Death's Reckoning

by Will Molinar

  Anders looked confused but nodded. Delora shrugged.

  “Sure,” Anders said. “Sure, yeah, you can trust us. You’ve been good to us before. What do you need, Muldor?”

  He told them, and they listened with rapt attention. Thieves understood the importance of information in any confrontation, even one of a political nature.

  “Course we will Muldor,” Anders said. “You helped us the best you could when we needed it. Giorgio, he, uh, said you were the best friend he ever had.”

  At the mention of the missing man, Muldor went stiff. He nodded his thanks and looked at Delora. She shrugged, seeming indifferent to the whole situation. “Whatever. Long as the pay is good.”

  Anders seemed put out by her obvious greed, but Muldor wasn’t stressed.

  “It will be, I assure you, Miss Delora. Take an initial payment now if you would.” He handed over some coins. “Now, what can you tell me with the state of things within the city council, what talk of restructuring? Anything?”

  Anders shrugged this time and shook his head. “Not sure what you mean by that, but I hear things about them wanting to get rid of people, people that were in it from the beginning with Castellan.”

  Muldor wasn’t surprised. In fact, he had heard similar rumors but had never considered he was one of those people. He sent the two thieves off, hopeful they would both find something out more specific, and that they would keep his name out of any discussion with others. Back at his office, sleep was hard in coming. There was too much left to think on.

  * * * * *

  “You’re lookin’ a bit pale yourself, Cubbins. Never thought such a husky fella like yourself would get so thin. Must be spending some time at the Madam’s yourself, have ya?”

  The jibe was followed by laughter, and the other men at the table snickered. Some slapped Cubbins on the back. He wanted to say they were wrong, but they weren’t. His appetite was gone, and he’d lost weight.

  “Blame yourself, Mikels,” he said. “You never invite me over for dinner anymore. Your wife’s cooking suited me well.”

  “Ha! Well, that it did, captain, that it did. But tell me this.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and squinted. “What’s the latest on all these strange happenings I keep hearing about? Grave robberies, all kinds of nasty things. Lots of trouble in town.”

  “Trouble,” Cubbins said as if the word had no meaning. “Sounds like your wife’s been telling tales again. I haven’t heard anything.”

  “Oh, c’mon, now! You can tell me.” He leaned his head closer and looked about the table, but the rest of the men were busy smoking, drinking, and conversing with themselves. “You know what I mean. What is going on here in town? All kinds of nasty rumors I been hearing.”

  Cubbins half considered telling him something in part because he wanted Mikel’s stink out of his face but also in part because the desire to tell another human being what he was going through was strong. But he was raised by a father that never said anything about his feelings and never a word when the rest of the family was suffering. So the police captain said nothing.

  Someone offered Cubbins a smoke, but he turned it down. It was difficult enough sleeping as it was, and smoking so late at night made him twitchy. The conversations of the table moved on to other, more mundane topics.

  Still, he found his concentration shifting towards the previous weeks’ troubles. Death and dismemberment, evisceration, mutilations, corpses, that was his destiny, all men’s destinies. The reaper would come. There was no stopping it; no point in fighting. There was no hope.

  Talk was all over town about what happened at the gaming tents the other night, and their table spoke of it as well. Many employees were kidnapped by a group of police impersonators. No one knew who was behind it, but Cubbins had his suspicions.

  It smacked of Castellan’s former thug, Jerrod, and Cubbins always thought Castellan had the maniac under control. Now that he was gone, things like this happened. He assigned a few men to go looking for him but not to attempt to bring him in. Jerrod was too dangerous. If they found him, they would watch him, and then Cubbins could decide what to do.

  At the moment there were more important things to contend with, like finding the morbid people that liked to steal bodies and slaughter men in the middle of the night. Cubbins kept hoping against hope to hear something, anything amongst all this rumor and speculation, which would shift him towards the solution. He felt his very life was at stake. To fail would doom them all to death. It was an irrational, unreasonable fear with no logical origin.

