CHAPTER TWO
Her steps were markedly faster with even a hint of light, and in minutes she found her lantern and her bag and all its spilled contents. With the lamp, she quickly confirmed there was nothing else in the basement for her to add to her treasure, nor that she could drag over and climb on in order to get out.
She’d just begun to consider how much effort it would take to move the trunk all the way to the accidental opening when a soft voice intruded on the weight of silence around her.
“Ci?”
“Meesh!” Thank all that was good, the smallest of them. “Careful of the—”
“Oh no, I see it.” Meesh’s warm voice lightened with a laugh he kindly kept tucked away. He’d never let Terio live something like this down, but he was a little more considerate with Cima and Ackles. “You all right?”
“I lived.” Cima grinned, because with a way out it all became suddenly, irrevocably real. “And remind me to bring Terio’s soothsayer a present.”
“You found something?” His small face poked over the jagged hole between them, dark eyes brilliant in Cima’s lantern light. “I only got a splinter.”
“Meesh, I found everything. Get the rope and get the others, because we’re going to dig into this together.” Unable—or unwilling, rather—to hold back her smirk, Cima turned down her lantern and lifted her arm.
She waited the appropriate amount of seconds for Meesh’s eyes to adjust, and saw the moment he registered the soft glow of the pearls wound around her arm like a pet snake. Her very own valuable and impractical vambrace.
“Forsaken babies and abandoned gods.” The curse was low and fervent, but he grinned and suddenly half his body leaned over the hole. “Pretty sure you won the night.”
“You could say that.” Cima twisted the pearls, admiring their glow and near uniform perfection. “I’d say I won our entire lives. Hurry!”
“Oh, I’ll hurry!” He vanished between one blink and the next, silent as ever.
Cima took a long moment to consider if she should duck back from the hole in case one of them came in with a weapon, determined to turn a score for five into four, but that catastrophizing voice in her brain had never played for truth with her crew. This time was no different—in minutes they arrived with soft laughter and eager questions, not murder.
“We’re gonna have to go no-lookout for a little bit,” she said, pitching her low voice to carry no further than the four above her, all of whom were leaving a respectful distance between themselves and the hole. “You’re all going to want to see this so we can make a plan.”
Gaudi leaned forward, visibly gauged the distance, and jumped down. He landed in a roll, patted himself, and nodded in satisfaction. “Don’t have to tell me twice.” With a grin to Cima, he tilted his head back toward the opening. “Anchor the ladder so we can get back up, but I can catch in the meantime.”
“If you drop me, rothead . . .” was all the warning Ackles gave as she flung herself into the air.
Gaudi caught her without so much as a huffed breath. She kissed him on the cheek before he set her on her feet and she crossed to Cima. “Good, is it?”
“It’s so far beyond good we might as well be on one of the moons.” Cima displayed the pearls and Ackles purred over them.
Terio followed and barely touched the ground between Gaudi and Cima once she landed. “This alone is worth coming out here.” She stood shoulder to shoulder with Ackles and ran the tips of her fingers over the string of pearls. Her smile flickered, and her ocean blue eyes reflected the mixed hues of the pearls even in the lamp light. “Told you Rastanzi was a real soothsayer.”
Cima swallowed back an automatic protest and nodded. She hadn’t shared the fortune teller’s exact words with any of them, but Terio was right. The diviner had pointed them in a direction they would not have gone, given the Liddow’s reputation. The quarter had sat undisturbed for so long, quietly opening holes in the ground and running people insane. Surely there couldn’t be anything valuable left worth the risk . . . but they’d been surprised in the Cavella district. Maybe that had helped them agree they could risk ghosts and sinkholes, especially after a soothsayer’s reassurance. Arguing that would be ungracious. Stingy even.
A thing Cima and her friends could afford to never be, ever again.
Meesh flopped the rope ladder over the edge above them and tested his weight at the edge of the hole before climbing down. Cima shifted from side to side, eager to show off, to finally shrug away the drag of the last month’s awfulness, to usher them into this next gleaming phase of their lives.
Their reactions did not disappoint.
“Ooh a creepy basement, yes excellent find Ci—what the bilge bucketing shit?” Ackles managed a noise that was more whisper than scream, but certainly conveyed the enthusiasm of the latter.
