It was a huge relief to get out of the Templarum Magestus. The risk of wandering sniffers and magi recognizing me dwindled with every step I took towards Docklands. We pulled hoods up against the drizzle and made idle chat as we passed through the thinning crowds outside the gods’ temples. Outside the temple of the Thief of Life, and in the middle of discussing my utter distaste of sea travel, a man called out to her. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. A shiver rippled up my spine and bile seared the back of my throat.
“Evangeline!” he called again. I glanced up to see high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, immaculate ash-blond hair, and absolute bastardry. Harailt, heir to High House Grasske, had aged badly and was now painfully thin and gaunt. He wasn’t wearing the sort of showy finery I remembered from the past; instead his plain robes blended in with the poorest magi. I quickly looked away, face hidden by scars and hood, and slipped amongst the worshipers wandering through the columned portico of my patron god Nathair’s temple, hiding, watching, hating.
He made my skin crawl. Seeing his face again flung me back to when I was entombed alive, and even now I couldn’t control my fear of dark enclosed spaces. When they discovered what he had done to us, if he hadn’t been the heir to a High House, then the Arcanum would likely have thrown him out. But he was, with all the wealth and influence that brought. Every day after his crimes had been exposed he had sought out ways to persecute and vilify me, as if it would somehow excuse his own villainy. It wasn’t even entirely personaclass="underline" he would have treated any scabby little runt from Docklands the same for dirtying up his hallowed halls of privilege and power. He was the worst product of the Old Town, the type that considered his blood pure and righteous, and ours tainted with base-born blood little better than animal.
I kept my hands clenched to stop myself from grabbing Dissever and ramming it through his fucking face, the barbs biting deep. He had briefly appeared in Lynas’ death visions – but much as I wished otherwise, that didn’t mean he had been involved; it was much more likely Lynas had been trying to tell me it involved the Boneyards.
“I am glad to have caught you,” he said to Eva, his voice slick with the cultured tones of the High Houses. They all sounded the same, these honey-tongued, spoilt bastards. “The famed Ahramish illusionist Lucata of Sumart is performing a play at the amphitheatre tonight. I was wondering if you would care to join us?”
She groaned. “Always when I am working. I have night patrol with the wardens tonight.”
“A shame,” he said, sighing. “I find shadow-play fascinating. Another time perhaps. Fare you well tonight.” With that he gave a slight bow and left.
“So,” Eva said, once Harailt was lost in the crowd. “You know Magus Harailt?”
“Was it that obvious?” I had slid from mysterious into suspicious.
“You don’t seem the bashful type.”
She had me there. “I knew the heir to High House Grasske when we were young. It’s a long story.” I couldn’t keep the venom from my tongue.
“Ah,” she said. “I have heard about his old scandals. By all accounts he was a flaming prick back then.”
I gritted my teeth. “Was? In my experience people like him don’t change.”
She made to reply, stopped, pondered it for a moment, and then chose her words carefully. “How much do you know about the disappearances ten years ago?”
Careful! A mundane shouldn’t show that he knew too much. “A god died. And Archmagus Byzant disappeared.”
She nodded, “Harailt and Archmagus Byzant were particularly close. It hit him hard when the Archmagus went missing so shortly after Artha died, and, well, there were a few accidents afterwards.” Meaning Harailt had probably maimed or killed people and Grasske covered up the worst of his excesses. “His house disinherited him and the Arcanum shipped him off to work in our embassies based in city states bordering Esban and the southern Skallgrim tribes. When he returned to he had become an entirely different and better person. He is not that odious youth you knew so long ago, that I can personally vouch for.”
Her taste was piss-poor. It still rankled that Byzant, a good and decent man, had shown that cock-maggot Harailt any favour after what he had done to Lynas and I. Maybe my old friend thought he could rehabilitate the swine.
“The bastard can burn, for all I care,” I said. “Some things cannot be forgiven.”
She shrugged, body language displaying her distaste. Not surprising – I was bitter and twisted, sour as any lemon at the suck.
We walked in silence for a while. “I’m sorry,” I said eventually. “It’s not a pleasant topic for me.”
“We all have our wounds, and some go deeper than others. I rarely get to see a man’s scars before I know him well.” She looked at the ragged scars marring my cheek and neck. “How did you acquire those? I suspect that’s an interesting tale.”
“Bad jokes and worse timing,” I said. It was close enough to the truth.
“Ha, I am surprised you are in one piece in that case. I would bet good coin that most of your jokes are terrible.”
My mind was churning with anger, questions, and the acute fear that I would be caught if I stayed any longer in the Old Town. I was not in any kind of mood for flirting and small talk, and as for love or sex – pah, no time for that! She was far too sharp to risk revealing anything more.
“I might tell you that tale someday,” I said, giving her a small bow, as befitting a noble of the Old Town taking his leave. I did have proper manners when I cared to use them.
“I will hold you to that,” she said. “Hope to see you soon, Master Reklaw.”
With that we went our separate ways. I kept my head down and hurried through the gate to the lower city, paranoia ebbing with every step I put between the Arcanum and myself.
I was finished earlier than I’d thought and not due to meet Charra until tomorrow. What to do now? The gaps in my current knowledge of Setharis were glaring. I needed to immerse myself in the underbelly of the city, to feel its ebb and flow before I could identify more links to Lynas’ murder. I knew just the place, and it wouldn’t hurt to earn coin while I did it; information would cost me dearly, and the people there would know who else Bardok the Hock was working with. It was time to toss the dice.
Chapter 12
Gold and silver are the greatest lubricants known to man. Greasing palms makes everything easier, everywhere, and black-marketeers and snitches were never less than ruinously expensive, which made my meagre stash about as useful as teats on a fish. It didn’t take me long to find a gambling den in the Warrens; all you had to do was follow the sweet scent of alchemic smoke and the sour odour of drunken fools shuffling along with golden dreams in their eyes and poverty in their future. Sooner or later they all ended up in the sleaze-pit called the Scabs, the scummiest part of the entire city, an impressive claim considering the competition. The muddle of crooked lanes housed the very worst gambling dens, where underground slavers and pimps bet flesh as often as coin. It was also where the best information brokers plied their trade.
An old man doddered into me from behind and I felt a hand slip into my pocket. I backhanded him into the mud and gave it no more thought. Cutpurses were the least of my concerns – I was far more worried about the moneylenders. When I fled Setharis I’d owed a bucket of gold to various unsavoury characters and their sort never forgot or forgave, but to look on the bright side, hopefully they were all dead by now.
I ended up dicing in a copper-bit dive occupying the mouldy basement of a raucous tavern. It was heaving with painted, pox-ridden doxies and hairy-knuckled toughs with overhanging foreheads taking bread money from the desperate and the drunk. It wasn’t the sort of place to hear interesting snippets of gossip, not the sort of place I needed to be, so I stayed just long enough to grow my handful of copper into silver and got out before they dragged me into a back alley and kicked my head in. I didn’t even use my Gift, just a load of bullshit and skill gained from a misspent youth and a downright wasted adulthood. I didn’t even enjoy the games: amateurs like them exhibited too many tells and their attempts to cheat me were frankly embarrassing.