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She could not help but picture him as a little boy, before he’d learned that preternatural calm, that sideways smile. A little boy like Josit had been, all skinned knees and messy hair. Shelikedhim, she thought. He was hard not to like—self-deprecating, funny, clever. She could see why Prince Conor had been so desperate for him to live.
They had reached the central part of Arsenal Road, the Maze’s main thoroughfare. Drink and drugs for sale had given way to sex. Scantily dressed young men and women, lips and cheeks rouged with paint, sat in the open doors of brothels, or crowded in front of glassless windows, calling out to passersby. A man in a blue soldier’s uniform stopped in front of one window. After a lively exchange with a crowd of girls, he crooked his finger at one—a slim young thing with dark hair and freckles. She came out of the bawdy house and smiled at him, holding out her hand. He counted coins into her palm under the light of a naphtha torch before leading her down a nearby alley.
Lin had thought they would disappear into the shadows, but they were still visible when he stopped and lifted the girl up against a wall. He slid his hands up under her skirt, burying his face against her neck. Her bare legs dangled around his hips as he unbuckled his trousers and thrust into her with a feverish desperation. Lin couldnot hear them, but the girl seemed to be patting his shoulder as he moved—an almost motherly gesture, as if to say,There, there.
Lin felt her cheeks flame. Which was what she got, she supposed, for standing and staring; Kel had stepped away for a moment to drop a coin in the cup of a young boy in a torn jacket several sizes too big. He’d only been gone for a moment, but when he returned, he took a look at Lin’s face, glanced down the alley, and smiled wryly. “That’s what they call ‘a half-crown standup,’ ” he said. “Cheaper if you don’t pay for a room. And no,” he added, “I don’t know that from personal experience.”
“It’s just…Well, it’s not like the Temple District, is it? The courtesans there have their health checked by physicians regularly. For theirownprotection,” she added, knowing she probably sounded extremely prudish, “as it should be.”
“To work in the Temple District is to be a courtesan,” said Kel, sounding uncharacteristically somber. “To work here in the Maze is to be desperate.” He seemed to shake off the seriousness, like a heron shaking water from its feathers. “Come. We’re not far from the market.”
They fell back into step together. Lin said, “You told me the Ragpicker King keeps offering you a job. A job doing what?”
“Spying for him, as far as I can tell. He wants to know what’s going on with the Charter Families. He has some eyes on the Hill, but not in every room.”
“And spying on the Crown Prince, too, I’d imagine. Which seems awfully dangerous.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’d never do it, regardless.” Kel exhaled and looked up at the stars, which were largely invisible behind the torchlight’s glare. “I feel as if everyone keeps asking me why I won’t betray Conor,” he said, and Lin felt a jolt, as she always did when the Prince was referred to so casually. He was Crown Prince Aurelian; surely it was odd for him to have something so simple as a given name. “He isn’t the one who came and got me from the Orfelinat. He isn’t the one who made me a Sword Catcher. And if Ihadn’t become a Sword Catcher, I’d likely have ended up here.” He indicated the Maze with a gesture. “When I was twelve, I fell off a horse. Broke my leg. They were worried I’d limp, that my gait would never match Conor’s after that. They were ready to put me out on the street. Conor said if I did wind up with a limp, he’d break his own leg with a hammer. In fact, he said he’d do it if they sent me away, regardless.”
Lin found herself staring. “So what happened?”
“I healed without a limp.”
So the Prince never had to follow through on his promise,Lin thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. It was an awful story, but Kel had told it as if it were a fond memory. A moment of grace in a strange and brutal life.
“I shouldn’t have told you that,” he said, ruefully. “It’s probably a state secret. But fuck it. You know everything already.”
Lin was too surprised to respond, but it didn’t matter. They had reached their destination. Arsenal Road curved away from the city here, deeper into shadows where warehouses and shops were jumbled together like discarded toys. Here a square opened out, one side backed up against the Key; Lin could glimpse the shine of light on water through narrow gaps between the buildings, and hear the crash of waves.
Lining the inside of the square were tables—some of wood, some of boxes stacked hastily together, a cloth thrown over them—on which various objects were displayed. Lin hurried to investigate.
Here were things dredged from the bottom of the sea, blasted into the water by the force of mage-fire during the Sundering War. For the first time, Lin saw magical writing that was notgematry.Elegant scrollworked letters, winding around a carved wooden box, stamped on the hilt of a rusted dagger. She drifted over to look as a saleswoman in a Hindishsatikasnatched up the dagger and brandished it proudly. “It is no ordinary dagger,” she said, in response to Lin’s curious look, “for it cuts not skin or flesh, but emotions. It cancut through hate or bitterness and end it. It can cut through love and put it to rest.”
“Lovely,” said Kel, materializing out of nowhere, and putting on arich, distracted merchant’s son, slumming,voice, “but not what we need. Come along, my dear.”
Lin rolled her eyes—my dearindeed—but followed him to another table. Here were bags of herbs, tied up with ribbons, and handwritten spells, which Lin knew at a glance were nonsense. Cards for fortune-telling, and all sorts of objects—weapons and pendants and even compasses—set with bits of Sunderglass.
Lin’s heart sank into her shoes. She was a fool to have come here. There was norealmagic at this market, no forbidden lore. Just a heap of glittery, useless nothing, like the contents of a magpie’s nest. She wanted to smash a window, to scream.
As she turned away, she caught a glimpse of a book with a familiar red-leather cover. She dashed to look at it. It was indeed one of Petrov’s. But her heart fell as she turned it over, and then the next, and the next. Nowhere among them was the book with the rayed sun on its spine. Only a collection of books about interpreting dreams and reading palms, and a few tomes ongematry—The Mysterious Power of Alphabets,one was titled—no doubt forbidden amongmalbushim,but of no use to her.
“This batch of books interests you, I see?”
Lin looked up to see that the junk dealer had made his way to her. He was a tall man in a brass-buttoned coat, with a reedy voice and a quantity of graying ginger hair.
“I sought one book in particular,” she said. “The work of Qasmuna.”
“Oho,” he said. “An expert in the area of grimoires, I see.” Lin bit her tongue. “There was a Qasmuna volume among these,” he added, with a gesture toward the remaining books. “It was, I fear, snapped up immediately by a discerning individual.”
“Who?” Lin said breathlessly. “Maybe they’d be willing to sell it to me.”
The dealer grinned. He was missing several teeth. “Alas,” he said. “My customers depend on my discretion. Perhaps something else…?”
“These books belonged to a friend,” Lin said, abandoning pretense. “His landlady sold them when he died. Have you nothing else that might have belonged to him?”
She felt foolish immediately. There was nothing trustworthy about the dealer; he would surely dig up his worst, most worthless volumes and attempt to exploit her presumed grief to sell them to her. She was about to turn away when he drew something out from beneath the table and said, “This did not belong to your friend. It does, however, mention Qasmuna. It is a different sort of book—not spells, but history.”
Lin turned back to examine it. It was an old book, bound in pale leather gone gray with time.Tales of the Sorcerer-Kingswas stamped upon the cover in gilt, as was the author’s name:Laocantus Aurus Iovit.
