by Dale Lucas
“And why are we doing that?” Rem asked, trailing after him. He didn’t need to ask whether the dwarf was capable of reading them himself or not; he clearly wasn’t.
“Looking for suspects,” Torval answered without even turning back. “There’s a good chance that whoever offed Freygaf is someone that he and I have dealt with on the streets before. Thought a perusal of the records might jog my memory a bit.”
They set up at an unused desk in a quiet corner of the room, lit a number of lamps and candles to provide good light, then dove in. Rem’s eyes nearly crossed when he studied the first scroll he unrolled—the crabbed script, the lines upon lines of simple entries, the many columns illuminating the nature of each arrest, its date, its particulars, and the like. Rem’s momentary, slack-jawed disbelief and squinty perusal of the records made Torval impatient.
“What’s the problem?” the dwarf snarled. “I thought you said you could read?”
“I can,” Rem said. “I’m just trying to orient myself. There’s a lot going on here.”
“Well, hurry up,” Torval said, shifting on his chair. “We’ve got a lot to go through and I don’t want to spend all night doing it.”
Rem looked at the dwarf. He could tell now that the little fellow wasn’t upset with him—he was simply impatient, and still a little angry over his partner’s ignominious end. More than anything, he looked worried and preoccupied. Rem wanted to broach the subject of Indilen with Torval, to discuss the strange lie that he’d caught Cupp in at the Pickled Albatross—but he could see that this moment was the wrong one. He licked his lips, studied the pages before him.
“Do you have any solid ideas?” Rem asked quietly. “Someone the two of you brought in? Or an accomplice?”
“None,” Torval said. “So, let’s get started.”
“All right, then,” Rem said, and dove into the scrolls.
It took close to three hours to comb through the arrest records, neatly arrayed in chronological rows upon the scrolls like monetary entries in a ledger. Torval sat beside Rem and stared off into the middle distance, listening with a frowning, implacable face, occasionally telling Rem to make a note of one of the arrestees before urging him to carry on with this peculiar trip down memory lane. Finally, when they’d made it back seven or eight months, Torval bade Rem stop reading from the scrolls and reread the list of suspects they’d compiled.
Rem did as he was told, mumbling the names and their attendant crimes: Grummon, trading in stolen goods; Larga, illegal blood sport; Valek, burglary; Haerken, pickpocketing and purse-snatching; Eldred, illegal trade in narcotics; Nerva, prostitution and theft. Once more, Torval revealed little of what he thought. His mouth remained in that unmoving frown; his eyes kept staring off into the distance. Rem waited silently for a definitive response.
He waited for quite some time. He got none.
“Well?” he prodded. “What now? Do we go roust them out?”
“Three names on that list have one thing in common,” Torval said, almost to himself.
“And what’s that?” Rem asked.
Torval finally looked at him, a frown on his face. “They all pay tribute to the same guild master.” With that pronouncement, Torval leapt onto his feet and swaggered across the administrative chamber toward the door.
Annoyed, Rem stood as well. “Where are we going? Do I return these to Eriadus?”
“Leave them,” Torval called back over his swinging shoulder. “Eriadus will take them back or we can return them later. We’ve got places to go now.”
Rem hurried after the dwarf, only catching up to him on the far side of the room, nearer the entrance. Already there was the nightly flock of petitioners in the vestibule outside, awaiting audience with watchwardens or Ondego himself. Torval bypassed the vestibule and crowds of citizens and made for a side entrance that allowed easy exit.
“Do you have your stick?” Torval asked.
Rem checked his belt. “No, I seem to have forgotten it, seeing as you’re in such a blasted hurry—”
“Well, go get it,” Torval growled. “You’ll need it.”
Rem doubled back to the armory, snatched up one of the many nightsticks lying around there, then hightailed it into the street. Torval was waiting in the square outside, maul in hand, smoldering and impatient. He didn’t say a word when Rem approached. He simply started off again, leading them out of the square and deeper into the Fifth Ward.
“Do you mind telling me where we’re headed?” Rem asked.