  “Hell of a night, eh?” Mikels said after they had left the tavern. He and a few others stood with Cubbins on the street. Mikels craned his head upwards and peered at the night sky. A deep shade of pale grey signaled the start of the dawn. The days grew shorter as summer equinox rolled in.

  “I used to put little Kyle on the windowsill on nights like this. He loved it. That kid loved looking at the stars.”

  Mikels grew wistful and pulled out a cigarette. Cubbins felt empathy towards the man. Little Kyle was dead past four years, taken as an infant by a wasting sickness for which there was no cure. There was pain in Mikel’s voice as he turned his head away and sniffed. To show emotion was a more difficult thing for a man to do in Murder Haven than win a bar brawl.

  Mikels turned back and smiled. “Yeah, good nights like this are to be cherished, Cubbins. Don’t forget that. Me and the missus gotta have you over again for dinner. Martha will fix you up good, don’t worry.”

  Mikels patted his arm and moved away to the other group of, leaving Cubbins standing alone. The police captain felt an unexpected lump in his throat, but he cleared it and shook it off.

  The next night saw much of the same, visiting street corners instead of taverns, listening, hoping, praying to hear a tidbit of news on the right subject, but nothing came. But activity on the streets was more varied than one might think, so he stuck it out there for a third night in a row. For those with no money left over from the betting tents or arena, or those too poor to drink at the taverns with regularity, talking and congregating on the streets was a common occurrence.

  Some of the whores, so prevalent this side of town near the shipping yards, worked the street crowds as often as possible, hoping to snag a late night customer once the taverns cleared out and people were more intoxicated. The girls were more desperate to turn a trick than normal.

  Several of them mingled with street dwellers. The girls were beautiful, young, and willing, everything a man could want, but times were different in the wake of the riots and naval bombardment. The powers that be were tightening their purse strings, and the common people suffered for it.

  One of the girls, a voluptuous brunette with long curls dangling over her oval shaped face, wore a red silk corset. He stepped up to Cubbins and smiled.

  “Master Cubbins. Well, well. So unusual to see in these parts this time of night. Been a long while since I’ve seen you about at all.”

  She squeezed his shoulder, and Cubbins tried not to frown. “The loss is mine, Gloria. You’re one of the Madam’s fairest.”

  She laughed, flattered with his honest words, so she flirted with him for a few moments about common things.

  “Wasn’t the weather warm tonight?”

  “Of course. This time of year and all.”

  “I love lying down in bed when it’s this warm, yes, all naked and rolling up in the sheets. How wonderful! How nice it feels when a cool breeze shoots through the window. And what does the captain like to do with his time? Yes, that sounds nice. And drinking with his friends, of course, what real man doesn’t like to share time at the tavern with other men, sure. A rugged man like you should do that. Maybe head to the docks-oh, you haven’t had much time the last few weeks, is it? Sorry to hear that.”

  Cubbins thought to take a night off and spend some time with Gloria. She was working hard to tempt him, and he had spent some of his hard earned cash with her before. But it wasn’t to be that night. Another
girl ran up to the area, out of breath and yelling for help. The people closest to her tried to calm her and make sense of her nonsensical ramblings while Cubbins worked his way through the crowd.

  She kept yelling. “We need help! Town Watch, where are they? Come to the Madam’s House! Please, we need help!”

  Some of the crowd dispersed, bored by the request for assistance. They wanted tales of slaughter. Fire in particular brought out the gawkers and onlookers.

  Cubbins got to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Calm down, Julie. Tell me what’s happened.” She didn’t answer right away. She was distraught, a very young girl, perhaps seventeen, and this was probably the most dramatic thing to ever happen to her. “Listen to me. Settle down and tell me what’s happened.”

  “They-they… these men, they came in. They were after Gi. Came in right before them. He acted crazy.”

