by Conrad Mason
“Curse the League,” snapped an elf farther down the table. “How dare they presume to—”
“But it would be foolish to—”
“I’ll say what I like! You can’t tell me to—”
The governor pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed at his brow. It was an all too familiar argument, and the timing was exceptionally bad.
Thankfully, at that moment, the doors to the dining room swung open and an unusually portly elf in Cockatrice Company livery entered. It was Governor Wyrmwood’s butler. The voices died down almost at once.
“Your Honor,” announced the butler. “His Grace, the Duke of Garran, ambassador of the League of the Light, has arrived.”
There was a shift in the room. All trace of the bickering disappeared instantly. Instead, there was a tense, expectant silence.
“Very good,” said the governor, his voice wavering only a fraction. “Show him in, will you?”
And before the butler had a chance to reply, the Duke of Garran glided into the room.
The Cockatrice merchants couldn’t help themselves—they stared. The duke was a small man, with pink skin so perfect and flawless that it looked like it belonged to a child. He was dressed in white, from the white satin tricorne that he handed to the butler to his white silk stockings and white leather shoes. Even his eyes seemed to have no trace of color. They swept around the room, quietly judging everyone and everything within sight.
Nothing but those eyes seemed to fit with the dreadful rumors surrounding the Duke of Garran. He collects the severed heads of trolls, the governor told himself. He hangs goblins upside down for days, just for fun. He has baby imps thrown on bonfires.
“Good evening, Your Grace,” he said.
The Duke of Garran moved his lips into the exact shape of a smile, without actually smiling.
“Thank you, Mr. Wyrmwood.” His voice was soft, gentle, and cold. “I hope you have not been waiting long?”
“Not at all,” the governor said quickly, before Skelmerdale could interrupt. “Please, let us sit.”
The Cockatrice merchants gratefully pulled back their chairs and collapsed into them. Not one of them was used to standing up for as long as the hour they’d had to wait. Normally, it was other, less important people who waited for them.
“Well, Your Grace,” said the governor, tucking his napkin into his collar and finally beginning to relax. “I must say, it is a truly splendid honor to welcome you to Port Fayt, and to my dear home, Wyrmwood Manor. I do hope you find it to your taste. It was my great-great-grandfather who conceived of the original design, you know. The exterior is, of course, based on the castle of Vorlak the Strong, in the Northern Wastes, as I’m sure you’ll have noticed, and …”
His words died as he looked up. Everyone had sat down—except the Duke of Garran. Several of the merchants were exchanging anxious glances.
Governor Wyrmwood forced himself to smile.
“Won’t you, er, have a seat?”
“Unfortunately, I cannot stay for dinner,” said the duke. His colorless eyes flickered, momentarily but obviously, toward a pair of troll merchants seated near his end of the table, and for an instant he looked as if he had swallowed a morsel of rotten fish. “I must return to the Old World on the next tide. Urgent business.”
“But the sanctions,” said Mr. Rotheringham, his voice a little higher than usual. “I mean to say, I understood that we were going to be discussing the League of the Light’s sanctions against Port Fayt.”
The duke turned his glassy stare on the imp.
“There is nothing to be discussed. The trade sanctions will not be lifted. Not without considerable evidence that the Cockatrice Company, the Redoubtable Company, and the Morning Star Company are all fully committed to the way of the Light.”
“The way of the Light,” said Skelmerdale, in a tone that was dangerously close to a growl. “Are you referring to your purges? To the removal of so-called demonspawn wherever you find them? To the wholesale slaughter of goblins, trolls, and ogres by the League’s troops? Heads displayed on spikes? Barbarism not seen since the Dark Age?”
“I believe I will take my leave of you now, gentlemen,” said the duke, ignoring what had just been said.
“Good riddance,” roared Skelmerdale. He stood, towering over the table, his face purple with anger. The other merchants stared at him in horror. “Port Fayt will never submit to the way of the Light. We are not murderers here, Your Grace.”
