A Discourse in Steel Read Online Free PDF Page B

adolescence, of lives he’d saved over the years. He thought of Egil, of a friendship that had weathered the worst the world could do and endured.
    The darkness howled at him, a deep rumble that carried a city’s worth of spite in its bass tone. It came closer, closer, picking up speed. Nix imagined a great mouth, filled with fangs and hate and rage.
    “Don’t move, Egil. Think of the day your daughter was born, her first smile, think of the first girl you loved, your first kiss, the day you married your wife, think of that time we got over on that one-eyed sorcerer and his familiar, think of Lis when she touched your arm at the Tunnel…”
    The darkness streaked toward them, a howling, shrieking black wind that cloaked them in cold and night. They screamed in answer, braced against its onslaught, shielding their faces and blinking in the ink, and Nix heard something in the shriek, a plaintive wail that sounded like…
    The gong of Ool’s clock.
    A cool drizzle fell. Nix looked around, startled, the echo of Blackalley’s howl still in his ears. He stood at the mouth of an alley, but not the alley in the Warrens. He grabbed Egil by his biceps.
    “We’re out! You did it! You all right?”
    Egil shook his huge head, looked around as if he’d just awakened from a three-day drunk. “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. Where are we? Not in the Warrens.”
    “No.” Nix searched the skyline for Ool’s clock, for the Archbridge. He could smell the Meander in the wind, fish and sewage.
    “Near the Dock Ward, I think.”
    “What happened?”
    “I guess it spat us out.” Nix answered.
    “It’s a good thing you taste like shite,” Egil said.
    “You’re not the first to say that.”
    The sun was up, though hidden by a blanket of rain clouds. It was early morning. How long had they been trapped in Blackalley? It had seemed less than an hour, yet many hours had passed.
    “Gods,” Egil said, and ran his hand over his tattoo. “Gods.”
    “Thirded,” Nix said.
    Egil gathered himself. “Well done, my friend.”
    Nix nodded, pleased with the ordinarily stoic priest’s praise.
    Egil blew out a breath, dusted himself off. “Who’s going to tell Enora about Drugal?”
    “You are.”
    “Why me?”
    Nix dropped his voice an octave to imitate Egil’s deeper voice. “Because sometimes you have to do the right thing, Nix.”
    Egil sagged. “Shite. All right.”
    “But first a drink, yeah?”
    “Aye,” Egil said.
    “Then a visit to Mamabird, yeah?”
    “Yeah. Be more than good to see her.”
    As they walked away, Nix couldn’t help but glance back at the alley: shadowed but not black, not Blackalley. He thought of the sound he’d heard in Blackalley’s shriek, the plaintive words that had come not from those trapped inside but from Blackalley itself.
    Free us.
    He shivered and blamed the rain. Seemed better that way. He pulled his cloak tight about him and they made their way to the Slick Tunnel.
    —
    Rusk lingered among the crowd and watched the fortune-teller—Merelda was her name, the younger of the two faytors—disappear into the swirl of color and noise. She’d just made his work easier and for that he tossed a pray at Aster, god of the guild. Wasting no time, he ducked down the narrow opening between the fortune-teller’s tent and the adjacent smoke-leaf stall.
    Through the rear entrance to the tent he could make out the other fortune-teller’s voice, together with that of the Upright Man himself. He smiled, thinking of the jest he’d been making since the guildseers had given them auspicious omens and he and Channis had gone forward with the click.
    Gonna turn the Upright Man into a dustman.
    He glanced back the way he’d come to ensure he was unobserved, then drew his crossbow from where it hung behind his back. He took a boiled leather bottle from his belt pouch and unwound the tie that kept it closed. The acridity of the bloodleaf paste within stung his nostrils and made his eyes water but he blinked