Dark Practices: Book Four of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  “I wonder who Butler’s buying from these days.”

  “Not Keela; she wouldn’t have felt us out about what we’re looking for if she was. She was fishing for an angle she could use to make money.”

  “She offered me a job.”

  “Really,” Arian turned and stared at his companion. “There’s something you don’t see every day: a retired Silver Eagle being recruited as a lady of the evening.”

  “I would start as an inn-girl, with plenty of opportunity for promotion,” Janna observed. “It’s nice to know that even at my age I still have other career options.”

  “I would be the first one in line.”

  “I’m sure you would. She also mentioned that five Marks would hire three good bully boys.”

  “That’s a good way to lose three bully boys,” the monk tossed his torch up in a flaming arc and caught it with his other hand.

  “I pointed that out.”

  “Then she can’t say she wasn’t warned. I think we’ll take some more chicken to Wing tomorrow, or maybe a ham; Butler’s going to be getting another connection for girls, and I bet the lad has an idea who travels in those goods.”

  “But Wing said that Butler bought teen-aged girls, not the children we’ve been told about.”

  “I’m thinking the two are connected: snatch the little ones, buy slightly older ones through an accommodating pimp. No point in re-inventing the wheel, as it were, there’s a well-established system here in the underworld for women and girls.”

  “So I’ve discovered,” Janna observed drily.

  “So, how would a healthy lass such as yourself like to make an easy ten shillings?” Arian leered, sliding an arm around her waist.

  Chapter Four

  The room came with an ornate charcoal-fired water heater of hammered brass with copper piping; Arian, freshly bathed, was shaving while Janna soaked in the long low tub, Rosemist leaning close to hand.

  “You know, I could come scrub your back in just a minute,” the monk observed, tilting his head back to get at the base of his throat.

  “Mmmm-humph,” Janna mumbled, half asleep, her long wet hair hanging over the rim of the tub.

  “Yes, indeed,” the monk leered at the drowsy Silver Eagle. “I do think a bit of back-scrubbing is just the thing...” A knock at the door caused Arian to hop half a step to the side, his hand falling to the hilt of his enchanted broadsword, head cocked to one side in puzzlement. “I wonder who that could be?” he said to Janna, who was wide awake and sitting upright, Rosemist in hand, the soap-filmed water lapping at her breasts. “Throw some clothes on, Janna my dear. Someone’s come to call.”

  A young woman in her mid-twenties stood on the other side of the door, a moon-faced girl of voluptuous build and clean shining blond hair piled in great gold coils on top of her head wearing a simple dress with a thick woolen shawl drawn close against the morning chill that pierced the open-windowed hallway . “Can I be of service?” Arian smiled politely, the naked dagger in his hand hidden behind the door frame.

  “I think so,” the girl nodded, her pale blue eyes flashing. “If you’re those ones what paid Keela to talk with Helga last night.”

  “That’s us,” Arian nodded.

  “Then you ought to talk to me. I’m Sheeny.”

  “Come right in,” the monk stood aside and swept his arm into the room. Janna, clad in a robe, sat on the bed braiding her hair. “Have a seat.”

  “Keela don’t know I’m here, and I want to keep it that way,” the whore announced as she sat. “She wouldn’t want me talkin’ to you.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Ten Marks to hear what I got to say, up front.” Sheeny folded her hands with a show of stubbornness.

  “That’s a good weight of gold to hand over without idea what we’re getting.” Arian shrugged, sheathing his dagger.

  “I’m telling you you’ll like it for the price,” Sheeny grinned knowingly. “And there’s not been a man yet who I said that to what didn’t later tell me I was right.”

  The monk tossed her two five-Mark pieces. “There you go.”

  The coins vanished down the bodice of the dress. “You know who I am.”

  “Keela mentioned you, yes.”

