The Holver Alley Crew

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  “Very flattering,” the woman said, finishing her frisk.

  “Now follow me,” the male valet said, opening a door that blended into the woodwork of the wall. A wide staircase, inlaid with marble tiles, led underneath the dining room. The three of them followed the valet down to the gambling floor. “I should remind you that tonight all tables have a hundred-crown minimum.”

  “Excellent,” Gin said. The man nodded and went back upstairs.

  The gambling floor was a sprawling room, with chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling and oil lamps along every wall. A great round fireplace drew Helene’s eye, the centerpiece of the room. Gaming tables littered the place: dice games, wheel games, card games, every kind of game. Along the far wall there were further corridors, girded by red velvet curtains.

  “Back offices, count rooms,” Gin said under his breath, nodding to the curtains ever so slightly.

  “You spot the mage yet?” Helene whispered.

  “Not yet.”

  “What shall we be playing?” Helene asked in a louder voice.

  “Over there,” Gin said, pointing out a table on the far side of the room. The table was right under several oil lamps, close to the fireplace, but still somewhat secluded from the rest of the room. Most important to Helene, there were stools and a cloth skirting around the table. That gave her a good place to hide her hands.

  Moving the casks had taken a couple of hours. Verci had been glad, though. It was better to have something physical to do, something to burn the hours they had to pass before it was time to run the gig. Waiting was always the part he hated the most. It made his nerves build, made his hands twitchy. Cort had been complaining the whole time. Greenfield worked quietly, nodding occasionally with Cort’s complaints. Kennith would move a few casks, then go back up to the carriage, do something up there, and come back down.

  “The horses are nervous,” he said the last time he came down.

  “They ready to run, though?” Verci asked.

  “I guess,” Kennith said. He grinned. “We never really did test that thing, you know.”

  “I checked over everything you built,” Verci said. “I couldn’t see anything wrong. You did a fantastic job with it.”

  “Thanks,” Kennith said. “Still there’s something to be said about testing things out.”

  “Field tests are fine,” Verci said. “I’ve had to do that many times.”

  “Makes me nervous.”

  “You two done yapping?” Cort asked. He put his ear to the stone and tapped it with a hammer. He moved over a few feet and repeated it. He gave a small nod. “We need to crack the barrels and drill some holes in the wall.”

  Verci opened up his satchel and pulled out two hand drills. One thing he liked about gigs like this, he could bring plenty of gear. “Where are we drilling?”

  “Where is Asti?” Greenfield asked. “Shouldn’t he be back by now?”

  “Should be,” Verci said.

  “What do we do if he’s not?”

  “If he’s not back when it’s time to roll, we roll,” Verci said.

  “But without him?”

  “We roll,” Verci snapped. “We’re burning time. Cort, where do we drill?”

  Mila kept her head down sitting on the corner. She held out her cap to each passerby, but didn’t shake very hard. Just enough to keep up the show. Eyes up, head down, like Asti had told her. She saw Helene, Julien, and the old man go in. They didn’t come back out, so it must have gone clean. She saw her various pips strolling about the street, trying to look inconspicuous. Some of them had taken up a street game of tetch, which was a good strategy, Mila thought, had it not been well into moonrise. Kids playing tetch in the street would keep a clear path, letting them flat it fast when the signal came. But it was going to be around midnight when that happened; kids playing tetch then would look strange.

  Nothing to be done about that. The porters at the door to the Emporium didn’t pay the pips any mind, and that was what mattered.

  She glanced back at the porters. No real change there.

  A constable strolled through the street. He paid no mind to anything, save a friendly wave to the porters.

  This night was going to drive her crazy with waiting.

  She heard a grunt and a scuffle in the back alley leading to the Emporium’s loading dock. No carriage had gone in. She risked scooting closer to the mouth of the alley to get a glance down it. The porters took no note of her. She craned her head around the corner.

  There were a group of goons dragging someone to the back door, a guy with his arms and legs shackled, a hood over his head.

  A short, muscled guy wearing Asti’s coat.

  “Blazes,” she muttered.

  She spun back around before the porters snapped at her.

  If she just saw what she thought she saw, the job was skunked. Wasn’t it? It would have to be.

  Blazes.

  She took the coins out of her hat, shoved them into her pocket and put the hat on her head. Only one way to be sure.

  Head down, eyes forward, she shuffled off until she was out of the line of sight for the door porters. Then she ran for the wine shop as fast as she could.

  “Double-tap!”

  Helene was impressed with this old man. He had won several hands of cards in a row, and had a pile of several hundred crowns of winnings. He kept betting high. Already one disgruntled minor noble had stalked off, having been cleaned out by the stakes Gin was setting.

  “That’s how the bull hits you,” Gin said, pointing two forked fingers at the dealer. He gave a twangy, nasal laugh. “Ain’t that the way, darling?”

  “Sure is,” Helene said.

