Friendly Fire
Page 1
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Dale Lucas
Excerpt from The Fifth Ward: Good Company copyright © 2018 by Dale Lucas
Excerpt from The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn copyright © 2018 by Tyler Whitesides
Author photograph by J. P. Wright
Cover design by Lauren Panepinto
Cover illustration by Sammy Yuen
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2018
First Edition: August 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lucas, Dale, author.
Title: Friendly fire / Dale Lucas.
Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : Orbit, 2018. | Series: The Fifth Ward; 2
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004942 | ISBN 9780316469104 (paperback) | ISBN 9780316469081 (e-book (open)) | ISBN 9781549115080 (audiobook (downloadable))
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction. | Adventure fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3612.U2355 F75 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004942
ISBNs: 978-0-316-46910-4 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-46908-1 (ebook)
E3-20180517-JV-NF
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Acknowledgments
extras
meet the author
A Preview of The Fifth Ward: Good Company
A Preview of The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn
By Dale Lucas
Praise for The Fifth Ward: First Watch
Orbit Newsletter
For Doug.
My friend, my family.
CHAPTER ONE
“Wardwatch!” the piss-monger shouted. “That bastard’s gone afoot with my slop jars!”
Rem struggled to regain himself—to wipe the mud from his eyes, to draw breath, to stand—despite pains both broad and acute from head to toe. He heard the raucous clip-clopping of the bulky draft horse’s shod hooves galloping along Fishmonger’s Row, the speeding cart rumbling rowdily behind it.
“Are you just going to lay there?” the piss-monger brayed, his oafish son at his elbow. “That thieving swine’s getting away!”
I know, Rem wanted to say. That’s why I was in the mud, you plank. Did you not see me on the cart’s running board? Trying to clamber on? Narrowly avoiding those enormous wheels as I fell?
But he knew it would do no good. Thus Rem ignored the malodorous nightman, found his feet, and reeled out into the middle of the wide, cobbled street. His quarry raced into the distance, heading east. If the fleeing rogue kept the cart on cobbled streets—to keep from bogging in the mud—his path would have to loop back toward the river and follow it for a short length before he could finally wend eastward again, toward the city gate. If he reached the gates with enough speed behind him, not even the city guards could hinder his escape. Rem knew for a fact that the lazy bastards were in the habit of guarding the city gates at night—but rarely closing them.
Rem leapt into a desperate sprint in the cart’s wake, his mind formulating something like a plan, fuzzy though it might be. Ahead, beyond the rattling pisswain, something caught his eye.
A short, stocky form trotted out of a side alley a block on from the rushing wagon. It was his partner, the dwarf Torval, hurrying back onto the main drag from the side street he’d been searching.
And he was rushing right into the cart’s path!
Rem had time to shout Torval’s name once—just once—before the hurtling cart ran over his stocky dwarven partner, losing no momentum as it jounced down the length of Fishmonger’s Row.
Rem screamed something that was no longer Torval’s name—just a howl of disbelief, terror, unbridled rage. He sprinted in the wake of the cart while the thief whipped the draft horse hard, opening the distance between them second by second. Something in Rem relented. There was no way he could catch that cart, but at any moment—any horrible, soon-to-arrive moment—he’d see Torval’s crushed and twisted dwarven corpse come rolling out from underneath the damned thing.
Any moment now.
Any moment …
Losing speed, Rem squinted, trying to get a good look at the cart in the dim moon- and starlight supplemented by the few lit post lamps lining the boulevard. He blinked. Did his eyes deceive him? Could it be?
There was Torval, still very much alive, clinging to the axle assembly on the underside of the cart. The whole bloody thing must have passed right over the old stump, the horse’s hooves somehow missing him in its headlong dash.
Rem slowed to a trot, knowing that he could not catch the cart, no matter how fast he ran … and curious as to just what his seemingly unkillable partner was up to.
In a series of quick, jerky movements, Torval worked his way to the rear of the cart. Eager to get up off the cobbled street, he clawed for purchase. As the cart rolled on, Torval dragged himself, hand over hand—precariously, laboriously—into the open rear bed of the cart as it jounced over the cobbles on Fishmonger’s Row.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,”
Rem muttered as he jogged.
But there was no jest to be found. He saw clearly in the dim glow of the post lamps and windows lining the street that Torval had clawed his way up onto the cart bed and now sought a clear path forward among the stout, sloshing jars of piss and shit that stood between him and the thief on the driver’s bench. Thus far the thief hadn’t looked over his shoulder even once. He just sat there, hunched on the driver’s bench, whipping the horse on, keen to leave Rem well in his wake.
