Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  Ballisantirax was lying on the table. The urq ignored her. She ignored him, giving Heden a bleary eyed, relaxed appraisal. But the fact she was lazing in arm’s reach of the war-breed spoke volumes.

  When the urman heard Heden enter, he fished into his pocket for two gold crowns and put them on the table. It was among the most expensive vintages Heden stocked. At the sound of the coins hitting the table, Balli loped down.

  Heden walked in and ignored the demiurq. He walked through the common room and up the stairs, then a few moments later came down and opened the door to the cellar. He called out, his voice echoing into the darkness. No reply. He closed the door.

  Then he turned his attention to his guest.

  The urq called himself Bann, though he made no attempt to mask the elaborate symbol burned into his forehead that read ‘112’ in the numbering system of the First Language. The closest thing he had to a real name. Like the urq from which they were bred, he had dark blue skin, so blue as to sometimes seem black. His tusks were much smaller than a true urq’s, jutting a discrete half-an inch past his lips. Warbred urq tusks never grew as long as those of a true urman. Heden believed Bann kept his tusks further filed down to a fashionable size. His arms and body were otherwise normal humanoid shaped, not the elongated massive arms and small legs of the true urq.

  Bann wore no sword because he was not planning on fighting Heden. He would lose any such fight, sword or no, and it would not be pleasant. So, dress well, drink well, and wait. Heden guessed he’d been here for hours, waiting for Heden to return from visiting the abbot, but it would take more than a few glasses of wine over several hours to have any effect on Bann.

  Heden walked to the table, cupped his left hand just under the edge, and swept the coins off the tabletop into it. He pocketed the money. It would be impolite to refuse payment.

  “Bann,” Heden said.

  The urq’s bright yellow eyes did not meet his own. With no expression on his flat face he tilted his head deferentially.

  “You done with that?” Heden asked, nodding to the wine.

  Bann made a gesture with his hand, black fingernails like miniature serrated spearheads. Heden picked up the bottle and glass.

  As he walked to the bar, Heden said, “Want anything to eat?”

  “What’ve you got?” Bann said, his voice casual, but like low thunder nonetheless.

  Heden went into the kitchen and came out a few moments later with some beef that was on the wrong side of fresh. It wasn’t that Bann or urmen in general preferred slightly rotting meat, it was just that it didn’t seem to matter much to them either way, so Heden took the opportunity to offload some of his older stuff. He put the plate in front of Bann.

  Bann ripped a small piece of steak off, and began tearing delicately at the meat with his teeth. No war-breed ever used cutlery, though many of them managed to look civilized eating without them.

  “Where’s the girl?” Heden finally asked, sitting down.

  “Back at the Rose. Came on her own.”

  Heden thought about this. Nothing was disturbed in here; the door to the basement wasn’t open. Three days was a long time.

  “Okay,” he said. “I believe you. Is she safe?”

  Bann took his time chewing his steak, then wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and looked at Heden for the first time since he entered the inn.

  “No,” Bann said, his voice a rumble.

  Heden looked at the war-breed.

  “But nothin’s going to happen to her, uh, right now.”

  “Why are you here?” Heden asked.

  “Reasons, I have three,” Bann said, amusing himself with an archaic turn of phrase.

  “Morten, bit of an embarrassment. Figured I should apologize.”

  Heden accepted this. “Have to start somewhere,” he said.

  Bann seemed to agree.

  “I’ll find a use for him. Don’t like letting people go,” he said. He was, Heden knew, fiercely loyal. Though the use Bann might find for Morten could require a glorious death.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Heden said. “It was a mistake. We all make them.”

  Apology accepted, Bann reached into his doublet and pulled out a thin roll of black cloth which, when unrolled on the table, revealed three star sapphires, three rubies, and a diamond, the seven gems worth something on the order of seventy-five thousand crowns.

  “Second reason,” he said. “You saved the girl’s life. By some law,” Bann said, reminding Heden that in a city as diverse as Celkirk, the laws and traditions of many species and cultures held sway, “means you own her. Miss Elowen wants to buy her from you.”

