by Grace Draven
Ah, what exact want, how much?
“How much of that bacon do we have?” Alair said out of the side of his mouth.
Martis sighed. “Five flitches, no more, but enough spices for a boatload of pigeon.”
Are you top-bitch mermaid? Martis asked. Can you make deal?
Not top-bitch, carry offer to top-bitch, bring back answer. Top-bitch never come to City.
“How can we know that she’s telling the truth?” Martis asked.
Trust, signed the mermaid and frowned.
Trust? Alair made a very rude sign of rejection-not-that-stupid that had probably been one of the first signs ever invented it was used so often when striking a bargain. Split pay, half now, half later.
The mermaid grinned. Agreed. Now what want, what offer?
Alair spelled out what he wanted with halting fingers, Trade Signs not really suited to describing the precise method of death you wanted to inflict on a challenging-bitch. It did extend to murder-for-hire, merchants being what merchants were, but usually the choice of method was left up to the assassin-for-hire. After all, why hire a professional and dictate how they should perform their job? You didn’t tell an artist what colour to use, you didn’t tell a sculptor what chisel to employ, and you did not tell an assassin what garrotting wire to use. There were signs for make-sure-the-body-is-never-found when you wanted to spread terror by being mysteriously threatening and string-them-up-in-the-market-place when a point had to be made by being obviously threatening, but that was about the limit of discussion considered necessary.
Between them they managed to find a way to explain what they wanted, how they wanted it, and how much they were going to pay for it, and Martis was three flitches of bacon, and a lot of pigeons, short.
Make it four, can’t split halvesies else.
Fine, Martis signed. No more. Finality-sign.
No. Like Nice Man. The mermaid sighed, then frowned, wrestling with her conscience. Two bacon.
“They really did like him,” Martis said.
“Aye.” Alair sighed. Four bacon—two price, two gift to friends of Nice Man.
The mermaid nodded. Spit-in-the-hand-agreement, take to top-bitch?
They both signed their spit-in-the-hand agreement.
Martis regretted the extra bacon, but it would be a mistake to skimp on revenge. If nothing else, it would feel like they were undervaluing his brother’s life, and though he had not been unquiet after death there was still time for him to come back and haunt them. He had loved his brother, and missed him desperately, but did not want to see him again on this side of the Dark Rubicon.
He was also relieved not to have to actually spit in his hand. It was unseemly, it was unsanitary, and it was closer to a mermaid’s teeth than he liked to be, bubbies or not. He’d never thought there would come a time when he wouldn’t be pleased to see a pair of bubbies, but these had lost their charm.
He yearned for the simpler pleasures of trying to peer down the bodice of a fellow merchant’s daughter or sister without getting his face slapped, and trying to get them to sneak into the garden for a few kisses. The City, for all its blatant charms, had never understood that struggling for something that couldn’t be bought was priceless and not valueless.
Their answer was delivered three days later by way of a large conch deposited by their water gate, which Barnardis brought in to them as they worked through the accounts in the study.
“I believe you were expecting this,” he said, laying the shell on the desk. It was still damp, and Alair winced at the potential damage to the wood of the desk.
“Yes, we were. If you could convey to Lady Vanth that all is ready…” Alair said. “And then prepare extra tea. I expect visitors shortly.”
“When don’t we?” Barnardis murmured, and took away the conch before any damage was done. He returned with fresh tea and Aishen.
“Lady Vanth has decided we’re under control then?” Alair asked, finally displaying the fine manners he was noted for by pulling out a chair for Aishen to sit in.
“She doesn’t feel the need to supervise the fine details of our soiree, no,” Aishen returned smoothly. “I do have a list to work through.”
Martis grinned. “You must meet Alair’s mother. She’s always saying that he needs someone to keep him in order.”
“Many have tried,” Alair replied. “I’m incorrigible.”
Aishen turned pink and covered her agitation by digging in her pocket to find the list.
“Oh, she likes you,” Martis said.
“Do you really want to tease someone who is a dab hand with the poison jar?” Alair asked, smiling softly at Aishen.
“We’re all friends here,” Martis replied. “Besides it was your hair I was tugging on, not hers.”
“Martis always used to pull on his sister’s braids as a child. We had hoped that he would grow out of it as he became mature but alas…! You can see he’s still the same.” Alair reached across the table and patted Aishen’s hand soothingly, making her turn even pinker. “Don’t mind him.”
“I don’t,” Aishen said.
Martis noticed she didn’t move her hands away from Alair, so she didn’t mind that either, but he said nothing. Alair’s point about the poison was well made, not to mention the risk of turning up in a rude limerick insulting his looks, his brains, or insinuating an unnatural interest in goats. The limerick would be worse. He had once had to leave town to avoid the irritation of hearing one of Alair’s gifts to him being repeated over and over again.
“So what’s on the list then?” he asked.
“A theme,” Aishen said.
Alair tipped his head back, looking at the ceiling in apparent thought, looking like a well stroked cat. “The sea—blues, greens, lots of shells and pearls. Rub Dovestone’s nose in his exclusion from the oyster trade, whilst making it look like Her Ladyship is ready to deal.”
