A Discourse in Steel Read online

“Make anyone yet?” Egil whispered.

  “Not yet—”

  Motion drew Nix’s eye, about a block away, dark shadows crossing the flickering light of the streetlamps.

  “And there they are.”

  “How many?” Egil asked.

  “Two,” Nix said. “One on each side of the street. About a block back.”

  Egil put a fist in one of his palms. “Let’s find a spot.”

  “Aye.”

  They continued on toward the Poor Wall and their tail crept closer.

  “Ballsy,” Egil said.

  “Sloppy,” Nix answered. “With them this close, you’re going to have to move fast.”

  “I can move fast.”

  “I guess we’ll see.”

  They eyed the alleys as they walked along, looking for a likely spot. Ool struck two, summoning bad memories for both of them.

  “Fakkin’ alleys don’t look the same at this hour anymore, do they?” Nix said.

  “Truth,” Egil said.

  “Minnear’s full again tonight, too.”

  Egil grunted. “Well, you’re not planning to grease up any alleys with corpse tallow, are you? Then let’s not worry about it.” The priest indicated an alley to their left. “This goes through to Crooked Way. It’ll do.”

  “Aye.”

  They ducked down the wide, unlit alley that separated a two-story draper’s shop and a cordwainer’s store. Neither building had windows or doors that opened onto the alley. Barrels, some scrap wood, and piles of compost and rubbish lay at intervals along the alley’s length, which went on for thirty paces before opening onto Crooked Way.

  “Run along, priest,” Nix said, and shoved his big friend deeper into the alley. “They’ll be along quick. You don’t want me to have all the fun.”

  Egil sprinted toward Crooked Way, the tread of his boots like hammer blows on the cobblestone. Meanwhile Nix crouched behind the barrels near one wall, falchion drawn.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The streetlamps painted the shadows of their pursuers across the road in front of the alley. They were hustling, but slowed at the alley mouth and peeked around the corner, wary. Seeing no one, they stepped into the alley mouth, peering into the darkness.

  “Shite,” one said. “No doors. We lose ’em?”

  “We go round to Crooked Way,” the other one whispered. “Pick them up there.”

  As they turned to leave, Nix intentionally bumped a barrel. The sound caused both men to whirl around and draw their swords, the blades short and wide.

  The moment they did, Nix bolted. He feigned a stumble as he pelted down the alley.

  They cursed and gave chase, as he’d known they would.

  “Check the barrels for the big one!” one of them said to the other.

  “Not there!” said the other, barely slowing.

  Halfway down the alley, Nix whirled and filled his off hand with the haft of his hand axe. The two men skidded to a stop, one bumping into the other, the leader nearly falling. Both breathing hard.

  Behind the men, Nix saw Egil’s shadow reaching across the alley mouth. Nix backed off from the men, as if frightened.

  “What do you want?” he said, letting his voice quaver. “Why’re you following me?”

  Behind them Egil slid down the alley, as quiet as a spider.

  The men shared a look and the shorter one with the beard nodded.

  “No one said we couldn’t kill ’em,” he said.

  Nix backed off another step. “Kill me? What is that now?”

  The men put on hard faces and spaced themselves in an arc before Nix, blades at the ready.

  “What is this now?” Nix said.

  “You cross the guild, you pay in blood,” the taller of them said, and lunged forward, stabbing at Nix’s abdomen.

  Egil and Nix burst into motion at the same instant. Nix sidestepped the stab, stepped forward, and slammed the back of his hand axe into the man’s temple, sending him to the ground with a groan. The other man bounded forward, stabbing at Nix’s chest, but Egil snatched a fistful of the man’s shirt, then the seat of his trousers.

  Surprise raised the man’s voice an octave. “What in the—”

  The priest spun and slammed the man headfirst into the alley wall. A meaty thud and he went limp. The priest threw him atop his fallen guild brother, their limbs an awkward tangle.

  “I think they’re in love,” Nix said.

  Egil checked the one he’d dropped.

  “Dead?” Nix asked.

  “No,” Egil said, and looked up at Nix with raised eyebrows.

  Nix frowned. “No point in killing the slubbers if we don’t have to. They’re down, so we’re clear of eyes. Putting the Upright Man down is how we send the right message.”

