The Hand That Takes Page 13

  The call sounded again, so faint it was difficult to hear, and somehow too urgent to ignore. It was then Sal realized what was urging him. He reached into the pocket of his jerkin and slipped out the locket. It was warm to the touch, and it sent tendrils of energy surging through him. Sal stared at the tarnished gold, running a skeev-coated fingertip over the three vertical slashes.

  The locket seemed to drink in the golden-brown residue of the skeev.

  Sal pulled his finger back as though bitten, though he felt no pain, physical or otherwise. Instead, the current of energy flowing from the locket into the hand which held it seemed to increase tenfold. He felt stronger, faster, nigh on invincible.

  There was a boom of thunder, and Sal felt the storm closing in. Only, when he looked out Bartley’s window, he saw a clear night.

  It was happening again. Sal moved away from the window, fearing he would be pulled through just as he had on the night he’d stolen the locket. He still didn’t know whether the events that night had been real or imagined, but whatever the case he wasn’t willing to risk it.

  Sal looked at the locket. He thought about what Nabu had told him, and the recollection sent a shiver down his spine. This thing was dangerous, and Sal knew it. Nabu had said as much, hadn’t he? No, he had said more.

  “Destroy it,” Nabu had said.

  With one last look at the tarnished gold locket, Sal’s mind was decided. He slipped his cloak on, jammed the locket back into the pocket of his jerkin, and headed out the door.

  Once down the stairway, through the taproom, and outside the Hog Snout, Sal breathed deeply of the crisp night air. He made for South Bridge, weaving a route through alleys and side streets, past flophouses, warehouses, alehouses, skeev-houses, and whorehouses. He took the long way around to avoid the Magistrate’s Compound, cutting through Docker’s Avenue and up the Bayway, when he saw something that nearly caused him to trip over his own feet.

  A gang of street urchins twenty strong lined either side of the Bayway ten paces ahead of Sal. The instant he stopped, they moved to block the street ahead, closing in like a pack of feral dogs.

  When alone, or in small groups of two or three, street urchins often resorted to begging. They would position themselves on streets leading to and from marketplaces, or near the steps of Knöldrus Cathedral, grasping at skirt hems or shirt sleeves and pleading for iron dingés or scraps to soothe their aching bellies.

  They were harmless.

  But a gang of street urchins twenty strong was another matter entirely. They’d been known to prowl the streets of Low Town at night, setting ambushes in the quieter places and alleys, waiting for a lost noble or an alehouse drunkard to stumble past.

  Sal reached for his boot and drew his pigsticker. Nine inches of cold steel flashed in the moonlight as Sal readied himself for an attack.

  Twenty pairs of sunken eyes looked to the apparent leader, a pug-nosed, round-faced kid half a head taller than the next biggest, and nearly of a height with Sal.

  Sal backed away slowly, his pigsticker held out before him, a silent threat but not one to go unheard.

  Wordlessly the leader shook his head, and the gang dispersed, slinking back into the shadows, behind old fish crates and piles of rubbish and into the alcoves and alley mouths along the Bayway.

  Sal slipped into the nearest alley, tucked away his knife, and climbed up a loosely mortared wall. The air was cooler, fresher upon the rooftop. The slight breeze chilled his slick skin beneath sweat-soaked cloth.

  Moving through Low Town by rooftop was slower than walking the cobblestones, and although there were no clay-shingle roofs to contend with, the rooftops of Low Town presented dangers of their own. Many of the structures were old and had been left to deteriorate with time. Others were poorly built, with rafters too weak to support the weight of a man. Both the neglected and the poorly constructed had to be avoided. Some parts of Low Town, like the Kettle, the Lowers, the Narrows, and the Shoe, were simply impossible to navigate by rooftop, as many of the homes were wattle-and-daub shacks roofed with straw.

  Despite the drawbacks, one obstacle the rooftops of the Bayway did not present was a gang of street urchins. Likely victims of the urchin gangs were most often found at ground level, as anyone walking the rooftops was likely a thief or a hired killer.

  To Sal’s relief, he reached South Bridge without incident.

