“The facts are these: a Marienburg cargo ship called the Altena crashed into Riddra earlier today, causing the collapse of several houses and a number of fatalities. Both my Black Caps and the Suiddock River Watch investigated. There was a pitched battle between our forces and a gathering of heavily armed looters and scavengers, in which several maritime watchmen were killed, before we prevailed. At present the cause of the accident remains under investigation.”
The watch commander arched an eyebrow. “And you expect us to believe that?”
“That’s what will be in my written report,” Kurt replied, smiling despite himself. He hated all forms of paperwork and left the writing of reports to Scheusal and the more literate Gerta. Manann alone knows what they actually submitted to headquarters each month, as their handwriting was even less legible than Kurt’s own.
“I see,” the watch commander sneered. He nodded to his adjutant, who stood by the meeting chamber’s double doors. The underling opened these and ushered in Damphoost, the River Watch captain’s uniform still stained with blood and mud from the battle with the ratmen. The commander introduced him to the other captains, before inviting the maritime watchman to describe what had happened at Riddra.
Damphoost glanced at Kurt, who remained impassive.
“In your own words,” the commander growled.
Damphoost repeated what Kurt had said, almost word for word.
The commander’s face fractured into something resembling a smile. “And here was I led to believe you and Captain Schnell did not see eye to eye on most things. Yet both of you have given this meeting exactly the same report.”
“Captain Schnell and I only disagree on matters of opinion,” Damphoost replied. “When it comes to the truth, there can be little dispute.”
“So it would seem. Thank you for your time,” the commander said. “That is all.” The adjutant ushered Damphoost back outside, shutting the doors after him.
“I’ll keep you apprised of any further developments,” Kurt told the meeting.
“Yes,” the commander agreed, through gritted teeth. “Please do that.” He twisted round to glare at Sandler, who was sat opposite Kurt. “Now, perhaps the captain from Goudberg can convince us why we should give him the increase in manpower he seeks.”
Sandler nodded, all too aware of the angry undercurrent in his commander’s tone. “My watchmen have built up a network of contacts among the criminals of Goudberg—”
“What, both of them? Or have you got three criminals now?” Quist jeered.
“My district may have the lowest levels of lawbreaking in the city,” Sandler continued, “but I’ve good reason to believe a major incident is planned for Goudberg. I’m not able to reveal what that could be at this time, but trust that the good work my Black Caps have done will not be ignored by the Watch. I ask for a temporary—I repeat, temporary—increase in numbers for my district.”
“If any area needs more watchmen, it’s Suiddock,” Kurt cut in. “I’ve got the Thieves’ Guild plus the stevedores and teamsters on my doorstep. Half the crimes committed in Marienburg can be traced back to members from those organisations.”
“There are more important considerations than petty crime,” Sandler snapped.
“You’re calling murder, robbery and smuggling petty crime?” Kurt asked, unable to keep the disbelief from his voice. “What crimes do you have in Goudberg that are so much more important? Please, enlighten us!”
Sandler opened his mouth to respond, but the commander cut short the debate with his wooden gavel, slamming it down on the table. “Enough. Until Captain Sandler is able to offer more specifics, Black Cap allocations shall remain as they are now. That is all. We meet again seven days after Geheimnistag, barring emergencies. Dismissed.”
Sandler stormed from the chamber, his fellow captains Wout and Rottenrow hurrying after him. Kurt made sure he timed his own departure to coincide with that of Quist. They had clashed in the past, but the captain from Noordmuur was becoming something of an ally in these meetings. “Thanks for what you said,” Kurt muttered.
“Only speaking my mind,” Quist replied. Kurt waited until they were out in the corridor and clear of the other captains before asking what his colleague thought of Sandler’s request for more men. “Typical showboating, that’s gorgeous Georges all over,” said Quist. “Claims there’s some great threat to get him more men, increase his powerbase. Two meetings later he’d say the threat was averted thanks to the extra Black Caps, and they should become a permanent presence in his district.”
“He seemed angry enough when we challenged him.”
