The Holver Alley Crew

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  Asti paced about, hands clenched in tight fists. “Not again, Verci. I can’t—”

  “Don’t say that.” He took Asti by the shoulders. “Don’t you dare tell me you can’t.”

  Asti shook his head, looking at the ground. “I’m not any better. Head’s still cracking.”

  “Look at me!” Verci grabbed his brother’s head, forcing him to meet his eyes. He’d be damned if he let Asti slip off on him now. Not in the middle of this. “Job ain’t over, and we’re skunked. You hear me?”

  “Job ain’t skunked until you’re pinched or dead,” Asti whispered. One of Dad’s rules.

  “Are we pinched?” Verci asked.

  “No.”

  “Dead?”

  “Not yet.” A hint of a smile crossed Asti’s lips.

  “Then we drive forward, hmm?”

  “Forward.” Asti nodded and stepped away. Now his chin was high, eyes full of thought. He stripped out of his bloody clothes, throwing them on the remaining body. “Where’s my pack?”

  “Still up on that roof.”

  “Go get them,” Asti said. “I need fresh clothes.”

  “Good,” Verci said. He went to the door. “Tell me you have a plan.”

  “I always have a plan, brother.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “We’re going to go see the Old Lady.”

  There were no lamps burning in the windows of the Junk Avenue Bakery. Several blocks away from Holver Alley, it was a quiet night. No panic in the street, hardly any stirring at all. The only sound was Asti pounding on the bakery door.

  “She’s probably asleep,” Verci said. He didn’t want to do this. Not in the middle of the night. Not without checking on Raych first. Asti insisted, though, his mind whirring like a clockwork box again. Verci would go all night if it kept Asti on this side of sanity.

  Asti shook his head. “The question is if she’s here at all tonight.”

  “She’s here,” Verci said. He didn’t have his ear to the ground like he used to, but if she had gone somewhere else, he probably would have heard about it. “Question is if she’ll see us.”

  “She will.”

  “She never liked that you left,” Verci said.

  Asti shrugged. “She’ll still see us. She likes you.” He pounded the door again. After a moment it creaked open a crack. A small man looked out through the crack.

  “What do you want? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “We need the Old Lady,” Asti said. “Is she here?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, come off it, Mersh,” Verci said. “Look at us. It’s Asti and Verci Rynax.” The man peered closer.

  “Sorry, couldn’t see you.” He added pointedly, “It’s dark. It being the middle of the night when you came banging.” He opened the door and let them in. “Been a while since you’ve been here.”

  Verci looked around the bakery as Mersh went about lighting lamps. He hadn’t been in the place for over a year. The place still smelled the same as it had a year ago, when he did that last job for her. A lifetime ago.

  “You two look awful,” Mersh said once he had a light on. “What happened?”

  “The whole alley burned down tonight.”

  “What?” said Mersh. “What do you mean? Which alley?”

  “Holver Alley. Every single shop and house on the east side,” said Asti, “From Ullen Street to Rabbit.”

  “Great blessed saints,” said Mersh. “How? Is anyone hurt, or . . .” He let it hang.

  “A lot of people dead, Mersh,” Asti snarled.

  “We don’t know all what happened yet,” Verci said. “Stay awake and start baking, though. There’s a few more hungry people with no homes out there today.”

  Mersh kissed his knuckle and pressed it to his forehead, whispering a quick prayer. Three knocks pounded from below the shop. Mersh went over by the oven and twisted a few hidden levers. A small trapdoor opened in the wall by the counter.

  “Sounds like she’ll see you. Go on down.”

  Asti crouched to enter the hatch.

  “Boys, leave the packs. And any weapons.”

  “Right,” Asti said, sliding the pack off his shoulders and handing it over to Mersh. He crawled down the hatch. Verci slid his own pack off, grabbed a lamp, and followed him.

  The passage was a narrow staircase, the ceiling not more than five feet high. The two of them needed to crouch low to work their way down, one step at a time. As soon as they were both going down, the hatch door shut behind them.

  “How the blazes does she get down this way?” Asti asked.

  “I don’t think this is the way she takes,” Verci said. “I’ve never gone down this way.” A sudden sense of dread filled him. “Asti, stop!”

  “What is it?” Asti asked. He put his foot down on the next step, and as he did it Verci heard a gentle click. Asti looked up at Verci. “Oh, sweet blasted saints, is this what I think it is?”

  “Stay perfectly still, Asti.”

  “She blasted well had us sent down a blazing trapped staircase?” Asti shouted. “Played us for rabbits?”

  “Shush!” Verci hissed. Slowly he moved down to the step above Asti’s and handed him the lamp. “I think it’s an arm-and-release. We’ll be all right as long as you don’t move.”

  “And what will happen if I do?”

  Verci gently touched the step. There was just a hint of quiver to it, barely noticeable. He reached down to the next step and touched it. No quiver, no give. It was stable. Stretching around Asti, he moved down to it.

  “Blazes you doing?”

  “Getting a better view,” Verci said. “Don’t move.”

  “Don’t knock me over.”

