Both boys cheered wildly and immediately began a contest regarding the additional duties they now promised to do as a show of gratitude.
“I’ll get water for all the animals,” Julo declared and gave his brother an imperious look.
“I’ll brush them all down,” Jalen countered and when his brother shrugged dismissively, he added: “Even the Wain goats!”
The older boy scowled but refused to concede defeat.
“Well, I will stay up all night to watch for thieves,” he said and drew his shoulders back so his narrow chest swelled.
“Oh, yes,” Jalen cried, a warning note in his voice. “I’ll stay up all night too but I’m not gonna watch for silly old thieves. I’m gonna watch for snatchers.”
Vahrem and Ax-Wed shared a bemused look.
“You’re a liar, Jalen bet’Faru. Everyone knows you’re scared to death of snatchers.”
“Oh no, I’m not, Julo bet’Faru! You’ll see I can do it.”
“What are snatchers?” the warrior woman interjected sharply.
Both boys shared a guilty look before they lowered their heads.
“Pap says Crevs problems got Crevs solutions,” Julo said, his face downcast. “He said we weren’t to speak about it with strangers.”
She frowned but the caravan master stepped forward and knelt to look at the boys with a hand on each shoulder.
“Well, I’m certainly no stranger,” he said, his voice warm but firm. “I may not live in the Crevice but I was there when you were both blessed with mare’s milk as babes. As a matter of fact, it was my mare that gave the milk, so how about you boys be honest with me? What are the snatchers?”
The brothers exchanged another weighty glance before both shrugged in surrender.
“We don’t rightly know what they are,” Julo confessed and still struggled to look the man in the eye. “No one has ever seen them or at least seen them and been around to tell about it.”
“Some says they’re ghuls or djinn or even ifreet,” Jalen added, his dark eyes huge in his small, grubby face. “Kullah’s mom even says she saw a manticore prowling the rooftops and that’s what it is, but everyone knows she spends too much time dancing with poppies.”
“You don’t even know what that means,” Julo snapped with a disgusted scowl. “Whatever else anyone says, Pap says they’re men but the wickedest kind. He says a man could be a thief for hunger and murder for vengeance, but only the evilest men could do what they do.”
“They snatch people,” his brother declared, his face a picture of youthful horror. “From the streets or their houses, it don’t matter! They snatch ’em and no one ever sees them again.”
Chapter Four
Guuhal hated being with this kind of scum.
If the prince had given him a choice between his current task and wading through city midden heaps, he knew which he would have chosen.
“So it seems his highness has more than whetted his appetite on our wares, then,” chuckled a ruffian who went by the moniker Crim. “I should’ve warned him that once you get a taste, it’s hard to stop, eh?”
The guard commander looked down his nose from his considerable height at the wiry man whose stubbled face resembled nothing so much as a hatchet. The officer began to fantasize about how pleasant it would be to spatter the filth’s brains across the alley but forced himself to stop. If he grew too familiar with the idea, he wasn’t sure he could resist the urge to make his dreams a reality.
“Can you meet the new quota or not?” the Hazarbed asked and didn’t bother to hide his sneer.
Crim saw the open disgust and it seemed to only make him happier.
“Possibly,” he replied slowly and made a show of thinking it over. “That is, of course, dependent upon certain…considerations.”
Guuhal let the word dangle between them until the little villain began to squirm. The noise from the streets of Jehadim filled the growing silence between the two men. A block away, two men broke into a raucous bawdy song, which provoked a woman to scream at the two drunkards to do anatomically unadvisable things to one another. Across the street, several dogs squabbled savagely over scraps. A pack of howling teens darted past the alley mouth and continued, oblivious and bellicose, into the dusk-wrapped city.
“You won’t get a shekel more than the agreed rate,” the guard commander said stiffly and his hands ached to hold his staff of office. With one quick stroke, he’d never have to hear this worm, this parasite, speak again.
“Did I mention money?” Crim exclaimed with an exceptional imitation of moral indignation. “Did I even ask for a single godsdammed qirsh?”
“Lower your voice.” Guuhal growled warningly and took a single step to loom over the smaller man.
“Lower my voice?” The villain spat and glared indignantly at him. “You came to me. I don’t come to your fancy palace and—”
“Lower your voice!” The Hazarbed snarled with suppressed fury and the sound rumbled from deep in his chest.
“Why don’t you lower yourself and wrap your noble lips around—”
The guard commander’s huge, dark hand launched out with frightening speed. In one smooth movement, it wrapped around Crim’s thin neck and pinned him to the alley wall.
“You were chosen because you were useful,” he stated coldly as he bent to position his mouth next to the gagging rogue’s ear. “Your usefulness requires you to be efficient, consistent, and more than anything, discrete. Do you understand?”
Spittle flecked the corners of the man’s mouth and his cocky manner had evaporated, but he still managed to glare as he nodded above the hand that tightened around his throat.
“Good.” The word was almost a purr and he flashed brilliant teeth for an instant as he drew his face back to arm's length. “Cease to be useful as described and you will be replaced by someone who can be useful. Is that clear?”
