by Jackson Lear
Chapter Ten
The Captain had never spoken clearer in his life without shouting. “For the next month your cut is coming my way, or this doesn’t happen.”
I agreed.
“Greaser’s going with you. Take two others.” I earmarked Lieutenant and Runaway immediately. “You four will be on your own for this one. If you’re caught in someone else’s territory, you will have to deal with it. If we have to break you out, all expenses are coming out of your pocket. And there will be expenses. If retribution comes our way for any reason because of what you do or who you piss off, you will resolve it. Do you understand me?”
I agreed.
“If you find this girl, what do you plan on doing?”
“If she wants to go back to the orphanage I’ll let her. If she wants to go back to her job I’ll let her.”
“If she doesn’t want any of that?”
“I’ll find her a better job. Somewhere nearby.”
“The last thing she’ll want is to become a whore in a couple of years,” said the Captain.
“It won’t come to that.”
“Good. If you find the people who killed your friend, what do you plan on doing?”
“I have no interest in prolonging their lives, despite the agony they deserve. It’ll be quick.”
“Their bodies are never to be found.”
I agreed.
“Agrat seems to think that a rich person is behind this. If they have employed a rival company to kidnap this girl, what then?”
“I’ll have to get creative.”
The Captain glared at me. “Just know, you’re at the top of my shit list. You’re going to be there for a very long time. Even if everyone else in the company fucks up badly, you’ll still be at the top. If everything works out for you and this girl and there’s no retribution and you find a haul of money that you share with us and we never have to work another job in our lives, even then you will be on the top of my shit list. You walked out on us. I had to send your brothers into danger. And you’ve screwed me around by getting me to go against my own orders. You should be on lockdown. Instead, I’m letting you out because of Greaser. He’s vouched for you. Given your loyalties over the last day, I’d say he’s taking one hell of a chance on you so don’t fuck this up for him because he’s also on my shit list because of this.”
Greaser stood as still as granite, though his eyes shifted towards me as a moment of hesitation crept over him. I would be forever in his debt.
“You have three days.”
We left the Captain in peace. He wasn’t going to change his mind now but we’d be idiots if we went downstairs to tell everyone we were in the clear.
“Who else are you bringing in?” asked Greaser.
“Lieutenant and Runaway. Runaway has already volunteered. I just need to find Lieutenant.”
“All right. I’ll be in Agrat’s. You bring those two along.”
Lieutenant was lying in his bunk, fully dressed except for his boots and sword. I brought Runaway with me, hoping to sway him with a friendly face. He knew something was off the moment he saw me smile. Apparently I have a permanent condition of evil-eye.
“You’re shitting me,” said Lieutenant.
“Nope. The Captain gave us three days and no leash.”
“He’s given you a rope to hang yourselves with.”
“Agrat’s found something on the note. Greaser is looking into it right now. He’s seen the Eyeless Ghost as well.”
Lieutenant narrowed his eyes on me, his suspicions rising. “What’s going on?”
“We have a four man team. Me, Runaway, Greaser, you.”
He sat up slowly, his jaw hanging open. “Me?”
“I wouldn’t brag about it to the others.”
“You’ve dragged me into this?”
“And I’d suggest bringing a shorter sword.”
“How the hell did my name even get mentioned?”
“You know your way around Red Hill.”
“I was lost! And I had to stop and ask a dozen people for directions!”
“And you have the charm to talk your way out of any situation.”
“Then I’m going to talk my way out of this. I’m not going.”
“Nice try.” I grabbed him by the arm. Runaway took the other. We lifted him onto his feet. “How rested are you?”
“Fuck you.”
“Good. I was worried that you might’ve taken a nap.”
“You woke me up when you came in here.”
“Yeah? You’re a side sleeper, aren’t you?”
“What of it?”
“Neither side of your face has been slept on.”
“You found me on my back!”
“Thinking I was right to look into Día all along.”
“No. I was thinking about how grateful I am that Greaser, Smoker, Third-Eye, and me especially, made it through three enemy territories and survived.”
I stared back at him, figuring out which part of his conscience to tug on first. “When you were a kid there was some defining moment which steered your life onto a path that you had never considered before. You could’ve been a doctor. You could’ve been a senator. You have the looks and brains for both and yet you became a mercenary. One thing you and I have in common is that there’s an asshole somewhere in our past who turned us onto this path. If you could go back in time, as you right now, would you confront that person who ruined your life?”
He gritted his teeth, scowled, then remembered that such a look would wrinkle his forehead.
“If you ever have that chance I will come with you. Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, I will come with you, even if you won’t help me now with Día.” I had the bait. Now for the teeth of the trap. “And besides, if you ever leave this life behind, there isn’t a person in the world who wouldn’t melt at hearing the heroic story of how you went up against the most dangerous kidnappers the world has ever seen to rescue a scared little girl … and won.”
He grunted like he was Greaser’s protégé. “God damn it, Raike.”