  Heden stared at the gems. Something was happening here he didn’t understand. If Elowen was offering seventy-five thousand crowns for Vanora, that meant Vanora had to be worth something like 300,000 crowns to Elowen. Under no circumstance could a whore, even one at the Rose Petal, be worth 300,000 crowns, even summed over the course of her whole life. A tenth that was reasonable. This meant something dangerous was happening around Vanora. Heden remembered her saying it wouldn’t be easy.

  Heden reached out and pulled the black cloth toward him. He looked at the gems and did some reasoning.

  “Someone thinks that girl is worth a lot,” Heden said.

  “Miss Elowen said to apologize for the crude offer of money,” Bann said. “Told her seventy-five wouldn’t mean nothin’ to you. But she don’t understand. She could have a hundred million crowns and she’d still want five more.”

  “Someone with a lot of money wants Vanora.” Heden could make neither heads nor tails of this. Vanora was…regardless of what Heden thought of her, in the grand scheme of things, she wasn’t anything special.

  “Told her you’d say no,” Bann said, smiling in self-congratulation.

  “You brought the offer anyway,” Heden said.

  “’s my job innit?” Bann said. “’sides, I think you should take it.”

  Heden snapped a look at him.

  “Lots of folks afraid of me, but you ain’t,” Bann said. “Got no reason to be. No reason to be afraid of Miss Elowen. But there’s some in the city you should be afraid of.”

  Heden looked down at the gems and picked up the diamond. Gems. Not cash. This offer didn’t come from Miss Elowen.

  “Even though I know you ain’t,” Bann finished.

  “You said three reasons. What’s the third reason?”

  Bann sniffed. “I like it here,” he said, making an expansive gesture with one hand, dropping a piece of meat into his mouth with the other.

  “Really?” Heden said.

  “Better than the Rose,” Bann said, chewing.

  Heden scrutinized the face of Miss Elowen’s head enforcer.

  “No it isn’t. You love working at the Rose.”

  Bann swallowed. “Better here than there,” he said, enjoying the moment, “when you are about to go to there and kill a lot of people to get the girl back.”

  All the warmth fled the room.

  “I don’t want to kill your men, Bann.” Heden said.

  Bann took his time picking his teeth clean with his black, spear-point fingernails. Then he smiled at Heden and showed all his teeth.

  “It’s not my men that have her, Heden.”

  Chapter Forty Nine

  The Rose Petal sat on Grape St. where Wigen intersected it, so that if you stood on the stoop of the brothel looking out, you’d see Wigen stretching away before you, and Grape running left and right.

  Two men stood outside the front door to the Rose. They were leaning against the doorframe, watching the traffic pass by in the afternoon, smiling and talking. One of them was Bann’s. The doorman. Heden recognized him.

  The other man was Teagan.

  Heden walked up and stood on the three steps leading to the door. He nodded at Bann’s doorman. He looked up and down the street, looking at the people and carts making their way.

  Then he turned and looked deliberately at Teagan. The man had a
casual grin, showing no teeth. Heden was not smiling.

  “Teagan,” he said.

  Teagan touched his forehead with his thumb and index finger, where a forelock would be if his hair wasn’t too short.

  “What are you doing here?” Heden asked.

  “Captain wanted to make sure everything was okay here,” Teagan said. It was the second time Heden had heard him speak. He was clad in brown leather armor that looked simple and unadorned, but Heden recognized it as very expensive. It was light, reinforced, and allowed maximum flexibility. It said a lot about how Teagan fought. Heden looked at the sword at Teagan’s side. It was hard to tell in the confines of the city, but Heden didn’t think it was sorcerous. He’d seen Teagan work. It didn’t need to be.

  “I’m here for the girl,” Heden said.

  Teagan, still smiling, nodded.

  “You going to stop me?” Heden asked.

  “You think I could?” He cocked his head and peered at Heden as though thinking about who would win.

