Kramus reeled from one tavern to another throughout the evening. It had long been his custom to end his working day with a gang of compatriots, mostly Grape Corner boys and associates, doxies and assorted hangers-on, and occupy some hostelry. Sometimes these were quiet drinking sessions of plotting, sociable bantering or – often of necessity – mourning, but more often they were boisterous bawdies. Occasionally members of a rival mob would already have laid a claim to some bar, locals like the Rackhutch Splatters or the Killbirds or, more rarely, adventurous outsiders like sailors or gravelmen, the bandit gangs who preyed upon travelers between cities. Those were the nights Kramus liked best and sought out. Hostilities would begin with shouted innuendo and quickly graduate to insults, provocations like spilled drinks and purloined trollops, and finally to the brawling. He bore the scars of a thousand such encounters with pride.
Tonight had been one of the quiet nights. That left him in a surly mood. He had hoped that after a day spent contemplating mayhem and bloody murder, he might be afforded some opportunity to unleash his pent-up aggression, but it seemed destined not to be. Sellton had departed early, citing an urgent compulsion to pay his compliments to a particular lovely from Mistress Nelloway's cathouse with whom he was presently taken. Chroke Ilchard and Bull Zellmann, both recruited for the upcoming skirmish, had chosen to follow Sellton's lead, leaving Kramus at a loose end. He could have joined them, but fighting and fornication were two different itches, and Kramus wasn't one for scratching them with the same hand. He didn't care for doxies with bruises. Not his thing.
Instead he wandered, bar to bar, sampling the atmosphere and finding nothing to his liking. He'd run into a couple of Splatters, Oughten and Kink, but they were just kids and they stepped away as soon as he looked at them sideways. They had learned from the humiliations Kramus had visited upon their lieutenant Eryll Fudge. He knew that when they tried to repay that lesson, they'd come in force. For now he had no call for concern, and he moved on.
Around midnight, the skies made good on their threat of rain and Kramus ducked into the nearest inn. He had wandered into Milkwell Walk, well north of his usual haunts but not quite alien territory. Milkwell fed into the Fellport Way, the main road that ran from the highways to the north, skirted round Coalface Hill and bisected the eastern Dockside neighbourhoods, terminating at the Martello. The inn he had entered catered almost exclusively to highway users, caravaneers with coins to rub together. It boasted comfortable beds, accommodating servants and steep prices. Kramus didn't give a fig for overpriced comforts and would normally have taken his money where it would last longer. He didn't fancy a drenching though, so this would have to do.
It was a typical tavern, though perhaps with more recently varnished floors and painted walls. The main entertainment for the evening, provided by a pair of knife-throwing acrobats, if the posters peeling away from the front door were to be believed, had concluded some hours earlier, but there was a minstrel in one corner plunking away at a harpsichord and crooning “Death of Five Silk Kites”. Kramus dismissed his lolling crowd of inebriated admirers and reviewed the potential company offered elsewhere in the room.
A crew of caravan guards – they hadn't bothered to change out of their uniforms, orange and black jerkins identifying their employer as the Gatley-Valingdale Trading Company - were playing dice at one table. These Kramus also ignored. On another occasion he might have talked his way into the huddle, but he and Sellton had invested their ready simoleons heavily of late and just at present he didn't feel like losing. Or picking a fight at seven to one against, for that matter. He liked a one-sided battle as much as the next man, but it all came down to which side you were on.
The remaining prospects seemed equally unpromising: a caravan driver attempted to cajole, beguile or otherwise persuade some haughty traveling mistress up to his room, a merchant feverishly negotiating with a buyer, scrawling inky scratches on a parchment between them and muttering about profit margins, and a few sullen loners at the bar who like him appeared out of place and had probably also wandered in off the street.
Sighing, he took a seat by himself at a small corner table and resolved to leave just as soon as the rain slightened. He watched the minstrel attempting to rouse his listeners into a chorus of “Dismay the Saints”. Kramus judged his lack of success a matter of inevitability – they were clearly weary from travel and in no great mood for a revel – and found his persistent cries of “Come on, all, don't be shy!” a source of mounting irritation.
“Not really the hour for it, is it?”
A man had appeared at his side, toff by the sound of him. Kramus turned his head and looked up askance. Sure enough, the fellow wore a caped cloak trimmed with puffed rows of fox fur, doublet and hose expensively embroidered, and a broad-brimmed hat of some waterproof material which could have kept the rain off three heads.
