8

Every time Vürdmeister Neph Dada met with Rat, it was in a different place. Rooms in inns, cellars of boat shops, bakeries, east side parks, and dead-end alleys in the Warrens. Ever since Neph had figured out that Rat was afraid of the dark, he’d made sure they always met at night.

Tonight, Neph watched Rat and his bodyguards enter the tiny old overfull graveyard. It wasn’t as dark as Neph would have hoped; taverns and game halls and whorehouses huddled not thirty paces away. Rat didn’t dismiss his bodyguards immediately. Like most parts of the Warrens, the graveyard was less than a foot above the waterline. The Rabbits, as the natives of the Warrens were called, buried their dead directly in the mud. If they had the money, they erected sarcophagi above ground, but ignorant immigrants had buried their dead in coffins after some riot or another years ago, and the ground had swollen above those graves as the coffins fought to float to the surface. Several had broken open, their contents devoured by feral dogs.

Rat and his bodyguards looked sick with fright. “Go on,” Rat finally said to his bigs, nonchalantly picking up a skull and tossing it at one of them. The boy stepped back quickly and the skull, weak with age or disease, shattered on a stone.

“Hello, child,” Neph rasped into Rat’s ear. Rat flinched and Neph smiled his gap-toothed smile, his long, sparse white hair falling in a greasy trickle to his shoulders. Neph stood so close the boy took a step back.

“What do you want? Why am I here?” Rat asked.

“Ah, petulance and philosophy all bound up in one.” Neph shuffled closer. He’d grown up in Lodricar, east of Khalidor. The Lodricari thought men who distanced themselves so much that you couldn’t even smell their breath were hiding something. Merchants in Cenaria who dealt with the Lodricari complained bitterly about it, but stood close eagerly enough when Lodricari coins were at stake. But Neph didn’t stand close for cultural reasons. He hadn’t lived in Lodricar for half a century. He stood close because he liked to see Rat’s discomfort.

“Ha!” Neph said, exhaling a gust of rotten air over Rat’s face.

“What?” Rat said, trying not to edge back.

“I haven’t given up on you yet, you great stupid boy. Sometimes you manage to learn despite yourself. But that’s not what I’m here for. Not what you’re here for, either. It’s time to move. Your enemies are arrayed against you but not yet organized.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know more than you think, Ratty Fatty.” Neph laughed again, and spittle flew onto Rat’s face. Rat almost struck him then, Neph could tell. Rat had become a guild Fist for a reason. But of course he’d never hit Neph. The old man knew he looked frail, but a Vürdmeister had other defenses.

“Do you know how many boys your father has whelped?” Neph asked.

Rat looked around the graveyard as if Neph hadn’t already checked for anyone eavesdropping. The boy was hopelessly stupid. Stupid, but capable of cunning, and utterly ruthless. Besides, Neph didn’t have many choices. When he’d come to Cenaria, he’d been placed in charge of four boys. The most promising one had eaten some bad meat in the first year and died before Neph had even known he was sick. This week, the second had been killed in territory fight between guilds. That left Neph with only two. “His Holiness has fathered one hundred and thirty-two boys the last time I counted. Most of those lacked Talent and were culled. You are one of forty-three who are his seed. I’ve told you this before. What I haven’t told you is that each of you is given a task, a test to prove your usefulness to your father. If you pass, you may one day become Godking yourself. Can you guess what your task is?”

Rat’s beady eyes glittered with visions of opulent splendor.

Neph slapped him. “Your task, boy.”

Rat rubbed his cheek, trembling with rage. “Become Shinga,” he said quietly.

Well, the boy aimed higher than Neph would have guessed. Good. “His Holiness has declared that Cenaria will fall, as will all the southlands. The Sa’kagé is the only real power in Cenaria, so, yes, you will become Shinga. Then you will give your father Cenaria and everything in it—or, more likely, you will fail and die and one of your brothers will do this.”

“There are others in the city?” Rat asked.

“Your father is a god, but his tools are men, and thus fail. His Holiness plans accordingly. Now my little failure-in-waiting, what is your brilliant plan to deal with Azoth?”

Rage roared high in Rat’s eyes once more, but he controlled it. One word from Neph, and Rat would be one more corpse floating in the Plith by morning, and they both knew it. In truth, Neph was testing him. Cruelty was Rat’s greatest asset—Neph had seen Rat’s bloodthirstiness cow older boys who might have killed him—but it was worthless if he couldn’t control it.

Rat said, “I’ll kill Azoth. I’ll make him bleed like—”

“What you can’t do is kill him. If you do, he will be forgotten; another will take his place. He must live broken, where all the world can see him.”

“I’ll beat him in front of everyone. I’ll break his hands and—”

“What happens if his lizards rush to defend him?”

“They, they wouldn’t. They’re too afraid.”

“Unlike other boys I know,” Neph said, “Azoth isn’t stupid. He knew what it meant when those bigs came to him. He may have even been planning for this all along. The first thing he’ll expect is that you’ll get scared and try to beat him. So he’ll have a plan for it.”

Neph watched the realization settle on Rat that he might actually lose control of the guild. If he lost the guild, he’d lose his life.

“But you have a plan,” Rat said. “A way I can destroy him, don’t you?”

“And I might even share it,” Neph said.

It was coming. Azoth could feel it as he lay on the floor, surrounded by his lizards, his guild. His. Fifteen littles and five bigs. Half the littles in Black Dragon and a quarter of the bigs were his now. They slept peacefully around him, probably even Badger, who was supposed to only be feigning sleep.

Azoth hadn’t slept for four days. The night he’d come home from talking to Blint and every night since, he’d lain awake, plotting, doubting, feverish with excitement about a life without Rat. And the rising light of day had melted his plans with the fog. He’d called those who stood with him his lizards as a joke—they certainly weren’t dragons—but the children had taken the name proudly, deaf to the despair in the label.

During the days, he’d acted, given orders, formed his pathetic lizards into a force, done anything to keep his mind off killing Rat. How long would Rat wait? The time for a purge was now. Everyone was waiting to see what Rat would do. Everyone was still sure that he would do something. If he didn’t, though, and soon, his faithful would start to doubt him, and he’d lose the guild in an instant.

Azoth had even given orders for three of the littles he trusted most to guard Doll Girl at all times. Then he’d doubted himself. It wasn’t a good use of the strength he had. He needed those littles bringing him information: listening to the others in the guild, searching the other guilds to see if any of the neighboring guilds would like the lizards to join them. Besides, what could three littles do against all of Rat’s bigs? Children who were eight, ten, and eleven respectively weren’t going to stop Rat’s fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds. He’d ended up assigning two of the bigs who had joined him first to watch over her, and had kept her close during every waking hour.

He was slipping, though. The nights without sleep were catching up with him. His mind was a muddle. It was only a matter of time until he made a stupid mistake. And all of it was because he didn’t have the guts to kill Rat.