It wasn’t Lees’ name that Ormo gave her then. It was more than a year before that name came up. In the meantime, things returned to business as usual for Syrina, with the addition of Triglav. Watch him, steal that, kill her. Working with the owl almost immediately became as natural for Syrina as it had ever been alone. He seemed to know her thoughts, and he always did what she wanted.
When Lees’ name finally did come up, it came up pretty much like all the others did.
She met Ormo in his Hall. It was decorated like his private chambers, and for that matter like most of Eheene. Walls built from obsidian and white marble blocks made a rectangular checker pattern, otherwise unadorned. Naphtha braziers sibilated bluish-white flame in the corners and left only the top of the dais in the center of the vast room in shadows. The onyx floor whispered and hummed when Syrina’s bare feet padded over it, but she’d long ago stopped being disconcerted by the sound. Triglav circled somewhere outside. He’d find her within a few minutes of coming out and either land on her shoulder or follow along above, depending on his mood.
“There’s a delicate situation I’d like you to look into,” Ormo said. He began a lot of the jobs he gave her that way.
“Of course there is,” she said. “And as usual, I’d like nothing better.”
“I know.” Once again, she could feel his smile through the paint and shadows, as sure as she could feel Triglav’s presence somewhere outside. “As I said, it is a delicate matter. Subtlety is of the essence.”
“Isn’t it always?”
He chuckled down at her. “There is a merchant–a low merchant–named Xereks Lees. For the past several years there have been growing discrepancies between his reported profits and costs. They are beginning to show troubling tendencies. I’d like you to investigate the matter.”
Syrina couldn’t hide her disappointment. “If it’s an accounting issue, Ma’is, do you really need a Kalis to deal with it? Surely–”
“Mr. Lees is a powerful man. About as powerful as someone can be without being invited to join the High Merchant’s Syndicate. Powerful enough that perhaps one day he’ll be asked to replace one of the Fifteen. His power no doubt comes in part from the backing of one of my colleagues. It’s for this reason I have until now ignored his inconsistencies. However, they have begun to affect my own interests directly, past the point where I can pretend they don’t exist.
“If I am going to pursue any action against Mr. Lees, legal or otherwise, I need to know exactly what is happening, so I can decide whether it’s worth the risk. If it is, I need proof I can bring to the other High Merchants. Enough that the one backing him will have no recourse against me.”
Syrina nodded with a sigh. Paperwork. “Delicate. Fine. Where can I find this Xereks Lees?”
“He manufactures a wide range of ceramic and metal machine parts both for local interests–naphtha refineries and the like, though not much military–and for steam machines in N’narad. His offices are adjacent to his warehouse near the commercial port in the Foreigner’s District. Exporter Row.”
“N’narad. So he has dealings with the Church?”
“I don’t have details, but as it is difficult to trade with N’narad without getting involved with the Church, it is likely.”
“Okay then. Delicate. I’ll see what I can find. Anything else I should know?”
“He gets most of his raw components from Naasha Skaald.”
“Who? The name sounds familiar.”
“The materials merchant–copper, mostly–who’s been having trouble with Corsair raids on her costal smelters.”
“Ah, right.”
“Lees’ costs have been going up parallel to Skaald’s security expenses, same as everyone else’s.”
“I see. Alright. I think I can probably use that.”
“I have faith, Kalis. Let me know if there’s anything else you need. Until then.”
Syrina spent the rest of the day mentally hashing out her plan and getting some old documents from Ormo’s archives that wouldn’t be too hard to alter. Then she stopped by the room Ormo kept for her for a couple of hours to put on the face and clothes of a young N’naradin merchant marine. She went with a male. Women in N’narad who weren’t Church officials tended toward less martial occupations.
She preferred the faces of the poor for generic, poking-around jobs. Merchants and other affluent types rarely did their own work if they could hire a lackey to do it for them, and foreign peasants were both common and ignored where she was headed. It wasn’t unusual for unscrupulous captains to abandon their hired help to the alleys of the Foreigner’s District if they were going back mostly empty and didn’t need the extra hands. Contracts forged with fresh, uneducated and usually illiterate sailors often included provisions about getting paid upon return to their home port and abandoning such rubes in distant lands was an easy loophole. The wait was usually months or even years to sign onto a ship going back to wherever they came from. A lot of them wound up getting remedial work in the District in the meantime. A few might even apply for Skalkaad citizenship, and a small fraction of those might earn enough tin to get it and see the other side of the wall that separated the District from the rest of Eheene.
