The Oubliette, page 10
Emerging from the maze solved one of the mysteries: the location of Lostrovsky’s head. The assassin’s visage stared at the mouth of the labyrinth from the remnants of one of the trophy racks. The killer’s face was contorted in an agonised scream, the little round chin extended and warped in a way Ashielle would have thought impossible. Her family had been avid hunters at one point, and the mounted specimens of dozens of animals lined the upper levels of Darcarden. She had always noted in her youth the difficulty of capturing life and emotion in the dead eyes of a trophy creature. Lostrovsky’s murderer had no such difficulty, and in fact was a true master of the craft: the assassin’s eyes were still bright and clear, wide with terror and wet with torment. Even when he had been prepared to snuff her life, those eyes hadn’t betrayed a flicker of emotion to her, but here before her she read a world of pain.
Ashielle was shaken from her reverie by the bone-chilling realisation that the assassin’s face was still moving. A chill touch crept down her spine, rooting her to the foetid stone floor as she watched the eye rolling in its skull. Just before she began to scream, she realised the dead eyes had not been animated by some unholy means; a large drop of blood had merely welled up in the socket, and finally spilled from the eye. She shook herself, breathing deep and willing her hammering heartbeat to slow. She didn’t know how long she had stared into Lostrovsky’s dead face, but by the time she had calmed down, her joints were stiff and her fingertips cold. She clutched her pistol tighter and stomped past the spiked head to the main chamber.
Something was different. Ashielle held her luminator out, trying to determine what was amiss. There were bloody streaks on the ground, evidence of Lostrovsky’s terrified and ultimately doomed struggle for life, but it was more than that. There was a brick lying loose on the ground that hadn’t been there before.
There was a passage, or at least the beginnings of one, leading away from the trophy room in the opposite direction from the oubliette chamber. Scratch marks covered the dirt there. Several other stones and bricks had been dislodged to form a loose pile at the bottom. The creature had been busy. Beyond the damage the creature had inflicted, she spied a vertical shaft, too narrow for anything larger than a rodent to squeeze through. The flow of air told her that it went all the way to the surface. Could the creature squeeze itself through such a passage? If it could travel through the shadows, as she’d seen, she wouldn’t be surprised.
The oubliette room held an even more disturbing labour. The geometric runes ringing the stone circle had been cleaned, the cobwebs and dust brushed away from the smooth white material. Each rune had been carefully daubed with a thin coat of blood.
‘You like my little display?’
Ashielle spun, trying to pinpoint the voice. She snapped her pistol up, ready to threaten the creature, only to find the passage behind her occupied by nothing but damp moss and the echo of her fearful breathing. She realised that even the chittering of rodents was absent, and had been since she had ventured through the secret door. The quiet was so total, she began to fear she had imagined the voice.
When she turned back to the stone ring, her gaze was met by the hellish pits of the creature gazing back at her. The coal-eyes she had seen locked away before were more intense now, the spark brighter and deeper. The brilliant orbs were so hateful she could have sworn they would burn her if she got close enough. She had no idea how it had moved past her without making a sound. The inhuman face was no more than an arm’s length from her own, close enough to pounce before she even raised her weapon. She shuddered to think how long it had stood behind her, studying her, while she had been menacing an empty passage. The thing stood watching her, but its easy stance didn’t fool her. She knew it could move with the speed of a marshlion if it wished.
‘The grunting, painted barbarians that used to call these caves home were fond of planting those ridiculous little trophy displays to ward us off.’ The voice was smoother, richer than it had been before. Ashielle swallowed, her mind suddenly unable to focus. She couldn’t have shot the thing if she wanted to. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting.
‘The trophies, the labyrinth,’ she said, aware that she needed to regain the social footing, ‘they weren’t for intruders from the surface, were they? They were supposed to intimidate and obstruct your people.’ She successfully resisted the urge to turn her head to the stone ring, but her eyes flicked towards it anyway.
