The Fifth Ward--First Watch

by Dale Lucas

  “Such a thought had occurred to me since my arrival,” Rem said.

  Masarda turned his ageless gaze upon Rem. “And where did you arrive from, good watchman?”

  “Up north,” Rem said. “Hasturland. The low country.”

  “Ah, the Hasturi low country,” Masarda said. “Pastures and orchards and green rolling hills. What on earth brought you here, to this most oppressive and wanton of cities?”

  Rem shrugged. He kept the elf’s gaze locked with his own. “Just looking for a change of scenery, sir. I would imagine you know something of what I speak.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t,” Mykaas Masarda replied, his smile remaining but his eyes and voice gone cold. “I was taken from my folk and their forest home when I was but a child. By the time I could return there of my own accord … well, shall we say there was nothing for me to return to. It was only Yenara and her penchant for … we’ll call it reinvention, that allowed me to once more find a suitable and welcoming habitat suited to my talents and moods. It was my home before I ever arrived, you might say, just waiting to welcome me.”

  For that one instant, Rem understood the elf perfectly. He, too, had known that curious feeling—the surprising realization that Yenara—new, alien, overwhelming, threatening—was, in fact, the home he had always yearned to return to, the place of belonging that his own homeland had never been.

  “I’m sure this good dwarf knows of what you speak,” Kethren Dall interjected. “Yenara can’t be much like the Ironwall Mountains, or wherever it is you hail from, eh?”

  Torval looked weary with all the obsequies and banter. Clearly, mixing and mingling was not his strong suit. “No, indeed,” he said. “Though I’d had my fill of mountains and mines by the time I came to Yenara, it most certainly was not what I was used to.”

  “There, you see?” Dall offered. “You gentlemen have something in common!”

  Mykaas Masarda offered a forced smile and stared for a very long time at Rem and Torval. “Apparently,” he finally said, then smiled unconvincingly. “How serendipitous. Carry on, good watchmen. Be ever vigilant and keep us safe.”

  He swept into the room, the assertiveness and swiftness of his movement making it clear that now that he had arrived in Citizen Dall’s presence, Rem and Torval could leave.

  “As you say, milord,” Rem said, and stepped toward the door, hoping that Torval would take the cue and follow him.

  At the door, Rem nearly ran into the elf’s Estavari bodyguard. For just a moment, the two stood toe to toe on the threshold, eyes locked, quietly appraising one another, each waiting for the other to step out of the way.

  Rem finally decided to relent and stepped aside, allowing the bodyguard to enter the room and linger at his master’s elbow. Once he was in, Rem and Torval passed out again into the hall and quickened their pace, to be away from that cramped study and Mykaas Masarda’s ageless, inscrutable gaze as quickly as possible.

  “Can we go now?” Torval asked.

  “With pleasure,” Rem said. “And what are we to do with this?” He hefted the fat little pouch of coin that Dall’s eunuch had handed him.

  Torval shoved his own coin bag into a pouch on his belt. “Keep it. The regs say we can accept gifts for tasks already completed when said gifts are issued by private citizens. Still, don’t forget to give Ondego a cut—just to keep him happy. A fifth should do.”

  Rem nodded. “Wouldn’t want to end up down in the dungeons, like Kevel.”

  Torval shot Rem a narrow-eyed glance. “No. You most certainly would not.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE

  Rem and Torval ended up back at the watchkeep. It was the middle of the night, but the administrative chamber was alive with arrested suspects and watchwardens on their way in from fresh arrests or heading out in search of more—an atmosphere of weary assurance. The two of them sat at an empty desk, hunched into themselves, and did their damnedest to piece the scattered shards of their investigation together. After almost an hour, they weren’t getting very far.

  “So,” Rem offered, “to summarize, Freygaf ends up beaten and murdered by the North Canal; the Creeper claims innocence, but assures us that Freygaf had secrets that you won’t be happy to uncover; Ginger Joss provides a promising lead, sneaking into Freygaf’s apartment to steal this funny little medallion, but Joss ends up as shark food because Frennis didn’t like us invading his turf. All we know, courtesy of the late Ginger Joss, is that he fears someone else more than he feared Frennis—at least enough to keep quiet before the fish ate him.”