“Sit down,” pleaded the governor desperately. “Please, Mr. Skelmerdale, sit down. I apologize, Your Grace, the Festival of the Sea is such a stressful period for all of us … I’m sure you can understand …”
“I understand.”
“Um, do you? I mean, excellent, well, perhaps we could put this all behind us, and—”
“I understand perfectly. And I will not forget this, Mr. Skelmerdale.” The Duke of Garran tapped his head with a plump pink finger. “I have a very good memory. Very good indeed.”
He turned on his heel and glided out of the room, taking his white satin hat from the butler as he went.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
“Well?” said Skelmerdale at last. “It’s true, isn’t it? The League will be at odds with us so long as Port Fayt allows all people to live here peacefully.”
“Perhaps,” said the governor, “a little more delicacy might have been appropriate …”
“Delicacy?” scoffed the elf who had spoken up earlier. “The League has never been delicate with us. What about the assassination of Governor Mandeville?”
Everyone seemed to stiffen a little at the words. Skelmerdale and Rotheringham cast anxious glances at the governor.
“We have never repaid the League for that,” the elf went on. “You, of all people, Your Honor, should remember—”
“ENOUGH!” bawled the governor, making several merchants flinch. His head felt like it was exploding now, and he clutched at it, trying to control the pain. “That’s quite enough. The Mandeville Plot was a long time ago, Mr. Bentham, and I had hoped that we had put it behind us. In future, I would prefer it if you did not mention the matter.”
The table had gone very quiet again. The elf opened his mouth to reply and then thought better of it. Some merchants fiddled with their cutlery. Others became very interested in the tapestries on the walls. A few stared intently at their empty plates.
The governor stood. He felt suddenly weary, and embarrassed.
“Thank you, gentlemen. I, er, I hope you will forgive my little, um, outburst. And please excuse me; I will not join you for dinner. I find I am not hungry.”
He dropped his unused napkin on the tablecloth and practically fled from the room, feeling the stares of the merchants every step of the way and almost colliding with the servants bringing in the first course—a large silver tureen of soup.
Grubb’s eyelids blinked open, then closed again.
There were two people in the room with him now. They were talking to each other, and their voices came to him distantly, as if through a fog. He dozed, half listening.
“Do you understand how much it’s worth?”
“Yeah, yeah, but the deal was—”
“Forget the deal; that was before I knew what I was stealing.”
“Two hundred, that was what we agreed, weren’t it?”
“I took it to Mr. Harrison, you see. The toymaker.”
“The what?”
“Let’s just say Mr. Harrison sells other things as well as toys. The point is, the imp was able to identify it for me. This is a leash, my dear, deluded friend. Do you understand what a person could do with this?”
“What do I care? It’s worth ducats is all I know.”
“Three hundred.”
“Maw’s teeth! Stinking thieves, yer just don’t know when to stop. Thieving out of yer own employer’s pocket … Yer’ll be stealing my flaming shoes, next.”
“Four hundred.”
“All ri
ght, all right, steady on. Three hundred. Done. But you’re a crook. Can’t trust nobody in this town.”
There was a jingle of coins. Grubb rolled onto his side. The voices seemed to be getting fainter and fainter, but he was fairly sure they were his mother and father.
“Where did you go?” he asked them. “I’m so glad you’re back. Why did you leave me alone again?”
“Wake up,” said his father.
“But it’s still dark. I’m so sleepy …”
“I said wake up, mongrel.”
Ice-cold water crashed over him. He jerked upright. He was drenched, and very much awake.
“That get your attention then?”
It all came back to him.
The package.
The cat.
The rooftops.
The fall.
He was sitting on a makeshift bed of straw, heaped on a stone floor, still wearing the imp’s fancy shirt and jacket. A yellow glow spilled from a lantern onto a goblin crouching over him—one who looked extremely irritable. Now that Grubb was awake, it was no surprise to see that the goblin wasn’t his father after all.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could make out huge oak barrels looming over them in the darkness at the edges of the room. A cellar, somewhere. How long had he been unconscious? Hours? Days?
“And this,” said the goblin, putting down the empty water bucket, “really takes the cake. Bringing some grogshop runt here. Some mongrel. What in all the sea am I supposed to do with him?”