“Well, I don’t trust him. Sandler’s hiding something, always has been. I’ve heard whispers his wife was a secret Chaos worshipper before she killed herself.”
Kurt frowned. “How could he still be a captain, if that was true?”
Quist rubbed the fingers of his left hand together. “A substantial donation to the commander’s favourite charity from the wife’s family and it all went away. Trust me, there’s something rotten about Captain Georges Sandler.”
Belladonna staggered through the streets of Suiddock, unable to see the way for fog, her boots slipping and sliding on the greasy cobbles. The corpse was closing on her, and it had been joined by three others, all three risen from the watery grave of the Altena. The dead sailors were stalking her, playing with her. She rounded a corner, thinking there might be sanctuary ahead, only to find one of the corpses had got there ahead of her somehow. Belladonna couldn’t shake the feeling she was going in circles.
She tried hammering on doors and windows, but nobody answered, nobody came to her aid. She was on her own, alone and terrified. All her bravado about facing death without fear, of knowing what lay ahead for her—that was easily said in the light of day when you were warm and safe. But here in the mist-shrouded darkness, with death at her heels and greasy clouds of fog choking the breath from her body, Belladonna realised how flawed her bravado was. She’d been a fool and now she was going to die for it. Sweet Shallya, were they going to do to her what had been done to them? Stuff her in one of those pottery urns, breaking her bones and crushing the life from her lungs? Seal her inside forever as the final torment? Anything but that, she whispered, anything but that.
Holismus was running after Belladonna when his brother appeared out of the mist. Belladonna had fled into the fog, screaming in terror at something Holismus had not seen. He went after her, fearful she would come to harm. Holismus called for Silenti to follow him but heard no reply. Every time he got close to Belladonna she gave him the slip. He kept calling out her name, but it sounded strange to his ears, as if somebody else was speaking through his lips. Then Joost lurched into his path and Holismus forgot all about the other Black Caps. He had his own nightmare to confront.
Joost had been captain at Three Penny Bridge before Chaos addled and mutated him. Long thought drowned, Joost had reappeared to haunt and torment his younger brother when Holismus was assigned to help reopen the watch station in Suiddock. The witch hunters took Joost away to purge the heretic taint from his fractured body, but he had escaped to the marshes south of the city, where fen loonies roamed the forbidding wasteland. Holismus thought that the best place for his brother, and hoped never to see him again.
But now Joost appeared in front of him, large as life and twice as ugly as before. The mutating power of Chaos had rendered the fugitive all but unrecognisable. It was only the last glimmer of humanity still lingering in those eyes and the sibilant rasp of Joost’s familiar voice that proved his identity to Holismus. “Why do you run, little brother? You cannot hope to escape the same fate as me. It is inevitable, Lothar. It is your destiny to become like me. Don’t fight against your fate—embrace it.”
“Keep away from me,” Holismus warned him. “Don’t touch me!”
“Why not? Don’t you care about me anymore, little brother?”
“Stop calling me that,” Holismus spat. “You stopped being my brother when
you surrendered yourself to Chaos. You shamed the family, you shamed us all.”
“Let me make it better,” Joost hissed, reaching out a blood-smeared hand. “Let me help you become like me. Let the sweet taste of Chaos claim your flesh and your soul.”
“Never!” Holismus sank to his knees on the cobbles, sobbing. “I’ll die first.”
It was a smell that lured Silenti away, a familiar scent on the air from his childhood. Every Festag after sundown his mother would boil water for the copper bathtub that hung on a hook behind the kitchen door. Then all the Silenti children would take it in turns to get scrubbed clean, washing away the grime accumulated from Wellentag to Angestag. First one in always complained the water was too hot, last one out always complained the water was too cold and dirty. So Mama Silenti kept a roster of whose turn it was next to wash first. As one wet child jumped out and their replacement jumped in, she sprinkled a handful of salts and dried herbs into the water to keep it smelling sweet, no matter how grubby the liquid might have become.
