Heaven's Needle (52 page)

It did not surprise Asharre when Bitharn knocked. She had been expecting the signal, or something like it, for hours; even before opening the door, she knew Bitharn had come to summon her to the hunt. The
sigrir
rose, swept on
her cloak and swordbelt, and stepped outside. She carried Aurandane, not her own
caractan
. Her weapon was an old familiar friend, but it would not serve tonight.

“The Thorn has found Corban,” Bitharn said, slightly breathless. Under her hood, her cheeks were flushed from cold and exertion. Her rain-sodden cloak dripped a puddled circle around her feet.

“Where?” Asharre asked.

“Near the docks. He wouldn't tell us more than that. We're to meet him in the Illuminers' safehouse on the Street of Little Flowers. Kelland should already be there.”

Asharre nodded, raised her hood, and followed the younger woman from the temple into the storm.

Outside the sweeping dark fell upon them, whipping them into silence with lashes of wind and rain. Asharre pulled her cloak tight, huddling against the deluge and narrowing her focus to Bitharn's boots splashing across the cobblestones two steps ahead.

The city was empty in the storm. Half-blinded by the sleeting drops, with her only companion a faceless wraith ahead, it was all too easy for Asharre to imagine that she was back in Carden Vale—or, worse, walking through a vision of what Cailan might become if they failed.

The streets would run red first, though. And the conflagration that would consume the city before it settled into the silence of ashes was a horror Asharre did not want to imagine. She closed her mind's eye to it, concentrating instead on the weight of the rain on her cloak, the slippery cobblestones underfoot, the wail of wind over stone-tiled roofs.

It was almost a surprise when they came to the safehouse. The Street of Little Flowers, named for the cheap brothels that lined it, was one of the rowdiest parts of
Cailan. Sailors and dockworkers stumbled through it at all hours, drunk or on their way there, while bawds called enticements and footpads stalked them in the alleys. Tonight, however, that endless game of chaser-and-chased had been pushed indoors. The glow of firelight through the brothels' rain-drummed windows, accompanied by snatches of rowdy song, suggested that the merriment continued there—but the street itself was desolate.

The safehouse, which ordinarily stood out like a maiden aunt at a drunken revel, was just another house shuttered against the storm tonight. Curlicued ironwork barred its windows, and salt-poisoned rosevines clung feebly to the trellis over its door, suggesting a certain gentility, or at least an attempt at it, in an environment utterly unforgiving of such graces.

The door opened to a musty-smelling sitting room carpeted in drifts of cat fur. Scented candles dotted the tables and alcoves between the windows, adding a layer of cloying sweetness to the stuffy air and giving just enough light to outline the two people who sat waiting for them inside: Kelland, trying without success to pick cat hairs off his trousers, and a sleek-haired older lady who knitted deftly in the near-dark. A fat dowager cat sprawled in the woman's lap, twitching its ears to the click of her needles without opening an eye. Another sat on the back of her chair, and a third paced sinuously around Kelland's boots, weaving its body through an endless double loop.

“Homey.” Bitharn swatted at a puff of cat hair on a chair, then made a face when it stuck to her wet hand.

“Don't get too comfortable,” Kelland said. “We aren't staying long. As soon as Asharre is disguised, we'll go to meet the Thorn.”

Bitharn looked up, surprised. “I thought we were meeting him here.”

“Good. You were meant to … as was Malentir. In truth, it was a bit of hair-splitting.
We
, meaning the three of us, are meeting here. We'll meet him near the brothel across the way.”

Bitharn's nose wrinkled. “Coisette's? That place is a snake pit.”

“Hardly fair to the snakes. But yes, it's a den of degenerates and dreamflower addicts—and, as it happens, our upstairs windows have an excellent view of its doors. I can think of worse ways for a Thorn to occupy his time than trying to ferret out which of Coisette's patrons are secretly Celestians.

“Whether or not he chooses to spy on Coisette's guests, however, he won't know where the real safehouse is. And,” Kelland added, as the old woman put away her knitting and removed a case of tiny bottles and brushes buried in her yarn basket, “we won't have to rely on him to disguise us tonight. I expect he'll want us to wear the faces of the dead, and while I can see the wisdom in hiding ourselves from Corban as long as possible, I
don't
see any reason we should resort to bloodmagic to do it. Our disguises will be simpler things. Hooded cloaks for the two of us. A little more for Asharre.”

