The Man in Shadow

by Taylor O'Connell

  “He asks only for what he is owed. You have a fortnight, Seventy-six krom. Don Moretti will forgive the interest this once. But, Pumphrey,” Alonzo said, shaking his head, “do not try his patience again. Don Moretti is a businessman, not a man of the cloth.”

  Alonzo nodded toward the door, and Sal released his grip of Pumphrey’s finger. Sal followed Alonzo to the door, looking back only once to see Pumphrey clutching his finger to his chest, where he laid on the floor, weeping.

  As he stepped out into the cool day air, Sal still felt sick to his stomach, yet he was relieved to be out of the tailoring shop and away from the crying man and his broken finger.

  “You did well,” said Alonzo as they walked deeper into the Agora.

  Sal didn’t know what to say. He’d hated it, every bit of it. There was a reason he’d stayed away from the Commission for so long. Sal had done terrible things in his life. He’d even done murder. But torture was something he would never be able to stomach.

  “Listen, I’ve got a job,” said Alonzo, “official business, and it’s going to pay well. Valla and the big man have already vouched for you, but you can still consider this an audition.”

  “Valla vouched for me?” Sal said in surprise.

  There was a time when he’d have expected that. Though, since their falling out after the Scarvini warehouse job, things between them had been quite tense.

  “I did some poking around the Family, seems a few of the made men knew you; all of them spoke highly of your work. Though it was Valla, that told me you were one of the best snatchers in the city, and if I didn't offer you this job, I was a fool.”

  All Sal could think was how right his uncle had been, but then again, Stefano Lorenzo was always right. It was perhaps his uncle’s most irritating trait.

  “I’ll keep in touch as the exact details are worked through,” said Alonzo. “At the moment, I’m merely filling out the roster.”

  “I’ll consider it,” Sal said. “I’ll need a bit more information before I can responsibly commit.”

  “Right,” Alonzo scoffed. “You’ve a fine sense of humor, kid.”

  II

  The Shadow

  For it is I who dances with shadow. Flicker and flame, flow and wither. ‘Pretentious?’ Ask you. Think not do I, for shadow will bend. But do you? Step into the shadow and dance with me, dance with the shadow—shadow dancer divine.

  —The Song of Isha

  To find the monster, look no farther than the man.

  —Abbot Jacques

  11

  The Norsic Problem

  INTERLUDE, SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  The rushing current of the Tamber broke upon the rocks beside the path, capping white and spraying a skyward mist.

  “I don’t know that I’d call him a friend,” Bartley said. “He’s more of an associate.”

  “But you’re certain he can take care of our Norsic problem?” Sal asked as he walked beside his friend on the riverside path.

  “Sure am. I’m more worried about whether he’ll bother,” said the little Yahdrish.

  “And where might we find this associate of yours?”

  “Ought to be just down this way. He’s been working the docks of late.”

  The smell of the Tamber’s fresh rapids was gradually overwhelmed by the subtle wreaking stench of true Low Town. Stagnant green tidepools of the brackish bay-water lined the precipice along the Bayway. The tidepools were left to stew beneath the blistering afternoon sun, slowly dwindling away as they were picked at by the seabirds, alley cats, and street urchins until not remained but desiccated seaweed and the stench of rotting shellfish corpses.

  South by southeast, they walked, past First Harbor, Second Harbor, Third Harbor, and Fourth, past Fifth Harbor, and even as far as Sixth Harbor.

  “Lady’s sake,” Sal cursed as they trudged past Seventh Harbor. “Mate, you going to take me all the way to the tippy-toe of the Shoe? The hell is this friend of yours anyhow?”

  The little Yahdrish only laughed. “Shouldn’t be much farther now. Usually, find him lurking about the Eight Harbor docks.”

  “Lady’s—Eighth Harbor? Why didn’t you say that before I walked all this way?”

  “Knew you wouldn’t come along otherwise,” Bartley said with a smile.

  They veered off the Bayway at Eight Harbor, and took the frontage onto the harbor’s loading-round, dodging wagons and oxcarts as they skimmed the edges of the crowd and onto the mud-sheathed cobbles near the docks.

