Sixteen: Deception

Jordan had faced a Death three times in the last few months and almost been crushed to death by a Listener twice. He had pulled a child out of the path of a Fleshmonger and torched four Bone Wights at once.

Somehow, the leader of the Hooded Devils brought him as close to shitting a brick as he had been in any of those life-or-death situations.

Arlen wasn't being much help. It wasn't clear how he expected Jordan to conduct himself, and when he did fidget or lean over, he was only met with a tight-lipped glare. Arlen didn't look much more comfortable than Jordan felt, and hadn't said a word since he had mentioned the plague – a decision he was already starting to question.

Across the table, Marick's icy blue gaze caught his, as if reading his thoughts. The Devil leader already had the whole thing planned out, and worst of all he expected Jordan to participate. There was going to be a reckoning when he got back to Yddris's already, and he hadn't the faintest idea how he was going to get out a second time, let alone during the day. He hadn't been entirely truthful with Arlen about how he'd been able to get here at such short notice, partly because it would get the Devil's hackles up and partly because he had found it so unnerving himself. The fact was, Nika had seen him leave; he had been watching from the back door when Jordan turned to drop down to the other side of the fence.

"Please be careful," he had said, in a voice Jordan had never heard from him before, and then he had turned around and gone back inside.

Jordan had a hard time believing that Yddris would have said anything to Nika, and Jordan certainly hadn't. Even if the Unspoken had known it was Jordan out in the city that night he'd met with Darin, he couldn't have known the reason – could he?

A hard jab in the side from Arlen's elbow brought him back to the cramped little meeting room at the beer hall.

"How well do you know Harkenn's grounds?" Marick was asking him. His eyes had narrowed a little.

"Barely at all," Jordan said, seeing no point in lying. It was better to sound incompetent than to show it by fucking up a job. "I don't go often, and haven't been round the grounds themselves."

He left it there, sensing it wouldn't help matters if he admitted he hadn't known there were grounds beyond the walled gardens he'd been in.

"You'll have to brief him," Marick said sharply to Arlen, whose jaw clenched as he nodded. "He'll have to know where everything is, where all the escape routes are."

"If I could suggest that he has one of his mentors with him," Arlen replied. "Usk, perhaps. Or Akiva. They could ensure things go more smoothly, considering we are running on a tight schedule."

"Usk is a little...obvious, is he not?"

"You'd be surprised," Arlen said, and Jordan silently agreed. The giant had a knack for hiding that would have been impressive in someone half his size.

Marick thought for a long moment, looking between them. "Fine." He looked back down at the crude chalk map he'd scrawled over the desk. "Would it be at all possible for you to keep your tutor out of the way, boy?"

"Yddris?" Jordan swallowed. Might as well ask me to move the whole castle a few inches to the left.

"I clearly didn't mean Arlen," Marick said shortly. "Can you do it or not?"

"I..." He paused. Yddris was about as likely to stay out of the way as a Death would be to volunteer at a community shelter, even if Jordan was honest with him about why. "I don't know. I can try."

"And try gets you where you want to go, does it?" Marick asked, an edge in his voice. Despite the two men being on polar opposite sides, he was reminded strongly of the talking-to Harkenn had given him after the siege on the castle. "I need better than try, boy."

The door to the office opened, and the man who stepped in reminded Jordan of a villain from a cheap western; a thick, greying handlebar moustache occupied the lower half of his face like the back end of a dead badger, and he walked slightly bow-legged as if he'd just been riding a horse for hours. A wide-brim cap threw his face into shadow, with stringy grey hair hanging to his shoulders. If Jordan had been in any other situation he was certain he wouldn't feel quite such a hysterical urge to laugh, especially since the man's belt was bristling with weapons that didn't look cheap at all.

"Gelert," Arlen said warily, "Well met."

Gelert tipped his head. "Alright, White-Eye?"

Jordan could tell straight away that the two men didn't like each other and that if he ever used the term 'white-eye' to address Arlen he'd be running home holding his own guts in.