“This was just . . . sitting there?” Terio demanded, though wonder coated each word.
“No, it was . . .” Cima turned to gesture at the door that had stymied her, but there was only bare wall and an empty rectangle between them and the room she’d fallen into. She blinked, but it didn’t reappear. Maybe Gaudi had lifted it off its hinges, marked it for salvage? No, she would have seen—Terio cleared her throat and Cima twisted away again. “Tucked back here, in the dark, and I didn’t have my lamp.”
Meesh made a visible effort to break his gaze from the open chest, succeeded, and pivoted toward her. “You have your lamp right there.”
“I fell,” Cima replied, with what felt like a great deal of patience. “Through the floor. When the house ate me. Dropped my bag and my lamp on the way. And it was very, very dark, so it took me a while to feel through and—who cares? Look at it!”
“I’m sending you to get eaten by every house ever, in the future,” Terio said with a gesture to the drowned gods, inching closer to the treasure. “If this is what comes of it.”
“Are you cracked?” Ackles laughed and spun in place, arms wrapped tightly around her own midsection. “We won’t ever have to go scavenging into another house, ever, unless it’s a flipping mansion that we own in the Hiane district, because we own so much we forgot what we had.”
“All right, this deserves a toast,” Gaudi exclaimed, because of course he did, and Terio laughed out loud.
“You rothead, we need drinks to toast, and you better not tell me your brought some on the job.”
“No, but when we get back we can buy all the drinks,” Meesh declared, to which Gaudi hurrahed with great enthusiasm before the rest of them hushed him in unison.
“We have to be smart about this.” Cima’s cheeks ached, which was the moment she realized she had been grinning like a forsaken madwoman for longer than might have been healthy. “If we go unload all of it on Ky, it’ll glut the market and she’ll undersell us.”
“There’s no way to glut the market with this, Ci.” Meesh gestured wildly at the open chest in the corner. “People are going to lose their shit. Can you imagine the bidding on the globe?”
“And then what, Meesh?” Cima stepped forward, enough to put herself between her friends and the treasure without fully blocking their view. “They’ll ask questions. They’ll find a way to figure out where we were, and some rich fop will discover their great-great ancestor’s ancestor owned the street, and lay claim, and—”
“And the point remains, we drop too much at once, we don’t get the best price.” Ackles held her hands up and tilted her head. They’d all worked with or for Ky for over a decade, but Ackles had also indulged in a series of relationships of varying seriousness with the older woman over the years, and had the most training in the fine art of the fence. “But we filter a few here, maybe take some to jeweler’s row . . .”
“Use that big purple one to pay our tabs at the Barren and Top Seed.” Gaudi clapped. “We can plan it out at home. Let’s close it up, we’ll winch it out and I’ll carry it home.”
“That’s a terrible plan,” Terio said instantly, Cima on her verbal heels.
“—beyond getting mugged, or calling the Watch to see what we’re hefting out of here—” Ackles added, though Meesh spoke over her, arguing as was his wont when Terio had a point.
“Fine, but where would we hide it if it’s not with us—” Meesh gestured wildly, and Gaudi elbowed him, but that didn’t help.
“—and it’s old you daff, let it crack open down Tinter’s Avenue and—” Ackles continued, and Terio glared as her sister’s voice rose.
Cima clapped her hands and forced back an immediate gasp when her injured hand flared. Everyone turned to her expectantly, and she didn’t bother to look at her injury in the lamplight. It could wait. In a day or two she could afford to go to the Council’s own doctors if she wanted. It could wait until then—this couldn’t.
“Process it out—we get the trunk home, where are we stashing all of this until we can farm it through Ky or the jewelers or whomever? Where’s safe enough?”
“Ky’s got a vault.” Meesh kicked at the ground, frowned at the beams above them. “We could—”
“She’ll look in it.” Ackles shrugged. “And not a one of us can blame her for that.”
“Does it lock?” Gaudi leapt to action, shifted around Cima and leaned over the trunk. He put his large hand on the top to tip it closed. Terio made an aborted protest that died on her lips when the lid remained unmoved. With a huff of a disbelieving chuckle, Gaudi repositioned himself fully toward the trunk and pressed again, then added a second hand. “Was this open when you found it?” he asked, slightly winded.
“No, I had to pick the lock.” Cima tilted her head and stepped closer.
