I scanned the rest of the warehouse, finding nothing else of note. If there had once been more evidence, then the boots of the wardens had obliterated any trace. I climbed the creaking steps to his personal rooms and peered into the study and bedroom – all empty; drawers torn out and left broken on the floor, furnishings gutted and abandoned, even the floorboards had been ripped up. Anything that might have proven useful had already been carted off for investigation.
I gritted my teeth in frustration and stomped back downstairs. There was something of Lynas lingering by those bare shelves, an undecipherable hint of strained emotion ticking the back of my mind that would have been undetectable if we hadn’t been Gift-bonded. I didn’t have the faintest clue what it meant, but a foul metallic tang now lingered at the back of my throat.
Had somebody wanted what was on those shelves? Or was it whatever had been stored in that chair? They were possibilities at least, and more than I had to go on before.
I climbed out the window and carefully closed the shutters behind me, making my escape back over Carr’s Bridge and past the oblivious mind-fogged guards, tossing the dead warden’s gloves into the river as I went – they were an unpleasant reminder, and already tainted with my scent.
The warehouse had given me no answers, only more questions, but it felt like I was on a trail now. Lynas had made his coin from imports, and I couldn’t imagine he’d made much in the way of any enemies while I’d been away – he was the nicest person I’d ever met. Sure, he’d been a bit cracked in the head after going through the Forging rite and failing – which meant the Arcanum booted him out onto the street – but then who wasn’t a little broken in one way or another? I was sure he wouldn’t have been involved in anything particularly illegal, not knowingly anyway. What goods had those shelves held? Had they been removed before or after his murder, and were they connected to Lynas’ presence in the slums that night? Meeting a buyer perhaps.
I had hoped to find something more solid to go on but now I was forced to head up into the Old Town for information, and if I was recognized they would hunt me without mercy. Legend had it that in the dark days before the rise of Escharr, my sort of magus had dominated the tribes of man and made endless war on one another until the sanctors appeared, immune to the tyrants’ powers, their Gifts solely used to close down other magi and kill them. No wonder the Arcanum took precautions when a dangerous throwback like me appeared, even if nominally every magus was welcome within their ranks. Not that my sort ever lived long enough to become anywhere near as powerful as the tyrants of old. Once the nature of my Gift became apparent I had researched all my accursed predecessors in the Arcanum records: suicide, street stabbings, tavern brawls, drunken accidents. We were not a lucky lot. And with me fleeing Setharis without leave, I’d been listed as gone rogue. A rogue tyrant was the stuff of nightmares, which is why I’d been forced to fake my death years ago.
In my current state there wasn’t much else I could do this evening. Tomorrow I would get in and out of the Old Town in one piece, everything going to plan. After that I planned to kick over some anthills and shake down some local scumbags until all the information I wanted dropped out of their heads. I just needed Charra to tell me which particular vermin I needed to talk to and where they holed up.
With my mental tweaking slipping into crushing comedown, I made my way back to the inn, hammering on the door until the sour-faced woman unbarred it to curse me. I swept past without a word, up the stairs and into the windowless room, making sure the door was barricaded before crawling onto the straw pallet. Sleep proved elusive, the dead warden’s face plaguing my attempts, staring with accusing eyes. Eventually, exhaustion brought welcome blackness.
Chapter 10
A door slammed, waking me at an unnatural hour of the morning, hanging half-off the bed. Groaning, I hauled myself off the old straw and scratched my many itches. I ran a hand across my bristly chin. The last thing I needed was to look unkempt in the Old Town, and in any case the last few years I’d spent in Setharis I’d sported a ridiculous Ahramish-styled philosopher look with pointy goatee, so in the interest of not being recognized I would need a clean shave and new clothes. Between that, time, and the scars marring my face, if I was careful I should be able to slip into the Old Town without notice.
A quick scrub of face and armpits with a wet rag and then it was time to appease my grumbling stomach. The innkeeper provided some hard bread and a chunk of tangy cheese that was surprisingly good considering the midden I was staying in. Seemed she took more care over her kitchen than her cleanliness. I washed it all down with watery morning ale. Sometimes I missed the crisp mountain streams of the mountainous north, but drinking water in Docklands was asking for your breakfast puked up in a corner somewhere. I dipped a rag into the ale and used it to give my teeth a polish, then chewed on a wilted sprig of parsley to freshen my breath. Most nobles and magi wore expensive perfumes to mask their odour, but this was the best I could do given the circumstances.
A runner arrived with a package from Charra. It was on: Old Gerthan would meet me at the top of Sethgate, and the next morning she would meet me in Carrbridge temple square at three bells before noon with all the information she was compiling. She ended the brief note with: “Buy yourself something pretty”. I opened the included coin pouch and smiled at the gleam of silver inside. Outside a soft drizzle was falling, perfect weather for a man to buy himself a cloak and keep the hood up.
Just before crossing into Carrbridge I noticed a blood and bandage barber’s sign down a side street. Barbers and chirurgeons had an unsavoury reputation, the shedding of blood and body parts seen as fearfully close to sorcerous practices by superstitious peasants. However much people dreaded going to barbers, their sort were necessary for those without access to Arcanum healers.
A man exited the shop, reeking of rum and holding a swollen jaw. I peered inside. A young man with cropped dark hair was washing his bloody hands in a ceramic bowl by a crackling fireplace, steaming rags hanging above it. A set of pliers on the workbench next to him still clutched a cracked yellow molar.
“Be right with you, friend,” he said, cleaning up after that poor sod’s adventure into dentistry. He corked a bottle of dockhouse rum and stowed it away in a cupboard before picking up the tooth and adding it to a large pickling jar on the sideboard. The jar was full of human teeth: a week’s extractions later to be handed over to the priests of the Lord of Bones for safe disposal. It was a little unsettling to see his collection, but vinegar did render them useless for any sort of sorcery. Even if he did wish to trade body parts in Setharis, the Lord of Bones took a dim view of that sort of thing and tended to nail such people to walls, through their eyeballs if they were lucky.
He looked at my unruly mass of hair. “A shearing, is it?”
“No, a clean shave, thank you.” Due to my peculiar magical adaptions a haircut felt akin to somebody pulling off my fingernails.
He opened a leather case and took out a straight razor of fine steel and a small blue bottle of oil. I settled into the chair and he placed a steaming cloth over my face to soften the hair. He stropped his blade up and down a strip of thick leather and when he was ready he removed the towel and poured a small amount of perfumed oil onto his fingers, massaging it into my neck and jaw.
I was grateful he didn’t plague me with inane chatter as he carefully scraped the blade across my skin. Acutely aware of the knife at my throat, I fought down a rising paranoia. He was young, and I’d been gone ten years so he couldn’t know me. Still, I sat there sweating until he had finished, then watched him clean his tools and pour the gunk of oil and hair into the fireplace. Only then did I pay – a magus had to be careful with their cast-offs. My face felt newly-born as I stepped out and the breeze played over bare skin.