The thing let out a horrifying sound: a hollow, echoing click that reminded her of a primitive trying to start a fire in a cave by slamming rocks together. The monster’s shoulders juddered slightly, and she realised with a start that it was laughing at her.
‘Yes,’ it hissed. ‘Your kind has always clutched desperately at talismans they think will protect them from us.’ It shifted its gaze to her pistol. As if to demonstrate its point, the thing broke away from the shadows and stalked back towards the stone ring, turning its back fully to her. It was as if the darkness swallowed it up. Its form became faded and indistinct. She tried to focus on the ashen grey hair, but after a moment that too was gone in the gloom.
‘Why are you still here?’ Ashielle asked.
‘I cannot leave,’ came the hissing reply. It seemed to echo throughout the room. Ashielle felt a creeping dread up her spine. She knew the thing was trying to unnerve her. She had no intention of playing its childish games.
‘I find that hard to countenance,’ she snapped. ‘I think you could be out of the palace and gone from Kostoveim before anyone even realised you had been here, if that was your wish. So why remain?’
The eyes snapped open again, no more than a handful of paces from where the creature had vanished. It stood in front of the stone ring upon the wall, one hand lifted to trace the runes. It gazed at her over its shoulder, the red eyes now taking on a hateful hue they had not seemed to possess before.
‘Palace, city, river or caves – they’re all still here.’ It turned back to the stone ring. ‘And I cannot leave here until I am bidden to do so.’ The creature turned back and cocked its head. ‘As it has ever been, the emissary serves the pleasure of the chieftain.’
Ashielle scowled. ‘Explain.’
The creature clack-laughed at her again.
‘You bear the signet on your hand,’ it said. ‘You wielded the knife that made the offering of flesh and blood. You gave life to reconsecrate the pact.’
Ashielle’s eyes narrowed. ‘So, are you bound to my bidding, then?’
The red eyes flared briefly.
In the space of a blink, the thing crossed the distance between them. It stood close enough for her to smell the dry, rotten odour of its skin, like a den of hibernating reptiles. Its arm moved like a striking serpent, snatching her rod of office from her belt. The fiend held it up between them.
‘No,’ it said. For the first time its tone was not jovial or restrained. She could feel a galaxy of contempt in that word.
‘In what way do you serve my pleasure, then?’ Ashielle knew she had the upper hand, at least for the moment. As fearsome as the creature was, it was prevented from harming her, either by sorcery or necessity.
The thing growled with a voice like a drowning gurgle. The eyes burned steady now, and along its black skin she could see a series of heliotrope runes glowing faintly. Here was the truth of it, the cultured and easy demeanour a thin mask. Beneath lay a predator, alien in thought and body.
‘Call my name,’ it hissed. The cadence and lilt were still alien, but the anger and arrogance were unmistakable no matter the language. ‘Make your offering of flesh and blood. Of life. And the darkness shall descend where you command, leaving only whom you wish.’
‘And what is your name?’ she asked.
‘Jaezubiel.’
There was no discordant hiss, no pop of displaced air, no dramatic device to signal the fiend’s departure. It was just gone.
Tanzeg slammed the door to the carriage. The previous night had been positively vexing.
The wardens had arrested his primary apothecourier in Kostoveim earlier in the week in a raid that was so well coordinated it had to have been instigated by inside information. Try as he might, Tanzeg had been unable to determine who the rat had been. His suspicions had already led to him questioning several of his bagmen, two of them to the point that they would no longer be able to serve his enterprises.
He’d tried to work out his frustrations by visiting his favourite gentry’s club, home to one of Kostoveim’s infamous ‘strife societies.’ Amid the tang of aged amasec and a pall of rich smoke, the wealthiest degenerates of Kostoveim would gather together to dine and drink in luxury, surrounded by fine art and finer consumables. Under cover of darkness, the most desperate of the city’s poor were brought in and enticed to fight for the pleasure of the viewing elite. Sportsmanship and righteous challenge were nowhere to be found; the strife societies operated to turn a profit and provide the audience with entertainment. The rules were irrelevant, the lives of the competitors valued less than beasts, and the terms of each match subject to change at a moment’s notice with the offer of enough coin.
