Songs of the Dark

by Anthony Ryan

- A Raven’s Shadow Novella -

  Chapter 1

  “You stupid little shit!”

  Frentis shrank back as Derla advanced on him, though his gaze retained the usual gleam of uncowed defiance. It was one of the things she liked about him, but not today. “If you’re going to do something so utterly mad you could at least have made sure you finished the bastard!” He flinched at the cuff she delivered to the top of his head, shrinking further into the corner of the room, a sullen grimace on his lips.

  “Would’ve done if ‘is lads hadn’t dragged ‘im off so quick,” he muttered.

  “What did you expect them to do, just bloody stand there?” Derla raised her hand for another blow, this time clenching her fist.

  “I think he knows he did wrong, Derl,” Livera piped up in her soft, sing-song voice. “You do, dontcha Frentis?”

  Derla’s fist hovered as she stared down at him, watching him fail to summon enough contrition to offer more than a brief nod. But for the bright defiance in his eyes he would have been just another wretched, rag-clad pickpocket infesting the slums of Varinshold. She had always known there was a great well of anger behind those eyes, but had never thought it deep enough to compel him to such an extreme.

  “My arse he does,” Derla said, lowering her fist and turning away. She took a deep breath, smoothing her hands over the green satin of her bodice as she sought to calm herself. “Hunsil will have the gutters running red for this,” she sighed. “And, of course, you had to come here.”

  “Came over the rooftops,” Frentis said. “No one saw me.”

  “He’ll know I’ve fenced your stuff before. Or if he doesn’t, one of his lads will. How long do you think it’ll be before they’re knocking on our door? You can’t stay here.”

  “Derl…” Livera came to her side, dusky hands reaching for hers. “The boy’s got nowhere else.” She leaned close, smelling of jasmine and honeysuckle, Derla’s favourite. She knew Livera would have dabbed on a spot or two upon hearing her ascend the stairs to their rooms. “And he’s always done right by us,” Livera said. “Never lost money on the stuff he brought us.”

  “For which he was paid a fair price.” Derla felt her resolve erode a little as Livera pressed her violet painted lips to her neck, letting the kiss linger.

  “He’s a good boy,” Livera whispered, raising her lips to hover over Derla’s ear. “Reminds me of my brother…”

  “Your dead brother,” Derla said, putting an edge on her tone that made Livera step back, her small oval face bunching with hurt. Derla’s resolve almost faded completely but she clamped it in place, pulling her hands free of Livera’s and turning back to Frentis. One of us has to do the hard things.

  “You need to get out of Varinshold,” she told the boy flatly, moving to the mantel above the fireplace. She opened the small chest sitting below the gilt framed mirror and extracted half-a-dozen silvers. “Get yourself to the docks,” she said, holding the coins out to Frentis. “Find a ship called the Sojourner. The bosun’s got certain… habits.”

  A frown creased Frentis’s besmirched brow as he stared up at her. “Habits?”

  “Kind’ve habits that’ll let a boy earn his passage across the Erinean.” She jangled the coins in her palm. “But he’ll still expect a little something up front.”

  “Fuck that…” Frentis began, lips forming a sneer.

  “You think you’ve got any other options!” Derla grabbed the scruff of the boy’s rags and dragged him upright so that he stood on tiptoe. “You stuck a throwing knife in the eye of the worst shit this city has to offer. What did you think would happen next? A nice frolic through the flower beds?”

  “I ain’t selling my arse to no sailor! Not everybody wants to be a whore!”

  There was no holding her fist this time. It caught him a hard blow on the side of the head, sending him sprawling and provoking a sob from Livera. “Derl!” she scolded her, rushing to the boy’s side. Derla ignored Livera’s reproachful scowl as she helped Frentis up, putting a protective arm around him and smoothing a hand over the knot of greasy hair left by Derla’s fist. His eyes, she noted, remained as bright and defiant as ever.

  “You don’t want my help, fine,” she told him, returning the silvers to the chest and closing the lid with a hard snap. “Feel free to take your troublesome arse elsewhere. Piss off to the Sixth Order, why don’t you? Since you’re such great friends with the Battle Lord’s whelp and all.”