“No insult, Ci, but how’d you get this thing open?” Though Gaudi leaned his not inconsiderable weight on the lid, muscles standing out along his arms, it remained stubbornly upright.
“It . . .” She shook her head. It had just opened, far more easily than she’d expected. Her hand throbbed, and she shoved it further into her pocket.
“Well, solid enough to move or no, we’re not taking it out like that.” Meesh grunted and crossed his arms, as though he hadn’t been the one arguing to move it in the first place. “Even if we could lift it without spilling, can’t imagine even with slops we can get it anywhere unnoticed.”
They’d used slops as a literal cover more than once. The food wasn’t difficult to secure—they’d sent Meesh to look hungry and pathetic at various innkeepers, gathered up the leftovers and meals marked for donation to the desperate, then used the odds and ends to cover more interesting materials underneath for transport. They always got the food to the poorhouses as intended, once the goods were secured, because people needed to eat. The thought of covering this priceless treasure with old stew and stale bread made Cima’s stomach turn, though it had never stopped them before.
Gaudi shifted his position again and shoved the trunk experimentally. The small pile of coins heaped along the far edge didn’t so much as shiver. “Yeah. Huh. I’m not moving this.” He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and then grinned into the trunk. “Can we divvy it up now?”
“Night’s passing fast, and if we’re leaving it here we don’t want anyone to see we’ve been anywhere near here.” Cima couldn’t imagine anyone else wandering into the Liddow, but a month ago she wouldn’t have pushed them into the city’s oldest abandoned section.
She stared at the pearls around her arm for a brief moment, then detailed her reasoning, “Ky’s on our side, but she’s a businesswoman. She’s gonna ask questions, of us, but also anyone who might have seen where we came from. Let’s start light, so no one marks us as a target and gets interested in our path.”
They’d been thieves often enough in their careers, and it didn’t take long to weigh how much they could move without pulling too much interest. She clicked her tongue and continued, “Maybe load up, say . . . six pieces each?” Cima glanced sidelong at Terio, and the other woman paused, then nodded.
“That’s easy enough for us to hide, and plenty to get us started with Ky. Then we’ll come back with better gear for the rest tomorrow night.”
Gaudi, though he still regarded the trunk with mild confusion, put his hands on top of his head. “I’d like to dump it all out and get a better look before we pick our six, but gods and dogs just what we can see is beyond . . . anything. Whatever we decide, I’m in.” And if that wasn’t the Gaudi-est of Gaudi’s sentiments, Cima couldn’t have said what was.
“We still don’t have anywhere to hide it for tomorrow night—” Meesh protested, though he looked thoughtful rather than argumentative this time.
“We get a vault at the Council bank.” Ackles made a considering noise as she slid forward toward the trunk. “No, that’ll take a few days to set up, but there’s that merchant bank on Sweets, right? We can move stuff in there little by little . . .”
“Still gonna take time,” Meesh interjected, crowding closer, and Ackles put a hand on his shoulder.
“No one’s stupid enough to be coming to this part of the Liddow anytime soon.” She beamed at each of them in turn, and then, most especially, the trunk. “Just us.”
“I want to take it all too, Meesh.” Terio sighed and brushed her hands together. “But we can afford to be smart and careful here. We’ve never been so able to be smart and careful!” A small smile tugged her lips, and after a moment there was a unanimous round of nods. Their rough semi-circle drew closer around the chest and its unfathomable wealth.
“So let’s see what we’re working with if we’re not unburying the whole thing—Cima, it’s your find, you want to start portioning it out?” Ackles gestured Cima closer with a flourish, and Meesh echoed the gesture on her other side.
“One set of hands that we can all watch.” Meesh delivered the words drenched in sarcasm, but the brilliant grin tugging his lips made his sentiment clear. “And you’re the worst sleight of hand-er we got.”
“Or I’ve been misleading you all for this exact moment.” Cima huffed a laugh and turned fully toward the chest, flexing her aching left hand experimentally in her pocket.
“Hey, she was good enough for the streets, back when we did that,” Gaudi argued, but even his unending loyalty shifted into a deep chuckle, and he added, “but yeah, we’d catch her.”
“If she wanted to hide it for herself she already would have, dolts. She’s the only one who passed the temptation test already. So instead of wasting time . . .” Terio clucked her tongue, and Cima winced.
