“All right, you barmpot, give it here.” He pried the man’s fist open, only to find it empty. “What? No! No! No! No! No! No! No!”
He searched his slacks, vest, and coat pockets. Aside from a few useless things, Pierce found no stater coin.
“Where is it?” He grabbed the dead man by the lapel and screamed in his face. “Where is it, you limey bastard!”
He realized Giles had been fooling him into believing he had the coin by keeping his fist closed. He must’ve dropped it when he fell on the stairs. Pierce just needed to search around the storage room. He raced round to the front and rushed back inside. He entered and saw flames consuming the place. The murky, ill-lit room now flamed brightly in reds, oranges, and yellows. Fire scratched at the walls and ceiling like the merciless claws of a hellhound. The insides of the textile printing machines popped and hissed as they sizzled. The reek of burning cloth was unavoidable. The ominous crackling of the fire itself came eerily close to laughter. Pierce clutched the hair on top of his head in disbelief.
“Pierce!” Taisia called from near the back. “Joaquin, he’s over here!”
His brother appeared from the doorway leading into the other room, coughing and gasping for air. He rushed over with Taisia.
“How the hell did you get over there?” Joaquin asked, jogging his way up.
“M-my coin is in there,” he croaked.
“C’mon,” Joaquin said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away. “We need to go.”
They left the factory burning and after collecting his hat at the alleyway where it had fallen, they headed for the Red Apple Stables to gather their horses.
Pierce was quiet for the rest of the day. He felt vulnerable. He needed a silver knife like Darius and to sleep with both eyes open from now on.
Chapter Twelve
The Hustler
Busy birds chirped loudly as they flew in and out of the birdhouses hanging from the bent trees. Many years had gone by since Élie had been to the Singsong Orchard. It was just as beautiful as she remembered it from her youth.
Élie held her breath as Durothil emerged from the forest. She squeezed Nona’s hand tightly.
“There he is,” Élie announced softly.
Nona stared at her father with glistening eyes. Élie was tense and excited like her daughter. This overdue moment had finally arrived.
“This place is amazing,” Jasper said, approaching them while carrying a broken birdhouse. It was a square house with coin-sized stones added to the sidewalls. The roof was half broken in and the railing of the balcony was bent. “Mum, would it be all right if I brought this one with us and fixed it up?” He raised his chin and spotted Durothil across the field. “Is that him?”
“Oui. C’est lui,” Élie answered as Nona let go of her hand and began walking toward her father.
Jasper came alongside Élie and watched his wife meet her father for the first time.
“Durothil hasn’t seen her since she was a bébé,” Élie said.
“He looks to be my age,” Jasper noted.
“Age creeps up on the elves far slower than us.”
Nona reached Durothil and gazed upon the tall elf. The many arrows in his quiver stuck straight up, and his unstrung bow lay across his back. His majestic pose took on a gentler contour as he stood before his daughter. They stared at each other for a long while. Nona clasped her hands together over her chest, overcome by the sight of him. Durothil opened his arms to her and, without hesitation, she fell into his embrace.
“I am so fortunate,” Jasper muttered tearfully. “Fortunate Nona has loved me enough to allow me to be her husband. She should have been a queen.”
“Nona is a queen. The queen of you, as you are her king. You both are fortunate to have each other.”
Jasper grinned, but it faded.
“Tell me, Mum, is Joaquin going to be all right?”
Élie already had an answer, for she felt a strong connection to her grandson.
“He has grown weaker these past few weeks.” She looked at him. “But he is alive. By now, they should have reached Edinburgh.”
“Do you think he will be all right?” Jasper again asked more directly.
“If you’re asking for a future prediction, you’ll be disheartened. The future can’t be captured in a single forecast. One incident in the present can change it a little or distort it completely. All I can offer are versions.”
“Give me one of those,” he ordered in desperation.
She clasped her hand around his.
“I believe you will be reunited with Joaquin in this life.” She tapped the roof of the damaged birdhouse he held. “Take this, if you want. Make it new once more.”
* * *
After weeks of riding, and after trading the horses off twice, Pierce began wishing they could have taken the train. They had passed workers assembling railroad tracks during their journey. It wouldn’t be long before tracks crisscrossed the entire country. It couldn’t happen soon enough, as far as he was concerned. At least his leg had healed and no longer hurt when he walked.
The sun was resting high in the sky by the time they reached the City of Edinburgh. The ancient metropolis stretched for miles, surrounding the old fortress of Edinburgh Castle perched high upon Castle Rock. Edinburgh was a grey city that had been built up for centuries. It sported gothic structures, copper-clad dome buildings, and even modern apartments. Courthouses and cathedrals crowded together, shoulder to shoulder in some places, over the hilly landscape. Old dirt roads ran through narrow spaces between the buildings, and most cobblestone thoroughfares were no better with all the horse dung lying about. No street sweepers in Edinburgh. After entering the city limits, they were surrounded by ancient buildings lining the Royal Mile. The buildings stood so high and close together, they blotted out the sun, keeping the shadowy streets cool.
“Where is Mary King’s Close?” Pierce asked Joaquin, riding behind him.
