"Varthi's saggy tits, watch it!" Arlen roared. Usk darted back to avoid taking a boot to the face, then returned to bandaging Arlen's wounded leg.
"You watch it," he said mildly, with an undercurrent of a threat. "The goddess's tits are not saggy. Don't blaspheme, or I'll cut it off."
"You don't even worship anymore," Arlen growled back, spitting onto the floor and pushing sweaty hair out of his eyes. "What do you care?"
"I care." Usk tied off the bandage. "And you are at my mercy. So shut up."
Arlen knew he had pushed Usk to the limit since returning from the temple job, but he couldn't find it in him to care. The bolt wound wasn't healing clean; it was looking increasingly like he would have to lose the leg. Several members of the Devils had metal limbs – it was an occupational hazard to lose body parts every now and again – but no one relied on them the way Arlen did. How was he meant to travel over rooftops with any speed lugging several pounds of metal? Not to mention the pain; Devils had to rely on gutter doctors and quacks for their medicine. Any respectable physician would never open the door to them.
If he had to lose the leg, it might not even come to figuring out how to travel. Shock was as big a killer as rot.
He scowled at the offending limb. Blackweed kept the edge off, and alcohol helped a little, too, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd slept well. It woke him in the night, sweating and weak and having to suffer the indignity of asking Usk to move him back into the front room so that he could dose up again. He hadn't been sober for more than an hour or two in days, but it wasn't worth the agony.
He could already feel blood seeping into the dressings. He wasn't sure if it was the leg that smelled like a sewage pit or if it was all of him.
"Has the brat been back today?" he asked. Silas hadn't spoken more than two words to him since the job. He'd barely been in the building at all, and while at first Arlen had been grateful for it, his continued absence was getting suspicious.
"Not that I know of." Usk sat at the table opposite, the argument already forgotten, and poured himself two fingers of whisky from the bottle at Arlen's elbow. "Akiva said he's been lurking around the beer hall, not talking to anyone."
"He's a strange little fuck," Arlen muttered. "Can never work out what exactly he wants."
"I'm sure he'd take your undying love," Usk said. Arlen glowered.
"Don't make it weird."
"I didn't make it weird, he did. I bet he'd let you bend..." the brute ducked the now-drained whisky bottle as it flew at his head. It smashed on the wall behind him and Usk resurfaced, rocked with deep belly laughs. "That hit a nerve, did it?"
"Now it's your turn to shut up. We're even."
Usk held his hands up in a placating motion. "Shutting up."
The silence, though, was always worse. Silence left him with only the pain for company, and a deep fear that he might never walk again. Keeping the leg could have a higher cost still; the bolt had gone deep. Arlen had never been afraid of death, because any assassin had to be prepared for the job that got them killed. Almost no one in his line of work died a natural death at a venerable age, and he'd come to terms with that a long time ago; but with it, he had relied on the belief that he'd die on his feet, dignified in action. Not forced into permanent immobility or pinched out of existence by wound-rot and pain.
He groaned, shifting in his seat, but nothing provided any relief. He needed to make provisions, he knew that, in the event of the worst case scenario, but he couldn't bring himself to broach it with Usk. Arlen didn't have friends, but he and Usk had a partnership that went deeper than Guild ties, and there was no more humiliating thought than having a man who had seen him at his strongest make arrangements for the possibility of his death.
Then he had an idea.
"What day of the week is it?"
"Hm?" Usk's grunt came through a haze of blackweed. "Sixthday."
Arlen managed a smile, and it felt unfamiliar on his face. "Can I ask you for a favour?"
-
Arlen had dozed off in his chair by the time Usk returned, jolted from vivid, pain-tinged dreams by the thud of the Varthian hooking himself through the window. He shook himself free of his lucid nightmares, blinking sleep from his eyes and pushing himself upright just as another figure appeared in the window, backlit by the one lamp on Arlen's street. Usk had lit several candles around the apartment, but the cloak remained featureless except for two bright spots of green.
