Being an information broker for a large city involved a great deal of paper crossing his desk, and a great many people coming in and out of his front office at all hours of the day and night to report in. It meant organizing and cataloging hundreds of factors and people and movements and other things in diagrams and charts on more paper than a monastary saw in a year. Maybe not that much, but it was hard to keep it all in one place with any degree of efficiency.

And all the mess only infuriated Spider further when he was waiting for word. Every little thing infuriated him when he was waiting for word, to find out if this was going to work, if Amaranth could be trusted. And if she would be all right. The little worm of guilt ate its way through his stomach, even if he'd never cared much for her one way or another.

The sun set, and Little Wing wandered through the offices lighting the candles. Still no word. Grayson should have delivered the message by now, even if he had to work his way around the crew to do it. She had to be fed, didn't she? And her pot had to be emptied, unless they'd given her a room with a window where she could dump it out the side. Someone had to do those things.

"I hate waiting," he muttered, to no one's surprise and neither woman's perturbation. Little Petal reached around him as he tapped his fingers on the desk, picking up papers and notes to be either boxed away or scraped clean and reused. "I hate situations where I don't know all the factors, I hate..."

"We know, we know."

That was Ginger's voice, striding in through the doorway and putting a box down on the table. He frowned at it, then her. "What's that?"

"That is what's been waiting outside your door at least since anyone was last out. I almost tripped over it as I was coming up to see you." She threw herself into the chair on the other side of his desk and propped her feet up on a newly cleared space. "Well, you might as well open it."

Spider glared at her, but it wasn't much of a glare. "Impatient..." he started, before realizing how that sounded when he had just been complaining about waiting.

"Mm?"

"Never mind." The knife through the strings on the package was more violent than it needed to be. The wrappings fell away, around a small wooden box. He wedged the point of the knife under the top and pried it open, at least the corner. The smell pouring out of the box as soon as it was even slightly opened told him everything he needed to know about what was in it.

"Ginger?"

"Yeah?"

"You might want to stand back."

She frowned. Her legs came off the desk and thudded onto the floor, and she pushed back the chair as she stood. "What..."

"Just... stand back." One hand waved Little Wing and Little Petal away.

Ginger took a few steps back behind the chair, closer to the door. She didn't say anything, either because she didn't know what to say or because she was waiting to see what was in the box before she decided what she was going to do. Spider took a step back too, as much as he could and still be able to open the box. He didn't want to, he didn't care to see whose what was in there, but it was the only way to find out for himself. Another person might not be able to see what he saw.

For all that he played a large role in the criminal underworld of his city, that didn't mean he was comfortable with this kind of naked carnage.

"All right," he took a breath, then held it as he pried the top off quickly. The smell crawled down his nose and coated his tongue anyway. Disgusting. And wrong, in a visceral way that he couldn't explain but that he knew from walking past the charnel houses and prison surgeons.

Grayson's sightless eyes stared up at him from the box. His head had rolled onto the back at some point during the trip from wherever it had been separated from his body and here. The job had been done with a hacksaw, and not a very sharp one at that. The edges were jagged at the bottom.

"That's a clear message, if anything..." words failed him. He licked his lips and reached in again, feeling around the sides for anything written down, anything tucked in with the head. "That's disgusting." The backs of his fingers brushed against the edges of flesh and muscle at the stump of the neck.

"You're telling me that's disgusting, you're the one groping a head." Ginger leaned against the doorway, breathing fast and shallow. He looked up and she had paled to the point of white face and pink lips, looking as though she might faint.

"You'd better sit down..." And he managed not to yelp when the edge of the folded paper brushed his fingertips. "Well, let's see what he has to say for himself."

[Thank you for the little gift. Here is something in return, I hope you get as much pleasure out of it as I have.]

Normally this was the sort of situation where Spider would have thrown something at the opposite wall, except that the only thing there was to throw was the head. At least, to hand. He put the lid back on the box and made for the door to put it with the midden heap under the step. Ginger backpedaled completely off the steps and almost fell.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

She bolted in and almost slammed the door on him. "What did he have to say for himself."