Kramus was averse to conversing with the gentry. Much of the time, he could play the top man and have things his way. He didn't like to be reminded of his place. But at this late hour, he supposed it didn't hurt to try to salvage something from the evening, even if it was just a diverting conversation and some free drinks. Besides you could never tell when a toff might be in the market for something that he could supply. “He should put his energy into talking the blonde home with him,” he said agreeably. “Weather like this doesn't put a man into a singing mood.”
The man took this as his invitation and drew a chair up alongside Kramus. As expected, he signaled the barman and ordered two ales. He looked young - round-faced, flop-haired, with big and somewhat sad eyes - but something about him suggested the opposite. His eyes locked on Kramus' as he sat. He had the manner of one used to dealing with people, with staring them down and smoking out their lies.
Sellton had the same look. “You Master Lonely?” he asked. The Ducal Sentry were sometimes called Lonely Men, for the quite sound reason that nobody would have anything to do with the pricks.
The gent just laughed. “Do I look like a guardsman? Or do you just have a guilty conscience?”
Kramus shrugged, not relaxing yet. “Everyone's got something they'd rather them bastards didn't know.”
“True,” said the man with the same philosophical tone, accepting the drinks brought by a short rotund waiter with bags under his eyes. “So no, I'm not Sentry. But I do like to ask questions.” He pushed one glass across the table at him.
Kramus bristled. Whatever this was about, he knew he wouldn't care for it. “Pity for you I don't like to answer them,” he said. But he accepted the drink anyway.
The man was not disconcerted by the rebuff. “It is a pity,” he agreed, “because if I'm not mistaken you are in a unique position to advise on matters of great interest to me. And I am accustomed to paying well for good advice.”
“I don't know who you are, master, but if you want some good advice, take advantage of my good mood what's unexpectedly come over me at the sight of this beer. Walk out that door and don't look back.” Kramus leaned forward a bit, to emphasise the bulk around his shoulders and arms. He once broke a man's arms and ribs in a brawl just by squeezing him in a body lock. If this fellow knew who he was, he'd get the message.
“Come, come,” he replied instead. “There is no need for ill sentiment, Master Kramus. I've a simple proposition to put to you and I will not be dissuaded by threats, implied or otherwise. If you do not wish to hear about it, well, I can't force you, can I?”
Kramus was suddenly suspicious that perhaps this lark thought he held a card or two. This was not the usual Sentry intimidation, nor apparently some daredevil slumming amongst the lower classes. “No, you can't,” he asserted. “Suppose I'm interested in a conversation. How interesting is it going to be?”
The toff unbuttoned the top two buttons of his doublet and reached two fingers under it, drawing a small sack from a pouch under his heart-side arm. Without a word he pulled the drawstrings and dipped the fingers inside, withdrawing a fresh-minted simoleon. It almost glittered, it was so golden. “Nice,” Kramus had to admit, nodding. The toff replied the gesture with no sign of superiority or smugness and tossed the bag in front of him. From the sound, the coins inside were equivalent to his cut of a good week's protection.
“All right.” Kramus sucked his beer. “Tell me your name and ask your questions. If I feel like answering, I'll take your money. Fair?”
“Fair.” The toff said “I am Sir Kowan Dart. You've heard of me?”
Kramus nodded at the rhetorical question. “You're in the Duke's court. Married his cousin, yeah?”
“You're well informed.”
“I have a friend who keeps track of that stuff, nobles and that,” said Kramus. “What's your question?”
“You know what yellowpetal is. It's commonly available in Corphena and Cenautia but I have never before heard of it being bought for any price in Fellport. Is that still the case?”
Kramus' expression didn't waver. He briefly considered lying, but this had the air of another rhetorical question. “Yeah. It's around.”
“As I understand it, its oil may be extracted and treated to produce a medicine of quite powerful hypnotic qualities. Ingestion leads to feelings of euphoric pleasure that can last several hours. It is quite popular amongst the suppressed Corphenite lower classes.” He paused for confirmation, but Kramus just returned his questioning look. “It has another curious property, does it not?”
“It makes you talk too much,” said Kramus pointedly.
