by Adam Golden
The prisoner had been raving for hours, alternating between pleading in the most pathetic ways and threatening the most terrible kinds of vengeance. After hours, he finally quieted, but he stirred when he heard steps in the dark. There was no torch. Who would come without a light?
“Who’s that?” Fouettard demanded, wincing as something sloshed at his feet. “Who’s there?” his voice screeched, the demand in his tone weakened by more than a bit of pleading.
“I have come to hear your confession,” a voice said from the dark. “To unburden your soul.” The voice of the unseen presence was low, eerie in its calm, and close. Something about it made the butcher shudder.
“I’m innocent! Please, Father, if priest you are, I did not kill those children! I swear I didn’t,” Fouettard cried, almost blubbering.
“It is true, you didn’t kill these,” the voice confirmed simply, and Fouettard’s heart leapt, “but innocent? I think not.” The voice paused and the silence was heavy with menace and knowledge.
Fouettard was still as granite. Whoever this was, he knew. How? Catarine? Had that vicious bitch turned on him in order to save herself?
As though reading his thoughts, the butcher’s unseen tormentor laughed, there was no mirth in it, more a clipped bark of disgust than anything.
“How many have you and your wife taken that were never found?” the voice asked. “How many have stocked your brine barrel Pair? Do you even know?”
Of course he knew, he knew exactly, but he wouldn’t tell whomever this was. He opened his mouth to tell the cruel bastard so, when something clanged hard into the bars he was pressed against. Fouettard leapt back with a shrieked cry, slipped on the slime that coated the ground, and landed with a disgustingly thick sounding splash.
“These may not have been yours,” the voice told him when all was quiet again, “but your butcher’s bill is hefty, and it has come due.”
Fouettard was still alternating between sobbing like a scared child and ranting like a madman long after Nicholas had slipped from the armory and returned to his waiting coach. As Tulio made the trip back to the villa, Nicholas allowed himself a small pleased smile and a drink from the crystal wine decanter the carriage always held. Much of what he was called to do weighed heavily on him, but this night he felt light. There was still some justice to be found, even in the darkest of deeds.
Bourne Up By Low Secrets
Arius’ breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps. Sweat soaked his tunic and rolled off his brow in sheets, stinging his eyes. The muscles of his legs screamed in agony and started to cramp.
‘A little further, just a little further!’ Even the voice inside his own head seemed to be panting. If he faltered now he’d never get free. ‘And if I fall, how will I ever rise?’ he wondered with a shiver. With those twin dreads burning bright at the core of his thoughts, he squared his shoulders and dragged every shred of capability from his exhausted frame.
Arius rounded the walls of the abbey for the twentieth time and came up short as he came face to face with the grim displeasure of Brother Feris.
“Father Arius!” the usually jovial monk exclaimed. “Not dead yet? Shocking, given how hard you’re working at it. I thought to check the ditches for your corpse, since a Christian burial seems to be the only service we can offer you here that won’t be utterly wasted.”
“Why, thank you brother, I’m feeling quite well,” the old priest said with a smile, or rather he slurred it around the drooping wreckage of what had once been his smile. His speech was slowly becoming passable again, but working the muscles in his ruined face got harder when he was tired.
“Are you indeed?” asked Feris, who’d gotten quite good at deciphering the slurred jumble that often passed for speech. “You look like you’re about to keel over from here. Brother Thomas says you left the gate just after vespers, that was six hours ago. Have you been walking all that time?”
The afflicted priest wished that were the case, the fact was he could barely manage a quarter of the circumference of the abbey walls without a protracted rest. He’d likely spent half of that time sitting, gulping air, and trying to still his thudding heart before it burst his ribs.
“At the risk of repeating myself, Father, you have suffered serious injuries. Your body and soul require rest and care,” the earnest monk said for what must have been the hundredth time in the week since Arius had been well enough to drag himself off his cot. The brother’s anger melted, replaced by genuine concern that sparked a prick of guilt in the injured priest. “You cannot ignore these things Arius, they will kill you.”
The bullish look on Arius’ face slowly drifted away, he sagged under the weight of his exhaustion, and grudgingly he gave his caregiver a sullen nod. He knew the man’s intentions were good, and he wasn’t wrong, but he also didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. The old priest had to push himself. He had to recover his strength, and he had to do it quickly. He’d finally found his man, Nicholas was here, and every day he went unpunished was an affront to his victims. An affront to Chara. Arius could not have that, so he worked his battered body, lifting buckets, shuffling up and down stairs, forcing the numb and once nearly dead muscles of his right arm and hand to flex and move, and working the drooping mush that was his face, endlessly mouthing words and sounds in an attempt to recover what had been lost. It was painful, frustrating, and slow, but it was working. Less than a fortnight before he’d been a dumb, bedridden cripple.
Now you’re a slurring, shuffling cripple instead. Enemies beware! the most vicious and sarcastic of his inner voices piped up before Arius crushed it mercilessly. What Feris would never understand was that he had no choice in any of it. If he didn’t work toward this goal, his body might as well adorn the abbey’s ditch. Giving in would kill him as surely as over-exertion would.
