Dark the Dreamer's Shadow Read online

  ***

  Jairus tried to ignore the heavy jingling in Bartolo’s pockets as they walked up to the surface together. He must have three pounds of gold weight in there, he thought. How can he even walk straight?

  Bartolo probably imagined he had wrapped the coins so well in thick leather rolls that no one could hear them, but he had come to the wrong place for dull senses. He had come to the wrong place for everything he wanted. The Warden was not one to be bullied into solving other people’s problems, especially someone with a reputation for arrogance as rank as Bartolo’s. Jairus hated arrogance. It was sloppy. Sloppiness got people killed.

  He spent the next few turns idly entertaining thoughts of knocking Bartolo down and running off with the hoard like a street urchin scrimping an apple, but quickly put the notion aside. It would easy, but a very foolish thing to do. Bartolo was a notorious lover of rare monies, and he had likely filled his pockets with the dearest items in his collection. Even if he made it more than a few steps without Bartolo screeching for help like a stuck pig, there would be no way to unload those unusual treasures without getting caught.

  Besides, he didn’t really need any more gold, but he did need Bartolo to like him. The Warden had told him to make a good impression, and even though it seemed like it would be heavy going, he was determined to give it a try.

  “How is your brother faring, sir?” he asked out loud when Bartolo gave no indication of wanting to continue their former conversation. “I haven’t heard from him since I left Paderborn.”

  “I really wouldn’t know,” Bartolo said. “I do my best to stay clear of anything that dribbles out of his mouth these days.”

  Jairus smiled politely. “Would you prefer, perhaps, to wait in the library near the north gate while I try to make arrangements for you in town? It may take some time for me to find the owner of the property.”

  “No, I’ll come with you. The sooner I get away from this horrible place, the better. I don’t know how you stand it down here.”

  “I find I can get used to nearly anything with a little bit of work, if I must.”

  “Being unambitious is nothing to brag about,” Bartolo said quietly. He probably thought that Jairus wouldn’t be able to hear him, but he was wrong.

  “The lodgings I have in mind are rather small,” he said instead of responding to the jab. “The sitting room is really more of a corner. But Basset – that’s the owner, sir – he says there’s an excellent harbor view, as I may have mentioned. I can’t think of a better place to be if you’re interested in departures. Or maybe in arrivals.”

  “What makes you think that arrivals would be any of my concern?” Bartolo asked sharply.

  “Nothing, sir. Nothing at all. I just know some people like to watch the ship traffic to pass the time. My sister was very fond of it in Paderborn. She knew the name of every licensed –”

  “Yes, yes,” Bartolo said peevishly. “I’m sure. It’s this way, isn’t it?”

  Jairus let him walk ahead briskly, putting some distance between them as he muttered to himself about something or other. There was no point in pressing the issue when Jairus already knew all about it. The Warden had said that Bartolo would be waiting for a woman named Megrithe Prinsthorpe to find her way to Niheba. He had stressed the name, because Jairus was supposed to find her first.

  He didn’t know who she was or why she was important, but neither was he much accustomed to questioning his orders. Loyalty and obedience were qualities that the Divided stressed highly, and Jairus had always found that obedience, at least, could serve him quite well.

  “This way, sir, if you please,” Jairus called. Bartolo had taken a turn towards the service tunnel that ran further inland, sloping upward to deposit carts and wagons into a yard at the back of a warehouse owned by the Warden’s friends. It would be locked at this time of day, and he wouldn’t put it past Bartolo to throw a bit of a fit if stymied by something so trivial. “We can use the small gate.”

  “This is new,” Bartolo said as Jairus opened the grating.

  “Relatively, sir. I’m not sure if we used it when you were here more commonly.”

  “Well, that’s why I went the other way,” he said, pushing ahead as they climbed the steps to leave the sea caves.

  It was always a bit of a challenge for Jairus to reacclimatize to the city’s noise after the velvety quiet of his underground home, and while Bartolo lifted his chin to feel the warmth of the brilliant sunshine on his face, Jairus just shook his head a bit in a nearly unconscious gesture that helped him clear his ears.

  “I expect Basset will be in his offices on Cloud Clam Street,” he said when he could once again distinguish the one-horse carts from those drawn by two, and the cloddish footsteps of the lazy, clay-like neneckt from those who passed for nearly human. “May I presume that taking a shortcut through the palace grounds would be unwelcome?”

  “Have you been listening at keyholes?” Bartolo asked stiffly.

  “The Warden mentioned a few things to me before we left, sir. He has placed me at your service entirely, and I am to do everything and anything that would help you, including protecting you if any of your errands take you to places that are somewhat less than savory. I should like to have your trust, sir, and I am a very good listener, but I don’t expect to be given your confidence until I have earned it.”

  “Start with the lodgings, boy,” Bartolo said after a moment. “We will move on from there.”

  “Of course. After you, sir.”

  Cloud Clam Street was nearly halfway across the city, and the necessity of circumnavigating the central bulk of the palace made the walk even longer than usual. Normally, Jairus would be perfectly happy with an afternoon above ground for whatever reason, but Bartolo was making him anxious.