  In truth, South Bridge wasn’t one, but two bridges, which connected Low Town and High Town via the Big Island. Sal walked out across the damp planks of the Low Town half, pleased to find the bridge empty. The bridge towers looked to be vacant, as there was no light shining through the arrow slits.

  Sal approached the stone parapet. The bridge planks creaked underfoot. He was still uncertain whether he would follow through with his plan, uncertain whether he could.

  Sal reached into the pocket of his jerkin and shivered at the contact between skin and metal. The smells and sounds of an approaching storm filled his mind. The locket was warm to the touch—strange how it seemed to change. When he took hold of the locket, it sent a jolt of energy into Sal’s arm and throughout his body, an alien feeling but one Sal had come to enjoy.

  He gripped the locket tightly in one hand and placed the other upon the rough stone of the parapet to support his now shaking legs. Reflected moonlight danced on the surface of the black water below. He looked down at the tarnished gold locket and noticed the tips of his fingers were still coated in the golden- brown skeev residue. His hand shook, and the energy of the locket continued to pulsate in him, the sounds of rolling thunder filling his mind.

  Sal knew what he had to do. Since the day he’d walked into Nabu’s shop and seen the fence’s reaction to the locket, he’d known.

  He had to be rid of the thing.

  He pulled his arm back and focused on a spot way out in the black water of the Tamber.

  Sal threw the locket, but before he let go, he felt a tug so jarring it ripped him from his feet with the force of a lightning bolt. For an instant his throat, stomach, and manhood seemed to occupy the same space. He tore through the air. An overwhelming sense of nausea and vertigo swept through him, and the next instant he went crashing into the cold black water.

  The current of the Tamber swept Sal along with it like a leaf in a windstorm.

  As he fought to keep his head above the surface, the cold water made his chest feel constricted so that he gasped for air and could not catch his breath. His limbs felt weak and sluggish. He was unable to fight the overwhelming power of the river’s current.

  He needed both hands if he was to keep himself above water. Yet he found he was unable or unwilling to let go of the locket still clutched tight in one fist.

  His mind was numb, his head throbbing, and all the while the sound of rolling thunder and the pulsating energy of the locket consumed his thoughts.

  It had happened again, as it had the night he’d fallen from his window. He’d been pulled an impossible distance by an unstoppable force. Only this time he was going to die, drowned like a wet rat.

  He kicked, flailed, and trod water. It was all he could do to keep his head above the surface, and still it got into his mouth as he tried to breathe. He drank it unwillingly, sputtering and coughing with each forced gulp. The river was ice cold, and each breath was more difficult to draw than the last. If only he could swim out, but the current was too fast, the shore an impossible distance.

  Then it hit him, an idea that struck like a bolt of lightning .

  Sal focused on the shore and used all the power his mind retained to will himself toward it.

  Lightning took hold of him, a sharp sense of vertigo and an organ-jarring jolt. Suddenly Sal was skidding across cobblestones on hands, elbows, and knees until finally he came to a stop. He sputtered and coughed, then doubled over trying to catch his breath.

  After a moment Sal rolled onto his back, taking deep breaths and staring up at the starlit sky. He had survived, against all the odds, against the very laws
of nature; he had managed to pull himself from the grip of certain death.

  Sal got up on his hands and knees. The pain made him wince. He was covered in scrapes and bruises, his heart pounded against his chest, and his head felt ripe to bursting.

  Then something took hold of him, a sort of madness, an idea that was felt more than it was thought. An idea he couldn’t resist trying. He clutched the locket tight in his palm, the current of energy flowing, tendrils of electricity taking root as he centered his mind.

  Sal focused on the roof of a nearby building and willed himself there, gripping the locket tight. The next instant, he rode the lightning. Vertigo returned as he lurched forward, rushed through the air, and landed feetfirst upon the rooftop.

  12

  Banished

  B y morning the events of the night before felt like a dream.

  Sal had done magic—again.