Jordan Haverford had come a long way with the Gift since Arlen had last seen him; his crackling magic was tangible before he had even made it into the room. His physical fitness, however, still seemed to be somewhat lacking. The boy grunted with strain as he heaved himself up off the crate below Arlen's window, hooked a leg over the sill, and then tumbled gracelessly onto the floor.
"Ow," Jordan muttered. "Could you have picked a more awkward place to live?"
The Unspoken apprentice got to his feet and dusted himself off, then looked around at the tiny room. It was hard to tell what he thought, but Arlen doubted he was impressed. He wouldn't have been, in Jordan's position.
"What happened to your leg?"
Arlen had to credit Haverford for trying to keep the fear out of his voice, even though it was blatantly obvious the boy was shitting bricks.
"Crossbow bolt." Arlen grinned, showing all his teeth. "Almost got caught on a job."
"A job?" Jordan repeated.
"Aye. Oversight on my part. Usk, can we have a minute?"
"I'll be outside," the brute said. "Under the escape route, eh, boy?"
Usk laughed as he swung himself from the window. Jordan seemed to realise how trapped he was and visibly shrank.
"What do you want?" he asked. "The head of Nict will be back from the castle soon and he'll..."
"Be completely unsurprised that you're here," Arlen drawled. He gestured at Usk's vacant chair. "Sit."
Jordan didn't move. "Callan works with you?"
"Of course he does," Arlen scoffed. "How else do you think that temple is still standing, being where it is?"
Jordan inched towards the chair and perched himself on the edge of it, as if afraid he'd catch a disease off the timber. Arlen's stinking leg rested on the table between them. The Unspoken boy couldn't keep his eyes off it, which didn't help Arlen keep his thoughts off it.
"Something interesting?" he snapped.
"That looks bad," Jordan murmured. "Someone should look at it."
"You got a suggestion?" Arlen said coldly. "Someone who'd be willing to tend to one of the most wanted criminals in the city and not say anything to the city guard or just poison me and have done? Fuck off, boy." He scowled. "It's not gone bad. Hasn't been there long enough."
"If the bolt was dirty there'd be symptoms after one or two days." Jordan paused, and then stood up very abruptly. "You killed the head of Orthan. It was you, wasn't it?"
He backed towards the window. Arlen grinned. "You go out there, boy, Usk'll just catch you and bring you back again. Might even give you a hiding. You ever seen a Varthian flay someone?"
That halted Jordan's retreat towards the window, but he made no move to go back to the seat.
"Technically I wasn't the one to kill him, if that's worth anything," Arlen said, doubting it, but he needed Jordan to listen to him. Having to hurt him wouldn't get Arlen any closer to replacing Silas. "I was there, but it wasn't me who took the blade to him."
"Oh, that's alright then," Jordan said, an edge of hysteria in his voice, "you just helped someone else do it. Look, I don't know how anything works around here and even I know how bad this is."
"It's not my job to question my orders," Arlen said sourly, the conversation reminding him of someone else he'd had it with. He hoped Jordan wasn't going to make Arlen dislike him. It really wouldn't do the boy any favours, considering Arlen was the only thing between him and Marick. "And I have no particular care whether I'm causing Harkenn any inconvenience. I'm surprised you do. But of course, your sister's up there with him, isn't he? It's always about her, and I hear our esteemed high lord has quite the temper."
"Stop it," Jordan growled, an unexpected steel in his voice. Arlen tried to hide his pleasure at hearing it; steel could be moulded and still retain its strength.
Arlen just needed to live to see it.
"I didn't come here to discuss politics, boy," Arlen said. "What's done is done. I wasn't the hand who committed the murder, nor am I the one who ordered it. So let's try again, shall we?"
"Is that how you sleep at night?" Jordan muttered, taking the seat even more reluctantly than before. He perched so close to the edge it was a wonder he didn't fall off.
"I sleep at night by securing enough money to live on," Arlen sneered. "Think of that what you will. It's alright for some, living on a tutor's coin, when there's always food available and your boots can be replaced when the soles wear through. When your rune nets can be touched up when they fade, in a quarter where your kind patrol. What about the rest of us, eh? We do what we can to survive, and until you've been as low as you can go, boy, I will tolerate no judgement from you. You understand?"