Agrat had his nose buried in Día’s note again like there was a secret layer of writing that he hadn’t noticed before. His room now smelled of incense and candle wax. The sun was starting to set, casting a salmon-like hue across the clouds. By now all I was thinking about was food, but I’d have to abstain as much as possible. The others as well. The last thing I wanted was for us to rest up and head out in the morning. I needed these guys tired and primed for magic. The problem was we didn’t know what kind of magic we’d need.
“Who here can read?” asked Agrat. Greaser and Lieutenant answered. Agrat wrote two identical notes, one for me, one for Runaway. “In case you want to study the wording some more. Or, if you see these words appear again. Take a close look at the first letter of the second word. Death. It’s the same letter that begins the last word. Decades. It’s also the same first letter as Día’s name. That should help you recognize it quickly. Now, as far as I can tell, it was written by someone who has money but who also uses their hands professionally. They take good care of themselves by lathering lemoned cocoa butter over their skin. I had a look in my books. So far I haven’t seen any mention of it helping with arthritis but people will try anything these days. Maybe this is the newest craze. The writing style is smooth so no sign of joint pain there. Men and women do tend to have a different style of writing. This was written most likely by a man. Right handed as well.”
“You can tell that?” I asked.
“Yep. See the slant in the letters?”
“Lefties can write like that as well,” said Greaser.
“Yeah but they have a greater chance of smudging the letters before it dries. No smudging here. Unfortunately the majority of writers are right handed. Not sure why. It would be easier if the writer here was left inclined but they’re not. I found something in the ink. Not sure what exactly but it has a trace of something sparkly in it. The quality of it is much finer than the stuff I use.”
Lieutenant turned to me. “So, who do we start with first? The rich? Because that won’t end well for us.”
“I say we go for the doctors,” said Greaser. “They deal with life and death every day. Maybe they’re looking to explore a thing or two by killing this girl.”
“Perhaps.” I looked back to Agrat. “Have you ever seen the Eyeless Ghost?”
He shot a half-smile at Greaser. I guess they had started that conversation before the rest of us got there. “No. For most people it’s a myth, albeit one that is as dark as hell.”
“What if it’s true?”
“It probably is. Even more interesting is that it’s the only one of its kind.” That certainly left us staring at each other like we were telling horror stories around a fire. “I’ve seen the head of a dragonkin mounted on a wall, and was once tempted into buying the heart of a bog-nymph. No matter where you go, you will always find another of these things nearby because they have to breed somehow. Except for this. There is only ever one Eyeless Ghost. People have done what they could to track it. They’re able to record where it was and tell someone else but despite how fast it moves it’s only ever in one city at a time.”
“Why is there only one?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the last of its kind. Perhaps it used to be one of us. A man who went too far and became something else.”
Greaser breathed deeply beside me, growling under his breath.
“What does it do?” I asked.
Agrat glanced over Greaser quickly before staring at his row of books. “There are many theories. Personally, I think it opens people up and takes their souls so it can feed itself.”
I wasn’t sure how much of a soul I had left but even so, I wasn’t all that keen on letting this thing get too close to me. “One of the kids said this girl saw the Eyeless Ghost and it told her what was going to happen. How can someone control a spirit like that?”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you,” said Agrat. “But whoever wrote the note was human.”
“Does it leave anything behind? A smell? Claw marks?”
“Not that I know of, but it likes to make an entrance.”
No kidding. Unfortunately all this talk about a ghost had given me an idea; whoever took her had already revealed themselves with the note. Maybe they would reveal themselves again if given the right kind of encouragement. For now though, I would have to leave that as a worst-case scenario option. I couldn’t risk losing the fellas before we’d even left the compound.
We headed outside, remaining silent as we considered our next move.
“There’s more than one person doing this,” said Runaway.
Greaser agreed. “We’re talking some pretty dark magic here. Shit that might not even be possible.”
“Everyone has a different way of charging,” said Runaway.
“Yeah, but it’s really all the same thing. You exhaust yourself, you focus on what you want and the word you’ll use, and that’s it. How you exhaust yourself is where the money is. But taking a kid and sacrificing them or using them as a focus and then killing them … if that was to happen in the army I would’ve heard about it.”
“Either someone’s learned how to do it or they’re trying to learn right now,” I said.
“Maybe they’re not human,” said Runaway. “You hear of vampires every now and then. Werewolves, ghouls, and people who come back from the dead years after they were buried. Makes sense if they have access to different kinds of magic than us.”
Greaser cleared the air in front of him with a single stroke of his hand. “I ain’t fucking around with vampires. If we’re up against even one of them then I’m out.”
“This isn’t a vampire,” I said. “Picking out a random kid in an orphanage doesn’t fit.”
“We’re not that far away from their territory,” said Greaser. “Maybe one of them was exiled, stayed hidden as they came this way. Either way …”
“Either way,” I said, bringing Greaser back on target, “vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and the like, go back to where they lived. If someone’s turned Día into a vampire, she’d want to go back to the orphanage or to where she grew up. Werewolves as well. It’s their place of safety until they realize it isn’t all that safe anymore.”
“She might be turning into one of them right now,” said Greaser. “She saw the ghost at night and was taken just after dusk.”
