He staggered over by the paralyzed toymaker and faced the five motionless phantoms.
“Please, listen to me,” he said softly. “I can’t argue that you don’t have every right to kill him. He took everything from you, and he deserves nothing better. I certainly can’t stop you if that’s what you choose to do. But before you kill him, please listen to what I have to say.”
He spread his hands palm upwards, illuminated by the cold fire of five ghostly lanterns.
“I want to apologize for the shameful way the law failed you, and I’m begging you for the chance to set that right. Yes, you have every reason to kill this piece of trash right here and now. But if you do, blood will have answered for blood, and that will be the end of it. It will have been a personal matter just between you and him. I can offer you something more.”
There was no motion or signal from the figures to suggest they were listening, or that they could even hear him.
“Give him to me,” the Captain continued. It must have been brutally cold that close to the toymaker, because the lawman shook as he addressed the phantoms. “Let me have him, and when he steps up on those gallows, it won’t be just because he killed you—it will be more than that. It will be because the law said your lives mattered and he had no right to take them from you. It will be the City of Khrem acknowledging that you should have had the chance to live your lives, that they had value, and that he has to pay a price in front of the entire city for ending them. That’s the justice you deserve,” he finished. “Please, please let me set things right and give you that.”
For a moment, the specters gave no indication they heard Drayton. The temperature in the street continued to fall, growing painfully cold, and the toymaker was shivering violently and turning blue. He would not last for another minute of this.
Then they simply weren’t there anymore.
They vanished without noise or fanfare, and Chappett slumped to the cobblestones with a groan. He shivered violently, but it was obvious he still lived.
With a sigh of exhaustion, the Captain dropped down on the cobblestones beside the toymaker. He sat, battered and bruised, bleeding from several cuts. Cupping his shoulder where the doll had grabbed him, Drayton appeared exhausted from his long flight from Nocce.
“I think we’ll just sit here until morning,” he groaned. “The Watchmen down on Ten Temple Street will be coming up this way at dawn looking for me. We’ll just wait here for them and let them fetch a coach for us.”
The other two Watchmen groaned their agreement with this plan.
They were in as bad, if not worse, shape than their Captain. I had actually fared the best of the four of us, having missed the first part of the fight, and having spent the last part of the battle at the bottom of the pile, merely trying to minimize the amount of times I got stepped on, sat on, or otherwise squashed.
Which was just as well, because I still had one more thing to do.
“Mr. Cargill, where are you going?” Drayton asked with obvious effort when he saw me limping back toward the square.
“I have somewhere I need to be, Captain,” I replied, “and I don’t have a lot of time to get there.”
I staggered off into the darkness, pushing my tired and sore body to go as fast as it could.
Chapter Eleven
“Is there any sound in the world feared so much as the word ‘goodbye?’” — Karod the Poet
It was nearly dawn, only moments from when the Haribbean priests would sing their greetings to the dawn, when I struggled to the top of Kragen’s Brewery.
Normally an easy climb, the aches and injuries of the night before made getting up here before dawn nearly impossible. Age might have had a little to do with it, too. It hurt in every corner of my body and being as I staggered over to the iron railing that still surrounded the roofline, and gazed at the brightening eastern sky.
The long night was over.
The Cordwood Killer had finally been caught. He hadn’t died by my hand, but would find justice at the end of a rope.
That had been good enough for Camber, Maddy, and the others, so it had to be good enough for me, too.
At least now they were finally whole again.
Whatever the toymaker had done to create Nocce had torn much of their very essences from them, leaving them in spiritual shreds that had combined to form a very dangerous and confused entity. But they had taken back what was theirs, and now they were gone on that journey to wherever ghosts go to find rest. At least, I hoped they were. After all this, they deserved it.
And now it was over, at last.
Seventeen years ago, Camber had come up here to try and say goodbye to me. Now my turn had finally come.
A small flock of birds took wing from their night roosts behind one of the lower domes of the Godsvault Cathedral in the distance. I watched them ascend through the arches and spires, their pale wings glowing against the reddish gold of the greater dome, like spirits rising to the heavens. I liked the idea that Camber and the others could go with them.
“Goodbye, Camber,” I whispered. “Please be well.”
“I will.”
It was just the sense of sound, not sound itself, but enough for me to wheel around at the railing.
She stood in the fading shadow of the gable, not even a real apparition but an impression against the lightening gloom. Yet it was still enough for me to tell the shawl was gone, replaced by her full mane of hair. She was smiling, but her eyes were shiny with tears.
“Camber?”
“You did it, Cargy. You saved me, after all.”
Her voice was just a whisper, a mere echo of actual sound.
And she had already started to fade with the brightening day.
“Camber, no! Oh gods, please don’t go. Not again.”
“I have to, love. I have to.”
“No! Please! I’m begging you! All I ever wanted was you on that caravan!
“I know,” her voice grew even fainter with the impending dawn. “I know. But there will be other caravans. I promise. One day, you’ll see.”
