He couldn't bear it anymore.
"Salt water," he grunted at Usk over the table, on the third day following Jordan's abrupt departure from his rooms. Arlen was running low on Mary-Beth already. It was the only thing that afforded him any sleep, but it came with a price; the last three nights in a row he had woken, sweating and screaming, as a dark figure waited at the end of the bed with a blade in one hand, only he wasn't screaming because he couldn't move. His body slept while his mind battled the spectre, walking the cliff edge where madness waited at the bottom of the drop.
At the prospect of another night like that, he could have wept into his porridge.
He shovelled in another mouthful of the only dish Usk could cook – he had been living on porridge since he was shot, another factor that had pushed him to this point – and briefly pondered the glop's potential as a road surface. A spot had flicked onto the table while he'd been pushing it around his bowl, and it had dried like a lump of rock. He tapped it with his finger and suppressed a snort.
"Are you going to expand on that?" Usk muttered. "Or did you just want to say it?"
Arlen knew Usk was aware of his nightmares, and hated him for it. The Varthian probably thought he'd gone mad. Arlen's response was sharper than intended. "I want some. Nothing we're doing is working, and even if it does heal I don't want to be running around with a bolt stuck through my dark-damned leg."
"Taking it out would be too risky."
"Which is why we're going to get a physician to do it."
Usk looked at him, and Arlen realised the brute really did think he had cracked. He scowled. "I've been thinking of a scheme. If it doesn't work, I'm no worse off."
"If it doesn't work, you can't get away," Usk pointed out. "I believe that would actually leave you considerably worse off."
"It's this or dying of wound rot," Arlen snapped. "At least this has a chance of improving things."
Silence stretched through the room. Arlen returned to pushing his food around the bowl, avoiding Usk's eye. It was the first time he'd said out loud that the wound might kill him, and if he hadn't taken Mary Beth with two shots of whisky the minute he woke up that day he might have stopped himself. But the words were out, and he couldn't take them back. It didn't make them any less true even if he could.
Usk put down his spoon and dragged Arlen's almost-untouched bowl towards him. "What is this plan, then?"
Arlen paused, withholding his relief. Usk never made decisions without considering every angle, which was useful when they worked together, and infuriating when Arlen tried to con him. "We could get Jes and Akiva involved. Jesper's a great actor."
Usk paused mid-chew.
"Akiva could easily get the costumes."
"You want to pose as a merchant," Usk said, without a trace of a question. "How do you propose doing that while looking the picture of...what was it Akiva said? A slippery git."
"Merchants are slippery gits," Arlen muttered, scowling. It had been bothering him, too. He could dress up like Harkenn himself and place his arse on a solid gold throne; he still wouldn't look respectable.
"If I may make a suggestion," Usk said. "My sister could make you look like someone else."
"I don't like your sister."
"And she hates you," Usk retorted. "But you could spend the rest of that money on drugs or you could pay her to pretend she doesn't. Unless you have a better expert in disguises that you've kept very well hidden."
Arlen glanced back at his room, where the money Jordan had fetched for him sat in the cavity under the floorboard next to the Mary-Beth.
"Can you get me there?"
-
Arlen doubted his own plan by the next day. He hated relegating the choosing and tracking of a mark to someone else – no one did it better than he did – but he hardly had a choice. Usk had gone out to find a physician who might turn a blind eye to anything suspicious, Akiva and Jesper were out planning a raid on a merchant's townhouse, and Arlen was stuck in his rooms, leg stewing in a bucket of salt water, feeling distinctly that he was wasting time. The salt stung, and a thin scum of blood and pus bobbed on the surface of the water. Arlen didn't know if the salt was helping at all, but he took it as a sign that it was worth trying anything.
A shadow fell across the streetlamp beam through the window. Arlen looked up, and sighed when he recognised Silas. The room was only lit by a candle, and as Silas approached it his scowl was thrown into sharp relief.
"You're doing a job without me," the boy said. "I just saw Usk."
"It's not a job," Arlen said, with more patience than he normally might have had if he hadn't been so exhausted. "It's a personal project. And I'm doing it without you because you'll get in the way."
"Is that Haverford kid doing it?"
Arlen blinked, but supposed he should have guessed Silas would find out who Jordan was. "No."
Silas seemed satisfied. He took the seat opposite Arlen, and then craned his neck under the table. "Why are you...?"
"Finish that sentence and I'll tip it over your head."
Silas shuddered and fell quiet. Arlen watched him across the table for a long time, and when it seemed the boy was about to lose his nerve and leave again, he said, "Just spit it out, kid."
"What is it about him?" Silas burst out. "Why do you prefer him over me? He didn't even want to be here!"
"I'll counter that, boy, by asking you why you're so set on having me teach you," Arlen growled. "Plenty of other Devils to choose from, a lot of which never turn down opportunities to teach and would probably suit you better. And still you're coming after me and humping my leg like a neurotic dog."
