Nine: Questions

Jordan always felt sorry for anyone who got tangled up with Arlen, but Riko was getting on his nerves.

Horribly aware of Darin waiting for him downstairs, Jordan resisted the urge to start tapping his foot as the accountant dug around in his drawers for a magnifying glass. Sweat beaded on his brow and spattered the table he was searching, and Jordan wondered if the man might have mistaken him for Arlen himself. The full-body trembling certainly suggested as much.

"Ah." Riko slicked back his thinning hair from his face and emerged from a desk drawer clutching a magnifying glass so scratched and filthy it was a miracle he could see through it. He gestured, and Jordan laid out his goods on the table. He knew Arlen would expect him to haggle for it, but Jordan would take whatever Riko gave him if it meant the night was over faster. At that moment, Jordan was more scared of Arlen's brother.

At least he hadn't almost killed Arlen the first time they met.

"I'll give you an Auriel for all four items."

Jordan pursed his lips. He had determined not to haggle, but Arlen would send him straight back if all he returned with was an Auriel. So much for knowing better than to cheat.

Heart sinking – he hated bartering – he stepped closer to the table and inspected the items with care.

"So for four items made with real gold," he said slowly, "You want to give Arlen...one bit of gold?"

Riko paled. "I...I suppose th-that's not..."

"Six Auriels," Jordan said.

The accountant paused, seeming to realise Jordan was looking to bargain rather than to shank the money out of him. Jordan, in turn, had a hard time trying not to think too much on what that said about his tutor's usual methods.

"Two," Riko said, some confidence leaking back into his voice. "I won't go higher for stolen goods."

"Five."

"Two and three Certs."

"Four and three Certs."

Riko narrowed his eyes. "A clean three."

"Three and two Certs."

"Deal." Riko scooped the items into a desk drawer and shuffled over to a chest at the back of the room. Jordan's chest eased. He had once seen Akiva haggle for half an hour solid and he didn't think he could face it.

Any relief at getting rid of the stolen items was mitigated by the solid purse of gold he left with, jangling lightly in one pocket. As he descended the stairs, his heart seemed to rise, as if sensing that he was safer up there than wherever Darin was lying in wait. When he stepped out into the street and saw no one there, he dared to hope he'd got bored and left, but then a figure stood up from the front step of a closed shop and came over.

"What's this about?" Jordan asked. He tried not to sound as nervous as he felt, but his vocal chords had other ideas.

"Talk over a pint?" Darin shoved his hands in his pockets. His aura betrayed his unease, strong enough for Jordan to pinpoint it, and supposed he couldn't blame the man. It was reassuring to know he wasn't the only one bricking it, at least. And it must have been important for Darin to willingly put himself in Jordan's presence for more than a few minutes.

"If you know somewhere," Jordan said. "I never go to the taverns round here."

"Me neither," Darin said. "Too pricy."

Before Jordan could respond –he didn't really have time for a crawl through the Reach looking for a cheaper pub – Darin turned and struck off down the road. Shame flooded him at the strong temptation to slip away, but he didn't want to risk Arlen's ire if it really was urgent. He knew Arlen paid at least some, if not all, of Darin's rent, which was uncharacteristic enough that Jordan could tell he actually gave a shit. He liked to pretend otherwise, and Jordan didn't press it, but if his adoptive mother had taken a turn for the worse and Jordan hadn't stuck around to hear about it, a knife to the gut would be a much more genuine threat.

So he hurried after Darin's retreating back, keeping his eyes on the streets around them. The commercial streets of the merchants' quarter were mostly rune-warded, but Jordan knew from experience there were weak spots, and he didn't want a repeat of the night he'd almost killed Darin by accident.

It was clearly also on Darin's mind.

"I'm assuming this is safer than last time," he muttered as Jordan caught up. "It's been a few months."

"I did apologise. And meant it." Jordan scowled.

Darin shrugged. "I didn't say you meant to do it. I blame that shitbrain brother of mine more than you, sending you on a job you didn't have enough control for." He glanced sidelong. "How's he treating you?"

Jordan thought for a moment, but couldn't pinpoint what he meant to say. He settled for, "He's...Arlen."

"Say no more," Darin replied. He stopped in front of a doorway into what looked like an ordinary food store. It was still open, and dim light glittered inside. "This place has a courtyard behind it. Not a tavern, so the ale's cheaper."