  “Aye,” Egil said. He stood, kicking one of the guildsmen for good measure.

  “You’re lucky slubbers tonight,” Nix said to the two downed guildsmen.

  Egil said, “Some of your boys won’t be getting off so easy.”

  “You were as loud as a cart ox coming down that alley,” Nix said.

  “It’s well that your blather drowned out my approach then.”

  “Blather? I thought it more a ballyhoo. I was acting.”

  “I’m staying with blather.”

  “Really?” One of the guildsmen groaned so Nix kicked him in the head. The man went quiet. “Fair enough. Blather it is, then.”

  They drew their hoods and walked quickly through Dur Follin’s streets, violence on their minds. They saw other pedestrians now and again as they moved west, very brave or very foolish souls with no fear of Blackalley, but they avoided them. Their path took them under the smooth, sharp-cornered limestone spire of Ool’s clock, the tallest structure in Dur Follin save the Archbridge. The sound of the perpetual cascade that powered the clock’s inner workings sounded like a gently snoring giant. Graffiti covered the limestone. Some of the vulgarity was creative enough to make Nix smile.

  Egil led them, knowing from his discussion with Merelda where they should enter the sewers, which weren’t proper sewers at all, but the Undercity, a honeycomb of underground chambers and passageways dug by the ancient civilization upon whose bones Dur Follin had been built. Some of the passages had been expanded and put to use by the city as sewers, aqueducts, or storage, but many had been commandeered by whatever squatter could take and hold them. Nix knew firsthand that certain vile cults used the Undercity to build shrines to gods whose worship was illegal even among the otherwise tolerant citizenry of Dur Follin. Nix had never seen a convincing map of the Undercity, wasn’t sure that one could be drawn. Rumor said the layout of the Undercity changed from time to time when the sorcery used to build it ran amok. Rooms and halls disappeared, shrunk, or expanded, or new ones materialized where before there’d been none. No one even knew how deep the passages actually went. Some said they connected under the Meander with secret tunnels that led down from the Archbridge’s monumental pylons. Some said they extended down deep and then expanded east under the Deadmire. The foolish said they extended down to the center of the world, where demons of the earth plotted the fall of men.

  Nix figured he and Egil would explore them in detail one day, provided they lived to see sunrise.

  Egil led them down Broadstreet, which ran roughly parallel to Mandin’s Way. Several grated openings dotted the wide avenue, all of them locked, all of them leading down to the Undercity. Egil led them to the nearest, in a part of the street ill lit by the streetlamps. Dark shops with closed shutters rose on either side. The street was empty but for them. Not even the Watch.

  “Right here,” Egil said.

  Stink rose from the grated hole, the reek of old rot and new sewage. Graffiti decorated the cobblestone near the rusted, hinged grate, much of it worn away by the weather, but some still visible.

  I pissed down this grate.

  Dark down there. But not as dark as my heart.

  Jherek is a bunghole.

  A large padlock fastene
d one side of the grate to a U-shaped bar set into the stone of the street. Nix could’ve picked it, of course, but it would’ve taken longer than they could spare. Besides, he wanted to try out his new toy.

  He reached into his bag, withdrew the magical key and an apple, then whispered a word in the Language of Creation. The key warmed in his hand and the bit yawned. Nix held the apple before the key’s mouth.

  “Give us a carrot,” said the key.

  “A what?”

  Egil snorted.

  Muttering, Nix shoved the apple back into his satchel and pulled out a carrot he’d taken from Gadd’s cellar. The key took a bite and chewed.

  “Doesn’t it shite in your satchel?” Egil asked.

  “No it does not. The magic of the key consumes what it eats. The food partially powers the magic. All of which you’d know if you weren’t a simple hillman of limited faculties.”

  “At least I don’t have a key shitting in my pack.”

  “Didn’t I just say it doesn’t shite in there? And it’s not a pack. It’s a satchel.”

  “So you say.”

  Smiling, Nix stuck the sated key into the padlock. He felt it vibrate as it squirmed itself into shape, then gave it a turn. Tumblers fell and the lock opened with a satisfying click. Nix looked back, holding up a finger, waiting for it, waiting…

  “Gewgaws,” Egil harrumphed.

