Reciprocity Read online

  The lady brushed past me and eased Tommy to the ground. She went to work with Axe Handle’s axe handle and one of Tommy’s suspenders, and within a few seconds she had a nice job of a tourniquet on his forearm. He was pale and sweating, and he wasn’t screaming anymore, but that didn’t mean he’d be all right. She laid the wounded arm across his heaving chest, away from the dirt and grime of the pavement.

  “I believe I’ve done everything I can for you, at least until a doctor can see you. I beg your . . .” She faltered then, and her voice got as thin as poorhouse soup. “I beg your pardon for the grievous injury.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” he whispered.

  “Well, that is uncalled for,” she murmured, her voice dry and her hands shaking.

  Tinny police sirens whined louder now, not more than two blocks away, shaking some sense back into me. What I should have done was dropped her sword and cheesed it, but some part of me might have remembered my bloody prints all over the thing. Not that abandoning this girl was a real option anyway—Felix and Wolfgang had got a real eyeful of what had just happened, and they’d have questions.

  I pulled at the girl’s elbow. “Time to fly, your Ladyship. Come on, come on.”

  We left Tommy and his friends and his hand lying in the street. The air was full of police sirens and smoke.

  * * *

  Running from the law and taking the lady along wasn’t a smart move, but I never claimed to be the cleverest cookie in the cupboard. She stumbled and squawked at first. I didn’t catch what she was saying, but she sounded upset. After the first half of a city block, she got the right idea and started running with me. She was doing a job of it, too, holding up all those skirts and ruffles and somehow managing to not get her fancy shoes caught up in the mess.

  Some people could run through the streets and look inconspicuous. Another day, I could be one of those people, dressed in my courier getup and running like mad, dodging cars and bicycles and pedestrians as I went. But today I dragged a fashionably dressed lady by one hand and held a bloody sword in the other.

  There was inconspicuous, and then there was us.

  We might be running away from the law now, but that couldn’t last. Wolfje and Felix could be hot on our heels, or the regular cops were. I didn’t have to look up to know the aerostats were flickering at each other and keeping eyes on us. We had to hide, and fast.

  There was a trick to this sort of thing. You needed to stick to the edges of high buildings and alleyways and under awnings, but you didn’t want to get lost in the warren of shacks, gin joints, and smack dens of the Low Quarter. There were more dangerous things than cops in there, and not all of them would give a dime about a Lange affiliat. The trick was to get someplace even the cops wouldn’t want to go, and not get snapped up by nastier elements. Easy as walking on a razor.

  We turned a corner and stopped at the front steps of an old, run-down church. St. Gridra the Immaculate wasn’t so immaculate anymore. One of the two spires was sheared off. The walls needed a whitewashing bad—they were greasy with sulfur and coal smoke and decorated with decades of graffiti. The stone stairs leading up to the front doors were smashed in spots, and somebody had rigged iron bars over the double doors like a portcullis.

  I high-stepped through the weeds in the front garden and hissed at the girl when I saw her gaping at the old church. I jerked my chin toward the rear of the building and kept going. Didn’t need to look back at her—I could hear the thorns snagging at her dress.

  The rear alley of the church was pretty well hidden from the ’stats—church wall behind me, and a decent screen of graveyard trees in front of me. A few vagrants—either drunks or addicts of something worse—huddled down the alley in their filthy, shapeless rags. I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath.

  A string of curses flooded through my head and stopped at my teeth. What kind of stupid luck put my brother Wolfgang and Felix at the café across the street from that ruckus with the Rademakers? I’d had no doubt they kept tabs on me, but I’d be crazy to think they knew I’d end up on that corner, in front of that hotel, at quarter to nine in the morning on that Restday. Or was it crazy? Wolfgang, Felix, and the rest of the trade regulators had connections and resources that scared the life out of me, and my brother liked to hold a grudge.

