He left her shop and read what she had carved.
By late afternoon he had visited three more places, imparting code phrases to six people, and he was convinced that he was being followed.
It was surprising how quickly he became used to being seen again. People stared at him and steered their children out of his path, and some of them offered uncertain smiles of sympathy. Those he respected most were the ones who either ignored him or treated him as they would anyone else-trying to con him out of money, overcharging him for food or services, or shoving past him in the street with little more than a mumbled apology. They made him feel human, while the frightened ones and the smilers turned him into a monster.
The last person he was directed to was an old man sitting on a bench by the main canal leading from the refineries to the Western Reservoir. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and heavy coat, even in the heat. Beside him on the bench were a fishing rod broken into three pieces, fishing paraphernalia, and a wooden bucket filled with water, in which a single fish swam in tight, slow circles. The woman who'd sent Nophel here had told him that Brunley Bronk sat on the same bench every day between the hours of noon and sunset, and most other times few people were able to find him. She said it was an old man's habit, but to Nophel it sounded like someone making himself available.
Nophel had doubled back several times on his walk along the canal, leaving the overgrown towpath and slinking between buildings, trying to make out who was following him. There was never any sign, but that only served to unsettle him even more. He felt eyes on the back of his neck. And since his experience with the Blue Water, he knew that not seeing someone did not mean no one was there.
So if the Unseen followed him, what of it? He did not know the rules and capabilities of his mother's potions, whether he would still be able to see the Unseen after taking the White Water. But he was also sure that such people would know of the Baker's continued existence, because they could sit in any shadow in the city and see, hear, and smell every secret.
Besides, caution was good, but paranoia would not serve him well.
He sat beside the man and looked down at the fish.
"You're from Dane Marcellan," the old man said.
"How did you know that?"
"Tell me."
Nophel muttered the code that the woman who'd sent him this way had written down for him. The old man nodded and scratched at his ear.
"Eat the paper," he said. "Don't want you dropping it so that just anyone can use those words. They have power. See this?" He held out his hand.
"What am I looking at?" Nophel asked.
"My reaction. Those words. They stop the shakes, because they make me excited. Something's happening. And you've come to ask me how to find the Baker."
He knows! Nophel thought. I'm close now, so close! The weight of Dane's message tube made itself obvious in his jacket pocket, as if aware that the end of its journey was near. He glanced back along the canal path, but the only movement was the splash of ducks and the scamperings of canal rats. They were twice the size of normal city rats, fattened on birds and frogs and water mice.
"What you looking for?" the old man said.
"Nothing."
"You thought you were being followed. You should have said." The man had turned to him now, and any lightness was gone from his voice. Nophel saw the seriousness in this man's eyes, and the startling intelligence, and he berated himself for forming foolish opinions. I thought he was feeble.
"So what do you want with the Baker?"
"It's not me, it's Dane Marcellan." I hope he can't hear my lie, he thought.
"Why?"
Nophel snorted. "I can't tell you anything like that! You expect me to-"
The cool touch of keen metal pressed against his throat. A hand curved around him from behind and clamped across his forehead. And, in the center of his back, he felt the bulky heat of a knee.
"One wrong move," a woman's voice said.
"So who the crap is he, Malia?" a man's voice whispered.
Nophel felt the woman lean in close and sniff at him. There was something animalistic about it, something brutal, and her voice purred like a serrated knife through flesh.
"Marcellan pet."
They took them farther along the canal to Malia's boat. It wasn't the safest place, but it was the closest. Malia and Devin guided Nophel, an arm each and a knife pressed into each side. They let Peer bring the old man Brunley. Brunley complained that he'd have to leave his fishing gear behind, but Peer assured him that they wouldn't be long. She could not inject any certainty into her voice. For all she knew, Malia was going to kill them both.
Inside the moored canal barge, Malia quickly drew curtains across the windows, while Devin tied Nophel into a chair. Brunley sat on a comfortable bench behind a small table, crossing his hands before him and watching the proceedings with a sharp eye.
"What are you mixed up with now, Brunley?" Malia asked.
"Fishing," he said.
Peer glanced from one to the other, and she could sense the long relationship between these two. Malia spoke to the old man without looking at him, bustling at a cupboard, and he answered in a lazy voice. They've been here before, Peer thought. The questions, the deceits.
"Fishing with the Marcellans' Scope keeper?"
"Is that who he is? I've never seen him before."
"Tell him," Malia said, standing before Nophel. Devin had tied his bonds good and tight and retreated outside, sitting on the barge's roof to keep watch.
"I'm thirsty," Nophel said.
"I'll throw you in the canal later." Malia turned back to the cupboard, and an uncomfortable silence descended.
This isn't finding Rufus, Peer thought. They'd been sitting in the tavern, dividing Course and Crescent into search districts on a large sheaf of paper, when the whore Andrea had arrived. She'd been running, she stank, and she'd grasped Malia's arm and dragged her into the toilets before any of them knew what was happening. Peer had not seen Malia controlled like this by anyone before. As she'd looked around at the others, eyebrows raised awaiting an explanation, Malia had come storming from the toilets, violence in her stride.
From there, to the canal, to here, and still Peer was as confused as she'd been at the beginning.
"What's the Marcellans' Scope keeper doing here?" Peer asked. Nophel looked at her-one good eye, and a face ravaged by growths. He stared, perhaps expecting her to look away, but she'd seen a lot worse in Skulk.
"Looking for the Baker," Malia said. And that was when Peer knew Malia meant to kill the Scope keeper. Talking about the Baker so freely before him-even mentioning her in his presence-meant that he would not leave.
"Who are you?" Nophel asked.
"I'm the one with questions." Malia turned from the cupboard at last, a bottle of cheap wine in one hand, a small velvet bag in the other. The bag moved. Truthbugs. Peer shivered at the memory.
"Do you know where she is?" Nophel asked. "I have to see her."
"So you can kill her?" Malia said.
"Why would I want to kill her?" Nophel's eye was wide, but his expression was hard to read; his was not a normal face.
"Because you work for the Marcellans." Malia squatted before him and placed the bag flat on her palm.
"Who are you?" Nophel asked.