  “That’s about the size and shape of it,” Torval agreed.

  “So,” Rem said, “we know little more than when we started.”

  “Little enough,” Torval said. He was toying with the little sack of coin he had been given by Kethren Dall. Unexpected bonus aside, he was clearly glum and downtrodden at being no closer to Freygaf’s killer than they were even a day or two earlier. Rem couldn’t blame him. He felt like a failure himself—and he hadn’t even known the late, mourned Freygaf.

  “Then what’s left to us?” Rem asked. “You’ve no other leads from the arrest records?”

  Torval shrugged. “I’ve exhausted them. We had history with the Creeper. The Nightjar bore us a grudge, and the presence of one of his gambling chits—not to mention finding Joss on his property—seemed promising. But both of those leads led to dead ends, didn’t they? All the other colorful sorts that Freygaf and I have arrested over the years were small-timers. I suppose we should leave no stone unturned, but I have a hard time believing any of those remaining in our personal rogue’s gallery were capable of getting the drop on Freygaf, let alone killing him.”

  “Then we’re at an impasse again,” Rem said. “Barring miracles or necromancy.”

  Torval was silent for a long while. However, his incessant fidgeting with the little bag of coin had stopped. Torval’s gaze had wandered off into the middle distance and his mouth hung open.

  “Torval?” Rem asked.

  Torval studied the young man then. He picked up his little bag of coin and brandished it. “How attached are you to this little bonus, lad?”

  Rem shrugged. His own bag of coin was still in the inner pocket of his jerkin. “I suppose I couldn’t miss what I didn’t have a couple hours ago. What’ve you got in mind?”

  Torval sat up straight. He stared at his coin bag again, as though trying to penetrate it with his gaze alone, in search of some secret or hidden clue. “I’ve an idea,” he said, “but it’s on the shady side. I don’t want you joining me in it unless you’re truly willing. Besides that, it might cost us.”

  “What is it?” Rem pressed. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  Torval snatched up his coin bag. “You said it yourself. Necromancy.”

  Rem stared at Torval for a moment, not sure if he’d heard him right. Then, knowing that he had, he did the only reasonable thing: he shrugged and rose from his uncomfortable wooden chair.

  Torval nodded. “Follow me,” he urged, and off they went.

  Torval explained on the way. In Yenara, there were a finite number of mages legally licensed to sell magical implements and wondrous works. The wards even kept several on the payrolls—specialized battle mages and diviners, employed for dangerous raids, incursions into hostile territory, and the reading of signs and portents. However, outright necromancy—summoning and speaking with the dead—was strictly forbidden by city law and the laws of several of the city’s more powerful temple congregations, so no licensed mage—especially one on the wardwatch payroll, such as a member of the Mage Squad—would ever agree to such black and proscribed magic, lest they end up with their heads on pikes at the city gates.

  However, since most of the city’s working mages could not afford to be, or did not want to be, licensed, the fact was that there were many, many more in the wonder-working business who simply plied their trade illegally. They usually fronted their operations by owning curio shops or botanicals or apothecaries, but if on
e knew who one was talking to and what they were capable of, these same seemingly innocent shopkeeps could, for a price, work all sorts of magic for their customers in the name of commerce.

  Most of them, according to Torval, held court in a dog-legged side street right there in the Fifth Ward, known as Mage’s Alley.

  “So, we’re going to buy a miracle?” Rem asked as they marched through the winding streets of the Fifth, on the way to their destination.

  “Something like that,” Torval answered. “I don’t know what these two little sacks of coin can buy us—black-market mages working blacker magic can more or less name their price for whatever operation you seek from them—but since we’re out of options, short on leads, and newly coined—it seems worth a try.”

  “Have you got someone in mind?” Rem asked. “To handle the transaction?”