He gave the
sigrir
an apologetic shrug. “No other woman in Cailan looks like you. I don't know that Corban truly has any sentries guarding his lair—if he did, I'd like to think we would have found them—but there's no reason to chance being spotted early.”

The old woman set her case on a stool near Asharre and clicked it open. The
sigrir
looked into it curiously. She'd heard a little about the sisters who lived here from Oralia.
In their younger years, both sisters had practiced on the Avenue of Camellias, where they'd learned the arts of paint and powder from an Amrali-trained courtesan. They could turn a toothless drab into a beauty, or a handsome youth into a wart-covered fright. As Oralia told it, when they were finished with a man, his own dog might not recognize its master.

After surveying Asharre with a critical eye, the woman clicked her tongue, nodded, and reached into the case. “You'll make an easy man,” she said. “A big full beard to cover some of those scars on your face, an old case of pox to explain away the rest … yes, you're an easy one. Hold still.” She dabbed a strong-smelling glue on Asharre's face, covering each daub with a pinch of coarse reddish hair.

“You don't need better light?” Asharre asked.

“Hush. No talking, unless you want your new face put on crooked. There, now …” She chuckled softly as she worked. “Weak light suits these old eyes well enough. It lets me see you as the man I'll make you, not as whoever you are … and you'll not be wearing this face to one of Lord Gildorath's galas, will you? The eyes that see you will have no better light than this. It's the outlines that need to be strong tonight, not the details.”

Asharre had her doubts about that, but she held her tongue. After finishing the beard, the old woman mixed a thick putty and applied it to the
sigrir
's brow and upper cheeks, filling in some of the scarred runes while emphasizing the ridges of others. When she finished, Kelland stood, pulling his cloak's hood over the white shells in his hair. Gloves covered his dark hands, and the sun-marked hilt of his sword was wrapped in nondescript leather.

Bitharn had watched Asharre's transformation curiously, but waved off any suggestion that she should wear
the same. “Paint never suited me,” the girl said, wrapping her damp cloak around her shoulders. She checked the watertight case that held her bowstrings, fastened an oilcloth cap over her quiver, and led the way out of the safehouse.

The storm's fury had not abated during the hours they'd spent inside. Cascading water foamed across the cobblestones, running so strong in places that it threatened to sweep Asharre's feet from under her. She trudged through it stolidly, splashing across the street until she reached the brothel's door.

Inside Coisette's, all was eye-watering smoke and oniony fish stew and the raucous, desperate laughter of the damned. Drunk bawds swayed on the laps of drunker patrons, and although the dingy torchlight made Asharre a convincing man, it could not hide the exhaustion under those painted smiles. The
sigrir
sat at the periphery of a dice game, halfheartedly losing money, until a persistent tap at the window put an end to her purse's slow bleed.

It was a sparrow. A little brown sparrow, eyes glossy with rainwater and death.

She had to remember to breathe. The sight of the bird had stunned her with remorse, resentment, rage—all the things knotted around her old grief. All the things she couldn't afford to show, couldn't afford to
feel
.

Asharre inhaled. Exhaled, striving for control.

“That is a truly unfortunate beard,” Malentir said a moment later, sliding into an empty chair at the dice game. He wore another face, but Asharre knew it was the Thorn; his black eyes were too cold to be human, and the other men at the table muttered and moved away from him, troubled by the new arrival without quite knowing why.

“We thought it best to surprise our host.” The dice cup had come around to her again. Asharre gave it a shake and
tossed the dice, watching them tumble with suddenly intense interest. The spinning pips meant nothing to her, but they were safer to look at than the Thorn.

“Oh, I agree,” Malentir said. He lifted a hand. Silver and glass gleamed in his sleeve: three tiny bottles tethered to his wire bracelet by delicate silver chains. “I would have offered a solution, but I see the knight found his own. It
was
his suggestion, wasn't it?”

