The Heels are Heavy

I took the job at twilight because Berdusk is easiest then—shop lanterns coming alive, the river breathing the day’s heat into fog, and everyone easing out of formality.  It’s a Harper’s hour.  It belongs to watchers.

This man I'm watching calls himself Aewen Wael, which is pretty funny if you know your wood elf poetry.  He moves like a man pretending to be ordinary—hands visible, stride loose, pockets untied.  A thumb ring turned idly.  When a gull made a sound like a door hinge giving up, the ring paused; he shifted a half step to catch a constable’s lantern in the shop glass, not so much checking his reflection as the angles behind it.  Now he drifts on, content to work on being unnoticed.

At the mouth of Dye Alley, two of the thieves' guild —Ryk with the smiling knife and a short woman with pearl earrings—leaned on their laughter.  The one in pearl earrings I didn't know, and she wore a look on her face that told me she could sell a person back their own hat for twice its price.

“Aewen,” Ryk said, half-grinning but wincing as if the name nicked him. “You’re late.”

“For what?” Aewen’s face obligingly empty.  He looked honestly puzzled.

“For buying the round you owe me.”

“Nah, I never buy rounds,” Aewen replied.  “I do buy the second drink, though.  You see, the first is almost always an apology or an entreaty.  Both of those are tangled in trouble.”

Pearl Earrings chuckled. “He’s got you there.”

“Tonight you do,” Ryk said. “There's a new 'tithe' near the river.  You’ll want to cross through there early to avoid paying it.”

“Well, if you announce a surprise,” Aewen said cheerfully, “you forfeit the surprise.” He clapped Ryk’s shoulder like they were kin and wandered on, a man who leaves firelight before his coat could smell of it.

The market changed key as I followed him: stall clatter softening to lute songs, camphor and fennel from the apothecaries sitting sternly in the air. He stepped past a broken paving tile he had not acknowledged, yielded to a porter three paces before the man began to veer, spun his ring when a lantern swept the crowd, and glanced at the river below, all humming without noticing.

A small hand reached for his purse. The girl could not have seen twelve winters. Her eyes were busy with exits.

“Your weight in is the heel, not the toe,” Aewen murmured, not turning. “Weight in the toe is a promise to spring forth, but weight in the heel roots you where you stand.”

She froze.

He half-turned then, eyes soft as river dusk.  No censure, no alarm, only a craftsman’s interest in how other craftsmen arrange their tools.  She stammered, “I wasn’t—”

“You were,” he said kindly. “You’re very nearly good at it.  Your breath is wrong, though.”

“My breath?”

“When you’re closer than an arm, breathe like you’re listening.  Not like you’re about to run.”  He mimed panting.  Her gaze snapped to a rack of gray scarves.  Aewen laughed, not unkindly, and produced a pear he had already paid for and a thin strap with a needle.  “Here's a tip for you: sew this inside your shirt at the ribs,” he said. “Thread your purse-string through.  If someone tries what you just tried, you’ll feel it at the bone.”

“Why help me?” she asked, offended by instruction.

“So I can steal from you properly when you’re older," he laughed.  His smile was gentle, the sort reserved for those who have not yet had to inventory their mistakes.  "You know, you could help me with something--do you know the arcade of Deneir off Seconder's Road?"  She nodded, and he leaned in to whisper.

After a few moments, Aewen walked on; the girl bit the pear as if reconsidering her next target.

Near the dyers’ last vat, a wizard stumbled in like a bad night's sleep.  Robes stained in long squabbles with his own inkpot.  Smudged chalk-and-charcoal runes clustered under his sleeve.  He carried a brass birdcage that lacked a bird, but had a finger-bone tied to its door.  He brushed the bone with his thumb like a worry-stone as he muttered at the cobbles.  The hair on my forearms lifted.  He was a practitioner of hedge-magic, hungry and careless.