"Ah. That." He could breathe again. His office smelled only faintly of corpses, but he could breathe again. "Um. He knows I sent Amaranth into his path, and he's sending back the head of my man in return.

The air was cold on her skin. They could have given her a blanket, at least.

They were outside, and this high up in the sky that wasn't the safest of propositions for her to be naked. She didn't know where in the city they were; not at the docks at least, because the wind current was almost down to nothing. Women wailed, or maybe children, somewhere below and to her right. There was a drone of prayer elsewhere. It seemed like a place of worship, or a cemetary.

How gruesome. But if they were going to sacrifice her, at least she was going to be killed at a cemetary. She wouldn't have far to go for burial.

Her next thought was that they had found the knife. They must have found the knife, she didn't have anywhere to conceal anything on her person. And even if they hadn't found the knife, it was with her clothes, wherever they were. Something propped up her head, but that was as much sensation as she had, the awareness of movement around her and the crick in her neck.

Voices droned closer. Different voices from the praying, this was chanting, magic. She didn't know what language they were speaking. Maybe a language of magic, maybe something in their own tongue to help them focus, it was hard to say. She didn't have anything else to think about, though, so she tried to find patterns in the words and intonations. Every sound had a meaning, and when strung together they had a greater meaning. She stretched out the sounds and linked them to actions around her. The rustling of leaves on the ground. The rustling of something on the table.

It was too strange and alien to be uncomfortable. The cadaverous features hovered over her, disgusting her, but he didn't do what she thought he would. Instead the creature on his back, or maybe in his back, reared its head and stared at her from six narrow-slitted eyes, cherry-red. Dry, cold tentacles slid along her body, exploring her from every angle, every curve. She felt her mind fleeing the implications as her body grew numb under their touch. The last thing to go was her neck, with the scratching of fabric beneath it. Familiar scratching.

Her fabric. Her clothes.

If her clothes were piled under her head, maybe her knife was there too.

Each thought slammed through the hazy barrier in her mind. Burst through the fog they had placed on her thoughts, however they had done it. There was a knife under her head. If she could move she could reach it. If the numbness in her limbs was only the sort of numbness that took away sensation but not movement, she could reach it. While he was distracted. She pushed her hand up on her fingertips. It didn't work, at first, and then it did.

The jaw gaped, dessicated lips peeled back from yellowed teeth as she crawled her hand up her side, behind her head. She couldn't feel anything, only pressure and form of whatever taht was under her hand, a shirt, maybe. There was something harder though, something rounded and harder. The hilt of the knife.

The droning around her had grown shrill and fast; whatever it was they were approaching into a frenzy. She let what was left of the Captain lean into her, do whatever it was he was doing to her, let him as close as he wanted while she gathered her strength and pushed it through her arm, yanking the knife out of its sheath and burying it in his shoulder.

The Captain scramed. She didn't recognize it as a scream at first, it was too hoarse and raspy. There were shouts all over the place, too. They were upset. Good. Let them be upset.

If she could move her arm she could move other parts of her body, too. Rolling off of the table was easiest, so she did. Rolled off of the table or the tomb or whatever it was they had laid her on and landed hard on the ground, bruising her knees and doing something bad to her wrist that she couldn't diagnose just yet. The stones ground into her body, feeling strange with the pressure but none of the pain. They were all clustered on the other side of the tomb table thing, taking care of the Captain. She didn't bother going for her clothes, only bolted out of the ring and out of the cemetary as fast as her numb, frozen legs could carry her.

Everything swam in front of her eyes. After a few breaths of her trying not to be sick and then realizing that she didn't feel sick at all, she blinked her eyes clear. The everything resolved itself into a wooden ceiling with a lamp hung in it. Small, but cozy.

There were voices murmuring around her. Other voices. Everything was still too sharp, too bright, everything was far too much on her senses, and she closed her eyes to make sense of what she was hearing. There were three distinct voices that she heard, and another body shuffling around. Not moving very much, but shuffling. Someone tied?