  Gin turned to the player on his right. “Now my cousin, he kept trying to speculate in silver up in the hills, and I kept telling him, I told him, the only thing you’re digging up there is your own grave. Am I right? Am I right?” The other player nodded but seemed afraid to interrupt. “Sure, the silver can pay off big if you find it, but ‘if’ is too dangerous a game for this ranchman.”

  “You seem to like taking chances,” the dealer told him.

  “Cards ain’t chances!” Gin laughed again. “Man has skills he uses to win here.”

  Julien kept eyeing the room nervously. He hadn’t spoken since they entered the Emporium. Gin had told him he should keep his speaking to a minimum, but Helene knew how uncomfortable he must be. He hated new situations. She felt so out of place, but she clenched her teeth and kept her fake smile up.

  The player next to Gin threw down his cards. “Blast! Too much for me.”

  “Oh, come on now, buddy,” Gin said. “Can’t give up yet. Night is still young. Barely ten bells, am I right?”

  “It’s halfway to eleven bells, sir,” the dealer said.

  “Eleven bells?” Gin asked, his eyebrows raised. He gave a pointed look to Helene. “Did you hear that, darling?”

  “Still early. You haven’t even spotted your old friend yet,” Helene said.

  “I know,” Gin said, looking around the room. His eye stopped on a far corner. “No, it couldn’t be.”

  “What?” Helene asked.

  Gin leaned in to the dealer. “You’ll forgive me, boy, but I think I spot an old family friend over in the corner there. That is, um, Miss Ecrain sitting there with the roast pheasant, am I correct?”

  Helene turned. There she was, rail thin with stringy hair falling in her face. She sat at a table in the corner, gnawing on a piece of meat while staring out into the room with dead eyes.

  Ecrain was a woman. Blast.

  “Family friend?” the dealer asked. “I can’t imagine her having many friends.”

  “Her mother was a lovely woman,” Gin said. He turned to Helene. “Don’t you think you should go say hello?”

  “Really, dear,” Helene said. “She
was more your friend. I think you should do it.”

  “But you are the one who has her gift,” Gin said.

  “But I think she would take it so much better from you,” Helene said. “I don’t think she’d be as charmed by me as you are.”

  “You can’t be sure about that,” Gin said. “You should try.”

  Julien’s large hand suddenly thrust into the pocket where the vial was. “I have it.” Before Helene could say anything to object, he was already striding across the room.

  “There,” Gin said. “Now that that’s taken care of, the rest of the evening can proceed. Don’t you think?”

  Helene laughed her best faking, trilling laugh and wrapped one arm around Gin. The other hand she dug into her dress. She was desperate to run over to Julien and drag him away. What was he thinking? How did he plan to give her Cort’s concoction? She couldn’t let herself watch, or even think about it, or sheer panic would overtake her.

  With deliberate movements, the ones she had practiced all afternoon, she began removing the pieces of the small crossbow. She was going to have to assemble and load it with one hand. In the stable she could do it in five minutes.

  In the stable her hands weren’t shaking.

  “Nicked pair, sir,” the dealer said, flipping over his own cards. “Sorry, sir. Perhaps your luck is changing.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Gin said. “This night still has some luck, I think.”

  Mila ran to the back door of the wine shop, bursting through with more energy and noise than she had intended. She called out, “Asti? Asti?”

  There was a crash and a few swearing voices below her. A moment later she heard pounding feet coming up the stairs. Verci came up from the basement, his face red with anger. Mila had the passing thought that, for the first time, he really looked like Asti’s brother.

  “The blazes is wrong with you?” he snarled at her. “You’ve got a post to watch!”

  “I was watching it!” she said. “Where’s Asti?”

  Verci’s eye twitched. It was a small thing, but she spotted it. “He’s not here.”

  “I think they grabbed him.”

  Verci took a moment and then nodded. “All right. Get back to your spot.”

  “But—”

  “Get back to your spot, Mila!”

  “If they grabbed him, doesn’t that mean we’re skunked?”

  “The last thing he told me was, no matter what, drive the gig forward,” Verci said. “So get back out there and let me do my part!” He stalked back downstairs.

  Mila stumbled out of the wine shop. They were going to move forward without Asti? And Asti was grabbed by those goons? And she was just supposed to keep watch on the door?

  No chance she was going to do that.

  She was going to have to get into the Emporium.

  Chapter 27

  HENRIETTA NOTARA OF ERINGASH really felt she should get to be called Lady Henrietta. She had money. She had land. She had both from her birth, and they had been in her family for three generations. She had more land than some baronesses she knew. She certainly had education and manners. She just lacked a hereditary title, as her family had only come into land and money in the past sixty years.

  Her cousin Niya was now Lady Niya, thanks to marriage, a point Niya never failed to drum home at any opportunity. Henrietta would be damned if she was going to let Niya beat her out on a title. That was why she had set her sights on young Kesmin Jounce, to be Earl of Upper Kisan once his dismal father had done the world the favor of ceasing to breathe. Kesmin, despite his title, was lacking in both land and money, due to his father’s unhealthy fixation with gambling. Unfortunately Kesmin had inherited this trait from his father. He was obsessed with coming into this dismal part of Maradaine for the privilege of giving away the little money he had.

