Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) Page 8

  Rayk nodded.

  “Priest of who?” Aiden asked.

  Teagan shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Llewellyn.” That didn’t mean anything, they knew. If you were a priest in Celkirk everyone assumed you were a priest of St. Llewellyn.

  “We’ll talk to your captain, see what he knows,” Rayk said. “You know where this priest is?”

  “Nope,” Teagan said.

  “But you know him,” Rayk said, cocking her head as she watched Teagan’s reaction. “You know his name, you know he keeps the place closed, but you don’t know where he is or when he’ll be back.”

  “Just a simple copper, me,” Teagan said.

  “Uh-huh,” Rayk said. “So what were you doing here?” Rayk asked.

  Teagan sighed.

  “Coming off shift from number seventeen, off Salter like I said. I live on Rab Lane, come past here every night. I turn the corner, I can see down the street something’s happening inside. Someone’s causing an…,” he couldn’t remember. “An affront?”

  “An affray,” Rayk said. “You sure you’re a watchman?”

  “I’m new,” Teagan said. “I run down, door’s open, I come in, I see this. Whatever happened, it was over. I searched the place, no one here. I see all this, I figure this is not someone doing a little snatch and grab, so I come get you lot.”

  Rayk nodded. “And between the time you see whatever’s going on, and run down the street, the whole thing is over.”

  Teagan shrugged. The girl was safe, whatever happened was over, and he was not inclined to help the castellan’s men if they were going to be asses.

  “Found something,” Fandrick said. He’d gone behind the bar and was rooting around in the cupboards and drawers.

  Aiden and Rayk went to him. Tegan remained leaning against the post, showing no real interest in what they did.

  Fandrick pulled four pieces of brown-stained cloth out of a drawer, and laid them out on the bar.

  Aiden didn’t understand what he was looking at. Bloodstained scarves, so what.

  Fandrick and Rayk shared a look.

  “The Black,” Rayk said.

  “Boils on Cyrvis’ balls,” Fandrick said. “The Black.”

  This got Teagan’s attention and he walked over. Inspected one of the scarves. “That’s interesting,” he said.

  “The black what?” Aiden asked.

  Fandrick and Rayk continued their silent communion. Teagan spoke up.

  “The Guild of Blackened Silk,” he said. “Their agents wear these scarves, sign of station. Red, green blue. Black. But they coat them in soot so we can’t tell which is which.”

  “Until it’s too late,” Rayk sneered.

  Aiden nodded. “Bad guys.”

  “Worse than most,” Teagan agreed. “Not as bad as the Darkened Moon, maybe.”

  “Boy,” Fandrick barked.

  “Uh huh,” Aiden said absently. Not eager to reinforce Fandrick’s attitudes.

  “You sure it’s the same here as the gallows?”

  “Yeah,” Aiden said. “Same black goop. Mixed in the blood. I’d guess we clean these bodies up, get ‘em back to the slab,” he said meaning the operating table where the castellan’s physicians and priests divined dead bodies, “we’d find they’d be clawed at with man-like fingernails and limbs ripped apart with unnatural strength. Ghouls. Or something very like.”

  Fandrick nodded.

  “This doesn’t make any damned sense,” Rayk insisted, mostly to Fandrick.

  “The fuck are the Black doing here?”

  “Are these their corpses?” Rayk asked, walking around to the ripped apart bodies littering the floor.

  “And why are they fighting ghouls? Who summoned the ghouls? Why? Why attack the count here?” Fandrick asked. There were so many question, he gave up.

  “The count?” Aiden asked Teagan, the most forthcoming of the three. He held his hand out, and Teagan gave him a scarf to inspect.

  “Runs the guild. Hereditary title. Mostly the guild does what he wants, but he’s sort of…there’s an agreement between him and the senior members of the guild. The guild does what the count wants, as long as the count wants to do what the senior thieves want.”

  “I think I get it,” Aiden said, pulling the blood-stained scarf through his hand. “He doesn’t have absolute power.”

  “No one does,” Teagan said absently.