"She's awake," someone said, and it wasn't until the footsteps came closer that Amaranth opened her eyes and tried to focus them again, to see if this was a threat or not. She didn't recognize the man, with features that were almost handsome and curly hair that looked pinkish in the light. But she recognized the tone of his smile. "Good morning."

"Good evening," someone called from behind him. It would have to be after dark for that many lamps to be lit. "It's after first moonrise."

"Can you sit up?" The maybe-redhead offered a hand between her shoulderblades to help her up, and she did after a second. One hand pressed the blanket to her chest just in case not everyone here was so gentlemanly, but at least they had given her some sort of covering. "Good. We didn't have much more than rags in your size, my sister went to find..."

"Your sister?"

"We're friends of Spider. He got the message the Captain sent, but he sent us instead. I think he means to buy time, but ..." he shook his head, grinning. The smile, while it did nothing for the aesthetic of his face, made her like him more. "Whether or not he counted on you stabbing Tolliver in the shoulder is anyone's guess."

"Is that where I got him," she muttered, leaning forward and resting her head on her knees for a second. "What happened after that?"

"After you ran?" He shook his head. "Hard to say exactly, but there was quite a bit of chaos, and that woman chased after you."

Amaranth jerked her head up and around the room, searching out the prisoner. It was a prisoner, she was a prisoner, the Serpentine woman, that had to be who he meant. And yes, in the corner, bound and gagged and blindfolded sat the lady of House Serpentine. "Lovely," she muttered, before a cold chill took all thoughts of revenge from her and shook her body like a rat in a dog's mouth.

"Is she all right?"

That was one of the voices Amaranth didn't recognize. The man stood from where he'd been sitting with his back to her, turned and stood over the shoulder of the man with the curls. Towered over, really. Either the curly-haired man was very short or the other man was very tall and broad. Or both.

"She's not all right, she's still bound to him." The taller man's voice rumbled through the air, drawing her attention and her focus.

Amaranth squinted at him. "What do you mean, still bound to him?" her voice sounded strange to her ears. Not that it didn't make sense, but, it didn't make sense. Or rather, she didn't know what it meant. What had happened. She wanted it to be all right and she had the terrible sickening feeling that it wouldn't be.

"I mean..." and the third came up till they circled around her, everyone except for the prisoner, staring at her like she was some sort of carnival marvel. "That they managed to complete at least some of the ritual. He's injured, you did do that much, but there's no way to tell how badly until he starts pulling from you. And I don't think you want that."

One hand scrubbed over her face. Either she was too exhausted or too distracted by the flicker of the lights above her head, the way it reflected off the shades of the warm wood. The sounds of their voices, each individual smell of each person, nothing she could track like a dog but a different sort of musk in the room. The tastes mingling in her mouth, none of them pleasant. She wanted to argue at the link, the bond, whatever it was.

But when she tried to get off the table to stand on her own feet and argue her legs buckled beneath her.

"I wouldn't do that," the big man said mildly, while the curly-haired fair-haired one picked her up. There was strength she hadn't anticipated in his slender arms.

"I'm Malachy," he smiled a little. "And you would be Amaranth, yes? Spider told us."

Amaranth nodded, still trying to make her legs hold her.

"This is Dodger and Foss. We've been Spider's eyes and ears here for some time, or, well..." After the bigger man grunted in disapproval. "We've been allied with him, we'll say. He told us you were here, and we thought we would try to get you out of that mess. Of course, it looks like you were pretty good at getting yourself out of it by yourself."

She shook her head. "There was an opportunity. I took it. If Grayson hadn't given me the knife..." Everyone's faces stilled and went varying degrees of blank at the man's name. "What?"

The woman on the floor must have heard that, because she chuckled behind the gag. The others didn't seem to hear it, but Amaranth did. That didn't bode well for Grayson.

"What happened to him?"

"He's dead," Dodger said, turning and stomping off into a corner to check something. Something liquid in a pot, she heard. Smelled. Oatmeal or some other kind of sloppy food; he ladled it into a bowl and brought it back to her. "Eat. You'll need to recover your strength."

