Visible Light, page 15
Jensy grinned at her; everything slid off Jensy. Gillian gripped her sister by the wrist and jerked her out into the press, walked a few stalls down. It was never good to linger. They did not look the best of customers, she and Jensy, ragged curls bound up in scarves, coarse sacking skirts, blouses that had seen good daysbefore they had left some goodwoman's laundry. Docksiders did come here, frequent enough in the crowds. And their faces were not known outside the Sink; varying patterns of dirt were a tolerable disguise.
Lean days were at hand; they were not far from winter, when ships would be scant, save only the paltry patched coasters. In late fall and winter the goods were here in midtown, being hauled out of warehouses and sold at profit. Dockside was slim pickings in winter; dockside was where she preferred to workgiven choice. And with Jensy Midtown frightened her. This place was daylight and open, and at the moment she was not looking for trouble; rather she made for the corner of the fish market with its peculiar aromas and the perfumed reek of Agdalia's gilt temple and brothel.
"Don't want to," Jensy declared, planting her feel.
Gillian jerked her willy-nilly. "I'm not going to leave you there, mousekin. Not for long."
"I hate Sophonisba."
Gillian stopped short, jerked Jensy about by the shoulder and looked down into the dirty face. Jensy sobered at once, eyes wide. "Sophonisba never lets the customers near you."
Jensy shook her head, and Gillian let out a breath. She had started that way; Jensy would not. She dragged Jensy to the door, where Sophonisba held her usual post at the shrine of the tinsel goddess legitimacy of a sort, more than Sophonisba had been born to. Gillian shoved Jensy into Sophonisba's hands& overblown and overpainted, all pastels and perfumes and swelling bosomit was not lack of charms kept Sophonisba on the market street, by the Fish, but the unfortunate voice, a Sink accent and a nasal whine that would keep her here forever. Dead ear, Gillian reckoned of her in some pity, for accents came off and onto Gillian's tongue with polyglot facility; Sophonisba probably did not know her afflictiona creature of patterns, reliable to follow them.
"Not in daylight," Sophonisba complained, painted eyes distressed. "Double cut for daylight. Are you working here? I don't want any part of that. Take yourselves elsewhere." .
"You know I wouldn't bring the king's men down on Jensy; mind her, old friend, or I'll break your nose."
"Hate you," Jensy muttered, and winced, for Sophonisba gripped her hair.
She meant Sophonisba. Gillian gave her a face and walked away, free. The warrens or the market neither plate was safe for a twelve-year-old female with light fingers and too much self-confidence; Sophonisba could still keep a string on herand Sophonisba was right to worry: stakes were higher here in all regards.
Gillian prowled the aisles, shopping customers as well as booths, lingering nowhere long, flowing with the traffic. It was the third winter coming, the third since she had had Jensy under her wing. Neither of them had known hunger often while her mother had been there to care for Jensybut those days were gone, her mother gone, and JensyJensy was falling into the pattern. Gillian saw it coming. She had nightmares, Jensy in the hands of the city watch, or knifed in some stupid brawl, like their mother. Or something happening to herself, and Jensy growing up in Sophonisba's hands.
Money. A large amount of gold: that was the way out she dreamed of, money that would buy Jensy into some respectable order, to come out polished and fit for midtown or better. But that kind of money did not often flow accessibly on dockside, in the Sink. It had to be hunted here; and she saw itall about herat the risk of King's-law, penalties greater than the dockside was likely to inflict: the Sink took care of its own problems, but it was apt to wink at pilferage and it was rarely so inventively cruel as King's- law. Whore she was not, no longer, never again; whore she had been, seeking out Genat, a thief among thieves; and the apprentice had passed the master. Genat had become blind Genat the beggardead Genat soon afterand Gillian was free, walking the market where Genat himself seldom dared pilfer.
If she had gold enough, then Jensy was out of the streets, out of the way of things that waited to happen.
Gold enough, and she could get more: gold was power, and she had studied power zealously, from street bravos to priests, listening to gossip, listening to rich folk talk, one with the alleys and the booths she learned, did Gillian, how rich men stole, and she planned somedayshe always hadto be rich.
