As I limped away into busier streets, three men burst through the door behind me, tumbling over the gurgling dockhand. I wasn’t in the mood for teaching them a lesson now, and after using magic, I didn’t care to linger. I slunk off into the darkness as they scrambled to their feet, cursing and kicking, looking around in vain for the man they were supposed to have beaten and robbed.
As dusk drew in I bought a packet of smokes and spiced meat on skewers from a cart on Fisherman’s Way. My teeth sunk into the hot meat, spicy juices dribbling down my chin as I wolfed it down while listening to a group of musicians drinking and playing on a street corner. Docklands might be squalid in comparison to the Old Town, but it was far more alive: a real and vibrant community in many places.
Whoever the Skinner was, he had nothing to do with the usual underworld strife. That lot seemed more on edge than anybody. When I met up with Charra tomorrow I hoped everything would slot into place.
As I passed the dark mouth of an alley something bright and fluttering in the breeze caught my eye. Hidden in the shadows amidst a pile of refuse was the green of a torn coat: fine Clanholds wool distinctively tailored by Arlsbergh of Ironport.
It was my coat.
I peered into the gloom with knowing dread. A man’s corpse lay in the alleyway… well, not a corpse precisely, more like what was left of one. Chunks of raw offal had been strewn across the cobbles and tattered flags of flesh and skin hung from shards of stone and wood gouged from the walls by massive claws. I squatted down and picked up a silver earring of twisted wire still attached to most of an ear. Arse. It was the boy thief’s earring.
I recognized the bite marks on a hunk of thigh, made by fangs the length of my hand. Shadow cats! Of all places, I should have been safe from daemons in Setharis. Lynas had seen shard beasts, and now these were here hunting for me. Somebody or something had to be protecting them from the city’s corrosive effects.
My plans were just grand in theory, not so great when I was confronted by my own bloody handiwork. Still, the lad had been no innocent and had dug his own grave, and not undeserved either. Such a waste of a life. I took one last look at the remains and then ran for the inn.
I kept Dissever naked in my hand and found my eyes flicking to every darkened doorway, every corner and pool of darkness, watching out for anything lurking in the shadows. How had those damned shadow cats located me so soon? It could take a week, usually two or three before they narrowed down my location, and this time I had travelled over the accursed sea, which should have made it more difficult. A thought struck me: with their master here, perhaps some of the damn things had never left Setharis at all, had sat waiting and watching all these years just in case I should ever return. If one knew I was here then the rest of the pack surely did. I would have to keep moving from now on. There went any chance of a good night’s sleep.
I blocked off the door to my room and carefully set an array of the nastiest wards that I could remember – things that would blast your mind and burn flesh from your bones. Only then, weary with the effort, did I shrug off my clothes, climb onto the pallet and pull the blanket tight around me.
My fractured dreams were stalked by a butchered boy in a tattered green coat running from shadows, and the night echoed with Lynas’ screams.
Chapter 13
Somebody crashed into my door. I jerked upright, blanket flying, and reached for my wicked knife. It was just a drunkard staggering down the stairs, hacking up his lungs as he went. I slumped back into a doze, immune to guests clomping on the stairs, the creaking of floorboards and the clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen below. For a single sublime moment I just lay there, numbly cocooned in my own safe little world.
My blissful numbness gave way to a growing itch. I sat up and scratched at my hair and body, peering down at the straw, at an almost imperceptible hint of movement. My skin crawled. Bile rose up my throat. Swallowing, I looked down at my itching crotch and with two fingers quested at the root of the hairs, pulling off a tiny hard speck smaller than a grain of sand. It squirmed between thumb and forefinger. Lice.
Fucking Docklands inns and their mangy pig-faced owners!
One of the first things that the Collegiate tutors beat into initiates was cleanliness, both magical and mundane. Most Gifted had one method or another, and luckily my meagre skills at aeromancy proved sufficient to avoid the worst of the beatings. Sod the risk; I wove a scouring blade of wind to strip away all the dirt, grime, dead skin, lice and bits of straw, and left a pile of gunge in the bed. My skin felt fresh, if a little raw, and the vile itching had ceased.
I beat the worst of the dust and dirt from my clothes and slipped them back on, then stomped downstairs to curse the sour-faced owner, telling her to burn her lice-infested bedding. She hissed like a startled alley cat and I was forced to duck a bowl flung at my head. I spat more curses right back at her as I stormed out into unexpectedly garish sunlight, quickly leaving behind the scabby inn and the hag shrieking obscenities at my back. If she was lucky I wouldn’t be back to burn the place down myself.
The city din washing over me was cleansing in its own way. Setharis was a place of mists, sea fog and rain, and the hubbub of daily life was usually somewhat muffled; it was a rare treat to enjoy such fine weather. The city had sprouted sails: linen hung out to dry on ropes between buildings fluttered and flapped in the crisp morning breeze.
Despite the glorious sunshine, there was still an undercurrent to the babble of voices, an edge of intangible tension flowing through the city streets. Setharis was worried sick. It was more than the usual disaffection amongst the peasantry or the influx of refugees from coastal villages around Ironport, nor was it solely due to the Skinner murders and the missing people. The lower classes might even have cheered had the murders been up in the Old Town instead of right on their own doorsteps.
With the shadow cats already in the city, I wasn’t about to linger where I’d used even a little magic, in daylight or not. I walked briskly towards Carrbridge, passing through the morning market at Pauper’s Gate where men and women were gathering to sign on to ships and work gangs. If they were very lucky, a labourer might get hired by the Arcanum, or find a place on one of the various guilds’ projects. For the few who excelled it might offer prospects of retention and steady pay. Of course such contracts were rare as diamonds.
A muddle of languages and accents filled the streets as travellers and foreign sellswords sought their fortunes, steady work, or to disappear. Setharis could easily offer that last. It was sometimes called the Dreaming City in the oldest of texts, depending on which translation you used, but City of Fever Dreams was to my mind the most accurate interpretation – for many newcomers it soon became a nightmare.
In the ten years I’d been gone the number of businesses and trading houses boarded up and abandoned had tripled, as had the number of beggars. Was trade really that bad these days? The poor clustered on every street corner, ragged figures squabbling over turf and doing their best to look worse off than any other: pinching their babes to make them wail piteously, grinning at me with soot-blackened teeth, cultivating fake limps or showing off bandaged stumps of missing limbs that were merely bent double and tied up. I knew most of these old tricks, had used many of them myself as a street rat. There was some real artistry on show here today and I wished them the best of luck.