  “Castellan’s going to lose his shit,” Fandrick said.

  “Completely mental,” Rayk agreed.

  “And we’re the ones have to chase it all down, which means we’re the ones the count’s gonna string up by their balls.”

  “So to speak,” Rayk said.

  “Count goes after the castellan’s men,” Teagan said, “then it’s a war with the ragman.” He seemed a little concerned. Why were the specials talking like the regulars?

  “Well that’s some comfort,” Fandrick sneered. “When my wife’s crying over my dead body wondering where her next meal’s comin’ from!”

  “Your wife never cried over anything in her life, ‘cept maybe a missed meal,” Rayk said.

  Fandrick pointed at her. “That’s a filthy lie and you take it back.”

  “Shant,” Rayk said, and sniffed.

  “I’ve got a question,” Aiden said, holding one scarf up, trying to make sense of the runes stained into it.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “If the priest who owns this place isn’t here, hasn’t been seen, and never opens this place…,” Aiden put the scarf down and looked at the three watchmen.

  “Who put these scarves away?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The specials were gone. Teagan waited a moment until their argument outside trailed off down the street.

  “You can come down,” he said.

  Vanora danced down the stairs and took stock of the mess.

  “I’ll clean this up,” she said. “Can you take the bodies out of here?”

  “How old are you?” Teagan asked.

  She collapsed a little, and frowned at him. “Really?”

  Teagan shook his head. “You should be apprenticed to a seamstress or a candlemaker. Or an ostler. I bet you like horses.”

  “Fuck that,” Vanora said. “I’m none of those things and never was going to be. Can you help with the bodies or not? This floor’s going to take days to get clean.”

  Teagan shrugged. “You should go back to Miss Elowen.”

  “Miss Elowen’s not going to clean this floor,” Vanora said, and went about looking for a mop.

  “It’s what you know,” Teagan admitted. “I mean what are you going to…”

  “I was at Miss Elowen’s and she sent me away!” Vanora barked. “I had a fit, and she sent me off to be…put down.” She bit the words off. “She said I was special, and I believed her, but in the end….” She left that alone. “Heden saved me. I’m not going back to the Rose, fuck the Rose.”

  “And when he doesn’t come back?”

  “He’s coming back,” Vanora said. “He promised.”

  Teagan shook his head. “I thought you were too young,” he said. “I was wrong. You’re too old to believe in fairy stories. And a trull at that.”

  “Shows what you know,” Vanora said. “Trulls believe in fairy stories their whole lives.”

  Teagan watched the girl begin mopping up the blood. He wasn’t sure what to do or say, he felt grossly out of his depth, but he knew the priest instinctively the way he was sure the girl could not, and felt she deserved the chance to make up her own mind. So he took a chance.

  “Let me tell you something about that priest,” he said, and his voice seemed bleak, not youthful as it had been. This drew Vanora’s attention. “I know about him. Known men like him. No matter what he promises you, no matter how good his intentions, eventually there’ll be someone else needs him more and he’ll have no choice. Man like that,” Teagan said, and shook his head. “The world heaps everything on him until he breaks. And he wi
ll break. ‘Cause there’s no end to the need. It’ll eat him up and then he’ll be gone.”

  “Then I go with him,” Vanora said instantly. “He saved me. I go where he goes.”

  “Why go with anyone?” Teagan asked. This brought Vanora up short. The answer was so obvious, he was being so stupid, so why couldn’t she articulate why?

  Why be with anyone? Stupid question. She shook her head to get it out.

  “I’ve got a plan,” she said. “I can do it myself.”

  Teagan watched her begin scrubbing industriously. It was a simple problem, blood. But it would take a lot of work. And it seemed the girl was committed. The floor would get clean.

  “I’ll take care of the bodies,” Teagan said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Well that’s the end for mister scribbler here,” Fandrick said.

  Aiden said nothing. His grimace spoke for him.

  “How you figure?” Rayk asked. The three of them stood on the wooden stoop in front of the Hammer & Tongs. The thick midday street traffic creating a low roar they had to talk over.