That was the smell that tugged at the Black Cap, the scent of dried herbs and bathing salts, an aroma so rich and powerful it transported him back to that room, that time, that place. Silenti wandered through the streets of Suiddock, seeing his brothers and sisters lining the cobbles. One by one they had died, taken by a pox that had no cure. Nine out of ten children died that year, but little Alfons had been the lucky one, the sole survivor. Even his mother succumbed to the pox, though most adults were immune. Not her. She perished in bed, pus-dripping sores blistering her skin, her eyes weeping blood.
She waited for him now, looking the same as the day she died, her face still creased by pain. Behind her was that same copper bathtub, steam rising from its surface to form a delicious mist in the air, the aroma of salts and dried herbs heavy and warm. “It’s your turn to go first, Alfons,” she cooed, though crimson tears stained her sunken, pock-marked cheeks. “I filled it for you specially.”
Silenti stumbled past her to the edge of the bathtub and looked inside it. But the liquid inside was boiling hot blood, not water. It bubbled and gurgled, releasing a fresh waft of aroma into the air. Silenti peered up at his mother. She seemed to tower over him, her arms broad as those of any stevedore. “I don’t want to,” he said.
“But it’s your turn, Alfons,” she insisted. “You’ve got to wash behind your ears.”
Silenti shook his head, but to no avail. A grip of iron clenched itself round the back of his neck and pressed his face down towards the bubbling bathtub of blood. The nearer he got to the surface, the hotter his features became. The liquid was boiling, hot enough to scald the skin from his face. Silenti tried to struggle, tried to fight back, but he was helpless in his mother’s grasp. That was how she’d always made him feel, utterly helpless. He’d been happy the day she died, free from her grasp at last. Now she was making him suffer for wishing her dead. Now she was killing him as revenge. Silenti stopped fighting as his face plunged towards the boiling bath of blood. He deserved to die.
CHAPTER FIVE
The watch commander thought his nephew should arrive at Three Penny Bridge in style, and arranged a private carriage to take Potts to Suiddock, even allowing Kurt to share the transportation. But the horse-drawn carriage skidded to a halt halfway across the mighty Hoogbrug. Kurt climbed out to see what was wrong. “It’s this fog; got the horses well and truly spooked,” the gruff man at the reins replied. “Sorry, but they won’t go another step across this bridge.”
Getting any driver to go west of the river was never easy in Marienburg, but for once Kurt could understand the objection. There’d been a thin mist in the air when they’d left City Watch headquarters, but nothing untoward for the time of year. Kurt had once escorted a prisoner from Doodkanaal all the way to Noordmuur. The western district basked in bright summer weather, but the temperature was half that further north after a sea mist rolled in, blotting out the sun. This time the conditions were reversed. The fog was so dense ahead of the carriage he couldn’t make out anything more than a stone’s throw beyond the unhappy horses. The cloud extended as far as the eye could see both north and south away from the bridge.
“There’s nothing for it,” Kurt said. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
“Good,” Potts replied, emerging from his uncle’s carriage. “I’d rather walk. It’ll give me a chance to see some of the district first-hand.”
Kurt smiled. He’d done much the same thing on his way to assume the captaincy at Three Penny Bridge. Perhaps Potts wasn’t the fool his uncle thought. “I’ll doubt you’ll see much of anything tonight. I’ve had pea and ham soup that was clearer than this mist, and a healthier looking colour.” He pressed coins into the driver’s hand, more than enough to pay for the journey, before striding west into the mist with Potts. They’d not gone more than ten paces when the fog closed in around them, blotting out everything in front and behind. The two men kept going, both wishing they’d thought to bring a lantern to light their way. It was a pleasant surprise when two glowing lights appeared in front of them, both held by men in dark caps. Kurt recognised them as Andries and Wijk, watchmen assigned to policing the curfew on the Hoogbrug after dark. It wasn’t easy to tell the pair apart when both had kerchiefs tied round their faces, hiding all but their eyes. Andries’ gruff Bretonnian accent gave him away.
“Captain Schnell?” Andries asked. “What are you doing out in this?”
“Trying to get home,” Kurt replied, introducing his new watchman to them. “Why have you two got your mouths and noses covered?”
“Stops the visions,” Wijk muttered.
