NOVGO.NET Chapter 124: BACK IN SEWER ROW
Chapter 124: BACK IN SEWER ROW
By the time Aiden approached the city, the sun was already high.
The guard on the gate took one look at what was coming up the main road and decided, very sensibly, that it was above his pay to stop.
Aiden held up the summons.
The guard waved the enormous flaming wolf through. He’d have waved a thunderstorm through if it came with paperwork.
I left this city through the sewers in the dark.
I’m coming back through the front gate in daylight on a Solari Blaze Dancer, and the guard is pretending to look at something else.
He didn’t go toward the good streets around the academy.
He turned off the gate-road, into lanes that got narrower and meaner with every turn. More familiar, too.
Sewer Row.
He’d learned every useful skill he had down here. How to fix lamps. How to move through the streets. How to spot someone looking for trouble.
The enforcers barely come down here. House Vane has no hold on these streets.
They wouldn’t sell him here. Not out of love.
Nobody on the Row sold anybody to the Vanes on principle. The principle being the Vanes had never once done a thing for the Row but take.
Three lanes in, Miasma jumped down his arm, onto the cobbles, spines up, venom beading at the tips.
She pointed at a doorway that looked like every other black doorway on the Row.
Then the man inside moved, and Aiden saw what she’d seen.
Two months ago I’d have spotted him from thirty feet away.
Being surrounded by rock and fire made me rusty at reading streets.
Now Miasma has to do it for me.
A little embarrassing. Still, it was nice not having to use those skills.
The man moved and Aiden watched him.
Not a Row man. Row men slouched. This one stood straight and still, with one hand tucked inside his coat.
Miasma coiled.
Aiden knew that look. She had found a threat and was about to send it a little venomous gift that would keep him in bed for a week. Or forever, if she decided his face deserved it.
The man’s smirk as he approached deserved that much.
A bounty hunter or a House scout.
He put two fingers on her back.
"No," he said. Out loud, so the man in the doorway heard it too. "Down."
She did not want to stand down. He felt that as well.
Men like that had chased them all the way to the Fire Country. She had spared most of them. But anyone who came back after she’d already shown mercy should stop being a threat. Immediately. Permanently.
She was right. She was completely right.
But he couldn’t let her kill a man in the middle of Sewer Row.
If you kill him here, Percival gets exactly what he needs.
They’ll call us dangerous. The assessment will become an excuse to take you all from me.
You’re not wrong. You’re just early.
"You," Aiden said to the doorway. "Whatever business you have with me, I’d strongly advise you to take it to someone else. My little partner here wants you more than your wife ever has."
He put his hand over Miasma.
"The only thing between you and her is me."
He let that sit.
"Tell whoever sent you I’ll be at the east annex when I’m supposed to be. Nobody has to come to the Row."
The man scrutinised the flaming wolf two lanes back, then the small furious thing on the cobbles that hadn’t blinked.
Then he went back into his doorway and was gone.
Miasma climbed Aiden’s arm slowly and settled onto his shoulder. Her eyes remained on the doorway.
"I know," Aiden said. "But not here."
She stayed silent, but Aiden could feel her disagreement through the bond.
They took shelter in a dead court he knew. Walls on three sides, one way in.
I pick shelters the same in a city as I do on a mountain.
I’m starting to think I have a type.
He sat against Cinder and faced the thing he’d been putting off.
He knew what waited at the annex. He didn’t know what Percival had added to it.
So he looked at the one who could find out.
"Can you find out what’s waiting at the annex?"
Nyx’s ears twitched. It didn’t seem to enjoy the city anymore.
He had known it wouldn’t enjoy it the same way he knew Cinder would never love any place more than the mountain.
They had crossed two countries. It had tasted wild darkness. Darkness under trees. Darkness at the bottom of pits. Real shadows.
The city’s darkness was cheap in comparison. Lamps broke it apart every few steps, and stone walls trapped it between them.
He stroked its small dark head. "Just the annex. What’s in there that shouldn’t be. Then come back."
Nyx gave the city one long look before slipping off into the shadows.
It shadow-stepped to the gaps the lamps missed, under eaves, and behind walls.
Miasma watched it go, then looked at Aiden.
"Yeah. I hope it’ll be fine too."
Nyx was gone for a long time. The lamps burned down. The Row slept in its uneasy way.
When Nyx came back, Aiden spread his arms to catch it before it reached him.
He felt it the moment he caught it.
Nyx was rigid. As it had been on the ridge. At the pit. In the barn doorway.
Aiden recognized that reaction. He’d felt it from Nyx before.
The cold chamber.
They brought it here.
Aiden sat very still with Nyx in his arms.
Cinder pressed her head against Nyx to warm it up, and Miasma gently put a foot on her back.
After a moment, the shadows on the ground shifted and took shapes Aiden recognized.
The east annex. The assessment hall. And behind it, waiting: the Ice Heart cradle, set up to contain Cinder.
Handlers were waiting nearby. The same kind that had come after them on the mountain, with nets and everything else they needed to restrain a beast.
It was never a registration.
Percival dressed a seizure up as paperwork and got the Academy to sign it.
I walk her in. Forty experts assess her. The second one of them writes down Tier Three, unlicensed, hazard, they have everything they need.
He doesn’t take her off me. The Academy takes her from me, legally, with everyone watching and nodding.
He looked at Cinder in the dark of the dead court.
"Those men are going to look at you and write down what you are. If they write Tier Three, the cradle comes out, and we don’t leave with you."
He put his hand on her.
"So they have to write something smaller. That means I’m going to stand in front of them and pretend you’re less than you are, and you’re going to let me do it."
He rubbed his thumb along her jaw.
"Be a big dull dog who follows a tired man around. Just for an hour. Then we walk out and you can be whatever you like."
Cinder pressed her head against him.
She didn’t try to speak. She’d keep the words to herself.
But the press said it anyway. She’d be whatever the hour asked, the same as he’d emptied himself out for her.
That’s the trade. It’s never once gone how either of us wanted. We’ve made it every time.
Toward fourth bell, Nyx came down from his arms.
It faced the drain-mouth at the corner of the dead court. Its eyes stayed fixed on the darkness.
For three breaths, the darkness beneath the bars held a particular silence. The same one it had held beneath a lamp’s grate a season ago, and in a yard full of proctors on the day of the exam.
Organised. Listening back.
Then it was ordinary dark again.
Nyx settled, and did not take its eyes off the grate for the rest of the night.
The Witness.
Of course. I get one night in my own city and it comes down a drain to check on me.
You watched me through a scavenger. You watched me through a dog. You put a woman in the yard to look at me from six rows up.
You’ve never even told me what you wanted.
The night wore on. Aiden watched the dark go grey.
A clerk. Forty proctors. A cradle. House Vane. And a Witness under a grate, still watching.
"Right," he said. To the fire, the venom, the shadow, the cat. "Everybody be very, very boring tomorrow."
The cat yawned.
It, at least, would have no trouble at all.