  “Which one is—”

  “The big one,” Bartley said, as a shaky grin spread across his peevish face.

  Sal stopped short. He could hardly believe his eyes. “The bald one?” he asked, “That big Norsic?”

  Bartley nodded, his smile shifting to something more like a nervous leer, the apple in his throat bobbing as he swallowed.

  A group of hard looking thugs stood and talked about the docks, awaiting the next ship. Tattooed head to toe the lot of them, yet even among that crowd, one man stood out. A head and a half taller than every other man on the dock.

  “Lady’s sake, mate, you’ve got to be japing.”

  “No, japes,” Bartley said, slowly shaking his head, the grin taking over his face. “That man there is the one.”

  “A Norsic to deal with a Norsic,” Sal said as they approached the dock. “Not a bad plan, I suppose. Might be the biggest bloody Norsic in the city too. Hell, he might be the biggest bloody man in the Known World for all I could say.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Bartley said, laughing as though he’d had something to do with the Norsic’s abnormally large size.

  “How do you know him anyhow?” Sal asked.

  Bartley bit his lip. “I tried to pick his pockets the once. It didn’t—rather, well, he agreed not to break me if I agreed to touch of work.”

  “Agreed not to break you,” Sal said, half in jest, half in wonder. He didn’t doubt the big Norsic very well could rip Bartley in two with naught but his massive hands. Then Sal noticed the hammer slung upon his back.

  A war hammer, the haft, a dark stock of polished ebony wood, was as long as Sal’s arm span. The head of the hammer looked to weigh a good two stone and was forged in the shape of a man’s fist. Just the thought of what that iron fist would do to a man made Sal’s stomach quiver.

  “That hammer,” Sal said. “He just walks around the city with that thing strapped to his back?”

  Bartley scoffed. “If you were on the City Watch, would you be the steel cap that told him he had to take it off?”

  “Good point,” Sal said, just before they reached the edge of the loading round.

  “Oy, little big mouth,” called the big Norsic, as Sal and Bartley slogged through the mud toward him. “What brings you little fishes swimming into my pond?”

  Bartley opened his mouth, but rather than speak, he shrugged, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes focused on the dock planks.

  The big Norsic laughed, a sound loud as rolling thunder and smooth as buttermilk. His bald head reflected the sun like the water of the bay about them. “What’s this, you come to look at my feet? Well, who’s the fresh meat then?” he asked, as he reached out to scruff Sal’s hair.

  Sal ducked and dodged away. He immediately regretted his show of timidity, but the Norsic merely let loose another of his rolling laughs.

  Despite his hard looking face, the Norsic seemed a genuine jocund. His calloused hands clutched his flat muscled belly as he arched his back, his thick chest jutted forth, bearded jaw yawned wide, and he laughed loud and careless.

  “I’m Salvatori Lorenzo,” Sal said, hoping to scavenge whatever scraps of dignity he still could. He extended a hand, “And your name is?”

  The Norsic looked down at Sal’s proffered hand as though he was unsure whether to shake it or eat it. Sal slowly withdrew the hand and cleared his throat to fill the silence.

  Hands on hips, the Norsic wrinkled his brow as a thoughtful look crested his bemused visage. “Lo
-ren-zo,” he said slowly, tasting each syllable before it rolled off his tongue. “Stefano Lorenzo?”

  “Salvatori,” Sal corrected, a sickly feeling forming in the pit of his stomach at the mention of his uncle’s name.

  The dock thug shook his head, the smile showing through his thick beard. “You’re his kin?” he asked, brow arching until the whites of his eyes showed.

  Sal gave a nod, averting his gaze in an attempt to hide his shame.

  “Name’s Odie,” said the big Norsic, as he extended a massive hand. “But most them just call me big man.”

  Sal took the proffered hand and was swallowed within the Norsic’s grip. He thought his arm might pull clean off as the Norsic shook enthusiastically, his big white smile showing more teeth than Sal would have liked.

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Odie,” Sal said through gritted teeth.

