The Wonder Engine Read online

  Everyone was alone and everyone else watched you carefully, in case you had a knife. You fought your way to the top, or you broke and crawled home to die.

  She’d earned her place and held it, right up until the end.

  For a long, dizzying moment, standing on the steps of the Grey Church, it was as if the intervening years had never happened, as if this were another day at work like any other day.

  Chains creaked, and Slate’s eyes lifted.

  There were five crow cages hanging over the Shadow Market, from the rafters of the ancient church.

  There’s five.

  But there’s only supposed to be four.

  Where did the fifth one come from?

  Seven years of history crashed down on her. Adrenaline stroked cool chemical fingers down her spine.

  They added a fifth one.

  Just for me…

  Lying in bed, hours later, Slate was able to snort at herself. Probably there had just been too many bodies one day, and Boss Horsehead had ordered another one hauled up. It had nothing to do with her. She’d probably been gone for years by the time it went up.

  At that moment, though, it had seemed to fill the entire world. Her ears rang and the crowd noises faded away and there were five crow cages and there was Slate and—

  Brenner said, in her ear, “Not a good time, darlin’.”

  She inhaled too sharply, almost gagging, and let him steer her aside with a hand on her elbow.

  Not now. Later. Slate pushed down the panic and the memory, aware that she would pay for it later. That was fine. Once she was safely back in the hotel, she could do anything she had to do—weep, scream, throw a chair at Caliban’s head.

  He’d probably even bring me the chair.

  She laughed soundlessly behind the veil, teeth bared. It felt almost like screaming and the panic retreated.

  Later. It was a promise to herself.

  “Better?” asked Brenner again. There was a look in his eyes that Slate knew. He did not want to have to ask again.

  “Better,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  They went through the Shadow Market together, she and Brenner, two more carrion crows in the gathered flock. Brenner asked the questions and she showed him who to ask. No sense letting anyone hear her voice if they could help it. No sense letting anyone see her face.

  People watched them. People watched everyone. Slate watched them back. There were new faces and old. The ratty-eyed little man with the knives. Sparrow, Blind Molly’s daughter. Rumor had it that she’d killed her mother to take her place. The wonderworker who could spell locks. She knew them all, albeit some only by reputation.

  But Slate didn’t know the old woman with the glass eye who gave her such a peculiar look, or the cringing giant, or the man with the ferret.

  Well. They say you can’t ever go home again.

  The relief of familiarity faded and the dread crept back. When they had learned everything they could for one night, and turned to leave, she had to keep from running up the steps of the church, like a child fleeing the basement one step ahead of monsters.

  But they left.

  And no one stopped them.

  They walked home. They doubled back on their trail and split up through a building and came together again. If they were being followed, it was by highly skilled trackers indeed.

  In the hall of the inn, Brenner turned to her, scowled, and then put his arms very carefully around her.

  Slate was not expecting that. Even less was she expecting to bury her face in his shoulder and give a single ragged sob.

  “Darlin’,” said Brenner after a moment. He smelled, as he usually did, of leather and tobacco smoke. “Do you feel like lying to me?”

  “No?”

  “Then I won’t ask what the problem is.” He shook his head and let her go with exaggerated care. “You do good work. Even when you’re so scared you’re puking in corners. But you better handle this or I’m going to have to handle it for you.”

  “I don’t think you can murder your way out of this for me,” said Slate.

  “Darlin’, you’d be amazed what I can murder my way out of.” He kissed her forehead gently, as a friend might, then stepped back and let her lead the way into the suite to report.

  Afterward, Slate went into the bedroom and locked the door and curled up in bed with the blankets over her. Then she screamed, very quietly, into her pillow.

  Caliban came and knocked on the door—it had to be Caliban, nobody else had a tread like a bull moose and a knock that sounded like an apology—and she ignored him and eventually he went away again.

  When she was calm again—or could fake it convincingly—she got up and opened the door. Grimehug came in a few minutes later and curled up on the bed.

  And it was over.

  And she was still alive.

  For another day, at least.

  Thirteen

  Brenner slipped around a corner.

  He was skulking. It was a good skulk. There was an art to it, and Brenner was a master. You kept your cloak around you and your hood up and you put your feet down quick and quiet and you looked over your shoulder every few seconds—

  The side of his head encountered an armored wall and rebounded. He clapped a hand to his ear and hissed.

  Unfortunately, some people just didn’t get into the spirit of the thing.

  “Going somewhere?” Caliban asked. He only had a few inches on Brenner, but he glared down them quite effectively.

  The assassin made frantic shushing gestures, still rubbing his ear. “Keep your voice down! Someone’ll hear you!”

  “Perhaps you should explain what you’re doing,” the knight said, a bit more quietly.

  “What, here? In an alley?”

  “Unless you’d like to go back to the inn…”

  “Hmm.” Brenner frowned and scanned the street. There was no one suspicious, except an anonymous gnole, who was doing a pretty good skulk itself.

  “Why’d you follow me, anyway?”