  Fandrick spat. “I said it was deathless, I said it was a cult. We shoulda gone to the church, instead we came here. Wasted time.”

  “It’s not wasted,” Aiden said quietly. “We can still go to the church, and probably should. But we learned a lot coming here,” he said.

  “Learned it’s something to do with the count,” Rayk agreed. “That’s useful. Count’s in some kind of pissing match with a cult.”

  “This happened twelve hour ago,” Fandrick said. “Gallows happened after, which means we’re working backwards and we should’a been working forwards and we would’a been working forwards if Mr. Scribbler here hadn’t come on with his airs about ‘it can’t be deathless.’ Balls,” Fandrick pronounced.

  “We found evidence of the count’s men,” Aiden said, looking at his shoes, “but no cultists. No sign of any cultists at either scene.”

  “Well someone chewed up the count’s men,” Rayk said.

  “The ghouls,” Fandrick growled.

  “But who summoned the ghouls,” Aiden asked, turning to look at the window into the inn. It was too dark inside to see anything.

  “The fucking cultists!” Fandrick barked. “Are you daft? Are you mental? Me and the ragman gonna have a word about you.”

  Aiden took a deep breath. “Maybe,” he said. “Someone summoned those ghouls. Maybe it’s cultists.”

  “Count’s in a pissing match with a cult, and this is what happens. Dead thieves everywhere. Better them than us.”

  “You say that like it explains something,” Aiden wasn’t going to let someone just ride over him. He didn’t know why the…the ragman picked him, but he was in it now and he wanted to know. Wanted to know what was happening. “It’s been three years since the last deathless was seen anywhere, by anyone. Cultists can’t summon deathless anymore, otherwise they’d all be doing it.”

  Aiden and Fandrick stared at each other.

  “You don’t think it’s cultists,” Aiden said severely. “You just hope it’s cultists because that’s what you know. Well you take what you know, and you go back in there and look at the scene and tell me it makes any sense.”

  Fandrick fumed, but said nothing.

  “Any of this make sense to you?” Aiden threw this at Rayk.

  Rayk shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “I don’t know if cultists is a dead end either way, but I know the count’s involved, so I say we watch him.”

  Aiden nodded. “Let’s find out. Let’s go talk to the count.”

  “Talk to the count!” Fandrick said. “You are mental! Fuck you think’ll happen if we just roll into his club, brace him in front of all the nobs he holds court with? He’ll smile and nod and half a turn later our guts’ll be spilled all over the street.”

  “He does that and it’s a war with the castellan. Court on the street.”

  “Who taught you that?” Rayk interrupted the barking match. “Who taught you ‘court on the street?’”

  “I read a lot,” Aiden snapped. “Now someone, the count, I don’t know, is going around the city using ghouls to murder people and he’s doing it right in front of us, in broad daylight, and he doesn’t give a shit if we know. Doesn’t cover his tracks. Like we don’t matter.”

  “We don’t matter,” Fandrick snarled. “We ain’t thieves, we ain’t assassins.”

  “We’re the special watch,” Aiden said. “The castellan’s men.”

  “That don’t mean nothing,” Fandrick said.

  Aiden was trying to stop the shaking running through his limbs. He wasn’t used to confrontation and didn’t much like it. But didn’t like being ignored more. “We’re both going to have a talk with the ragman when we get back,” he said, and stood his ground under Fandrick’s glower.

  When Fandrick didn’t replay, Aiden pushed his slim advantage. “Now here’s something neither of you asked,” he said and walked down the wooden steps into the street. Foot traffic jostled him, but he didn’t move.

  “What’s this inn have to do with it?” Aiden asked, his eyes roaming around the whole building. “What’s in here worth fighting over?” Neither Fandrick nor Rayk offered an answer. They didn’t know, and they didn’t like not knowing.

  Aiden looked at the other buildings in the row, and at the people passing by and said, mostly to himself;

  “And where’s her owner?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Days later, and Vanora’s plan was working better than she’d ever imagined. A half dozen men ate and drank in the common room, trying the place out.