  “Well then, Salvatori,” Odie said, “Seems to me the little big mouth’s finally run short of words. You want to tell me what you little fishes are doing swimming around a place like this?”

  “I’ve not run short of nothing, you big oaf,” Bartley spat, prickling up like a puff fish. “You had anything other than stuffing inside your fat head you’d know it too.”

  Sal could hardly believe the outburst. He half expected the big Norsic to reach for his war hammer and put an end to the little Yahdrish there and then. Yet Odie laughed, a big, loud, good-natured laugh.

  “This is the little big mouth I have been expecting. Well, tell me, what is it you want?”

  “A job offer,” Bartley said. “We’ve got a—”

  Odie held up a hand, and Bartley drew short. “Got more work than I can handle as it is. With the docks and my collections for the don,” he shook his head. “Just don’t got the time for more work.”

  “Big as you are, I can’t imagine you have much trouble getting work anywhere in the city,” Sal said, more for Bartley’s hearing than Odie’s.

  The big Norsic laughed and nodded. “Wasn’t always this big, though, was I? Gods, not even so big now, am I?”

  Sal and Bartley shared a look. “You’ve got to be the biggest man in all of bloody Nelgand.”

  “Biggest man in Nelgand?” Odie scoffed. “I’m not the biggest man in the city. The big fishes always look bigger to the little fishes. But the truth of it is that we are all just as small on the inside.”

  “Until the big fish eats the little fish, that is,” Sal said with a smirk. “Then the big fish gets bigger on the inside.

  The big man shook his head. “The big fishes can eat the little fishes, but that don’t make the fishes bigger on the inside, only the problems.”

  Sal thought about that for a moment. Perhaps this big Norsic wasn’t half so dim as Sal would have thought. It seemed while Sal was busy arguing about the natural order, this Norsic dock thug was speaking in metaphysical terms.

  “Here’s the truth of things.” Sal dropped his attempt at coercion. “Bartley and I have been dealing with a bit of a problem, you might call it.”

  Odie seemed to perk up at that, his thick brow wrinkling slightly.

  Sal let the silence build until the big man couldn’t help but voice the question.

  “What do you mean, a problem?”

  Sal smiled. “I’m glad you asked. I suppose the best way to put it—there’s a Norsic brute out there that has been on our take. Every score we pull, the bastard is on us before we’re halfway home.”

  Odie grunted.

  Sal waited. He’d expected something, a laugh, a scoff, some words of advice, or an offer of help, but there was—nothing.

  Stone-face and silent, the big man stared.

  “So, uh, you said yourself, you were small once too,” Sal said, grasping for straws. “I only thought you might be able to help out, considering.”

  At that, Odie nodded. “I was small once too, like you little fishes. I’ll tell you this. When I was a boy still living in my old village on the steppes of Skjörund, there was a gang of older boys. The biggest of these boys, Drusca he was called. This boy, he thought to give me a hard-learned lesson.” The big man snarled, his eyes distant as though thinking back on his youth. “This Drusca, he was bigger than me, and he thought to teach me a lesson, but it was me who did the teaching. Understand?”

  Bartley shook his head. “Not in the slightest. What in Sacrull’s hell did you do to him?”

  The Norsic held up his big thumb. “I took his eye,” he said, flashing them a wicked grin.

  Sal felt slightly queasy.

  “Sacrull’s bloody balls,” Bartley cursed. “You want us to take the bastard’s eye?”

  “Eye, ear, tongue,” the Norsic said. “Anything will do. Just got to send a message.”

  Bartley laughed. “Don’t you think we’d have just beat him into the ground if we could have?”

  Odie shrugged and held up his thumb.

  Bartley scoffed derisively, and Sal cleared his throat.

  “What if we just wanted to avoid the confrontation, you know, just stay out of his way altogether?” Sal asked. “I mean the real problem is that we don’t even know how he’s finding us so often. It’s not like we work the same districts every day.”

  “Tracer?” asked the big man.

  “We don’t know any Talents,” said Bartley.

  “He means the Norsic, Bart. What if the Norsic has a tracer?”

