M McNally - The Sable City

Not stupid. Smells good. I approve.

“Thorough as ever, old man,” Block growled, then coughed in the still, heavy air.

The Captain had approved, he had written it down right there. There were other aspects to the admissions process, other quarters heard from, and in the thirty-plus years Captain Block had been engaged at the Guild there had been candidates of whom he had not approved (yet not specifically denied) who had gone on to be admitted. The dwarf could not now recall any of those who had lasted the full three years. But there had not been a single applicant on whose short entrance interview sheet the dwarf had written the two words “I approve,” who had not been allowed into the Guild. The jeweler’s eye of Captain Block was respected. If he saw something, others took notice.

He just wished he could remember what the devil it had been with Matilda Lanai. Her father’s perfumery or no, she could not have smelled that good.

Whatever he had seen three years ago, Block reckoned he had seen it or something like it again, high in the summer of the previous year during the incident which had come to mind when taking one and only one apprentice to Noroth was suggested. But Block was not ready to think about that yet. That was just an impression as well, and the orderly mind considered more. He replaced the interview files in their wicker nests and returned to the table in the center of the room. There, after a day spent speaking to the Guild instructors, he had already unrolled the full three-year files of four apprentices. Matilda Lanai was among them, but not on top.

After a glance around the room he knew full well to be empty, the dwarf grunted and climbed onto a strong chair to hang the lantern with the light shining down on the spread parchments. Block settled to a seat on the chair with a huff, and placed his big, knobby fists on the table. He ran his eyes over columns of numbers, figures showing how four individuals stood on a variety of measures among a class now of thirty-seven, which had started three years ago as sixty-five.

Matilda Lanai was not tops at anything. Not one solitary thing. Block told himself he was looking at all four candidates equally, but found he was comparing the other three to her. Second in foot stealth and Third in long-arms. Second again in Iaijutsu, which was high considering only a Sixth in centering. Block had been looking for a First, possibly several, and his disappointment at not seeing one right away faded as he looked more closely and realized that Matilda Lanai, across the board, had no number lower than an Eighth, in locks.

Block’s dark eyes narrowed under his heavy brows. Without really thinking about it, the dwarf pushed the other three files aside on the table and unrolled a more detailed review of Lanai’s monthly rankings over her whole stay at the Guild.

She had been in the upper quarter in most scores from the very first monthly measures, nearly three years ago now when the class was at its full size. But there, gaping like a hole, was a Fifty-ninth in locks. Rank incompetence, and even worse as women tended to be better picklocks than men. Something about patience and delayed gratification. But as he ran a thumb along just that one row of numbers, Block saw thirty-three months of increasing proficiency. Fast at first, a plateau, then slow-but-steady improvement. The old dwarf knew what that meant. He knew that the rising numbers told of late nights after long and exhausting days, when aching muscles cried for rest but instead got only hours of crouching at keyhole-height up in what the apprentices called the Knob Room. Eyes closed or at least unfocused because all that mattered were ears listening for faint scratches and slides, and nimble fingers trying to feel subtle differences through the unforgiving medium of two short pieces of bent, steel wire.

She had got herself up to an Eight. With graduation just three months hence Block might have made a wager that Matilda Lanai, even if she still was not of the First rank in anything, stood a chance of being top five in them all. But of course, she was not going to be here to graduate with her class, for with a short nod Block admitted to himself that the eighth-best picklock among the class of ’07 was his girl. He further acknowledged that he had known it already, for more than a day.

*

The summer of a year ago had been sweltering in the Islands. Miilark was always hot in Fourth Month as the seasonal trade winds and currents come from the south at that time of year, bringing warmth from the distant equatorial shores of Oswamba. But last year had been particularly bad, bad enough so that dock rats seeking noontime shade had infested the dank basement of the Guild. Someone had the inspired idea to move a third-year class training with bows and handguns down there, though that in turn meant a change of venue for a second-year grappling class. The grapplers were moved up to the top floor of an old warehouse joined to defunct apartment buildings as a single complex, together constituting the Guild on Silt Cove.

The top floor of the warehouse was open space and while the pinewood floor was solid, it creaked and groaned in a manner seemingly designed to test an apprentice Guilder’s ability to move silently. The space had sliding cargo doors at the dock and street sides, though the heavy winches at both were long gone. With both sets of doors open a salty cross-breeze off the water was sucked through toward the Ghost Mountain looming above the Miilarkian capital, making it by far the coolest place in the complex on a hot summer’s day. Thus it was to there that the second-years had moved after leaving the basement to the rats and the shooters, and it was also the place to which Captain Block had repaired after eating his customary free lunch in the mess.

The exertions of the apprentices made fair after-supper theatre, for their instructor had paired them off boys-against-girls. That was always a tricky proposition for full-contact wrestling, though in theory they were working mostly on throws. A dozen pairs in cloth leggings and sleeveless tunics lunged, grappled, and chucked each other about the space on thin thrush mats that did not do much to cushion solid impacts. The floor was not the only thing that groaned and squawked.

Matilda Lanai was among them, though at the time Block knew her vaguely by face but not name. Of about typical height for a young Miilarkian woman, she was however paired against a fellow Block recognized and even knew by name as Kuanu, a full-blooded Islander with a creamed-coffee complexion and a mass of black hair to his waist. While of only moderate size for a water buffalo, Kuanu was an excessively large human. Block had known enough Island men of the type to suspect that later in life the big fellow ran the risk of turning astonishingly fat, but at nineteen years of age he was a chiseled mountain of a man. Stolid in nature, but capable of accidental bursts of breathtaking power.

That hot day last Fourth Month, Matilda Lanai had found herself on the business end of just such a burst.

Block’s attention had been elsewhere, but everyone in the room heard Kuanu cry “Tilda!” in sudden alarm. The dwarf turned and saw the big man frozen with one knee on the mat and his arms fully extended, watching wide-eyed as the bare feet of his sparring partner kicked the air. This did nothing to prevent her sailing out head-first through an open cargo door, and dropping out of sight. Four stories up.

Block was on the other side of the room, and well past his sprinting days. As he crossed to the cargo door the dwarf had time to think at least she went out on the water-side, but then he also had time to wonder just how far the timber cart path extended out around the base of the building to hang pier-like over the water. Pretty far, he reckoned.