  “It’s cold down there,” Martlyn said of the cellar, “and it looks like some of the food just arrived, it’s still good. But it’s mostly wine and ale and stuff anyway.”

  Vanora nodded.

  “What’ll we do? We got so much more wine than….”

  “We just lower the price on the wine until everyone’s coming here to drink it. Take the money, buy ham and mutton and duck.”

  “That makes sense,” Martlyn said, nodding. “You’re a natural at this stuff Violet.”

  Vanora smiled and caught herself wondering if it was a real smile, or one she put on for effect. She wasn’t sure.

  “It helps having friends,” she said, and Martlyn smiled back.

  It all seemed ridiculously easy. Half the girls had worked in taverns before coming to Miss Elowen anyway. Vanora hadn’t considered that. Word of mouth spread and eight girls were now spending their off time here at the inn, time they’d otherwise use to drum up business on their own or go shopping outside the Rose.

  They all seemed to know what to do and none of them, even the older girls questioned Vanora’s role in this. That surprised her more than anything. She imagined constant fighting to see who was in charge, but no. The girls all seemed to…to want someone to be in charge. They were happy that Vanora took that role. It was like this huge secret no one had ever told her. The girls, it seemed, wanted to be useful, wanted to get paid, earn a wage. No one argued with her about anything. She thought it would be nothing but arguing and the inn would never open. But they were opening tonight. It was working.

  She wasn’t sure how she’d work out the hours. Taverns usually opened mid-afternoon and stayed open until a few hours past midnight, but inns in the city were expected to be open and have staff and food ready all the hours of the day.

  Unless Vanora started hiring people, which she didn’t intend on doing, they’d only be open a few hours a day, and be unable to rent out any rooms. The girls all had jobs already.

  Maybe she should hire some people. Couldn’t be that hard. She’d need someone to keep people in line. Someone like Bann. She wanted to ask him, but was afraid that he’d go tell Miss Elowen and she’d tell the girls they couldn’t come here. But Miss Elowen had to know, didn’t she? She knew everything the girls got up to.

  She watched Martlyn go down into the cellar, and decided she’d sol
ve that problem when she got to it. A strategy she was discovering worked better than she’d ever imagined. She remembered her mother, cringing before her father, and she got goosebumps thinking about what she was doing here in this inn. Something her mother would never in her life have ever tried or thought of.

  There was a cough that turned into a loud hacking wheeze. An old man nursed a drink at one of the tables. He was alone and, Vanora remembered, had been here a few hours.

  She walked over to him. “Hungry yet?” He had a red face and a thin wisp of white hair curling haphazardly around his head. He wore a chasuble of St. Llewellyn.

  The old man looked around the common room as though seeing it for the first time. “Yes!”

  “Duck?” she asked.

  “Mutton,” the old man said, and lifted his tankard. “And more ale.”

  Vanora nodded and went to get the man some food.

  When she returned another two men had entered the inn and Martlyn was attending to them. Vanora served the old man his mutton and ale.

  “When was the last time you left this building,” the old man said conversationally. As though they’d known each other forever and this was a perfectly normal thing to ask.

  “What?” Vanora asked.

  “You are young miss Vanora, yes?” the old man asked.

  “How do you know my name?” Vanora frowned.

  The old man nodded to the chair. Vanora put a hand on the chair back, but did not sit down.

  “How long since you left the inn?” the old man asked again, digging into his sheep meat.

  “Who are you?” Vanora demanded.

  The abbot looked at her from under thick white bushy eyebrows. His rheumy blue eyes sparkled. “We have a mutual friend in common,” he said smiling.

  Vanora puzzled this out.

  “I used to eat here, you know,” the abbot said, “Before he bought it and locked it up.”

  “Heden,” she said. “You’re his friend.”

  “One of them,” the abbot nodded. “Sit down.”

  Vanora sat down.

  “Where is he,” she said, her voice almost a hiss. She looked around to see if anyone was watching.