  “Oh,” Bartley said sheepishly, going red as he looked away.

  Sal nodded. “I think you might have the right of it. He’s got to have something, how else would he keep finding us?”

  Bartley threw his arms in the air. “Well, ain’t that a treat? A bloody tracer? The Norsic bastard must just take himself a hank of hair with every beating. How are we supposed to avoid him if he has a tracer?”

  “We don’t,” Sal said flatly.

  “Sacrull’s balls, that’s just peachy, ain’t it? Just fucking peachy. Well then, what’s the plan?”

  Sal smiled, nodded to Odie, and held up his thumb.

  12

  The Other Man

  Sal crumbled the golden-brown flesh of the mushroom between his fingers. The skeev was cured just right for smoking. Poorly cured skeev was damp and wadded up like wet paper, rolling into little balls too dense to take flame. Yet this cap crumbled into a fine, golden-brown powder and left a sticky residue of tightly packed dust on his fingertips.

  What remained of the mushroom cap, Sal put into his pocket. He packed the skeev in the bowl down with his thumb, put the pipe to his lips, and raised the handlamp.

  But before he put the flame to the bowl, Sal placed the lamp back on the end table. With one last look at the pipe and unlit skeev packed within the bowl, Sal laid the pipe down beside the handlamp.

  There was a clamor coming from the taproom below. Raucous laughter was accompanied by music, and though Sal couldn’t make out the words, it sounded like “The Queen and Her Goose.”

  Sal stood up from his bed, put his arms up, and reached as high as he could, yawning as he stretched. A pleasant tingling streamed from the back of his head down his spine—a rare good feeling of late.

  Things had been looking bad for him and the others, and somehow, they’d only gotten worse, thanks to Valla and Odie. Sal knew Odie had only done what he had, in order to protect Sal, and in turn, protect himself. Yet, he was quite certain the opposite was true in Valla’s case. Recommending Sal for a Moretti job was undoubtedly an attempt to keep herself alive by keeping Sal close at hand. If Sal was to be found out, and identified as the orchestrator of the most recent Scarvini death, he would find himself with a wide red smile across his throat, and Valla would be the one wielding the knife.

  Although, once they’d managed to take care of Don Scarvini, the threat would no longer be present.

  Sal had an idea of how to make that happen, but he needed time to organize his thoughts. He would also need time for scouting, accumulating the proper gear and supplies, and additional planning with the
individual members of the crew about their roles within the greater scheme. Said and done, It would take a fortnight. A fortnight he would be lucky to survive.

  Still, none of it seemed real, and it hadn’t for quite some time. Not since the night, he’d stolen the locket from the High Keep had Sal felt like himself—like a man living in the real world—like a man in control of his own destiny. Sal pulled the locket from his neck and examined it. Rivulets of warm energy pulsated into his fingertips and up through his arm.

  After all this time, Sal still had no idea what it was he held. A small oval locket, three vertical lines etched into the tarnished yellow gold of its face. The mark of three, he’d been told, by Jacques, the signs of Sacrull. And yet Damor Nev had claimed that mark represented the three gates, the mark of the warrior: a sign of Tiem the World Mother. But Nabu had claimed it was a symbol used by Kellenvadra, a rune of sorts, a mark of the old magics. So many different conflicting sources, all so confident of their own understanding of the symbol, yet the only place they seemed to agree concerned the age of the symbol. Whatever it was, whatever the symbol stood for, it was ancient.

  But what did that mean? Where had the locket come from? What had it been used for, and used by?

  Probably, he should seek out the sources Valla spoke of. She claimed to know something about the old magics. Sal might not learn what the locket was, or where the symbol had originated, but anything he could learn about the old magics might deem useful.

  He put the thin silver chain back over his neck, tucked the locket into his shirt collar, and headed for the door. As he stepped out into the hall, he could make out the words to “The Queen and Her Goose.”

  It seemed to be a favorite of the new singer. The man sang it in the Hog Snout’s taproom once a week, at the least. Sal headed down the stairs, skirted past the taproom, and headed out the door.