It wasn’t fair.
All I could do was watch the last of her fade, too choked to do anything but call her name one last time.
“Camber?”
“Goodbye, Cargy. You be well, too.”
And she was gone.
The Haribbean priests burst into song as the sun peeked above the horizon and flooded the rooftops and gables with golden light.
A new day had broken over Khrem.
Below me the ancient city got on with the business of getting on with life. People would be going to their jobs, shopping at the markets, arguing with vendors and haggling with merchants. Urchins would watch from the shadows, ever alert to grab a fallen fruit or roll of bread as they tried to put something in their bellies one more day. Older cutpurses would be wandering the crowds, looking for the unwary as they avoided the Watchmen looking for them.
None of it reached me.
None of it mattered.
I sat there on the roof and watched the birds fly east, out over the harbor and into the morning sky.
After all those years, and everything I had survived, I thought I had forgotten how to cry somewhere back in the dangerous streets of my childhood.
I guess I had been wrong about a lot of things lately.
***
The night crowd at The Amber Glass was starting to thin when Keris came in and sat down across the table from me. I had already ordered a large platter of skewered beef on rice and he started filling his plate as soon as he sat down.
We made quite a contrast…him smooth and dapper in his disguise as an eastern merchant, and me looking like the wrong end of a cart accident with the recent contusions and bruises turning all different shades of blue, yellow and green.
"Every time I meet you here, you look worse," he quipped in greeting. "I'm scared that next time you're going to have limbs missing or something. Are you going to see an apothecary about all that damage?"
"If I say 'yes,' will you please not come over here and start poking and twisting things?"
"Fair enough," he chuckled. "So, what is the occasion for this visit? Have you decided to renounce bookselling and go back to a clean living of thievery, robbery and vice?"
"No." I winced because it hurt to laugh. "I just wanted to visit and say a few things. The first of those things being 'Thank you.'"
"Thank you?" he gaped in stunned surprise. "Why?"
"For a number of things," I stated, "starting with you injuring Nocce's leg so we had a chance to stay ahead of her."
He spread his hands, his face the picture of pure innocence.
"Knock it off," I snapped, "I know it was you. I thought at the time she had injured her leg kicking down those doors, but after seeing how little damage that big crossbow did, and having time to think about it, that scenario just didn't work. No, somebody shot her with a crossbow that had to be every bit as big as the one I had that night. Somebody who had access to such a weapon, somebody who had seen those diagrams and had figured out to go for the joint with their first shot, and somebody who was good enough with the weapon to risk a difficult knee shot like that from a distance…probably from the rooftops. That all adds up to you.” I pointed a beef skewer at him for emphasis.
“And you’re not angry?” he asked as he chewed a piece of grilled beef.
“No,” I sighed. “If I hadn’t been so obsessed with avenging Camber myself, I would have asked you to cover me from the rooftops in the first place. I went a little crazy there, and wasn’t thinking clearly. That makes me a very poor excuse for a professional. Besides, like you said, she was your friend, too. You had a right to be there.”
“Did you fall on your head?” he inquired with mock alarm in his face. “Since when has being wrong ever made you so maudlin?”
I ignored the dig and stared down at my plate. I hadn’t really eaten much of anything.
“I saw her, Keris,” I replied softly. “She was there, just for moment…just long enough to say goodbye. And then she was gone. I think she wanted us to know she would be okay.”
Keris looked somberly across the table at me.
I could tell he believed me. He was the closest thing to a brother I had, and I knew him better than anyone. Unlike Chappett, he hadn’t been born what he was. Something had broken inside him a long time ago. I know, because I had been there when it happened.
For a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he reached for his glass and raised it.
“To Camber,” he quietly toasted
I raised my glass as well. “And to Allurd,” I answered.
I could tell the name of his long dead brother surprised him, but he recovered. Yes, there was something human left in my friend.
“And Delly,” he responded.
“…and Pitri”
“…and Po”
“…and Selken”
“…and Lari”
“…and Kela and Little Mol.”
Our dead.
We ate the rest of our meal in silence, lost in the past.
Epilogue
“Aye, things end.” she spat into the fire, causing it to burn green, “but it ain’t ever really that simple. People walk around sayin’ he or she is dead, or this or that is over, and the damn fools can’t see they’re still right in the middle of it.”
“The spirits are still with them?” I asked, then tried not to wither under her glare.
“Well…sometimes that too, I reckon.”
—Maltrair’s “Conversations with a Witch.”
The hanging turned out to be a big event.
Criers, running around town, recounting the horrors of seventeen years ago, had ensured a big turnout. And the turnout had been massive, filling Three Gallows Square to its very edges. The crowd was properly hostile, and Chappett had been pelted by a veritable storm of spoiled food and refuse as he had climbed the stairs toward the noose. There were hisses, boos and howls of rage as his crimes were read aloud to the crowd.
I doubt a single person there knew one of the victims, but I suppose a good time was had by all.