  “Never said ‘e was my friend,” Frentis retorted. “Just that…”

  “…he gave you a knife the day he beat the merry shit out of a bunch’ve guardsmen at the Summertide Fair. I know.” Derla gripped the mantelpiece, frowning as she sought to control an anger laced with no small amount of fear. “Come to think on it, it’s not that bad a notion,” she said after a moment’s contemplation. “Hunsil won’t think of it, not right off anyway. You being an orphan with no one to give you over to them.”

  “He can’t go there,” Livera said, holding Frentis closer. “Boy’s die there.”

  “What d’you think he’ll be doing tomorrow if he doesn’t?” Derla watched Frentis’s face as the notion took hold, a small flicker of determination passing across his brow.

  “Why would they take me?” he asked. “Some gutter born dipper with no family to put ‘im in the Faith’s hands?”

  “Doesn’t have to be family. Just someone who can vouch for you. Who better than your knife gifting friend?”

  Frentis briefly clasped Livera’s hand then disentangled himself from her, getting to his feet and moving to stand in front of Derla. “That hurt,” he said, rubbing his head.

  “It was supposed to, you mouthy little sod.”

  She glanced at the window, seeing the lengthening shadows stretch over the tangle of chimney and slate. “You can stay till it gets dark. Don’t use the rooftops, Hunsil’s boys will be watching them by now. There’s a passage through the cellar to the sewers. I suppose you still know the way to the drains that feed into the Brinewash?”

  “’Course,” he said with an aggrieved pout.

  “Good. You’ll have to swim for it, steer clear of the bridges. Once your out, stay off the road. If you’re not at the Order House by morning…”

  “I will be.” He paused, a small grin of gratitude playing over his lips. “They’ll still come looking,” he said. “Hunsil’s lads.”

  “Yes, they will. Liv, fix this boy some soup. No point sending him off to the Sixth Order with an empty belly.”

  Chapter 2

  Hunsil sent Ratter and Draker, which Derla would normally have considered something of an insult but assumed his more reliable employees were otherwise engaged just now.

  “Too much to expect you to wipe your feet, I see,” she greeted them, casting a caustic eye at the mud Ratter’s boots had left on her fine Alpiran carpet.

  Ratter began to respond with a sheepish shrug, then stopped himself, fixing an unrepentant glare on his narrow, pointy nosed face instead. Draker was apparently too preoccupied with ogling Livera to respond at all, so much so that Ratter felt obliged to deliver a hard shove to the side of his companion’s shaggy-haired head. “Wake up, lack-wit! We’re here on business, remember?”

  “Not that you could afford either of us,” Livera said, not looking up from her embroidery. She sat by the window, working a needle and thread through a circle of framed silk. Her pleated skirt was long enough to conceal the daggers she had strapped to both legs. Derla’s own knife was tucked into a hidden sheath at the small of her back, a curved fisherman’s gutting blade useful for swiftly laying open a belly or a throat in a confined space.

  “Watch your lip,” Ratter said, making an effort to sound menacing. However, his threatening tone was undermined somewhat as he gave a short backward step, removing his muddy boots from the carpet. Derla had always thought him too wary a character to make a successful thug, but today his habitual nervousness had blossomed into outright fear. Fear is bad, she knew. Fear makes even a coward
dangerous.

  “State your business or piss off,” she advised, her tone one of weary disdain. “We have appointments to keep.”

  “Frentis,” Ratter said. “Where is he?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You fence for him. Everyone knows that.”

  “I fence for half the dippers in this city. Doesn’t mean I know where they are at any given moment.” She angled her head in a display of calculation. “But that also doesn’t mean I can’t find him, if I’m adequately compensated for my time and trouble, of course. What’s he done, anyway?”

  “You been asleep all day or something?” Ratter asked. “The whole quarter’s in uproar.”

  “We had a late night,” Livera said, raising her head to smile at Derla. “Didn’t do much sleeping, did we Derl?”

  “What’s that..?” Draker said, voice husky with lust as he took an involuntary step forward. Derla could smell the cheap grog matting his beard.