That decided, the choice of food and drink followed easily: fishy delicacies, delicate white wines, and the finest brandy, all served on oyster shell plates.
“I’ll speak to the artificers about something to float on the water.” Aishen made another mark on her list. “Perhaps some toy boats?”
Alair nodded. “Yes, we want Dovestone to stand close to the edge, and if there is something that catches his eye, that will be all the easier.”
Aishen found it necessary to visit the house on several occasions in the time before the party, agreeing the finer details of the arrangements, with her lists in hand, marking things off as done and then scribbling more notes so that the list never grew shorter.
He did the decent thing and left them alone for an hour or two, leaving them in the dining room comparing lists whilst he checked the accounts in the study. And if the lists appeared unchanged when he returned, coughing loudly outside the door just in case, well, the accounts weren’t much advanced either.
He suspected that matters hadn’t progressed much further than some furtive glances and perhaps handholding, because if everything went to hell in the next couple of days they would be running for their lives through the City and hoping to make it out by daylight. It was not a hunt you invited guests on, not if you were a man of honour.
He had stayed away from Hartest for the same reason. They were dangerous company, operating on the finest edge of the law and the Master’s word.
They gathered on the day of the party to ensure that everything was running as it should. Alair looked worn out, and Martis’s mirror told him the same story.
“The Master has accepted the invitation,” Aishen said.
“The last element has fallen into place then,” Alair said with satisfaction. “I was getting worried that he would stay away.”
“Do we want him there?” Martis asked, remembering the unease the Master had inspired.
Alair raised his hands from the table, almost in surrender. “I want the Master to witness every moment so he can see we dealt fairly with Dovestone, but also to make sure he’s compli
cit and can’t go back on his word.”
“Not that it will stop him from doing anything that he chooses,” Aishen said.
“No, but that’s no reason to make it easier for him to renege.” Alair shrugged. “We do what we can do, and chance falls where it will.”
Martis preferred a solid plan to relying on chance, but he had made an offering to several gods asking for their help, just in case any was to be had. He had even included the harsh god of the Trinitarians in case he was minded to take an interest in avenging one of his own.
“And do you have an escape route planned?” Martis asked.
“Of course,” Alair replied, and grinned. “I hope you can run very quickly.”
“I can.” He had been practising, just in case Alair and the gods fell down on the job. He had also made his will—ten thousand gold crowns to anyone who killed Dovestone, and the rest to his sister. It was not subtle or clever, but that price would tempt someone into action and ensure their triumph even from the grave.
On any other occasion, Martis would have been impressed by the party. The mermaid gate was wide open to admit the guests, with strange burning lamps hoisted high to light the way. The pier they had used on their first visit had somehow been lifted away, and the water of the canal ran straight into the courtyard which was now underwater. The canal flooded deeper into the garden, waves lapping at the trees, filling up an old water course that ran the alongside the labyrinth and sending cold, wet fingers into the borders.
It was now possible to take a boat into the depths of the garden and then stand on dry ground to talk to other guests, or be gently propelled round in boats. Food and drink floated by on silver shells, or could be collected from servants standing at the edges of the water in ornate costumes decorated with shells.
“This must have cost a bloody fortune,” Martis murmured.
Alair put out a hand to snag a passing shell and help himself to the contents. “Caviar, my favourite.”
“Which sort?” Martis asked, his hand poised over the buttered toast spread with fish eggs.
“Top quality,” Alair replied, his voice muffled with a full mouth. “And with a nice touch of lemon. You’ll like it.”
Martis did like it, and he liked the goat’s cheese pastries, the strange vegetable pasty, and even the thin slices of bacon curled around a spicy sausage which he had eyed with suspicion, not liking the strange way the skin had glistened. He had no idea what the Lady Vanth and her ilk ate, other than people when they could get them, and hoped that the sausages had been provided for the human guests and made from cows or sheep as they should be.
“It’s donkey,” Alair said. “In case you were wondering.”
Martis had another helping. He liked donkeys, but they did make fine sausages. He snorted; that was probably what Lady Vanth and the Master thought about them.
They drifted into shallower waters and up against a wooden platform where they tied off, and hauled themselves out onto the pier. There were other guests there, dressed in their finest clothes—bright satins, deep velvets, pale silks, all bedecked with heavy embroidery. One woman had golden bells sewn to her dress that sang when she moved. Another had an embroidered hunt across her sash, where the figures moved across her body in a perpetual chase, never catching their prey. If you looked closely, you could tell that the thing being chased was human but dressed in a stag’s head and coat.
Martis had to wonder if that was some sort of message for Lady Vanth: you cannot catch me. It was just as likely to be one of her kind, revelling in the never-ending terror of the victim, or even one of the stranger Hunt god cults that proliferated in the frozen North where they took the need for food to take them through winter very seriously.
Martis was wearing his pearl outfit again. Mostly because he was too lazy to buy anything else, but also so that Dovestone would be able to find them in the crowd. Alair had chosen something new—all black, so he blended into the night, with blood red embroidery wreathed around the cuffs and collar. He looked like a priest, or something fell bent on vengeance—doubtless the effect he sought.