She gave it a dubious look and reached out for it, but Foss moved it away. "That'll make her sick if she tries to eat it. Put some honey on it, that'll help."

Dodger gave the other man a funny look, but did. Amaranth was glad he did, too, it smelled much better after he had. The gruel or oatmeal or whatever it was had been water and grain, this tasted better when she wolfed it down. Her stomach churned, burbled, but it stayed in place. And she felt a little stronger.

"So." Malachy said, leaning against the wall. "Now what?"

Now what turned out to be moving the Serpentine woman to a cell of her own before they made any concrete plans. Amaranth wasn't all that sanguine about the security of that, considering they'd been talking freely in front of her before then, but she had no idea what they'd said or what the woman might have overheard, so she kept quiet. Besides, she was the injured party here, through her own stupidity. If she were them, she wouldn't have taken her word for anything either.

They settled her on the biggest chair in the room so that she could stay curled in the blanket, and after a little while the woman named Ginger came back with some clothes. She even held up the blanket so Amaranth could dress behind it, with the other men looking discretely away. Small favors of dignity.

"Well, he's crippled, but he's not dead..." Malachy started.

The big guy snorted. "More crippled. He wasn't all that well put together to begin with, not since the curse."

"More crippled," he corrected, with an annoyed look at his friend. "And..."

"And if you all are thinknig about killing me to sever the connection you can just strike that right off your list," Amaranth muttered. This time, everyone ignored her.

"We don't know as much as we need to, and I doubt that conniving bitch upstairs is going to say anything. At least, not quickly. Spider's working on gathering information, but we're running against the glass and we don't even know what he was planning or what he was gearing up to."

Ginger frowned. "We know what he was planning at least for her, he was planning on being a great deal stronger than he is now. What's to say those plans haven't been overridden by not having her, by being weakened with the knife wound?"

Amaranth's mouth twitched upwards in a smile she wouldn't have managed a fortnight ago. A nasty, bitter smile. She liked the idea of making him frustrated and weakened like that.

"Nothing, but who's to say he didn't put in a contingency plan just in case he didn't manage the ritual? What does he want..."

"Vengeance."

That was easy. No one questioned that answer, it was the likeliest one, especially with so much evidence. The question was, how. RJ started to pace, arms folded over his chest. "He's running scared. He doesn't know ... no, he knows who would have given you the knife, at least, who was most likely, but he can't know that Grayson was our only man on his ship, and with her," one finger stabbed upwards. "Captured or missing, does he know we've got her?"

The big guy shook his head. "I doubt it, we were discreet. I think he only knows she's missing."

"Maybe Spider can find that out too. If she's missing, well. He turned her against her people once, there's nothing to say someone else can't turn her against him. It might even be more likely. Her loyalties are proven unreliable."

"All right, so, he's running scared. Where does he go?"

"Safe place," Amaranth shrugged, and everybody stared at her. "What? If I was in trouble, I would go to somewhere I felt safe. Either some place I had resources and allies, or if I didn't have access to either of those things some place that just made me feel safe. That was familiar. Comfortable."

She couldn't believe the thought hadn't occurred to them. And as it turned out it had, but most of them hadn't thought it was feasible. A little more argument and some detail as to what resources and allies he might have or need and it seemed much more possible a solution.

"He's crippled. He's not dead."

Spider had arrived two days later, sometime in the middle of the night. Amaranth woke to him sitting guard over her instead of one of the two other men as was usual. He hadn't said anything, only looked over at her and pointed to the bed, and she'd fallen back asleep again without managing to ask him what had brought him there or why he was in her room. Such as it was.

Another day and they had at least the bulk of the information that they could scrape together quickly, which was considerable. Spider shook his head. "It wont' work."

"It will work, because like you said, he is crippled. And there will be no killing," Amaranth pointed a finger at the fair-haired sneak. "Do you hear me? You're not going to kill me to get to him and you're not going to kill him before we know I'll survive it. And you don't know it would work anyway. And," she added, with a show of strength that fooled no one. "I'll kill anyone who tries to kill me."