“Come then,” Brother Feris said, “let me help you, we’ll get you inside and find you something to eat.”
Arius’ hollow stomach rumbled at the mention of food, and he nodded mutely.
Brother Feris slipped under his arm and took up his weight.
Arius stiffened and, as it always did when the weakness slipped in, the memory of his enemy’s knowing eyes and arrogant smirk floated to the front of his mind. He’d see that smirk melted away, he’d watch the light in those eyes bleed. He would!
As Feris helped to turn him toward the abbey gates, bells started to sound in the town below. Feris slowly turned back to look and Arius summoned what strength he had left to form his next words as precisely as possible.
“What is that?” he asked, the words tumbling from his drooping lips with minimal mangling. “Why the bells?”
“Likely announcing that the Governor is arriving in town,” Feris said, scanning the horizon, and then he pointed at a rising dust cloud on the road, still miles distant. “There, see? We had word of his approach yesterday. The trial is set to begin in the next couple of days.”
Arius gazed at the other man expectantly. Waiting for an explanation.
“Do you mean you haven’t heard?” Feris asked, the surprise clear in his tone. “My, but you’re a single-minded creature, aren’t you? The abbey has been abuzz with the news for a week.”
Abuzz in the abbey likely meant a single overloud whisper at dinner, Arius thought, but he kept his peace and Feris continued.
“There was a pair of murders in town, almost two weeks ago now. Two children found mutilated and decapitated on the road. A witness saw the killer, all swathed in a red cloak and fleeing.” The words banged in Arius’ head like the clanging of the bells below.
Murder . . .
Children . . .
Red cloak . . .
He’d struck again, Arius had failed to kill him and Nicholas had taken more innocent lives. The grief and shame surged, but another of the words Feris had used slammed into his consciousness, holding the flood of emotion at bay.
Trial.
“They caught him?” the afflicted priest asked, his voice more
urgent than he meant it to be.
Feris noticed and gave him a strange look. “Aye, so they did,” he said after a moment, and a searching gaze. “There was a great search of the area, and they found him hiding a bloody cloak and the very murder weapon from what I hear. Terrible to think that such a creature could have been among us for so long. Smiled at us, laughed with us, and now this.”
“Nicholas . . .” Arius’ mind was racing so quickly that he didn’t even hear himself speak the name out loud. They’d found him out, captured him, and now he was going to be publicly shown for the monster he was! It was more than Arius could have dreamed of.
“It was the mayor who instigated the search, of course,” Feris said, misunderstanding Arius’ use of the name, “but I did hear it was the Bishop who found the witness, and it was His Excellency who had the monster put in the deep cell.”
The words didn’t penetrate at first, and when they did Arius fell from the other man’s grip and slumped into a boneless seated position. Nicholas had duped them all, framed someone else for his crimes, and found a way to have himself celebrated for it no less. Of course.
He’d spent hours, days thinking about why he hadn’t been killed. Why hadn’t the murderous demon slain him there in his villa? Was there some perverse code to the man? Some polluted morality, or was it some kind of game? The Bishop knew Arius’ motives. He’d been wearing Chara’s knife. Was that a message, or a threat? He’d worked and reworked the puzzle endlessly. Now he knew why. He still lived because he was no threat. This monster had been twisting the world to his will for decades, not only eluding discovery, but completely sidestepping any suspicion and building the devotion of all who encountered him. How could such a creature be brought down?
He was vaguely aware that Feris was speaking, but he couldn’t bring himself to focus on the man. He just sat, staring down at the town. Nicholas’ town, his playground since childhood. His own little kingdom. What secrets that place must have.
Secrets.
Every town and city was awash in secrets. Arius had spent his life navigating the murky rivers of other people’s hidden crimes, taboo passions, and outlawed beliefs. If he knew anything, he knew that there was always that element of society who fed off such things, collected them, traded them. Secrets, a currency more valuable than gold and a weapon more powerful than steel. Someone down there knew the things no one spoke of.
Feris reached down to shake Arius’ shoulder and the old priest’s good left hand clamped down on his wrist, using it to pull himself up. Once he’d regained his feet, the priest graced the monk with a cringeworthy grin.
“Come along, Brother, we need to be going if we’ll make the town before evening,” Arius said briskly as he turned toward the abbey gates.
“Town?” Feris asked, the chagrin and disbelief thick in his voice. “You’re in no shape for that, why would you want to go to Myra?”
“Of course I’m in no shape, you made your case well,” Arius exclaimed, still wearing that grotesquely melted species of smile. “Which is why I’ll need your help to reach the Governor. Now, are you coming or not?” that last was delivered over his shoulder as Arius stumped inside to collect his scrip and staff.
After a moment, Feris followed, stupefied and shaking his head.
—
Myra’s East Quarter was a tangle of narrow twisting streets cut between clusters of shabby, close built wooden structures. Far from the sprawling white stone villas and wide spotless causeways of their betters, the Quarter was a district of laborers and servants, of minor merchants and less than prosperous craftsmen. They were the poor, simple people who were mostly concerned with where their next meal would come from and how they could go on caring for their families.
