1.36. Different This Time

The Thief

“That’ll do it, il Gutierre.” Marla straightened her spine with an audible crackle and sighed out her scriber focus. “Tat’s ready.”

Thank Saint Borac. Seth didn’t consider himself craven to pain but Marla had an ungentle hand. And she’d been even stiffer with the hand this time, owing perhaps to the extractive two-fer deal she’d been roped into. Ofelia, the other recipient, was sitting peaceably by, her nose in a book about the Kanjiri pole-barges.

Seth sat up and lowered his arms. He winced at the stinging sensation across his back. Sometimes he wished he’d gotten these things on his arm so he could see them, but those weren’t easily hidden. Annalise could pull the arm thing off, but he was neither as gregarious nor as state-sponsored as Annalise. And she had much more real estate on her biceps. And her forearms. So much space for ink. Especially when she crossed her arms and squared her shoulders and her chest pushed out. Did she have any tattoos out of sight? They’d have to be pretty low down if they didn’t show through those low-cut tunics she sometimes wore. He should have gotten a better look when they’d bathed together, and she’d—

“Il Gutierre?” Marla’s gritty voice sanded the daydream off him.

He blinked. The sting-y sensation was back. “Hmm?”

“Give it a try,” Marla said. “Same thing you do with the Fox. Find the new muscle that isn’t a muscle, and flex it.”

Seth shut his eyes and focused on the spot between his shoulderblades. Finding the extension was easy enough. It was the bit of you that didn’t smart from the needle.

He gave an experimental flex of the new muscle that wasn’t muscle. His skin went numb and cold, like a spiritual ice cube had dropped down his back. “Hey, Agger,” he said, in Marla’s rough voice. “You’re fired.”

The shop bodyguard jolted upward from his daydream hard enough to creak his perch by the stairs. “What?”

“You’re not fired, Agger.” Marla peeled her work glove off and cracked her spidery knuckles. “It’s just il Gutierre being obnoxious. But stop falling asleep.”

“Wasn’t asleep.”

“Well done, madam.” Ofelia approached Marla, as the scriber wrapped Seth’s shoulder in gauze, and stuck a hand out. “With this done, I believe we may all part as friends.”

Marla squinted at the extended unlit hand. She sliced the long gauze bandage from the roll and tugged her work glove back on. Only then did she shake the unlit girl’s hand. Ofelia’s genial smile betrayed no ill feelings.

Seth shrugged his shirt back on over the gauze and buttoned it. The crisp and smartly stitched fabric—black, of course, he had a new aesthetic to uphold—was luxurious under his fingers. Now that he’d invoked the Forked Tongue it would be another hour or so before the patch of skin upon which it was printed recovered its hexis and the passive effect kicked in. He was impatient to give his sonorous new voice a try. He wondered if Annalise would like it.

“Il Gutierre.” Marla beckoned him. “Stay back a second.”

Seth shared a glance with Ofelia. The girl gave him a nod and strolled past Agger, up the creaking steps and out of the criminal underworld. Seth sat back into the overstuffed leather sofa Marla did her work upon. “If I’m not back up there soon, you won’t like what happens, you know.”

“Not gonna lay hands on you, Seth.” Marla rolled her singular eye. “Slippery as you are, you’d just pop right out anyway. What’s going on here, fella? Rohan’s knocked off, now you’re all spick and span in Legion black, running around with the Verdugo who killed him?”

“That’s about the summary, yeah,” Seth said.

“You had something to do with it?”

“Depends on what you mean. Is it my fault he’s dead? No. It’s his. Did I shoot him in the stomach? Yes, I did.”

Marla smirked. “You’re cocky with these unlit at your back, huh?”

“You know, Marla,” Seth said. “I suppose I am.”

“You’d better hope they stay that way, Seth.” Marla’s face turned grave. “You’ve got people looking for you. Coming to my fucking door, asking about you. You better be real civil with that Headtaker, cause without her you’d be looking over your fucking shoulder.”

“I’m the picture of civility,” Seth said. “I’m the hundred-and-first saint. Who’s asking about me?”

“Who do you think? Syndicate people. Rohan’s nephew. You heard of August al Agante?”

The floor dropped from Seth’s stomach; he industriously rebuilt it. “Should I have?”

“You have, Seth,” Marla said. “Don’t bullshit me. Guy was the Prossimo boogeyman.”

Seth shrugged. “I don’t believe much of what I hear. The young Syndicate guys are always talking about the nuns they skinned or whatever.”

“When it’s August al Agante,” Marla said, “you believe what you hear. When it’s August al Agante you tell him whatever he asks. Telling you now that if he comes back, I sell your ass out faster than a lame horse to the hexis dynamo.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” Seth said. “It’s like the lady said. Our business is done. I’m out of the life. I’m going straight.”

“Heard that before.”

“It’s different this time.” The spot on his forehead where Annalise had kissed him tingled. “This time it’s gonna stick.”

Marla raised an eyebrow. “You’re in over your head, I think.”

“Nah.” Seth winked. “I’ve got the Fox, right? No refunds.”

He detached himself from the leather sofa—summoning another dull sting to his back—and left the bemused scriber and her thumb-headed bodyguard there in the dark.

Ofelia was waiting for him at the florist’s cellar door. “A hard chew, that scriber,” she said.

“Ahh, she’s fine,” Seth said. “With crooks you have to sorta flip it in your head. The mean ones, you can trust what they say. The ones who act nice will pull your fingernails out for a brace.”

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“You act fairly nice, Mr. il Gutierre.”

“Well, I’m not a crook anymore, Ms. al Ydris.”

“Ah, right.” Ofelia tapped her smooth, colorless forehead. “Pardon me.”

“It’s only fair.” Seth set off with her down the sparse Sondam avenue. “Your mom pardoned me.”

Tiago’s borrowed body sprinted across the plain, screeching and flapping his arms in a useless bid to reach the sky.

His mother pursued him. “Box him in. Seth, to the right. Box him in!”

“I’m trying. Shit. How’d he get out?”

“This happens sometimes,” Ofelia hollered. “Some of them are smart enough to flap their way out the door.”

Seth made a lunge for Tiago, missed, and skidded on the dew-slick grass. His freshly inked forked-tongue hexentat gave a protesting sting across his back. “Are you gonna help?”

“I am! I’m providing context!”

Tiago reached the base of a tree and uselessly hopped at its lower branches. He saw Seth coming, bolted the other way, and Annalise slide-tackled into his path. She caught him as he flopped forward over her, rolling with him and pinning him to the ground.

“Cuff him,” she cried. “Cuff him!”

Seth fumbled the Passkey Standards (he’d convinced Annalise to invest) onto Tiago’s wrists. They jangled with Tiago’s mad, half-arrested flapping.

Ofelia was doubled over atop the carriage, her giggle fit high and piping. Annalise lay on the ground, one hand clamped around her flopping son’s ankle to keep him from sprinting away again, and joined in, wheezing with helpless laughter.

A grouse with its head twisted halfway off landed in her lap and sent her into renewed convulsions. That got Seth, too, who sat down and laughed with the al Ydris ladies, hoarse and breathless. A golden eagle flapped to the ground next to the corpse, tilted its head, and scowled at them.

“I’m sorry.” Annalise wiped at her eye and left a thumbprint of mud on her face. “I’m sorry, Sunshine. I know. It’s our fault. I—”

“GRAW,” Tiago cried, and she descended into cackling again.