  He was sore as hell at me for not playing ball eight months back, when the middle son of a middling steel family in the Middle Terrace was suspected of cutting the eyes out of prostitutes working in the Lower. That charming fellow had cut quite a swath through the comfort crews working for both families, and independent contractors as well. Wolfgang wanted to arrest that son of a bitch and send him up the river, all by the book and according to the law. But a temporary, ad-hoc alliance of Rademakers and Langes tracked the maniac down and nailed him to the gates of the Middle Terrace by his coin purse.

  I could have told Wolfgang about it, but I didn’t. The whole episode had embarrassed him. If there was anything he hated more than nobles who thought they were above the law, it was looking like an idiot in front of his trade regulator cronies.

  That he hadn’t sent me up the river for something in the last eight months was a surprise. Now he had a good reason to, but I’d be damned if I was going to make it easy for him.

  The noble girl finally rounded the corner, surprisingly composed, and hardly panting at all. I asked her, “You like the tour so far?”

  She took in the filthy alleyway—the broken bottles and piles of trash, and the dozens of little brown glass vials and crumbled corks that littered the ground. Torn blue-inked labels swirled around in an errant breeze. She looked over the graveyard with its greenery grown wild, ivy and clingvine pulling down the waist-high stone wall by small degrees.

  “Quite,” she said, and then massaged her throat with a grimace. “Quite charming, I’m sure.”

  A red stripe creased the girl’s neck, and she coughed delicately into a lace handkerchief. It came away spotted with blood, but since she’d run however-many city blocks with me, I figured she was probably all right. She clutched her overcoat closed around her throat, despite the heat of the morning.

  “Thank you for taking me with you. I didn’t want an entanglement—” She grimaced and swallowed hard. “With the police. Oh, that smarts.”

  “Catch your breath,” I said and handed over the tin flask I kept inside my coat. “Have some medicine.”

  While she sipped at the flask and made the faces I’d expected her to make, I cleaned her sword with my own, less fancy handkerchief. The blood was getting tacky, and the thing would need a proper cleaning, but it wasn’t any work at all to wipe my fingerprints off the hilt. When I was done, we swapped flask and saber and put them both away.

  “Listen, your Ladyship.” I leaned the back of my head against the wall and wished desperately for a cigarette. “I’m not sure why you jumped in there, but I appreciate it.”

  “And I’m not sure why you came back, but I’m glad you did. That . . .” She trailed off and gestured at my sleeve and what sat inside. “Contraption of yours is remarkably versatile.”

  “One of a kind, like yours truly. So I guess we’re even.” I folded my arms. “You should be more careful next time. You were a little out of your league with those jerks.”

  Her brows drew together. “I beg your pardon. I have trained with the foremost duelmasters in the state, and—”

  “It’s Kaeri,” I interrupted. I let a smile soften it a little.

  “Excuse me?” Her eyes showed a little white now, and I decided I liked that.

  “Kaeri. Kaeri Hawen. You’re bent on keeping me late for some reason, so maybe you should know my name while you’re at it.”

  “Maria Irena Cantabile, at your service.”

  She said it like she didn’t mean it at all, but that was all right. Her family name clicked into place inside my rattled brain, and I clenched my teeth. I walked past her and peeked around the corner, but there wasn’t much to see. The rustle of her ski
rts and coat told me she’d turned around to face me.

  “Now, look,” I said, “I think we shook the bulls, but we go out again together, and the ’stats will pick us up again for sure. It’s not every day a bonded courier and a swell like you go out for a stroll. So what I propose is—”

  Something thumped behind us like a body falling to the ground, and we both turned around to see. The bums in the alley crept closer, some crawling and sniffing at the ground like dogs, and some staggering with their hands open like beggars. They started making this mumbling noise as they approached. One of them looked up, his eyes cloudy, his focus vague.

  “Why, what in the world—” Maria began.