"Oh, right." It didn't look like the kind of place where anyone stuck around for a drink. He almost offered to just buy Darin a drink in a tavern, but stopped himself. This wasn't an outing for fun, and Darin wasn't a friend. The ale was most likely just a pretence to buy more time for interrogating him and nothing more.

It was a food store, he saw when he stepped inside, but Darin appeared to know the owner. At a gesture, Jordan shuffled through the shop and out into the little courtyard behind it. To his surprise, it was quite pleasant – a couple of benches rested on a decorative patio, and night-blooming flowers trailed from hanging baskets on white-washed walls. Lanterns hung from ropes slung across the space, filling it with warm light and lending it a feeling of cosiness despite being in the open air. Jordan just hoped the rain held off while they were sitting there.

Darin stepped out with two glass bottles of ale and slammed them down on one of the benches. He sat down on one side and, with all his trepidation rushing back to him, Jordan slid onto the other. He felt horribly out of place in his dark clothing and deep hood. To anyone outside looking in, it would probably look like Darin was hiring him to kill someone, which was a little too close to current events for Jordan to be comfortable with.

"Where is he?" Darin asked, taking a long swig of beer. His eyes bored straight into Jordan's.

Jordan hesitated. Darin didn't know about Arlen's amputated leg, and all his business had been conducted through Usk since it happened. Clearly, Usk had done well in keeping his mouth shut, but that unfortunately put all the heat on Jordan.

"Where he always is," Jordan said neutrally. "Dead quarter."

"Do I look stupid?" Darin snapped. "If he wants to keep me in the dark about something, fine, but he should at least have the balls to tell me that himself. Kiel knows I don't want to know what he gets up to in his free time. But I haven't seen him in months and he's banned all his lackeys from telling me why, and that's got me nervous."

"And what makes me nervous is telling you something no one else has been allowed to say, when he holds so much over me that he's managed to blackmail me into a whole bloody apprenticeship," Jordan said. He swallowed half his beer in several gulps to try and douse some of his anger. He wasn't a lackey. "I already don't fucking sleep."

They glared at each other across the bench. Then, suddenly, Darin deflated.

"She's dying," he said, all the heat gone from his voice. "And she wants to see him."

Jordan sat back. "Oh. Oh, man. I'm really sorry."

Darin's brows furrowed. "What are you apologising for?"

"Otherworld thing. It means, um...sympathies." Even after months in the Reach, the culture barrier tripped Jordan up every other day. He cursed it.

"Otherworld things are weird," Darin muttered. "Not your fault my mother's dying and my brother's a selfish dick."

"I...thought you said he was disowned." That was more than once that Darin had referred to Arlen as a brother.

Darin shrugged. "On public records. Ma doesn't know what he does now and I haven't told her. To her, he's still the clingy little kid she picked up from a refugee slum. Da knew," Darin's fingers tapped lightly on the glass and his gaze was far away, "Da wiped his name from our family records when he came home with that awful thing tattooed on his head. He'd already been with the Devils for years." He must have guessed at Jordan's confusion, because he shrugged and added, "Ma's been blind since we were kids."

Jordan swallowed. He almost wished to un-hear all that so he could stay angry and not do the stupid thing he was about to do.

"Usk will beat me to a pulp if he thinks I told you this," he said, "So please don't say anything."

"I'm covering my own arse, kid, not looking to get you gutted."

"He got shot," Jordan said, dropping his voice and checking all the shadows. "Crossbow bolt to the leg. He had to lose it."

If Darin's eyes had rolled any harder they'd have disappeared into the back of his skull. He put his forehead in his hand and in a muffled voice said, "Stupid bastard. Stupid, reckless bastard." He resurfaced. "Tell him she wants to see him, won't you?"

"And you won't..."

"Kid," Darin interrupted him, "I do appreciate what you're up against here, and I didn't really expect you to tell me. So thank you for that. I swear on whatever'll convince you that I won't say a dark-damned thing." He paused. "What does this mean for his work?"

"He's got a new leg," Jordan said. "A fake one."

"I expected that. Where's the money coming from?"

Jordan shrugged, face heating. "Me, I guess."

