Chasm of Fire Read online

  “I want those artifacts,” she said. “I want whatever is behind this wall.”

  “Again,” he said. “To what end? Let’s at least know why, before we take the risk.”

  Naila wasn’t sure she could articulate it, any more than she could articulate why she sometimes wanted to take an artifact out of the temple and test it somewhere safe, like the seedy alleys and rickety tenements to be found off the Wood Road that belted the lower terraces. Somewhere she didn’t need to worry about hostile eyes watching her.

  It was easier to articulate what she didn’t want. She didn’t want Mercado’s money. She didn’t want de Armas’s military power, with men saluting him and foreign nations fearing his armies. She didn’t even want her rightful place at the head of the Torre family, except if it meant revenging herself on her former husband, her husband’s cousin, and the others who’d wronged her. Money and status and issues of hierarchy meant little to her.

  So what was it? Like the artifacts, she’d know what she wanted when she saw it.

  Thiego spoke again, and his tone was more conciliatory. “Leave this secret be for now. Spend your efforts on more immediate concerns, like patching relations with the Quinta. Or worrying about what’s lurking at the bottom of the Rift. That thing out of the mines is the biggest artifact we’ve ever seen, short of the bridge itself. What is it, and why is it here?”

  “Salvatore woke it,” she said with a shrug. “He called on the wanderings or . . . something. I don’t know exactly. What does it matter now?”

  “For all we know, it’s spawning an army of witherers and lemures who are going to come crawling up the cliff face some night. Doesn’t that concern you?”

  “Childish fears. It’s only dangerous if we meddle. That was Salvatore’s obsession, and it got him killed. And now it’s at the bottom of the Rift where it can do us no harm. Or help us, for that matter.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “How about this, then. Isn’t the fact that it’s got your enemies worked up enough to draw your interest?”

  “What do you know about my enemies?”

  “I don’t have to be the Master of Whispers to know that Lord Carbón, Iliana Diamante, and Pedro Torre are worried about the artifact. That the Basdeenians are intrigued, and that half of Grosst’s engineers are as interested in what’s at the bottom of the Rift as in the bridge repair work we’re paying them for.”

  Naila kept her expression neutral. Was it true? She hadn’t been paying the foreigners much attention, but Basdeen had its own cults interested in the relics of the past plenties. They were called guilds, and were technocratic, rather than sacred, like the Luminoso, but she had no doubt that the foreigners would love to know more about the artifact.

  “Of course I’m interested in the foreigners,” she said, unwilling to admit her ignorance on the matter. “But what can they do about it? There are plenty of dangers down below, even if you ignore the witherers spawned by the artifact. Let them go down—I hope they do. They’ll die.”

  “I wouldn’t make that assumption,” he said. “Grosst might have a device to neutralize it.”

  “And what do you propose doing about it? Are you going to lead an expedition into the Rift?”

  “Not an expedition, no. That would draw far too much attention.” Thiego’s lips drew into a thin line, and his eyes hardened. “But yes, someone does need to investigate. A quiet visit, perhaps. And the Luminoso should take the lead.”

  She studied him. “You mean you, don’t you? Careful, cabalist—more clever sorts than you have died from an excess of curiosity. How would you even find your way down?”

  “For someone whose trade is secrets, there’s a lot you don’t know,” he said. “As it happens, I have a guide.”

  Chapter Four

  “So this is where the dumbre live,” Lady Mercado said as she and Lord Carbón stood atop the lower wall, looking down at the packed buildings, stairways, ladders, and alleys spreading down the hillside. “I don’t know what is worse, the stench, or the way it looks like a single good rainfall would sweep it all into the gorge. What is that godawful smell, anyway? Sewage?”

  “A rendering plant, mostly.” Carbón pointed down and to the right. “See that steaming building? That’s where they boil bones and hides.”

  “So it always smells this bad?”

  “Mostly, yes.” Carbón eyed her with surprise as she stared at the building with a sour expression. “Have you really never descended to the lower wall before?”

  “Why would I? I barely set foot in the Thousand if I have to. Makes my skin itch.”