  It was not the sort of commonplace magic done by the local Talents. Sal had done magic told of only in stories. Now it seemed the locket was something far more spectacular than he could have imagined. He almost couldn’t believe he’d intended to throw the thing into the river.

  Sal rolled out of bed, groggy and sore. His body was throbbing, scraped and bruised from head to toe, but he forced himself to dress through the pain. His mind was full of questions, and there was one person he knew that might have answers.

  The house was quiet. Sal guessed Nicola had already headed out for the day. He hoped her plans didn’t involve Oliver Flint. Of all the men Nicola had brought home over the years, that one had rankled Sal more than most. However, she might have trouble seeing him if those steel caps from the other night had clapped Oliver in irons for resisting arrest outside the Bastian estate. So far as they knew, the man who’d thrown the flasher in his escape had been named Oliver Flint. Still, Sal didn’t wish that on the man; even that oily toff didn’t deserve such a fate as the under-cells, nor for that matter the crow-cages.

  Sal checked the kettle hanging in the hearth and spooned out a bite of simmering pottage before he headed off into the morning storm and made for Penny Row.

  As he walked, Sal kept a hand inside the pocket of his jerkin, clinging to the locket and drinking in the rain as the smooth gold pulsated faintly in his palm. Oddly enough, unlike the night before, the locket was cold to the touch. The rain felt good on his sore body. It seemed to dull the pain somehow, and made the walk seem all the shorter for it.

  Just as Sal reached Penny Row he saw the door of Nabu’s shop open, and to his dismay a pair of steel caps exited. They clinked with every step as their sword hilts rubbed their chain mail hauberks. For an instant, Sal worried that they were there for him, but he quickly convinced himself the notion was nonsense.

  Still, the steel caps were headed in his direction. Panic took root, and Sal considered running, but that was pure madness, bound to get him killed. Sore as he was, he couldn’t have outrun a lame child, much less two armed steel caps.

  Instead, Sal knelt and bent down to hide his face, pretending to adjust his boot. When the steel caps had passed, Sal stood and headed for Nabu’s shop, hoping he wouldn’t come face to face with more steel caps inside.

  The sweet smoke of burning incense couldn’t mask the reek of mildew within the shop. Nabu had yet to clean the cobwebs that clung to every corner and sconce, or the dust that had collected on every surface in the shop. The Miniian rugs looked so tattered and threadbare they might have been older than Dijvois itself.

  Nabu Akkad was alone in the shop. He leaned behind the counter, drumming the fingers of one hand on the countertop, the rings upon his fingers rapping the wood with a soft click, click . With his other hand, he stroked his braided black mustache.

  “Ah, the face of welcome company,” Nabu said, one eyebrow arched. “The gods are good, yes?”

  “Good morrow, Nabu. Trouble with the City Watch? ”

  The fat man winced. He stroked his mustache with his right hand and tapped the counter with the ringed fingers of his left, click-click, click-click . “Trouble, oh yes. This City Watch is full of greedy thieves. More even than your Commission. Always with the collections, always I am paying and always they are wanting more.”

  “Collections?” Sal asked in surprise. “Why should you pay a tax to the steel caps? You pay your due to Don Svoboda, don’t you?”

  Nabu flashed a sad smile. “A man would not stay in business long if he did not pay his protection fees to his don. But when these City Watchmen come knocking on my door, I must pay, yes? Not even the power of the Don Svoboda can protect a man from the magister’s hounds.”

  “How often does the Watch collect?”

  “I am thinking once a fortnight, sometimes more, sometimes less. Though this is not the only reason for their visit this day.”

  Sal sensed a trap but couldn’t keep his curiosity in check. “Why were those steel caps bothering you?”

  Nabu examined his fingernails. “What else should a man with my talents for procurement be harassed for but the very nature of his business? These men came to me asking for information about a certain item. A stolen item.”

  Sal rolled his shoulders and yawned, feigning nonchalance, as cold sweat beaded in his armpits. “Something of value?”

  “Jewelry,” Nabu said, leering at Sal across the counter. “A locket. Old gold, and round, they said it was, with three vertical lines upon the face.”