He started when Darin drew up, looking furious. "He's paying me with your money?"

"It's not like that," Jordan said quickly, cursing himself for bad wording. "I do the jobs as part of training, he takes a cut, and I take a cut. He sends the money out of his portion."

"Still dirty." Darin sank back down, looking unhappy but a little mollified.

"This is Arlen we're talking about."

Darin snorted, and Jordan received the first smile he'd ever got from him. Jordan relaxed a little. Even if he was already terrified of Arlen finding out, he sensed that he'd gone some way towards making up for their bad start. He didn't think they'd ever be friendly, but knowing that Darin didn't entirely hate his guts when they were more than likely going to have dealings in the future was at least something.

The payoff from it diminished considerably when Jordan was faced with returning to Arlen to drop off the money and receive his pay. Arlen was no Unspoken, but the assassin had an uncanny knack for reading the room and Jordan was very bad at hiding things. There was a reason the only jobs he did by himself were buying and selling; all those involving deception were accompanied, and he only played a very minor role. As he passed back through the shop, he cast about for nettle wine. Presenting Arlen with it might distract him.

The wine was so eye-watering in price – there was a reason, then, why Usk had stopped bringing it back – that Jordan used some of his own money to subsidise it, figuring it was, in a way, an investment in his own safety. He parted with Darin at the door, trying to ignore the dread-filled pit in his stomach, and set off back the way he'd come, weighed down with the glass bottle balanced in his inside pocket.

He kept his wits about him when he went anywhere dressed in his dead quarter garb, but even accounting for that the Unspoken along the next street took him completely by surprise. He had a split second to dive down an alley and haul himself up onto a roof using the window ledges. It was not the graceful ascent he had come to expect from any seasoned Devil, and if it hadn't been a single-storey roof he'd probably have lost his balance and broken his neck, but he managed to pull his feet out of sight just in time and hunch down behind a low chimney stack.

There were two Unspoken, and with a pang Jordan recognised Koen's voice from one of the figures. The other, to his surprise, wasn't Koen's tutor Hap but Nika.

"Where did you say Thorne was, again?" Koen was saying. Jordan's heart leapt into his throat.

"Visiting his sister, Yddris said." Nika sounded unconvinced. "I'm surprised he didn't take Thorne with him to the temple this evening."

I wish. Jordan repositioned the bottle of wine in his pocket as it threatened to roll out, and suppressed an unexpected longing to be down there instead. His tutor had mentioned an imminent trip to Kiel's temple, which Jordan had only seen from outside. He thought it would probably be a much more pleasant trip than the one he'd already had – in a much more pleasant temple.

As if sensing the thought, Nika's head turned. Jordan held his breath, drawing deeper into the shadow of the stack. Surely Nika hadn't sensed him from there. Jordan couldn't feel Nika's magic, but he had no idea how sensitive Nika really was. If the Unspoken could tell it was him from there, Jordan was fucked.

He held completely still, drawing his magic in as tight as he possibly could, until he felt heat building in the pit of his stomach. He wasn't supposed to hold onto it so tightly – Yddris had explicitly warned against it – but the fear of discovery overrode his caution. He may not face punishment from the Lord of the Reach if he was discovered running Devil errands, considering Harkenn had contracted him to do so, but the Unspoken Guild was a separate entity. Harkenn couldn't do anything if the Guild punished him. And though Nika was one of the few people in the Reach Jordan had come to know on a personal level, they were still not at a stage where Jordan could guess how Nika might react to finding him out here.

A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, blood pounding in his temples and insides burning.

"What are you looking at?" he heard Koen ask.

"Thought I saw something," Nika replied. Jordan could discern nothing from his tone. "Must have been a shadeling."

Their footsteps receded and Jordan finally released his held breath, holding onto the chimney as his vision flashed. It was uncomfortable to release his grip on his magic so slowly, but letting go all at once risked a flare strong enough to bring out flames, which would give him away in an instant.

He slid down from the roof, even less elegantly than the trip up, and narrowly avoided putting his boot through someone's back window. His heart still thundered in his chest, and a small voice in the back of his head wouldn't stop insisting that Nika had known it was him. He pushed it aside; if he had, then Jordan would soon find out. There was no point risking a slip-up around Arlen because he was distracted.

