Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

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 seven men played lansquenet with 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-green pastisson, 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 observed him.

Ships’ berths, gutted out of their old homes, were stacked against one of the walls. Diaphanous curtains half hid them from the main floor; as they passed, Kel was aware of movement behind the curtains. Figures, writhing in the small compartments—muffled gasps and rustling, the occasional gleam of light on bare skin or dark velvet.

“The doxies here work for Beck,” Jerrod said as they crossed the room. “It pays well, and we Crawlers protect them. As long as you keep spending money at the tables, their services are free.”

The edge of a diaphanous curtain twitched back. Kel saw a girl: pale-purple curls, an indigo velvet mask. An arm looped around her from behind, a hand sliding down into her bodice. Her eyes fluttered shut as the curtain fell back in place.

Kel thought of Silla, and of Merren. Of Lin. He had been kissing far too many people lately, he thought. He was in danger of becoming some sort of romantic bandit from a Story-Spinner’s tale, of the he kissed her, then vanished mysteriously into the night variety.

He’d enjoyed all the kissing—kissing Lin had been surprisingly pleasant—but knew enough about himself to realize he was seeking something he had not yet found.

Nothing about the berths here enticed him, regardless. There was something a little desperate about such public debauchery. As he and Jerrod headed toward a velvet curtain at the far side of the room, they nearly collided with a young Malgasi sailor as he staggered by, rolling down the sleeve of his copper-colored jacket. Not before Kel caught sight of the puncture marks along his forearm, though. They looked fresh. The boy glanced at him briefly; his pupils were vastly dilated, like black dinner plates. This was how it started, Kel thought; soon enough he’d be one of the emaciated addicts staggering around the Maze.

“So, is this Beck’s headquarters?” he asked as they ducked past the curtain and found themselves in a stairwell. Rickety steps led upward. Lamps swayed from hooks on the walls. Stacked crates of bottles with bright-green labels that proclaimed it to be SINGING MONKEY WINE. A peculiar name for a vintage.

Jerrod led the way up. “One of many,” he said. “Beck’s not like your Ragpicker King, with his Black Mansion and his pretensions of being a gentleman. He owns a score of buildings, each running a different business, and moves among them. A manufactory one day, an old temple another. It’s clever, really.”

“And how’d you end up working for Beck?” Kel asked. They had reached a small landing.

Jerrod, though, seemed to have run out of patience with small talk. “None of your business,” he said, shouldering open a door whose rusty hinges screeched like an owl.

Another short corridor before Jerrod led Kel into a room that seemed to have once been an office. It had a nautical feel to it, the walls painted dark blue and hung with dusty maps of faraway ports. A carved walnut desk took up most of the room.

On one side of the desk was an empty wooden chair; on the other sat a man who glanced quickly from Kel to Jerrod and nodded. “Good,” he said, in a guttural voice. “You brought him.”

So this was Prosper Beck.

Beck was a big man—much bigger than Kel had somehow imagined. Barrel-chested and broad-shouldered, he had a thickened nose that looked as if it had been broken more than once. Dark stubble shaded a lantern jaw. He wore an elaborate coat of scarlet-and-silver brocade that seemed somehow at odds with a neck the size of a tree trunk and fists the diameter of dinner plates. In fact, Beck overall was the opposite of what Kel had pictured.

Well, that was what one got for making assumptions.

Kel studied him, wondering what to say. Long ago, when he had first been learning etiqueta at Marivent, he had complained to Mayesh that he did not understand why he needed to memorize the hundred different ways to greet foreign nobility, the correct way to deflect questions without giving offense, the different bows appropriate to different occasions.

“Politics is a game,” Mayesh had said. “Manners give you the tools to play that game. And it is a game as deadly as any swordfight. Think of etiquette as a sort of armor.”

And so Kel, in his mind, put on his armor of manners. The greaves and gauntlets of polite smiles, the vambraces of careful answers that gave nothing away, the helm and visor of unreadable expressions.

“May I sit down?” he asked.

Beck indicated the seat across from him. “Sit.”

Kel settled himself in the wooden chair. It was uncomfortable. He was aware of Jerrod, standing against the wall, arms crossed. He was not foolish enough to think Jerrod was the only observer here, the only one ready to leap to Beck’s defense should Kel prove troublesome. Though Beck looked as if he could defend himself.