Chapter Three

WHILE THERE were surely people within the Silver Quarter who could tell me where to find Jory Pearce, I didn’t know any of them. I couldn’t just grab wealthy pedestrians and ask them; the city guard would haul me off for being a nuisance. So I went instead to one place I was reasonably sure I could find my answers.

The Fox’s Den was inside the Low, but barely, with a décor fancier than usual for the quarter and with higher prices. Most of the patrons—well-heeled men and women from elsewhere in the city—came just to slum it for the night. Nominally, the Den was a tavern, but nobody came for the drinks. The main attractions here were the dice games—and the pretty young things who’d be happy to take your winnings in exchange for a romp in one of the upstairs rooms.

A pair of large women ran the place. I don’t know whether they were sisters or spouses, but in any case, I wouldn’t have wanted to face either of them in a fight. The Den employed a few guards to keep things orderly, but the landladies provided the main deterrence to misdeeds. Tonight they saw me as I entered—very little escaped their notice—and gave me twin nods. I only waved back, since it wasn’t them I’d come to talk to.

Redigon was easy to spy despite the crowd. She stood taller than most men, and her hair flamed as red as jewelberries. She’d once sworn to me that it grew that unnatural color because her mother had been blessed by Howl, the god of the setting sun. Redigon’s lies were always hard to distinguish from her truths. Tonight she’d braided her hair and wrapped it atop her head, adding a few white flowers for contrast. She stood among a tightly packed group, watching a man and a woman take turns throwing dice.

“Daveth!” she cried when she saw me. Her eyes glittered with avaricious joy. “What brings you to this side of the river tonight? And dressed so well?”

“These are hunting clothes.”

“Are they, now?”

“Will you have a drink with me?” I asked.

“I’d be delighted.”

We sat in the quietest spot available, a small table tucked into a back corner. The table nearest us was occupied, but the two men were so busily pawing under each other’s clothes that I doubted they’d notice us at all. One of the landladies came to our table with a pair of full tankards. I paid, of course.

Perhaps Redigon had once been a handsome woman, but her fondness for trance-drops had robbed her face of its flesh and vitality, leaving hardly more than a skin-covered skull and disconcertingly bright eyes. And that hair, of course, like a flame consuming her. One day the drops would kill her just as they’d killed my mother, but except for her appetite, most of Redigon had died already.

“Whence the newfound fortune, Daveth?” she asked after taking a deep quaff of her ale.

“It’s not a fortune. Payment for a job.”

“You look good when you’re cleaned up. You must have been quite a sight in your guard uniform, back in the day.”

With some effort, I kept my face calm. I didn’t like Redigon and she couldn’t be trusted—but she had an uncanny knack for knowing all the gossip in this neighborhood, and she was willing to share that gossip for a fee.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said to her.

“I could be that someone. For a fee.”

“You’re not to my taste. You know that.”

She shrugged. “Douse the lanterns and what difference does it make whether the mouth around your cock is attached to a man or a woman?”

“It makes a difference to me. And in any case, that’s not what I meant. I’m not searching for a bedmate tonight.”

“You never are. It’s one of your problems.” She pointed a claw-like finger at me. “If you fucked more often, maybe a little of that frown would fade.”

I wondered whether she knew about the last man I’d gone to bed with—Myghal Tren. If so, she was keeping that information to herself at the moment. I drank my entire tankard in one go.

“I need to find a singer named Jory Pearce. He used to perform at the Harp, but he’s not there any longer. Where can I find him?”

She considered me for a few moments, then sipped at her ale. Her hand shook a bit. Good—that meant she’d be hungry for trance-drops soon and therefore more eager to help me. “I don’t think you can afford him, darling,” she finally said. “Not unless your employer has been very generous. Not that he wouldn’t be worth the price.” Her grin almost made me shudder.

“Where is he, Redigon?”

“It’s a big city, isn’t it? So many places a man could be.” Pretending coyness, she traced a pattern in a puddle of liquid on the table.

I could beat the information from her, but that wasn’t my style. Besides, the landladies would be angry at me and would probably retaliate in kind for disturbing their tavern. I could wait until Redigon’s hand grew too shaky to hold her tankard, until her eyes burned with the need for trance-drops, at which point she’d acquiesce to my demands for almost no payment at all. But I didn’t want to wait, so I dug out a remi and held it between finger and thumb. “Where?” I repeated.

Her gaze sharpened. “Five, Daveth.”

“I don’t have five,” I lied. “And even if I did, this information’s not worth that much.” But I added a second coin to the first.

She lifted her chin. “Four. That will be enough for me to buy my dreams tonight.”

I stood and shook my head. “You’ll have to buy them elsewhere. I’ll find him another way.” Which I could do, eventually.

After the briefest hesitation, she leapt to her feet, snatched the remi away, and secreted them somewhere on her person. “He’s at Two Gray Cats.” And apparently pleased with the closer prospect of her trance-drops, she even told me the street name and gave vague directions.

I headed off into the night, daydreaming pleasantly about the easy capture ahead of me and the crowns I’d soon be adding to my account at the bank.

The more fool I.

I FELT considerably less cheery after spending almost an hour wandering the Silver Quarter in search of Two Gray Cats. The surroundings were pleasant enough, but it wasn’t home. I wanted a few more pints of ale and then my own lumpy bed.

After asking some passersby, I eventually found the street I was looking for. I’d walked by it a few times already in the darkness. Access ran beneath a large stone building, through a cobblestone passageway that I’d originally assumed would lead to a courtyard. Instead the walkway exited at the back of the structure and climbed at a steep pitch. Massive stone buildings loomed on my left, most of them with lantern-lit windows, while the ground dropped off severely on my right. Had the air been clear of smoke, I would have had a nice view of the river and the temples high on Sevi Hill.