“Indeed,” agreed the toff. “It quite loosens the tongue. The consumer becomes highly suggestible and garrulous. Carelessly so, I believe. A man under the influence of yellowpetal would be incapable of exercising appropriate consideration in his choice of words.”
“Yeah, that's all true.” Kramus' irritation was returning. “Do you have a question or did I imagine that part?”
“I have reason to believe that an associate with access to certain sensitive information was exposed to yellowpetal and may have been interrogated. Is there any possibility that if that were the case, could he have resisted its effects?”
Kramus barked with mirth. “He knows someone's dirty little secrets, does he? Well then, they're out of hiding, sorry to say. There's some as can resist it, build up a resistance by taking it regular and such. But like you say, there's not much of it around, so I'd bet your purse here against it.” Kramus smirked. This toff had obviously entrusted some friend with some tawdry little indiscretion and was now panicking to discover that they might be a bit loose with the bedroom talk. “Why don't you just ask him this yourself?”
Sir Kowan Dart frowned. “Because he was murdered recently. I'm looking for his killer.”
Kramus eyes flicked involuntarily towards the toff's. In the instant they met, both instantly recognised the other's flash of revelation.
Baron Galford. Fuck. He should have known it. All these toffs were in each other's arses. This bastard was here for revenge. His hand had reached for a knife in the opposite sleeve before he even thought about it.
The toff was faster. Much faster, he realised, as the man reached across the table and swept his glass up into Kramus' face. It shattered across his septum, bursting the cartilage and stinging his eyes with blood and glass and ale. “A bit too slow, Master Kramus,” sneered the toff's voice as the knife was wrenched out of his hand. Something grabbed him by the wrist and pulled and suddenly his hand blazed with a crushing impact and fierce, stunning agony. He grunted in surprise.
He blinked furiously, feeling the gouging scratches get worse in one eye as the vision returned to the other. His right hand was skewered to the table by his own knife. The toff was somehow beside him, turning a long shard of glass over and over in his fingers, right before his eyes.
“I had this notion,” said the toff, “that being in the trade yourself, you might be aware of the particular effects of yellowpetals. You might even, as you intimated, have built up a tolerance to those effects. That's why I fixed your drink with seasnake venom instead. I imagine you don't have it too often. Besides, I couldn't buy yellowpetal anywhere.” The toff beat the butt of the knife with his palm, as if to ensure it was secure. A bolt of pain surged from his hand up his arm. Kramus screamed then. “These gentlemen were kind enough to let me know how to find someone knowledgeable about illicit intoxicants, in exchange for my cooperation in securing your attention. I gather that they were most eager to have you all to themselves.”
Three men appeared across the table from him. Through his one functioning eye he could make out the leather shoulder patches and fire-shaped tattoos rising from the eyes. Rackhutch Splatters. The one in the lead, the one holding up a hand with just the inside and outside fingers – that was young Eryll...something. He knew the others. He just couldn't seem to recall their names at the moment.
“Given your reputation, I had no special objections. Especially after poor old Master Fudge here told me what you did to him. I had no idea you were the very man I sought.”
Filthy little bastards. Sold me out to the Sentry, or as good as. That isn't how the game's played! Kramus tried to shout an invective opinion, but the only sound he could make was an inarticulate moan.
“Paralysis,” the toff diagnosed. “Nasty little side effect. I don't believe it will trouble you for long, however.” He leaned in close, nose to nose with him as he drew the shard down the side of Kramus' face, opening his cheek to the bone. He left it there, hanging half out of his face, blood streaming around it like an outcrop on a waterfall. He whispered, so quiet that only Kramus could have heard, “You won't profit from the murder of Battis Fenchrow, I promise you that. Whatever you've learned you may take to the sea with you. But don't worry. Your associates will join you soon enough.”
With a theatrical flick of his cape the toff stood and addressed the room. The horrified patrons of the inn had recognised this frightening scene for what it was – no business of theirs – and had retreated. Kramus thought he could make out the bald pate of the innkeeper above the line of the bar, but apart from the Splatters they were alone. “I think that concludes our business. Keep the coins. I'm sure you've earned them. And now I will excuse myself and let your friends have a talk.”
As the Splatters loomed forth with their knives and their lean, thirsty grins, all Kramus could think about was this: Where had he heard the name Battis Fenchrow?
***
The Moistened Cardinal normally closed about two or three hours after midnight, depending on when its patrons' pockets began to run dry, but the kitchens were cleaned and closed as much as two hours earlier most nights.