As she dressed she prepared her mind, getting into character, and she thought about what Ormo had told her. If this Lees was dealing with the Church of N’narad it could make things a lot more complicated.
It was well after dark when she reached the high, copper gates that separated Eheene from the District. The wall was forty hands of granite, stretching away on either side, bending out of sight and circling the entire capital. The city-side was unguarded. She had no problem scaling over it and slipping past the mercenaries that sat on the ground on the other side playing cards, even with her tattoos hidden under the false skin of a seventeen-year-old N’naradin boy. They were looking for people sneaking into the city, not out of it.
The contrast between the District and the rest of Eheene was stark. Wide, cobbled streets and high, marble houses were replaced with narrow, unpaved alleys and low wooden hovels, and there were no lacy bridges, no oily canals. The streets in the rest of the city were all but abandoned this late, but the District thrived at night. People staggered from the multitudes of bars and brothels laughing, fighting and shouting in a confluence of languages. Honest peddlers hawked on every corner, yodeling about everything from cups to locks to ceramic piping. Others whispered from the alleys, selling tiny, leather pouches full of delezine and the glass pipes to smoke it in, or sex, or slaves, or all three. Once, a few years back when she’d been there on another job, Syrina had been offered a wailing infant.
The bronze piping that fed Eheene’s naphtha lamps was mostly cleverly concealed by the elegant architecture on the citizen’s side of the wall. In the Foreigner’s District aging copper piping ran along rooftops from building to building, or led along the edges of the muddy streets, half-exposed and green with patina. In other sections the pipes had burst generations ago and never replaced. Now those streets were lit with torches and candles flickered behind crookedly shuttered windows.
The District might be alive in the middle of the night, but Lees’ office wasn’t going to be, so she made her way to an inn she’d used before–an ancient, sprawling, dilapidated mess universally known for some reason as the Cranky Maiden, even though the sign over the brilliant orange door showed only a bed and a spilled, pewter mug. It was less than a span from Exporter Row.
Syrina swaggered in, looking drunk enough to not get noticed but not so drunk that someone might try to rob her, and put down two N’naradin tin Three-Sides from Ormo’s infinite coffers. Enough for a private room for a fortnight, plus another ten copper balls to be sure she got one where the locks worked.
The main floor of the Cranky Maiden was a high ceilinged common room with a dozen long tables and a bar that ran the length of the back wall. Behind the bar were doors that led to various private meeting rooms, the kitchens and the cellar. Across the front of the room filthy windows let in murky, yellow light. Two unstable-looking staircases led up to a mezzanine that ran above the bar. Along it were smaller, more private tables and two doors that led back into the sleeping areas. The one on the right led to a series of dorms, each with a furnace in the center and twenty or so cots. The left one led to the private rooms, and that’s where Syrina stumbled. She found her door, made sure the locks really did work, and settled in.
The bed was small, but the linens were more or less clean and Syrina was more comfortable sleeping on the floor, anyway. One of the walls was the chimney for the fireplace in the kitchen, so it was uncomfortably warm even with the window open, which in turn was small and as dirty as the ones in the common area and looked out onto the wooden face of building opposite, so close she could almost touch it. That was good, because she could climb out that way if she had to. Triglav found the window a few minutes after she settled in and perched on the sill to watch her.
Syrina spent two nights and three days lurking around Lees’ warehouse, watching all the comings and goings, and followed some of the more interesting goings when it looked like they were up to no good. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but she wasn’t one to jump into a situation without checking out all the players first, if she had a choice about it.
She spent another two days in her room doctoring the old archived documents she’d gotten from Ormo’s library, changing what she could and faking the rest, along with the seal, until even the merchant whose name she was forging wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from one written by their own hand. As a rule, a Kalis needed to be more thorough than her target, and Lees was probably going to be as thorough as they came.
