The alley was dark, but his Spider father had contributed enough to Sands’s heritage that he could read quite comfortably by moonlight. The moon was waxing, three-quarters full and still bellying out from one night to the next. A murderer’s moon, they’d call it in Merro. The Fly-kinden had always been able to turn life’s little practicalities into poetry.
Despite his heritage he looked almost entirely Beetle, did Forman Sands. Only closer observation detected the telltale discontinuity of warring kinden in his face. It had been enough, though, between a disinherited birth and a persecuted youth, to set him on a darker path, yet he still considered himself a good citizen of Collegium. He always cast his stone in the Lots, and followed all the major speeches in the Assembly, buying a record of each as soon as the printers could turn it out. If he sired a child, then he would buy a place in the College, with money to spare. Sands had scraped his education together by his own hand, and he valued book learning above all else, not just because of the opportunities it gave but because it made sense of the world in a way that nothing else did. It assisted him as he constructed his own philosophy.
‘I still think it’d be easier if you just catch his eye, leave the rest to us. No need for it to be your hand on the knife,’ his underling said. He was a plain Beetle man, scarred about the face and missing an ear: competent enough, but with no desire to be anything more than a thug. He was exactly what Sands aspired to distance himself from, symbolically if not actually.
‘It must be me,’ Sands told him. ‘Do you think I’m not capable?’
‘No, chief, but-’
‘So no argument.’ A gesture from Sands sent the man off. He then carefully tucked the book away in the folds of his robe, after marking his page. It was difficult to exist as an intelligent man on Collegium’s underside. Collegium preached virtue, humanism, the duty of people to work for each other’s benefit, or so the College philosophers claimed. Only thus would the lot of people everywhere, of all kinden and social classes, be improved. Charity and consideration were the watchwords. Even the most grasping of Beetle magnates made a public show of open-handedness. How, in the face of that, could Sands justify himself: the robber and the killer, the agent of corruption?
He had studied long and hard, with the assistance of Spiderland philosophers who had written on the same issues a century ago. They had all manner of glib answers for the conscientious Beetle: good deeds could only exist against a background of evil, the actions of predators promoted excellence in their prey, complacency was ever the enemy of progress. Sands was all the while constructing his own philosophy of the virtue of criminality. Day by day, book by book, he was justifying his own existence.
And when I am an old man, I shall publish, he thought, but, for now, business intervenes.
His Fly-kinden scout, Filipo, dropped down nearby. ‘Coming right now,’ he reported curtly. Somehow the Fly-kinden never seemed bothered about right and wrong; Sands envied them such freedom.
‘Keep watch,’ he directed, and then stepped out into the street.
It was late. His sources had been keeping good track of his target, who was obliging enough to make appointments that continued past dusk. He was hurrying home now, and heading through a good enough area of town. Sands’s cronies were twitchy, out of place, while Sands himself was not. No watchman, seeing him there, would have cast a suspicious eye over him: a tall almost-Beetle in neatly folded robes, the very picture of a well-to-do middle merchant or scribe, or else the servant of some wealthy man.
Sands saw his assignation hurrying towards him, a thin Beetle with an agitated step, wrapped up in his own worries, clutching a satchel to his chest. Sands stepped half into his path without attracting his attention, and had to resort to calling out the man’s name.
‘Master Failwright?’
The shipping merchant stopped, snapped out of his own thoughts, peering at Sands. He saw a respectable, mild-featured Beetle, at least so far as the dusk revealed to him.
‘Do I know you?’ he asked, suspicious but not alarmed.
‘Master Failwright, I am sent from Master Mendawl.’
‘I know Master Mendawl,’ Failwright allowed.
‘Your words at the Assembly have disturbed him, Master Failwright. He was hoping to discuss them with you,’ Sands said, and saw how a spark of hope lit up in the man’s eyes.
‘Of course, of course,’ Failwright was saying. ‘I knew someone would take notice. Let Maker and Broiler and the others stew. He’ll see me tonight?’
‘He stays up for you in a hostelry near here,’ Sands confirmed. ‘I’m only glad I found you.’
Failwright nodded, a man with a mission. ‘Take me to him,’ he directed, and Sands’s hand offered the side-street to him. Sands’s accomplices had made themselves shadows, and Failwright marched along happily under his direction.
It was simple enough, for Sands had a speed that belied his size. As soon as Failwright was in the shadows, he had a hand over the man’s mouth. His other hand, the Spider-Art spines jutting from his knuckles, jabbed twice, once above each kidney, small spots of red spreading in the man’s robes. With practised smoothness, Sands spun the man about, slammed his back against a wall and rammed his claws up into Failwright’s throat.
The man’s eyes were wide, his struggles disjointed. The injuries in themselves, even the last one, were not fatal, but Sands’s claws ran with poison. He held his victim firmly while the toxin did its work, locking the man’s muscles, a joint at a time, then freezing his breath. He stuck in a few more doses, just to be sure. Beetles were a tough breed, even scrawny merchants like this one.
When Failwright had finally stopped twitching, Sands removed his hand. The man was still alive, just, but not for long. There were a few red specks on Sands’s robes, but otherwise it was a remarkably clean way to end a life. Sands’s Beetle underling approached cautiously.
‘Into the river with him,’ Sands instructed, and held out a pouch that the man gratefully accepted. Filipo landed nearby, ready for his cut. Sands left the pair to it. He had a client to see.
It is all justified, he thought. We are the surgeons hacking off the dead flesh. It was not done for a political cause, for he was no revolutionary. It was done for the sheer sake of it, the philosophical necessity of honing the blade of civilization. He tested that phrase in his mind, found it good, and continued on his way a happy man.
Helmess Broiler had a polished repertoire of smiles for all occasions, but he saved the genuine ones for moments like this.
She stepped down the stairs of his townhouse as though the simple descent was an indecent act, pausing halfway to lean on the banister and grin down at him. She loved him to be duplicitous, he knew. The fact that he had been fencing with the Imperial Bellowern, whilst all the while playing a larger game was meat and drink to her. It was one of the many ways she resembled a Spider-kinden.
It had always been thus, it was true, but formerly it had been a shady habit practised behind closed doors. Beetle men of status and of power, for all that they mostly had wives and families and the like, found in themselves a yearning to exercise their potency through other channels. Mistresses were well known, scandalous when exposed, yet ubiquitous amongst a certain class of Assembler and merchant. A clever young Spider girl or handsome youth who came to Collegium would not lack for opportunity. Oh, it was not always a Spider-kinden, but that was the archetype: beautiful and dangerous and irresistibly charming.