Gardenio had finished the shift in a foul mood, swearing at the junior cooks, whipping the kitchen hands with his switch to encourage some haste and above all slandering the name of their new employer to anyone who would listen (which was nobody, as word got around of his tirade).
To fuck with Beyda Chur! Never had he experienced such disgrace! Three meals had been returned with complaints! Three! Two more than any other night of his career. Too cold, they had said, or too hot, or too spicy. What they meant was that it was too fucking foreign, and Gardenio agreed with them.
Of course Chur had had to make a meal of it himself, as though he were the master chef. He had invited the disgruntled patrons into the kitchen – into his kitchen! - and had demanded explanations and apologies! Apologise? For doing well what Gardenio had warned would be an utter failure? He would rather be struck dead than tender his remorse, and had said so. Chur had dressed him down before the clients and banished him from his sight, making every promise of restitution to placate them.
Gardenio had furiously retaken his kitchen and refused to concede it to Mistress Breanna or one of the juniors. With every new complaint and every new bone-brained interview, though, he was sorely tempted to retire himself then and there. Or better still, to cut Beyda Chur's throat and serve him up as stew. Somehow, though, the question of his dismissal was not raised and Gardenio was too furious to take the first step. So he completed the night's work, sent the hands away and closed his kitchen, and still he steamed with fractured pride.
Like all the senior Cardinals, he commanded a room in the small boarding house behind the saloon, but tonight he was in no mood to confront his co-lodgers. Fowart would blather with obsequious deference to Chur, and Breanna would try to suggest new recipes and Nana would laugh and tease and take Chur's side. They all seemed to love him. Gardenio was not well disposed to hear praise for dear Sir fucking Beyda right at the moment.
Instead he took two bottles from the kitchen stores and retreated to Highflame Gardens, a small public place a few minutes from the saloon. At this hour it would be frequented by drunks and homeless travelers, but he slipped a paring knife into his belt and trusted to his black look to keep beggars and friendly overtures at bay.
As he laid occupancy to a bench beneath a small overhanging roof along the border of the park and slugged shot after shot of a hot, vinegary Cenautic wine, he found his anger growing rather than subsiding. These country nobles were all the same – give them an old house and a few servants and they think they're nobles. But let them get their hands on some money as well? Then they think they're the King! Gardenio had grown up on a country estate in the Western Province, the son of a butler and a chef. He had watched his parents grow grey and tired, worked slowly to death in the service of an unsympathetic master. He had learned the trade of his mother, groomed to replace her in service. Instead at her death, he had fled to the city with his inherited pittance. To his disgust, he had found things there no better.
“Ten years!” he muttered. “Ten years working for that fool and his wife, and what do I have to show for it?” He shook his head and drank deeply. “Rot the Moistened Cardinal.”
A voice from the next bench said “It seems I'm not alone in my sentiment.” The man seated there rose and approached Gardenio's retreat.
Gardenio lay back on his bench with his arm across his eyes, listening irritably at the crunch of broken cobblestones beneath the man's feet. “I'm not in the mood to share, friend. Make yourself scarce.”
The voice replied “Oh, I've brought my own drink. But I think there's something else you might be interested in sharing.” There was a solid chink of glass on the bricks-and-mortar wall against which his bench was bolted.
Gardenio opened his eyes. Even in the dismal light emitted by oil lamps on the far side of the Gardens, he recognised the man. “I know you. You're the one who brought in the singer. I saw the doormen throwing you out earlier.”
“Casimir Meldaran,” he said, offering Gardenio a fresh bottle. It was kumera vodka, the good stuff. Gardenio shrugged and accepted, tipping his head back for a heady sip. “I had a slight disagreement with Sir Beyda this evening.”
“Sir Beyda,” sneered Gardenio. “Even when he's not there, you all speak about him as if he's the Blue Duke. He may have you and everyone else baffled, but he does not deceive me. He's nothing but a lucky fool.” He struggled to his feet, ready to back up the insult with his fists if this Meldaran turned out to be in Chur's camp. “Fuck him with horses, I say.”
“Excellent suggestion,” said Meldaran cheerfully, “but he'd probably enjoy it. So what is it about the great and noble Sir Beyda that prompts your ire. Master -?”