  “See, she grabbed Patch’s girls fast, put out money and favors aplenty to get them within hours of Patch being found, ‘cause she’s hoping to cash in the same way Patch had been, only it turns out that he wasn’t making it through the girls, but through the Butler, so now she’s short on money and we got to give up all the nice things for a while...anyway, that’s why she let you talk to Helga, so she could find out what your angle is. She’s looking to make contact with the Butler, but she don’t know how.”

  “That’s all very interesting, but not worth much more than a shilling,” Arian commented.

  “I’m just getting started. See, Keela has been tracking down the Butler since Patch turned up dead and she finished talking to that bitch, Helga. A few days ago I overheard Keela talking to a house-girl named Triana, seems Triana used to have a regular customer who had some connection to the Butler.”

  “What sort of connection, and what’s a ‘house-girl’?”

  “A house girl is a girl who works out of a house, a bordello; the connection I’m not real clear on, apparently the customer knew who the Butler was, or of him, that sort of thing. Triana hadn’t been real interested in it at the time. Anyway, she’s got this customer comes in regular as clockwork three times a month, straight work, nothing fancy. Then he stops coming for a month, and shows back up only now he wants special treatment, some dancing for him and then tying her to the bed, but he’s cash up front and a nice tip afterwards just like before. About a month ago the customer shows up all haunted-eyed, gives her twenty Marks just to hold him for a long time; Triana says she saw whip marks on his back and a real sick expression in his eyes. He leaves, and later she hears he hung himself at home.” Sheeny sat back with a confident expression.

  “That’s very interesting, but you’re still falling well short of ten Marks.” Arian kept his face blank. “I would say barely five Marks, at best.”

  “Ohhh, you’re one of those, wants a mile-long ride for ten feet’s worth of pay,” Sheeny sneered. “The other five’s so I don’t say nothing to Keela.”

  “Keela’s not someone we worry about.”

  “You know, she knows lads who, for just a few Marks...”

  “...will get themselves killed,” the monk finished for her. “The lady here and I, we kill for a living, lass, and not in an alley from behind. Where can I find Triana?”

  “The Velvet House,” the whore muttered sullenly.

  “Good, now what was the customer’s name?”

  “That’s an extra two Marks.

  “No, that’s letting you keep the ten you’re got and not telling Keela about this conversation,” Arian grinned at Sheeny. “How does your boss deal with ‘bad girls’?”

  The blonde tossed her head. “Erbert Priller.”

  “And why are you here?’

  “I tole you, for ten Marks ‘cause Keela’s short and I want...”

  “Wrong.” The word cut like a whip crack; Arian’s face had hardened like granite, and his eyes bored into the girl’s face. “If Keela found out you were here, or that you didn’t give her a cut on the money I’ve paid you, you would be sorry indeed, but instead you risked it. Why?”

  “None of your business.”

  “It’s my business because I’m making it my business; I might have to pay more than Keela, girl, but I imagine I could hire a few good bully boys who would enjoy an afternoon taking turns on a pretty young whore before they cut her throat and tossed her in the river.”

  Sheeny paled, then flushed with anger. “It’s her fault, Keela’s: she had to bring that bitch Helga in, give her the good room, spend all her time with her whispering and giggling instead of setting the bitch to making up the money she lost grabbing Patch’s stable so quick. We was just fine before
Helga came, just fine and I was pulling in enough, me and the other girls too; we were doing just fine.”

  Arian stared at the pouting face and reddening eyes and saw Helga, a slender wisp of a nineteen year old girl, knee-length nutmeg hair and bright hazel eyes, pretty and fresh. “All right. If you hear anything else, there’s more gold in it for you.”

  When the door was closed and latched behind the whore, Janna shook her head. “What a bunch we’re running into these days. Durek, by the way, is going to be livid at ten Marks for a name.”

  “Not really; Sheeny told us a huge amount.” The monk was scribbling in his ledger.

  “What did I miss? A merchant who liked whores killed himself; he knew the Butler somehow, but the connection is unclear.”

