The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (lightest ebook reader txt) 📗

“It’s Gammer Lindworm.” Arkady flicked her ear, as did the other children—an old gesture meant to keep the night haunts away. “She’s taking them to feed to the zlyzen.”

“Gammer Lindworm?” How many times had he heard such stories as a child, all the terrible things Gammer Lindworm would do to him for being such a wicked boy? As though he didn’t have more to fear from his own kin. “If fire tales are all you can give me…”

So much for his lead. However world-worn she might act, Arkady Bones still saw the world through a child’s eyes, finding in it a child’s fears.

And lashing out with the strength of a child’s frustration. Grey limped back as sudden pain shot up his shin. Arkady shifted on the cobbles, ready to kick him again. “Don’t know why I wasted breath telling an old fart with shit between his ears. Go back to your people and leave my knot alone. We’ll take care of our own.”

You deserved that, Grey thought ruefully. If he’d been her age, he would have kicked himself, too. Anyone who organized the street children this well deserved more than his disbelief. Still… “And you are my gammer, that I should believe a night haunt has crept out of stories to hunt the children of Nadežra?”

“En’t the real Gammer Lindworm,” Arkady sneered above the snickers of her gang. “But what else you gonna call an old hag who takes children, eats ’em up, and spits ’em back hollow? Been around for years, but used to be she only took one of us every month or two. And the ones that came back were only shook and nightmarish.”

Years? Guilt tightened around Grey’s heart. He hadn’t known. One every month or two—the Vigil wouldn’t take notice of that. Street children went missing in Nadežra all the time. From disease, from drowning in the river, from running afoul of cuffs. “What changed?”

Her bony shoulder twitched. “Dunno. Ciessa went missing in late Colbrilun. Turned back up the first Meralny in Similun saying she couldn’t sleep. And she couldn’t. Went mad and died before Tsapekny that same week. Been over thirty since then that we know about. Most never turn up again. So what do we do?”

A ragged chorus answered her. “Don’t go out alone; don’t hit a mark alone; don’t sleep rough alone; don’t be a shit-wit hero alone. If you see something strange, tell Arkady.”

Punctuating the recitation with an approving nod, Arkady set fists on hips and said to Grey, “Dunno what you think you can do that we can’t, but I got tired of hearing reports about you.”

“I can investigate it without the danger of being taken,” Grey said, hoping her sense would overcome her distrust.

“Ha! Guess that’s so. Better you than us.” She flicked a hand at her gang, and they trickled away through gaps too narrow for him to follow. “You learn anything useful, drop a few centiras to the pity-rustlers in Horizon Plaza. They’ll come find me.”

And probably turn over at least part of that take. Grey didn’t believe for a moment that Arkady was organizing the kids out of charity. Still, he had something to go on now.

“What if you need to find me?” he asked, before Arkady could slip away after her knot.

She thumbed her chin at him, a gesture he usually only received when he was in uniform. “We know where the hawks roost.”

“So much for disguises,” Grey muttered, tugging on the open collar of his panel coat as he left the alley.

When he reached Coster’s Walk, he scanned the thoroughfare looking for Ranieri, finally spotting him next to a man selling secondhand shoes from a blanket, and not far from a patterner plying her cards. Grey passed the patterner without comment. He wasn’t in uniform, and the woman had to eat; if he ran her off, she’d just set up again somewhere else. And compared with kidnapping, what harm was a little fraud?

Pavlin Ranieri was a sunwise man, born a daughter to his parents, but now a son. With his silky brown hair and delicately pointed chin, he could have had a lucrative career on the stage even if he couldn’t act his way out of a puddle. Instead, for reasons surpassing Grey’s understanding, he’d chosen to become a hawk.

Right now, he was slouched against a pillar, also out of uniform. “What have you learned?” Grey asked, leaning against the other side of the pillar. It shifted slightly, his weight counterbalancing Ranieri’s.

“Not a lot,” Ranieri said. “Tess is as loyal as they come, and she’s Alta Renata’s only servant, so there’s no one else to talk to. Sir, I—I don’t like doing this. Pretending to make friends, just so I can snoop.”

If Ranieri had consulted him beforehand, Grey would have warned him not to use his real family and their bakery as a cover, no matter how convenient it was to Viraudax’s townhouse. Hard to keep the professional and the personal separate when you let them overlap like Corillis and Paumillis during conjunction.

“Noted. Maybe I should put Kaineto on snooping and dump the Indestor business on you?”

Ranieri twisted to face him, horror and dread dueling in liquid dark eyes, until he caught the sardonic twist to Grey’s brow. “Not necessary, sir. I wouldn’t wish that on any of us.”

“Good man. Did you find anything other than your conscience?”

Gaze shifting to the broad street, Ranieri said, “She’s not from Little Alwydd—Tess, I mean. The alta hired her when her ship docked in Ganllech. Seemed grateful to be quit of the place—Tess, not the alta—but that’s Ganllech for you. She’s overworked, though.” He frowned. “Which makes sense if she’s the only servant, but if that’s the case, then she’s not overworked enough. Not for a house that size. They don’t have day workers or accounts with any of the local grocers, either. Of course, Alta Renata takes most of her meals out—she’s hardly ever home.”

That supported what Grey had heard from the street children he’d