In the end she was satisfied that she had all the information she was going to get without having a look inside Lees’ place. She took one more night to go back to the palace and confirm a few points with Ormo, then allowed herself a few hours of sleep at The Cranky Maiden.
As she drifted off, she felt Triglav again find his spot on the windowsill.
Exporter Row was quiet in the early afternoon drizzle compared to the rest of the District. A few warehousing goons moved here and there, and once she needed to make way for a cart laden with bricks and long wooden dowels pulled by two shaggy, black camels, but an hour after noon most of the people were already in the work yards and warehouses, doing whatever it was they were paid to do. The air stank with smoke from the N’naradin steamships anchored in the harbor, and her eyes burned.
Xereks Lees’ place was easy to find. Exporter Row was eighteen blocks long and two blocks wide, running along the northeast side of the commercial docks. His was the nicest building, if not quite the largest. Its wood was painted white, the high windows were cleaner than those of the Cranky Maiden’s, and “LEES” was painted in wide, red letters, both across the side of the warehouse and above the door of the smaller, adjacent office.
Syrina entered the office without knocking, ignoring the sign that said “PRIVATE–NO ENTERY.”
The man behind the desk had a gaunt face and pudgy body, and lingered in that indeterminate age between thirty and fifty. What was left of his thin black hair was cropped short. He looked over his shoulder at the newcomer from where he was fiddling with a row of dark, wooden filing cabinets that stood at attention along the back wall on either side of the door that led to Lees’ office. He wore loose, well-tailored, dark green trousers and a black satin vest, and he sported three large gems, red, black, and yellow, in rings on his right hand. “This is a private business,” he said to the boy hovering in the doorway. “Didn’t you see the sign on the door? Are you lost?”
The lad appeared young, even among the N’naradin deckhands stranded in Eheene’s Foreigner’s District, who averaged under seventeen, but his boyish cheeks, still free of stubble, were painted with burns, and his large green eyes were old and cold as glass.
“You mean you’re not expecting me?” The youth scowled, and his scarred brow furrowed. His N’naradin accent was thick, mushing his words together and rendering him almost unintelligible.
The man behind the counter only smirked and turned back to his filing. “Hardly.” His tone was dismissive.
The boy sighed as if he weren’t really surprised at the cold reception and stepped into the office, taking a seat in one of the two straight-backed wooden chairs opposite the plain reception desk. “My name is Silas Narn. Shenaa Marik sent me to offer a proposal to Mr. Lees. You were supposed to have got a messenger hawk two or three days ago letting you know I was coming. I guess it never showed up. I assume you must be Lees’ secretary, Orvaan. You fit his description, anyway.”
The pear-shaped man behind the desk finally turned at Shenaa Marik’s name, but his expression was no more inviting. “Yes. I am Orvaan.” He studied Silas a moment and snorted for good measure. “Marik. The naphtha merchant? I assume that’s who you’re referring to. You claim she is now using foreign rabble to deliver her business proposals?”
Silas missed the insult, or simply wasn’t bothered by it. “As was supposed to have been explained already by way of the hawk, Miss Marik and most of her regular people are indisposed at one of her refineries. She hired me many months ago as a valve operator so I could earn passage back to Fom. I have since done so, but I’d already decided to stay on with Miss Marik, who has encouraged me to work towards Skalkaad citizenship. She has rewarded my loyalty with less dangerous jobs away from the refineries and has promised to sponsor me when my citizenship interview comes up in five or six years.” He eyed the scowl tugging at the corners of Orvaan’s mouth. “At least, they’re supposed to be less dangerous jobs,” he added. Then he cleared his throat. “Again, at least some of that was probably explained in the hawk message that you say never came.”
Orvaan’s expression managed to grow even darker, but he only asked, “So then, why are you here?”
Silas reached into his tattered jacket and produced a neatly folded letter, sealed with a blob of white wax stamped with Shenaa Marik’s seal: the eight angular, pointed petals of a stylized navaras flower. “As I said, I have a letter to deliver. A proposition.”
Orvaan reached out to take it, but Silas pulled it away from him and tucked it back into the hidden pocket of his jacket.