With Marick watching, however, his tutor only offered a tight, unfriendly smile, a finger caressing the handle of his hunting knife.

"What's the plan, then, boss?" Gelert said, closing the door and leaning over the map.

"Your group and Arlen's group are spearheading this particular endeavour," Marick said. Beside him, Jordan felt Arlen tense. "You and Jesper take initiative. The boy stays with Usk." The leader's gaze sharpened. "Ashe isn't to go near him, you understand?"

"Ashe's harmless if you know how to handle yourself," Gelert muttered, but his eyes glittered with malice under the brim of his hat when he looked Jordan's way. "Just don't let her get close enough to put anything in your pockets."

"I'm telling you for her sake," Marick said, which wiped the smile off Gelert's face. "More's the fool who tries to put firecrackers in the pockets of someone Gifted."

"'S true, then?" Gelert rumbled. "You're a witch man?"

"Can't have been paying much attention," Arlen said. "Unless you thought we were about to get struck by lightning instead."

"Did wonder," Gelert replied, unruffled by the venom in Arlen's voice. "Huh. Figured folks were getting jittery about some two-Flint magic tricks someone learned down the pub."

"Easy to mix up hidden handkerchiefs and green fire," Arlen muttered.

"Arlen," Marick said, silencing the argument. Despite seeming casual, Jordan caught Gelert smirking as he bent over the map again, and felt a shiver of dislike. "Nict's balls, if I wanted petty bickering I'd have hired children. Now, here's what is going to happen."

"Here's what's going to happen," Arlen said, the minute they were back in his rooms and the window was sealed up. "Kid, you're going to get back and you're going to tell your tutor that plan."

"What?" Both Usk and Jordan said it at the same time.

"You're cracked, Arl," Usk said, after a moment of stunned silence. "He'll find out it was you. Or even if he doesn't trace it back that far, the kid'll be for it. An idiot could see where that leak would've come from, and Marick's no idiot."

"Not if he was here the entire time," Arlen said.

Usk's brow furrowed, and then his eyes widened. "You are cracked."

"I've spent the last few weeks sitting in here literally watching a stump heal," Arlen snarled. "Of course I'm fucking cracked. But not so much that I think this plan should go ahead."

Jordan looked between them, lost, but they seemed to have forgotten he was there.

"Not only is that asking for trouble of all kinds," Usk said, his voice rising, "if anyone did think to check up, there's a very obvious difference between Gifted and non-Gifted, even if he's all covered up."

Arlen scowled and rounded on Jordan. "Can you make a fire last even if you aren't here?"

"I don't know," Jordan said, and quailed under the resulting glare. "I haven't tried."

"Then try," Arlen said. He pointed at his stove and the pile of balled up wrapping and kindling stacked inside it. "Light that and then run around the block."

He was too perplexed to argue. He looked at Usk, who was still staring at Arlen like he'd grown a second head, and then again at the glare on his tutor's face. He swallowed and focused as best he could on getting the kindling to catch. With everything that had happened in the last day or two clamouring for attention in the back of his head, it was much harder than he might have liked to keep hold of his focus on the current. Finally, though, he had a reasonable flame going in the grate. He sighed in relief.

Arlen cleared his throat and raised his eyebrow, and that was how Jordan found himself running laps of a derelict shithole neighbourhood in the drizzling rain, hoping the fire kept burning without him and trying not to spiral into panic.

The crates rattled under him as he scrambled back up. As the rains became more frequent, the makeshift stairs to Arlen's window had become slippery with age and algae, and in his haste he almost lost his balance. How Arlen got up and down them with a false leg defied belief, but Jordan guessed that the earliest attempts had involved lots of swearing.

The fire was thankfully still going when he returned. He almost said that he didn't know whether it would hold if he was as far away as the merchants' quarter, but the look on Arlen's face told him there was no point. He leaned over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath instead. The journey between Yddris and Arlen's houses was long enough, and he wasn't the fittest even when he hadn't already lapped a city block.