“Dunno. I haven’t been this far into Scotland before. Which reminds me, given the bad history between England and Scotland, it may be best if we pose as Scots, eh?”
“Is it dangerous here?” Taisia asked.
“Not for a Russian like yourself, but for Pierce and I, flaunting our British brogue might get us into trouble, especially in the rougher patches of the city.”
“What do you mean?” Pierce asked.
“Grandmother Fey said we need to find a hustler, remember? Hustlers don’t generally hang out in nice areas.”
“It depends on where the hustler hustles,” Pierce remarked, and then said in a Scottish accent, “Och, if ye think it best tae pose as Scots, then Scots we are nu.”
Taisia laughed.
They pushed on, searching for Mary King’s Close when Joaquin began coughing harshly.
“Oi,” Pierce said. “You all right?”
“Aye,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m right as rain”
Taisia leaned over to Pierce, whispering, “He hasn’t been doing so well since we left Birmingham.”
Pierce noticed, as well. After the debacle in Birmingham, Pierce had begun seeing changes in his brother. His pigment had paled, and he moved slower, as though his muscles ached. Pierce had no idea if the ore stone was even working anymore.
They rode up beside Joaquin, and Pierce said, “All right, you best start talking to me. What’s up with you?”
Joaquin looked at Pierce’s stern face, and then at Taisia’s concerned one on his other side.
He sighed deeply. “Whenever I fight against the curse, the energy inside the ore stone must work twice as hard, using up more of its potency.”
“And the weaker the energy is, the sicker you become?” Taisia guessed.
“Aye,” Joaquin said dolefully. “Grandmother Fey warned me of this before we left.”
“Shite,” Pierce said. “Joaquin, you should have told me before I let you risk yourself in getting back the coin.”
“What’s done is done. We’re just goi
ng to have to be more careful from now on.”
How could Pierce have been so egotistical? While he and Taisia had waited in the upstairs office area, Pierce wasn’t at all concerned about his brother’s safety, and he hadn’t even appreciated the risk he was taking. His tunnel vision had utterly blinded him. Now, his brother was paying the price for his arrogance.
Pierce felt like such a fool—a selfish, selfish fool.
“Joaquin, I—”
“No worries, little brother. Let’s just find the hustler, eh?”
In his green eyes, eyes that matched his own, Pierce saw he held no regret about the sacrifice he’d made.
“Right,” Pierce said genuinely. “Hold up, eh?”
Pierce rode up near the walkway where a group of Scotsmen stood about, chatting.
In his best Scottish accent, Pierce asked, “Lads, could ye tell me where Mary King’s Close is?”
“Och, Mary King’s Close?” one of them inquired surprisingly. “Have ye ever been there, laddie?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t be asking how to get there,” Pierce said tersely.
He hated being called laddie.
“No,” another person spoke up, “what he means is . . . are ye sure you wanna be goin’ there?”
“Aye.”
When they told him where to go, he couldn’t believe it.
“What did they say?” Taisia asked as he rode back to them.
“They say it isn’t far. We ought to find a stable to put the horses up for a while.”
“Why? Where is this place?”
“It’s underneath the city,” Pierce answered.
They found a stable for the animals and headed deep into Old Town. When they reached Warriston’s Close, just past the St. Giles Cathedral, they came to a narrow road that, at first glance, could have been mistaken as an alleyway. When they entered, Pierce spotted a sign that read Mary King’s Close.
“This is going to be interesting.”
The narrow cobblestone road dipped down into a crowded section of the city that had been displaced completely. Instead of a sky, a heavy slab of concrete sat atop the buildings, blocking out any natural light. Laundry hung above, drying in the cool, stale air. The way was lit by lamps mounted on building walls, giving off a nightly feel. People lived inside apartments and were going into shops. Children played out on the streets. The sour stench of rotting food, human waste, and body odor were inescapably trapped inside this tomb-like metropolis. Aboveground, such wretched smells also existed, yet, for the most part, they were dispersed into the open air.
The Scottish weren’t the only inhabitants. Asians, Africans, and African descents also lived in their own pockets throughout the underground area. The diversity offered Pierce relief, for it limited any unwanted curiosity toward Taisia. Nonetheless, he held her hand firmly. Pierce searched around, looking for any signs of this hustler that Grandmother Fey had spoken of, but he had no idea where in Mary King’s Close the bugger might be. He hoped they hadn’t come all this way for nothing.
They entered a cramped marketplace area where vendors sold miscellaneous rubbish. Trinkets, broken toys, whatever they had scavenged from around the city. After crossing through the packed market, they reached a tavern.
“Oi,” Joaquin abruptly said, snatching Pierce by the arm. “Let’s go in.”
He practically dragged Pierce in with him as if the rundown old building was made of gold.
Pierce allowed his brother to pull him inside. “All right.”
The tavern was nearly vacant. Only a few patrons sat at the bar, and a handful more were seated nearby. The group easily found a table just visible through the gas-powered lights and a candlelit chandelier. The two-story tavern had upstairs rooms, and a hardwood banister was wrapped around nearly the entire upper section. Green paint was peeling off the walls where ugly, fading paintings and tarnished mirrors hung.
