The little former slave master impeded, " While we contend your . . .grievance against Spartador, Master Smith, we aren't to waste our political capital on some general."
" We don't have to," Momma J declared.
The Mistress of Pleasures was still glamorous, though it had been years since she was the city's most prominent courtesan.
" We can get what we need by deluding someone else inquired for it."
Everyone halted and eavesdropped.
"The prince was ready to buy off the general with a political marriage. So we notify him that Spencer's price is a political nomination instead. The general won't anywise know, and the prince isn't apt to inquire about it."
" And that bestows our power to reopen the slavery matter," the slave master let out.
"I'll be damned if we whirl slavers again," another mumbled.
He was a big man going to fat, with heavy jowls, minor sights, and scarred fists befitting the master of the Oxen's bashers.
"That dialogue can wait. Smith doesn't need to be here for that," Corbin Fishill said.
He swerved his heavy-lidded sights to Smith.
"You didn't kill tonight." He let the assertion droop, unadorned.
Ryan gazed at him, declining to grab the incitement. " Can you accomplish it?"
Words were worthless with a man like Corbin Fishill. He enunciates the language of meat. Ryan sauntered to him. Corbin didn't flinch, didn't twirl aside as Ryan came toward the forum, though some of the Nine were uncomfortable. Under Fishill's velvet trousers, Smith could glimpse his muscles clump.
Corbin shoved at Ryan's countenance, but Ryan had already shifted. He jabbed a needle deep into Corbin's calf and strode back.
A bell rang and a moment later, Brad and Lefty gush into the compartment. Smith bridged his arms and made no move to defend himself.
Smith was tall, but his mass was all lean muscle and sinew. Lefty charged like a warhorse. Ryan barely lengthened both hands, unclenched, but when Lefty slammed into him, the unthinkable occurred. Instead of grinding the minor man, Lefty's pursuit ceased rapidly.
His face halted first, his nose popping against Ryan's bare hand. The rest of him proceeded onward. His torso was hoisted parallel to the ground, then wrecked to the stone floor.
"Stop!" Corbin Fishill screamed.
Brad glid to a pause in the guise of Ryan and then squatted by his brother. Lefty was wailing, his oozing nose filling the maw of a rat carved into the rock floor.
Corbin yanked the needle out of his calf with a scowl. " What is that, Smith?"
"You wish to understand if I can still eradicate? " Ryan set a little vial in the guise of the basher.
" If that needle was poisoned, this is the remedy. But if the needle wasn't poisoned, the cure will exterminate you. Drink it or don't."
" Drink it, Corbin," Pon Dradin mumbled. It was the first time the Shinga had talked since Smith arrived.
"You know, Smith, you'd be a better Rudeboy if you didn't realize you were the best. You are—but you still take your orders from me. The next time you touch one of my Nine, there will be effects. Now get the hell out."
The subway felt wrong. Flynn had been in other caverns before, and if he wasn't relaxed with striding through the cloying dark by touch, he could still accomplish it. This cavern had started like any other: rough slash spinning, and of course dark. But as it dropped deeper into the earth, the embankments got straighter, the floor smoother. This cavern was important.
But that was different, not false. What was mistaken was one stride in the guise of Flynn. He hunched on his heels, resting, thinking. He didn't sit. You just sat when you learned there was nothing you'd have to run away from.
He couldn't perceive anything distinct, though the air was as enormous and coarse as gruel down here. If he winked, he guessed could glimpse something, but he was pretty certain that was simply from scraping his eyes. He lengthened his hand also. Was the air cooler just there?
Then he was sure he felt the air shift. Abrupt anxiety arced through Flynn. Smith had ratified through here twenty minutes ago. He hadn't held a torch. Flynn hadn't reckoned about it then. Now he recollected the tales.
A small gust of sour air rippled at his cheek. Flynn nearly flew, but he didn't realize which path was safe to run. He had no way to defend himself. The Fist retained all the weapons. Another gust stroked his other cheek. It scents. Like garlic?
"There are mysteries in this world, kid," a vocalist let out.
"Secrets like metaphysical buzzers and the individualities of the Nine. If you take another stride, you'll discover one of those mysteries. Then two delightful bashers with laws to eradicate intruders will locate you."
" Master Smith?" Flynn studied the darkness.
" Next time you follow a man, don't be so shifty. It makes you conspicuous."
Whatever that meant, it didn't sound nice.
" Master Smith? "
He heeded giggle up the cavern, striding away.
Flynn leapt to his feet, feeling his confidence slide off with the fading laughter. He ran up the cavern in the dark.
" Wait!"
There was no reaction. Flynn scampered quicker. A rock yanked his foot and he fell roughly, scuffing his knees and hands on the stone floor.
" Master Smith, holdup! I wish to apprentice with you. Master Smith, please!"
The vocalist uttered just over him, however, when he peeked, Flynn could discover nothing.
"I don't take apprentices. Go home, kid."
"But I'm different! I'll do anything. I've got money!" But there was no answer. Smith was gone.
The stillness ched, and throbbed in time with the slashes on Flynn's knees and palms. But there was no aid for it. He wanted to weep, but weeping was for infants.
Flynn strolled back to the Black Dungeon region as the atmosphere lightened. Parts of the Lowdys were shaking off their intoxicated snooze. Bakers were up, and smiths' apprentices were commencing forge fires, but the guild rats, the whores, the bashers, and the sneak thieves had gone to sleep, and the cutpurses, trickeries, sharps, and rest of those who toiled the daylight were still asleep.
Usually, the odours of the Lowdys were relaxed.
There was the permeating odour of the cattle yards over the more immediate odours of human droppings glooping through broad ditches in every rotting vegetation from the sandbars and backwaters of the sluggish river, the less pungent smell of the ocean when a fortunate breeze blew, the stench of the sleeping never-w ashed beggars who might blast a guild rat for no purpose other than their anger at the world.
For the first time to Flynn, rather than home, the aromas signified soot. Rejection and suffering were the fogs soaring from every mouldering ravage and shit wad in the Lowdys.