“While there are all sorts of criminal lordlings in this city, great and petty,” Torval answered, “there are five primaries, each controlling a different ward. We arrest them when we can, but generally, we look to them to keep some semblance of order among the pickpockets, mollies, and gambling hounds that pay them tribute. Most of the time, we manage an uneasy peace of sorts—but every now and again, when we’ve pinched their earners once too often or these thief lordlings feel unduly targeted, they might try to retaliate.”
“So you and Freygaf, you rousted this fellow you’re speaking of, or people who worked for him, once too often?”
Torval nodded grimly. “He’s a proud sort. Takes wardwatch interference in his affairs as a personal slight. We’ve always maintained an uneasy peace with him, but it’s not beyond the bastard to suddenly decide a lesson needed to be taught.”
“Wait a minute,” Rem said, suddenly realizing that Torval was probably leading him into a very dangerous situation. “Is this stick really all I get to protect myself? Or do I need something else? Something a bit more … persuasive?”
“No,” Torval spat. “If you walk into this place armed, you’ll be dead before you take three steps or get your sword from its sheath.”
“But you’ve got your maul.”
“They know me,” Torval said.
That didn’t fill Rem with any confidence. Where the hell were they off to?
Torval led them deep into the labyrinthine streets of the Fifth Ward, closer and closer to the waterfront. Finally, after taking so many corners that Rem thought they were walking in circles, they came at last to a boisterous tavern bleeding acrid poppy smoke and the sounds of rumbling revelry into the night. Beyond a dooryard arrayed with modest gardens, a pair of burly bouncers flanked a single narrow door under the dusky light of a tarnished old tin lamp. As Torval approached, both sentinels drew upright, their shoulders squaring, their faces growing dark with belligerence.
Torval was barely half the size of either, but he stared them down nonetheless. “I’m here for a chat with your boss,” he said. “Stand aside.”
“You’re not on the list,” one bouncer said. He was a thick-necked Hasturman, with greasy hair the color of fresh-churned mud.
“Turn around and march your stunted little arse back to ward headquarters,” the other urged. He was thinner but still muscular: a swordsman perhaps, muscles corded, eyes aloof.
Torval sighed, looking deferential. For a moment, Rem thought the dwarf might just turn around and go back the way they’d come. Then Torval struck.
Using his bald head as a battering ram, Torval drove his body into the belly of the whipcord bouncer on his left. The strike stole the man’s breath and doubled him over. Before his fellow could leap to his aid and yank Torval aside, the dwarf had seized the thick-necked bouncer’s scrotum through his filthy breeks and squeezed. The Hasturman dropped to his knees, howling in agony. When he was down, Torval hit him with a powerful uppercut and sent him reeling. By that time, the slender bouncer was recovering from being head-rammed in the belly, but he was still too slow. Torval grabbed his tunic and head-butted the thin-but-muscular bouncer so soundly that the man’s nose exploded with a sickening crack, cartilage crumpling and blood squirting out of either nostril. Down he went in a heap atop his companion.
Torval still had his maul in hand, but he had never employed it. A broad splash of blood from the bouncer’s exploded nose lay on Torval’s forehead. Rivulets of the red stuff cut tracks down h
is broad, flat face.
The entrance to the house of ill repute lay open and unguarded before them.
Rem stared at the bloody-faced Torval. Torval just cocked his head toward the door. “What are you waiting for?” he said, and pushed through. Rem followed.
CHAPTER TEN
It was, indeed, a den of iniquity, but quite a stylish one. There were Estavari tapestries depicting jousts, hunts, and grand old battles long forgotten, finely carved imperial tables and plush, comfortable chairs, even little storybook lamps from the Far East—Shimzari, if Rem was not mistaken—gracing all the tables and pillars. The lamps, along with numerous banks of half-melted burning candles and tapers, filled the common room with a smoky, golden glow that struck Rem as rather warm and welcoming.