  “Business!” Ratter reminded Draker, applying another hard shove to his head. This time the larger man responded with a growl, rounding on his diminutive companion and crouching in readiness for a lunge.

  “You two fuckheads want to fight, do it outside,” Derla said.

  The pair glared at each other for a second before slowly turning back to her, Draker’s bearded face displaying a sulky frown, though his eyes inevitably began to stray to Livera once again.

  “Hunsil lost an eye last night,” Ratter said. “Frentis’s doing.”

  “That scrawny whelp?” Derla scoffed. “Come off it.”

  “We was there,” Ratter insisted. “He sank a throwing knife into Hunsil’s eye from fifteen feet away, then went skipping off across the rooftops. I’ve seen less tidy jobs from lifelong cutthroats.”

  Tidier still if he’d actually finished it, Derla thought, putting the appropriate measure of surprise on her face as Ratter continued.

  “So y’see,” he said, “Hunsil won’t want to hear any shit about addyquait compysashuns and such. In fact, we tell him you weren’t generous with your help he’s gonna send us back with different orders.”

  Derla said nothing, watching the increasingly bright sheen of sweat form on Ratter’s balding pate. “You were there,” she said. “Supposed to be guarding him, right? Didn’t do a very good job, did you? ‘Spect he’s awful riled about that. Seems to me he’s likely to be angrier at you two than me right now.”

  “Just tell us where he is, Derla!” Ratter started forward, teeth bared in a snarl of impending violence as Draker followed his lead, dropping into a preparatory crouch.

  Derla saw Livera tense, hands stopping their work to settle into her lap and grip her skirts. Derla resisted the impulse to reach for her knife, instead arching a tired eyebrow at the two visitors and asking, “Is that really the best idea?”

  There were times when a reputation born of excessive violence had its advantages. Derla’s had been won after a brief but spectacularly bloody encounter with a Volarian sea captain. Having employed her services for the better part of a week the fellow then avowed a disinclination to settling his bill, employing an unwise level of incivility in the process. Although Derla hadn’t been able to extract the required funds she took some comfort from the knowledge that the man would have great difficulty voicing such language in future, she having shortened his tongue by two inches.

  Draker bridled at her words but Ratter, the smarter of the two by a small margin, reached out a hand to restrain him. “If you won’t talk to us he’ll send others who ain’t so nice,” he said in a rare display of honesty.

  Derla gave an annoyed sigh and turned to Livera. “You knew the little bastard best, Liv. Where’s he likely to be?”

  “He knows the sewers better than anyone,” Livera replied, smiling sweetly at Ratter. “Even you.”

  “They’ve already been scoured from end to end,” he said. “Has to be somewhere else.”

  “He was always going on about getting enough loot together to buy a berth on a ship one day. ‘Gonna sail away from this pit for good,’ he said.”

  “The docks’ve been scoured too.”

  “Is the Sojourner still at anchor?” Derla asked before going on to elaborate on the bosun’s proclivities. “Any berth will do if a boy’s desperate enough,” she added with an explanatory shrug. In fact, she had made a surreptitious trip to the docks at first light to ensure the Sojourner had sailed with the morning tide. By good fortune the vessel was destined for the Far West which meant she wouldn’t return to Varinshold for at least a year.

  “We’ll check on it,” Ratter said, shoving Draker towards the door.

  The larger man stayed put, his gaze lingering on Livera once more. “I got some coin…” he began, reaching for a purse on his belt.

  “There’s not enough gold or liquor in the world,” Derla told him then jerked her head at the door. Draker’s face darkened but he duly shuffled after Ratter as he stepped out onto the landing. “If I were you,” Derla added, “I wouldn’t stick around too long. Once Hunsil’s scraped this city clean looking for Frentis he’ll need to sate his anger on someone. I hear there’s profit to be had on the southern shore, if you don’t mind getting your feet wet.”

  Ratter met her gaze for an instant, giving a faint nod of a grim acceptance before closing the door.

  “That could’ve gone worse,” Livera said quietly once the footsteps had faded from the staircase. Derla went to the window, watching the pair of miscreants make their way along Lofter’s Walk, in the direction of the docks.

