The
White Stone
SHE WAS ACROSS THE LANE from them when Talis went up
to the building and knocked on the door, holding Nico. She heard
the cry from Serafina—“Nico! Oh, Nico!”—and she watched the woman
gather up Nico in her arms . . . and she also saw Talis stiffen as
if in alarm, raising the walking stick he always carried as if he
were about to strike someone with it, gesturing with his free hand
as if he wanted Serafina and Nico to leave.
She hurried across
the lane, her hand on one of the throwing knifes hidden in her
tashta. She caught some broken, loud conversation as she did
so.
“. . . just go! Now!
. . . the Numetodo Ambassador . . . tried to kill me . .
.”
“. . . knew where
Nico was, and you didn’t go to him? . .
.”
There was more, but
the voices were yammering in her head, and she couldn’t distinguish
the real ones from the ones inside her head. The door closed behind
Talis, and she took the opportunity to slip into the narrow space
between the buildings. There, she pressed against the wall next to
one of the shuttered windows. She could hear the muffled
conversation—clearly enough to realize that she didn’t need to
intervene. Not yet. There was talk of the assassination of Archigos
Ana, (“That cold witch deserved to die for
what she did to my family,” Fynn screeched), of something
called black sand that could kill (and all the voices of her
victims clamored in her head at that—“Death!
Death! Yes, bring more of them here to us!”—so loudly she
had to scream silently at them to stop), of a man named Uly
(“That name . . .” Fynn said
“I know that name . . .”).
When it was apparent
that Talis and Nico would be staying here, she slipped away again,
returning to her apartment and gathering up the things she had
there. That evening, after three or four stops, she had rented a
new apartment, one street south of Nico’s matarh’s rooms: there,
from the window, she could see the door of Nico’s rooms through the
space between the buildings.
For days, she
watched. She would slip at night between the houses and listen to
them. She followed them whenever they left, especially if Nico was
with them. For days, she watched: the trips to Oldtown Market, the
attempts to find Uly. She’d already found the man herself, living
in squalid rooms on Bell Lane near the Oldtown Market. She found
the foreigner strange and loathsome—not a man who cared about the
cleanliness of his rooms or the filth ground into his clothes. He
was brusque and rude with the customers to whom he sold potions,
usually in the tavern below his rooms: the Red Swan. He was often
drunk, and he was a poor drunk. He could be violent as well;
certainly he was rough with the prostitutes he hired, enough that
most of the women working the streets around the Market avoided
him.
For days, she
watched.
She was surprised,
one day, to see Nico accompanying Varina and Karl to the
market—generally, that was something that Serafina wouldn’t allow.
But she also knew that the market visits were by now routine, that
with each passing day the group had less expectation that they
would ever find Uly, and she knew that Varina and Serafina had
become close friends, that Nico seemed to think of the Numetodo
woman almost as a beloved tantzia. She followed the trio closely,
winding her way through the throngs about the stalls, close enough
to almost listen to them but never so near that one of them might
notice her. She saw them talk to a farmer in his stall, saw him
point and the three of them hurry away, with Varina looking
suddenly worried. Karl went up to a woman with a yellow tashta—a
woman that she recognized as one of Uly’s customers.
A hard knot of worry
twisted in her stomach—or perhaps it was the child growing there.
The voices muttered. “She will tell him . . .
You’ll have to intervene . . .” She put her hand to the
white stone in its pouch around her neck, pressing hard as if she
could stop the voices with her touch.
Had Karl started to
go after Uly with Nico, she would have stopped them. She wouldn’t
let them endanger Nico. She wouldn’t.
But Karl sent Varina
and Nico away. She followed the two long enough to know that they
were actually returning to their rooms, then she turned quickly
back, hurrying through the streets toward the Red Swan. On the way,
she plucked a small, flat, and pale stone from the
street.
She saw Karl enter
the tavern and followed after him. Uly was there, sitting at his
usual table and—also as usual—half-drunk. Karl saw him as well, but
he was at the bar, ordering a pint. As she watched, Karl pushed
away from the bar and went to Uly’s table. She couldn’t hear their
conversation, but not long afterward, Uly finished his ale and
stood up, Karl following him toward the door.
“You know what will happen.” Fynn cackled in her
head. “What are you going to do about
it?”