A stung silence was the best Arlen seemed likely to get as an affirmation.
"I would have come to you, but for obvious reasons I wasn't able to," Arlen said. "I'm calling in a favour."
"I don't recall owing you any."
The brassiness of the response earned him a small chuckle and a few bonus points. "You're the one at a disadvantage here. You forget I have Marick's ear, and Marick has your sister surrounded. Besides, boy, I could be calling on you for a definite answer by now. Be grateful that I'm not."
He glared, challenging Jordan to point out that Arlen was in no position to be training anyone at the moment, and the boy was wise enough to stay quiet.
"I need you to visit someone," Arlen continued. "They live on the edge of the Merchants' Quarter, where the market is."
"I can't," Jordan said immediately. "Yddris never lets me out of the house alone."
There was a story behind that, Arlen could tell, but he didn't press. "Which is why you're going to get there and back before he comes to collect you. I know the hours Callan keeps you. You've got plenty of time. Run into any demons, bolt for a public building. Simple."
"Someone will recognise me."
"Then I trust you to improvise. I'm sure you can imagine who'll take the flak if you don't do this, boy."
"I'm fed up with everyone using Grace for threatening me," Jordan snarled. "I'm fucking sick of it. I know. Stop rubbing it in my face."
"Then you'll do it," Arlen said, satisfied. "Good lad. You want thirty-three Wick Row. If you can't see the top of the candle factory, you're in the wrong street. Ask for Darin, and don't mention my name until you're speaking to him and him only. Tell him I need the vault key, get him to take you. Empty the vault, and use some of the money to visit an apothecary. I want as much powdered Mary-Beth as they'll let you buy at once."
"What's Mary-Beth?"
"A Varthian-grown root. Painkiller strong enough to down a Firebull if you give it enough. No one can say its native name, but they'll know what you mean."
"Can I write that down?" Jordan asked sullenly, but he seemed resigned. There was no absolute guarantee that he would carry out what Arlen asked, but he had no way of knowing that Arlen had no intention of telling Marick about Darin. For all the boy knew, Arlen had enough influence to snap his fingers and have Grace killed before Jordan could even get back to the castle to warn her.
The Unspoken produced a thin book from an inner pocket of his cloak, a pencil wedged inside. Arlen's stomach clenched.
"What is that?"
Jordan glanced up. "A sketchbook. Can you repeat what you said?"
Arlen swallowed, tearing his eyes from the book and forcing himself to focus, trying not to think about the book under his floorboards in the other room. "As long as you don't write the name or the address."
He repeated the instructions, and watched uneasily as Jordan copied them down in a foreign hand. Arlen couldn't read the script, hadn't thought that far ahead. Jordan could be writing anything. The only consolation was that it was unlikely anyone else would manage to translate it unless Jordan told them what it said, and he wouldn't if he knew what was good for him.
So Arlen might have said if he wasn't in such a dark-damned vulnerable position.
He breathed a little easier as Jordan tucked the book away again. Arlen's trained thief's eye picked out its value by the way Jordan handled it; he wouldn't be careless with that book.
The Unspoken stood. When Arlen had first laid eyes on Jordan, he hadn't thought the boy would come to anything; he had flinched at everything, stammered and whispered and cringed away. The boy in front of him now held himself upright, and might even have convinced someone less experienced than Arlen that he wasn't terrified. He'd at least started biting back, which was a good sign. It would be such a shame if something as stupid as an errant crossbow bolt robbed Arlen of a chance to do something with that kind of material.
"How does Yddris know you?" Jordan asked, after a long pause.
Arlen scowled. He'd have liked to know that, too. "I'm pretty sure that's none of your concern, boy."
"He knows Marick, too," Jordan said.
Arlen couldn't cover up his surprise. Yddris could have picked up on Arlen in any number of ways; Arlen got everywhere in the city, and one couldn't stay completely without trails with his kind of record. Marick, however, had barely left the dead quarter since taking over the guild, and if he did, his own subordinates didn't notice. The only way to know Marick was to have guild ties – good or bad.