“For Mr. Lees, only,” Silas said. “Ms. Marik was very clear. I’m to receive his answer in person, as any further actions I take depend on his response.”
“Well, I’m not just going to let you in to see Mr. Lees based on your word and some mysterious letter I’m not allowed to see. He’s a busy man,” Orvaan said, but there was a hint of hesitation in his voice now.
Silas rolled his eyes. “Once again, more information was supposed to have already come by hawk days ago. Miss Marik, Mr. Lees, and a few others suffer from some sort of mutual problem and Miss Marik thinks she’s found a solution. She instructed me to get a response from Mr. Lees first. If Mr. Lees agrees, I am to approach the others. If he declines, I am to return to her. If you want more information, you’ll need to let me in to see Mr. Lees, and he can read the letter himself, then tell you about it, if he wants to tell you about it. Which is no more my business than this letter is yours. With all due respect.”
Orvaan ground his teeth, mind churning. The last thing he wanted was to grant this little foreign prat some sort of perceived victory by letting him in to see Lees, but his own options were limited if the boy was telling the truth, and only Lees would know for certain. His only other choice was to take the letter by force and see for himself what it said, but if it was indeed a proposal beneficial to his boss, Lees would have him spit and roasted for blowing the opportunity, not to mention doing irreparable harm to whatever business relationship existed between Xereks Lees and Shenaa Marik. No, the only thing left to him was to go into Lees’ office and ask the man himself what he should do with this urchin.
“Wait here,” Orvaan said gruffly after a long silence. He turned and went through the door behind the desk, locking it behind him.
He came out some time later to find Silas leaning back in the chair, feet propped on Orvaan’s desk, looking idly around and chewing his tongue in thought. The boy’s eyes found Orvaan as the door opened, his smile amused.
The expression made the top of Orvaan’s balding head grow red with anger, but his boss had spoken. “Mr. Lees will see you, now,” he said through clenched teeth.
Silas’ smile didn’t change, and the boy only offered a nod of thanks as he brushed past Orvaan into Xereks Lees’ office. Orvaan followed silently behind.
The room was paneled in dark wood, the floor covered with a thick, wool rug the color of bronze. On three walls, nine massive portraits hung of men alternately dour and jolly-looking, all with hawkish noses, thin lips, and slightly slanted eyes. Nine generations of Lees’. The newest one hung directly behind the desk in the bold, almost cartoonish style that had been popular among the low merchant elite the past few years and oddly mirrored the man seated in front of it.
The fourth wall was covered from carpet to ceiling by a black and gold mural of interlocking tubes, cleverly concealing a door that must lead onto the warehouse floor.
The man seated behind the ornate, marble desk was middle-aged, with a few flecks of grey salting his black hair and close, trim beard. His hair was pulled back into a slick pony tail, showing off a slightly receding hairline. He wore a large tin pendant around his neck, fashioned in a simple Skalkaad Spiral. Despite the brooding, brightly colored portrait of himself hanging directly behind him, his smile was pleasant. His pale blue eyes gleamed, and if he felt any malice towards Silas Narn or concern over what the boy’s message might contain, it didn’t appear on his face.
“Orvaan tells me you are here representing Shenaa Marik.” Lees’ voice was smooth and baritone.
Silas nodded.
“So how is that old bird, anyway?”
Silas forced a smile. “As good as she’s ever been since I’ve met her, though I doubt she’d appreciate being called an ‘old bird.’”
Lees grunted a throaty laugh. “Marik has always had a knack for bringing out loyalty in her employees. I’m sure she’s pleased at her continued success in that regard. Now, you have a message?”
“Yes sir.” Silas reached into his jacket and produced the letter, which he tossed onto the desk.
Lees cracked the seal and was silent as his eyes scanned the page, his expression unreadable. “Do you know what this says?”
Silas nodded. “Not exactly, but I know the general details. She wants you to break a contract with someone so she can legally do the same. Another merchant–Skaald, I think. I remember the name because it’s so much like ‘Skalkaad.’ Then you both can resume your business with someone with more stable prices. If you agree, I am to go to the other merchants on my list and convince them to do the same.” If he heard Orvaan’s teeth grating behind him, he chose to ignore it.
