Merchant pitchmen walked with elaborate tree-poles, whose branches displayed hats, shoes, cheap jewelry, and purses. Fetching girls carried baskets of glass baubles, medicines, and cloth. Minstrels played while jugglers tossed gourds, dancers performed acrobatics, storytellers on boxes captivated crowds of listeners, and games of chance were everywhere. The smell of cinnamon and apples fought with the smoky aroma of roasting pig.
It didn’t seem likely that thieves would have a home in such an environment. Hadrian imagined cutpurses would live in abandoned hovels in a neighborhood much like the Lower Quarter, or in a sewer, or perhaps above some dockside bar. On the other hand, mice were more likely to take up residence in a full cupboard than an empty barn.
“What game is this?” Puzzle asked, having not needed to direct Royce for several turns. “Your friend knows where he’s going.”
Hadrian was certain that was not true. Royce said he had never been to Medford before their last visit, and despite everything, as far as Hadrian knew, Royce had never lied to him. He always thought that was odd given the man was a thief with no more ethics than a shrub, but it wasn’t the only thing strange about Royce Melborn, and his ability to find his way was one of those.
Royce came to a halt at the end of Paper Street in front of a large iron gate between Faringham’s Bookbindery and Virgil and Harrington’s Engravings. On the far side was a small graveyard. The gate was sealed with a massive and hopelessly rusted lock.
Royce faced Puzzle. He motioned toward the cemetery. “In there, right? But you have another way in. Something quick and simple.”
Puzzle stared at him with suspicion.
“It doesn’t take a genius,” Royce explained. “In the heart of everything but isolated. No one has touched that chain in a decade. How do you get in?”
The thief glanced over each shoulder, then with a specific sequence of slaps, popped one of the iron bars out of place and slipped through the gap.
“You don’t have too many fat members, do you?” Hadrian said, but the thief was running now, sprinting between the graves. Royce didn’t follow. They had arrived. The thief was just distancing himself from the bloodshed that was sure to follow.
Hadrian wondered if trees in graveyards were different from others. The few that grew among the headstones were like premature balding men, having already shed all their leaves. Their bark was black, their trunks twisted and bent. A blanket of recently deceased leaves hung in the crooks of statues and covered the mounds and mortuaries. Sculptures of women in flowing robes revealed faces streaked with the tarnish left by rain. They appeared at best to be weeping and at worst to be bleeding from their eyes. It was quiet there. Behind them, the bustle of the Merchant Quarter was a faint echo, a lonely sound that marked their isolation. Graveyards were supposed to be peaceful, serene resting places, but this one was infested with two-legged rats. Rats who did not like visitors, especially those who barged in unannounced.
Standing in the middle of the graveyard, they lingered like kids who had just whacked a beehive and were waiting to see what would emerge. Hadrian didn’t consider this the most reckless, or even the most peculiar, thing he had done recently. Life with Royce was like that. A year earlier, if anyone had suggested they would still be working together, Hadrian would have laughed. Well, maybe not laughed-he didn’t do a lot of laughing back then. He had suffered from a kind of despondency that made even the stupidest ideas seem sensible. This was how he ended up agreeing to team with Royce Melborn, a brooding, vicious sort of criminal, and only Maribor knew all the things he’d done. After a year, all Hadrian had managed to learn was that he needed to tread carefully when Royce raised his hood, that his friend disliked any beverage except an obscure and expensive wine, that his dagger had a name but his horse did not, that he was abandoned at a young age, and that he was indeed very good at stealing. He also knew Royce placed little value on human life. He had a habit of seeing murder as the easiest solution to life’s many problems. Normally this was an issue between them-but not that day.
Deep within the shadows, faces appeared. No one said a word. They gathered slowly, circling, threading between the headstones. In a few minutes Puzzle reappeared, coming out of a gargoyle-decorated crypt. Five others came with him. They fanned out, creeping closer. Hadrian guessed the odds at maybe five-to-one.
“This pinky finger says you asked to be brought here.” The speaker was surprisingly short and wore a high-topped black hat with the red imprint of a hand stamped on it. He had a nasty bruise on the left side of his face and a deep cut along his cheekbone that appeared to be recently stitched. It didn’t appear to bother him much, as he was in the process of eating a drumstick and licking his fingers as he spoke. “We have this sort of rule, though. It says that no one sees where we live and keeps living unless they is willing to join.”
“Yeah, I can see your need for secrecy,” Royce said. “I’m sure no one knows you’re here.”
“We got ourselves a smart one, boys. Maybe you ought to tell me why it is you decided to kill yourself today-while you still have the privilege.”
“You’re looking for a girl named Rose from Medford House. I want to know why.”
This brought a few chuckles from the circle of onlookers, laughter that made Hadrian think of crows on a fence. Each member of the Crimson Hand looked like patchworks of people. One wore a hunting vest over a sailor shirt; another had a painter’s smock, a jester’s hat, and knee-high waders. One fella even sported a riding boot on one foot and a satin slipper on the other. Stray dogs living in an alley-thin, vicious, dirty, and very likely diseased.
“Mighty demanding, aren’t you?” Top Hat asked. “What makes you think we’d tell you anything?”
“Honor among thieves.”
Top Hat narrowed his eyes. “You a thief, then? Do you know what we do to thieves who practice in our city?”
“No, and I don’t really care-besides, I haven’t stolen anything. Your man there can vouch for me. He’s followed us ever since we arrived.”
Top Hat turned. Puzzle nodded.
Top Hat hummed as he took another rip from the drumstick, sucking in a long strand of meat. He chewed a bit. “Who are you, then? Fellas don’t walk into a den demanding information, lest you’re touched or…” He paused, took a step forward, and squinted at Royce. Motioning with the chicken leg like it was a pointer, he asked, “Who you working for?”
“Nobody.”
“They were with another fella earlier,” Puzzle put in. “Left him at a barber with a bag of coins to buy new clothes.”
“Fancy fella? Rich?”
Puzzle shook his head. “More like Roy the Sewer.”
Top Hat threw away his chicken bone and began to circle them, sucking his fingers and wiping them on his pants. He carried a naked saber at his side. From the single-edge, slightly curved blade and the brass-plated handguard, Hadrian guessed it was a sea dog cleaver-standard issue for sailors on western vessels. He also wore a long bladed dirk, another naval weapon. While it was possible, Hadrian couldn’t imagine Top Hat had ever been on a ship, but his steel was a matched set. “What’s your name?”
“Royce Melborn.”
“Royce … Royce…” He paused. “Why is that name familiar? You come up from the south, didn’t you? Colnora maybe?”
Royce didn’t answer.
“You’re working for the BD, ain’t you?”
“BD have designs on Medford?” one of the others asked, the one with the mismatched footwear.
Top Hat scowled and slapped his arm against his sides in disgust. “Ah…’course they do. Bloody BD have designs on every ruddy thing in the world, don’t they? Can’t stand not having a pinch of every honest copper. Miserable piss pots. Ain’t it enough the Jewel runs half the world? I should kill the both of you right now.”