"Can you get him?" Arlen asked Usk, quiet through the pounding blood in Jordan's ears. "Or do I have to do it?"

"I'll get him," the Varthian muttered. "Still think you're cracked, mind. And he'll want something in return, you know. Knowing him you won't like the price."

Arlen was silent.

"Don't know where the fuck this charitable streak has come from," Usk was still muttering as he heaved himself out of the window.

"Not a charitable streak." Usk was gone, but Arlen still looked furious. "At the very least we're ensuring that dog's bollock Gelert doesn't succeed at something he's in charge of." He sighed. "Get changed and go, kid. You're running short on time."

Jordan did as he was told. He was just as confused as Usk, but he wasn't about to ruin it. This might be his best chance to get free of the city, something to push Harkenn into agreeing to an early Guildtown trip. At the idea of getting away from the Devils for a while, everything looked less hopeless. In the meantime, however, that meant he had to play Arlen's game, one he was swiftly realising wouldn't necessarily place him well in Marick's.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts as that bleak prospect threatened to pull him under, focusing painfully hard on simply changing his clothes. His hands were trembling so badly he needed the focus anyway, to stop himself opening his fingers on his dagger blade.

"Who is Usk going to find?" he asked. "Who's pretending to be me?"

The silence that followed stretched so taut that Jordan thought Arlen wouldn't answer. Then he said, "Silas."

Jordan fumbled his belt buckle and his knife slipped out with a clatter. He bent down to pick it up without turning round so Arlen couldn't see his face. "Why him?"

"Because he's about your height and size and no one gives a shit where he is most of the time," Arlen said. "He's also the last person anyone would expect me to use. I'll deal with everything else later."

"He wants to kill me. Why would he help you keep my name clear?"

"Let me worry about that."

Jordan finished buckling up his Unspoken cloak and turned around. Arlen had limped to his chair and sat down, face drawn with pain, but his scowl was just as fierce. Jordan didn't wait around to question anything else, aware that Silas could arrive any moment.

The trip back to Yddris's through the dead quarter was one of the most nerve-wracking journeys he'd made in a long time. He didn't know if Yddris would even be there, and that would leave him with Nika. He kept his magic drawn in tight, certain that every shadow contained a Devil spying for Marick. Twice he thought he heard footsteps behind him, and the third time he was certain, though they fell away when a Wight cackled in the next street over. He told himself it was just a scavenger looking to mug him and pressed on, even less eager to encounter the Wight than he had been to get robbed.

His throat was burning when he reached the other side of the bridge, but he kept running because his shaking legs would never start again if he stopped. He wondered if Silas had agreed to the plan. He wondered if the fire was still burning. He wondered if he would return to the dead quarter the next day and find his pockets bulging with shit as payment for Silas's services.

All that fled his thoughts when he reached his tutor's front door, gasping with relief when he felt Yddris's astral signature inside. The front door opened just as his hand touched the handle, pitching him to his knees on the front step, staring at his tutor's boots as they appeared in front of him.

"Are you about to tell me something that will make a shit day even more shit?" Yddris asked. He leaned down and hauled Jordan to his feet by the armpits.

Jordan just nodded, too winded to talk.

"Come in," Yddris said. "Kiel's teeth, boy, you sound half-dead."

Half-leaning on Yddris's arm, Jordan stumbled inside. Tears pricked at his eyes as the smell of Nika's cooking washed over him; what he wouldn't have given to forget the whole business and spend the evening by the fire with a bowl of stew. Nika was stirring the pot when they entered, and said nothing as Jordan collapsed into a chair. He only set the kettle over the fire to boil and drifted out of the room.

"Does he know?" Jordan said hoarsely.

"Not the details," Yddris said. "But whatever he thinks it is, he's blaming me. So that's been my evening so far."

"He saw me go," Jordan muttered. "He watched me scale the fence."

"What were you doing scaling the dark-damned fence?"