  I whipped an arm around her head and covered her mouth with my hand. Pulling her close, I whispered in her ear, “Shut up. Don’t you know anything? Those are limpets. They’re all flying high on aker. Limpets leave their little empty bottles wherever they go, you see? It makes them blind and stupid after a while, but they can hear and smell all right, and we’ve been talking loud as hell. Damn my eyes for not paying attention. Usually they’re harmless if you leave them alone, okay? Let’s just back out of here, nice and slow.”

  Maria got real still like she was listening and wasn’t gonna panic or anything, so I let her go.

  The limpets crept closer, but they didn’t have a good fix on us. One crawler planted her hand in some broken glass, but she didn’t seem to mind it at all. I laid one hand on the church wall, the other across Maria’s shoulders, and backed away. Maria threw a quick look over her shoulder at me and at the street behind us.

  I took another step back, and one of the little brown glass vials crunched under my boot. I said something very nasty and stumbled, only staying upright because of my grip on Maria’s shoulder. The limpets lifted their heads like a pack of dogs hearing a whistle and started to close the gap. Their mumbling got louder and more insistent, like the accountant monks chanting their ecstasy at Quarter End. I thought I could make out a few words, but it mostly sounded like begging for money or food.

  I reached into my trouser pocket and brought out a few coins, not more than half a guilder’s worth, and let them jingle in my hand. The limpets scuttled closer, and when the closest of the crawlers came near to grasping distance, I tossed the coins into the middle of them. They hit one in the chest, and the whole mob of limpets pounced on them and each other with a speed that never failed to surprise me.

  “Come on,” I whispered, tugging on Maria’s elbow. “We’ll cut through the graveyard.”

  She looked back at the swirling, mumbling melee of limpets for only a moment before she followed me in earnest. I cleared the waist-high stone wall with ease, but Maria’s skirts slowed her down some.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as I helped her over. She smelled of cut grass and warm school days in the convent gardens.

  “Across this graveyard. The trees will give us some cover from the ’stats. The priest’s brother owns a pawn shop on the other side.”

  “Do you know the proprietor?” she asked as she followed me. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “I wouldn’t say he’s a friend.”

  “Then what are we doing there?”

  “Costume change for both of us. We stand out, and every cop within blinking distance of those aerostats will be on the lookout for a short courier and a tall drink of water in a pretty dress. Also,” I said, and pointed with my chin to the Cirkel tower stanchion that abutted the shop, “it’s our way out.”

  “You think my dress is pretty,” she replied, her lips turning up in the tiniest smirk. “That’s very nice of you to say.”

  “Well, it was, anyway. Before the blood and all.” I matched her smirk to the millimeter. “Come on, your Ladyship.”

  The alley separating the other side of the graveyard from Piet’s Pawn and Loan was a lot narrower, but no one was hanging around—not even limpets, which was fine with me. I gave the alley and the skies above another once-over, hopped the wall, and jogged over to the door marked for deliveries. Piet’s was a plain brick box, not much to look at. The drapes on the upstairs apartment were the same as the last time I was here, all faded floral prints yellowed with cigarette smoke. One foot of the copper-and-iron Cirkel tower stood some ten meters away, surrounded by rusted chain-link fencing and barbed wire. Even if there were an easy way through that, I wouldn’t want to climb all the way from street level. That was too much like work.

  “Keep an eye out,” I said. “I’ll jimmy this in a second.”

  Maria was a good sport—she did just as I asked and looked around, even if she couldn’t have had much of an idea of what to look for.

  A high, mechanical hum came from somewhere above. From the corner of my eye, I could see Maria looking up to the left and right, trying to find the thing, but there wouldn’t be much to look at besides a yellow, smoggy sky.

  I stopped working for a moment to ask her a question, but closed my mouth when I saw her hand rest on something at the small of her back, under her coat. I stared at the strangely angular gun sitting in a holster at her waist. I prayed to Absent Mother and Father God, prayed more sincerely than I had in quite a while, that she was not stupid enough to take potshots at a passing ornithopter.

