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“Why do you want to talk to someone worse than the Ragpicker King?” Lin asked, puzzled.
“I don’t want to,” said Kel. “I have to.” He turned back to Jerrod. “Can I bring her with me?”
Jerrod shook his head. “No. Only you.”
“I can’t leave my friend here,” said Kel. “Let me bring her back to the—to our carriage, and I’ll return and meet you.”
“No,” said Jerrod. Lin had the feeling he rather enjoyed refusing requests. “Come with me now, or the deal’s off.”
“Then we’re back to where we were in the noodle shop,” said Kel. “I’ll harry you unto death, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Gray hell,” muttered Jerrod. “I should have killed you when I had the chance. Wait here,” he said, and disappeared back into the shadows.
“He seems nice,” Lin said.
Kel, looking harried, half smiled down at her. “He isn’t an easy man to deal with. But he’s my only conduit to Beck.”
“Is he a Crawler?” Lin asked.
Kel looked surprised. “How’d you guess?”
“Chalk dust on his fingers,” Lin said. “I had a patient who was a Crawler once when he was young. He told me they use it for grip.” She hesitated. “Was he one of the ones who—”
“Attacked me in the alley?” Kel said. “Yes, but I’m working on not holding grudges. Besides, it was a mistake.”
Jerrod returned before Lin could ask what that meant. This time he had a carriage with him—a small, nearly impossibly light-looking vehicle with open sides. A young woman with close-cut dark hair sat in the driver’s seat. She had chalk dust on her fingers, too.
“Prosper Beck offers you the use of a carriage and driver to bring your friend home,” said Jerrod, in a tone that indicated that this was the most generous suggestion anyone had ever made. “Take the offer or leave the Maze.”
Kel’s brow furrowed. He started to protest, but Lin cut him off. “We will take the offer.”
She clambered up into the carriage—easy enough; it was low to the ground, light as if it were intended for racing—and settled back into the seat. Kel leaned in. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. The Qasmuna book was not here. She felt empty and weary and wished only to go home and remake her plans. She would not give up, but she could not bear more of this tonight. There was also a thread of anxiety in her chest, still, about Mariam. Surely it would be best to check in on her.
Kel stepped back. “Take her to the gates of the Sault,” he said to the driver. “Do not stray off course.”
“Indeed, do not,” said Jerrod. “Or he’ll poison you.”
This produced an alarmed look from the driver. She raised the reins, clucking to the horses, as Lin wondered what on earththatmeant. She recalled Merren, the pretty boy at the Black Mansion who’d called himself a poisoner. Surely, she thought, as the carriage began to move through the tangle of Arsenal Road, that could not be a coincidence? It was as if every thread led back to the Ragpicker King somehow, like the threads of a web all led to the spider in the center. Was she an observer of the web, she wondered, or was she, too, a fly?
When the last of her people had passed before her, and her Source-Stone could hold no more power, Queen Adassa climbed to the top of the tower of Balal, and there her heart sank, for outside the city walls she could see the massing of the armies of the Sorcerer-Kings. She cried out then for Makabi, saying, “My right hand, you must now leave me. Leave me, and save our people.”
Makabi did not want to leave his Queen, but he did as she commanded. He rallied the people of Aram and told them that their Queen would hold the armies off while they made their escape. “The land of Aram, we must abandon,” he said. “It will be consumed in the fire of war. But the spirit of Aram is the spirit of its people, and it shall live on as we carry it with us.”
With great mourning, the Ashkari people were led by Makabi to the uncharted western lands.
—Tales of the Sorcerer-Kings,Laocantus Aurus Iovit III
Kel followed Jerrod in silence down Arsenal Road. (He felt a little foolish—he ought to have simply assumed that when he entered the Maze, one of Jerrod’s Crawlers would have reported on his presence. The Maze was Beck’s territory, after all.)
Eventually they reached a warehouse whose windows had been blacked out with paint. Jerrod led him inside and down a long corridor that seemed as if it had been decorated in stripes; Kel realized, upon a closer look, that the weathered paint was simply peeling away in long strips. Curls of paint lay scattered on the floor, crunching under their boots like dried leaves. From the far end of the hall came the glow of moving lights and the sound of voices.
The corridor ended abruptly, opening into an enormous room. Here Kel paused a moment to stare. Glass lanterns hung from a roof that disappeared into darkness, dimly illuminating dozens of tables scattered across the rough wooden floor of what was clearly an abandoned shipbuilder’s manufactory, back in the days before such work had been moved out of the city to the Arsenale. An array of rusting hooks, on which sails had likely once been stretched to dry, hung from the ceiling. The hulking shadow of a half-built ship gazed down at an upturned crow’s nest, around which six or sevenmen playedlansquenetwith gleaming mother-of-pearl chips. Presumably, they would be traded for money at the end of the night.
Not everyone in the place was engaged in gaming. Men and women in dark-blue velvet moved among the crowd, taking money and dispensing gambling chits and fresh bottles of wine—Beck’s employees, clearly. A few young men cavorted among dinghies piled with cushions, drinking abnormally bright-greenpastisson,the kind that produced waking phantasms. One slept against a rusting anchor, the bottle clutched against his chest, a blissful smile on his face like a child’s. They were more finely dressed than the average inhabitant of the Maze, in gold-cloth and silk, jewels gleaming at necks and fingers. As Kel did not recognize any of them, he guessed they were rich guildsmen and merchants, not inhabitants of the Hill.
Though, he mused, what would keep Montfaucon or Falconet away from such a place? Or Roverge, or even Conor? Though Conor claimed he had never met Prosper Beck, that did not mean Prosper Beck had not observedhim.