  Cubbins stopped her. “Gi. Tell what you mean. Tell me who Gi is.”

  A few other girls came around her, trying to comfort her, including Gloria who looked at Cubbins with admiration.

  “Gi-Giorgio. He came in raving like a lunatic. Said men were after him. The Madam told him to hide, but they won’t leave. Please, you must come!”

  “Of course I will.”

  Cubbins found someone from the city watch that happened to be roused by the commotion and told him to run off and find as many police officers as he could and meet him at the Madam’s House. For some reason he thought this might be more than it seemed.

  * * * * *

  “How many times must I tell you gentlemen? I have no idea what you mean.” Madam Dreary tried her best to put on an air of professionalism, but her patience was almost at an end. “There is no one here,” she put her hand on the shoulder of one of her girls and smiled. “Of course we have customers here, but no one that matches the description of who you are after. We have a bevy of beautiful women for you to choose from. There is no need for violence.”

  The five men looked unconcerned with what she or any of her girls had to say. They glanced around. Two of them spoke to one another every so often in a harsh sounding language. Madam Dreary recognized it but spoke very little; enough to say hello, goodbye, and a little more, and these men spoke far too fast for her to understand more than the gist of their conversation. They might’ve been from Mermadon or some other southern nation, an area of the continent with sand and rock and little else.

  From what she caught of their gestures and bits of language, it was clear the men were both excited and confused by what they found in the whorehouse. Three of them did little of anything but stand and stare at Madam Dreary’s guards with cold eyed stillness. They were handsome, and Dreary wouldn’t mind getting to know them a little better, even with their stern demeanor, but they were also dangerous. They stood with their hands close to their belts. Polished scimitars sheathed at their hips.

  They were thick shouldered men with muscular chests and knobby arms that poked through their black shirts. The stubble on their dark faces looked as if it could cut paper, and their beards were sharp as shovels. She wondered what it might be like to be on top of them.

  A fierce, irrational fear of them struck. Their presence was fateful, harmful, and would hurt her and her girls. She became so frightened of them in an instant that it was difficult to focus on anything other than getting outside and away from there.

  “Would you gentlemen,” she said and had to control her breathing. “Would you gentlemen care for something to drink? There is a nice chilled wine in the back or some tea if that is what you crave. It is rather late, but we could get some goat’s milk for you.”

  The oldest one glanced at her with a stern glare. He shook his head and frowned. “No. Not why we come. Man is here, there is not doubt, good lady. He is very dangerous. Will hurt many ladies here. Important find soon.”

  Her security men, four of them on shift that night, were getting restless. They were well armed, well trained, and loyal, but she knew men better than themselves most times. When tempers flared, it was anyone’s guess what could happen.

  She put on her best smile and stepped closer to the older man. “Even if I believed ye, sir, and I am not calling you a liar mind you, but even if I believed ye, I would not be allowed to take you to him. We have strict codes of privacy here, and anyone within my House is protected. This is sanctuary. Please leave.”

  A shorted man with sharp eyes conversed with the elder, and Madam Dreary felt frantic energy creep into her mind. Stubborn men. There was an instant swell of heat in her breast, and the sudden desire for them to leave increased to full rage. These men had invaded her House, her home, her place of business. They would leave, that instant!

  The men became more animated in their discussion, with even the still and silent trio taking part. She pulled aside one of her guardsmen.

  “Go rouse more men, wake Paul and Julian. Tell them I want these men out of here now! Go!”

  The last word was spoken with such rage and hatred, the guardsman started and looked at Dreary as if her head were on fire. But he obeyed and grabbed another guard, and they took off down the hallway to other sections of the House.

  Madam Dreary took a few shuddering breaths, but it did little to calm her searing hate, and she glared at the men. Every inch the fiery red head she appeared to be. The men must have been watching the guards, for when they moved away, they pushed passed the girls and the other two guards toward the three separate hallways that led to the back rooms.