For once, Silas didn't fire up instantly. "Because you're the best."
"Correction," Arlen said, "Marick is the best. But he'll cut your bollocks off for asking." He cocked his head. "For an acolyte ripped from his holy calling you sure seem enthusiastic about bumping people off."
"Orthan was the easiest to get into," Silas said. "Ethred liked me." He paused. "I would have taken anything that meant I didn't have to go home."
"I know how that feels," Arlen muttered, thinking of Darin.
"But then I saw that I could do more with my life. Make my own money. Become good at something – really good at something. I want people to respect me for once. Even if those people are..."
"Scum?" Arlen suggested cheerfully. A dull blush appeared on Silas's face. "Look, kid, I admire that, but to get good at something you do it. You just fucking do it. Your teacher has almost nothing to do with it compared to a decade of solid experience. Don't tread on the toes of anyone important, grovel when you have to, get where you want to go." He offered a thin smile. "I'm picky, kid, there's no getting around it. This life? It chooses you. None of us would be here if we weren't doomed to start with. I take choice where I can get it; Haverford suits my style of working, and he doesn't get under my feet. It's very simple."
"And he has magic, and you're a bastard for shiny things you can't have?" Silas added. His expression had steadily darkened as Arlen went on.
"Oh, you did notice?" Arlen sneered. "Was it the crackling or the fuck-off big hood that gave it away? And no, kid, you couldn't give me all the money in the world to willingly manifest the Gift."
Silas stood up. "I'll prove I'm better than him."
"You've said that. I'm not holding my breath."
Silas growled and stalked towards the window, then half-turned as if he meant to say something more. Something in Arlen's face must have stopped him, because he turned away again with a huff and climbed back out.
"Nict's balls," Arlen muttered. The boy only ever showed up to piss him off these days; if he thought that improved his chances, he was more deluded than Arlen had previously thought. He remembered the struggle of getting noticed as a novice to the Devils and didn't begrudge the kid a bit of wheedling, but in the same position he wouldn't have dreamed of pestering a high-ranking guild member. He'd wanted Marick to teach him. Marick hadn't chosen to, and that had been tough shit. What about that was so hard to understand?
"Do you want me to reassign him?"
Arlen jumped and hissed in pain as the bucket tipped and he caught it with his foot. Eyes watering, he looked up at Marick as he took the seat Silas had just vacated. The look in his eyes said it all; Arlen's injury and self-medication had made him sloppy. He hadn't even seen the guildmaster slip inside.
"Reassign?" Arlen asked.
"Silas," Marick clarified. "I highly doubt at this point that you're changing your stance on him, and I want that Unspoken boy trained. Speaking of which, you can't take him either if you're crippled."
Arlen winced, and hoped Marick didn't see it.
"I've pulled a few strings. Your plan should go without a hitch," Marick continued, "Though it might have happened sooner if you had mentioned this to me."
Arlen stayed silent. He recognised a telling-off when he saw one, no matter how pleasant Marick seemed on the outside.
"It's been a month and you haven't got him to commit to anything," the guildmaster continued.
"I was under the impression I had three, sir."
"Plans have changed. We've been over this," Marick said, two steps short of snapping. Arlen kept his gaze trained on the table. Marick was looking for an excuse to get angry; there was an air about him, no matter how composed he looked, that Arlen had learned to recognise over the years. Something had gone wrong in one of Marick's other inscrutable plans, but he valued his life too much to ask.
"I'll sort it out, sir."
Marick twitched and looked over his shoulder at the window as if he heard something, before leaning in, "And for Nict's sake, keep that rabid little acolyte off him."
"Rabid, sir?" Arlen repeated, baffled. Silas was sulky, whiny, and one of the most irritating little brats Arlen had ever had the misfortune to spend time with, but rabid wasn't a word he'd have used.
"He's obsessed with the demon hunter's boy," Marick said, grimacing. "I've received several reports from my contacts in the city guard that he's been caught sneaking around in the Fingers more than once. He's lucky he hasn't run into any of Harkenn's men."
"He wants to kill the kid to prove some kind of point," Arlen said, "Or that's what he says. I've made several attempts to put him off it."
"If he mentions it, you can say I won't have him taught anything until he proves he won't use it to be even more of a moron," Marick replied. He scowled. "All he needs is one run-in with Yddris and he's done for." He rapped smartly on the table and then stood up. He pointed an imperious finger back at Arlen as he went back to the window. "Get your leg sorted out, get the Unspoken boy sorted out, and keep the little twits apart until I find somewhere else to put the acolyte."
"Aye, sir." Arlen nodded, but his employer was already gone.
He ground his teeth in irritation; that was always the way with Marick. He hadn't even had the opportunity to ask which strings had been pulled or where those guarantees came from, so he was relying on Usk and the others having more information than he did.