  Nix grinned and tried to pull up the gate. He stopped trying before he ripped something.

  “Maybe I’ll just get the lock,” he said, and detached the padlock.

  “Grates are for simple hillmen, I guess,” said Egil.

  Nix stepped aside and the priest bent down and grabbed the grate. With only a mild grunt of exertion, he lifted it out of its seating. The screech of metal on stone broke the quiet of the night. Nix glanced around in alarm, but the street remained deserted. He put the key back into his satchel, took one of the silvered rods from his pack, and lit it with a matchstick, taking care not to confuse his ordinary matchsticks with the magical ones he’d used while summoning Blackalley.

  The tip took the flame, glowed a soft red and softly shot off a spark now and then. He dropped it down the shaft and it hit dry stone twenty rods down, lighting a passageway that went off in two directions.

  “Have a piece of chalk in that pack?” Egil asked.

  “Satchel,” Nix corrected, but handed over a piece of chalk.

  Egil quickly scratched his own graffiti on the cobblestone near the grate.

  Egil and Nix were here.

  Nix nodded, smiled. “Why not, by the gods?”

  With that, Nix lowered himself into the shaft, pressing the soles of his feet against one side and pushing his back against the other, slowly walking himself down. After he’d gone about five rods, Egil followed him in, sliding the grate back into place and placing the padlock back in its place. He didn’t lock it, but a Watchman would have to examine it closely to know it was unlocked.

  When they reached the bottom, Nix took his falchion in one hand and the glow rod in the other, while Egil put the haft of a hammer in each fist. A small scattering of rocks and other debris lay on the smooth stone floor, probably bits of junk dropped down the grate by children. The air crowded them, a stale cloak, and it smelled moldy and vaguely of piss. Light from the glow rod illuminated less than a candle. At four paces Egil looked like a hill of muscle and hammers and anger. But Nix figured the dim red light would be harder to spot and wouldn’t betray them as readily as a torch. The sound of their breathing bounced off the walls. A narrow corridor of cut stone stretched off before them.

  Egil took the mail shirts from his large pack, handed the smaller to Nix, and they both worked them on over their tunics, both of them cursing to the sound of ringing links.

  “I feel like a stuffed sausage in this,” Egil said.

  “Aye,” Nix agreed, testing his range of motion. “How’s a man supposed to kill someone in this nonsense?”

  “Let’s go find out,” Egil said, and they headed off in the direction of the guildhouse, walking dark, musty corridors in a bubble of dim red light. The sound of dripping water came from somewhere and their breath and the soft ring of their mail seemed loud in the quiet. Between the weight of the armor and the close air, Nix was sweating before they’d covered two hundred paces.

  “This keeps up and these slubbers will smell me coming.”

  Egil led them on, turning here and there, through corridors wide and narrow, but always moving in a generally southwest direction. Nix didn’t question him about the route. A decade of robbing tombs all across Ellerth had given both of them a head for maps and a keen sense of direction, even underground.

  From ahead a slow current of air carried the pungent stink of sewage.

  “That’s not me,” Nix whispered.

  Egil grinned as the narrow hall was bisected by a wide corridor. Walkways flanked a sunken channel of still water that stretched off into the darkness left and right. Filth floated on the surface of the water, shapeless patties of stink. The odor made Nix’s eyes water.

  “Leads out to the Meander,” Egil said, pointing with his chin to the west.

  A heavy rain or winter melt would raise the Meander and rinse the channel, but otherwise the water sat there, stagnant, a stew of shite and trash.

  “City needs better engineers,” Nix said.

  Minding their step on the slimed walkway, they leaped the sewer channel to the other side.

  Nix smelled himself and winced at the reek. “If I’d known this little excursion was going to put such a stink in my clothes, I might’ve let these guildboys slide. But now that I smell like a turd, we might as well kill a few of them.”

  “Or more than a few,” Egil said. The priest stopped and visibly consulted the map in his mind. “We follow this for a bit. Then right down a side channel, then we’re under Mandin’s Way and close.”