  Dreary’s guards looked to her, and she ignored them. So intent was her focus on the interlopers and their audacity. She and the girls yelled at them to stop, but they didn’t listen. Instead they split up in their search for Giorgio.

  Madam Dreary stepped in front of the older man while the others snaked around the guards and girls like fish swimming against a current.

  “I told you, he is not here! Damn you, get out of my House!”

  She lost all semblance of control and began beating the man’s chest with her closed fists. He looked shocked by her outburst, but he defended himself by putting his hands up and grabbing her wrists.

  But the lady was possessed. She scratched at his face and screamed in demonic fury, clawing thin lines of skewered flesh on his cheeks before he could get a hold of her arms. Madam Dreary screamed and cursed him to the abyss. She kicked and snapped her teeth at his neck, and the world spun in a manic dance of insanity.

  The Madam saw nothing but a blunted blur of fogginess, a haze of hatred. People yelled her name, the girls screamed in fear and confusion. There was an iron grip on her arms, hot breath on her face as the stranger tried to pull her down to the ground. Rough stubble on his cheek scraped against her flesh.

  She snapped at his nose like a cornered badger, but he was too fast. The foreign invader brought his head back and then slammed it forward, smashing into her face.

  The world went dark.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Cubbins, a few of his men found on patrol, plus several town watchmen entered the house of ill repute, there was a scene of chaos no one would have ever expected to see at Madam Dreary’s place. Not in a thousand years.

  Several girls shouted in fear or anger. The frightened ones held their dainty hands to their mouths while the braver ones stepped in closer to the fracas that enveloped the center of the room.

  Three men dressed in dark clothes with chainmail poking through around the chest and upper arms. They grappled with some of Dreary’s guardsmen. No one had drawn steel yet, but Cubbins didn’t like the looks of the curved swords hanging from their belts. They fought like they knew how to use them, and it could get nasty real fast.

  Captain Cubbins took in the entirety of the scene in scant seconds. The group behind him came to an abrupt stop and almost knocked him over as he stood motionless for a moment. He didn’t stay still for long, pulling out his police club; a thick, sturdy weighted cudgel that was well used and efficient.

  If no one drew a sword, pe
rhaps there was hope to end this without bloodshed. Cubbins felt a deep nervousness at that moment as if his life were at risk. This was the end. The guardsmen were in dire straits as the trio of men had them out numbered and were putting them down.

  One had a security man face down, his leg twisted behind his back. He snapped it hard, and the bone popped. The security man rolled to his back gasping in pain and held the injured joint as the foreign man jumped to his feet. The other two grappled with a guard and had him firm in a headlock. The aggressor looked not strained at all.

  Another man, older looking with a salt and pepper beard, stood in front of several girls. He pleaded with them to settle down and let the men do what they needed to do.

  Cubbins headed straight for this man. At least he was talking instead of fighting. The two foreigners let go of their opponents and turned to face the new threat with shocking agility. They started drawing their swords, but the older man stopped them. “No, my brothers! Show them the truth of our words.”

  Perhaps the older man recognized who Cubbins was because he stopped and made a formal bow. People shouted and shoved, but the Town Watch and police stayed busy calming the room down. A few moments later, Cubbins stood in front of the commanding gentleman.

  “I am Unri, good sir. There are two of my cousins, Beni and Yoseph. We are come from another land, travelers drawn here by a devilish creature. Track one of his agents here to this house.”

  He stopped short when two more men, dressed much the same with similar builds and appearances came into the room from an adjoining hallway. They went into defensive postures when they saw the number of men arrayed against them. Unri bade them to stand down.

  “We will not fight here, brothers,” he said and looked Cubbins in the eye. “Please, sir. If only you speak more with us now.”

  The Madam was injured, and after some fuss, the staff got everything straightened out for the time being. They all went outside, the five foreigners, Cubbins, with his few men, and the town watch in tow. They shuffled out into the early morning air, dawn rising up in the east.