An organ sat in the corner near an empty stage with tattered curtains hanging leisurely from it. At first glance, the organ appeared to be nothing more than a rickety old cart. It sat on two skinny wooden wheels at the back of it, and a pair of iron legs in the front. The top was completely flat with a long strip of paper full of musical notes sporadically punctured into it. The paper ran under the tracker bar stretched across the center. The organ pipes that jutted up from the back were corroded, giving them a blackish, burnt look.
A couple of gents, leaving the bar with their pints, went over to it and put a coin into the slot box bolted in the front, and then turned the iron wheel crank fastened to its side. As the wheel turned, the paper moved over the surface and under the tracker bar, creating harmonious, yet off key, sounds from the neglected pipes. The musical notes rounded the top edge of the machine and slipped into a small space, where it traveled through and resurfaced on the other side. Pierce listened to the badly played melody, trying to distinguish it.
“Crazy Jane,” he reckoned.
Once upon a time, the pub might’ve been a decent establishment. Perhaps the whole neighborhood had once been an upscale area, but somewhere along the way, it had fallen out of favor. Pierce reckoned that, like most underground places, it wouldn’t be long before Mary King’s Close would be abandoned and forgotten altogether.
“Welcome to the Black Iron Tavern,” greeted a busty barmaid with black hair and brown eyes. “Best tavern in the Underground.”
“The Underground?” Pierce asked.
“Aye, that’s what us locals caw all the underground areas in Edinburgh.”
Pierce wondered how many underground city sections there were.
“What can I get ye?”
“A pint, lass,” Pierce said.
“The same.”
“An’ for you?” she said to Taisia.
The word for came out as fur.
“Wine, please.”
As the serving wench left to fetch their orders, Taisia asked, “Where do you think this hustler is?”
“Grandmother Fey said he’ll be somewhere around,” Joaquin answered, scanning the place. It appeared he had sensed something near, something that had drawn him inside the building in the first place. “Where and when he’ll be around is another manner.”
As they spoke, Pierce’s ears perked to the sounds of billiard balls clacking together in the tavern’s backroom.
“Fuck!” someone yelled.
Moments later, a man stormed out of the backroom, cursing.
“Och, don’t be like that now,” a handsome young Scotsman said, stepping out after him. In his hand, he held a coin sack. “Come back again, aye?”
Pierce knew a hustler when he saw one. In his Gypsy family, there had been several. Not to mention, he’d done his own fair share of hustling at one time.
He stood from his seat.
“Wait here,” he told his brother and Taisia.
“Where are you going?” Joaquin asked.
“Give me a tick, eh?” Pierce raised an index finger to him before walking away.
The man, who appeared to be the same age as he was, leaned against the open doorway of the backroom, counting the coins inside the sack. He wore a black and grey striped tailcoat, pinstriped trousers, a black vest, and a shabby top hat. He had the complexion of a doll, perfect and untarnished by blemishes, and his golden-strawberry hair shined as though he washed it twice a day.
He sensed Pierce’s approach before Pierce even reached him.
“What do ye want?”
Pierce walked by him and said, “Gonna play.”
Pierce entered the snug back area that offered only enough room for the players and the threadbare billiard table. He set up the three wooden billiard balls in the rack and plucked a cue stick off the wall to examine it. He knew the hungry hustler would follow. “Bad playing” was a tactic Pierce had once utilized as bait in order to reel in people. In truth, Pierce was an excellent billiard player. He had played the game for an entire summer in Blackpool while posing as the son of an aristocrat. Pierce would find his way
into social parties or high-class taverns where billiards was played and acted as though he was a spoiled, arrogant rich kid who hadn’t a clue as to how to play the game. He had earned himself a good amount of loot that way.
Pierce broke terribly and started randomly hitting the balls, missing the holes by a mile. The lad entered and observed him.
“Damn,” Pierce said. “I’m usually much better than this.”
“Are ye now?” the hustler challenged him.
“Aye. I once beat the Earl o’ Kilmorey,” Pierce bragged truthfully.
The lad laughed and then considered him a moment. The humor left him as if he suddenly realized Pierce wasn’t fibbing.
“Aye. Richt,” the young man said. “Well, at the moment, you’re worse than me mother.”
Pierce hit another ball, this time getting it in. He straightened his posture and put his hand on his waist, holding the cue stick in his other like a walking stick.
“Och, an’ I s’pose ye can play better?”
A cocky grin stretched across the hustler’s face. “Perhaps.”
“Fine. Let’s wager on it,” Pierce challenged him, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the coin purse that he’d gotten back from Luca and Gilas. “I bet ye four crowns I can beat ye in three baw.”
“You’re on.”
The hustler had taken the bait!
“What’s your name?” the young man asked as he took hold of his own cue stick that was leaning against the wall.
“Craig Finlayson,” Pierce answered, gathering the balls and setting them up in the rack. “Ye?”
“Faolan Shea,” he answered with a slight bow. “At your service.”
“Charmed,” Pierce said with a fixed grin. “Do the honors?”
The Underground Page 13