"Fine. Charming. Can we move on?" Spider shook his head. "He's crippled as he is for strength, and his confidence has taken a hit. His men's confidence in him, too, maybe. A woman who was in his care has gone missing, the first time that's happened in..." He frowned, eyes tracing a path of numbers in the air above him and to the left.

"Three years, sixteen months. Almost four years."

"That long," Spider hissed. "All right. He's known for protecting his people, having that undermined will rattle the rest of his crew. We might have to rattle them some more to get them out of his influence, though."

"Oof." Amaranth pushed her fingers through her hair. "What about Bartiss?"

"Tha'ts the strange part," the big guy frowned, stepping forward. "He's not pushing as aggressively as we thought he would. He's calling in a few markers and forting up, acting as though he were the one pursued instead of Tolliver."

"It's to be expected," Spider said, chewing on his lower lip and staring at the map instead of looking around. "Tolliver probably blames him for all of this. Judging by his movements he doesn't know how widely he's hated, or, more likely, he doesn't believe it. He won't go after us just yet, not unless he thinks we're in Bartiss's pay."

"Some of us were."

Everyone ignored that mutter. It didn't do anyone any good and acknowledging it would mean acknowledging how tied they all were, and therefore, how screwed. Amaranth tapped her fingers against the table and thought some more, trying to ignore how the scrape of the chair across the floor grated on her nerves.

"We need backers," Spider said, startling everyone. She had been about to say something too, and he'd driven it right out of her mind. "We need a purse behind us, preferably one with his or her own network in place. We can't do this with the resources we have."

Several voices raised at once, the loudest of which boomed over everyone's heads. "Who the hell would be stupid enough to get involved in this?"

Amaranth attempted to pitch her voice above theirs, too. "Judging by the people who already have? Everyone."

The voices trickled off again, leaving her a little more comforatble but still with a pounding headache. Spider gave her an ironic and mirthless smile. "She has a point. The territory, the riches involved here are big enough that a lot of people might want to get involved, either to protect the wealth they already have or to bite off a piece of the empire. The question is, how do we pitch it, and to whom?"

The discussion started up again. It was loud and cacophonous, and someone's voice was making her head buzz. She was too tired to sort through the separate sensations, the scrape of the chair was back, even the smells were bothering her. Someone smelled like piss, someone else smelled like sex, giving her a confusion and making her even more uncomfortable. The bootsteps behind her were no surprise; the hand that came down on her shoulder was.

"Go to bed," Spider's voice purred in her ear. She hadn't realized how musical a voice he had until she could appreciate it far more closely than she wanted to. "You're exhausted and you're sick, and you're likely to remain so until we finish this. We can do without you for this much of the planning, at least."

She glared up at him for the sarcasm in his voice, there. Yes, she wasn't the best Finder in the Guild, she wasn't even ranked int he top ten, but she'd done her bit on this. She'd weakened Tolliver, hadn't she? And she'd come up with solutions.

Standing up to protest that she was fine, though, made her head spin and bile rise in her throat, the taste of which sent her heaving to the door. Liquid, foul smelling liquid splashed all over the dirt to one side of the front step. She hadn't been able to stomach much in the way of solid food in the last few days, and it showed. And stank.

"That's charming," someone commented. Someone else told him to shut up.

Maybe Spider was right. If she were more rested she would have been able to connect names to voices, she knew, but this wasn't helping. She was sick, she needed to rest, to regain her strength. The words echoed and repeated in her head as she was picked up, one arm around someone's shoulders. Half carried to bed like a child.

They left her with a glass of water and shuttered the windows, putting a blanket on the door. She remembered earlier how they'd nailed the blanket to the door and every beat of the hammer was like a pounding in her skull. No wonder the women donned veils and kept to themselves if this was what it was like. After a year of this they probably had gone completely mad, withdrawn into themselves to avoid having to deal with all of this information.

She wouldn't. Amaranth resolved that she wouldn't, she would survive this, and live to bury her knife in some place more lethal than his shoulder as soon as she was free of him. It was a comforting enough thought that she drifted off to sleep shortly after, brow still furrowed in pain.