JAMILA LIFTED HER HAND to cover the glare of a stranger’s head lamp at the foot of her makeshift bunk in the morgues of Thebes. This one smelled of cold fur.
“Foundling,” he said to her.
She put down her knotting work and reached out. Errol thought she was going to strike him; he caught her wrist.
“Outlaw,” she said. “It’s a good thing I can read.”
“Ah,” Errol Thebes said. “A past insult returns, that I may regret saying it again.”
“What do you want?”
“Woody said I had to—or rather, I myself wanted to—apologize. I said things last night that were foul. I am not accustomed to whiskey. I didn’t mean at all to—I must have sounded like a fool—”
“You’re not doing much better this time,” said Jamila.
She twisted out of his grip and pulled him up as if he were a kelp. Her strength surprised him. He knelt at the end of her high bunk, aware that dozens of foundlings were sleeping around them in warm bunks, with tiny lamps over each of their heads. Bunks? These were coffins, stacked along the walls, and Errol had the fleeting realization that there were twice as many bodies in the room as the live ones he could see. So small, these foundlings all were, under the crushing weight of the iron tower that was Thebes.
She had a scroll on her pillow. A worn fiddle and its bow hung from a hook. A rag tunic lay folded at the foot of her rag blanket. This is everything she owns, Errol thought, and then realized he now owned even less. Next to her lay a small heap of knot work, still on its spikes. He picked it up.
“What are you doing back in the guilds?” she said.
“I came to teach you to knot,” he said, holding the edges of her handwork. “Aye, word reached the streets that you were trying to knot some sort of a blue question mark with lips, and I was the only one who could help. This is a disaster. Comes of working in the dark.”
“I can hardly knot in the light,” she said.
“Then it’s lucky for you I’m here.” He sat next to her and turned his head lamp so he could examine the knotted thing. He felt the edge of the spike in it and saw blood on his finger. “This is Banhus-theof,” he said under his breath. “Where did you get these spikes? They’re without their sheath and yet you were just knotting with them, in the darkness.”
“Yes,” Jamila said. “I have lit the foundling kelps, so they will be safe.”
“But what about you? Have you already met the knotting spikes in the dark?” Errol could see now she was bandaged under her thin rag of a shirt.
“Aye,” she said.
He spoke slowly, as though waking. “You were there at Lascaux House last night. I remember it now.”
“Somebody has to protect Odd, with you gone to the streets.”
“I wish you had done your job better. Why didn’t you keep him from meeting the dawn in that tent with that girl?”
“Why didn’t you help him?” Jamila said.
“He told me to go away. The whiskey blurs it. Then I was talking to that muse. I was on a plank and I saw you. I yelled out. I—”
“You threw the spikes at me.”
Errol cringed. “Aye. And then I was falling. How is it, then, that I am alive?”
“It’s best if you don’t remember.”
“No. It isn’t best. The parts are coming back to me. When you saw me fall, you dropped off the plank. You were reaching for the spikes while you fell.”
“The spikes were also coming for me. Luckily the abyss is dark.”
Errol furrowed his brow. “This can’t be real. Somehow you knew that whatever was going to happen to you, with those spikes, would happen on the fall from that plank—”
“I didn’t know it would happen. I thought it might.”
Errol felt the sensation of falling, even now. “How did you know it would happen before you hit the earth?”
“It was a guess,” she said.
He reached up to touch her bandage.
“It hurts,” she said.
“Of course it does. How on earth could you have known that whatever came from your banhus, from your ribs, could catch you and me in the air?” He shook his head in disbelief. “And that it could bear the stag as well?”
“That wasn’t a guess. I’ve smelled the beast for years, in my palms and fingers. Hoofs and feathers, both. Of all Pliny’s animals, what else could that be?”
“The winged horse. A rare beast.” Errol felt a thrill in his ribs at the bravery of such a leap.
He considered now his history with Jamila. His meeting her at the tufuga’s and the way he had grabbed her that night and told her she would never amount to anything. At the party on Al-Razi, accusing her of collaborating with the regnat.
“Why would you ever save me? I have never been anything but foul to you.”
“It was an otherwise dull night,” she said. He laughed. And then he pulled up a corner of her blanket and looked under it. He shone his lamp around the room.
“And where is that beast of yours now?” he said. “No doubt he, or she, wants to be with you. My stag is likely thrashing Woody’s quarters as we speak.”
“She could not be contained by a tower. Or a wall. She is gone. Safe, elsewhere.”
“Jamila Foundling. You are a whole city unto yourself.”
He picked up her knotting again. “Well, and who is this half-knit beast taking up precious real estate in your sack?”
“He is a wyrm I’m making for one of the foundling kelps.”
“Name of the dragon?”
“I haven’t named him yet. He isn’t done.”
Errol winced. “There are rules concerning this, Jamila Foundling, and you are in flagrant violation of them. You must name all wyrms before their heads are knitted, or incur stiff penalties.”
“No name fits him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Wyrms are the easiest beasts to name. Ask anyone.”
“I’m asking Errol Thebes,” she said.
He caught his breath when she said his name. “And Errol Thebes shall reply,” he said. “There are the traditionals: Fafnir. Bullar. Tiamat. Kukulkan. Ying-long. Also one cannot forget Lagarfljotsormurinn or the Laidly and Lambton Worms.”
“Those are not names,” she said. “The Lambton Worm was just from Lambton. Same with Lagarfljot. And laidly means ugly. The Ugly Worm.”
“Then you could call him Saint George’s, after the famous dragon by that name,” he said.
“I protest,” she said. “That’s is not a name, either. It’s the name of the slayer of the dragon. Hardly an appropriate name for the dragon himself.”
“I beg to differ. When that little dragon was born, just a tiny wyrm scorching his cradle, and long before his neck started to fall over like this one’s, his mother named him Saint George’s. Can you believe that he was later slain by Saint George? Huge coincidence, really. I mean, what are the chances?”
Jamila petted the dragon’s half-knit head. “I thought Flicker would be good,” she said.
“You must be joking. How can he hold his head up at dragon gatherings—how can he hold up this head at all, really?—when all the other fanged fire-breathers are going around as, you know, the Dreadful Biter. Listen, this is simple. What is your nightwatch’s name, that small fellow sleeping over there, shirking his duty to protect you from me?”
That foundling was a tiny kelp, who sat asleep on the floor under the dim light that burned in the tunnel. He had a book open in his lap.
“He’s Hrothgar, named after the king in Beowulf,” said Jamila.
“There’s the perfect name,” said Errol.
“Well, you could give Hrothgar a blanket so long as you’re planning to steal his name.”
Errol dropped to the floor and carried the kelp to an empty bed. He pulled a blanket over him, lit the lamp with a flint that had been left next to it, and set the kelp’s book next to his hand.
“Did you teach him to read?” Errol said, returning to her.
“Aye.”
“Did you teach them all?” he said.
“Anyone who wants to know,” she said.
“And dance? Do you teach them that?” he said. “The rumor of you is circulating on the streets of this city.”
“It’s not much of a story,” she said.
“I do wonder if you ever have danced the gavotte in the guild kitchens,” he said.
“Nearly every night, when you important guilders go to sleep. Listen, why did you come here, back to the towers?”
“To forget what I’ve seen,” said Errol. “The repair of this blue dragon is all I’m prepared to think about at this moment. That, and eyrouns. Let’s go steal a pair of real knotting spikes from somebody’s workbench and get something to eat, and I’ll teach you how to do the one thing you can’t seem to do.”