  Verci got on the lower step and crouched down to Asti’s feet. The steps were wooden, and Asti’s had two small grooves in the back that allowed it to slide down the quarter inch it needed to arm the trap.

  “What will it do when it goes off, Verci?”

  “Working on that,” Verci said. He could feel a slight vibration somewhere near him. He touched the wall. That was the source. He ran his fingers down to the base, where the wall met the steps. Sure enough, there was just a slight gap, a hint of a draft coming from the crack.

  “This wall will close in on us.”

  “We’re going to be crushed?” Asti started swearing profusely. Verci looked along the wood grain of the step. There were slight scrapes, ending two-thirds of the way across.

  “No, it doesn’t close completely. We’ll just be pinned. A few broken bones.”

  “Slow or fast?”

  Verci placed his hand back on the wall. “I’m thinking this is being held back by tension. Its natural position is to be closed in. I think it’ll slam on us.”

  “I’m going to kill that blasted doxy,” Asti said.

  “Just stay still,” Verci said. He tapped along the back of the steps. Hollow. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around one hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t have many tools,” Verci said. “Have to get into the guts of this trap somehow.”

  He punched into the back wall of the step.

  “Saint Keller!” Asti shouted. “Won’t that set it off?”

  “Hope not.”

  “Hope not?”

  Verci punched again. The wood cracked. The panel on the back step wasn’t very thick. Verci punched again. The panel gave way enough to get a few fingers inside it. He unwrapped his hand and pried the panel off.

  “Hand me the lamp.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Now you’re just insulting me.”

  The device was not very complicated. It armed when Asti’s weight snapped a small pin holding the release trigger in place. Once he moved o
ff the stair, there would be nothing to prevent the trigger from closing, and that would slam the wall on them both. “There must be a lot of counterweights in here somewhere to balance this out.”

  “That’s really fascinating, brother. What can you do?”

  “Take off your belt.”

  “Why my belt?”

  “Because I’m not wearing one.”

  Asti started removing his belt. “Verci, I really feel I have to tell you something.”

  “Please don’t get sentimental on me, brother,” Verci said.

  “I’m not,” Asti said. He handed Verci the belt. “I want to tell you that far too many of your plans involve removing clothing.”

  “You love it.”

  “Yes, very much.”

  Verci pulled off the belt buckle. It was a crude tool, but it would do the job. “Get ready.”

  “To do what?”

  “Very slowly, you’re going to remove your weight from the step, and I’m going to wedge the belt buckle into the trigger.”

  “This is your plan?”

  “This is the plan.”

  “I hate your plan.”

  “Good,” Verci said. He got the buckle in position. “Count of five.”

  “Do I remove on five, or is a five-count the pace of taking my weight off?”

  “Surprise me,” Verci said. “One.” Asti lifted himself up, the step moving just a hair. “Two. Three. Four.” The step moved up a bit more, and Verci pushed the buckle into the trigger. “Five.”

  Asti was off the step.

  The trigger held.

  “All right, let’s go,” Asti said.

  “Up or down?”

  “Down,” Asti said. “We go through that, we’re going to see the Old Lady.”

  They went down the last few steps carefully, making sure that nothing else was rigged. The door at the bottom of the steps had no handle.

  “Fake door? A staircase to nowhere?” Asti asked. Verci knocked on it. Hollow.

  “There’s empty space back there. Just don’t know what.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that belt buckle isn’t going to hold forever, and we want to get out of this stairwell.”

  “Good thought. Stand back,” Asti said. He braced his hands on the sides of the wall, and hit the door with a sharp kick. It came right off the frame. “Easy enough.”

  “A little crude, though,” the Old Lady’s voice came from the next room. “Come in, boys.”

  The room was a small study, warmly lit with several lamps and candles. Verci hated this room. There were no obvious exits, save the broken door they just came through. He couldn’t even spot the entrance he had always used in the past. The Old Lady made every way in and out a hidden passage. Verci darted his eyes about, trying to determine what in the room could be a secret lever, a hidden catch, anything that would open the way out. Knowing her, there was a good chance any door he found would lead to a trapped dead end.

  There were several soft chairs at a round table. The table was covered in loose papers. The Old Lady, Missus Josefine Holt, was sitting at the table. Slowly she gathered up some of the papers and put them in a neat pile.

  “Sit down,” she said. She stood up from her chair, picking up a cane and using it to support herself as she crossed over to a metal pipe. She banged it twice with the cane, and pulled a lever next to it.

  She looked much older than she had a year ago. Her curly bush of hair had gone from dark brown with a few single grays to having large streaks of white. Her clothes were simple: modest cotton blouse, practical wool skirt. No jewelry or other adornments. No one glancing at her would suspect she was one of the richest people in the North Seleth neighborhood. She was stooped slightly, as if she was carrying a heavy weight. Verci knew she had been reliant on the cane for years, but now it seemed far more necessary than ever before. It almost broke his heart to see her like this. Almost.

  “Why did you try and kill us?” he asked. Asti, he could tell, was steaming, too angry to speak yet.

  “Please, Verci,” she said as she returned to the table. “If that little thing had killed you, then you wouldn’t be worth talking to anyway. And put your shirt on.”