The other shrugged. He was standing in the shadows, but a sliver of light from the doorway fell on the side of his face—pale freckled skin, ginger hair, the glint of one eye, yellow, like a cat’s …
“I could hardly leave him lying in the street. He saw me take it.”
“So why didn’t you just deal with him? You’re too soft, that’s your problem.”
The shape-shifter ignored that and examined his fingernails.
Letting out a long sigh, the goblin stood.
“All right, you can buzz off now. Got yer payment, ain’t yer? We’re done.”
“Very well. A pleasure doing business with you, Jeb.”
The door opened and closed with a bang.
The goblin called Jeb scratched his head and inspected Grubb. Jeb’s clothes looked expensive but thrown together, so that they mismatched. He was wearing a canary-yellow coat with a dark blue waistcoat, heavy gold earrings, and a belt buckle that glittered with jewels. Grubb glimpsed black velvet sticking out of the goblin’s belt. The package, stolen by the cat the night before. Or was it two nights ago?
“Had a nice rest, have we?” inquired Jeb.
“Yes, thank you,” said Grubb.
He carefully flexed his leg and found that there was no pain at all.
“My leg …”
“You can thank that ginger weevil for that,” said the goblin sourly. “Now get up. You’re coming with me.”
“Where am I?”
“You’ll find out. On yer feet.”
Grubb stood up slowly. His limbs were stiff. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to go with Jeb, but it didn’t seem like he had much choice.
“Are you a friend of Phineus Clagg?” he asked.
“What? No. Friends are for mugs. I’m a businessman.”
“So … what are you going to do with his package?”
The goblin grinned, running his tongue over his pointed teeth.
“Sell it, of course. It’s bound to be worth something.”
“But it’s—”
“Enough.” He shoved Grubb toward the door. “Right little troublemaker you are, ain’t yer? Chasing after a shape-shifter in the middle of the night, then lying around snoring and moaning all day yesterday, and now you’re up asking all these stinking questions. What do you think you are, the Demon’s Watch or something?”
Grubb couldn’t help himself.
“It wasn’t his to take, sir. Not yours either.”
That won him a cuff on the back of his head.
“Ow!”
“Keep your trap shut, mongrel. Clear?”
Grubb nodded. There didn’t seem much point in arguing about it.
Jeb pushed him through the door and up a flight of stone stairs. Grubb could feel his heart pounding. The shape-shifter might have looked after him, but he was far from convinced that Jeb would do the same. Someone who paid hundreds of ducats to have things stolen for him could be capable of anything.
They turned into a corridor and climbed more stairs, wooden this time, dimly lit with lanterns that hung from hooks on the walls. Above the creak of their footsteps, Grubb heard the muffled sound of people chattering and laughing. Stamping their feet, shouting, and singing. The sound grew louder.
At the top of the stairs they came to a thick red velvet curtain guarded by a man and a troll in spotless white shirts and red waistcoats, each carrying a stubby blunderbuss. Grubb swallowed hard and stopped, but Jeb shoved him forward again and nodded to the guards. They nodded in reply and pulled aside the curtain.
And then they were inside.
It was a theater, of sorts. Or, at least, Grubb thought it was a theater. He’d never been inside one before but knew what they were supposed to look like. A vast crystal chandelier lit the auditorium. There was dark red wallpaper and brass fittings, ornate molding papered in gold leaf, and a vast, domed ceiling. Everything looked old and worn.
Here, the noise was deafening. It came mainly from below, where Grubb could see spectators standing, crammed into the lower galleries and round the edges of the auditorium. They were jostling, waving at friends, shoving one another to get a good look at the performance area. But from this angle, Grubb couldn’t see what they were watching.
They had come in at the highest gallery, where the spectators were well dressed and silent. They sat in plush armchairs, fans fluttering, pipe smoke hanging heavy above them. Bullyboys loitered in the background, and Grubb saw sabers, pistols thrust into belts, and even the odd musket. He’d never seen so many weapons in his life.
“What is this place?”