Only three years of fending for two, and this third year that saw Jensy filling out into more than her own whipcord shape would ever be, that promised what Jensy would be the fourth year, when at thirteen she became a mark for any man on the docks This winter or never, for Jensy.
Gillian walked until her thin soles burned on the cobbles. She looked at jewelers' boothstoo wary, the goldsmiths, who tended to have armed bullies about them. She had oncemadlyentertained the idea of approaching a jeweler, proposing her own slight self as a guard: truth, no one on the streets could deceive her sharp eyes, and there would be no pilferage; but say to them, I am a better thief than they, sirs? That was a way to end like Genat.
Mistress to such, instead? There seemed no young and handsome oneseven Genat had been thatand she, moreover, had no taste for more such years. She passed the jewelers, hoping forlornly for some indiscretion.
She hungered by afternoon and thought wistfully of the figs Jensy had fingered; Jensy had them, which meant Jensy would eat them. Gillian was not so rash as in her green years. She would not risk herself for a bit of bread or cheese. She kept prowling, turning down minor opportunities, bumped against a number of promising citizens, but each was a risk, and each deft fingering of their purses showed nothing of great substance.
The hours passed. The better classes began to wend homeward with their bodyguards and bullies. She began to see a few familiar faces on the edges of the crowd, rufflers and whores and such anticipating the night, which was theirs. Merchants with more expensive goods began folding up and withdrawing with their armed guards and their day's profits.
Nothingno luck at all, and Sophonisba would not accept a cut of bad luck; Gillian had two coppers in her own purse, purloined days ago, and Sophonisba would expect one. It was the streets and no supper if she was not willing to take a risk.
Suddenly a strange face cut the crowd, making haste: that caught her eye, and like the reflex of a boxer her body tended that way before her mind had quite weighed matters, so she should not lose him. This was a stranger; there was a fashion to faces in Korianth, and this one was not Korianthine Abhizite, she reckoned, from upriver. Gillian warmed indeed; it was like summer, when gullible foreigners came onto the docks carrying their traveling funds with them and giving easy opportunity to the light-fingered trade.
She bumped him in the press at a corner, anticipating his move to dodge her, and her razor had the purse strings, her fingers at once aware of weight, her heart thudding with the old excitement as she eeled through the crowd and alleyward.
Heavy purseit was too soon missed; her numbing blow had had short effect. She heard the bawl of outrage, and suddenly a general shriek of alarm. At the bend of the alley she looked back.
Armored men. Bodyguards!
Panic hit her; she clutched the purse and ran the dark alley she had mapped in advance for escape, ran with all her might and slid left, right, right, along a broad back street, down yet another alley. They were after her in the twilight of the maze, cursing and with swords gleaming bare.
It was no ordinary cutpursing. She had tripped something, indeed. She ran until her heart was nigh to bursting, took the desperate chance of a stack of firewood to scamper to a ledge and into the upper levels of the midtown maze.
She watched them then, she lying on her heaving belly and trying not to be heard breathing. They were someone's hired bravos for certain, scarred of countenance, with that touch of the garish that bespoke gutter origins.
"Common cutpurse," one said. That rankled. She had other skills.
"Someone has to have seen her," said another. "Money will talk, in the Sink."
They went away. Gillian lay still, panting, opened the purse with trembling fingers.
A lead cylinder stamped with a seal; lead, and a finger-long sealed parchment, and a paltry three silver coins.
Bile welled up in her throat. They had sworn to search for her even into the impenetrable Sink. She had stolen something terrible; she had ruined herself; and even the Sink could not hide her, not against money, and such men.
Jensy, she thought, sick at heart. If passersby had seen her strolling there earlier and described Jensy their memories would be very keen, for gold. The marks on the loot were ducal seals, surely; lesser men did not use such things. Her breath shuddered through her throat. Kings and dukes. She had stolen lead and paper, and her death. She could not read, not a wordnot even to know what she had in hand.
And Jensy!
She swept the contents back into the purse, thrust it into her blouse and, dropping down again into the alley, ran.