  Torval threw a glance at him. “Of course. It’s not the first time I’ve come down here looking for a little help on a case—though it has been a very, very long time.”

  Outwardly, Mage’s Alley looked like any other narrow side street, chock full of shopfronts and twisting side lanes. The shop windows—dark so late at night—seemed entirely ordinary, the peaked rooves with their thatch and shingles just as prosaic as any other collection of buildings in the city. The street was deserted this late at night and shrouded in a fog even more perpetual than that which often graced the remainder of the city. There were very few post lamps here, so light was dim and intermittent, but Torval seemed to know where he was going and needed no guidance. Rem kept his mouth shut and his eyes open, quite uneasy for all the open alleyways and dark corners that lurked about them. If there was a place in the city where two watchmen shouldn’t be after dark, Mage’s Alley seemed to be it.

  Finally, Torval found their destination—one more shopfront that looked no different from the many they had already passed, a little door next to a window crammed with the accoutrements of witchery on display. There was no light within, and no movement. Torval pounded on the door.

  Rem looked for a shingle above the door, to mark the place. He didn’t see one. None of the shops nearby had shingles or names. That struck him as decidedly odd.

  Torval kept pounding on the door, pausing only for a few moments at a time, then resuming again. “Sheba!” he called, seemingly unconcerned with what neighbors he might be waking, or whose attention he might be drawing. “Sheba, get your ass out of bed and get down here!”

  Suddenly, the window shutters just above the shop window opened. A woman leaned out, her hair hanging in a loose braid over her left shoulder. Her eyes flashing in the dim second-hand post lamp light. “What is it?” she hissed.

  “It’s Torval,” the dwarf said. “We’ve need of you and we have coin. Get down here.”

  “Torval?” the woman sighed. “It’s the middle of the bloody night—”

  “Do you want the coin or don’t you?” Torval demanded.

  She sighed again. “Heel your hounds. I’ll be right down.”

  It was only a moment before the woman, Sheba, was moving through the shop, throwing back the bolt on her door, and letting the two watchmen in. Rem tried to get a good look at the woman in the murky, uneven light. She had a head full of dark, disheveled hair and a vaguely annoyed air about her.

  More like a bright-eyed pie baker than a powerful necromancer capable of trafficking with the forces of darkness, Rem thought.

  “What is it, then?” she demanded. “It’s the middle of the bloody night and I’ve had a long, trying day. Where’s Freygaf? Who’s this young sprout?”

  Young sprout? Rem started to open his mouth and protest, but Torval stopped him.

  “Freygaf, I’m afraid, is no more,” Torval answered. “The lad’s my new partner.”

  “Oh dear,” the woman said, not sounding terribly upset about the state of things.

  “No time for grief now,” Torval cut in. “We’re on the trail of his killer, and that’s why we’ve come to you.”

  Sheba blinked. “Really?”

  Torval drew out his own sack of coin, then held out his hand for Rem’s. Rem obliged. Torval laid both sacks in Sheba’s hands. “That’s all we’ve got. We want to speak to Freygaf’s spirit and find out who murdered him.”

  “You want me to summon a dead man?” Sheba asked.

  “Yes,” Torval answered.

  “No,” Sheba said.

  “No?” Torval asked.

  “No,” she said again. “Absolutely not.”

  “What do you mean no?” Torval asked. “We’ve got money. We’re willing to pay!”

  Sheba handed back both sacks of coin. “It’s not the money, it’s the ‘mancy,’” she said. “You know damned well how dangerous necromancy is, even for an accomplished practitioner.”

  “Which you are!” Torval countered. “Didn’t you once tell me—”

  She raised a hand. “I did. I have. That’s not the point. The two or three times I’ve done it, the outcomes have been, shall we say, unpredictable. I wouldn’t undertake it save for three times that much money and with far more time to study and prepare.”

  “Then we shall take our money elsewhere,” Torval said, and turned toward the door.