He was still thinking about the conversation when Usk helped him into a stolen carriage to take him to his sister's. It was a bitterly cold night, and their breath fogged in front of them. It was almost the only thing visible in the darkness – their streetlight had gone out two hours ago, and no bugger was brave enough to go out and light it again – so the stack of crates leading down from Arlen's window to the pavement below was treacherous, more so because Usk was half-carrying him. Even after several days getting used to it, the indignity of having the man helping him hobble around rankled.
"You remember the plan?" Usk asked in the darkness of the carriage. They could barely see each other, even though they were sitting two feet apart.
"I'm not that drunk," Arlen snapped.
"She won't talk to you anymore than she has to."
"She always talks more than she has to."
Usk paused. "You have a point." He sniffed. "Doesn't mean you need to respond."
"Trust me, I won't."
Usk's sister lived in a derelict-looking townhouse near the Aven. It was built in one of the uglier periods in the architectural history of Shadow's Reach; low and broad and utterly filthy, it squatted like a looming demon on a street lined with gutted ruins and patched-up hovels. Arlen slid down in his seat as it came into view. Intact property was a hot commodity in the dead quarter; it took steel to keep hold of it, let alone keep hold of it by yourself.
Usk's sister looked like she'd been carved from it.
"You again," she said, before she'd even looked at him. She looked uncomfortably like her brother; tall, angular, with a square jaw and long hair, though she had the advantage of being ten years younger.
"Mila," Usk said, and they exchanged a few words in their mother tongue. Arlen glowered and tried not to look like his knees were about to fold.
"We're on a schedule here," he muttered. He prepared himself for a blow to the side of the head, delivered as if she were just swatting a bug, but Mila seemed to feel he'd fucked himself over enough already.
"Come in," she said.
Arlen shook Usk off and hobbled over the threshold himself - it was one thing to have help getting down from the top floor, another to get through the door in front of a woman who hated his guts – and almost immediately his vision clouded with tears of pain. He kept his balance, ignoring Usk's outstretched arm, and casually leaned himself against an ugly table with which Mila had decorated her front room. The whole place smelled like mildew and corroded metal, catching in the back of his throat.
"Sit," Mila ordered, entering the room carrying a large metal lockbox.
"On that?" Arlen glanced at the wooden bench against the front window. It was padded, but the upholstery was threadbare and sprouted random tufts of wool, and it probably hadn't been grey originally. Arlen wasn't opposed to dirt; he just couldn't help aiming a few jabs. "I'll catch a disease."
"You are a disease," Mila said. "Sit or I will carry you over and put you there like you are a child."
Arlen glanced at Usk, but the brute had retreated to the corner of the room and faced pointedly the other way.
"Coward," Arlen muttered. He limped over to the bench, guiding himself using the wall. He gritted his teeth as the protruding bolt wobbled at each step, sending lances of pain through his body that exploded across his vision as flashes of light. Sitting almost sent him under; a crushing blackness crept into the corners of his vision for one terrible moment, only repelled by the surprise of his head bumping against the window pane behind him. He glanced up, squinting through clouded sight to find Mila staring down at him with an unreadable look on her face.
He grinned nastily. "Haven't had a challenge like this one in a while, have you? Good luck."
"It's manageable." She tipped some powder into her hand from a clay jar, and then added a few drops of water from a pail she'd placed by his feet. "Close your eyes and sit still."
He drifted. A small part of him pointed out that he was being stupid letting his guard down, but Mila's hands working on his face was strangely soporific. It could have been the whisky, too, he supposed. The front room was draughty and the bench was hard, but his sleep had been so disturbed in recent nights it didn't matter; the only thing keeping him awake was the periodic slap and shake he received from Mila when his head lolled. He didn't know what she was doing to his face. He only hoped it was thorough enough to do the job.
"Done," she said, what felt like an age later. His face was heavy and stiff, his eyelids sticky. He put a hand to his face and she slapped it away. "Don't touch. It'll come off."
"Verdict?" Arlen said, turning to Usk.
"Uglier than usual," the brute chuckled.
Arlen tried to smirk, but whatever was on his face stopped him. He settled for a grim chuckle. He had started to sweat already; this trip was shaping up to be fun.
"I hope you don't die," Mila said dispassionately as she packed away her kit.
"How uncommonly kind of you."
"Mostly because he would start bothering me," she added, jerking a thumb at Usk. "You? Fuck you."
"Again," Arlen sighed, "How charming."
She stalked out of the room with an air of total dismissal, leaving them to find their own way out. There was no mirror in the room and Mila hadn't offered him one.
"Will it work?" Arlen muttered, looking at Usk.
"Near as damnit," Usk said. "Get up. Akiva just arrived with the costumes."
Arlen looked at the bolt in his leg and his heart sank. Usk just laughed.
"Are you going to take your trousers off or shall I?"