“Plus, we don’t want to all dig in here at once—something cut me when I tried to untangle this.” She held up her pearl-wrapped arm.
Terio made a low noise and yanked Cima’s left hand out of her pocket. The slightly older woman examined Cima’s hand by lamplight, and ran her fingers over the skin without quite touching it. “No blood, but I don’t like the color, and it’s a little swollen.” She frowned. “Maybe a couple of really small impact points?”
“Maybe there’s a golden fork in there,” Ackles offered with a grin.
“Leave it to Cima to get forked finding treasure,” Meesh muttered, but he leaned closer with poorly hidden concern too. Apparently seeing nothing of great concern, he pronounced, “Yeah, you’re already marked with the blood poison curse then. Let’s keep ourselves clear. And grab me that ruby. There’s my precious treasure!”
Terio laughed, released Cima, and crouched at the side of the chest with her own hands firmly on her legs. “Dibs on that emerald though.”
“Hey, how are we doing dibs—” Ackles knocked against her older sister, though there was nothing but delight in her tone.
“Even Ky closes up shop if we get too close to dawns, bilge rats.” Cima flexed both her hands, ignored the ache in her left, and dropped down in front of the chest. “Let’s get this treasure tucked away and get our show on the road.”
By the time Cima chivvied them out of the basement they had their six pieces and their plans for selling them. It was nearly impossible to resist the pull of “just one more,” and as there was no way to truly determine equal value of each ridiculously fabulous piece, in the end they preened over the pieces left behind, filled their secret pockets, and admired their loot until their little quirl hearts were satisfied. Or satisfied enough—Meesh could have stuffed his cheeks with jewels and still had room for more.
The trunk looked no emptier than before. Cima’s hands, injured and unmarked both, itched to dig into each new layer, uncover yet more marvels, but they had a plan. Ackles and Cima would go to Ky, because she liked them best. Terio was determined to go to the fortune teller and see what else they had in store—it was their adopted leader’s one indulgence, and none of them argued. Meesh and Gaudi would head to the Barren, because that was what they all usually did, and would keep an ear out for any interesting gossip about shopkeepers and jewelers with the best prices.
They skirted the edges of the Liddow, spread across the narrow streets to keep from tempting the ground to open beneath them—Cima couldn’t imagine a second occurrence going nearly so well as the first—and slid in smaller numbers across the border to Cavella.
Centuries ago, Broadside had been a teeming metropolis that coated the land from ocean to mountains. During the Cataclysm, new mountains thrust through the earth, the ocean shifted, and the small number of survivors huddled in the most stable quarter of the city. The Liddow was the furthest extant section of the old city, crowded up against the Clasm Mountains and still prone to toppling into the earth.
On the side of the Liddow nearer the city was a motley strip of land. Over the last hundred years or so, with Broadside growing again, it had been partially reclaimed. After a successful rebuild in what was now the Mawal neighborhood, the Council had very recently turned its attention to the Cavella district. As such, the Watch patrolled it regularly, and it was best for Cima and her crew to split up before they shifted from abandoned and unattended streets to ones abandoned but under more direct Council attention.
She and Ackles broke off from the group first, stowed their lanterns, and moved through the edges of the semi-cleared streets. There were no working street lamps this far into Cavella, but the Watch carried lanterns with directional beams they delighted in shining directly in their targets’ eyes, which were not always easy to spot from afar.
The roads were thick with mud and strewn with chunks of stone from ruined buildings. As their eyes adjusted, Ackles slid up on window ledges and stone porticos without obvious cracks. Cima would have waved her down, but her adopted sister vibrated with excited energy, and who could blame her?
Cima kept her focus low around the corners, listened for the scrape of debris in the road or more than the sigh of the ocean breeze moving through overgrown trees. Ackles, back pressed against a sprawling house that leaned unnaturally to the right, side-stepped through a clump of scraggly bushes and flushed a flock of quirls. At least a dozen of the little birds spiraled out of the grasping branches, flopping their wings and hooting warnings to the no doubt twenty more still in hiding.
Cima’s skin attempted to slough off at the unexpected movement. Though her heart hammered, she bit back both her noise of surprise and the hiss to call Ackles over to her—they’d had far too many jobs requiring stealth for her to make such a novice error.