  “The merchant was a solid, no-frills man when it came to his women; he goes elsewhere for a while, and comes back with a taste for more exotic action, then finally comes back with whip marks and something he can’t live with. And he knows the Butler in some fashion, probably only by sight, but still there’s a connection. This comes across as a cult to me, specifically the Evening’s Gate, a pleasure-cult as they are mistakenly called.”

  “Or maybe his wife found out he was visiting a whore three times a month and left him,” Janna suggested, pulling on a pair of leather breeches and lacing them tight.

  “That’s possible; of course, we can find out more about Erbert Priller and see if the facts bear out the story. And take a look at the Velvet House, and talk to more of the Keeper’s contacts, while knocking off early enough to go dancing.”

  “Plus we need to arrange transport for ourselves and the children north, and sell off the stones,” Janna pulled on a clean flannel shirt and looked around for her vest. “And we need eight duffles and sixteen blankets, which we should get before we meet with the children tonight.”

  “So much for lounging around the decadent luxury of an Imperial city,” the monk muttered.

  The two Badgers trudged through the growing twilight eating kebabs. “This is but an appetizer, my dear,” Arian promised grandly. “We’ll nip back to the inn, bathe and change into our new togs, and it’s off to fine dining and the swirl of music.”

  “First dropping off our weapons at the Temple guard room for safekeeping,” Janna nodded. “What a day! I think we’ve done three laps around Teasau.”

  “At least, and we’ve still not sold the stones...trouble,” Arian slowed to a stop, carefully wiping his fingers dry on his trousers. The two Badgers turned so they were back to back as five men stepped out of the shadows in the otherwise deserted street and closed in from the front and sides. The five halted as both mercenaries drew their swords. “Hold, friends; let us pass, we’ve nothing on us worth dying for.” Arian kept his voice light and confident.

  “Arian Thyben and Janna Maidenwalk of Beythar’s temple and more recently the Phantom Badgers,” one of the men said in a conversational tone, a short man wearing an elaborate hat and carrying a naked sabre. “Why don’t the two of you finish your buying and selling and go home? What goes on in Teasau does not concern you.”

  “We’ll be the judge of what concerns us,” Arian gestured with his sword. “I’ll double your pay for the name of who hired you.”

  “Sorry, that won’t be possible.” The shadowy figure shrugged. “Professional form, you understand.”

  “Then let us get the killing over with, as I’ve plans for the evening and the Brotherhood’ll be asking us questions for at least an hour after we report your deaths.”

  Janna slid her hand up under her vest near the small of her back and worked at knots while Arian stalled them with conversation; finally the throwing axe dropped into her hand. With a sudden vicious overhand cast, she sent the axe whirling into the face of the nearest thug, dropping him in his tracks with a shattered skull. Diving forward, she used Rosemist’s full length to stab a second thug through the throat before the surprised man could bring his short sword to bear.

  Slapping aside the saber’s point with his dagger, Arian brought his broadsword up over his shoulder and then stuck downward at an angle, the enchanted steel catching the spokesman on the outside of his right knee with a full-arm swing, the sword’s edge biting through flesh and bone, shattering the joint. The monk hopped backwards as the screaming man crashed to the ground and another street tough lunged in, an old longsword held low and thrusting, but Arian leaned in, hooking the foe’s blade with his sword’s crossguard and pulling the narrow blade aside as he drove the point of his dagger through the man’s eye and on into his brain. Turning, he saw Janna decapitating the last man standing.

  Turning back to the leader, the monk found that the man had passed out from pain or shock, and was rapidly bleeding to death. Kicking the thug’s saber and dagger out of reach, Arian used the leather cords from the street-tough’s vest to cut the blood flow just above the shattered knee, and to bind the man’s wrists together.

  “Is he going to live?” Janna asked from behind him.

  “For the moment.” The monk accepted his cleaned weapons from the Silver Eagle. “Are the rest dead? Then I’ll stay with the leader here while you go find a Brotherhood patrol. Too bad I left my medical bag at the inn; I would have him awake and talking before they could get here.”