As was true in cities all over creation, though, the poorest districts always seemed to breed dens of the unsavory and dangerous. In Myra, that infestation was called Foreigner’s Run. The single dark street in the core of the Quarter was a den of vagrants, thieves, gangsters, cut throats, and unscrupulous whores. The place was a putrid cancer in the heart of the city, where an unwary man was likely to find himself clubbed down and robbed or stabbed and left to rot in some filthy black alley. It was the perfect place to find what he needed.
Arius’ meeting with the governor could not have gone better for his purposes. It turned out that the region’s highest magistrate was also a famous legal advocate. Within an hour, Arius had the man convinced that even a murderer as deplorable as this Fouettard person deserved a proper defense, that he himself was the man for the task, and that time must be given to collect evidence and interview witnesses. He’d been given four days, he hoped not to need that long.
The priest dusted his hands as his latest victim slumped bonelessly against the grimy wall of the dark alley Arius had lured him down. The old man hadn’t had much to smile about recently, but the stunned look in their eyes before his hard swung staff connected with each jaw had given him some amount of pleasure. As a priest, he supposed he should feel contrite, but each of them had been intent on robbery and murder when they followed him into the alley. Surely the Lord would understand.
Honor among criminals, and even fear of reprisal, gave way to a different fear when a man woke to a knife at their throat and Arius’ newly gruesome visage glared down at them. It didn’t take long to learn enough to know that his new client wasn’t the sort of man he needed to concern himself with saving, which was of comfort since his aims had nothing at all to do with Fouettard.
This last footpad had been the most helpful. He was little more than a boy. Arius hadn’t even needed the customary few jabs at his adam’s apple with something pointy to get him talking.
“The butcher’s a right bastard, and mean with it,” the boy said. “More than a few street kids have disappeared into that shop. I know, still he weren’t the one. Mama Ceres say there was witch work done that night. Right powerful. She’s never wrong, is Mama Ceres.”
“Witch work?” Arius asked.
“Magic,” the boy whispered conspiratorially. “The bloody kind. Mama Ceres says it’s dark as hell. Don’t work it herself, but she knows, knows all about that stuff . . . all sorts of secrets.” Once he’d said all he had to say, a sharp blow from Arius’ staff put him back under, and the tired broken priest stumped out of the alley.
—
The hut was a thing of sticks, mud, and thatch, hung with heathen totems and animal bones. Arius had seen such places all over the Empire. Wise women, midwives, fortune tellers, charlatans, frauds, and heretics all. Or so he’d always believed, but the more he thought about how suddenly his affliction had struck, the more he considered the books that had been taken from Chara’s shop, the more he began to wonder. Could it be that Nicholas was more than a simple murderer?
The woman who called herself Mama Ceres was hardly the crone the old priest expected. Half his age, if that, Mama Ceres was a healthy, well dressed, almost nondescript young woman who did her best to hide a startled gasp when Arius’ melted visage burst into her home.
“Greetings Father,” she said with surprising self-possession “You’ve come about the butcher, Fouettard.”
The boy must have awakened more quickly than he’d hoped, and he was fast. Arius shrugged mentally. He supposed it didn’t matter. “In part, I suppose,” he told the witch as he groaned himself into the hut’s single chair. “Though in truth, I’d rather you tell me about Nicholas.”
The look of bloodless shock and horror that painted the heathen woman’s face warmed the priest like the morning sun. He’d found his secret keeper! The witch’s eyes darted to the door, and Arius’ heavy knife slammed into the tabletop, sending rune stones and candles and dried herbs tumbling to the floor.
“You and I have much to discuss, my dear.”
Old Ghosts Birth New Horrors
“Why come to me?” Mama Ceres asked, squaring herself up proudly. Arius’ knife hadn’t yet stopped quivering where it stuck up from the scarred wood of the tabletop
, but already any trace of fear in her was gone, as if it had never been.
“Secrets,” the old priest told her. “This place is steeped in them. You wear them about you like a perfume. Mama Ceres, seer, mystic, witch. They say you know a man’s heart. You’re going to tell me Nicholas’ secrets, and how to kill him.”
While he was speaking, the woman stood, fists on hips, glaring as she took stock of the broken crocks, spilled herbs, and upset implements littering the floor around her work table. She tutted like a farmwife who’d found muddy prints on her freshly cleaned floor, hitched up her skirts, and squatted to right the mess, shooting her captor such a look of reproach that Arius actually fought the urge to readjust himself in his chair.
“I have absolutely no wish to harm you,” he ventured, forming the words carefully and displeased with the plaintive sound of his tone. “But I must know what you can tell me. I will know.” That sounded better, there was the conviction.
“I can tell you many things,” the witch said, the words coming out with a crisp snap as though she were hurling them like weapons. “I could tell you how dear pure beeswax candles are,” she said, brushing grit from the fine white wax before setting it back on the table.
“I didn’t come to hear about your candles,” Arius told her, leaning forward, hoping his gruesome visage would do the work of unsettling the woman. If it did so she gave little sign.