He checked his pockets to make sure he still had everything, and set off again at a quicker pace than before. He encountered no one else, and by the time he reached the bridge he'd finally managed to calm himself enough to slow down. He hopped up onto the balustrade and grimaced as his boots slid on the algae and muck, but the other bridge took him past the Nict temple again and he was keen to avoid that route for a while.

When he reached Arlen's window he paused, hearing voices inside. It was a good idea to gage the atmosphere before entering Arlen's home, and from the sounds of it his tutor's amiable mood from earlier had dissipated. His voice had lowered to an acidic hiss, and the faint, repeating schick in the background was a familiar noise. Arlen sharpened his knives mostly when he felt like using them on someone. Brandishing the nettle wine as a peace offering, Jordan made plenty of noise as he climbed the stack of crates so they knew he was coming. When he clambered inside, Arlen and Usk sat on either side of the table, glowering at each other.

"Well?" Arlen snapped, turning his glare on Jordan. He gritted his teeth, willing himself not to react, and sure enough the glare cooled somewhat when Arlen spotted the nettle wine.

"Give that here," he muttered. "Nict knows I need some."

Usk caught Jordan's eye and gave a short nod of greeting which Jordan returned, ignoring the phantom tingling of all the healed and still-healing injuries inflicted by the Varthian during training. He put down the money pouch while Arlen was distracted with prising the cork from the bottle. He stepped back, waiting for the signal that he was free to get changed and go. The meeting with Darin weighed on him, heavier and heavier the longer the silence stretched on. Jordan silently counted his blessings that neither assassin could see his face, as he was sure his guilt was plastered all over it.

"You seem tense." Usk rolled a blackweed cigarette, leisurely as if he hadn't just been fighting with Arlen. "Want one of these?"

Jordan shook his head. He didn't like how fuzzy blackweed made him feel, even when he wasn't the one smoking it.

"Had a close call with a couple of Guild members," he muttered. Arlen looked up, the cork between his teeth sliding out with a pop. He spat it across the room.

"Ours?"

"No," Jordan said. "Unspoken."

"Oh. I don't know if that's better or worse."

Worse, Jordan thought, but kept it to himself. He didn't want to see what the Devils' reaction would be if they thought his cover had been blown.

Arlen emptied the money pouch onto the table. "Not bad. Not bad at all. Did he try and squeeze you?"

Jordan shook his head. Riko had tried to squeeze him, but Jordan wasn't about to rat him out to the man who already had him indebted. "There was some haggling, but no."

He just caught the Cert Arlen chucked at him and pocketed it. For the usual standards a Cert was pretty generous. "Thanks."

"You found wine," Arlen replied, shooting a pointed look at Usk, who ignored it. "You get a bonus."

It had just about recouped his loss from buying the wine in the first place, but he didn't say so. Instead he started unbuckling his cloak, moving to the corner to undress when nobody stopped him. Only once he wasn't staring Arlen in the face did he pluck up the courage to blurt, "I ran into Darin at Riko's."

The silence behind him pressed at his back. The creak of Usk's chair and the rattle of Jordan's belt buckle suddenly seemed deafening.

In a very careful tone, Arlen asked, "What did he want?"

Dear god help me, Jordan prayed, closing his eyes. "Your mother wants to see you. He said...she hasn't got long."

He couldn't tell anything from the quiet that followed. He undressed with shaking fingers, fumbling the clasps on his Unspoken cloak as he did it up. He was grateful for the excuse it gave him not to turn around. He didn't know what to expect when he did; whether Arlen would be angry with him, or with Darin, or worse, Jordan would see how hard the news hit. It was easier to keep a distance from the assassin when he didn't seem like a normal person with the full range of emotions.

"If you want, I can..." Usk began, voice unexpectedly concerned.

"No," Arlen snapped. He didn't sound much different to how he normally did, but Jordan sensed a difference in the air. "I'll have to...night fucking take me."

The bottle of wine made several loud draining noises and then slammed down on the table, and Jordan jumped so hard he almost cut himself on his dagger while transferring it to his other belt. With nothing left to preoccupy him, he had no choice but to turn around. He found Arlen leaning back in the chair, pinching the bridge of his nose and breathing hard. Usk caught his eye and jerked his head towards the window, mouthing 'better go'.

Jordan went.