After this, they could afford to be loud, to let loose the laugh that bubbled up after tensing for a threat and finding only little, silly birds. Cima and Ackles turned their faces to each other, and though expressions were impossible to make out in the dark, Cima knew they were both struggling not to giggle.
A moment’s distraction, but it was enough.
The quirls changed direction, half running through the street, the other half taking flight and quir-quirling their way into a windowless house. Under the sound of wings and distress, a small scrape, like a boot against the road.
They both straightened and shifted deeper into their respective shadows, Ackles into the bushes and Cima across the street against the swirled stone column of another house. A moment later, another scrape, faint but closer.
A whistle, not a quirl but one of the overlarge seabirds with trailing tails, tore through the night in its usual one-three-two pattern. The bush across the street shook a branch, as though its resident quirls had settled in, but Cima didn’t need Ackles’s subtle acknowledgment to know the whistle wasn’t avian at all, but Meesh.
“Birds here, sir.” An unfamiliar male voice, far closer than she’d expected. “But tookies don’t call like that at night.”
Didn’t they? She’d only ever heard that call at night. Granted, mostly it had been her crew signaling to each other, but they’d gotten it from somewhere.
“Spread out,” a different male voice called. “Could be a group of ’em.”
“Single warning,” the bird expert called, and the shadows flickered as a tall Watcher stepped around the roofless house next to Cima’s. “Cavella’s off limits except to contracted groups, and we don’t have none of that this far in. City’s got rights on salvage, so you come on out and it’s just a fine for a first offense.”
A series of crashes, maybe a street away, answered him. They had played games with the Watch before, and had fun by staggering distractions across blocks to slowly draw Watchers further and further apart until they all hit their own escape route. Blind the peepers, Meesh dubbed it, though she’d also heard it referenced as hop the toads. This time, however, they couldn’t afford to make the night memorable. Nothing a Watcher would bemoan over drinks later, nor some event they’d report up to their superiors.
Cima considered the various treasure hidden in her clothes, the set of tiny rubies that had strung perfectly over her plain necklace chain, the pieces Ackles and the rest had. No, no they couldn’t afford the game now, or any Watcher recalling an encounter later.
She considered and dismissed several plans in rapid succession—flush out an animal behind the house, a no because the Watch had come from behind the next house, and there might be more. Throw a rock down the street, rejected because it involved too many motions and unfortunately most Watchers were not stupid enough to immediately fall for it. Stay in place, an obvious no because of her lack of cover. Fall back into the gap-toothed window behind her, tempting but she couldn’t make out what she’d be stepping into and anything from the crackle of dead leaves to another floor falling out from under her would easily give her away. Be bold as brass stroll into the street and pretend confusion and flaunt her chest . . . well, she wasn’t dressed for that and it was always a maybe for success.
Soft-footed and weight balanced, she eased further along the house, away from the road, and crouched low at the corner. The man on their street had gone quiet after the crashes, but that didn’t mean he’d run off. First she’d do her best to see what they were working with, and then—
“Birds and vermin,” the second man called, and a soft curse at the edge of Cima’s cover house answered. Most of the vegetation had died off or burrowed low with the lateness of the season, and she stepped with extreme caution to slip silently to the other side of the house without plants giving her away.
With the scene called clear, the Watcher flicked his lantern open and walked in the middle of the road, his step nearly as soundless as her own. Not nearly as soundless as Ackles’s, though, as the other woman appeared suddenly over Cima’s shoulder and timed her words to each step the Watcher made. “Was that Gaudi? Remember when he was awful at impressions?”
And for the second time that night, it took all Cima’s self-discipline not to squeak or elbow her sister directly in the gut, which would risk an “oof” just as dangerous. She did roll her eyes and smoothly raise her hand to flick the other woman’s nose, but by then the Watcher had turned the corner.
In silent agreement, they backtracked and went wide, risking the potential obstacles close to the houses rather than the speed of cleared roads. Four blocks later there were streetlamps in sight and Ackles brushed her hand.
Again wordless, they switched sliding from building to building in favor of the street, and shifted their respective gaits to an unsteady stumble. Cima loosened her braid and Ackles ruffled her equally dark hair, and they kept their heads bent together as though sharing drunken secrets. They were only a few crossings from Terraces, one of the nicer districts and home of Ky’s shop. While it wasn’t quite midnight, it was certainly late enough for two hard-working friends to have had rather too much to drink and stumble a street or two off their path on their way home.