Lees nodded. His eyes traced over the letter again before he turned his attention back to Silas. “And if I decline?”
Silas shrugged. “Nothing, as far as I know. I go back to Miss Marik and tell her you weren’t game.”
“So, my participation will determine whether she proceeds with the contract dissolution or not?”
Silas shrugged again. “Miss Marik doesn’t want to break her contract unless everyone else does, too.”
“Yes,” Lees nodded. “That would be the most legally expedient thing to do.”
Silas shrugged a third time. “She seemed to think that if you were on board, the rest would be easy enough to convince. She told me to start at the top.”
Lees’ smile was gaunt. “Flattering, but probably not inaccurate.” He sat in silence for a minute, thin lips pressed together, thinking.
“Hmm,” he grumbled finally. “I realize that there is legal precedent in what Marik seeks to do. Unfortunately, I must nevertheless decline. I’ve worked with Skaald for many years, and we’ve formed a trusting relationship with each other–a rare enough thing when one has done business in Skalkaad as long as I have. I would not throw such a commodity away for a temporary savings of tin, no matter how much tin it might be. Especially when Skaald’s prices are the result of security issues that those such as Marik and I have avoided only by mere chance.”
“So that’s what you want me to tell Miss Marik?”
“With my sincerest apologies.”
Silas stood and bowed. “Then my business with you is done. Thank you for your time, Mr. Lees.”
“And yours,” Lees said, remaining seated as Silas turned to go. “Orvaan, please show Mr. Narn to the door.”
The sun was setting sharp and bright into the east end of Exporter Row. Syrina bobbed out of Lees’ office and turned west toward the District, glad to keep the light out of her eyes.
The Row was busy this time of evening. Camel carts rumbled by in both directions, their drivers cursing and shouting at the snarling, spitting animals, themselves as ill-tempered as their beasts, which were still shaggy from the brutal winter. A few steam trucks operated by the wealthier traders bumped along the roads too, hardly faster than the camels in the crowd. Their engines bleated and vomited smoke from the tarfuel they ran on, which was five times cheaper than pure Skald naphtha, but neither as volatile or clean-burning. High tide wouldn’t peak for another three or four hours, but already a steady trickle of sailors and cargo was filtering its way to the docks to the south. There was a chill to the breeze, but it was still warm for so early in the spring. The air stank of smoke and oil and fish and camel shit.
Syrina was glad she’d been able to weasel into Lees’ office. She couldn’t glean anything concrete from the encounter, but the only reason she’d gone in the first place was to get a look around. The low merchant’s background had all but assured her that he would decline Silas’ proposal–whatever else anyone could say about Xereks Lees, once he signed a contract, he stuck with it. Good thing, too. If he’d accepted Marik’s offer, which was, of course, entirely non-existent, it could have made things down the road awkward.
She turned south toward the docks, taking a casual look down the Row as she did so, memorizing faces. She didn’t think she’d roused any suspicions, but she still wanted to be certain Silas wasn’t going to be followed.
Whoever he was, Orvaan hadn’t been an ordinary secretary. One of his rings had a hidden hinge where he could conceal poison or something more unpredictable, and from the way he stood Syrina was guessing he had a knife hidden under his left pant leg. Probably other weapons, too. He was confident that he could tell when someone wasn’t being honest with him. He was probably quite good at it too, when it wasn’t a Kalis doing the lying. That meant his boss had confidence in him. Lees’ profile didn’t carve him out to be the sort of guy who hired people as egotistical as Orvaan unless they had something to back it up with. Orvaan was a hit-man and an interrogator, possibly an outright torturer.
One other thing was certain, too–the files in the lobby that Orvaan kept pretending to be busy with weren’t going to tell her much, even if she did ever manage to see them. No successful business in Skalkaad was going to keep their records in the most easily accessed room in the building, in plain view of anyone who wandered in. Whatever was in those cabinets was probably real in the sense that if Syrina looked into them they would cover legitimate transactions, but she’d bet her tattoos they weren’t going to tell her what Lees was actually up to. The whole setup was begging to show everyone who walked in how clean everything was, and only criminals were that proud of looking like they weren’t committing crime.
