“Just getting my own back, Spilgit. Anyway, you quit as a tax collector, so what difference does it make to you? You’re getting half, besides.”
Spilgit climbed out of the hole, brushed sand from his hands, and then leapt at Ackle. “Thief!” His hands closed on the man’s twisted, scarred neck, and his weight drove Ackle down to the ground. Spilgit knelt on him, squeezing with all his strength, seeing the ugly eyes bulge, the deepening hue of the face going from blue to grey. “This time you die for real! Just what you wanted!”
Ackle’s struggles fell away, his kicking stilled, and all life vanished from his mottled face.
Still Spilgit gripped Ackle’s throat, gasping out the last of his rage. “Thief,” he said again, but this time without much feeling. “Look at you. Got your wish, fool. This was punishment. Legal execution, in fact. I’m still a tax collector-it’s in my blood, in my bones, gods, in my hands!” He pulled his grip free, crawled off the corpse.
Eyes falling to the chest, he frowned. “Stolen revenues. For building better roads. Lanterns in the streets. Keeping the drains clear. But still, well, a man needs to get properly set up. It’s not like they’ll take me back, anyway. I could go into accountancy, use my skills for the other side. A nice office, in a decent neighbourhood, in a fine city, with proper clothes. Servants. It’s what I deserve, after a year in Spendrugle. Year? Only a year? More like a century!” Reaching over he pulled close the chest, broke the seal and flipped back the lid.
The coins were properly columned, each column wrapped and sealed and marked with the total amount. They’d already been converted, meaning every damned coin was solid gold. This wasn’t no normal haul. Not some scrapings from villages, farms and hamlets. Gods below, this was a city’s take. What in Hood’s name was that tax collector doing with it on Whitter Road? Without an armed escort?
Spilgit, you fool, the bastard was stealing it, of course!
He dropped the lid. He was getting cold again, now that he’d stopped digging and strangling Ackle. He had enough coin here to buy Spendrugle, all the lands surrounding it, and that damned Wurms Keep. He had the coin to hire an army and march back in the summer and lay waste to the whole place, and it was only what they all deserved.
Spilgit stood, staring down at the chest.
The shovel flattened the back of his skull and he toppled forward. His legs kicked a few times then went straight as spears. Ackle studied the sprawled corpse of the tax collector. “I told you I was dead!” he shouted. “You can’t kill a dead man! I told you!”
Dropping the shovel, he fell to his knees and pushed the chest back into the hole. It could all wait until the spring, anyway. Too cold for travel. His joints were freezing solid, making every move a creaking ordeal.
Ackle filled in the hole again, and then took up Spilgit by the ankles and dragged him to the edge of the shelf. He kicked the body into the thrashing surf, watched as the corpse was tugged out to sea, sucked down and out of sight between two massive rocks.
“Killing tax collectors,” he muttered. “I could make a living out of that.”
Picking up both shovels, he set off for the village.
Witch Hurl crawled up from the bushes and made it onto the trail on her hands and knees. Blood dripped sluggishly from her forehead, but the cold had frozen most of it. She had to hand it to Spilgit: the man’s reflexes were like lightning. Still, no matter. Against nine of her, he would have no chance, and indeed the time had come.
Muttering under her breath, she sembled. Her form blurred, she yowled in pain, and moments later nine lizard cats emerged from the redolent, spicy haze. The wind whipped those scents away. Her bodies were scrawny, but filled with venomous hatred. She slipped forward, tails writhing, nine slinky forms rushing up the trail.
The King’s Heel. It would all start there, with the conclusion of plenty of unfinished business. It was likely all the denizens of the village were in there, anyway, meaning she wouldn’t have to do much hunting through houses and huts, pig-sties and stables. No, they would all be crowded in the Heel tonight, sitting out the storm, warm in each other’s stink.
She would make of that wretched inn a tomb, a haunted crypt, its walls sweating the blood of slaughter, the echoes running in all directions from the screams and shrieks and death-rattles.
Racing closer, her gazes caught once more the glaring light from the tower of Wurms Keep. Her fury sizzled like fat in a pan, and she found her throats opening to hisses and then spitting, every scale upon her nine backs arching into serrated lines.
There, directly ahead, the entrance to the King’s Heel.
Reaching it, she flung herselves against the barrier. And rebounded. Frustrated rage filled her bodies. Claws were unsheathed, lashing out at the wind, gouging deep furrows in the frozen mud. She glared at the door, willing it to explode. But it defied her power. Hurl screamed through nine throats.
At the high-pitched wailing from outside, Feloovil shivered. “The wind’s gone mad out there! Here, then, have another drink!”
Laughing, Relish held up her tankard, watching it weave before her. “Brilliant idea,” she shouted. “A tavern on a ship! We should’ve thought of that years ago!”
“You ain’t on a ship no more,” Tiny said, his small red eyes tracking the room before returning to their concentrated fixation on Feloovil’s breasts. “You’re drunk,” he explained. “That’s why you’re all wavering back and forth, and the floor keeps tilting, and those lanterns swaying like that.” He belched then and leaned on the counter to get closer to those breasts, and then he addressed them. “I know you’re old and all,” he said, with a bleary smile, “but that just makes you more desperate, and a desperate woman is my kind of woman.”
“The only kind, I would think,” Feloovil replied. “And I’ll have you know I’m only thirty-one years old.”
“Hah hah hah!”
“Now, if you had me some offerings,” she continued, ignoring his derision, “I might show you the youth of my soul and all that.”
“Oh,” Tiny replied, “I’ll offer you something all right. Hah hah hah!”
“Listen to that wind!” Relish said, swinging round to face the door. “Like voices! Screaming witches! Ugly hags riding the black winds!” She looked round, frowned at all the pale faces and the huddling forms at the tables. “Wind’s got you all terrified! You’re all useless, the worst sailors I ever seen. All hands on deck! Storm-sails, reef the jibe and trim the anchor!” She spun back to Feloovil. “I want some women!”
“She can do that,” Tiny said, nodding, “since it keeps her a virgin, and we promised old Ma we’d keep her virtue and dignity and stuff.”
Feloovil shrugged. “Head on up and find one, then,” she said to Relish.
Weaving, Relish made her way to the stairs.
Feloovil eyed Tiny Chanter. “You got small hands,” she said.
“They ain’t small.”
“Too small for the rest of you, I mean. That’s not too promising.”
“Tiny don’t make promises,” he replied, nodding at her breasts. “Tiny Chanter does whatever he wants to do, with anybody he wants to do them with, as long as they do what they’re told, they’ll do fine.”
“They’ll do fine all right,” Feloovil said. “And I bet you want to see them naked, don’t you?”
He smiled.
“All right, then,” she said. “Here’s the deal. You all look tough and that’s good. There’s someone up at the keep needs killing.”
“I can kill,” Tiny said. “Better than anybody. Just ask ’em, all those people I killed. I ain’t just a sword, neither. I got sorcery. Necromancy. Jhistal, Demidrek, High Mage. Pick a title, I’m it.”
“Even better,” she said. “Since that keep’s full of sorcerors right now. Lord Fangatooth Claw, and his guests. Bauchelain and Korbal Broach.”
Tiny seemed to reel for a moment, and then his face darkened. “Aye, them. Wait, who’s Lord Fangatooth Claw?”