Lieutenant shook his head at Greaser. “If this is because of vampires then the other kids who were taken would’ve come back as vampires. They didn’t. They simply disappeared off the face of the earth.”
Greaser sighed with defeat. “We’re going to need to gear up.”
Runaway turned to me. “What’s the plan?”
Chapter Eleven
We got to the orphanage just before dusk, a whole day after Día went missing. Runaway kept his shoulders hunched over the moment we left the company’s territory. Lieutenant and Greaser were a little more relaxed, given that we stuck to the same kind of route as this morning but that didn’t stop them from peering around every corner looking for the tell-tale signs of first the Peace Keepers then Vanguard. We ended up taking a more scenic route through the crooked narrow streets rather than the open boulevards and plazas. The plazas in particular were a common problem where our kind liked to keep watch of the goings on. Now that the sun was on its way down the merchants were wrapping up their blankets and wares for the day, the kids had retreated back home, and those who earned their keep through tricks and revelry under the eye of the moon started to come out.
After a steep rise through a narrow road, we came to the orphanage. Lamps and candles started to illuminate the buildings around us but such luxuries were scarce in my former home.
“It looks like one too,” muttered Runaway. He kept glancing over his shoulder, searching for spies ready to report our presence.
Greaser asked: “Do you really think Vanguard have people keeping an eye on an orphanage?”
“You three were here today. Maybe they figured you were coming back.”
“No one comes back,” I said. I started pointing out the relevant landmarks: which room belonged to Día, where we found her friend Kel, and where the Eyeless Ghost first appeared.
Greaser tapped me on the shoulder, nodding to my old bedroom. The leg of one boy was swinging out from the window. Then came the rest of him, legs dangling in the air, resting his hips on the windowsill. He held a rolled-up mat in one hand. He tucked it into his arm pit and shimmied from one window to the next, trying to get to the shortest drop he could. Greaser and I followed him. The kid landed, turned, and stopped dead at the sight of us.
I half hoped it was Kel, but no. This one had a bigger build, overly large features and a jaw like a brick. He also had that dopey look about him, the sort you get when you’ve only just woken up, yet this was the height of his capabilities for the rest of the day. The bruise along the side of his face probably had something to do with him climbing out the window with everything he owned.
“You’re Caen,” I said.
His eyes widened in terror.
“You work in the dye house, don’t you?”
He reeled back like I was the reaper coming for his soul. “How …?”
“Your hands. And you have that smell. You’ve stomped around in a lot of old piss, haven’t you?” He gulped, desperately reconsidering his decision to leave the orphanage at that time. As he turned I got a better look at the side of his face. “Who punched you?”
He pulled away, checking over his shoulder as though he was about to make a break for it.
I clamped my hand down on his shoulder. “No you don’t. You’re going to stay right here until you tell me all there is to know about Día.”
He didn’t wait around long enough to find out what I had to ask. Instead he bolted, breaking my grip, darted around the corner, and ran for his life. Greaser glared at me.
I glared back. “You scared him away.”
Lie
utenant strolled forward, slowly clapping his hands. “You have some good ideas, Raike, but you know shit about kids. Adults stay put. Kids run. Did you not think that a kid in the middle of running away from home might keep running if stopped by someone looking like you?”
“Fine. If you have such a good rapport with them, you can head inside and ask if anyone has heard anything else. Start with Kel. Maybe even ask him what he was doing at the dye house when he works at a mill.” I turned to Runaway. “You have some experience with kids seeing the Eyeless Ghost and probably with sestas not believing them. Go rattle them.”
“You two are going to wait out here?”
“No. Greaser and I are going to question the kid who just ran away.”
Greaser looked my way. “How? He just ran off.”
“He’s heading for the dye house to beg Mister Prig to let him live there.”
“You’re sure?”
“If you’re twelve and under, you runaway back home to see if a neighbor will take you in. Any older, and you suck up to the boss any way you can to let them keep you on full time.” Runaway nodded with me. I turned back to Lieutenant. “We’ll meet up where Día was taken.”
After a near-silent stroll through my old neighborhood, this time with Greaser by my side instead of Lieutenant, we came to the dye house. I pushed on past the point of no return, into the cloud of absolute foulness which had made me throw up as a kid. The pungent smell alone now gripped my insides. Thankfully, the Captain’s orders to not feed me anything meant that I had little to regurgitate.
Caen was waist-deep in a barrel, stomping around. He was the only person in sight.
There’s a strange thing about safety. The abused return to their abusers because the unknown is more terrifying, and people stay in the jobs they have because it’s better to share a collective misery than to be miserable trying something new. I mean, the Governor’s Hand charges protection for a fifth of the city. We’re outnumbered by more than a hundred to one, yet the people in our territory protect us from the city watch even when they hand over their money. Why? Because it’s easier living with a devil you know than one you don’t. Which is exactly why I wasn’t surprised to see Caen at the dye house. He may have hated working there, but it was better to stomp around in someone else’s piss for a living than be a beggar on the street. Greaser and I weren’t subtle as we approached. Caen turned. Stomp stomp … stomp … stomp …