  Caliban rolled his eyes. “You were watching the corridor like a hawk while that servant girl was lugging bath water to Slate’s room. As soon as the splashing started, you bolted. It was a little suspicious.”

  “Mmm.” Brenner frowned. “Okay. You have to swear not to tell Slate anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want her to know what I’m doing, obviously.”

  An expression of disgust passed briefly over the knight’s face. “You’re not going to a brothel, are you?”

  “What? No!”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “You think I have to pay for that sort of thing?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to speculate.”

  “I’m an assassin.”

  “So you say.”

  “We ooze danger.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Women love that.”

  “How nice.”

  “Now, if you wanted me to find you a brothel—”

  “Moving right along…” grated Caliban.

  “Right, right.” Brenner glanced around again. The gnole had found an exciting bit of trash in the gutter and was squeaking happily over it.

  “Okay. How much do you know about why our Slate left Anuket City?”

  Caliban frowned. “Very little. She got into some trouble with some people, and it worries her, but that’s about it.”

  Brenner sighed and turned his attention to the cobbles between his boots. “Damn. I was hoping she’d let something slip.”

  “Why, what do you know? You’ve known her for years.”

  “Not much more, unfortunately. Our Slate is quick with the insults, but not so much with the personal history.” He spread his hands. “Generally I respect that—this is not a line of work where people pry—but not when my life is on the line.”

  “I see.” Caliban’s frown deepened. “What do you know?”

  “She showed up in the capitol a few years back, fresh from A
nuket City, and said she couldn’t ever go back. Of course, the best laid plans…” He made a sweeping gesture that took in both of them, the street, and the inn on the corner. “The person she pissed off is apparently named Boss Horsehead, and that’s quite literally all I know. And I only know that much because I happened to overhear a woman say, ‘Boss Horsehead sends his regards,’ right before she tried to put a dagger in Slate’s guts.”

  Caliban blinked. “What happened to her?”

  “I slit her throat. Obviously.”

  “Good.”

  “Our Slate was very grateful afterward.”

  Caliban did not rise to this very obvious bait, but Brenner saw the lines around his eyes tighten almost imperceptibly and counted it as victory.

  “Our Slate’s not telling us everything,” he continued, “and by that I mean she’s not telling us anything. She won’t let me ask around about him, and when I ask her, I get the death glare.”

  “I can’t imagine she’d do anything to endanger us—”

  “No, no,” Brenner glanced around for listeners. “But she’s far from infallible, our Slate, and I’m getting a feeling that maybe this is a bad place for a blind spot. Near as I can tell, this Horsehead person runs half the underworld. That might mean he’s either involved with the clocktaurs or knows who is.”

  “I see.” Caliban did. “So—what? You’re going out somewhere—”

  “The Grey Church.”

  “—to this Grey Church place to see what you can find out about this Boss Horsehead person without her?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It’s a good plan.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Like hell you are!”

  “Do you think I don’t know how to act around thieves and ruffians?”

  “The fact that you even use a word like ‘ruffians’ is not filling me with confidence, no.”

  The knight folded his arms. “I can always go back to the inn and ask Slate outright.”

  “Fine. Fine. Just…fine.” Brenner pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Slate wouldn’t do this. Slate would hurt me if I even suggested doing this.”

  “Digging into her past affairs?”

  “No, taking a paladin into the Shadow Market. The digging she’d chalk up to understandable paranoia.” He let his hand drop and looked the knight over. “Do you have a cloak?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should get it to throw it over the armor—”

  “It’s white. Some idiot thought he was being funny.”

  Shame flitted briefly over Brenner’s face, but found itself in unfamiliar surroundings and didn’t settle. “Oh, right. Forget the cloak. Just…err…could you at least slouch a little?”

  Caliban slouched. It didn’t go well.

  It was a measure of Brenner’s concern about their situation that he didn’t abandon the whole idea immediately. Instead, he closed his eyes briefly and raked a hand through his hair. “If anyone asks, you’re a mercenary.”

  “Very well.”

  “A mute mercenary.”

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  “I’m already pushing it to the breaking point taking you to the Shadow Market.” He ran a hand over his face again. “I must be nuts.”

  They walked down the street together. Brenner didn’t bother skulking. There wasn’t much point, with the knight clomping down the sidewalk beside him like a draft horse.

  If Slate ever got wind of this…no, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  He chalked it up alongside the other things that Slate should never, ever get wind of. There were plenty of them by now.

  The streets of Anuket City were nearly deserted in the mist. Brenner pulled the hood of his cloak up again. Caliban got damper and damper, until his hair hung in lank strings over his forehead, which helped a little. In bad light, he might look almost disreputable.

  The Grey Church loomed out of the mist, the spires gleaming wetly overhead. Brenner halted.

  “Now, remember,” he muttered. “Keep your mouth shut, and don’t do anything noble. Bad things are going to be happening here, and you are going to let them keep happening. You are not going to intervene, you are not going to protect anyone, you are not going to stop to help women or pets or small children. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Brenner sighed. “If you breathe so much as a word to Slate…”

  “I won’t.”