  “With any luck,” she said, “they’ll linger long enough to tell Hunsil the ship’s already sailed and flee the city as soon as they can.”

  “Doesn’t mean he won’t send someone else.”

  “No,” Derla admitted, sinking down next to Livera and taking her hand. “Best if we stay quiet for a while, no more fencing dippers’ loot until this dies down. No appointments for the next few weeks. Also, keep a bag packed in case we have to run.”

  “But Kwo’s got another client lined up,” Livera said with an aggrieved pout. “A Nilsaelin merchant who just bought a Royal warrant to trade in Varinshold.” She rested her head on Derla’s shoulder, brows raised and eyes wide in kittenish solicitation. “Merchants always know so much,” she purred. “And think of all that loot his ships will be bringing in. Silks and porcelain, Kwo said. He’s a big fish, Derl, be a shame not to land him. And Hunsil’s likely to pay well for knowledge like that. Make him less peeved, maybe.”

  “I sometimes think I taught you too well,” Derla muttered. “When?”

  “Next Oprian.”

  “Is this merchant a civilised sort or another of Kwo Sha’s deviants?”

  Livera’s slim shoulders moved in a shrug. “A man of simple tastes, apparently. Easily pleased.”

  “Alright.” Derla squeezed her hand. “But I’ll hire Gallis to keep tabs, just in case this fellow’s not so simple. And make sure to take your knife.”

  Chapter 3

  Derla spent Oprian evening at her studies. Aspect Dendrish’s Rise of the Merchant Kings had been recommended to her by one of her clients, a Master of Histories from the Third Order who agreed to provide tutelage in return for a reduced hourly rate. After wading through a hundred pages of overblown prose long on narrative and short on analysis, Derla concluded her client had been somewhat biased in his opinion of his Aspect’s work. Still, the volume contained some useful statistical tables on the growth of Far Western trade since the days of the Red Hand which she spent a contented hour or two transcribing into her own notes. Besides Livera, economics had been Derla’s principal passion for the past several years and their rooms were increasingly filled with her reference library. It was all greatly amusing for Livera. “What use does a whore have for all these words and numbers?” she had asked shortly after moving in.

  “The mind stays healthy longer than the body,” Derla told her. “And I’ve got no intention of living out my elder years in penury.” />
  She became so engrossed in her transcription that she failed to notice the hour until the faint tolling of the Midnight Bell beyond the window. Whilst their shared occupation invariably involved late hours Livera was usually capable of satisfying her clients and returning home well before the bell. Derla returned to her work for a spell but soon found herself pacing the room, nerves fraying with every prolonged second. After an hour in which Livera had signally failed to reappear Derla strapped her knife around her waist, pulled on her cloak and went out into the street.

  She tried the Red Anchor first, a small but orderly drinking hole she knew Gallis favoured for a nightcap or two on the rare occasions he had money in his pocket. She found it only half full of patrons too insensible to even make the effort of a cat call. There was no sign of Gallis and the barkeep denied seeing him all night.

  “Probably off climbing some rich bugger’s wall,” he said with a shrug, before leaning closer and adding, “Don’t suppose you’re working tonight, Derl? Been awful dull in the evenings since One Eye went on the rampage.”

  One Eye. She supposed the name was inevitable. In the days since Frentis’s disappearance Hunsil had embarked on the kind of purge not seen in the Varinshold underworld for years. Rumour had it well over a dozen bodies had been consigned to the depths of the harbour, most of them slain by Hunsil himself, who made a point of wielding the knife in front of the victims’ kin. It was also rumoured that he forced them to look into his empty eye socket at the final moment, commanding that they cough up any knowledge of Frentis as the ghost of his eye now had the power to see lies. Such was the fear engendered by One Eye’s rampage that criminal activity had died down to almost nothing. Whores and thieves stayed home and went hungry rather than attract the notice of their new king, which is what Hunsil’s purge had made him now.

  Derla ignored the barkeep’s offer and slid a couple of coppers across the bar. “Gallis shows up, send someone to tell me,” she said before turning and walking out.