  By most measures, Mercado was the most powerful person in Quintana—when she’d come down on Carbón’s side after Salvatore’s treachery, that had effectively ended the attempted overthrow of the city’s order—and it was surprising that she’d accomplished so much while rarely leaving her estate up above. She was what? Fifty years old? How was it that she’d never come so far as the lower wall?

  “Why does that fellow Plata live down here, anyway?” she asked. “Aren’t there superior quarters in the towers of the upper wall?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to take Captain Diamante’s old lodgings. The watch is superstitious about the possessions of the dead. They think it draws lemures.”

  Speaking of Captain Plata, the man was currently mustering his forces behind them, on the rear side of the wall, standing atop of the light-colored paving stones that had been put down after the flood had torn up the square and sucked Espejo and a number of his men into the sewage drain. Iliana and the tall, rigid figure of Mercado’s guard, Mota, stood by the captain’s side in the square, counting the watchmen as they assembled. Mota wore a short sword on one hip and a pistol on the other, presumably loaded. Always armed and read for violence, that one.

  “I know Quintana needs the dumbre,” Mercado said. “I need them. Their black coins add up by the thousands. Brass turns to silver, and silver to gold. A majority of the cloth I sell goes below. Cooking oil, metal buttons, manufactures from the coast. Not all the food I import—none of the beef goes down—but eighty percent of the wheat ends up feeding the dumbre. Look, that must be one of their mills grinding it into flour.”

  She gestured with her head at a massive windmill turning in the breeze with its cloth sails billowing. Carbón thought she was wrong—he was pretty sure that particular mill hauled people up in buckets to the cog railroad that carried his workers to the plateau. On the rare occasions that the wind died instead of whistling through the Rift, the windmill didn’t turn, and his work shifts arrived late and on foot.

  “But surely we’d be better off if the whole lot of them moved to the far side of the Rift,” Mercado continued. “We wouldn’t need this wall, or the lower watch at all. And most of the upper watch isn’t there to guard against the Thousand, they’re for if the lower wall gets overrun by the vermin who live below. Move the dumbre across the Rift and you could control entry into the city from the bridge, and still get the workers you need. Maybe when they finish with the repair work, your engineers could—”

  “I’m going to cut you off there,” Carbón said. “You want to rebuild the lower terraces on the far side of the Rift? What happens when the Scoti come? Most of the city’s population would be on the wrong side of the bridge.”

  “The Scoti won’t make it this far. De Armas will stop them.”

  “But if he doesn’t? What happens to the dumbre? They’d flood back into the city for protection. How is that going to keep the upper terraces free of the dumbre? Or would you abandon them on the far side to be killed or dragged off in chains?”

  Mercado gave him a sharp look. “You misunderstand me, Carbón. I don’t want to empty the lower terraces to get rid of the people who live down there. I want to empty them to move the people somewhere cleaner and safer. It’s the filth and crowding and the criminals who roam freely down below that make it such a wretched, desperate place. Move the dumbre across, burn the lower terraces to the ground, and then rebuild
if you’d like. Move in patrols to catch and kill the troublemakers.”

  She was right. He had misunderstood her. Mercado wasn’t thinking of wiping out the dumbre. Instead, like a good master, she was thinking how she could improve them. Turn them into something they were not.

  Carbón felt a twinge of guilt to think that his own compassion for the suffering below was tempered by the suspicion that if you could somehow clean up the lower terraces, the dumbre would shortly return them to their previous state. Fine new buildings would turn into ramshackle tenements. Sewers would be clogged with refuse and abandoned. New cutthroats and pickpockets would spring up every time an old one was removed.

  And if that happened, the upper terraces would soon enough abandon the long-term effort required to change the dumbre, and retreat to comfort and safety in their enclaves above.

  Captain Plata led Iliana and Mota up the stone staircase to the wall walk where Carbón and Mercado were waiting. Plata cast a doubtful look behind him when he reached the top, and Carbón followed his gaze. The men below had divided into two groups, with roughly twenty standing to the left and several dozen to the right.