Back at the Cranky Maiden Syrina went up to Silas’ room for a while, then back down, still wearing the boy’s face. Triglav didn’t make a personal appearance, but she could sense him somewhere above the inn, waiting for her to come out again.
Near the front door sat two inconspicuous dock men that she’d seen earlier on the Row, first a few minutes after leaving Lees’ place, then again as she passed the piers a few blocks from the Cranky Maiden. Both were stocky, with round noses, wide-set eyes and black hair, though one was balding and the other sported a pony tail similar to Lees’. The latter was a head shorter. Most likely they were related. Probably brothers. Now they were clinging to clay mugs of glog, occasionally lifting them to their lips without really drinking. Too-restless eyes settled on Silas for a little too long, before turning away to pointedly look anywhere else.
Syrina sauntered to the bar and ordered her own mug of glog, buying a little time while she decided what to do. She was sure her performance as Silas Narn had been flawless. The fact that Lees was so paranoid he had the boy followed anyway didn’t bode well. If Lees was having Narn watched, he was certainly going to check out his story. In a day, maybe two, Lees would hear back from Marik and find out that she’d never heard of the kid. Then Narn would have both low merchants on his case. Lees would keep these goons on him until then, then hand down the order to nab him so Lees and Marik could take turns with him on the proverbial or not so proverbial rack until they could find out who he really worked for, then dump whatever was left of him into the harbor.
Of course, it would never go that far. Syrina could dispose of Silas Narn long before that happened, but that in itself was going to cause problems. Lees would still find out Narn didn’t really work for Marik, and when Narn disappeared under the noses of his two hired goons it wasn’t going to help Lees’ paranoia problem one bit.
Well, she thought, first things first.
Kakrik jabbed his brother with an elbow, making him dribble a few drops of brown glog onto his dusty, tan work vest. “There he is.”
Lasaav, who’d been staring into the crowd boiling within the Cranky Maiden with a vacant look, made an annoyed grunting sound and turned to follow his younger brother’s gaze towards the bar while he dabbed uselessly at the spill with his free hand. Silas Narn stood at one end of it, nursing his own cup. “Ah, yes. That’s him alright. Good. I was beginning to think he wasn’t going to come back downstairs until tomorrow.”
“Alright, alright,” Kakrik said, his voice low despite the din of the common room. “Don’t let him catch you staring at him.”
“He’s not paying any attention to us,” Lasaav grumbled, but he turned back to face his brother. “So, now what? Does Lees want us to just follow him or what?”
“That’s what Orvaan said. Whenever he goes. Wherever. We follow, until he gets where he’s going, then we report back. Easy. He’s supposed to be heading north somewhere, tonight or tomorrow.”
“If Lees knows where he’s going, then why do we have to follow him?”
Kakrik shrugged. “Suspicious, I guess. You know how Mr. Lees can be. Not my job to ask Orvaan why the boss wants us to do anything, and it’s not yours, neither. Just needs to be sure the kid is who he said he was. Simple is that. Far as we’re concerned, anyway.”
Lasaav frowned. “So, who did he say he was?”
Kakrik gave his brother an annoyed look. “You know as much as I do. Did you just not pay attention at all when Orvaan gave us the job this afternoon?”
“I did,” Lasaav argued weakly, but didn’t add anything further.
They stood in silence for a while. Kakrik elbowed Lasaav again, who was ready for it this time and deftly moved his mug to avoid another spill. “He’s going back upstairs.”
“I see that. Do we follow?”
“Unless he’s going out the window, there’s no need. Just wait here.”
There was another few, silence filled minutes between the two.
“What if he’s going to bed?” Lasaav asked eventually. “Are we supposed to stand here by the door all ni–”
“No, and shut up. He’s coming down. Looks like he’s got his stuff. Checkin’ out late. Let’s move away from the door.”
They jostled their way to a subtler vantage point toward the middle of the room, shielded from view by the still steadily growing crowd of vagrants, foreigners, and affluent citizens looking for the kinds of fun not easily found on the streets of Eheene-proper.