2
The tinsel shrine was closed. Gillian's heart sank, and her vision blurred. Again to the alleys and behind thence to a lower-story window with a red shutter. She reached up and rapped it a certain pattern with her knuckles.
It opened. Sophonisba's painted face stared down at her; a torrent of abuse poured sewer-fashion from the dewy lips, and Jensy's dirty-scarfed head bobbed up from below the whore's ample bosom.
"Come on," Gillian said, and Jensy scrambled, grimaced in pain, for Sophonisba had her by the hair.
"My cut," Sophonisba said.
Gillian swallowed air, her ears alert for pursuit. She fished the two coppers from her purse, and Sophonisba spat on them. Heat flushed Gillian's face; the next thing in her hand was her razor.
Sophonisba paled and sniffed. "I know you got better, slink. The whole street's roused. Should I take such risks? If someone comes asking here, should I say lies?"
Trembling, blind with rage, Gillian took back the coppers. She brought out the purse, spilled the contents: lead cylinder, parchment, three coins. "Here. See? Trouble, trouble and no lot of money."
Sophonisba snatched at the coins. Gillian's deft fingers saved two, and the other things, which Sophonisba made no move at all to seize.
"Take your trouble," Sophonisba said. "And your brat. And keep away from here."
Jensy scrambled out over the sill, hit the alley cobbles on tier slippered feet. Gillian did not stay to threaten. Sophonisba knew herknew better than to spill to king's-men& or to leave Jensy on the street.
Gillian clutched her sister's hand and pulled her along at a rate a twelve-year-old's strides could hardly match.
They walked, finally, in the dark of the blackest alleys and, warily, into the Sink itself. Gillian led the way to Threepenny Bridge and so to Rat's Alley and the Bowel. They were not alone, but the shadows inspected them cautiously: the trouble that lurked here was accustomed to pull its victims into the warren not to find them there; and one time that lurkers did come too close, she and Jensy played dodge in the alley. "Cheap flash," she spat, and: "Bit's Isle," marking herself of a rougher brotherhood than theirs.
They were alone after.
After the Bowel came the Isle itself, and the deepest part of the Sink. There was a door in the alley called Blindman's, where Genat had sat till someone knifed him, She dodged to it with Jensy in tow, this stout door inconspicuous among others, and pushed it open.
It let them in under Jochen's stairs, in the wine-smelling backside of the Rose. Gillian caught her breath then and pulled Jensy close within the shadows of the small understairs pantry. "Get Jochen," she bade Jensy then. Jensy skulked out into the hall and took off her scarf, stuffed that in her skirts and passed out of sight around the corner of the door and into the roister of the tavern.
In a little time she was back with fat Jochen in her wake, and Jochen mightily scowling.
"You're in trouble?" Jochen said. "Get out if you are."
"Want you to keep Jensy for me."
"Pay," Jochen said. "You got it?"
"How much?"
"How bad the trouble?"
"For her, none at all. Just keep her." Gillian turned her backprudence, not modestyto fish up the silver from her blouse, not revealing the purse. She held up one coin. "Two days' board and close room."
"You are in trouble."
"I want Nessim. Is he here?"
He always was by dark. Jochen snorted. "A cut of what's going."
"A cut if there's profit; a clear name if there's not; get Nessim."
Jochen went. "I don't want to be left," Jensy started to say, but Gillian rapped her ear and scowled so that Jensy swallowed it and looked frightened. Finally a muddled old man came muttering their way and Gillian snagged his sleeve. The reek of wine was strong; it was perpetual about Nessim Hath excommunicate priest and minor dabbler in magics. He read, when he was sober enough to see the letters; that and occasionally effective magicswards against rats, for onemade him a livelihood and kept his throat uncut.
"Upstairs," Gillian said, guiding sot and child up the well-worn boards to the loft and the private cells at the alleyside wall. Jensy snatched the taper at the head of the stairs and they went into that room, which had a window.
Nessim tottered to the cot and sat down while Jensy lit the stub of a candle. Gillian fished out her coppers, held them before Nessim's red-rimmed eyes and pressed them into the old priest's shaking hand.
"Read something?" Nessim asked.
