Page 88 of Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher)

“Yes,” she said, and blushed a little. “I don’t think it’s true, by the way. About the souls.”

“Notliterally,” he said, in a gently mocking tone. “Speaking of respectability, what is it you want in the Maze?”

“The Ragpicker King asked me to find him a book there,” she said. “In exchange, he will let me use the equipment in the Black Mansion to distill medicines—like the kind I used to treat you.”

“Can you not do that in the Sault?”

“Most of the medical apparatus in the Sault is off limits to women. It was only with great reluctance that they allowed me to become a physician at all.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kel said firmly. “You are clearly an excellent physician. And I say this as an unbiased observer whose life was not recently saved by your skills. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Lin smiled. “How doyou,Sword Catcher, know the Ragpicker King?”

“He offered me a job,” Kel said. “I told him no, but he’s very persistent.”

The carriage jerked to a stop. They had arrived.

An old stone archway, once a monument to a long-past naval battle, marked the entrance to the Maze. They dismounted from the carriage—Kel offered his hand to Lin again, to help her down, and this time she took it—which would wait for them here; the streets of the Maze were too narrow for it to carry them inside.

For the first time, Lin passed through the arch, following Kel, and was inside the Maze. She could still see the glow of the RutaMagna if she looked back over her shoulder, but not for long. The narrow, smoky streets swallowed it up.

The city’s lamplighters did not come here, any more than the Vigilants did. Instead, cheap torches—rags soaked in naphtha and wrapped tightly around wooden poles—blazed in metal holders clamped to pockmarked walls, much of whose paint had long been eaten away by salt air. The sense of being pressed down by darkness was profound, with the high warehouse walls and thick, rising smoke blotting out the moon and stars.

The place smelled of old fish, discarded rubbish, and spices. Houses where many families clearly lived had their doors thrown open; old women sat on the steps, stirring metal pots with long spoons over open cooking fires. Passing sailors carried metal bowls around their necks, and would hand them over, along with a few coins, for a ladle of fish stew.

The fires added their smoke to that of the torches, making Lin’s nose tickle. It was hard to see anything clearly between the smoke and the crowds. Faces loomed up out of the shadows and vanished again, as if they belonged to lively ghosts.

Out of self-preservation, Lin stayed close by Kel’s side. If she mislaid him, she doubted she could make her way back out to the Ruta Magna without becoming hopelessly lost. He walked with confidence, so her teasing had not been entirely misplaced. Hedidknow his way around the Maze.

“Look out.” Kel indicated a puddle of something blackish red, which Lin dutifully stepped around. He gave her the sideways smile she was beginning to realize was habitual—the one that seemed to sayI take nothing too seriously—and said, “What do you think? Is the Maze what you expected?”

Lin hesitated. How to say that it was strange to her, because they did not have poverty like this in the Sault? She had been to poor houses as a physician, but this felt different. It was a place that had been left to consume itself without the interference of either charity or Law. She could see, through grimy windows, wholefamilies sleeping on the floors of crowded, narrow houses. Poppy-juice addicts, their heads lolling as they dreamed, sat propped against walls, passersby stepping over them as if they were sleeping dogs. Old women kneeling in doorways shook metal cups, begging for coins.

“It’s crowded, but it feels abandoned,” she said.

He nodded, as if calmly observing the truth of what she’d said. He was awfully calm in general, she thought. She supposed it was the nature of his job, pretending tranquility in situations where he had to lie and lie and smile while he did it.

She wondered if he was lying to her when he smiled.

“I assume whatever book Morettus wants, it is something no reputable bookshop would carry,” he said.

“It is a book about magic.” Lin skirted around a Shenzan sailor sitting in the street, his left sleeve rolled up. A thin man in a Hanseatic soldier’s jacket was carefully applying a tattoo to his arm, using a tray of dye and heated needles. It was a crocodile, its tail looped around the man’s arm, its scales done in brilliant green and gold. “I cannot say anything more.”

“A book about magic,” Kel echoed thoughtfully. “Dangerous stuff, indeed.”

Lin eyed him sideways. Waves of sea air were rolling in, making her shiver, mixing with the spice-and-smoke scent of the Maze. They passed a salesman hawking bottles of a dark liquid he promised would clear up pox scars and “improve the quality of passion.” Lin cast him a disapproving glare. She knew such men; there was no more than colored water in the bottle.

“Do you know what Morettus is planning to do with the book, if you find it?” Kel said.

“I don’t think he wants it for himself, exactly,” Lin said. “I think he wants me to have it. To learn from it how to better mix magic and medicine.”

“Interesting,” Kel said. “Perhaps he’s ill. Or knows someone who is.”

Lin had been too busy thinking about Mariam to consider such a theory. The Ragpicker King seemed well enough to her eye—too thin, and perhaps too pale, but in a manner that suggested intensity and overwork, not sickness.

Kel smiled—the smile of someone recalling a memory. “There was a game I used to play as a child, at the Orfelinat.If you had magic, what would you do with it?My best friend, Cas, and I used to say we’d use magic to become the most powerful pirate kings of all time. That gold would fly off the decks of other ships and into our coffers.”

Lin could not help but laugh. “You dreamed of becoming a lazy pirate?”