Benny nodded. “Fair enough. It’s the Feast of Parata.”
I waited a minute for the rest of it, but Benny didn’t add anything.
“You know that’s not actually a plan.”
“Sure it is.”
The Feast of Parata was a public holiday. I had forgotten about it because freelance mages didn’t get such things as public holidays. Most of the temples in the city would be throwing open their doors to welcome worshippers into whatever festival of naked cavorting, hallucinogenic smoke, bloody animal sacrifice, or all three that got them feeling holy. Those citizens who considered themselves particularly pious would open up their houses, too, in the hope that some of the worship would rub off. Carnelian Silkstar was a follower of Belethea, the goddess of bees, and he would certainly be showing off his shrines and obscene wealth.
“We’ll be able to walk straight in,” Benny said.
“Along with several hundred other people.”
“Which is why no one will be watching us.”
I shook my head. “I have no idea how you’ve avoided the executioner’s spear this long.”
“Lucky, aren’t I?”
One of us had to be. I was tired. I was dirty. I certainly smelled. My ankle was killing me. I didn’t feel lucky.
“He’s going to have dozens of guards there precisely to stop people stealing things,” I said. The more I thought of it, the worse Benny’s plan sounded.
“They way I see it, it’s not stealing if your mark’s rich. It’s taxation. Just saving the Senate the bother of gathering it. I should be getting an award.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever actually paid any tax?”
“I’m not answering that one.”
I looked towards the palaces at the top of Horn Hill. I could only just glimpse them through the gaps in the high walls.
“I don’t know, Benny.”
His eyes tightened. “You promised.”
I had, and promises mattered between us, irrespective of Benny’s multi-dimensional tally of debts and favours. We had grown up in the Warrens, poor kids of poor parents in an area the City Watch avoided like a seeping wound. I had been five, Benny just turned six, when we’d met, and we had had each other’s backs ever since. I had never known my father, and even back then my mother had had ambitions for me that I hadn’t shared. Benny’s parents, meanwhile, had had almost no interest in him. Benny had already been drifting away from them when we met, and by the time he was nine, he had left home completely. You didn’t survive in the Warrens unless you had someone you could trust implicitly. I wasn’t going to break that after all this time, no matter what.
“I just thought you’d have a better plan,” I said.
Benny’s face broke into a grin again, the tension slipping from his shoulders like a shadow in the midday sun.
“I don’t need one. I told you, I’m lucky.” Which didn’t fill me with as much confidence as he probably thought. “Anyway, I’m not a mage like you. But if you want to turn us invisible or, you know, mind-control the guards or something, be my guest.”
“Not bloody likely.” Even if I could manage such things, Carnelian Silkstar was a high mage. If I touched magic within a hundred yards of him, he would know.
There were three ways to make a lot of money in Agatos: politics, crime, and commerce, although some would argue they were basically the same thing. The city’s high mages had them pretty well sewn up. The Countess controlled politics, the Wren ruled the underworld, and Carnelian Silkstar had most of the city’s trade grasped in his greasy little hands.
Benny shot me a happy smile. “I guess that means we’re doing it my way after all. So, what are we waiting for?”
Yeah, I thought bitterly. What are we waiting for?
Once, Horn Hill had been crowned by a fortified keep that jutted up from the edge of the Leap like a big ‘fuck you’ to anyone approaching from the sea. Over the centuries, the walls and the keep itself had been torn down and Horn Hill given over to a much bloodier purpose than war: making lots of money for very few people.
The story went that, four hundred and twenty-six years ago, Agate Blackspear had sailed into the harbour, seen the Erastes Valley stretching out before him, and announced in a ground-shaking and undoubtedly very manly voice, “I shall build a city here, and it shall be the greatest city on Earth.”
Agate’s clerks and scribes must have been working overtime for anyone to actually believe that goat shit, because there had been cities here for thousands of years, each built on the ruins of the previous, burying their memories, their histories, and their dead gods beneath the weight of stone and carefully crafted stories. Agate Blackspear had been just the latest in a long line of pirate kings who had seen the potential of Erastes Bay.
The prevailing winds across the ocean meant that ships were forced to anchor in the bay and there wait for the wind to change so they could sail through the Bone Straits to the Folaric Sea and the rich trade with the coastal cities beyond. If you controlled the only major port on the coast, well, think of the potential to tax all those waiting ships at the point of a sword. Agate Blackspear must have been rubbing his hands. Add to that the fact that the Erastes Valley marked the start of the Lidharan Road, the main trade route to the northern cities, and money washed through Agatos like shit through the sewers after a storm.
Over the centuries, whether Agate had actually said it or not, Agatos had become one of the great cities of the world. The Godkiller had secured his legacy, even if he hadn’t lived long enough to see it. Personally, I was glad he hadn’t. He sounded like a massive arsehole.
The Palace of a Thousand Walls covered a good chunk of the plateau of Horn Hill. I doubted anyone had ever counted the walls in Silkstar Palace, but they were impressive. Almost all of the internal walls were movable, capable of being swung or slid in and out of place to change the configurations of the rooms and the dozens of small courtyards hidden within. The house was supposed to reflect the honeycomb of a beehive in structure. I didn’t know if that was true, but I did know that Thousand Walls was a bloody awkward, ever-changing maze, and we had a good chance of getting lost in there and wandering around until we died of old age. The outer wall was solid stone and thirty feet high. It ran in a square that was a hundred yards to each side. Gold and blue banners draped the walls, embroidered with the Silkstar crest of a ship following a single star, topped by three absolutely gigantic bees. All I could say was that I wouldn’t have wanted to be on that ship when those bees came past.
The main gates of Thousand Walls had been thrown open and the internal walls had been slid back to provide a wide, direct passage all the way through to the central courtyard. There were guards at the gate and spaced around the roof, looking like Charo decorations in their frilly, matching Silkstar uniforms. The swords at their waists and the muskets in their hands looked anything but frilly and pointless. I might be a mage, but I wouldn’t be able to hold off that many armed men, even if their master didn’t decide to get involved.
“Pity, Benny. What have you got me into?” I muttered.
“What’s that, mate?”
I shook my head.
The guards were watching the steady stream of people passing through the gates, but no one was being questioned. Sneaking into the house itself wouldn’t be so easy, but that was Benny’s problem. And if he couldn’t get us in, well, that would free me from my part of the deal. The relief that rushed through me at the thought was followed by guilt.