  The man held his breath and hesitated each time they crossed a street, looking each and every way as carefully as an old crone, as if Jairus couldn’t be trusted to put one foot in front of the other without a sweeping cane and a warning bell. At any moment, he was expecting Bartolo to reach out and take his elbow, and he wasn’t sure that he would be able to contain himself if such an insult was presented to him.

  It was irritating, and it was making it harder for him to concentrate on the things that really would keep him safe from the trundling carriages and careless pedestrians. The vehicles could be heard – they could be sensed through his boots, too, as they rumbled along the cobbles – and he could apologize to the people on the pavements if he did, in fact, brush a shoulder or step on a toe, but he almost never did. He had made all his mistakes when he was just a boy, clumsy and uncertain in the face of a blank and frightening new reality, and the many years since had taught him all the lessons he needed to function in a sighted world.

  It had been difficult, of course. The red rash fever that had taken his sight had left him burning long after his young body had healed: not with anger or blame directed at the gods for allowing such injury, but with the smoldering knowledge that his path had shifted irrevocably into the darkness, and that it would be very, very easy to fall into the waiting abyss of despair if he lost his resolve for even a moment.

  Naturally, his youthful determination had wavered at times, as it did at some point for most men. His twin brother had not survived the disease, and that was a loss that constantly haunted him like the unquenchable pain of a phantom limb. The quick and brutal sickness had also taken two of his sisters, a newborn boy, and his favorite aunt during the long, impossible winter.

  The Lanque family had been devastated by the losses. Death hit the poor doubly hard in Paderborn: along with the pain of grief and the uncertainty of lost wages, it had cost them dearly to purchase and fill so many gravesites. Until he had come to Niheba, Jairus had never missed an opportunity to clean and attend to each of one them during the Black Moon festival, leaving his offerings of pomegranates, rice, and sweet wine in front of the tall, narrow stones etched with generations of names from his father’s line.

 
The sorrowful experience had eventually led him to the Divided, and now the Divided had led him to Bartolo. Jairus had a very strong suspicion that Bartolo would lead him exactly to the place he had wanted to be for a very long time – if he managed to worm his way into the cantankerous fellow’s good opinion first.

  Despite his human nickname, Basset was a neneckt, and not a very genial one. The face he favored came with a built-in frown that rarely shifted out of place unless he was presented with a suitable sum of money.

  He had made a good living off the Cuskeel tribe in the years since Tiaraku had come to the throne, taking quick advantage of their sudden desperation to become intimates of his newly formed court. The Cuskeels, hoping to adopt the fashions of the older, more settled families, had sold off most of their less desirable lands in exchange for a tightly packed complex in the city center, and they hadn’t been all that particular about who scooped up the valuable commodity in their wake.

  Basset was now the lord of a dozen human slums, to which he owed his social status, but a rather large portion of his wealth came from an entirely different source: the blind man now standing in front of him. Jairus had inspired more jeers than wise wagers during his first surprise victory in the lucrative yearly tourney, and Basset had not been slow to take advantage of that, either.

  “It’s still empty,” the neneckt confirmed when Jairus had explained his request. “And I suppose you’ll be wanting it for free,” he continued, looking Bartolo up and down without much pleasure.

  “I am fully aware that nothing is free, sir,” Bartolo said, putting a handful of gold on the desk. “Especially not silence.”

  “Indeed,” Basset said as Bartolo added a few more coins to the pile with a meaningful look. “I’ll get you the keys.”

  He went to the back of his office, where there was a large cupboard, and selected a ring from one of the dozens of rows of hooks jingling inside. “You certainly have a lot of interesting friends, Jairus,” he said as he handed Bartolo a bit of card with the address.

  “None of them greater than you,” he replied, and Basset snorted at the perfunctory flattery.

  “You can have it for a month, but then I’ll be coming a-calling,” he said. “You want it any longer, you pay double what you gave me today. It’s a good spot that I can sell in a trice, when it’s ready, to someone a lot more respectable than you.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  Bartolo seemed satisfied enough as they headed towards the waterfront buildings, and even regained enough of his equanimity to start shifting from his dour, defensive attitude to a more solicitous and probing stance as they threaded through the avenues of Niheba.

  “Interesting friends, indeed,” he remarked, trying to sound friendly. “Do you have any other acquaintances that I might be interested to know about?”

  “I really wouldn’t know what interests you, sir. Perhaps if you see fit to tell me what this is all about, I can be more useful to you.”

  “Is this the right building?” Bartolo asked, looking upwards at a tall brick construction with its entrances facing away from the harbor.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me, sir,” Jairus said. He was fairly certain they were on the right street, but it wasn’t an area he knew intimately. Besides, Bartolo seemed to like to be in charge. It wouldn’t hurt to let him be right about a few things now and again.

  “Yes,” Bartolo said, matching the number on the paper to the placard screwed to the rail, which wobbled slightly under his hand as he climbed the steps. “But it could be a bit less shabby.”

  “When Basset said it was not quite ready to sell, sir, he meant that there may be a few…inconveniences,” Jairus thought it prudent to say as Bartolo put the key into the lock.