  Sal went cold. His heart felt like to burst. It had grown hard to breathe and nigh on impossible to speak.

  “These City Watchmen, they seemed most interested in this item. Said a man would be well rewarded if he were to come across such a thing.”

  Sal took a slow, labored breath. “What did you tell them?”

  There was little warmth to be found in Nabu’s stony expression. “That my shop operates under the king’s laws of Nelsigh and the laws of their duke. There has been no one trying to sell stolen goods of late. Should any such attempt this thing, I shall alert the noble order of this City Watch posthaste.”

  The hammering of Sal’s heart slowed. “I thank you for your discretion, Nabu.”

  “I trust there is no chance this thing will be bothering me any longer?” Nabu said, one thick eyebrow arched. “You did destroy it, yes? It is gone?”

  Sal looked down at the dirt-stained Miniian rug. The weight of Nabu’s eyes had grown too heavy to bear.

  “You have not come here with such a thing. This I know. You would not make such a trespass.”

  “Nabu, I—”

  “Know this, Salvatori Lorenzo: lie to me now, and you will never again be welcome within these doors.”

  “I need to know more,” Sal said. “Why would the steel caps want it, and why do you fear—”

  “Out!” shouted the fat man as he lost his temper.

  It had happened again, just like the time Sal had shown Nabu the locket. Without explanation, Nabu had grown angry and fearful.

  Sal backed up a step.

  “Please, Nabu, what is—”

  “Out!”

  Sal turned and went for the door. He left the dingy shop with a stomach full of guilt and a head like to split with questions.

  13

  A Bold Request

  Interlude, Eight Years Earlier

  T he dark stone walls of the hallway seemed to close in around him as he stood looking at the brass handle of the door. Without giving thought to caution, Sal put a hand on the door handle and turned. He barged in, bold as a king entering his sleeping chambers. Resplendent light shone through the bay windows like the very image of Solus himself, reflecting from the thousands of crystals on the golden chandelier that hung at the ceiling’s center.

  Sal stepped onto the elaborately patterned Miniian rug and froze.

  Three men were in Uncle Stefano’s solar.

  The look Uncle Stefano fixed on Sal could have spoiled salt. It made him want to turn tail and run, as fast and far as his feet would take him. Still, he had no choice. He would do it f
or Mother. He swallowed, steeled his nerve, and approached his uncle’s high-backed armchair.

  A glance at the two men standing behind Uncle Stefano set his entire body to shaking: Benito and Hamish, a pair of thugs that were as ugly as they were mean. Hamish, a red-haired Kirkundan, looked the more formidable of the pair with his toned muscular build, but Sal knew that beneath the sagging fat and flesh, Benito Rici was the more dangerous of the two. Nearly twice the age of Hamish, Benito had been in his uncle’s service as long as Sal could remember. Fat and balding and with a goiter to boot, Benito was nothing to look at, but in a scrap he was one of the best men in the city to have at your side.

  “What do you want, boy?” Uncle Stefano asked, removing his reading lenses.

  “I—I’m sorry, Uncle. I hadn’t realized—”

  “Did you barge in here only to stammer like a jackanapes? Out with it.”

  Benito and Hamish made low chuckling noises.

  Sal clenched his hands into tight fists. It was now or never. “Uncle, I believe I’m ready.”

  Lines formed at the corners of his uncle’s eyes as his frown deepened.

  “I’m ready to earn my keep,” Sal said, hoping the clarification might spark a different response.

  “Oh?” said Uncle Stefano, arching an eyebrow.

  The ugly brutes behind his uncle exchanged a look. Benito cleared his throat, and Hamish smiled a big, dumb smile.

  “And how is it you propose to earn your keep, boy?”

  “I can work for you.”

  “Work for me? Just what is it you think you would do for me?”

  “I could earn.”

  Benito scoffed, while Hamish laughed aloud.

  Uncle Stefano didn’t laugh. He didn’t even give Sal his usual frown. Instead, he stroked his chin. He sat that way for a moment, silent, thoughtful. But eventually the frown formed, and Uncle Stefano shook his head. “What would your mother say?”