  Heden looked at the man. “I didn’t come here to find out,” he said.

  Teagan nodded. His amusement faded as the two men stared at each other, neither breaking eye contact. It wasn’t a confrontation. Each man wanted to know the other.

  Finally, without breaking eye contact, Teagan spoke. “You do what you have to,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Heden looked at the doorman.

  He looked back and forth between the priest and the watchman, and then realized something was expected of him.

  He sniffed the air dramatically. “Think I smell a pie with my name on it,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a moment, watch the door for me Teagan.” He walked down the stairs past Heden.

  Heden looked at Teagan. Teagan opened the door to the brothel.

  Heden walked up and entered the foyer. It was, unusually, empty. Teagan walked in behind him and closed the door.

  Heden looked sharply behind him.

  Teagan smiled and spread his hands. “Captain would be upset at me if I let you get killed in here so….”

  Heden did not know what to make of this fighting man. He’d known several in his life but none that seemed as at ease with their role.

  “You going to get in my way?” Heden asked.

  Teagan pursed his lips, then his open face resumed its light amusement. “That wasn’t my plan.”

  “There’s no in-between here,” Heden said. A door opened upstairs and rapid footsteps followed.

  Teagan smiled widely and extended his hand. “In for a copper,” he said.

  Heden looked at the proffered hand, thick and callused. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d accepted help from anyone. He took Teagan’s hand, and shook it once.

  “In for a crown,” Heden said, and the two men stared at each other for a moment.

  Miss Elowen glided down the stairs, her dress an elaborate pattern of gold and red. She enjoyed changing her hair color as the mood suited her; in this case her long straight hair was pure white. She was Heden’s exact contemporary, but looked twenty years younger.

  She arrived at the bottom of the stairs in the otherwise empty foyer, a place where no expense was spared to give every illusion of taste and refinement. Looking at Heden and Teagan, she sighed with something like defeat. She hurried over to the two of them.

  “What are you two doing here?” She looked between them.

  Heden looked at Teagan and looked back at Elowen.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Didn’t Bann…”

  Heden took the black cloth with the gemstones wrapped in it and threw it onto the lush carpeting. The cloth unfurled in the air and the gems spun and danced as they fell onto the floor.

  Miss Elowen didn’t look at them. She just stared at Heden, her face a mix of frustration and disgust.

  She looked to Teagan and saw the man standing casually, looking around the welcome room, hand on his sword.

  Elowen took a step forward and spoke quietly and intensely.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Yeah, but I know I don’t know what I’m doing. That should count for something,” Heden said.

  “Leave and forget about her. What is she to you?”

  Heden shrugged.

  Teagan frowned and looked around the room to his left as though hearing or smelling something just at the edge of perception.

  With no warning, just an explosion of violence like a finger of lightning striking down from the sky, Teagan’s body danced as he brought his sword out of its scabbard in one fluid motion, it soared around him once, there was a sick, wet sound, and a body materialized out of the air, its head severed from its neck.

  Elowen looked shocked, something Heden wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before.

  By the time Heden had turned around to see what had happened. Teagan had already sheathed his weapon, and the body of a man dressed in gray and black was convulsing blood all over the floor and divans. His head having rolled under a plush chair.

  Before Heden could react, he felt a sharp pain in his back. Someone had stabbed him from behind, and he knew he was poisoned.

  Grunting with pain he spoke a prayer and two brilliant white shafts of light stabbed down from the ceiling, each enveloping and exposing a man; one behind Heden, one on the far side of the room. Two men both clad in the same grey and black linen. Teagan and Lady Elowen shielded their eyes, but the two assassins, previously invisible, were now blind.

  But they were used to operating in darkness anyway, the one immediately behind Heden stabbed again. Even without sight his small, razor-sharp blade found its target, and Heden went down, his knees crumpling.