  After they’d walked for a time, Nix said, “Walking through sewers is less fun than I imagined.”

  “Imagined yourself walking through sewage often, have you?”

  “Given the shite you’re prone to utter, I don’t have to imagine it at all.”

  Egil smiled, seemed about to say something in response, but stopped and held up a hand. He whispered, “Things are about to get more fun, I think. Listen.”

  From somewhere ahead, Nix heard someone clear his throat, then a soft cough. The sound bounced off the masonry, carried down the corridor. Nix used his hand to shield the meager light from the glow rod. They stood still for a time, listening, wondering if they’d been heard. Nothing from ahead.

  “That about where they should be?” Nix whispered.

  Egil nodded. “From there, there’s a concealed door to a stair that heads into the rooms under the guildhouse.”

  “And once we’re in?”

  “Fun’s in finding out,” Egil said.

  Nix frowned and stared at his friend, eyebrows raised.

  “I’m not to say that?” Egil asked.

  “That’s mine to say.”

  “I see.”

  “It sounds ridiculous when you say it.”

  “It sounds ridiculous when you say it, too.”

  “It does not. Wait…does it?”

  Egil ignored the question. “Once we’re in we’ll have to search for the Upright Man. Or get lucky. Possibly we could have planned this better.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Nix said. “Eh, did that sound ridiculous, too?”

  Egil grinned. “Kill the glow rod. They’ll have their own light.”

  Nix dropped the glow rod into the sewage channel, extinguishing it. Darkness enveloped them but it wasn’t entire. A glow came from ahead, the soft flickering glow of torches.

  Hugging the wall, weapons bare, the two crept forward in silence. The corridor and sewer channel split into a Y-shaped intersection. They followed the glow along the left-hand wall and crept to the corner. Nix crouched and peeked around.

  Ten paces down, four guil
dsmen sat on barrels to one side of the sewer sluice. One toyed with a dagger, two sat close, holding a whispered conversation, and one, heavyset, had his hands crossed over his ample stomach and his back against the wall, snoring. Two torches burned in makeshift sconces attached to the wall. All wore leather jacks and sharp steel. None looked alert. Nix imagined guard duty in the sewers was more punishment than posting.

  He leaned back from the corner and put his mouth to Egil’s ear. “Four men. This side. Ten paces. Slubbers, the lot.” He put his hand axe in its belt thong, drew a throwing dagger, and showed it to Egil. “I take the sleeper.”

  Egil nodded, hefted a hammer in his throwing hand. “I take whoever I feel like killing.”

  Nix counted down from three with his fingers and when he reached zero they ran around the corner, leaped the channel, and charged, hurling their weapons as they went.

  Egil’s hammer hummed as it spun toward the guildsman with the unsheathed dagger. The man looked up in shock for only a moment before Egil’s hammer slammed into his head and pulped his face, spraying the wall in blood and knocking him from his barrel.

  Nix’s dagger knifed neatly into the throat of the sleeping man. He woke only to die, grabbing at the dagger’s hilt, eyes wide, blood spurting around the shaft of steel. He rose, staggered, gasped, and fell facedown on the floor, the upper half of his body in the sewer channel.

  The two survivors, wide-eyed with surprise, cursed, drew blades, and shouted for aid. One of them went to the wall between the torch sconces and frantically worked some kind of mechanism. He pulled open a door concealed to look like the wall but before he could get through it, Egil, roaring, hit the half-open door at a full run. The man, caught between door and jamb, squealed with pain. Bones audibly broke and he spat a mouthful of blood while he stabbed weakly at Egil. The blade caught the priest but scraped along the outside of Egil’s mail.

  Meanwhile Nix drew his hand axe in his off hand and bounded at the other man, who backed away, short sword and dagger drawn. Nix crosscut at the man’s throat with his falchion, but the man parried with his dagger and returned a stab at Nix’s stomach with his short sword.

  Nix anticipated the counter and slipped sideways, avoiding the stab, then chopped down on the man’s arm with his hand axe. The edge sank to the bone and blood sprayed. The man shouted with pain, recoiled, his fearful eyes already seeing his end. Nix lunged in close and stabbed the man through the stomach, feeling his falchion scrape spine.