Games of all sorts unfolded around them—card games like Burning Bridges or Turnslip, dice games like Roll-the-Bones or Swallowtail, even parlor games like Trinary and Malice. The more reckless guests were engaged in other contests, some involving venomous snakes or scorpions, others based on strength or skill with a blade. Every game played was played for money, and almost every contest attracted watchers, who placed their own bets on the one who might walk away from the table victorious. Rem was taken aback instantly by the openness and variety of vice on display. There were beautiful youths—female and male, scantily clad, well-oiled, and, no doubt, perfumed—serving drinks and attending the customers, while prostitutes of equally diverse stripe moved ghostlike between the tables, casting coy glances and tempting laughter toward their would-be marks, expertly manipulating any and all who caught their eye toward a conversation, a few drinks, then promises of sweet favors for solid coin. There were hard-faced, hard-lived men with beautiful young maids in their laps, and, perhaps more surprising, equally hard-faced, hard-lived women with young men on leashes. If one could imagine a pleasure or an indulgence that could be undertaken for sport or profit, it was here, out in the open, on vivid display. Even the most notorious of grogshops in his homeland would not hold a candle to the blithe decadence and cheerful lechery unfolding before him.
Rem felt a slight twinge of jealousy. Though such a hive of villainy would, more likely than not, never be his chosen outlet for an evening’s entertainment, part of him yet admired and even envied the people he saw before him. Their openness. Their complete disregard for social conventions or the expectations of polite society. He secretly hoped that someday he too could learn to care so little about what other people thought, what others expected of them.
A cursory glance around the room revealed that they were being watched by house security. Furtive sellswords and bravos with scars and oiled beards and blades at their belts were stationed all around the common room as plainclothes security. They all eyed Rem and Torval with a strange sort of incredulity. No doubt, they saw the blood sprayed across Torval’s face from his head-to-head collision with the bouncer outside, and they knew that something was amiss.
Their suspicions were verified moments later when Torval the dwarf gave a loud, bellowing battle cry, leapt toward the nearest gaming table, and brought his maul crashing down on the jug of wine in its center. Wine splashed everywhere and ceramic shards went flying. Torval followed that by upending the entire table. The players gathered around it scattered in a flurry of oaths and curses. The table flipped sideward, spilling ale steins, coin, and dice. Some of the girls screamed. The little band playing in a back alcove—a piper, a harpist, and a fellow with a squeeze-box—fell silent.
Torval turned to Rem and eyed the nightstick at his side. “Time to use that,” Torval said.
Before Rem could ask what Torval meant, a pair of bravos charged them. Torval shoved the first aside—right into Rem’s path—and lit into the second with his maul. Rem, suddenly face-to-face with what looked like a swarthy Sartoshi pirate with a lazy eye and a glittering short sword in his hand, raised his nightstick like a fencing blade and prepared himself for a match.
Torval’s act of belligerence set off a chain reaction. Cardplayers leaping clear of the upturned table collided with the tables around them. The players at those tables took umbrage and demanded satisfaction. Blades slithered from scabbards. Fists flew. Brawlers fell to fighting and cowards ran for cover. In moments, the common room was in chaos.
Rem had no time to curse his rotten luck or try to talk his way out of the situation. The bravo immediately set about sticking him with his sharp little poniard, and Rem was forced to defend himself with only his nightstick. Thrusting and slashing with a blunt piece of wood was not so useful, but he acquitted himself well enough, parrying most of his piratical opponent’s blows and never once feeling the sting of the blade. After some dancing back and forth, Rem finally managed to force his opponent into a knot of brawling gamblers. When the Sartoshi pirate slammed into a pair of wrestling Blighters, the Blighters joined forces and attacked the pirate. Rem thought his escape was made.
But before he could flee, Rem found his path blocked by a burly Kosterman with long, flaxen braids and only half the teeth he was born with. The Kosterman wielded a great, knotty club—most likely fashioned from a limb off a gnarly old oak. Rem set himself on guard with his nightstick. The Kosterman attacked. The brawl continued around them as they sparred.
From time to time Rem managed to catch sight of Torval, four feet of hellfire toppling men twice his size, upending tables, cracking skulls and shattering bones with his maul, even employing stray bric-a-brac—ale steins, pewter plates, footstools—as improvised weaponry. The dwarf’s gnashed teeth seemed to form a grin, but Rem could not be sure. Perhaps that was just Torval’s war face?