Rem gave up. He had to take a moment—just a moment—to regain himself. He fell to his knees and drank in the night air like sweet, cool water in the midst of a vast desert. His lungs burned. His legs felt like warmed-over beef fat.
Get up, a voice inside him said. Your partner needs you.
Rem raised his eyes. The cart was just veering right, out of sight, bending southerly now at the beginning of that long loop that would take it back toward the river on cobbled streets before it turned once more eastward, onto a long, straight course toward the city gate.
Rem considered where he was, where the cart was headed, what pathways were available to him … and then realized that there was a route capable of leading him straight into the path of the cart’s flight. If he hurried. If he could only find …
He saw what he required not a hundred yards from him: a livery stable, all closed up for the night.
“Aemon wept,” he cursed, then struggled to his feet and ran a little farther.
He managed to bridle his chosen mount quickly, but couldn’t waste time on a saddle … nor on making the stabler aware that one of his stock had been commandeered by a desperate watchwarden.
Before the present mess with the piss cart, the evening had been lovely: deep into the month of Haniss, creeping toward the solstice, the nights in Yenara utterly devoid of the fog that so often shrouded the city in a choking diaphanous haze. No, that night had been like many of late: keen and crisp, clear as glass, the heavens strewn with a million tiny pinpricks of firelight winking like diamonds thrown carelessly upon a jeweler’s black velvet counting cloth, the moon fat as a silver pie, not a cloud to mar the majestic, vertiginous view.
Rem and Torval had been on patrol along Fishmonger’s Row, the long, wide boulevard that bisected the little harborside peninsula known as Gaunt’s Point. When they heard the hue and cry, the two set aside their heated exchange—an in-depth debate on which bird tasted best from a brazier of coals, pigeon or gull—and broke into a dead run toward the disturbance.
The cries led them from the main thoroughfare into a maze of side streets nearer the waterfront and to a boxy dwelling tucked away between a tavern and a seamen’s hostel. It was a home for the orphaned or abandoned children of mariners and fishermen, run by a kindly middle-aged widow named Dorma. Smoke and flames poured from its opened lower windows while local fire brigade volunteers shuttled in water to try to douse it. A few dozen people milled at the edges of the courtyard, coughing smoke from their lungs, most of them women and children. Their injuries seemed superficial for the most part—bruises, scrapes, some soot stains, and a lot of coughing—but there were two or three little ones struggling mightily for breath. The sight immediately turned Rem’s stomach.
Dorma stood in the middle of the street, soot streaked, graying hair a tangled mess, banging two cookpots together and shouting.
“Here we are,” Torval spat. “Hang that racket.”
Dorma stopped beating the pots together, dropped them, and stepped forward. To Rem’s great surprise, she laid hands on Torval, a move that—had she been a man—would probably have earned her broken fingers or a sprained wrist.
“They’ve taken her! There’s no time to lose!”
“Taken who?” Rem asked, as softly as he could.
“Iesta!” the woman said, as if it were the clearest fact in all the world. “Recover her, I beg you! No reward shall be too great if you can return her!”
Torval gently shrugged off the woman’s grip. “Who’s this Iesta? One of the children? Is she kidnapped?”
“No,” Rem said, still not sure why Dorma was in such a twist, “Iesta’s one of the goddesses of the Panoply. Empress of the Abandoned. Patron of beggars, orphans, and mendicants, correct?”
“Precisely!” the woman said. “And she’s gone! They’ve taken her!”
“Hold on,” Torval said. “You’re telling me your home is burning and you’ve got hurt children all about and you’re in a twist about a bloody idol from your house shrine?”
“The idol’s hollow!” Dorma shouted, then bent close to add, “All our savings are inside it. Without that coin—”
Ah, there it was. The fire was not just some accidental blaze, but a distraction to cover a thief’s flight.
Rem nodded and clapped Torval on the shoulder; time to go to work. “See to the children,” he told Dorma. “We’ll have Iesta back by sunrise.”
She gave them a hurried description of the idol—a heavy, awkward sculpture of half-wrought old jewelry and tinkers’ castoffs, about the size of a well-fed toddler—and then the two were off.
“Stealing a household god,” Rem huffed as they ran, the cold night air burning his lungs. “Shameful. Who purloins a god, anyway?”
