Kingdom of Cages(183)

It would not be good to count on that.

Willie stirred in his sleep. Elle decided to let him live. He might alert the tailors, but that would take time, even if he woke before morning. She and Farin would already have their head start, and a death at this stage might make the constables sharper than necessary.

Elle opened the door and set the lock’s latch so that it would fall back into place when she closed it. It was that pathetic lock that had allowed she and Farin easy access to the shop. She supposed Willie used it to convince anyone keeping an eye on him that he had nothing worth protecting here.

She closed the door and heard the lock snap into place. Resting her stick on her shoulder, she hobbled down the boardwalk. She’d already made enough noise tonight. She did not need the tapping of her cane to alert anyone to her passage.

The constant wind carried no one else’s sounds to her. The only smells it held were damp and a bare whiff of smoke from some late fire. A shout lifted up from somewhere, freezing Elle in her tracks, but no other noise followed and she hurried on again.

As she rounded a curve of the boardwalk, both the clouds and the dunes separated to show the expanse of the moon-silvered lake. Stars and moon hung low and fat over the rippling black water. Despite all, Elle—whose life consisted of branches, trunks, and shadows—found a moment to stare.

Then the moon moved closer.

Elle’s hand slammed against her mouth. In the next moment, a low buzzing reached her, and the “moon” turned, changing shape from spherical to oval. It was a dirigible.

Old Fool. Elle let out a long, shaky breath. Closer to the nervous edge than you have any need to be. She made herself walk forward again.

Never in a thousand years would she have admitted to Farin how badly news of Chena’s disappearance had shaken her. He guessed too much already, observant boy that he was. It had bitten hard when he had no patience for the work of a Pharmakeus, but she had learned to live with that disappointment. He was brave and he was loyal, to her and the people they protected. Those were the important things.

The market at night was an unsettling place. The sides of the tents flapped in the wind, sending shifting shadows across the boardwalk. Then there was the dirigible, sinking ever closer. Part of Elle’s mind imagined it as a great white eye swooping in for a better look at her.

Ridiculous, she sniffed at herself, but as the dirigible settled down on the black water, she did duck behind the nearest tent. The crew would be coming up the docks soon, and she could not risk being seen.

Exactly, she said to herself as she brought her stick down so she could lean against it. It has nothing at all to do with fear.

Crouched behind her flimsy shelter, Elle watched two of the dirigible crew disembark to take the mooring cables and clamp them into place. As soon as the dirigible stabilized, two more figures emerged from the gondola. They ignored the crew, as far as Elle could tell, and started straight up the boardwalk, one shuffling its feet, and the other striding ahead, then stopping impatiently to wait.

Elle frowned. She couldn’t tell from here whether either of the two wore the hothousers’ black and white. There was no immigrant shipment due. Her sources would have told her days ago, but the figures wouldn’t have ignored the crew if they were pilots or handlers. That left hothousers.

She watched the one figure shuffle, and the other try to slow itself down to match the shuffler’s pace.

They had to be hothousers, but they didn’t act like it.

What is going on? Elle held herself still and low. The breeze dropped, giving her a solid wall of shadow for cover. The two came closer, their footsteps padding softly against the boardwalk. The impatient strider was a woman, tall, hunched, and relatively slender; the shuffler was a man, also hunched over. Elle peered hard, trying to see through the darkness. The tall woman looked familiar somehow. The man shuffled, swayed, took a few decisive steps closer, and straightened his shoulders, and Elle recognized him.

Tam Bhavasar.

She wanted to step straight into his path and demand to know what had happened to him and what he knew about Chena, but she held herself still. The woman with him could still be anyone at all.

Tam and his companion passed her without even looking around themselves. Careless, she thought. Then they paused at the juncture of two walkways, full in the moonlight. The woman wore the ubiquitous Pandoran tunic and trousers. She straightened up, looked left and right down the available paths, murmured something, and Elle knew. The woman looked like poor lost Helice Trust.

One of her daughters, at least, had come home.

“Hello, Teal,” said Elle, emerging from the shadows. “Hello, Tam.” Teal jumped and turned, grabbing Tam’s arm as she did, ready to run and drag him along with her.