“Yes.” And the purpose of that disguise, Asharre realized, was less to deceive Corban than to send a message to the Thorn: the Celestians refused to depend on his magic, or accede to his methods. He had, clearly, taken in their meaning at a glance.

The other players were drifting away, too unsettled by Malentir's presence to keep their minds on the dice. Kelland and Bitharn took the chairs they vacated.

“Have you learned more?” the knight asked quietly. His words were nearly inaudible in the clamor that filled Coisette's. Asharre pulled her own chair closer and passed the dice cup to Bitharn.

“Nothing worthwhile. Corban has at least one victim's corpse lying in his lair. The restless shade led me to him. It was, regrettably, of little use beyond that; less is left of that poor soul's mind than those of the
maelgloth
penned in Duradh Mal. I know where Corban hides, but little else.”

“That'll have to be enough, then,” Bitharn said, plucking at her cloak with a sigh. She checked her lantern, ensuring its flame was steady before she started toward the door. “Pity it couldn't be closer. I'm exceedingly tired of getting wet.”

Once more they ventured into the storm. Curtains of black rain billowed over the narrow roofs and blotted out the moon. The streets were rain-dimpled rivers, foaming white where they came down steep inclines.

Through this Asharre trudged with her hood pulled low and dripping past her chin. Bitharn and Kelland were blurs in the rain beside her, Malentir another ahead. None spoke. The storm drowned speech as surely as light, and they made their way in silence broken only by the hammering hiss of rain and the far-off boom of thunder over the sea.

The Thorn led them nearly to the water's edge. In the harbor, past the last ragged fringe of buildings, ships curled tight against the driving rain and bobbed on swirling waves. Slick-backed rats scurried through the alleys, quarreling over choice morsels. Corban's house squatted in one of those alleys, but no rats ran down that way.

The hovel's door, taken off its hinges, sagged against its entrance. Bird droppings caked the step in front of it. Rather than forming a dumpy ridge like every other such pile Asharre had seen, those droppings rose into vaguely familiar, spindly-stalked shapes.

“Mushrooms,” Bitharn said. “They're making the shapes of the mushrooms we saw in Carden Vale.
Morduk ossain
.”

Malentir's hood dipped in a nod. “That is not Corban's doing, but his god's. It gives me hope … and fills me with fear. The Mad God is not fool enough to let
morduk ossain
bloom on the Dome of the Sun's doorstep, but no Maolite could mistake this sign. There is a locus of Maol's power inside, it tells them: enter, and be sanctified. But does that signal mean that Corban has given himself completely to Maol, or that his god seeks new vessels to replace a failed one?”

Kelland moved past him without answering. He grabbed the door in gloved hands and pulled, shattering the unnatural sculptures on the stoop. For an instant something seemed to squirm inside the cracked shells of
bird dung—as if larval
things
, neither worms nor mushrooms but blind pale squirmers somewhere between the two, gestated inside. Then the door swept across them, knocking them apart, and they dissolved into the rain.

Bundles of herbs dangled from the rafters of Corban's hovel. They hung swollen and strangled in their strings, dripping slow brown slime. No longer were they feverfew or chamomile, wintermint or tansy; while a few moldy leaves on the outside of each bundle still retained their original shape, their hearts had all bulged into the contorted knots of beggar's hand.

Fat glass jars squatted under the bundled herbs and drying racks, and in them dead things swam. Kelland's light skittered over dissolving arms and shriveled tails, toothless mouths filled with brine and sleeves of decaying flesh that hung loose from soft soaked bone.

The stench of rotting, fermented fish that emanated from the jars was incredible. Several of their lids were askew. Wrinkled fingers clutched at their rims, stilled in the act of climbing out. The creatures' bodies, malformed and plump with brine, swayed gently in their jars; their fingers, exposed to unforgiving air, were dried and cracking on the glass.

“What stopped them?” Bitharn wondered. She walked over to one—a curled white thing with stubbed teeth and a single round eye over its upturned snout—and leaned over, using her belt knife to poke at its paws.

It didn't move, but something else did. Asharre glimpsed something, or
things
, slinking predatory and swift through the hovel's shadows. A familiar, wild rankness came from them. Something like …