Even this had failed to assuage Tanzeg’s mood, however. Normally the bloodshed at his behest perked him right up, but nothing seemed to relieve his stress. He had even opened his own purse to up the violence, first paying to have two bare knuckle brawlers armed with meat cleavers. When their brutal dismemberment of one another failed to satisfy, he’d intervened in another match, paying to have a recurring fighter’s legs broken before his bout. Even the boos and wails of his fellow nobles as they watched the crowd favourite beaten to death by a pair of half-starved street performers could not alleviate his ire.
This night didn’t appear to be shaping up any better. His date for the evening shivered on the carriage bench next to him. The women’s bench occupied by his mother and sister had a heavy down quilt to warm the legs on chill nights, but none of the Vaneisens would ever have let a common companion sit with nobility. It was only in the interests of time that they allowed Tanzeg’s companion into the carriage at all. If they’d been attending a soiree closer to the Vaneisen villa, his mother would have insisted he make Marysia walk.
He’d tried to self-medicate to take the edge off, of course. The new supplier he had found for rekanine capsules had proven to be slightly too good at his job. The high had been intense, but had lasted far longer than Tanzeg was used to. The sun had been creeping over the horizon before his heart had slowed enough for him to be able to get any sort of sleep at all, and what little he had managed had been light and easily disturbed.
And now he had the unenviable task of the governor’s ball. Few things were less attractive than spending an evening listening to tired string music and feigning deference to the pretentious child who ruled Darcarden. Of course, there was no experience so loathsome that it couldn’t be made more miserable by the presence of his mother and sister.
Ireina and his mother stared at him as he adjusted his coattails on his carriage bench.
‘Are you finished with your little temper fit?’ Esilia said. For the governor’s ball, she had chosen an outfit of Anzellian batsilk. The fabric of the gown itself was woven so tightly it looked as though it could be liquid. Her decorative shawl was a far looser weave, like a finely woven fisher’s net laid over her bared shoulders. Her hair had been bound with a series of batsilk threads, their gleaming silvery finish contrasting against the steel grey of the matriarch’s head.
Tanzeg said nothing, only slouched in his seat. He had chosen a rib-belly coat over a padded duellist’s vest and riding breeches. His creamy white outfit, trimmed with gold and odobenid bone, was the height of expense and ostentation.
‘Whatever has got into you?’ asked Ireina. She gazed out of the window idly.
Tanzeg slammed a fist against the back of the carriage. If the driver didn’t get moving shortly, he was apt to throw the man to the street and drive them himself. He’d done it before.
To many of the ruling families in Kostoveim, an autocarriage was the pinnacle of wealth and status. Few could afford them, and only the governor could afford to run one for mundane tasks. The Vaneisens had always preferred horses. Like his father and his grandfather, Tanzeg could wax poetic about the pride of Ceocan’s animal husbandry, about the dangers of automation, or the superiority of the horse to the autocarriage. It was all too common to meet a petty noble full of pride over their family’s new acquisition, and Tanzeg enjoyed injecting a bit of humility in their lives. In truth, his preference came down to the fact that he couldn’t whip an autocarriage.
‘He’s embarrassed because his security was breached,’ said Esilia.
Tanzeg’s eyes narrowed. How had she known? Ireina pursed her lips quizzically.
Their mother went on. ‘One of his little narcotic houses was raided, and not by the enforcers. He’s spent the better part of the last few days trying to figure out who did it.’
Tanzeg realised that his mother never spoke with such confidence about matters she was ignorant of. If she was putting his business on display, it was because she already knew who had betrayed him. It didn’t take him long to come to the obvious conclusion.