  “Inconveniences? Oh,” he said when the door opened.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jairus could smell the dried blood that had seeped into the floorboards, but that probably wasn’t as bad as having to see it without much of a warning. Basset took his rent rolls seriously, and occasionally he was required to defend his reasoning to those who believed differently.

  “Well, I’ll just have to walk around it,” Bartolo said briskly. “And this one, too.”

  “I’m glad you feel you can make do with less than perfect circumstances, sir,” Jairus said, unable to stop himself.

  “Careful, boy,” Bartolo warned. “You give me lip and I’ll tell the Warden you’re not as useful as he thinks you are.”

  “I very much doubt he would believe you, sir. He didn’t seem too pleased at your visit. I gathered that something involving Tiaraku might not have gone exactly as planned?”

  Jairus could practically hear Bartolo thinking in the silence that followed. That was a good sign.

  “Tiaraku and I had a disagreement,” he said carefully. “I have been responsible for certain aspects of his trade with the mainland. Due to circumstances beyond my control, that trade has been compromised.”

  “I am assuming this trade was of a delicate nature,” Jairus replied, feeling his pulse quicken a bit.

  “You could say that. There are some people who have poked their noses into my business, and it has upset the balance of things. One person in particular, actually. I may ask for your assistance with finding him. A neneckt. It calls itself Faidal.”

  “A neneckt may call itself many things, sir. I should need some more details about the nature of this business if I am to help you.”

  Bartolo paused again. “Red iron,” he said after a while. “False red iron, to be more exact. This Faidal fellow was dealing in it, and he has associates here on the island. I need them uncovered so I can learn more of his plans.”

  “Is he the arrival you may or may not be waiting for?”

  “No. That is a private matter. If you wish to prove your loyalty, you will chase down this neneckt and anyone he may have contacted in the past few weeks. I need to know what he thinks he knows, if you take my meaning.”

  “I understand, sir. May I enlist the help of a few of my brothers among the Divided?”

  “You may not. This is strictly between you and me. If I hear a word of indiscretion, you will not live to face the Warden’s disappointment. Are we clear?”

  “As the grotto pool, sir.”

  “Good. Now, you can do me another favor. I need you to go to the palace. Someone there has to know where my blasted manservant has gotten to.”

  Jairus was dismissed and sent on his way, smiling broadly as he skipped down the steps two at a time. It was anything but an unwelcome departure, since Bartolo had just told him more than enough to crack open a mystery that had been plaguing him for years.

  Everyone knew false iron was being made in Niheba, but no one had been able to prove it, much less stop the counterfeit from flooding the shores of the mainland. It was driving down prices and stretching the Guild’s resources very thin, making it impossible to put a finger in every leak.

  The Guild of Miners got the worst from both ends of the situation: smugglers and counterfeiters made sure that the inspectors couldn’t stop the fake product from getting into the hands of hopeful peasants, but when the goods didn’t work to repel the Siheldi, they got an earful from bereaved families for allowing the deceased to put his or her faith in the useless metal.

  It was deeply unfair to all of the parties involved, but while Jairus’ sympathies lay with the poor, his duty placed him on the side of the indomitable Guild. He has sworn himself to them as a child, ever since his frantic mother begged the Guild’s physicians do to what they could to save the sight of her surviving son.

  They hadn’t succeeded, of course, but they had been kind enough to let him recover in the Guild House’s sick ward. There he gathered a taste of what it meant to belong to the institution, listening in silent fascination as inspectors and knock-about enforcers shared the stories and adventures that had led to their wounds.

  Tales and dreams were his only companions during his recovery until one of the physicia
ns, sons and daughters all long dead, took to reading to Jairus after his world had gone dark. The bland appeasement of children’s stories soon lost their charm, and the doctor soon moved him on to the same classic texts the finer schools in Paderborn used to instruct their pupils. Jairus had striven to store as many facts as he could into the corners of his memory before he had to return home, losing access to the Guild’s copious collection of books.

  His new breadth of knowledge had led to some rather interesting encounters with the parish schoolteacher, whom he had first shocked and then astonished with his determination not to let the one currency that mattered slip through his fingers.

  An education was better than gold for a stricken child, who would otherwise be pawned off as a useless burden on the church’s coffers or consigned to a short, brutal life in a plague-ridden workhouse. Jairus knew perfectly well that no one else would ever bother to make something of him if he didn’t do it himself.

  In the years that followed, he never failed to seize an opportunity to listen to anyone with wisdom to tell, soaking up knowledge like a sea sponge while he simultaneously trained his body not just to avoid the pitfalls of his condition, but to far outstrip any one of his peers.

  He had put his skills to use as he grew old enough to seek employment, securing his first income as a warehouse errand boy by the time he was ten. But the Guild remained his ultimate ambition, and he had argued his case before the selection board with such conviction and vigor that the admissions clerk had been forced to put him on the list of untrained hopefuls angling for a place in the inspectors’ academy.

  Despite the honor of being awarded a spot in the queue, it was very, very difficult to come out of it again. He had no money to pay the tuition, and charity sponsors were few and far between. He had languished on the list for years, taking odd jobs to support himself and his family while he waited and waited, wondering each morning when he woke if that was the day he would give up hope.