The space between the road and the cliff finally widened and allowed for some buildings, and I came at last to my destination. At least I assumed I was in the right place: two huge stone felines flanked the wide doors. Two ogres guarded this place, wearing matching dove-colored uniforms. They nodded at me.

“Who’s performing tonight?” I asked, pretending not to see the playbill tacked near the door. I was good at hiding the fact that I couldn’t read.

The one on the left rattled off three names I didn’t know and one I did: Jory Pearce. Excellent.

But before I could enter, the man on the right smiled apologetically. “Sorry, citizen. We need to make sure you’re not carrying a sword.”

I lifted my cloak so they could see my waist. “Thank you,” they said in unison before ushering me in. So knives were permitted, which was fortunate yet foolish. I could do far more harm with my blades than most swordsmen could with theirs.

I’d been to the theater twice in my life. I’d snuck in once as a boy and paid to get in once when I was a guard. In both cases, the theaters had been open to the sky, with a rough wooden stage at one end and rows of benches lining the floor.

Two Gray Cats boasted much more sumptuous décor: marble floor, lines of padded chairs with small tables in front of them, and a high roof painted with vivid scenes and hung with glittering spiritlight chandeliers that must have earned some wizard a fortune. More chairs crowded the balconies, and lush maroon curtains set off a stage gleaming with polished wood.

I stood in the doorway, taking in the splendor for just a moment and then scanning the crowd. About half the seats were occupied by well-dressed men and women. On the stage, two pretty women played flutes while a third sang about the joys of springtime. They were good, I supposed, but then I’m hardly an experienced judge of music.

A young man all in gray sidled up to me. “A seat, sir?” he asked quietly.

“Yes. As close to the front at as possible.”

He didn’t seem to expect any money from me and simply led the way. I ended up three rows back from the stage, slightly off-center, with a pair of middle-aged women on one side and a large group of mixed genders on the other.

“To drink, sir?” asked my young man.

I glanced around quickly to see what others had. Wine, mostly, although a few drank spirits. I remembered something I tried when celebrating my first paycheck as a guard. “Rakia,” I said. Fruit brandy. Usually well out of my budget, but not tonight.

“Of course, sir.”

I drank three glasses—paying ten briquets each—while the girl on stage trilled about young love and brave heroes. The other patrons seemed to enjoy themselves, but I grew bored.

And then the girls left, I started a fourth drink, and Jory Pearce came on stage.

He was… breathtaking.

Literally. One look at him and my chest felt too tight to draw air. He was tall, perhaps almost as tall as me, but where I’m all bones and awkward angles, he was as sleek as a selkie, with firm lithe muscles showing through his artfully tight clothing. His hair, the color of freshly churned butter, grew in tight ringlets to form a cloud around his head. He had a firm square chin, and even from three rows away, I could make out the warm amber of his large eyes and the pink of his plush lips. Perhaps his nose was a trifle long, but that only added to his allure.

I’d never seen anything like the clothing he wore: a tightly fitted shirt and equally tight stockings, both of pale blue silk so thin as to be transparent. All that kept his body from being completely visible was a length of thicker indigo silk knotted at one hip. His feet were bare—long toes with polished nails—and he moved with all the lithe grace of the theater’s namesakes.

“Good evening,” he said when he took the stage. He gazed out at the audience, but I swear he locked eyes with me and gave a small smile.

Then he began to sing.

A funny thing. If I closed my eyes and just listened, he sounded good enough but nothing special. But if I looked at him, I felt swept away as if listening to a god. It might have been a spell, some charm he’d bought from a skilled wizard, but I didn’t mind. I was, quite literally, enchanted.

I didn’t have to endure trilling songs about pretty flowers or blushing maidens. He sang laments—a lover mourning someone lost at sea, a mother crying over a dead child, a warrior grieving after a useless battle, a farmer watching her crops wither. I’m not sentimental. Unlike some of the patrons sitting near me, I didn’t weep. But my soul felt heavy, and every note he sang resonated deep within me. He also played a lute, a few strums here and there, just enough to emphasize parts of the tunes. He had no other accompaniment. He didn’t need any.

I buried myself in his singing, losing track of time and forgetting why I was there. But when he stopped, the spell broke. He bowed slightly to the loud applause, caught my gaze a moment more, and left the stage.

I rushed out of the theater, accidentally stomping on feet as I went. When I pushed through the front doors, I saw the pair of guards but no sign of Pearce. Hoping that meant he was still inside, I walked several paces down the hill and found a shadowed place to wait. I assumed he wouldn’t head uphill, toward the city’s more rarefied heights.

Time passed. Now and then people walked by—some ascending and some descending—but none of them were Pearce. My new cloak kept me warm against the night chill, for which I was grateful, but my bladder became insistently full. Eventually I crept deeper into the darkness and pissed against a wall. I was returning to my surveillance spot, still tightening the laces of my chausses, when a single figure came into view, walking slowly from the direction of Two Gray Cats. I identified Pearce at once, with his hair glowing even in the weak moonlight and his silhouette oddly distorted by the lute hanging on his back.

Keeping to the shadows and many paces behind, I followed him.

As it turned out, Lord Uren was wrong—Pearce did live in the Low. His house was at the edge of the quarter, though, on a nearly respectable street just a few minutes’ walk from the Silver. From what I could discern in the glow of a few street lanterns, these houses were in good repair, with freshly painted facades and even a few window boxes with flowers. No beggars lurked in alcoves, and the air smelled of hearth fires rather than shit and rot.

Pearce stopped in front of a narrow house, taking a moment to unspell the lock. He opened the door, but instead of stepping inside, he turned his head to look over his shoulder. “Well?” he said. “Are you coming in or not?”

Shrugging, I left the shadows and followed him inside.