  Plata shook his head vigorously enough to send his jowls flapping as he approached the two Quinta lords. “Your servants took all the good ones and left me with . . . well, not the most physically capable. Being loyal to my men, I’ll leave it at that.”

  “Those fellows have to march all the way to Dalph,” Mota said. “I don’t think the others would be able to keep up.”

  “And that’s exactly the problem,” the captain said. “Several of those you left me have too many years on them. What will they do if faced by one of the broad-shouldered muggers from below? Three of those fellows can’t even climb the wall anymore after the leg wounds they took fighting off Espejo. And there are war-crippled veterans, plus boys too young to shave. What if we face another attack?”

  “But with all the strongest former soldiers gone,” Iliana said, “there’s no reason to fear another attack from the army.”

  “What about the dumbre?” Plata demanded.

  “I trust you’ll be prepared,” she said.

  Carbón’s chancellor didn’t sound unsympathetic, but neither did she seem particularly compromising. Once the order had been given, Carbón knew she’d carry it out. In that way, she was not so different from Mota.

  As for Captain Plata, who looked down at the wooden roofs, leaning buildings, and dangling walkways as if expecting a massive uprising from the dumbre at any moment, Carbón thought he was overmatched in his current role. He’d earned his position as captain of the combined watch, but had only lifted arms against the rebellion after some pushing from Iliana and the unwavering support of his men. If the dumbre did take advantage of the weakened state of the watch, would he be the man to fight them off?

  “I don’t like it, either,” Carbón said, “but we have to look at the bigger threat. And right now, that’s the Scoti.”

  Plata grumbled. “Sounds like a trick to me.” He worked at his nose, red and bulbous from age and too much ale. “De Armas wants to gut the watch, let the dumbre riot, then rush back with his troops to save us when half the city goes up in flames. At which point the Scoti threat will magically disappear.”

  “That thought has occurred to me,” Carbón admitted. “But we’ve received other reports that confirm. It isn’t just by de Armas’s hand that we know the Scoti are pillaging the Cheksapa.”

  It was those other reports that had pushed matters into the open. Initially, the Quinta had decided to keep quiet the report of the rampaging Scoti—entire tribes on the move—until they’d gathered enough men to supply de Armas’s demands. But there were hundreds of foreigners in the city and working on the far side of the Great Span, and these men and women began to receive reports from their own lands. The gossip spread to the Quintanans, and soon the news was in the open.

  Plata grumbled. “Basdeenians. That’s where the gossip comes from. Who’s to say they aren’t behind this? Anyway, those rats in the lower terraces will be sure to take advantage.”

  “Don’t worry about the dumbre,” Carbón said. “There’s more than enough work to keep them busy, and we’re going down to help matters along. Any able-bodied idler is going to be given a few coins to ‘volunteer’ for the army, and there will be precious few troublemakers left by the time we’re finished.”

  Iliana patted the fat purse dangling from her belt, but Plata only scoffed. “Don’t be surprised if you come back with neither coins nor recruits.”

  “I’ve been down before,” she said. “I know my way around.”

  “And she won’t be alone,” Mota said. He rested a hand on his sword hilt. “Any dumbre foolish enough to touch the girl will feel my blade in his belly.”

  “And I imagine you’d enjoy it, too,” Carbón told Mota. “But I’d just as soon my chancellor be taken seriously below, so please refrain from calling her a ‘girl.’”

  Mota nodded briskly, seeming not to notice the Quinta lord’s arid tone. “Right. I’ll do that.”

  Lady Mercado broke in. “Let’s get on with it. This smell is turning my stomach. We need the support of the Luminoso to get this done. Where is that damn cabalist, anyway?”

  Carbón smiled at her tone. “I think you mean blessed cabalist, don’t you?”

  She shot him a grumpy look. “The Luminoso is sacred and holy. But the individual cabalists are really starting to aggravate me.”

  “Here he comes,” Iliana said.

