“A moment ago you wanted to find your fellows in the faith. Now you want to murder immortal imposters. Which is it?”
“Worship,” Kossal replied, “is a coin with two sides: killing, and dying. I’m here to make sure everyone takes a turn at each.”
Ruc just stared at him a moment, then shook his head. “Sweet Intarra’s light,” he muttered, then turned to me, that green gaze of his uncharacteristically open. “Why does it seem like my life would have been so much easier if I’d never met you?”
I frowned. “I’m trying to hear that as a compliment.”
He coughed up a laugh.
“Let’s just say there aren’t too many people who surprise me, but the three of you…” He trailed off, wordless for the first time.
Surprise. I repeated the word to myself. Could surprise grow into love? It sounded possible, at the very least. Maybe more than possible, if I burned down a little more of the city.
“You can always shoot us later,” Ela suggested brightly.
“If I shot you now, I wouldn’t have to watch my back.”
“If you shot us now,” I pointed out, “we wouldn’t be there to help.”
“When did you get the idea I needed help?”
“When I saw your men puking over the rail of that transport,” I replied. “Whatever you’re fighting, the Greenshirts aren’t up to the job.”
“I have the legions.”
“The same legions we burned, then fed to the fish?”
Ruc’s face tightened. “I don’t trust you.”
“Then don’t trust us,” I said. “You already know what you need to know. Skullsworn or Kettral, we’re excellent at killing things.…”
“You are,” he cut in. “All I’ve seen the two of them do is drink and flirt.”
“A woman can’t be cutting throats every moment of every day,” Ela objected.
I met Ruc’s gaze. “You’ve sized up enough fighters.”
He sucked air between his teeth, then shook his head. “I feel like Cool fucking Collum strolling along up there on the wall.”
“Would you rather be cowering somewhere?” I demanded.
“Yes,” he said. “I’d rather be cowering.”
The smile bloomed on my face, fierce and certain. “No you wouldn’t.”
I wanted to kiss him again. My whole body ached to lean toward him, to seize his chin in my hand and pull him close.
“You should kiss her,” Ela suggested merrily, nudging Ruc in the shin beneath the table.
“They already spent half the night kissing,” Kossal groused.
“Pyrre!” Ela objected, rounding on me. “You canny little ferret. When were you going to tell me? This is too delicious. Something ripping out throats and a budding romance!” She purred contentedly. “Dombang really is a city of love.”
By the end of the night none of Ruc’s hidden crossbowmen had shot us, which I took for a good sign; on the other hand, by the time he finally left the deck of Anho’s Dance, Ruc had made no effort to include us in the finer details of his plans.
“Be here,” he said, straightening up from his chair. “I’ll send someone when it’s time.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To get things ready.”
“Want to tell us what things?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“A mission tends to work best,” I pointed out, “when everyone on the team understands the objective, the resources, and tactics.”
“The objective,” Ruc replied, “is to find the Vuo Ton and pry the truth out of them. Chua Two-Net is one resource, and the three of you are the other. Isn’t that what you just spent half the night arguing for?”
“I was hoping for a few more specifics,” I said. “How is it, exactly, that we’re planning to pry the truth out of the Vuo Ton?”
“I love specifics. Unfortunately, since no one aside from Two-Net has ever seen this secret lair of the Vuo Ton, there’s going to have to be a lot of improvising when we get there, a lot of making shit up on the fly.”
Ela beamed. “I love improvisation.”
Ruc ignored her, studying me instead. “That’s what the Kettral are for, right? That’s what you’re good at.”
I nodded at the same time that Kossal, weary or irritated, ran a hand over his eyes. “We’re not Kettral.”
17
For a full day, I watched from the wide deck of Anho’s Dance while Dombang unraveled. The city, like the canals threading it, looked calm enough on the surface: women and men going about their business and their lives, crowding the bridges and walkways, plying the channels in their narrow boats, obedient to the rhythms of work and commerce, revelry and rest. If you sat long enough, however, staring into that current, you could see past the bright, unblemished surface to the perturbations beneath.
People looked over their shoulders too often, even in the middle of the day. When they spoke, they leaned close, lowered voices, husbanded their words. When we first arrived in the city, most people had been going about their days alone; now they seemed to travel in groups of three or four, even when there was no obvious need. Ruc had outlawed the carrying of swords, but everyone seemed to have a knife, some sheathed in plain sight, others inexpertly hidden beneath the fabric of vests or pants. Emotions were raw. I’d watched two women try to claw each other’s eyes out over a broken crock, a man shove another into the canal for refusing to step aside on the walkway. Children raced in feral knots through the alleys and over the bridges, mocking the cries of their elders, chanting the words to outlawed songs. They couldn’t have understood what was going on, not really, but they could smell the rot in the air.
On the morning of the day after Ruc’s abrupt disappearance, I rose before dawn, bathed, then found my way to the deck, where I sat sipping a mug of bitter ta. Down in the canal, white-finned fish rose through the murk to take flies at the surface, then faded back into the depths like thoughts or memories, something lost or forgotten. The sky sat heavy and bright on the teak roofs, as though it had been stacked there. The day was hot, and going to be hotter.
“Would it have killed you to try to fall in love with someone a little more efficient?”
Kossal, as usual, had approached without my noticing, his bare feet silent on the wooden deck. He dropped into the seat opposite mine.
“He’s efficient,” I replied. “I just wish I knew what he was being efficient at.”
“Gone into the delta without us?”
I hesitated, then shook my head. “Not his style. If he decided he didn’t trust us, he wouldn’t leave us where we could burn down his city while he was away.”
“Then what is he doing? Doesn’t take two days to load a boat with supplies.”
“I should have followed him.”