A servant stood in the corner, dressed in a white silk that shimmered in the torchlight with all the colours of a pearl.
“Where’s the Lady Vanth?” Alair asked him. “She is expecting us.”
“Or Aishen,” added Martis, prodding his cousin in the ribs for good measure.
It was hard to glare at someone through a mask, but Alair was trying his hardest to do so.
“Sorry,” Martis said. “Nerves.”
He did not need to be told that they rose or fell by this night’s work, and bringing Aishen’s name into it was foolish even if it was only the servant who heard him, and who could guarantee that in this crowd?
“The Lady Vanth is in the heart of the garden.” The servant pointed towards a walkway where the trees were hung with golden ribbons. “If you follow the markers, you will find it.”
As they moved closer, Martis could see there were delicate sun charms hung from the ribbons.
“I’ve just realised how provocative that symbol is here,” Martis said.
“You mean the sun, shining, in a City of darkness, filled with monsters that eat humans and who fear dawn?” Alair replied.
“I never said I was bright.” Martis touched one of the charms and set it dancing, a light against the darkness.
Alair grasped his shoulder in a half embrace. “You’ll do.”
Martis had a new appreciation for the Lady Vanth’s mask when they found her under the poison tree. The design had been picked up in the embroidery on her dress and a thousand grinning suns stared back at them on a black silk background. She and Alair matched so perfectly in colour that it could only have been deliberate, a statement of their alliance to all who could read such things.
“And where is our guest of honour?” Alair said.
“Which one?” Lady Vanth replied. “The Master is over there, but Dovestone….”
A woman in a red dress and matching mask crossed behind Lady Vanth and whispered in her ear.
“Aishen has found him,” Lady Vanth said.
“Good luck,” Aishen said, and shifted back into the crowd.
Alair offered his arm to Lady Vanth, and they moved across the lawn in a stately procession, Martis bringing up the rear, until they reached a group round a man dressed in grey.
“Dovestone, there you are—how good of you to join us tonight.” She put a hand on his arm in what would pass for a friendly gesture if you did not know how strong her grasp was. “Have you eaten well?”
“Us?” Dovestone replied. “I thought you were the host yourself, unless you have started using the royal plural.”
Lady Vanth laughed. “No, I would not dare cross the Master. I meant myself and my confederers Alair and Martis. You know them, I understand.”
“Confed…?” Dovestone smothered his surprise. “Trading in pearls, I assume?”
“No,” said Martis.
“You know, they always say there is no beauty without death,” Alair remarked to the world at large. “And I intend to bring beauty to the world.”
Martis wished that Dovestone had no mask to hide behind. His companions began to ease away, unwilling to be caught up in what was developing into a nasty scene.
A crowd had formed around them, but a little away: close enough to watch but not so close as to be involved. Apart from it, standing to one side, and with a clear space around him that no one wanted to cross, stood the Master.
Dovestone glanced at him, then back at Alair and Martis. “The Master himself has ordered you to abide by the law.”
“He has.” Martis nodded.
“And we will not step beyond it by one inch,” added Alair. “But this is your last chance to clear your conscience before nemesis overtakes you. There are worse things than the law.”
“My conscience is clear,” Dovestone snapped.
“It probably is,” Lady Vanth replied. “Alas, poor Dovestone.”
>
Dovestone shifted uneasily on his feet, torn between keeping a careful eye on his interlocutors and appealing to the Master for his protection.
“My Lord,” he said. “They seek to undermine your rule.”
The Master’s voice carried clearly across the noise of the party. “No man will raise their hand against another, whether by blade, poison, nor any other apparatus. Anyone who breaks the law will be punished as the law decrees.”
Martis doubted that Dovestone would find this the comfort he was seeking, being so carefully balanced as to who had broken the law and who would be punished.
“I will not stay here and be threatened,” he said. “Not by two grief-deluded men and someone seeking to challenge for the Mastery of the City.”
There was a hiss from the crowd. The allegation of challenging the Master was a serious one, judging by the reaction, but the Master made no move.
Dovestone turned on his heel and moved sharply away along a path alongside the water.
“Do you know what the secret is Dovestone? The secret you killed for?” Alair called out. “Of course you do. It’s quite simple—the mermaids like meat.”
Dovestone reached the edge of the platform that thrust out into the artificial lake, and turned back, one foot slightly forward ready to step into a boat. “Meat?”
Alair removed his mask and smiled. It was the sort of smile that would make the Master think twice before pushing the matter further.
“They prefer it curried, but sometimes they will take it raw and unsalted,” he said.
Two pale hands appeared on the edge of the pier, unnoticed by Dovestone, then another pair a little further down.
“It also turns out that they like people who are nice to them and are inclined to resent injuries done to their friends. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to confess?” Alair said, his smile unmoving.
“Why should I do that? I have done nothing wrong,” Dovestone replied.
“I think there’s someone here who would like to discuss that with you. At length.” Alair gestured at Dovestone’s feet.
Dovestone barely had a chance to look down before the mermaids tugged at his legs. He lost his balance with a short, sharp cry, and then fell back into the water with a loud splash, his mask falling away to reveal a sweaty, panicked face.