“Gardenio. Head chef. Bloody outstanding head chef, too.” Gardenio wobbled unsteadily and dropped back into his seat. “Ten years, I've been a Cardinal. I was there, sharpening knives and washing pots when Warnell Korsolten started it. I was there, cutting onions and butchering rabbits, when he got himself run over by a runaway ice cart and that slut wife of his took over. I've been here ever since, and now she's dead and what is there for Gardenio, eh?”
“I take it you have seen not great profit from the Mistress' demise? A pity. Few seemed to have gained by it.” Meldaran seemed almost distracted, but then he said “Help me to understand, Master Gardenio. However does Sir Beyda Chur step onstage at this point? Where has he come from?”
Bitterly Gardenio said “From nowhere, it looks like. Showed up one day and talked himself into a job, the next minute the Seneschal's man is on the doorstep with a deed and suddenly Chur is the top dog. Thinks he's a harbinger and table captain and bar wench and chef all rolled into one. Well he can stay out of my fucking way, just to name one!” He pictured Chur again, arguing over the dishes for the menu, ridiculing Gardenio's opinions and overruling him like he was a scullery boy. In a furious rage he threw his empty wine bottle across the Gardens, where it disintegrated against a statue of a famous sea captain known for slaughtering pirates.
“He forced my girl to break her contract with me,” Meldaran spat. “All legal and binding, but in strolls Chur and leads her away, and not a simoleon for good old Cas. Not one coin in compensation for all I've invested! In Corphena, the skin on his back would be whipped bare for that.”
Gardenio waggled an admonishing finger. “Ah, but master, this is Fellport, and the nobs can piss where they please. Common folk and foreigners, they can just lick it up and call it cream.” He guzzled another taste of the vodka. “They don't do anything but what keeps the likes of us in our place.”
Meldaran said “It's true, it's true, the laws of society are on his side. Step out of line and there's a squad of Rak- of Sentrymen at your door.” He sniffed experimentally at the vodka bottle, handed it back to Gardenio. “Though I suppose that's only if,” he added, “you stay inside the law.”
Gardenio caught the implied invitation and opened it without hesitation. “You have something in mind to teach him a lesson?”
“Oh, I think he'll learn something, my dear Gardenio. I think he will understand the message quite clearly.”
“Tell me.”
***
Dawn was not far away. Across the sea to the east, the first warm glow was rising like the morning fog. It slowly crept west across Fellport, passing Coalface Hill and Oilgate, the twin belfry towers that had long ago formed the ineffective final line of defense against the invading Leph. When he had assumed control of Fellport, the Emperor had ordered these towers converted into prisons. Fifty prisoners had been forced at pike point into one or the other tower. Each had left by the same route, through the door to the uppermost level and out over the ramparts to his death one hundred feet below.
But the centuries had passed and Oilgate had become a housing district favoured by the established families and the newly wealthy up and comers. Most houses there were impressive structures, with multiple floors, extra wings and the richest furnishings. Holthock found himself at the door of one of these while the rain crashed down on his lock-picking companion.
“Hold the light still,” came the hissed command. “It'll be seen if you wave it about.”
Holthock didn't respond. Despite chewing two strings of rasp beans, he didn't feel any more courageous or certain about this. Paying other men to visit harm on his enemies – Sarema's enemies, he reminded himself – that was one thing. But this?
The name he had been given was that of a squat, bearded man with thick brows and broad biceps, who instructed Holthock to call him Hammer. He had listened to Holthock's proposal, had accepted all his coins and extracted, on threat of extreme violence, a promise to supply more as required. Then he had pushed Hothock into a back room of the inn where they had held their meeting. There he had begun explaining with curt brutality exactly what the two of them would do to meet his requirements. Holthock had protested, but Hammer had apparently taken this as a sign of mutiny and had reiterated his threats, punching a hole through the timber walls of the inn for emphasis.
And now here they were. Holthock had been given a wood axe by Hammer, who explained that it would be useful for knocking down the door if it came to that. Came to what? Holthock had asked but been ignored.
Hammer himself, perhaps unsurprisingly, carried a range of tools on a leather belt, including hammers, rasps, drills and chisels. Each had its own individual sheath, and the whole belt was strapped to the man's body in such a way as to defeat noise. Holthock just held his axe with both hands and willed his trembling fingers not to drop it on the street.