  Henrietta had the intention of humoring his vice only for as long as it took to get a bracelet on her wrist. As it stood, it had taken quite a bit of convincing to get him to leave that place while the night was still relatively young. She worried that she would have to make good on at least a few of her hinted promises. Enough to keep him interested, not enough to make him think unkindly of her virtue.

  Not until she had that bracelet.

  Kesmin wasn’t wasting time as the carriage trundled away from the Emporium toward his apartments. The ride would take nearly a half hour. Fending him off for that long would be a challenge.

  Especially with the carriage suddenly stopping in the street.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, pushing Kesmin’s hand off her chest for the second time.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, clearly with little interest in hearing an answer.

  “Why did we stop?”

  “I don’t—” He was cut off by a strangled cry from the driver.

  “What was that?”

  “Well, it . . .” he stammered. All the blood had left his face, and his lip was quivering. Was he really afraid? That wouldn’t do. A husband who frightened so easily was unacceptable.

  A muffled thud. A sound she was sure was the driver’s body landing on the cobblestones. Her heart jumped up to her throat.

  “Go see what’s happening,” she whispered.

  “I—yes,” Kesmin said. It was clear how little he wanted to open that door, but he was doing it anyway. That was a good sign. His hand only trembled a little as he pulled the latch. The moment it came free, the door flew open. A second later Kesmin was clutching at his neck as he was yanked forward, out into the dark street.

  Henrietta never even saw what had pulled him. Just, suddenly, he was gone.

  She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe. She was helpless with fear when someone jumped into the carriage, shutting the door behind her.

  Her.

  Henrietta had been expecting a large brute of a man, but it was just a girl. A dirty waif of a girl at that. Even more, Henrietta was certain she had dropped a few coins in this girl’s hat earlier that evening. There was peasant gratitude for you.

  “Take off your dress,” the girl said.

  “What?” Henrietta hadn’t been expecting that.

  “Dress,” the girl growled out.

  “This is Turjin silk!”

  The girl pulled out a knife from inside her bodice. “Get it off!”

  The blade looked dirty and sharp. Henrietta was certain she saw blood caked on the edge. The girl’s grip on it was hard and desperate.

  “Don’t—please . . . I have money, I—”

  “I don’t want your money,” the girl said. “Give me the dress!”

  Henrietta started unlacing the front. As she undressed, the girl carefully took off her own rags, all the while keeping her sharp eye and sharper knife close on Henrietta.

  “You don’t expect me to wear your . . . rags, do you?”

  “I couldn’t care,” the girl said. “Sit in your skivs in here.”

  Henrietta pulled the dress down, crumpling the silk before giving it to the girl.

  “And the shoes,” the girl said as she snatched the dress away.

  “I don’t think they’ll fit you!”

  “I don’t care what you think, give me the blazing shoes!”

  Street girls and their filthy mouths. Henrietta kicked the shoes off. The girl pulled the dress on. Sloppy.

  “Tie the laces properly,” Henrietta said.

  “Don’t tell me how to dress,” the girl snapped back.

  “Clearly it’s a subject you know nothing about,” Henrietta said.

  With one hand—since the other hand never dropped her guard with the knife—the girl deftly tightened the laces and tied them into place. Henrietta had to admit that was impressive. The girl had skills that would make her a good lady’s maid, were she not a filthy street-rat of a thief.
/>
  “Better,” Henrietta said. The girl jammed her feet into the shoes. Her feet were clearly too big, but she got them on. With a last sneer, the girl popped the latch open and stepped backward out of the carriage.

  “The driver isn’t dead,” the girl said. “He should wake up and take you home shortly.”

  “Thank you for that small kindness,” Henrietta said. She wasn’t sure what she meant by it. The girl bowed with mock extravagance.

  “Glad to be of service, my lady,” she said and slammed the carriage door shut.

  Henrietta couldn’t help but smile. At least the girl had the decency to call her “my lady.”

  Asti didn’t need to see to know where the carriage Miles and his boys had thrown him in had gone. Even with the hood on, even with the trick turns and the roundabout route, Asti wasn’t so spun around he couldn’t tell where he ended up. He knew they had reached the loading alley of the Emporium.

  Besides, where else would Tyne have him brought?

  They pulled him out of the carriage and brought him inside. He gave them a decent struggle, as good as could be done wearing a hood and shackles, but he really couldn’t do much to stop them pulling him inside. A few moments later they dragged him down some steps. He heard Miles’s hoarse whisper in his ear.

  “Normally, out of respect for the old days, I’d give you the dignity of dying here and now.” Miles leaned in close, so Asti could smell his hot breath. “Unfortunately for you, Mister Tyne wants to talk to you first.”

  So he was in the Emporium, on the lower levels.

  It wasn’t exactly the preferred way to get there, but he was where he wanted to be.

  He kept struggling as they dragged him down a corridor—he could hear he was in a narrow space—but just enough to make them think he was putting up a fight. He didn’t want them to think he was interested in them taking him wherever they were taking him. Then they might do something else.