When the derelict houses had given way to empty lots and eventually to well-maintained buildings, Cima paused to lean against a wrought iron lamp carved like a tall spray of water. She tilted her head and squinted up at the warm yellow of the lamp.
“Think the boys made it?” she asked, her words low but her giggle meant to carry.
Ackles planted her hands on her hips and shook her hair back. “Course. We—”
“All right, ladies?” Two members of the Watch strolled toward them, both displaying little of the alertness of the man in Cavella.
“Jus’ on our way home,” Ackles replied with a bare hint of a slur.
“You sure you’re going the right way?” The broader of the two gave their clothes a once over, but they were not noticeably out of place.
They’d picked up lovely long jackets from Ky’s shop last winter, the heavy fabric and dark color resistant to the sliding and creeping they often subjected their clothes to. Cima hadn’t thought to look at her current state, but if her fall had coated her in dust, Terio would have absentmindedly wiped her clean, so likely they were fine. Cima unfastened her coat and folded the lapels back so the fine buttons, previously hidden, caught the light.
“We aren’t irresponsible, sir,” she said, summoning her very nicest smile and stretching it a bit too loose. “Yes. Sweets Street is that way.” She pointed the way the Watchers had approached from, then squinted again and shifted several degrees east.
Ackles, meanwhile, murmured “Sweets for the sweets,” and giggled, then covered her mouth as though desperately trying to swallow the sound back.
“Pretty young ladies shouldn’t be wandering the streets at this hour.” The wider of the two Watchers crossed his arms, but there was a smile tugging his mouth.
“Pretty!” Ackles straightened and shook a finger in the man’s direction. “My friend is beautiful, and everybody knows it. Jus . . . jus’ been a long day, is all.” She wavered on her feet and steadied herself against Cima’s shoulder.
“You’re both quite beautiful,” he agreed, but before he could continue Cima put her hand over Ackles’s.
“And perf—” She hiccupped and widened her eyes as though the sound had had unexpected company. “Perfectly safe, with Watchers like you on the streets!” Cima solidified her and her sister’s standing as middle-to-do with both her delivery—admiring and wide-eyed—and word choice. People in Ossington rarely called members of the Watch Watchers. Peepers, often, and sometimes toads for their green jackets and position to the Council.
The shorter Watcher huffed a laugh. “All right now ladies, get yourselves home. You don’t want to linger and let people think you’re planning something nefarious.” He grinned and tapped his sword.
“Nefarious?” the other man muttered, and Ackles giggled again.
Cima shot her a look—was her closest friend overdoing it, or still overfull of glee from the other events of the night?—but it seemed to solidify their innocence with the Watch.
“Thank you sirs,” Cima said, then hooked her arm through the other woman’s and yanked. A block later, firmly in the occupied city and with the occasional passerby, she gave in to the energy zipping through her own midsection, and leaned against Ackles as they walked and chortled and didn’t appear at all as though they were paying attention to their surroundings.
“Think if we impress her enough with this, Ky will tell us what she really did?” Ackles asked with the air of one awaiting a new treat.
Cima, who thought they’d both been laughing at the sheer extravagance of the night, fixed her braid and used the motion to check the alley to their right. “What?”
“The haul. You know she gets chatty sometimes when she’s excited to sell things. Maybe she’ll drop a new detail and we can update the odds.”
Ky Felanel filled several roles in Broadside, and from small facts they’d gleaned in their work with her, had done far more. Here in the city she was the fence with the best prices and the widest base of buyers, likely related to the fact she also was one of the major contract holders for the Council’s scavenge and reclamation projects. But from her stories, she’d been a sailor, a courtesan in foreign lands, a scholar, a traveler, and a merchant on the high seas. A lot of lives for a woman not overmuch older than they were, but given her extensive contacts and occasional nuggets of wisdom, it wasn’t entirely impossible.
“Update the odds?” Cima grinned up at the cloud strewn sky. “Stop thinking small, girl. Because if we do this right, we can pay her to take us on a tour of the settled world and show us everywhere she’s been.”
Never had the world been so bright, such a wealth of promise and . . . well, wealth ahead of them.
And to think, it could only get better from here.