Silas Narn brushed through the mob, unaware of the eyes on him, and out the front door into the District. Thirty seconds later Kakrik and Lasaav followed.
“I wonder what he’s doing leaving now?” Lasaav reflected out loud as they wound their way through the packed, dusty streets, barely keeping track of the back of Narn’s head a half-block in front of them. “It’s dark out now. He can’t take the roads north in the dark. He should at least wait until Eyerise.”
Kakrik didn’t bother answering, and even as he spoke, Lasaav’s voice trailed off. It was obvious Narn was heading not north, but south, toward the public docks.
The press of bodies grew thicker as they approached the harbor and the tide began to reach its peak. The flow of people was still surging toward the moored ships, but, like two leaves caught behind another in a river’s current, it was impossible for the brothers to get any closer to Narn than they already were, and Narn’s short stature made any glimpse of him through the mass of humanity, lumbering steam trucks, and camels less and less frequent. By the time they reached the docks the boy had vanished completely somewhere between the islands of light cast by the rows of naphtha lamps that lined the piers.
Kakrik looked frantically about while Lasaav climbed up a naphtha lantern pole to see above the press, ignoring the looks of irritation cast his way by the people swarming around him. It was no use. Silas Narn was gone.
“Well, at least we know he boarded a ship,” Lasaav said weakly, hopping down from the lamp.
“Yeah,” Kakrik scowled. “Which one?”
It was Lasaav’s turn to shrug. “Well, it’s not like we don’t have anything at all to tell Mr. Lees. He thought Narn was heading north, but he got on a ship instead. That’s something. It proves the kid was a liar, anyway.”
Kakrik took one more futile look around, desperately, hopelessly, seeking the short form of Silas Narn on the deck of one of the nearer ships, but there was no indication as to which one he’d boarded. “Yeah,” he sighed, “It’s something, I guess. Let’s get back to Mr. Lees’. Orvaan will probably have some shit job for us to do, now that we bungled this one.”
Thanks to her timing with the high tide, it was easy for Syrina to lose the two goons once she got to the ships. Then she slipped into the murky, frigid water of the harbor, unnoticed by the seething hoard around her.
Holding her breath under the hull of a N’naradin loading barge, she peeled off the clothes and face of Silas Narn and hauled them to her favorite drainage chamber under the docks. It was muddy, damp, and cold, and it stank of rotting fish. She’d used it before, and she’d stayed in worse places than that.
There she burned the whole outfit after dousing it with the naphtha that she kept there for that purpose. The chamber filled with steam and grey smoke, and the scent of burning wax. And so, she thought, thus ended the life of Silas Narn.
Syrina reflected that Lees was probably hearing about Narn’s disappearance right about now, which meant she wasn’t even going to get the luxury of a couple of days before the exporter found out Narn didn’t really work for Marik. The question became, then, what would Lees think? Corporate espionage, most likely. Someone trying to sabotage his relationship with Skaald. That sort of thing was common enough in Skalkaad. Or maybe, given Narn’s origins and his flight to the departing ships, a spy for the Church of N’narad.
Either way it meant the same thing for Syrina: Lees was going to beef up his watch at the warehouse before she could get back there and do anything unsavory.
The extra security might be a hassle. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to be too concerned about it. She had yet to come across a mercenary detail she wasn’t able to handle, and it was worth it to go in already knowing the layout of his office. As long as she didn’t screw anything up they probably wouldn’t even notice she’d been there.
Syrina thought the Eheene docks at low tide were probably some of the most disgusting and impressive things that existed anywhere on Eris. When the tide was out, the biggest ships needed to move four spans out from the harbor or else sink into black mud six or seven hands deep. They carried smaller barges they could deploy to dock, where they perched on decaying wooden posts so they wouldn’t get stuck when the tide came back in. Sometimes the smaller boats got stuck anyway. There were always at least a dozen huge steam ships waiting in the deeper water, belching black smoke that wafted this way and that on the eternal wind blowing across the bay, occasionally drowning Eheene in its stench. Only a few of the wealthiest shipping companies used clean-burning naphtha engines, and virtually all of those were Skald and trafficked naphtha anyway, so could bear the cost.