  Using his tinderbox, Arian lit a candle and searched the dead men and their crippled leader, neatly laying out their goods by each’s feet. They were street toughs, men who made their living inflicting fear and pain; besides swords of various makes and daggers or knives, all carried leather coshes filled with sand or lead shot, binding cords, and all the other equipment needed for alley enforcement. They also had a good quantity of money on them, proof that whomever wanted the Badgers dead had had enough means to pay well. His grisly task finished, the monk checked on the leader and then seated himself on a nearby stoop to wait.

  Janna came back with a quad, a four-man Brotherhood patrol, a few minutes later. The Brotherhood of the Trident are a holy order devoted to Varya, god of law, order, and justice, providing street-level law enforcement in all sizeable cities in the Eisenalder Empire, the Steading of Kerbia, and the Principality of Navio, while the Order of the Scales provided judges for the same realms, giving those nations a disinterested and largely incorruptible legal system. The Brothers were husky men clad in shirts of studded black leather and gray wool trousers, armed with thin, straight swords called dhas, and ghoads, blunt throwing clubs that resembled short-hafted axes.

  “Well, well, well,” the Brother-Corporal commanding the quad studied the corpses each in turn by the light of his buckler-mounted lantern, a burly man who showed the scars of many a street battle. “Tragic, tragic, four young men cut down in their prime, and poor Wortley here will lose that leg, what a shame.” The heavy-set patrol leader absently nudged the crippled thug with the toe of his boot; Wortley moaned but did not regain consciousness. “You say the five jumped you and you killed them in self defense?”

  “Yes, sir.” Arian kept his hands in plain view and well away from his sword hilt; Temple-men the Brothers might be, but they were also notorious for parting a man’s hair with a ghoad’s edge at the first hint of trouble. Caution was a virtue in their line of work, as was a healthy set of reflexes.

  “Brother-Corporal, lad, not ‘sir’, I work for a living,” the patrol leader advised, studying the bodies again. “Brother-Corporal Cadwallader, to be specific. Why would five hired bully-boys jump you?”

  “My companion and I have been asking some questions regarding missing street children on behalf of Dame Vinke of the New Start Hospice.”

  “Hit a nerve or two, then, did you? I know Vinke, looks down her nose at you like she was aiming a ballista. Now this one here, if I’m not mistaken, shows the wound characteristic of a small axe blow in his forehead.” Brother Corporal Cadwallader fixed a look of world-weary patience upon the two Badgers. “You know that lugging throwing axes around in my city is a violation of Imperial law.”

  “Yes, Brother-Corpo
ral.” Arian tried to look contrite.

  “Good. Lay-Brother Bede, you will have the report on this matter; keep it short and to the point, misadventure in the street, four dead and the world a better place for it, that sort of thing, just as I’ve shown you. Ah, here’s the handcart now, we’ll clear the street of the offal and restore things to normal.” He smiled gently at the two mercenaries. “Now I’m not one to deny an honest citizen their right to self-defense, and killing street trash is a good thing under normal circumstances, but on the other hand, I don’t really care for an unfashionably frequent number of violent events occurring on my watch, if you catch my drift. As soon as Lay-Brother Bede has gotten your information you will be free to go, but I would advise you to avoid this sort of thing in the future.”

  “Yes, Brother-Corporal.” It was all he really could say, under the circumstances.

  The attack changed things: they did go out for dinner and dancing, but it was in their normal sort of clothing, with their swords at their belts, and while it did diminish the evening a bit, they both still had an excellent time.

  It was midmorning by the time the two Badgers made their way downstairs and ate a late breakfast, but neither was of a mind to rush out into the day. Arian was leafing through his ledger of notes while Janna yawned and pushed a bit of bacon around on her plate. The sudden death of conversation in the inn’s common room brought both back to the present as nine members of the Brotherhood of the Trident, a full File, entered the room, coming in through both street doors and the kitchen entrance at once, moving with a purpose, hands on their dhas.

  “Arian Thyben and Janna Maidenwalk?” the Brother-Serjeant commanding the file asked, his men ready at either side.