Again, Crim nodded, but his dark eyes burned with loathing.
“Very good,” Guuhal said and released his hold with an indulgent nod. “Now, there were considerations you wanted to present.”
The little villain coughed and fought to clear his throat as he rubbed at the bruises already welling on his flesh. It took him more than a moment to gather himself and even then, his voice was weak and hoarse.
“We need to expand,” he croaked with one hand still nursing his throat. “Across the Tin Quarter. We’ve picked all the low-hanging fruit from the Crevs and then some.”
He paused to swallow, cough, and wince before he continued.
“If we take any more there, it’ll be too many to ignore,” he explained but refused to look at the officer. “Soon, other groups will notice so we need to spread it thinly across the quarter and even that might not be enough before long.”
Guuhal frowned and considered the point.
The ruffian was one very small step above a pit worm but he wasn’t stupid and he probably wasn’t wrong. Although he despised enabling any group of criminals to operate much less those like Crim, he certainly couldn’t fault his reasoning. Jehadim was a big city but not so big that they didn’t have to be careful.
“Fine.” He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “Anything else?”
The man’s face contorted as he cringed a little, afraid to say what came next.
“To help things stay…explicable, we need to broaden the target range. The same kind of acquisitions at this rate is also very suspicious.”
The guard commander had feared this question more than the last, especially given the prince’s instructions, but he knew what he must answer.
“Gods, this makes me sick.” He snarled as his hands knotted into fists before his shoulders sagged heavily. “Very well. Fine, yes.”
Crim, who’d cowered only seconds before, leaned forward and his lips peeled back from his teeth.
“Truly?” he whispered, almost panting. “Any and all?”
Guuhal refused to look at the slimy creature’s grin because he knew that afte
r one glance, he would reshape his face with his bare hands. He took a moment to play the prince’s directions in his mind again but he already knew the answer. Not only that, but he also knew what this meant and for the first time in his life, he regretted that he had ever been so ambitious a man as to attain the office he had.
“Yes.” He growled belligerently, a hint of warning. “But not another word on that. Do you need any material or equipment to meet the new quota?”
The ruffian’s eyes shone bright with avarice, although his grin was checked when he stole a glance at the Hazarbed’s dark expression.
“Six or seven more of those little medallions in case the boys get stopped,” he said as though it was all very simple. “And two wagons with mules or the like since we’ll have to cover more ground.”
The guard commander sighed and slid his hand into the heavy cloak he’d wrapped himself in to produce five small clay disks, each stamped with his office’s seal and a number.
“You get these and no more,” he said and held them out with a scowl. “You should still have some saved from the last group.”
Crim’s lip curled but he snatched the disks without argument and slid them quickly into his pocket.
“The wagon and mules?” he asked as he looked surreptitiously up and down the alley.
“I’ll have two wagons made available outside the Tin Quarter barracks,” he said as though the words tasted foul in his mouth. “But you’ll have to secure the beasts for them on your own.”
The rogue seemed ready to protest but a flash of warning in Guuhal’s eyes made his jaws snap shut to forestall any further argument. For a moment, both men stood in uneasy silence, both criminal and commander unhappy yet unable to escape what lay before them.
Crim’s cough broke the stillness and he swallowed roughly as he looked toward the entrance to the alley.
“When do we need to start meeting the new quota?” he asked and his gaze slid into the middle distance as he began to devise the necessary schemes.
“Tonight.” The Hazarbed grunted as he turned to walk up the alley. “Double the previous quota starts tonight.”
The other man grunted acknowledgment but his mind had already raced ahead to the particulars of the evening's dark deeds.
“Fair enough,” he muttered. “Got to stay useful.”
Guuhal sniffed at the weak joke and continued his weary tread up the alley. Like the criminal behind him, the officer’s mind was elsewhere, so it was an unpleasant surprise when he stepped on a small pile of fetid filth. He looked down and scowled at the maggots that seethed in the muck that had squelched over his sandal and smeared against his foot.
He kicked the rot away from him, but the smell was in his nose and caked across the bottom of his foot.
With a wry and utterly unamused smile, he remembered the thought about wading through the midden heap.
Yes, that would have been better.
At least that would wash off.
Chapter Five
The shadows deepened throughout Jehadim, and among those shadows moved darker things than ghuls and djinn. Pap, although not a sagely man by nature, had not been wrong when he’d warned his sons about the kinds of men who now crept through the dark.
In a world without gold’s dark glitter or men’s darker lusts, they might have been like the tricksters of old stories who humbled the haughty and lifted the lowly. Not living in such a world, however, they were employed by the likes of Crim, a man for whom nothing was sacred and thus not forbidden.
Free from the oppressive presence of the guard commander and back in his lair, he exuded an easy arrogance that could easily be mistaken for unassailable confidence. The night-shrouded city was now woven with webs of shadow. He was the spider-king, seated on a throne he’d built on widow’s tears and the bones of his enemies. As his fingers caressed the bruises on his neck, he swore inwardly that one day, the towering fool would join those beneath the webbed throne—and maybe even Prince Tarkhind too.