  “Kaeri,” she said, still looking up.

  “I was just about to ask you,” I said, and waited for her to look down at me, hoping she’d leave the heater where it was, “if I could borrow a hairpin or something? These lockpicks aren’t up to the job.”

  She nodded absently and took her hand from the gun to fish a pin from her head. After she handed it to me, she left her hand dangling by her side. I breathed a little sigh of relief. Maria went back to looking for the ’thopter, and not paying attention to me. I didn’t need the pin, but I took a look at it anyway—a silver shaft and an oval ebony head ringed in ivory lace. A pair of them would have probably fed me for a week, if I wasn’t too picky about the food.

  “Mevrouw Hawen, I don’t wish to alarm you.”

  “I hear it.” More tumblers clicked into place. Damn Piet, anyway. “That’s either a high-priority courier, or some cop has got a new toy. Or they’ve called in the regulators, which would be a damned shame. I’m almost finished; hang on.”

  Maria grimaced at the mention of the trade regulators. The Unified Mercantile Authority Trade Regulators were, in general, some hard characters, and not to be messed with. My brother Wolfgang was one, a secret I’d barely managed to keep from my employers.

  Regulators were above the law and could investigate fraud, unfair business practices, and just about anything else all over the city, and anywhere else they could reach. They could revoke licenses from anyone looking to scrape a guilder or a penny from the dirt, from the lowest street vendor to C-level captains of industry. Urban legend had it that they were some of the deadliest humans in all the world, and could kill you fifty different ways with their bare hands. Not for the first time, I thought about whether I could ask Wolfgang if all the whispered stories about the regulators were true. But then, not for the first time, I remembered it would take a damn bit more than idle curiosity to get me to talk to my brother at all.

  For Maria to actually shoot at a trade regulator would be worse than unprofitable. If what I knew about them was true, and I figured I knew more than most, we would be lucky to just get shot for her trouble.

  “Surely not,” Maria said, her voice trembling. “I’ve seen worse than our little street scuffle in the last few days, and no regulators have appeared.”

  “Do you think you’d see them? They’re ghosts,” I replied, feeling the tumblers scrape and click under my tools. “Anyway, you’re right. Regulators wouldn’t stir over a street fight, even if some toothless beggar says he’s Vedette Sforza’s little brother. But they might come after you in particular, if you’re running from something hot.”

  Maria’s eyes widened, and she pressed her lips tight, as if she wanted to keep something from falling out.

  “Oh, for
Mother’s sake, don’t tell me. I’m the patron saint of plausible deniability, didn’t you know?” The final tumbler clicked into place, and I slid into the building. Maria slipped in behind me. As I pushed the door closed behind us, the high-pitched drone of the ’thopter’s engines hit its peak and fell away again. My heart raced as I watched the narrow dragonfly shadow flicker through the alleyway.

  “A near thing.” Maria sighed.

  “Maybe,” I whispered back. “Or maybe he saw us. We’re not sticking around to find out.”

  Chapter 3

  I listened hard at the door, straining to hear pounding boots in the alleyway or the whine of the ornithopter returning. All I could catch was Maria’s breathing and mine, syncopated and slowing. We crouched there for a good minute, Maria’s eyes picking my face apart, maybe looking for some sign of panic. My heart thumped a little faster against my ribs—all this excitement, and me with no breakfast.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  She looked away. “Your pardon. I was trying to keep as quiet as you.”

  “You’re doing fine,” I said, and found that I meant it. I started down the hallway, walking soft. “When we find Piet, let me do the talking, and stay out of sight. When I call you in, just follow my lead. If you stand there and look helpless, it might confuse him.”

  “Looking helpless will not be difficult today,” she muttered.

  I smirked over my shoulder. “Don’t sell yourself too short, your Ladyship. If that was your first rumble, you did all right. You’re not completely hopeless.”

  “You are too kind.”