Workers got to the ships across wooden walkways that rested crookedly on the muck when the water was out, and floated when it was in. They were composed of slimy planks, grey and waterlogged, dangerous even when people weren’t carrying heavy merchandise or naphtha kegs between ships. Everything was on a strict timetable. If one ship fell behind, they all did. If profits suffered, so did the workers.
Syrina hunkered on the eves of a dilapidated warehouse overlooking the docks. Triglav settled down next to her, his gaze following hers across the piers and mudflats.
She watched the longshoremen and stevedores, toiling and oblivious. Her thoughts kept turning back to Ormo. “Why did he give you to me?” she asked Triglav, who turned his head to study her, eyes narrowed slightly.
The question didn’t seem quite right, anyhow. The owl didn’t feel like a possession as much as a companion. She supposed she could have asked, “Why did he give us to each other?” but the thought was too sentimental. Anyway, it didn’t matter–Kalis had neither possessions nor companions, unless you counted the Ma’is they worked for. And the Ma’is did everything for a reason.
Her sudden doubt brought her thoughts around to her childhood, such as it was, and Ormo’s reasons back then.
She had had many instructors on her path to becoming a Kalis, each one crueler than the last. All of them but Ormo. Zigra stood out the most, her memory of the unassuming old man sharp even now. She smiled ruefully to herself. It had been a long time since she’d given much thought to Zigra and his tests.
She had probably been seven or eight. Zigra was a language instructor, grey bearded and wiry. His test took place in a massive room, filled with junk. Crates, broken naphtha machinery, heaps of rotting ropes. The objective was to stay hidden while answering the questions he shouted to her. About history and politics mostly. She realized later that the questions, and even the answers were secondary. It was instead a test of her responses under pressure and in pain. He would ask them in Skald and she was required to respond in whatever language the question pertained to. A question about the Church required an answer in flawless N’naradin; a question about the Black Wall required her to use the proper nomad dialect, depending on the details of the question. While she answered, she was to remain hidden. It was a lesson in history, language, and the use of her tattoos all in one.
Every time she was seen, every time she answered wrong, or Zigra heard a hint of her accent, he would break one of her fingers. The first few times he summoned her to the center of the room to do this, but she quickly caught on and remained hidden. Then he would need to find her himself, still asking questions, her still answering.
It was the worst of the days she always remembered when she thought of Zigra. All her fingers on her right hand already broken, his questions all about obscure tribes in the Yellow Desert because he knew she always mixed them up and got the accents wrong. Distracted by her pain, she managed to evade him for seven more mistakes before her involuntary whimpering gave her away.
So defiant she’d been when he’d grabbed her by the neck. Seven mistakes and only five more fingers? What more could he do to her? She refused to cry as he had calmly broken the fingers on her left hand, starting with the thumb, but when he wordlessly snapped her arm over his knee at the elbow she screamed, and her cries grew shriller when he did the same to the other one.
Syrina smiled humorlessly down onto the docks when she thought about it, now. Twelve mistakes and only ten fingers. What else was he supposed to do?
As she lay crying on the floor at Zigra’s feet, broken arms laying uselessly on the floor at her sides, the old man’s face still maddeningly without expression, Ormo was suddenly there, lifting her up. He carried her to his own bed, set her bones himself, and fed her chocolate with his own hands. Ormo had always saved her from the cruelty of the instructors, but it was then, as she lay in his bed chewing on chocolate through her tears, that she realized she would do anything for him. She loved him more than a father, with every fiber of her being, just as he loved her. He fed her all her meals himself for three days, gently scooping food into her mouth with a spoon like she was a baby, until her arms and fingers had healed well enough to endure more training, but it was on that first day that he owned her, and every act of kindness after that only reinforced her loyalty.
And then came Triglav.
No, Ormo did nothing without a reason. “So, what’s the reason for you?” She asked the owl, giving him a scratch on the top of his head.
He blinked at her and gave a little sigh.
As the tide began to trickle in again, a few hours after sunset the night following Narn’s disappearance, she headed toward Lees’ warehouse across the rooftops, naked and unseen. Triglav soared silently above her.