At last a click signalled Hammer's success with the lock picks. He returned to their place on the belt and removed a clawed hammer and a long, thin wood chisel. To Holthock's horror, he lovingly licked the handles of each in turn, then clinked their heads together gently. “For luck,” he said, giving Holthock an obscene wink. “Right. Follow me.”
As this killer stepped through the breach of the defenseless home, Holthock gave fearful consideration once again to full and desperate flight. Then he remembered precisely what he had been told would happen if he tried to, as Hammer had put it, loosen his shit and run. Shivering, he stepped after him.
The interior of the house was in darkness and within a few steps, his shin had collided with some invisible object. There was a hiss of contempt from deeper within. Holthock stilled himself, closing the door with exaggerated care and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the near-absence of light. He marveled at the variety of sounds inhabiting the still house. A creak of worn and warped timbers here and there, a sudden settling of ash in an unextinguished fireplace which he could now make out to his far right, the rapid twitch of wings from some caged bird unsettled by the intruders. When his eyes had finally acclimatised sufficiently to identify the object he had struck as a small bin containing walking canes and parasols, he decided he could dally no longer.
Ahead he could make out Hammer ascending a flight of carpeted stairs toward a landing overlooking the drawing room. There was a certain professionalism in his efficient approach to his target but Holthock was alarmed that a climax was imminent. It seemed somehow too inadequate a preamble for such a momentous crime.
Revenge, he told himself with shaking certainty. This is an act of revenge. Nothing more.
He moved silently after Hammer, who upon reaching the landing had chosen to disappear down a hallway to the right. Holthock placed one foot after another with as much stealth as he could manage, obscurely thankful that at least he no longer needed to squint into the darkness. Two feeble oil lanterns mounted upon the walls illuminated a dozen generations of portraits and an expensive wall frieze. He crept upwards, wondering what sense Hammer had relied upon to direct him in that particular direction. As he too reached the summit, he had his answer. Thunderous snoring was audible at the end of the hall, past a white door that stood aglow in the dim light.
Hammer knelt against the door, pressing first an eye and then an ear to the keyhole. When Holthock drew alongside, he glanced up and nodded. He rose a little way, still bent forward, and tested the doorknob. It resisted. Hammer drew back two paces and scrutinised the door as though he was reviewing an art exhibition.
Holthock filled his lungs and released his breath slowly. This is nothing, he told himself. This is not me. I have been at home on a stage all my life. This is just a performance, a role to inhabit and discard.
Something inside him rebelled, quickening his breathing and prickling sweat at his neck and brow.
“You ready?” whispered Hammer, more a command than an enquiry. He nodded, fighting down the roiling of his innards. He quietly spat out something bitter.
Without further delay, Hammer dropped into a shoulder charge and barreled with brutal forced into the door. It splintered around the locking mechanism, which spiraled off into the room ahead of them. Hammer continued his charge through into the room. It was a bedchamber with a single occupant, a man, who sat bolt upright at the sharp crash. As Holthock pushed past the swinging door, he could see the whites of the man's eyes picked out beneath a long sleeping cap.
“Who in the name of the Saints -?” The man got no further before Holthock's hired murderer brought both weapons down on his knees, pronounced beneath the bedsheets by twin hillocks. He gasped, too short of breath for the full-blooded scream he must surely have intended.
Holthock clamped a hand over the man's mouth as Hammer struck him again. The man flailed and clawed at the restraining hand, eyes bulging in agony. Holthock tried to banish the sick fear from his own eyes and raised the axe before the man's eyes. “Shut it!” he hissed. “Scream again and I make a cripple of you, understand?”
The man moaned through Holthock's locked fingers. His eyes glazed and rolled. He nodded, a spasmodic twitch. He let his hands fall away, trembling on the blankets.
“Do you know why we're here?” The man glanced at Hammer, who hefted his weapons and grinned back. He shook his head with nervous uncertainty.
“You highborn shit!” Holthock tightened his grip in a sudden fury. “Was it just a night of revelry for you? Just a diversion? An entertainment forgotten by morning? You hurt my friend, you worthless nob shit!” He squeezed. The man's eyes bulged and he shook his head in desperate denial, nostrils blazing as he tried to voice some refutation.
His hand slipped to the man's throat. The man gasped in a desperate breath. “It- it wasn't my idea, I swear it! Please, you must believe it!”