  The assassin who felled Heden couldn’t see Teagan and so couldn’t see the man gingerly step over Heden’s recumbent form and pull his sword from its scabbard in the same manner he had at the jail three days ago. Using the pommel as a projectile, he smashed his sword into the assassins jaw from below and with a sharp crack the man fell to the ground.

  That left the other assassin, blind, but too far across the room for Teagan to get to quickly.

  Heden, his face red, rolled over and propped himself up on his elbow. He pointed to the blind assassin, spoke a prayer, and the man suddenly stopped breathing. He grasped his throat, started pulling at his clothes, trying to get air, but could not. Suffocating was not a quick death, and he flailed around, eventually falling onto a table and breaking it. He continued to scrabble and his feet kicked as his tongue and lips turned blue.

  Heden spoke another prayer and the poison was neutralized. He panted, the redness in his face slowly fading. The man across the room slowly died.

  “Wasn’t sure that would work,” Heden said. Teagan helped him up. “If they’re good enough,” he said to the fighting man, “they can fight it. Especially if they’ve fought a priest before.”

  Teagan looked at him.

  “You know that though,” Heden said, lamely.

  “We went through three priests in the Sword,” Teagan said pointedly.

  “Well whose fault is that?” Heden said. Teagan smiled.

  “Salorna’s swollen teat,” Elowen hissed, looking at the still spurting blood, the blood spread around the room, the still twitching assassin who broke her table.

  “I’ll pay for the repairs,” Heden said.

  Elowen shook her head once. “Just don’t destroy the place, Heden. It’s everything I have.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Heden said. Elowen stepped in close.

  “There are six more of them, upstairs,” she whispered.

  “Not for long,” Heden said. “I’m taking the girl with me.”

  Elowen looked at him. With her heels on, they were roughly the same height.

  “Are you sure you’re not just being pigheaded?” she asked.

  “Is that a trick question?”

  “They said they’re not here to kill anyone, they just want to frighten you off.”

  “You told th
em that wouldn’t work?”

  Elowen nodded.

  “You care about the girl?” Heden asked.

  It was Elowen’s turn to shrug.

  “Not enough to fight you over her,” she said with ambivalence.

  “Heden,” Teagan said.

  Teagan was pulling a long piece of cloth off the beheaded assassin. It had been tied around his arm. It appeared to be a silk scarf.

  Teagan shook it and black clouds of soot billowed off, revealing a pattern of bright yellow silk beneath.

  “The Black,” Heden said.

  “That means the Count. This is a man you maybe don’t want to fuck with,” Teagan offered.

  “What do you know about this?” Heden asked him.

  Teagan had stopped smiling. “I know I don’t want to dance with the Guild of Blackened Silk,” he said. “You weren’t kidding about that ‘in for a copper, in for a crown,’ shit, I wish I’d stayed home today.”

  “He feels the same way,” Heden said, nodding to the headless man. “Now what?”

  “Hope they know I’m a watchman,” Teagan said. “The guilds don’t like killing watchmen.”

  Heden turned to Miss Elowen. “He wasn’t here,” Heden said.

  She sighed. “That means you’re not going to leave any of them alive.” That meant a lot of killing and a lot of expense cleaning it up.

  “It’s only a yellow scarf,” Heden explained.

  “I know what it means,” Elowen said.

  “Oh, I thought maybe you were concerned for me” he said with mock effrontery.

  “She’s not going to want to go with you,” Elowen said.

  “What?”

  “Violet wants to stay here.”

  Heden frowned and thought about that.

  “Well, whatever,” he said. “She’s not equipped to make that decision,” Heden decided.

  “I knew you’d say that,” Miss Elowen said. “Okay, it was just you. I’ve never seen the thieftaker before,” she said, nodding to Teagan.

  Teagan smiled and touched his imaginary forelock.

  “I’ll be in the basement,” Miss Elowen said, turning and walking to a far door. “I’ll wait until the noises stop.”

  Heden turned to Teagan.

  “After you,” Teagan said, pointing to the stairs that led to the upper floors. Heden prayed over both of them for a few moments, warding them.