Gillian pulled out the purse and knelt by the bedside while Jensy prudently closed the door. She produced the leaden cylinder and the parchment. "Old man," she said, "tell me what I've got here."
He gathered up the cylinder and brought his eyes closely to focus on it, frowning. His mouth trembled as did his hands, and he thrust it back at her. "I don't know this seal. Lose this thing in the canal. Be rid of it."
"You know it, old man."
"I don't." She did not take it from him, and he held it, trembling. "A false seal, a mask seal. Some thing some would knowand not outsiders. It's no good, Gillian."
"And if some would hunt a thief for it? It's good to someone."
Nessim stared at her. She valued Nessim, gave him coppers when he was on one of his lower periods: he drank the money and was grateful. She cultivated him, one gentle rogue among the ungentle, who would not have failed at priesthood and at magics if he did not drink and love comforts; now he simply had the drink.
"Run," he said. "Get out of Korianth. Tonight."
"Penniless? This should be worth something, old man."
"Powerful men would use such a seal to mask what they do, who they are. Games of more than small stakes."
Gillian swallowed heavily. "You've played with seals before, old man; read me the parchment."
He took it in hand, laid the leaden cylinder in his lap, turned the parchment to all sides. Long and long he stared at it, finally opened his purse with much trembling of his hands, took out a tiny knife and cut the red threads wrapped round, pulled them from the wax and loosed it carefully with the blade.
"Huh," Jensy pouted. "Anyone could cut it." Gillian rapped her ear gently as Nessim canted the tiny parchment to the scant light. His lips mumbled, steadied, a thin line. When he opened his mouth they trembled again, and very carefully he drew out more red thread from his pouch, red wax such as scribes used. Gillian held her peace and kept Jensy's, not to disturb him in the ticklish process that saw new cords seated, the seal preparedhe motioned for the candle and she held it herself while he heated and replaced the seal most gingerly.
"No magics," he said then, handing it back. "No magics of mine near this thing. Or the other. Take them. Throw them both in the River."
"Answers, old man."
"Triptis. Promisingwithout naming names twenty thousand in gold to the shrine of Triptis."
Gillian wrinkled her nose and took back parchment and cylinder. "Abhizite god," she said. "A dark one."
The sum ran cold fingers over her skin. "Twenty thousand. That'sgoldtwenty thousand. How much do rich men have to spend on temples, old thief?"
"Rich men's lives are bought for less."
The fingers went cold about the lead. Gillian swallowed, wishing Jensy had stayed downstairs in the pantry. She held up the lead cylinder. "Can you breach that seal, old man?"
"Wouldn't."
"You tell me why."
"It's more than a lead seal on that. Adepts more than the likes of me; I know my level, woman; I know what not to touch, and you can take my advice. Get out of here. You've stolen something you can't trade in. They don't need to see you, do you understand me? This thing can be traced."
The hairs stirred to her nape. She sat staring at him. "Then throwing it in the river won't do it, either."
"They might give up then. Might. Gillian, you've put your head in the jaws this time."
"Rich men's lives," she muttered, clutching the objects in her hand. She slid them back into the purse and thrust it within her blouse. "I'll get rid of it. I'll find some way. I've paid Jochen to keep Jensy. See he does, or sour his beer."
"Gillian"
"You don't want to know," she said. "I don't want either of you to know."
There was the window, the slanting ledge outside; she hugged Jensy, and old Nessim, and used it.
3
Alone. She traveled quickly, by warehouse roofs for the first part of her journey, where the riggings and masts of dockside webbed the night sky, by remembered ways across the canal. One monstrous old warehouse squatted athwart the canal like a misshapen dowager, a convenient crossing that avoided the bridges. Skirts hampered; she whipped off the wrap, leaving the knee breeches and woolen hose she wore beneath, the skirt rolled and bound to her waist with her belt. She had her dagger, her razor and the cant to mark her as trouble for ruffiansa lie: the nebulous brotherhood would hardly back her now, in her trouble. They disliked long looks from moneyed men, hired bullies and noise on dockside. If the noise continued about her, she might foreseeably meet with accident, to be found floating in a canalto quiet the uproar and stop further attentions.