“Wasn't your idea,” sneered Holthock with genuine contempt, in his rage close to throttling him. “You held her down and raped her across a costumer's basket, you bale of turds. You and your friends, one after another, taking turns. Taking turns!”
Throughout the man shook his head with violent disavowal, moaning “No, no, no!” Tears gushed from the corners of reddening eyes. Weak fingers pried at Holthock's grip, locked in place about his windpipe. His legs jerked and flailed beneath the bedsheets, painting new dark streaks with every desperate thrash.
Hammer laughed and took a knee in each hand, throwing his weight forward to curtail the man's movement. The pressure on the shattered remnants of his right knee forced a hiss of outrage past Holthock's fingers.
“Admit what you did! Admit it!” he hissed. “I'll hear you say the words before you -”
Holthock was interrupted mid-threat as Hammer rolled forward. He landed with a face-first thump on the man's stomach, driving out what little breath he still retained. “Fuck a Saint, what are you doing?”
As Hammer's head lolled away from him, Holthock saw the bolt in profile, protruding from the nape of his neck. It was an thick black stalk with sparse feathered fletching, protruding no more than three inches. With wild incongruity, Holthock perceived it for one strange second as a withered sapling the mercenary killer had grown on his head. The absurdity froze him in place a moment too long.
The doorway was no longer empty. The outline of a woman filled it, lit from behind by the soft lantern glow. He could not make out her features, but she had a young shape, firm and full. She moved with quick, nervous movements. Her fingers scrambled to load a new bolt into the crossbow, then brace it against her pelvis and draw the string back.
There was a click as the thick wire locked into place that sounded like a whip crack in Holthock's ear. No conscious thought guided his hand as it drew back and hurled the axe. His eyes were fixed on the crossbow as it traced a sharp decisive arc toward the woman's shoulder, where it shuddered then seemed to fall away to one side. Something caught at the side of his face, like he had turned too quickly backstage and brushed a rope or something.
The woman was stepping backward into the hall with uncontrolled jerks, gasping “Nuh! Nuh!” in a heaving sob. A strain was spreading down from her breastbone, in which Holthock now realised the axe was embedded. Her eyes were fixed on him, already emptying. She was beyond giving voice to her accusations. She toppled suddenly sideways and slumped against the wall, the force of her collapse twisting the axe free. Blood sprayed, retouching several ancient portraits in a grisly reinterpretation.
Holthock stared, his mouth working a silent babble. His legs seemed no longer to support his weight. He lurched against some piece of furniture, heard rattling, saw something shatter at his feet. One flailing hand found something to grip, arresting his fall. It was warm. He looked along his extended arm, saw that his fingers were wrapped taut about the leather straps of Hammer's apron. He realised too late that he was completely off-balance, and could not stop himself from dragging the dead man off the bed on top of himself.
“Fuh!” His victim had hauled himself off the opposite side of the bed, his lower body entangled, trailing bloody sheets. “Bastah.” He spat crimson past his swollen tongue, eyes rolling as he tried to fix his gaze on the doorway. Holthock couldn't tell whether he had in mind escape or anguished farewell.
It didn't matter. With a surge of disgusted strength, he rolled Hammer away and pushed himself to his feet. As he selected a sharpened chisel from the mercenary's tool belt, he noticed with detached curiosity that the bolt wound had raised a slight welt on Hammer's skin, but there was no blood. He saw two small pieces of mirror glass jutting from his elbow, and another just below his wrist, all oozing with dark stains. And there, now, in his hand was the chisel. It nestled in his palm, like it was home. He closed it into a fist.
“I have to go now,” he said. The man was clawing an inch at a time across the floor, each desperate push a little less certain, a little weaker than the last. His breath was sharp and infrequent. His eyes were as fixed on the door as his lolling head would permit. The door had become his whole world. He did not look up as Holthock moved above him, the chisel raised and steady.
“I have to go,” he repeated. “You have something I want. I'll take it now and go.”
***
Lynnis was grateful of the opportunity for a short rest. She normally restricted herself to no more than six hours, and usually managed to stay reasonably sane on four or less. In her present injured state, though, she knew she risked complications if she did nothing to help herself recuperate. So as she slipped from her room, soundless on silk dancing shoes, she promised herself that she would oversleep in the morning. Just as soon as she completed this errand.