  “No, you won’t,” Sheba said, and threw a glance at Rem that said this was a dance that she and Torval had done before. “You know damned well that any other mage on the alley would tell you the same thing. And the one that doesn’t tell you the same thing, that offers to conjure Freygaf’s spirit tonight, while you wait, is a charlatan or a fool. Do you want Freygaf’s spirit to end up wandering this plane eternally? Do you want him tied to you, to your person, following you around and skulking about in your bedchamber at all hours of the night—”

  “Day,” Torval said. “I work at night.”

  “Regardless,” Sheba said impatiently. “Or consider this, Torval: the borderlands between the lands of the living and the dead are haunted by all sorts of things—things that were once alive and things that have never known the pleasures and pains of this plane. They hang about newly-arrived spirits like street-corner con men in search of new arrivals in the city, knowing that the recently dead are the ones most likely to be called back, to be questioned. And when you open those doors to let the spirit you’re after through, other things can slip through as well …”

  “But can you do it?” Torval pressed.

  Sheba wasn’t listening. “And just consider the expense—for me! Every implement and offering employed in a necromantic operation is tainted by its employ. Anything I put to use would have to be burned, melted down, or buried when I was done, and I’d expect my customer to pay me for the loss and replacement of all those articles—”

  Torval threw up his arms. He was losing his temper. “What, then? We need a break in this investigation, lass, and we need it now, tonight! What do you recommend?”

  She shrugged. “Something less dangerous, perhaps? Have you got any objects that I might read? Any leads I could try to illuminate?”

  Rem was struck by a sudden inspiration. “We do!” he cried, and pulled the little medallion that they’d lifted off Ginger Joss out of his pocket. “Remember this, Torval?”

  “Well enough,” the dwarf grumbled. “But we could’ve had the Mage Squad do that for us, and without the outlay of coin—”

  Sheba shrugged. “You’re welcome to be on your way, then. I’m sleepy and—”

  “Oh, bugger it all!” Torval spat. “Give it to her, lad. We’re here, we might as well let her do her work.”

  Sheba took the medallion and studied it. “Even a little piece of tin like this can absorb a lot of information, Torval. You know that.”

  “I was looking for something more direct,” he said.

  Sheba put a mock frown on her face. “Oh, Torval, I know. But just think—it might be this little tiny piece of information that leads you to the end of your investigation. And it’ll lead you there down a safer path—with less coin spent! I promise, I won’t gouge you.”
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  Torval mulled it over for a moment, drew a deep breath, then sighed. “Get on with it.”

  “Very well, then,” Sheba said. “Come in the back.”

  They followed her into a close, incommodious conjuring space at the rear of the shop—a chamber with laden shelves on every wall and no windows, and only a narrow chimney in the roof to allow smoke to exit. Rem and Torval waited in the gloomy little space as Sheba went about her preparations. She lit lamps that hung from the low ceiling, snatched a silver bowl off one of the shelves and set it on a waist-high wooden butcher’s block complete with a meat cleaver stuck in its surface. She then disappeared out back for a few moments with a bucket. When she returned, her pail was half-filled with water, which she poured into the waiting silver bowl. Finally, she went rooting on her shelves again, drew off three phials of strange liquid, then returned to the bowl on the pedestal.

  She held out her hand. “Pay in advance. Twelve silver andies, please.”

  Torval, still looking more than a little perturbed with the sorceress, opened one of the two coin bags, drew out a handful of the silver coins therein, then counted them out into Sheba’s waiting palm. Satisfied, she slipped the coins into the pocket of her house robe, then held out her hand again.

  “The medallion,” she said.

  Rem, ever the keeper of the little bauble, offered it. Sheba studied the little pendant and chain carefully under the light of her many hanging lamps, then gently laid it at the bottom of the silver bowl, beneath the water. “Silence while I work,” she said, eyes falling on each of them in turn. “If the time is ripe for a question, I’ll tell you, and you may ask one. But ask for nothing until I tell you it’s safe to do so.”

  “I’ve heard this spiel before,” Torval grumbled.

  She indicated Rem. “He hasn’t.”

  “Just keep your mouth shut,” Torval said to Rem. “Let me ask the questions.”