"You two done?" Usk's head popped up over the window ledge. "We're running short on time."
"Yeah, he's going with you," Arlen said in response to Jordan's stunned silence. "Only as far as the quarter border so you don't get hopelessly lost."
"Ah."
"He's promised not to eat you."
Jordan made a noise that might have been a stifled gag. Usk's sharp-toothed grin gleamed in the dim light, pin-pricked with silver and gold.
"If you try to run, I might have a nibble," the barbarian said, grinning still wider when Jordan flinched. "A finger. An ear. The end of your nose."
"Usk," Arlen said, trying and failing not to laugh. It wasn't funny, but he had precious little to laugh about these days. He blamed it on pain-induced delirium and being shut in all day. "Pack it in, will you? He'll burn your bollocks off if you scare him too much."
"He can try."
"Wouldn't need to. Yddris ain't here to stop an inferno, don't wind him up."
Usk saluted, smile souring a little, and then he dropped back out of sight.
Jordan was watching Arlen, and he hated that he couldn't see the boy's face. Those hoods were so dark-damned inconvenient; they hid so much that he'd be surprised if they didn't use some kind of eldritch demonshit on them.
"Don't tell Darin about this," Arlen growled, gesturing at his leg. "Keep your trap shut and you might make a bit of coin."
"I don't want your money," Jordan replied.
Arlen sneered. "Afraid it's tainted? Blood money, is that it? Just cold metal, boy, will buy you food like any other. Don't be so precious. Now get."
"Salt water," the boy said abruptly, pausing at the window.
Arlen paused with another glass of whisky halfway to his mouth. "What are you on about?"
"For your leg," Jordan said. "Wash it out with salt water to clean it. Might help prevent infection. Draws out bacteria or something."
"The fuck is a bacteria?"
"It helps where I'm from," Jordan said. "Just...try it."
He hooked one leg over the sill and vanished. Usk's voice rumbled through the night, and then there was silence and Arlen was alone again with the pain and the uncertain future.
He scowled into the depths of the whisky bottle before taking a swig. Salt for wound treatment – pull the other one, he thought, smirking with dark humour. He'd heard of packing meat in salt. He'd heard that some villages outside the Reach packed their corpses in salt over the dark season when the ground was too frozen to dig graves. He'd never heard of using it on a living person, unless Jordan was trying to tell him something.
It was several times more convenient and less painful to wait until Usk returned before trying to move, but his head was muzzy with fatigue and his waking thoughts were worse than his nightmares. He'd feel better with a closed door behind him.
He rolled out of the chair, good leg and arms trembling with the effort to keep his wounded limb from hitting the ground. He couldn't kid himself that dragging himself across the floor this way wasn't demeaning, and tried not to think about the fact that if any guild members decided to pay a visit and saw him like this he'd lose a lot of face he might never get back – and that was if they didn't just end it for him out of pity. The width of the tiny room suddenly seemed vast. Dull pain echoed from his leg to his temples, and it was tempting to lie down where he was and fall asleep, cricked neck be damned.
He dragged himself into his room and shut the door behind him. He sagged against it, panting.
"Fucker," he growled, glaring at his bandaged leg. Pale blood blotches showed under the dressing. It would soak through again before long.
He pried up his loose floorboard, shuffling forward to peer inside. He couldn't bring himself to pull out the old book of drawings, but he stared at the worn leather cover for a long time. Jordan's sketchbook hadn't looked like this one, but Arlen pictured him with it, sitting in front of the hearth, pleading with him to sit still for the picture.
He blinked, and the image vanished. Jordan hadn't been there, not in that memory.
If there had been any doubt before, Arlen was sure he was delirious now.
He slotted the floorboard back in and dragged himself over to his pallet. The whisky was a gauzy protection from the worst of the pain, fogging his thoughts and filling his limbs with lead, but despite it, sleep didn't come easily.
When it did, he dreamed of fire.