Torval took a sudden left down a dark, narrow alley, and Rem very nearly overshot and lost him altogether. Torval barked back over his shoulder, “Where there’s need, there’s no decency,” he said.
They broke out of the alleyway onto Fishmonger’s Row, the only cobbled street in all of Gaunt’s Point, running nearly its length. Torval scrambled to a halt and scanned the area. Rem skidded to a stop beside Torval and struggled to catch his breath. Between the late hour and the bitter cold, foot traffic was light, but there were a few shadowy figures scattered along the avenue, reeling their way home from a drink or trudging off to a midnight shift in some warehouse or mill on the riverbank.
“What are we looking for?” Rem asked between great gulps of air.
“Consider the idol,” Torval said. “An awkward size and shape. Probably heavy, too. To move such a thing, our thief would have to go by horseback or cart sooner or later.”
“Simple enough,” Rem huffed. “Carts and horses are forbidden on the streets from dusk ’til dawn. He’d stick out like a sore thumb. He could just be holed up, waiting for morning—”
“Not likely,” Torval said. “He had to know that if they raised an alarm, there’d be watchwardens swarming the Point in no time. His only hope for escape is speed and distance. And if he’s going to gain ground, he needs hooves or wheels, and fast.”
“It’s a fool’s move,” Rem pressed. “Knowing that he’d be caught so easily, on a horse or a wagon, out in the open, when there are none about—”
Torval turned to Rem and eyed him askance. “Except for …?”
Rem suddenly realized what Torval was getting at. “Honeywagons,” Rem said.
“Honeywagons,” Torval repeated, proud that his protégé had followed his lead.
The only beast-drawn carts allowed to move through the streets at night were those of the nightmen, known colloquially as gong farmers, slop-brokers, or piss-mongers—men who contracted with the wards and their neighborhood councils to collect urine and excrement from the waste barrels that haunted the darkest downstairs corners of most tenements and boardinghouses. They’d crawl slowly up and down the side streets of Yenara all night long in their horse- or ox-drawn slop wains, hauling out those stinking barrels wherein Yenara’s good citizens emptied their chamber pots, transferring all that stewing egesta into great clay jars that were then delivered to the city’s tanneries for use in industrial leather curing, or beyond the walls to be used as fertilizer for nearby farms. Once or twice Rem and Torval had broken up brawls between competing slop-mongers, as one might try to horn in on another’s contracted routes to illicitly top off his jars. Tanners and farmers paid good money for all that piss and shit, after all, and very few people lined up for the dubious honor of collecting it. Generally, thou
gh, the wardwatch were aware of the progress of the honeywagons only peripherally, the sight, sound, and smell of them a barely noticed but prosaic element of Yenara’s everyday life—best ignored, if not forgotten.
“So, split up?” Rem asked. “I’ll head west, you east.”
Torval nodded. “Just so. Check any haul you find. Make any piss-mongers you meet aware of who and what we’re looking for. Could be, if they’re on their guard, our thief won’t manage to so easily overtake them.”
They split up then. Three blocks along, down a side alley, Rem found just what he sought: two human silhouettes beside a large horse-drawn wain parked in the lee of a three-story tenement. Rem set off down the length of the dark side street, the cart only a short block beyond the main road.
“You there!” Rem cried. “Step away from that cart and stand where you are! Wardwatch!”
The two silhouettes froze and seemed to study him. The shorter of the two clapped the larger one on the shoulder. The tall one bent to his labors again, while the other advanced toward Rem.
“I said stand where you are!” Rem shouted. “Throw up your hands!” Slowing now, he drew his sword, the blade hissing as it slid from its scabbard, keen edges glinting a little in the dim lamplight of the gloomy street. So armed, he slowed his approach just ten feet from the cart and its reeking contents, face-to-face with the big liver-colored draft horse hitched to the wain’s traces. The shorter and thicker of the two men stepped between Rem and the cart, then raised something: a wooden ax handle with an improvised lumpy iron crown.
“My permits are paid,” the fellow spat, shaking his bludgeon. “If you’re from Toomey’s camp, trying to jack this load, you’ll find my boy and me hard contests, indeed!”
The lug at the rear of the cart lifted his head again. “Need help, Da?”
“Bend to your work, boy. I can handle this one.”
Rem reached into his greatcoat—standard issue for all watchwardens in these colder months—and drew out his lead badge on its leather string. “I’m wardwatch, sir,” Rem said, showing it plainly. “You have my word. We’re just looking for—”
“Steady on, old-timer,” the broad, muscled boy at the rear of the cart said.