  Iliana gestured at the plaza, where one of Captain Plata’s lieutenants was passing official, handwritten orders to each of the men selected to join the army. Some looked pleased, while others slumped at the shoulders or looked with envy back at those being allowed to stay with the watch. No doubt there would be some old ailments discovered over the next few days, compelling reasons why this fellow or that one could claim to be unfit for general duty.

  A figure pushed his way through the crowd, clothed in a gray robe with enough sheen to the fabric that it might almost be considered silver. His hood was drawn, and between his clothing and his smooth, gliding posture, Carbón thought he looked familiar.

  Captain Plata cursed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was that devil, Salvatore, his bones reanimated from their urn.”

  “There was no urn,” Carbón said, “only a smear of ash. But you’re not far off. This will be our new Guardian of Secrets.”

  “Ah, so he finally reveals himself,” Mercado said. “Let’s hope he’s a better sort than the traitor who last carried that title.” She hesitated, as if wanting to control her tongue, but proved unable to do so. “Or the snake who calls herself the Master of Whispers, for that matter.”

  For someone who continued to profess fealty to both the code and the organization that enforced it, Lady Mercado seemed very nearly in open rebellion. Not that Carbón hadn’t harbored that sort of thought himself, and long before matters turned serious last fall during the penance weeks, but it was a surprise to hear it from Mercado.

  The man coming up the stairs swept back his hood to reveal a young man in his early twenties. Carbón was so surprised by his youth that it took a moment to recognize the face.

  “Oh!” Iliana exclaimed, followed by a brief, startled laugh. “It’s Thiego. The geometer!”

  Mercado stiffened next to Carbón, and he cast her a curious look, wondering if she was about to make an irritated comment about Naila promoting an inexperienced boy to the second most important position in the Luminoso, but it wasn’t anger on her face. Instead, she had turned pale. She swayed, and reached a hand as if to grab his shoulder for support, before she seemed to catch herself.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Perfectly fine.” Her tone was brisk. “Yes, well. No need for me to stay a moment longer, Carbón. You have my man, Mota. Your chancellor has a list of potential recruits, and now you have a cabalist to cow the dumbre if anyone gives you trouble. Lead me off this wal
l at once, Captain.”

  She turned on her heel and continued on the wall walk away from Thiego, which was also the direction she and Carbón had come from earlier. The captain frowned, swiveled his jowly face toward the approaching cabalist, then hurried after Mercado, who had gathered her skirts and was practically trotting away from them.

  Iliana and Carbón shared a surprised look, but Mota seemed not to have noticed his mistress’s strange reaction, and was instead sizing up the approaching cabalist as if to determine whether or not he was a threat. Mota’s posture gradually relaxed. For his part, Thiego was looking after the departing Mercado with a quizzical expression. He didn’t seem caught off guard by her reaction, but neither did it seem that he fully understood it, either.

  Meanwhile, Carbón had recovered from his initial surprise and was beginning to feel optimistic about his chances with this new Luminoso master. Thiego—he could work with the man. Iliana had already gone into the mines with him, and had returned a favorable report.

  Carbón kept his tone light and positive. “Last time we met, you were a lowly geometer. Now look at you. I suppose congratulations are in order.”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  “So . . . Master of Secrets,” Carbón added. “We had no idea. When did this happen?”

  “A while back. Months, in fact. Didn’t seem the moment to reveal it until now.”

  “Your idea or Naila’s?” Iliana asked. Thiego returned a shrug.

  Mota grunted. “I’m sure there are good reasons. Plenty of them. But daylight is burning up, and I’d just as soon get down there and collar our three hundred recruits, or whatever it is we’re starting with. I don’t want to be kicking in doors after dark.”

  “I’ve brought something that will make door kicking unnecessary,” Thiego said. He reached into the satchel swung over his shoulder on a strap. “Take a look at this.” He removed something that looked like a large, perfectly spherical piece of obsidian.

  It wasn’t often that a cabalist showed off artifacts to the uninitiated, and Iliana and Mota crowded in to get a closer look at the object. Carbón’s thoughts were already turning in other directions, and as he wasn’t descending into the lower terraces with them, he left the other three to their business and picked his way farther down the wall to where it ended in a watchtower overlooking the cliff.