‘A minute, Fish.’
He waits, bless him.
‘I’ve been thinking. I’m not even sure this is our only option. My granddad always said, the Burners …’
Quickfish butts in. Roofkeeper wonders if he got that from his dad.
‘The Burners are hedge magic. Nothing of theirs works for long out of the forest.’ He laughs, ‘Dad bought a present for Mum one time. Spent a fortune on it, if you believed him. Some kind of bird, made of blossoms. It’d sing every morning when the light hit it.’ He smiles at the memory. ‘For a couple of weeks, at least. Then the flowers all started to wither, and the branches of its little cage thing turned to dust.’
Roofkeeper grins, despite himself. ‘What happened to it?’
Quickfish can barely keep a straight face, ‘It stopped singing sweetly. Escaped up into the rafters. Would only respond to the moon.’ He cracks up. ‘Every night at midnight, we’d hear it screaming around up there, like a wasp in a cowbell.’
He stops, gets his breath. ‘I guess it died, after a while. Not soon enough for Dad though. He didn’t trade with the Burners for months.’
He steadies himself on Roofkeeper’s arm as they wind their way downwards. ‘What I’m trying to say is, I get your point, but can we just give this a bit more of a chance? There might be someone here who can help Mum, and, well, at least we know they’ve got some really strange stuff going on.’
Roofkeeper nods. ‘Strange is right.’
Quickfish takes his hand and leads him back towards where he thinks Icecaller might be.
‘Roof, I love you, but we come from a city where we put dead people in glass urns so the earth won’t take them. We throw ourselves off the Towers for sport. We drink inmostof Hesper’s dockside pubs. We are not allowed to call other people strange.’
Roofkeeper snorts. ‘But that’sourstrange, Quick.’ He catches a look. ‘Fine, fine. A good point, smugly made.’
Quickfish smiles. ‘I take after my folks sometimes.’ He thinks. ‘Actually, they might be a bit stranger here, but there’s reasons for it. My dad always said the folks in Thell were different after the Empire fell. Something about keeping to themselves for safety. I don’t think they were allowed to do much together, back in the bad old days.’ He shrugs. ‘Dad was never much for history. Even the stuff he was involved in.’
‘Rich people,’ Roofkeeper murmurs. Quickfish jabs him in the ribs.
He follows it with a soft kiss on the cheek. ‘Let’s see how it shakes out, please?’
Roofkeeper turns his jaw with a hand, kisses him back deeply. ‘You’re such a terrible optimist. I’m doomed.’
‘He’s right you know.’ Icecaller’s voice cuts in. They’ve walked to the edge of one of the stepped tunnels that slopes through the mountain. Her legs dangle from the alcove above as she looks down at them with a wry smile twisting her raw-boned face.
Quickfish tries to smile politely. ‘Right?’
Icecaller shrugs. ‘Right. You’re probably doomed.’ She slidesdown until she’s sitting opposite them, cross-legged, long fingers twisting expressively.
‘I mean,’ she says, rolling her neck. ‘Look at the facts. Your dad runs Hesper. Everyone knows he’s a problem.’
Quickfish’s face darkens like a spring storm. She holds up a pacifying hand, palm out. ‘A problem to that skinned nit of a girl in Astic anyway.’
She tips her head. ‘Or maybe, maybe, more of a challenge.’ She points at Quickfish, ‘Your big pappy kept his name, right? That takes, fuck, I dunno … Guts. Stupidity. Both. He kept hisname, and he kept his city. That’s got to sting. Hesper’s not pretty, but it’s got clout.’
Quickfish catches Roofkeeper’s brief smile.
Icecaller continues, oblivious. ‘Clout, yeah. And.Annnnd. And he used to hang out with that mad sailor cunt, back before the Republic was a thing, fuckin’ yeaars ago.’
Quickfish nods. ‘Shipwright. Yeah, they’ve been friends for ages. As long as I’ve been alive, at least.’
‘What did they even do?’ Icecaller asks. ‘Other than set us up in our big stone home?’ She slouches. ‘I’ve never been very clear on the rest. Something spooky with Skinpainter. Then, what, dicking around at politics and proxy wars for two decades and change until they sailed a big old fleet down south a few years ago? I remember hearingsomethingabout that. Not much. Didn’t end well.’
Quickfish shrugs. ‘Dad doesn’t like to talk about it. I hear bits sometimes. Something happened in the south. Something big. It changed things, I think. My dad, Shipwright, Shroudweaver. They all tried to stop it. It didn’t work.’
Icecaller watches closely, all the nervous energy drained from her, still and cool as her namesake. ‘Changed things how?’
Roofkeeper coughs, clears his throat. ‘Changed the … what would you call them? The rules, the fundamentals.’
