to his ear, and the cold moon showed him his hunkered shadow across the tall grasses, leashed uncomfortably to his heels. When had he gotten so skinny? Then a long, sawing huff of a snore sounded through his thumbpad, and it was time to get to work. Back into his clothes. Back to the Sidewinder, slow and silent. Moving through the pools of shadow cast by the posts of the porch.

Music playing from inside the main taproom. He could climb a clapboard quiet as a cat, but these walls were thin. He circled round to the stables instead, crept onto its roof. An animal whinnied below his feet; he hastened to the wall of the lodge in case old Grig came to check on that. Up the lodge wall he went, and he was making good time when a sound came through the pine and froze him. Voices. His own name, out of Grigori's mouth. His fingers crimped into the clapboards and stilled him.

"Seth il Gutierre?" There was Esza, all sweetheart custom absent.

"What the fuck was he doing in my stable?"

"What's Seth il Gutierre ever doing?" Grigori replied.

"Pacing around like a mutt waiting for you to drop a scrap or two. He took in the big Orwinese lady's horse, I think. The one in the suite. Passed me a brace and a half for the works." If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"A brace and—Wycrest's wilting whack. She told me she paid him five."

"Well, there you go. Still an overpay either way. And we pay three-and-one to the Seth il Gutierre tax. Call it alms to St. Sorrel and hope he finds a hot deal on a sense of shame."

"How'd he look?"

"Ah, you know. Skinny. Sad. Do you reckon… maybe there's something we could pass his way."

"Grig. No."

"I don't mean we need to board him or pay him. Just give the kid a hot meal, at least. He's lost weight, and there wasn't much weight to lose."

"Grig, if we feed him it'll just tell him he can come back. You said yourself he was a dog looking for scraps."

"I just—something about his face when I saw him. Or the way he held himself. It's just he's the last of the Arron Gang kids, you know? I was thinking about that. Only one who hasn't gotten themself knifed, or harvested, or strung out, or run out on a rail. The last one."

"There's a reason for that. You're growing up, you're supposed to learn about how to live in the world. He only learned how to pick its pockets."

"He has his head on straighter than the others did. That's how he's made it this far. But today… you know how you just know sometimes, when you see a person, that it's one of the last few times? Like you can see his death loitering behind him. Like he's sunk too far to pull back out, and there's already a ditch waiting for him somewhere."

"If you can't pull him back out, what's the use, then? Besides getting mud on yourself."

"True enough, I guess."

"Don't feel guilty that you got your life and he got his. Just let the world do what it does to people like Seth, and move on." Seth allowed himself a soft snort. Move on. That's just what he'd do. Get this job done, play the hapless hostage with Rohan—the man liked him, he knew, in spite of everything, or at least was amused by him, which was a start—and then worm his way out. He'd show them all how to move on. He moved on. Up the eaves and onto the roof. He slid on his belly toward the west side.

A thin hook stuck through the gap between the window's central panes and flicked the latch open. White-knuckled fingers teased the shutters open. Seth flowed into Annalise's room like a time-lapse's turning shadow. The woman was asleep on her side in the king bed, snoring unquietly. One long, sinewy arm sprawled out from the sea of spun cotton bedclothes. Seth tried not to stare, first for reasons of chivalry and then from dismayed shock.

Annalise's thick arm, from carved shoulder to calloused hand, was covered in tattoos. Must've been four rings at least, all down its muscle-packed length. Beasts and botanicals and interlocking geometries. Surely they couldn't all be hexentatuae—that'd take a fucking fortune —but he recognized at least two. The Weaver in its web across her bicep, the Weeping Razor on her forearm, its handle at her wrist. How much magic was scribed into her skin? What sort of wealthy woman had muscles like that?

Who the fuck was he robbing? He shook that foreboding thought loose from his shoulders and returned to his work. She had the etchings of a murder machine all across her, but she was asleep, which in Seth's experience was the best thing for an enemy combatant to be, tactically speaking. Get it done. Show Rohan your worth. Get him trusting you and treating you like his fuck-up son again. Then slip a knife into him if you can, and skip town 'cause you must. Who cares about the roads; you can handle the roads.

Wouldn't be the first time. Goodbye, Prossimo. It's been fucked. He crept across the floor— heel-to-toe, avoid that board, it's sticking up on the end —to the chest at the foot of the bed. The lodge, he knew, used second-ring infusions on the locks they could afford to enchant. A first-ring lock he could dispel by feel, at this point. Second-ringers, to his chagrin, he still needed eyes on. He uncapped the cylinder at his hip and thumbed out his picks and a pen-sized popmite torch.

He opened the torch's feed chamber and mashed the squirming maggot inside with his thumb to keep the clack of the trap from making a sound. Even with the trap open, you could keep the dying bug's hexis from leaking anywhere but out through the coil if you cupped your palm over the opening just right. And just right was how Seth made his living. The departing soul spun the torch's dynamo—a little buzz there, no getting around it, but it was a windy night, thank St.

Mannok—and threw a spotlight of unearthly green across the chest's lock. He tucked the unlit end into his mouth to free up both hands, and set to work on the infused lock. A proper pair of infuser's goggles cost more than Seth could make in a year of kitchen work, and he hadn't had the good fortune to rob a pair off anyone yet. But if you shine corpselight on an enchanted doodad and squint, you can train yourself to see the glinting contours of its infusion.

Seth learned that from a legion quartermaster on a drunken bender. It takes years of study to bind an enchantment, and Seth was no sorcerer. But it takes a bare week of learning to break one, provided the student is suitably desperate. And Seth was plenty desperate. Here a pin bound his hook; there a hex unfurled and tingled a knuckle. A game of milimeters to tease both of them back into their housings. Going by the stopwatch in his head, Seth missed his record for a second-ring lock by five seconds.

But it was still a beautifully done thing, and despite the coercion at his heels and the sword hanging over his head, he couldn't help but feel a surge of professional pride. The chest's fasteners seemed well-serviced, but he rubbed a pinch of tallow on each hinge to silence any squeaks, just in case. The box was sitting atop her folded coat, between her hat and her frightfully thorough collection of cutlery. Plain but well-built. The wood looked thick.

Perhaps whatever was inside would be easier transported without its case. And it wasn't like Rohan had forbidden him from looking within. Let's see what's so sensitive, Madame Annalise. Seth slid the halfmoon cam out of the latch, and opened the box, and beheld its contents. It was by sheer luck that the choked noise of revulsion and horror he made didn't wake the sleeping woman up.