  “So that’s why you sent us down that way?” Verci asked as he dressed. “See if I still had the goods to get through a trap like that?”

  “I’m disappointed that you triggered it at all, frankly.”

  “So am I,” Verci said. “Careless and amateur.”

  “You do that on a real job, you’d get pegged for sure.”

  “Real job I’d be long gone by now,” Verci said. “And I wouldn’t have left my gear with a front man.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “So you passed well enough to get to see me.”

  “A test?” Asti shouted.

  “Don’t you scream at me, Asti Rynax,” she snapped. “You come to me after years, years since you decided to cut out on me and go straight. Your brother had the decency to go straight honestly, telling me to my face that he was out of the business. But you—”

  “What about me, Josie?”

  “There’s going straight and going square.”

  “I ain’t square,” Asti said.

  “That’s the word out there,” she said. “Could be a nice cover. Asti Rynax gets kicked out of Druth Intelligence and worms his way back into the old business. Gets in good and deep.”

  “That’s not it,” Verci said. “That’s not it at all.”

  “So you say.” She pointed to a cupboard. “Get a bottle of wine from there and pour us some glasses.”

  Verci went over to get the wine. Asti sat down at the table, leaning in to Josie. “You don’t trust me, fine. Trust him.”

  “When it comes to you?” She shook her head. “Not hardly. He’d walk through fire for you.”

  “Already did tonight,” Verci said. He brought the wine over and poured out three glasses.

  “You said some noise about a fire up there. What happened?”

  “Holver Alley. The whole thing burned down on the east side. Our shop, Greenfield’s shop, everything in between.”

  Josie whistled low and sipped at her wine. Asti picked up his glass and sniffed at it.

  “Problem, Asti?” she asked. “Something wrong with the wine?”

  “Not sure,” he said. “I’m trying to decide if you are paranoid enough to keep a cabinet full of poisoned wine, dosing yourself with the antidote every day so you can casually offer the wine to someone who comes down here.”

  “I am,” she said, sipping her wine again. “I got pinched and thrown in Quarrygate once. That was plenty. But if I wanted you dead you wouldn’t have even made it in here.”

  “When’s the last time you saw sunlight, Josie?”

  “I’ve got safehouses with windows,” she said. “I’ve even got a nice little garden in one.”

  “Charming,” Asti said.

  “Quite,” she said. “All right, Asti, drink it.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Drink the wine, Asti. Or get out.”

  Verci had enough of this game. He picked up his glass and drank down the wine in one gulp. Asti shrugged and did the same.

  “Can we do some business now?” Verci asked.

  “Well, boys, that depends on what your business is. Who do I have here: a disgraced ex-spy and a married shopkeeper? Or do I have the Rynax boys?”

  “Josie, we’ve lost just about everything,” Verci said.

  “And I need to know why you’re here. Are you two locals, standing with hat in hand for a loan? Or are you the sons of Kelsi Rynax, coming to me to get a gig?”

  Verci looked over to Asti. He would rather just go for the loan. He’d hoped Asti would feel the same way.

  He saw the look in Asti’s eye. Asti was here fo
r the gig.

  “You want to get back into the business?”

  “No,” Asti said. “But what the blazes else can we do? We’ve tried other things, brother, but this is what we’ve been bred for. This is our blood.”

  “Touching, Asti,” Josie said. “But smart. If I’m right, you boys already have a debt to Old Spence for the shop. Adding a loan at my rates would break your backs.”

  Verci stared at the empty glass. He didn’t like this. He didn’t want to go back to it. Raych didn’t want him to, either. Raych and Corsi needed a home and money, too. Food on the table.

  Josie was right, no matter how much he didn’t want her to be.

  A few good gigs, they could rebuild the shop, get back on course.

  “Only slip-and-grab jobs, though,” Verci said. “From cats who can take the hit. No blood runs, no hassper or drug deals of any kind.”

  “I don’t do those kinds of deals,” Josie said. “Those have moved to the big dogs.”

  “We won’t do them,” Verci said.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “I may have something for you.”

  “All right,” Asti said.

  She got up from her chair and hobbled over to a desk in the corner. She took out a small pouch and tossed it over to Asti. “Twenty crowns. As an advance.”

  “What’s the gig?”

  “I’ll send word with details. I’ll be hooking you up with a carriage-man to work it.”

  “This a three-man job?”

  “Don’t know for sure,” she said. “That’s what you do, Asti. You size up the job and figure out what you need. But I’ve got a carriage-man I want to check out. He’s swaddling, but he’s eager.”

  “You want us to train new blood?” Verci asked.

  “You’re the boys who need the work,” she said. “You take what I got, or find someone else who’ll even talk to you. I’m only doing it because I feel a little nostalgic about your father.”

  “We appreciate it,” Asti said.

  “I’ll send him to you at Kimber’s, around six bells tomorrow evening.”

  “How’ll we know him?”

  “He’ll say I sent him,” she said flatly. “And he’s Ch’omik, so you can’t miss him.”

  Verci was surprised to hear that. Josie Holt usually didn’t use talent that stood out in a crowd.