Jeb opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment there was a wave of shouting and cheering, drowning out his words. It sounded like “Harry’s Market.”
That couldn’t be right.
Grubb looked around, hoping to see some way to escape. There were doors farther along the gallery, but he had a feeling that if he made a run for it, the dangerous-looking guards would be on Jeb’s side. There was no way he could get past them. He was stuck with his captor.
“Jebedee, my lovely!”
“Harry, you old scoundrel.”
The newcomer was an elf, tall and spindly, with curls of gray hair crawling out from beneath a tricorne hat. He wore a coat made out of some strange gray material that Grubb didn’t think he had seen before. On his shoulder sat a messenger fairy, wearing an identical coat and hat.
Harry and Jeb began speaking fast in hushed voices, too low for Grubb to hear what they were saying. So instead, he edged forward to the front of the gallery to see what everyone was watching.
He caught his breath. In an instant, he knew why there were so many armed men around. He knew what Jeb had said when he’d asked where they were. He even knew what Harry’s jacket was made of.
Where the stalls and the stage should have been, there was a gigantic pool of water, foaming and churning.
Of course it wasn’t Harry’s Market. It was Harry’s Shark Pit.
Grubb had heard all about shark pits.
The blackcoats had been trying to shut them down for years, but they were still going strong in secret, hidden in warehouses and theaters like this one, all over Port Fayt. He tried to pick out a shark fighter in the bloody water, but the dark shapes were moving too fast. They were merfolk, according to Mr. Lightly. A land dweller wouldn’t stand a chance in the pit. Sometimes they did it out of choice, for the glory of it. But more often, the shark-pit owner would send his boys out to sea with nets, hunting for recruit
s. They were locked away like lobsters in underwater cages, only allowed out to train and to fight in the pits. If Thalin could see this town now …
A figure breached in a fountain of spray, leaping up several feet above the surface. Grubb glimpsed taut, muscled arms, a slender trident, and the silver tail flicking off drops of water. The merman’s body flashed as it turned in the air and slipped underwater once again.
The spectators were roaring and cheering as loudly as they could. Most of them probably had bets on the bout. It wouldn’t be pretty if the shark fighter lost, but that didn’t seem to matter to them. There were tales of punters making their fortune at the pits. Then there were other tales, about those who lost but couldn’t afford to pay. The owners of the shark pits weren’t often all that understanding. And, of course, the sharks needed feeding.
Grubb spotted something gray, sleek, and fast below the surface and shuddered. He had seen mermen before swimming out in the bay, sometimes even coming up to the dockside piers to barter and trade sunken treasures with Fayt merchants. But a shark—that was something else entirely.
“Admiring my beautiful sharkies, my dear?”
Grubb had been so busy watching the pit below that he hadn’t noticed Harry coming up behind him. He felt the elf’s slender fingers resting on his shoulder and fought down the urge to push them away. Jeb sidled up next to him. The package was still stuck into his belt, so close that Grubb could have reached out and taken it.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, no wonder, duck. Look at that splendid coat o’ yours … I’d say you’re a gent who appreciates the finer things in life.”
Jeb guffawed.
“Just like my clients here.” Harry gestured round the gallery. His voice was shrill and probably would have been ridiculous if its owner wasn’t such a strange, terrifying individual. Grubb could see his clothes up close now—the rough texture of the shark hide, spattered with dark patches. He didn’t have to ask what had made those stains.
“This is the top brass up here, and no mistake, my dear. See that gent with the fan?” He pointed out a lanky troll in expensive-looking clothes, whose face was caked in white makeup. “That’s the Actor. No doubt you’ve heard of him, a man of the world such as yourself? No? The man runs nigh on every street gang and gambling den in the Marlinspike Quarter.” Harry lowered his voice. “Came over from the Old World two years ago. His whole family had been killed, see? By the League of the Light. Bayonets, it was.” He poked Grubb in the stomach. “Just like that. Dead as dead can be. They hung the bodies up outside the village and all, to show how only humans were welcome there. Charming, eh? But that’s the League for you.”
