A Gathering Of Stones

3

The first week Brann spent her nights in doorways with Jaril standing guard over her; she spent her days looking for someplace to go to ground.

She found an empty hovel on the edge of the Kuna Coru, the quarter where the sublegals lived when they weren’t in prison or on the street due to a stretch of Tungjii’s Buttocks in the Face. The hovel had three small rooms, one of them a kitchen of sorts; the roof leaked and the front door wouldn’t close because the leather hinges were cracked, the scraped sheepskin on the windows was cracked or mostly missing, but the walls were thick and solid, the floor was intact and there was a jakes around the corner that she shared with five other households and a branch of the aqueduct brought city water dose by; the tap on it was illicit, but no one paid much attention to that. All the discomforts of home and a bouquet of wonderfully varied and powerful stinks besides.

She paid the latch bribe to the local caudhar, hustled some furniture and had the roof and the floor fixed, then moved in. Her neighbors weren’t the sort to ask questions and she wasn’t talking anyway. Not then.

Once she was settled, she went to one of Sarimbara’s shrines and sat there all day, neither eating nor drinking, her legs in a lotus knot, her gaze blank as the stone eyes in Sarimbara’s icon. It was the most boring thing she’d done in all her long life, but she kept it up for a week, her presence there as a certified holywoman was cover for Jaril as he flew over the city in his hawkfonn, probing for any whiff of Yaril or her captor.

On the fifth day of this boredom, when Jaril came in from another sweep, this one as fruitless as the others, Braun was staring gloomily at a pot, waiting for the water to boil so she could drop in a handful of rice and some chopped vegetables. She was almost as bored with her own cooking as she was with the shrine-sitting; it’d been years since she’d bothered about meals, the ten years on Jal Virri, thanks to the cosseting by Housewraith. She looked up as Jaril flung himself into a tottery old chair by an equally dilapidated kitchen table. “You look like I feel.”

He drew hardened nails across the table top, scoring grooves in the soft gray wood, making an ugly rasping sound. “This isn’t working.”

“Nothing?”

“Tell me what I should be looking for. Besides Yaro.” He slapped his hand on the table. “Bramble, we have to DO something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know!” He kicked at the table leg, watched the table shudder. “I don’t know…”

“So what have you done, Jay? I see you about three minutes every third day.”

Ignoring its creaking protests, he leaned back in the chair, crossed his arms and scowled at the fire in the stovehole. “I figured anyone who could build a trap like that would likely be up around the top, so I started with the hills and the Isun sars. I found a couple sorcerors living in the sars, neither of them anywhere near Maks’ class. And a couple dozen mages, but mages don’t deal with other realities so it isn’t likely they’d know how to make that trap. I marked them anyway; if it comes to that, I can go into them and read as many of them as I can before they start yelling for help.” He leaned back farther and put his feet on the table. “I spent a while sniffing about the Dhaniks since they’re the ones that really run the city, I snooped on judges, tax farmers, priests in their shrines, caudhars of the districts. Nothing there either. Some Dhaniks hire Talents, but they sure take care not to associate with them. These Talents live in the Kuna Kirar with the lesser merchants. I checked out their hirelists, some witches for farseeing and truthreading, some shamans, mainly as healers, and low-grade mages to set wards about their offices and their sars. I looked at the lot of them; if you added their talents together, they wouldn’t have enough gnom to light a fire in a jug of oil. I checked out the doulahars of the High Merchants. Pretty much like the Dhaniks, they hire Talents but don’t want them around day to day. Yesterday and today, I did the Great Market. The same mix, mostly. Some street magicians whose hands are quicker than their Talents, especially when they’re in your purse, fortunetellers, card and palm readers, dealers in potions and amulets, curse setters and layers, and none of them worth the spit to drown them. I looked at every Slya-cursed one of them. I thought maybe the trapper might be hiding behind a charlatan’s mask. Be a good front, if you think of it much. If he is, he’s too good for me. I’m whipped, Bramble, down to a frazzle. I don’t know what to do now. Maybe I ought to dangle myself for bait.”

“Hmm.” Brann glanced at the pot, snorted as she saw the water busily boiling; she scooped up the vegetables and the rice, dumped them in, stirred them briskly and put the lid on. “Let’s save that for desperation time. I don’t think we’ve got that desperate, not yet. What about around us? The Kuna Cora.”

“In this collection of losers?”

“It marches with your idea about the streetsers. If there’s ever a place where people don’t ask questions…” She lifted the lid, stirred the mix inside some more, then moved the pan off the fire to the sandbed where it would continue cooking at a much tower heat.

“I’m tired, Bramble.”

“I know. You ought to try spending your days looking that damn snake in the face. I think I’m going to set up as a wisewoman, Jay; this holy bit is getting us nowhere. Why don’t you stay home a day or so, rest.”

“You mean be your familiar and friendly sneak and read those women on the sly. That’s a rest?”

“They say a change is as good as a rest.” She lifted the lid on her supper, replaced it, and walked briskly to the box where she kept her bowls and flatware. She laid a place for herself, hunted out a napkin and dropped it beside the spoon. “Get your feet off the table, huh?”

“They say. Who they? I doubt that they ever did a day’s labor.”

“Quibble. Feet, Jay. I don’t care to stare at your dirty boots while I’m trying to eat. You going to stay?”

“Oh yes.”