“Visions?”
Andries nodded. “People who stay out in the fog too long start seeing things, it plays tricks with their reason. Happens when you breathe in too much of this mist.”
“Good to know,” Kurt said. “Can we borrow a lantern? It’ll take us forever to reach the station otherwise. I’ll send one of my men back with it at sunrise.”
The Black Caps agreed, Wijk surrendering his lantern. Kurt and Potts pressed on, both holding a tunic sleeve over their mouth and nose to filter out the fog. It took them twice the usual time to reach the western end of the bridge, such was the density and bone-numbing chill of the mist surrounding them. Kurt paused to look around before pressing on. “Hope none of my men are still out in this.”
Belladonna ran smack into a wall of stone, and was thrown backwards on to greasy, wet cobbles. She sprawled there gasping for breath, winded by the double impact. She could hear one of the creatures coming for her, closing in. Exhausted and spent, Belladonna twisted round to face her fears. Instead she saw Holismus crawling towards her, tears and snot streaming down his face, eyes bulging with stark terror.
“What happened? Where’s Silenti?” The watchman stared at her, unable to reconcile the words with what he saw. “Holismus, it’s me—Belladonna!”
He blinked, and recognition warmed his features. “Belladonna?”
“Yes, that’s right.” She scrambled over to him, helping her fellow Black Cap to his feet. “What were you trying to get away from?”
“My brother, Joost.” Holismus glanced over a shoulder, checking to make sure the Chaos-crazed sibling was not close by. “He came back for me.”
“Well, he’s not there now.” She slid a comforting arm round his shoulders. “I kept seeing the dead crewmen from the Altena. I thought they wanted to shove me into one of those Lustrian pottery urns. It felt so real…” Belladonna looked about, trying to make sense of their surroundings. The two of them had wandered into an alleyway beside a tall stone building. There were lights inside, visible through the distinctive shaped windows. “I know this place. It’s the Golden Lotus Dreaming House, the drug den.”
“How’d we end up here?” Holismus wondered.
“I don’t know.” Belladonna breathed in, taking a deep lungful of air. The sickly sweet smell of the drugs consumed inside the Golden Lotus habitually seeped from the building, so mu
ch so nearby citizens crossed the road when passing to avoid being affected by the vapours. But Belladonna found the aroma easing away her fear and terror, the belief she was being followed, even stalked. “It must be something in the fog,” she realised.
Holismus looked at her, one eyebrow raised.
“We’ve been seeing things, hearing things that aren’t here. The dead crewmen we found in those urns are at the bottom of the sea, trapped inside the wreck of the Altena. They can’t have been hunting me. And your brother is still out with the fen loonies, there’s no way he could have got back to Suiddock—not in this weather.”
“It was our minds, playing tricks on us?”
“Exactly,” Belladonna replied, smiling.
Holismus wasn’t so relieved. “We’ve got to find Silenti. Manann knows what he’s imagining is happening to him, but it can’t be good!”
With a lantern to light the way and cloth over their mouths to stave off the worst of the mist, Kurt and Potts made decent time to Three Penny Bridge. Curfew kept most law-abiding citizens at home after dark, and the sinister, unnatural mist had driven the rest back to wherever they lived and slept. The captain and his new recruit found the station ablaze with light, with more than a dozen people locked in the central holding cells, most of them screaming, ranting or raving.
Scheusal was hunched over the desk sergeant’s table, gently snoring. Kurt gave his sergeant a nudge in the ribs. “Not now, Gerta—I’m only human, you know.”
The captain cleared his throat. “Attention!”
Scheusal snapped awake, straightening up and saluting in one swift movement. He relaxed on seeing his captain’s wry smile, and the bemused young man at Kurt’s side. “How was your meeting with the watch commander?”
“I’ve had worse. This is Erasmus Potts, a new watchman for our ranks.” Kurt leaned close enough to whisper in Scheusal’s ear. “He’s the commander’s nephew, but best the others don’t know that. Understand?” The sergeant nodded and smiled.
[Marienburg 02] - A Massacre in Marienburg Page 7
