A Discourse in Steel Read Online Free Page B

laughed. “Pits, we could even rename it.”
    “It
is
a tasteless name,” Rose said. “Fine, I’ll talk with them. And I’ll take the next few readings, too, but you fetch some lunch, then, yeah? Maybe some of Orgul’s sweetbreads? I can smell them all the way in here.”
    “Me, too.”
    As Rose donned her costume, Merelda shed hers, removing the outer robes and the gaudy jewelry. Mere took five commons from the coffer they kept hidden under the divan and winked at Rose.
    “Be back shortly.”
    Before she hurried out the back flap of the tent, the small bells that lined the front flap chimed as someone entered. Rose smiled her crooked smile, fell into character, and stepped out from behind the screen.
    “You’ve come for a reading on a matter of trust,” Rose said to the patron. “Sit here, across from me…”
    Smiling, Merelda ducked out and into the narrow way between their tent and the thin, slatboard walls of Veraal’s smoke-leaf stall beside them. She stepped out into the din and press of the Low Bazaar, turned for Orgul’s stall, and ran headlong into a thin, balding man wrapped in a brown cloak.
    “Sorry, milady, sorry,” the man mumbled, not making eye contact. He sounded drunk.
    Merelda grabbed the man by the cloak and with her other hand checked her pocket to ensure the copper commons were still there. They were, so she released the man.
    “No harm done,” she said, and let the man go.
    A crowd thronged the wool stall, everyone jostling and barking bids for bales of wool. A smaller crowd lingered before Veraal’s smoke-leaf stall, examining bunches of his leaf. Veraal, his thin gray hair crowning a face that looked made from old leather, pulled the pipe from his smoke-stained teeth, blew out a cloud of smoke, and smiled at Merelda.
    “I’ll bring you a bite!” she called to him, and he saluted her with his pipe.
    She swam through the sea of colors, sounds, and smells, following her nose to Orgul’s stall one row over, where four braziers sizzled with small cuts of organ meat.

Blackalley hung in the air before them. As they approached it, Nix felt its darkness pulling at the reservoirs of regret and sorrow that filled the lonely, late-night places inside him, but he forced his mind to focus on brighter things: Mamabird, the joy the urchins must feel when they found one of the coins he left scattered about the Warrens; he thought of the sisters, Rusilla and Merelda Norristru, whom he and Egil had saved from a dark fate.
    Everything went black and silent the moment they walked into the swirl. Nix could see nothing. He felt stretched thin, a piece of parchment about to be torn. The darkness was oppressive, heavy, and seemed to cling to him, as greasy as lamp oil. He found it hard to breathe. He lost his sense of direction. Nausea twisted his guts. Things forgotten churned up from the muddy bottom of his memories, sins small and large, petty things he’d done, spiteful things, all the things he wished he had never done, that he wished he could undo. He wanted only to curl up on the ground and forget everything, just go to sleep and forget.
    It’ll weigh down on you. Don’t let it.
    He flashed on Mamabird, her smile, and came back to himself.
    “All right? Egil, are you all right?”
    “What?” Egil said, his voice muted. “Yes.”
    “Keep walking and think of happy things,” Nix said. He had an idea of the dark memories Blackalley would dredge up for Egil. “Only happy things, priest.”
    “Right,” Egil said, though without conviction.
    Nix looked behind him, saw the faint green lights of his burning magefire, and it gave him hope. He thought of the moments he’d spent laughing with Egil, Kiir’s long hair flowing down her back, her smile, Mamabird. He thought of Mamabird’s laugh, her stew, her hugs. Mamabird. Mamabird.
    The darkness around them thinned and the silence gave way to weeping, wailing, not from them, but from others. The sound was so plaintive, so hopeless, that Nix