Aewen stepped directly into the path of whatever the wizard was building—he did not speed or slow.  A coil of greenish air shouldered past him, struck a painted inn sign—The Sleeping Fox—and the fox blinked awake, annoyed to exist.  The wizard flinched at his own success; the lantern above the brazier popped and spat a bead of fire that kissed Aewen’s collar.  He touched the singe with two fingers, cocked an eyebrow at the fox sign, and nodded to the wizard as a neighbor might nod at a rug successfully winched to a balcony, and continued.  I waited for the seam where luck and notice meet to show.  It didn’t.  Either he never saw the danger or he shelved it where other men keep rain-boots.  Twilight Hall prefers candidates who know acid from weather, so I suppose this is just a note to keep.

River Street’s fog found everyone’s ankles equally.  Aewen paused at a brazier, pretended to choose between two identical skewers, bought neither, and let the warmth draw him to the railing.  I left the roofline—some judgments want ground.  A gull watched me like a clerk and squawked.  Aewen angled his head at the noise—acknowledging the existence of hinges that give up—and resumed not noticing me.  I took a post by a coil of rope that smelled like wet dog.

Ryk and Pearl slid from the crowd effortlessly, the way boredom creeps from stacks of reports.

“Change of mind?” Pearl Earring asked.

“Keeping an eye on things,” Aewen said.  “Also, I owe you something.”  He drifted a hand to his too-available purse.  “I’ve decided to pay early, since I've decided to remain here a while.”

“That’s not how tithes—” Pearl began.

Aewen shrugged—a small arithmetic arriving.  He slipped them each a coin, then flipped a third high.  In my experience, I think thieves see a line, connecting to and fro; priests a circle, marveling at the geometry of the world; soldiers a trajectory, predicting a destination; and pure cynics, regardless of profession, take careful visual note of the origin.  Ryk watched the line traced by the third coin.  Pearl watched Aewen.

Neither Ryk nor Pearl saw the fourth coin, palmed beneath the theatrics.  Truth to paper, I'm not certain I saw it either: rather, I'm piecing together small observances from my recollection.  It fell naturally along the curb.  A boy broke for the fourth coin, alarming a dog that reconsidered its repose on the curb and shot across the street, a cart  swerved to avoid the dog, and dozens of people shifted their paths and their attention.  For perhaps six seconds the mouth of the alley cleared and then jammed.  Aewen Wael slipped off past Ryk and Pearl, leaving the pair surrounded by bystanders asking after their safety.  No magic—only a man with a head for foot traffic and a taste for shuffling the deck after others call the suit.

We looped the city: alleys thinning like rumor; singers’ quarter where old songs grow new endings; bookstalls where brittle poets are kept together so they can comfort each other.  Aewen made acquaintances without acquiring them, set small messes to rights with exactly weighted coin or remark, and never went where I expected him to go.  However, he wasn't hidden.  If he knew I followed, he was pretty good at behaving like a man with no talents at all.  Near the far stalls he slipped into a narrow court.  In the center of the courtyard, a tiny shrine to Deneir waited under fresh paint.  A single gray feather lay on the shelf.  Aewen did not pray.  He considered.  He set down some kind of token next to the fired clay offerings dish.

Only when his steps had faded to honest hush did I go in to examine what he had left behind.  The feather was only feather.  The token was actually a Harper's coin—I wondered where he picked this up.  I wheeled around to acknowledge a noise like the shuffle of feet behind me.  The girl from the vats stood at the mouth of the court.

“He said you’d come,” she announced, arms folded in the posture of the briefly tutored.

“Who?”

“The man with the white hair.”  She recited, satisfied: “He says your heel is heavy. You set it down like you’re sure the ground is yours.  That’s a way of telling the ground you’re not listening.”  "Don't fret," she added with a giggle, "I've just learned I do the same thing."  She turned to go, then added, “He said to watch the wizard with the birdcage.  He’ll try again tomorrow, but probably on a different street.  He's a little confused, but usually harmless.”  I nodded and watched her vanish into the busy mercy of Berdusk.

Twilight Hall’s silhouette held the last copper of the sun as I climbed back to duty’s address.  It is in the briefing room I now write.

Recommendation: Not yet ready for approach. Keep him in the book, but determine his allegiances.  Continue watching.