  “Okay. One last thing. Give me your money.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Caliban.

  “Give me all your money. C’mon, hurry up, I don’t want anyone to see us…” He scanned the street. It was a lousy night out. The mist was turning into rain, and the flagstones glittered.

  “Are you mugging me?” asked Caliban incredulously.

  “Dammit, I’ll give it back. But you look like a pickpocket’s dreams come true. They’ll pick you clean before you’ve gone ten feet. But if you don’t have anything to steal, they’ll assume you’re hiding it really well, and leave you alone.”

  “And they won’t try to steal from you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Whatever Caliban was looking for in the other man’s face, he either found it or decided not to bother. The knight slid his belt pouch off and handed it over. It clinked softly as Brenner made it vanish somewhere about his person.

  The assassin glanced around, crossed the street quickly, and knocked on the door of the Church. He could hear the knight’s footsteps coming up the steps behind him.

  The door opened a crack, and the gatekeeper looked out.

  The man’s eyes flicked from Brenner to Caliban, briefly back to Brenner, back to Caliban, where they stayed for quite some time, then finally over to Brenner again. The gatekeeper raised his eyebrows in mute eloquence.

  “He’s with me,” Brenner said.

  The eyes flicked again. The eyebrows went even higher.

  “Really.”

  The gatekeeper shrugged. Presumably it did not pay to inquire too much in his line of work. He opened the door.

  Brenner ghosted through. Caliban started to bow to the gatekeeper, caught himself, and followed.

  Fourteen

  Caliban was in over his head, and he was willing to admit it.

  When Brenner and Slate had discussed the Shadow Market—very reluctantly, in Slate’s case—he’d pictured it set in an ordinary church, like the small rural buildings he had visited by the hundreds when they sent him out demonslaying. Because of that, he’d pictured something of a certain scale. Even a fairly large church would only hold a dozen or so merchants in the main sanctuary and perhaps a few more in the nave and the side chapels.

  He hadn’t pictured a vaulted cathedral, sunken down into the ground and opening up into bays and galleries and catacombs on every side. It was twice the size of the Forge God’s cathedral. It was larger than the Temple of the Dreaming God in the capitol, and the Shadow Market filled it to overflowing.

  There was a crowd swirling across the floor, between the stalls, but it was like no crowd he had ever encountered. It didn’t move right. It didn’t sound right. It hissed when it should have roared, and this bothered him a great deal, because he had previously thought that all crowds behaved more or less the same way.

  He lifted his eyes to the great stained glass window, and the crow cages hung like chandeliers. There were five of them. Crows with broad, stunted wings perched on the iron bars of four, while the last hung empty, the door open and askew.

  He wondered if there was an exit somewhere near the roof for the birds, or if they lived their entire lives in the Grey Church, feeding on dropped food.

  Something twitched in one of the crow cages. The paladin looked away. Apparently the crows had at least one other source of food.

  This is not my world.

  It was definite
ly Brenner’s world. The assassin glided down the steps and into the crowd without so much as a pause.

  Don’t stand here. If you stand here above the crowd, you’ll make a big fat target out of yourself.

  He plunged after Brenner.

  The assassin had stopped at one of the first booths, in front of heaped piles of fabric. He glanced up at Caliban, then back down at the table. “Mmm…here.”

  Money changed hands.

  “What is—”

  “Put this on,” said Brenner, and then, in an undertone, “and keep your mouth shut, remember?”

  Caliban slung the cloak around himself. It was too large, and badly frayed, but it covered most of his armor, which was undoubtedly the point, and it was an indeterminate shade of gray-green.

  “Better,” the assassin said grudgingly.

  “Now what do we do?” asked Caliban, in an undertone.

  “We’re going to go buy someone a drink.”

  There was a bar in the Shadow Market, or at least there was a place that had tables and something resembling alcohol. “Bar” was perhaps too kind. This place might aspire to “dive” if it was cleaned up a bit.

  They had to walk down one of the side corridors of the Grey Church to get there, a rough-hewn area that looked as if the builders had expanded into the old church catacombs. Possibly they had—there were odd little niches in the walls. One had a shrine to the Masked God in it. Caliban glanced at it as they passed, unsure whether he was comforted to see a religion or depressed to see that particular one.

  Along the way they passed two sex acts, a beating, and a robbery in progress. Caliban wanted to intervene in at least three of them. He kept his eyes locked on the back of Brenner’s neck instead.

  It was an odd echo of his trip with Slate—a thousand years ago, it felt like—through the market in the capitol. The ceiling was high and distant, but he had no fear of falling into the sky.

  I’m afraid I might fall into the abyss instead.

  They reached the bar. There was no sign, but the sounds of mugs clinking and someone laughing came through the blanket that served as a door.

  Caliban had always believed that he had been in some very shady establishments, particularly for a Knight-Champion. Even paladins go slumming occasionally. Surely nothing in the Shadow Market could surprise him.