She moved. She
interposed herself between Karl and the door, bumping into him
deliberately. “Beg pardon, Vajiki,” she said to him. She took his
hand and placed the stone she picked up into his palm. “For luck,”
she said. “You must keep it, and it will bring you good fortune,
Vajiki. You make sure now. Keep it.”
She hoped he would do
that, because she couldn’t help him if he didn’t. Had he given it
back to her, or dropped it, or tossed it away, she would have been
helpless. “The White Stone can’t kill without
the ritual now,” the voices chorused mockingly. “Weak. Stupid.”
But Karl didn’t do
any of those things. She had hidden herself as she left the tavern,
and a few breaths later, Karl and Uly emerged. Uly led Karl away
from the tavern, and she followed carefully. In any case, Uly
appeared to be either too intoxicated or too uninterested in seeing
if anyone was watching. She saw him push Karl into an alley, and
she ran quietly forward.
When she reached the
intersection, Karl was already down, and it was apparent that Uly
intended to beat the Numetodo to death. “You’re a fool, Ambassador
ca’Vliomani,” she heard Uly snarl. “Did you think I wouldn’t
recognize you?”
She moved then, the
White Stone again, grim and serious. Uly glanced up at the sound of
her approach, but her kick was already on its way, smashing into
his kneecap so that the man crumpled with a groan, and then her
doubled fists hit the side of his head, taking him down to the
pavement unconscious.
Quickly, she tore
away Uly’s bashta, then went to the moaning, half-conscious Karl.
She wrapped the torn cloth around his head, then slid her favorite
knife from its sheath and pressed it against his neck. “Stay still
and you won’t be hurt,” she told him, pitching her voice low. “Take
off the hood and you’ll die. Nod if you understand.”
His head bobbed once,
and she left him for Uly. She slapped the man’s face to wake him,
watching his eyes widen as he saw her, and she showed him the knife
blade before jabbing it sharply into the tattooed flesh of his
neck. She placed her boot on the man’s broken kneecap. “He’s seen you. You can’t let him live now,” the
voices clamored, and she bid them to be quiet.
“Answer me if you
want to live,” she told him. She felt his hands start to lift and
she shook her head at him, driving the tip of the blade into his
neck, close to the throbbing, thick vein there. His eyes widened
further. “You killed Archigos Ana, didn’t you? You made the black
sand.”
“No,” the man began,
but she shoved the blade in further with the lie. “All right, all
right.” He leaned away from her as much as he could. “Yes, I helped
kill her. With the black sand. But it wasn’t my idea. I just gave
the man the stuff and told him how to use it. I didn’t know what he
intended to do with it.” Again she pressed harder with the knife.
“Ouch! Damn it, it’s the truth!”
“Who?” she asked him.
She knew Karl would be listening; she would give him the
information he wanted, as long as it meant Nico would still be
safe.
“You have to kill this one. You must.”
“I don’t know—” Uly
was saying, and she ignored the voice to draw the knife’s blade
slightly toward herself, opening a cut. Warm blood dripped down his
neck. “Ow! By Axat! Stop! He told me his name was Gairdi ci’Tomisi,
but I don’t know if that’s his real name or not. Paid me
well—that’s all I knew or cared about.”
The man tried to push
her away, and she put more weight on his shattered knee. He panted
with the pain. “Please. Please stop.”
“Then tell me more
about this man,” she said. “Quickly.”
“Sounded like
ca’-and-cu’, the way he talked. Firenzcian, maybe, by the accent.
Said he had ‘orders’ from Brezno, in any case. That’s all I know. I
made the stuff, gave it to him, and he left. I was as surprised as
anyone when the Archigos was killed.”
“You can’t stay here. You have to leave or someone will
come and see you.”
The voices were
right. She pressed her lips together. With a single, savage motion,
she plunged the knife deeply into the man’s throat and slashed it
from right to left. Hot blood spurted, and the man died in a gurgle
of wet breath. Quickly now, she pulled the pouch from under her now
gory tashta and opened it, placing the precious white stone on the
man’s open right eye. Then she went to Karl, rummaged quickly in
his pocket and found the stone she’d given him. That she placed on
Uly’s left eye. She sheathed her blade, waited a breath, then took
her stone from his right eye.
She could hear Uly’s
voice already, wailing in a language she didn’t
understand.
She placed the stone
in the pouch again. She glanced down once at Karl, who was
straining under the cloth, listening desperately.
She ran. She
ran—staying to shadows and lonely back ways because of her
blood-spattered tashta—ran to find Nico, to know that he was still
safe.