The Infernal City Read Free Page A

think they know what’s better for everyone else, people who believe they know what other people need but never bother to ask. That’s what your Titus Mede is spreading around—his version of how things ought to be, right?”
    “There is such a thing as right and wrong, Glim. Good and evil.”
    “If you say so.”
    “Prince Attrebus rescued an entire colony of your people from slavery. How do you think they feel about the Empire?”
    “My people knew slavery under the old Empire. We knew it pretty well.”
    “Yes, but that was ending when the Oblivion crisis happened. Look, even you have to admit that if Mehrunes Dagon had won, if Martin hadn’t beaten him—”
    “Martin and the Empire didn’t beat him in Black Marsh,” Glim said, his voice rising. “The An-Xileel did. When the gates opened, Argonians poured into Oblivion with such fury and might, Dagon’s lieutenants had to close them.”
    Annaïg realized that she was leaning away from her friend and that her pulse had picked up. She smelled something sharp and faintly sulfurous. Amazed, she regarded him for a moment.
    “Yes,” she finally said, when the scent diminished, “but without Martin’s sacrifice, Dagon would have eventually taken Black Marsh, too, and made this world his sportground.”
    Glim shifted and held out his glass to be refilled.
    “I don’t want to argue about this,” he said. “I don’t see that it’s important.”
    “You sounded as if you thought so for a second there, old friend. I thought I heard a little passion in your voice. And you smelled like you were spoiling for a fight.”
    “It’s just the wine,” he muttered, waving it off. “And all of the excitement. For the rest of the night, can we just celebrate that your ‘flying’ potion wasn’t a complete failure?”
    She was starting to feel warm in her belly, the wine at its business.
    “Well, yes,” she said. “I suppose that’s worth a toast or two.”
    They drank those, and then Glim looked a little sidewise at her.
    “Anyway—” he began, then stopped.
    “What?”
    He grinned his lizard grin and shook his head.
    “You may not have to go looking for trouble. From what I heard, it might be coming for us.”
    “What’s this?”
    “The
Wind Oracle
put into port today.”
    “Your cousin Ixtah-Nasha’s boat.”
    “Yah. Says he saw something out on the deep, something coming this way.”
    “Something?”
    “That’s the crazy part. He said it looked like an island with a city on it.”
    “An uncharted island?”
    “An unmoored island. Floating in the air. Flying.”
    Annaïg frowned, set her glass down and wagged a finger at him. “That’s not funny, Glim. You’re teasing me.”
    “No, I wasn’t going to tell you. But the wine …”
    She sat up straighter in her chair. “You’re serious. Coming this way?”
    “’Swat he said.”
    “Huh,” she replied, taking up the wine again and sinking back into her chair. “I’ll have to think about that. A flying city. Sounds like something left over from the Merithic era. Or before.” She felt her ample mouth pull in a huge smile. “Exciting. I’d better go see Hecua tomorrow.”
    And so they finished that bottle, and opened another—an expensive one—and outside the rains came, as they always did, a moving curtain, glittering in the lamplight, clean and wet, washing away, for the moment, Lilmoth’s scent of mildew and decay.

TWO

    A boy was once born with a knife instead of a right hand, or so Colin had heard. Rape and attempted murder planted him in his mother, but she had lived and turned all of her thoughts toward vengeance. She laughed when he carved his way out of her and went gleefully into the world to slaughter all who had wronged her and many who had not. And when his victims were drowning in their own blood, they might ask, “Who are you?” and he would answer simply, “Dalk,” which in the northern tongue is an old word for knife.
    According to the legend, it happened in