In either case, the truth was clear: Torval was in his element.
“I want the Creeper!” Torval shouted. “Where’s the gods-damned Creeper!”
He was a miniature bull stomping through a field of adversaries and making each pay dearly for whatever blows they landed, whatever insults they dared. Were he not so busy defending himself, Rem would have been eager to stop and bear witness to the swath of destruction that Torval left in his wake, far more impressive than his stunted stature suggested possible.
And then, just as suddenly as the brawl began, it stopped. Someone on a high platform blew into a hunting horn. The long, bellowing thunder of the horn drew everyone’s attention—a collective pail of cold water on the proceedings—and all eyes were drawn toward the deep and droning sound. When the horn’s sounding ended, Rem followed all the eyes in the room toward a balcony at the far end, where stood a thin pale man with dark, fiery eyes and lank, oily black hair. He looked like an underfed pickpocket—a shifty-eyed, thieving sort whose longevity was the result of nothing more than skill, luck, and ruthlessness.
“Torval,” the fellow on the balcony called down. “What the bloody hell are you doing to my gaming room?”
Torval leveled his finger at the fellow on the balcony. “Was it you, Creeper?”
The fellow on the balcony—Creeper—said nothing for a long while. “This is about Freygaf, isn’t it?”
“Yes or no!” Torval demanded. “Was it you?”
“It was not,” Creeper said. “Now get up here and let’s talk over cups like civilized men.”
Torval’s face, a blood-spattered mask of fury, didn’t suggest that he was interested in civilized discourse. Rem not only saw the fury in it, but also the sadness. All of these bruised and blinkered patrons had paid a price this eve for Torval’s grief. In that moment, Rem felt profoundly helpless. He wished there was something he could do or say to assuage Torval’s loss.
But there was nothing. He could only follow when the dwarf broke off from the Hasturi bruiser he’d been brawling with and picked a careful path across the ruined space toward the stairs that led up to the Creeper’s loft.
For the private den of a gambling baron, the loft struck Rem as surprisingly cozy and welcoming. There were plush Maradi carpets, sofas and divans draped with colorful linens and silks, a number of impressive mosaics in the old imperial style mounted on t
he walls, and a number of candles and brass lamps about, filling the homey space with a warm, golden light. Creeper himself, slight, bony creature that he was, seemed out of place in such plush environs—but his comfort level was apparent as he sauntered across the room, rounded a large mahogany desk, and bent to pet something lingering behind it. Rem had to crane his neck to see clearly what strange pet the Creeper was greeting.
It was a black panther on a bronze chain. The beast purred and swished its long, dark tail. Rem saw the glint of white, sharp teeth behind its black lips.
Torval seemed unimpressed. His baleful stare and squared shoulders suggested that he was a man on a mission, indifferent to both dangers and pleasantries. He stood in the very center of the room, allowing Creeper to greet his pet and dispense with well-mannered greetings and obsequies.
The Creeper didn’t strike Rem as particularly friendly, but neither was he unnecessarily combative or unwelcoming. He came across, rather, as a dedicated businessman whose interactions with others, even when cold and calculated, were always calm and cordial.
“Ale or brandy?” he asked. Whole casks were on hand, along with a number of cups and glasses. Clearly, the robber baron was used to entertaining in his private sanctum.
“Neither,” Torval said. “This is business, not personal.”
“And I never conduct business,” Creeper countered, “without a drink in hand. It’s uncivilized. If you’re worried about me poisoning you, you needn’t be. I could’ve had my guards and patrons tear you to pieces out in the gamesroom if I’d wanted.”
Rem bit his tongue. He was desperate for a drink about now, to take the edge off, but he’d let Torval run this his way, and show no signs of eagerness.
“Fine,” Torval said. “Ale. What’ll it be for you, lad?”
“Brandy,” Rem said.
Creeper tapped the appropriate casks. Torval got a mug of frothy brown ale and Rem was handed a glass of brandy. A taste told him it was made from apples, not grapes, and he resisted the urge to compliment their host on the quality of his liquor. No need to embarrass Torval by making the Creeper feel too superior.