She had encoded the message by candlelight, her concentration trying to focus past the confrontation with Casimir and the incessant throb of her injuries. She had memorised the codes months ago and – in what she could no longer deny was simple arrogance - had not expected to have to use them. Now they were shadowy and elusive, and it had taken more than an hour to bring the appropriate phrases into the light.
She had crafted an appropriate camouflage, a letter from a maiden aunt to her favourite niece, bemoaning the deplorable recent trends in hat styles and Fellport's shameful lack of veterinarians qualified in the care of the larger Woleji lizards, which were reportedly quite the thing right now. Only a Corphenite intelligence agent of a particular rank and assignment could decipher its real message, which was “I am unable to put the plan into effect”, followed by a series of instructions and suggestions. In her present state, she had no choice but to delegate the responsibility for certain of the finishing touches to the local operative. Something of a humiliating admission, but she could not imagine that this would further tarnish her until-now impeccable reputation.
The Moistened Cardinal was silent and dark. Lynnis had waited until she was certain of it. She had a soldier's knack, reinforced through years of intensive, disorienting training, of falling asleep instantly and waking at the appropriate moment. Now she crept with great care, testing the old floorboards with each step to avoid creaks. She ignored the pain in her ankle and was forced to stop twice while her right leg rolled through a series of sharp spasming cramps.
As she stretched her raised foot, she bit her lip and brought to mind the small, bright room where she had learned to endure pain. A white, featureless place occupied by gleaming instruments and expressionless men. She called it the Same Room, and she could return to it whenever she needed.
Soon she was outside. The cool chill of the night breeze ate into her, bringing her fully to her senses. She moved though the small garden at the saloon's rear, climbed the wall overlooking the herb patch and was about to drop to the cobbles of Spindle Street when she heard someone moving nearby.
Pressing flat against the tiled roof of the wall, which she judged was wide and high enough to ensure her invisibility from the ground at either side, she softened her breathing and watched. After a moment there was a shudder as someone stumbled with heavy disregard against the gate at the far end of the wall.She heard a violent burst of curses, a Murb commoner's accent thickened with drink, followed by the shriek of the gate's hinges, piercing in the still of night. Those hinges had been the reason Lynnis had opted for the wall.
“Son of a sainting pox!” muttered the voice. “Quietly! Fuck!” As the shape toppled through the gate, which slammed against the wooden wall of the Cardinal with a great thump, she recognised Gardenio, the cook. He was obviously as drunk as it was possible to be and still retain mobility. Lynnis slid off the wall as he flailed in an ineffectual effort to regain his feet. She would need to clear out before he awoke the whole household, but it was certain that he would not see her or hear anything above his own din.
A moment of human curiosity came and went as she wondered whether he was an habitual drunkard, but aberrant nocturnal conduct in the Cardinals was Beyda Chur's business, not hers, and she was glad of it. Leaving Gardenio dragging himself into the yard amid a blue storm of angry curses, she hobbled down the street in what would likely prove a fruitless search for a buggy driver.
***
A few hours later, a boy woke just before dawn just as he did every morning. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he delivered a scratch to the ears of the shaggy mongrel that lay at the foot of his cot and rose yawning to dress. The two of them walked a mile from his father's room above a Miller Lane carpentry shop, sharing a breakfast of a dried bun, today with currants. At a dairy farm along the Shallowbrook Road, he loaded a cart with four urns of fresh milk, exchanging a few minutes of cheerful gossip with the dairyman's son in the regular intersection of their morning rituals. After sneaking a lump of cheese from the drying tables, he pushed the cart north to Poetsbridge, where he would deliver them to two teahouses and collect an argent from each in payment.
On the way, he stopped as he did every day at a thicket of trees and shrubs next to a footbridge over Game Creek. While pretending to urinate, he inspected a small knot that had been hollowed out in the fork of a velavor tree, expecting to see nothing as usual.
Instead, there was a fold of paper crammed into the space. He snatched it out with excited fingers and suppressed the urge to examine what was written there. The simoleon that arrived wrapped in tissue paper once a month came with explicit conditions, foremost among them that he should never indulge his curiosity about anything he found in the niche. He supposed it must be something illegal, but this troubled his conscience about as much as it engaged his curiosity. All that concerned him was that this would mean a few extra coins would be wrapped in the next delivery.
The tea would be a few minutes late today.