I noticed the little section generally reserved for the families of the condemned murderer’s victims sat empty.
I guess that should come as no surprise.
The working girls of Candlewalk Lane seldom had families, at least ones who would acknowledge them. Part of me felt I should have taken a spot there, just so somebody would be there to represent them, but I couldn’t afford to bring that kind of attention on myself.
Camber would have understood.
The crowd erupted in a roar of approval when the executioner pulled the lever. I stayed long enough to watch Chappett fall through the trapdoor, but I turned away before he had finished kicking.
I was there for Camber, and for the other four women too. I knew they were gone, and probably didn’t care anymore, but I just felt it would have been disloyal on my part not to have been there. Sort of putting that last period to the whole story.
I wondered if Keris lurked somewhere out in that crowd. I had told him we should see each other more often. We just needed to be very careful that he and my new friends never crossed paths—and I wanted to be sure he didn’t take it upon himself to “deal” with my new problems.
Such as the one that just caught my eye.
Across the crowd, I saw the new high priest of Talanturos, Eggors, leaning against one of the front columns of his temple and looking our direction.
Even at this distance, I found his attention unnerving.
I somehow sensed he knew I was looking at him, and started to look away when my eyes were caught by the black ribbons hanging from the sign of his next door neighbor. Apparently, the ownership of Balmir’s Southern Fish Market had fallen to a new generation, and the old fishmonger had passed on.
For a moment, something nagged hard at the edge of my mind—the feeling that I missed something important, something that mattered. I stared at the fish market in confused concentration for a moment before it finally hit me.
The night this whole thing started, Drayton had said that the specter’s first victim this year had been a fishmonger named Balmir. Apparently, by sheer coincidence, the same Balmir was Eggors neighbor.
I’m not a big believer in those kinds of coincidences.
A bit of motion caught my attention and I looked back over to the temple to see Eggors give a small wave in my direction, and then go back inside.
Somehow he knew I had just figured it out.
Later, the three Watchmen and I sat out on my upper patio, recuperating in the warm afternoon sun. This time of year, the mornings and evenings would soon be getting an uncomfortable chill. The three of them looked even worse than I did, having borne more of the brunt of Nocce’s assault.
In truth, they were lucky none of them had died.
Poole sighed while idly picking at the bandage wrapped around his head. The entire side of his face was puffed up, with his right eye swollen shut.
“Are you still moping over that goat?” Drayton snapped. The apothecary had put his arm in a sling, which seemed to irritate him beyond all reason. I figured it was because that only left him with one good hand, and it wasn’t the one he used to wield his sword.
“It’s just a pity, that’s all,” Poole groused. “He could have come in useful in several different ways.”
You simply don’t abandon livestock on the streets of Khrem, especially at night. The Watchmen had returned in the morning to find the goat gone from the plaza, probably roasting on a spit over some urchin tribe’s fire. During a bad winter, even dogs and cats would get scarce on the streets.
I can tell you from personal experience, dog tastes a lot better.
“I’m sure the Watch Commander will take getting a replacement under advisement,” Drayton sighed, “but I’m beginning to rethink the wisdom of Mr. Cargill loaning you those books. The heavens only know what crazy idea you are going to be having me go along
with next.”
I listened to the two of them banter, Heinryk snoring away in his own chair. They were in amazingly good spirits, considering the shape they were in. I suppose that’s just the way they dealt with narrow brushes with death. In their line of work, that only made sense.
My mind was elsewhere, though. I had problems of my own to figure out.
This entire case had been a setup.
Eggors and Talanturos had set this thing in motion, for reasons I just couldn’t figure out.
Yet.
Were we just tools to get at the toymaker, and Talanturos had been following his nature and going after a particularly infamous murderer who had “gotten away with it?” Or had this been an attack on me of some kind? A trap? Or maybe a gift for good behavior? Maybe it was any or all of the above?
I couldn’t help but have the sneaking feeling I had very luckily dodged an arrow that had been aimed straight at me.
But had it been really about me, or the Captain?
The Spider God had taken an interest in Drayton, and had even offered an alliance of sorts…one the Captain had wanted no part of. But I don’t think Talanturos felt that his acquiescence was all that necessary. I don’t know what the Spider God’s ultimate goal envisioned, but I had come to one conclusion I simply couldn’t escape…I had been caught up in something a whole lot bigger than me.
And I had no idea what it could be.
All that I knew was that the Spider God had plans involving Captain Drayton, and those plans had not originally included me. The Captain had involved me against the wishes of Talanturos, and that put me in a very dangerous position.
The appearance of that spider in the alley had been as much for my benefit as it had been some useless gesture to terrorize a murderer who had already been caught. What it meant still eluded me, but then again pawns weren’t supposed to trouble themselves with the meaning of it all.
And that’s where things were going to get problematic.
My challenge was going to be to figure out how to stay alive, and yet hide one very important reality from Talanturos…
The Ways of Khrem Page 24
