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A new pigeon came. It looked as if it had been sprinkled in ashes and its tail dipped in them. “Th’ wagon was covered, an’ it were night.” It spoke to me, or its ghost did! I found more corn and laid it down close to me so Ashes would come near. It waddled over to eat. “They put scarves on our glims so we mayn’t see where they took us. We was led downstairs, t’ the cellar. They took the scarves off. Our orders was, dig against the wall, down an’ down. We thought ‘twas a well, but ‘twas too big. We was diggin’ pick an’ shovel through the pinky rock.”
“The pinky city rock.” White Spice’s ghost whispered it as the bird glided down to sit with Ashes.
“Pinky city rock,” Mumper’s ghost said, landing on the dirt.
Slapper finished the corn. He jumped up, smacking me in the face with his wings, then landed beside his friends. “Ungrateful filcher,” I mumbled.
“I was hired to dig a well,” Slapper’s ghost told me. “We was all hired to dig a well. There was a real well partway dug, but no water.”
“They never let us out,” said the ghost that rode a fresh arrival. That was the pigeon I’d named Fog. “Never once. They brung us food and drink and clothes, but we never left the cellar.”
“The mage drove off the water in the well. The rusher with the bullwhip said so.” White Spice’s ghost didn’t seem to mind that the bird preened while she talked. “It was dry, the hole where we dug. No water, but there was pieces that glittered in the torchlight.”
“It sparkles, the rock, like nowheres else.” The bird I’d named Pinky landed on my knee and left a large, warm present there. I swore, but I dared not shoo him off. I had no idea why they were talking so sensible, unless they’d reached some magical number (six of the same group of murdered folk) that let them speak more clear to me. “They have parts like glass as big as your thumbnail, bigger, that glow like fire with all manner of color. Beautiful.”
“Beauty in th’ Cesspool, what a joke.” Mayhap the magical number was seven. Here was a seventh bird, spangled in blue, green, and violet on white. Spangle’s ghost was a woman who sounded as tough as any of the river dodgers I’d faced. “But when we’d spilled some of our water on the rocks – Mithros!”
“Mithros,” the other birds said. The ghosts sighed. Two more arrived to sit with them. One was dark gray about the head and tail and pale gray in body, the commonest coloring of all the city’s pigeons. The other had a purplish gray head, a white bib, and purplish gray shoulders on a gray body. So there were nine in all.
Pinky bit my hand and jumped down to be with the others. Now they were cooing, pecking the dirt, looking for food. I grabbed the basket and started crumbling the bread for them.
“Where are you?” I asked. I was certain now that these were the ghosts of them who had dug Crookshank’s fire opals for him. He’d had them killed to keep the stones’ location a secret. I’d wager the cellar where they’d dug was in a house of his, but which? We’d need the army to search them all. And every mot, cove, and child in them would be doing their best to put a stop to it, for sheer contrariness. “You’d think you’d want your grave found!”
Well, I’d offended them then. Off they flew, leaving me to try to get pigeon scummer off my dress. Then other pigeons came, the flock that lives here and any pigeons who’d been drawn to them or to me. I forgot my clothes and crumbled bread fast. I put the diggers from my thoughts and listened to what all these birds had to say. There was always something going on, something I could piece together for my lord or the kennels.
When I’d finished with the pile of bread ends Mya gave me, I propped my chin on my hands and watched the birds. They’d quieted, but few had left, despite the food being nearly gone. They eyed me. I think they knew I liked them even if I didn’t hear their ghosts. They were beautiful, when they weren’t dirty. And whose dirt was it but the human folk of the city’s?
They have such silly faces, pigeons.
I held out my hand. One of them landed on it. When I put up the fingers of my free hand, the cracked bird tried to eat the tips.
“I don’t suppose any of you are here because the Shadow Snake doused you?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet. “Kidnapped you and killed you?”
The bird on my hand took off. More of the flock left – most of it. Nearly three dozen remained, all staring at me. One that was white but for drips of black on the ends of his wings and tail came toward me. “Mama? I’m lost, Mama.”
I leaned forward. “Rolond?” I asked. “You know me. I’ve held you sometimes, lad. Your mama is my friend Tansy.” My eyes were stinging, but I kept my voice calm. Spirits are all emotion. I get upset and they take off. “Your papa is Herun Lofts. And I know your grandmama, too, Annis.”
I didn’t know if he understood me, but I had to try. Mayhap today was a day of miracles.
Mayhap it wasn’t. “Mama, it’s dark and I’m lost,” he said, deaf to my words. “They took me away. Where are you?”
“Mama?” That was a little gixie’s voice. “The mot said yez wouldn’t give the Shadow Snake what the Snake wanted. Yer lily necklace was more important – tha’s what the mot said.”
“Da, the Shadow Snake said ye wouldna give o’er what ye won at the gamblin’, so he took me….”
“It was just a poxy book you can’t e’en read, you stupid puttock!” That girl was older and furious.
“I don’t understand. Why does someun called a Snake want yer brass box, Ma? Ye said it only had writin’ from some noble ye danced fer oncet.”
I finally put my face in my hands. Mama had always said there’d be a day I’d be sorry I asked so many questions. This was that day.
When I couldn’t bear it no more, I jumped to my feet and threw up my arms. They all took off in a cloud of feathers and a clap of wings.
Goddess, let me make something good of so much that is bad. Let me take from these birds some piece of knowledge. Something that will help me seek the Rats that killed those diggers, or the Shadow Snake. The feeling I’d had that day I led my lord to the Bold Brass gang would be naught compared to hobbling them. Knowing that two killers ran free in the Lower City was an itch I couldn’t scratch.
I rubbed my hands on my thighs and felt a lump in the pocket of my underdress. I had the fire opal still. I fetched it out and turned it over. It was so lovely as it was, I had to wonder what it looked like all polished and clean. Probably the nobles and the rich would want it more so, with no hint that it had come from the rock of the Lower City. I grinned. I liked the pinkish stone that cropped up everywhere, in our walls and walkways and little gardens.
Berryman had called them “fascinators.” Folk with gold in their purses would be fascinated with those bits of cherry and blue fire, the blaze of green…. I turned the stone now and then, shifting to new bits of color, and let the moments of the last week drift in my head. I let my questions come to the surface of my thoughts, bubbles in a well. Who would notice nine healthy mots and coves all gone missing together? Who would notice the vanishment of one child here, one child there, gone seemingly by magic from bed or street or plain daylight?
I had all manner of thoughts while I sat there. One of them was something Tunstall had said to Mistress Noll on my very first night of duty – “You sharp old folk are everywhere, aren’t you? You’re everywhere, and you see and hear everything.”
I came alert with the sun in my eyes. I know old folk. Mistress Noll herself, for one. Granny Fern, for another. And there were others throughout the Lower City, beggar women who sat their corners like my dust spinner friends, laundresses who used the same fountain squares, doxies who spent all their working nights in the same part of Corus. Folk talked in front of them like they was sculptures.
“I knew I’d find you here.”