But for now, he had business to attend to.
His hunting spiders, each one carefully chosen and trained by him, had gathered in one of the empty granaries at the edge of the Copper District. Despite the word going out only a few hours earlier, all had arrived promptly, armed for the night and dressed for the part they were to play.
They had already separated into the teams of two in which they operated. One acted as distraction and hauler while the other was striker and watcher. The former were generally all larger men capable of carrying a limp body for a few blocks without difficulty. They were dressed in the common garb of the Tin Quarter but sometimes accented with splashes of liquor or “evidence” of a false injury. The latter were smaller and clothed similarly, but all were secretly equipped with the tools of the abductor to quickly neutralize and bind their quarry.
Seeing them arrayed before him, Crim felt a swell of pride despite the risks that gnawed at his paranoid mind.
These were the works of his hands and now, they would make him richer than he’d ever dared to dream was possible.
“It seems our newest employer has a healthy appetite,” he said with a smile that was all teeth. “We’ve not only been given a new order to fill but an increased order.”
A low, eager murmur passed through the men and women before him.
“Our quota of acquisitions is now double what it was previously.”
A series of nervous chuckles rippled amongst those gathered. He could understand. In such a high-risk business, there was a fine line between necessary expansion and fatal overextension.
“I am also happy to report we have two other pieces of good news,” he continued, certain that what he was about to say would remove any growing unease. “We now not only have clearance to operate anywhere in the Tin Quarter but we are also authorized to seek any acquisition available.”
The chorus of soft jubilation from the abduction teams was music to his ears. They were motivated and skilled agents set loose to pursue their objectives without the limitations and entanglements that had so frustrated them before. Any concerns he might have harbored about their ability to meet the prince’s new demand were washed away by another rush of pride.
“Now,” he said with a touch of sternness to catch their attention. “We still need to observe all protocols and precautions. I’ve acquired two wagons to help with transport, so they should make sure we can make timely deliveries even with a larger order to fill.”
It hadn’t been quite so easy to find draft beasts, and Guuhal’s wagons had been ramshackle assemblies of planks that required much oiling and other finishing touches. In the end, however, he was glad he’d been bold enough to make the request. Having the wagons running delivery rotation while the teams were out making acquisitions would improve things considerably, especially with regard to reducing the exposure of his teams.
“We also have an increase in our stock of passage tokens but as always, please use these sparingly. With an order of this size, we will most likely need them.”
Crim met the eyes of each team member to make sure they understood how deadly serious he was about the last point before he raised his hands in a welcoming gesture.
“Are there any questions?”
He was so used to the group standing in silence that he expected to wait for only a single heartbeat before he sent them out, but a purring feminine voice rolled from the group.
“What about exteriors of the Tin Quarter?” asked Masheed, an abduction specialist of particular skill. She was one of his sub-supervisors who usually did double duty and took a double share for both running her own team and coordinating three others. Crim liked to believe that all his specialists were exceptionally loyal through a combination of greed and fear, but out of all of them, the hard-eyed Masheed gave him the most pause.
Careful to control his tone lest others think him disturbed by the question, he looked at her with an imitation of genuine curiosity.
“Did you have something in mind?”<
br />
The sharp, mocking smile that flashed on her face irked him more than he would admit to himself, but he stifled the snarl that threatened to curl his lip.
“A contact informed me that a large caravan was coming into the city tonight,” she explained. “They will settle for tonight in a stockyard at the edge of the Tin Quarter. Caravans often have very fluid populations and even if some notice a few missing, they won’t stay long enough to raise much of a fuss.”
Crim, despite his growing dislike for the woman, could see the possible benefits. Even if they only took one or two, it would be that much less pressure on the population of the city. That could be the difference between another week or two of operation before he’d have to renegotiate with the guard commander.
But there were other things to consider.
They were already operating on an unprecedented scale and adding an unknown factor like the composition of a caravan and the personality of its master was tempting fate. He had not formed the organization and network he had by tempting fate unless he had to.
“For now, we will abide strictly by the limits we’ve been given,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless. “Inside the Tin Quarter only. Any other questions?”
Masheed refused to give him the satisfaction of a glare and she wasn’t foolish enough to challenge him. After a stretched moment of silence, he nodded and gave his spiders a hungry smile.
“All right, my darlings. Let’s get to work.”
Chapter Six
“They’ll be safe.”
Ax-Wed heard Vahrem’s words but didn’t move from her post.
She watched Julo and Jalen laughing as they munched on honeyed cakes, all talk of snatchers forgotten. Their mouths full of food, they babbled over each other in the company of a group of caravan children around a fire. Some of the children, the brothers included, rubbed their eyes and several mothers and fathers were already busy with sorting out the sleeping accommodations for the motley group.
Circle In The Deep (The Outcast Royal Book 1) Page 6