"It was last minute," he protested. "One of them came while I was on patrol, said it was urgent. Nika was expecting me to rest up and you weren't here, so I made do. But he saw me go."

"Does this last minute summons explain why you sound like your lungs are going to collapse?" Yddris grabbed a cup and went to Nika's food stash in the corner. A jar lid clattered on the floor, and when he turned round a battered tea strainer balanced on the rim of the cup, filled with dried greenish leaves.

"Herb tea," Yddris grunted. "You look like you need something and I ain't giving you whisky until I've got some sense out of you."

Jordan was too tired to argue. He accepted the cup, grateful for the warmth between his hands. A scratching noise drew his attention to the doorway just as Ren bounded through it with a yip. She pounced onto his lap and proceeded to knead his cloak, her claws pricking his knees. He buried a hand in her fur, the pounding in his head easing, and took a sip of the tea. It was bitter and tasted faintly of sap, but it had a sweet note and the warmth felt good as it went down. He felt some of his muscles un-bunch, some of the fog clear from his thoughts.

"Better?" Yddris said. He squatted on his heels by the fire, stuffing a pipe.

"Better."

"Now you'd better tell me what's happened."

His tutor was silent as Jordan spoke. He described what had happened in the meeting, and then what happened with Arlen afterwards. The only sign of agitation his tutor showed was a slow intensifying of the crackle in the room, but otherwise he simply smoked and listened. In Jordan's lap, Ren had also fallen still as if she was listening, though she probably just sensed Jordan's stress.

"I'm not sure whether to be more concerned with Marick's motives or Arlen's," Yddris said. It was the first time Jordan had heard his tutor speak Marick's name aloud. "I refuse to believe that either one is doing it to be noble." He looked up. "If this ruse with that kid doesn't work out and shit starts flying, he's losing his other leg as well. Tell him that from me if you like."

"Is it likely the fire kept going?" Jordan said, afraid to hear the answer.

"Truth is, boy, I don't know. Never had any reason to be that far away from a fire I set. My inclination is to say yes, if you were firm enough with it. Otherwise rune nets would last all of five minutes."

He hadn't thought of it like that, and hoped fervently that he had indeed been firm enough.

"Either way, we're on a time limit." Yddris straightened, knees cracking like whips in the silence. "Night take me, I'm too old for this shit. Then again," he went to the window and knocked out his pipe into the street, "for this particular kind of shit I felt too old twenty years ago. Wait here a minute."

He went out into the hall and up the stairs. A lump returned to Jordan's throat at the thought that Nika might have guessed where he was going, what he was doing. It would mean he knew how many times Jordan had lied to his face, and it stung more than he expected to wonder if Nika thought less of him for it. The Unspoken had grown on him, despite his strangeness, and had probably spent more time with him than Yddris had – and Jordan had repaid him with a crock of shit.

Multiple crocks of shit.

Yddris returned a few moments later in surly silence. Jordan stood up, tucking Ren into his hood and thanking anything listening that at least he would have her with him for whatever was coming. She chirruped and licked his cheek as she settled.

"Unsurprisingly, the blame has not shifted from me in the last hour," Yddris muttered. "You up to walking there, boy?"

Jordan's legs felt weak and jelly-like, burning after the exertion of the night's events. He wasn't sure they'd hold him as far as the front door, let alone the castle, but he nodded anyway. It had been a long time since he'd had any choice in these things.

"We'll deal with all this," Yddris said, as the cold night hit them like a wall on the other side of the front door. "And then you're going to the Guildtown whether Harkenn likes it or not. Nika will go with you if that's what it takes."

Despite the prospect of 'all this', Jordan felt a flood of relief. He had no idea where the Guildtown was or what to expect from it, but it had to be better than this.

He felt a pinch of guilt when he realised he would be leaving Grace behind, and knew telling her would be a whole problem by itself, but she had no idea what it had been like for him in the city. She had Nova. Yddris or Nika would be around to look out for her.

He just had to get out of this dark-damned city before it broke him.