‘You?’ he asked, turning a wicked eye to his mother.
Ireina giggled. Esilia ignored her son’s outburst and her daughter’s taunts.
‘Clearly it was warranted,’ she said. ‘You’ve poisoned your mind to powder – how else could your utter failure be explained?’
Tanzeg forced his face into a bitter, crazed grin.
‘You underestimate me, mother. I’m wounded that you think your own son wouldn’t turn a setback to his family’s advantage. We haven’t been arrested, which means Lostrovsky wasn’t taken alive by the governor’s forces.’
Ireina waggled her decorative fan dismissively. ‘And yet your minion has yet to make himself known, either. Which suggests he didn’t make it out alive.’
‘Too right.’ Tanzeg nodded, reached under his jacket, and produced a slim control unit. ‘It would be a shame, then, if his corpse were to be discovered in the governor’s palace.’
Ireina leaned over to her mother. ‘He fitted the assassin with an iso-tag,’ she said.
Esilia continued to look unimpressed. ‘Which is all well and good if the Matkosen child was foolish enough to keep a rotting cadaver lying about her drawing room for a month after shooting him dead. What are we to do if the body has been removed?’
‘The device tracks the radionuclidic signature of the tag,’ Tanzeg said. ‘All I need to do is begin at the last place I left him, and I should be able to track Lostrovsky all the way to his final resting place. At the very least, to the site of his death, which should be able to produce evidence of his demise.’
Esilia scowled. ‘There will be a great deal of security.’
Ireina laid an obsequious hand on Esilia’s arm.
‘Please, mother,’ she said. ‘I can think of no task that Tanzeg has more practice or talent for than skulking about a lady’s home unwanted and unnoticed.’
She made not a sound, but Tanzeg caught the hitch in Marysia’s breath as she bit back a snort of laughter. He wasn’t sure if his escort’s laughter was at his expense, or because she knew things his sister did not. His pride compelled him to believe the former.
‘That’s why I brought a professional,’ he said. ‘After all, what was it you always said about craftspeople?’
‘Artists,’ corrected his mother, absently staring at the curtained window. The windows of their carriages were always heavily draped. All the better to remind themselves and the world around them that there was a wall around the family, an eternal separation between them and the common person. ‘An artist is only as good as their tools.’ She turned and cast a critical eye on Marysia. ‘And you are a useful tool, are you?’
Marysia’s face betrayed nothing, but Tanzeg could feel the brief tension in her. He knew she wanted to say something sharp, but wisely refrained.
‘I should think so, ma’am. Good enough to do my job and remain silent about it afterwards,’ she said. Tanzeg was glad Marysia hadn’t tried to make some snide comment or witty boast. Real professionals never did, in his experience.
‘And you can do your part?’ he asked his sister.
Ireina nodded. ‘The Grevenate knows that having a ruling family as weak as the Matkosens invites nothing but disaster. Ashielle succeeds now only by walking the most perilous of balancing acts. The nobles need only the flimsiest of tangible excuses to back our installation as the governing family.’ She smiled sweetly, in a way that made Tanzeg distinctly uneasy. He’d seen that smile before. In their youth it had usually heralded him being punished for a crime he hadn’t actually committed. In adulthood he had learned it came before far more nefarious turns of fortune.
‘You have an agent within the Matkosen household, don’t you?’ He had tried for months to plant a solid traitor within the governor’s household, or else to flip a loyal supporter. How had his sister got her hooks into the governor’s people? And how highly were they placed?
‘She has a prospect,’ Esilia snapped, stealing the momentum from her daughter’s gloating. ‘So far that seems to be all either of you have. And we cannot build a legacy on ifs and maybes.’ Esilia smiled for the first time since Tanzeg had got into the carriage. ‘How do we build our future?’
Tanzeg grimaced and slumped in his seat. As much as he hated Esilia, she was right. In many ways he supposed he and Ashielle had a great deal in common. Both of them had been shaped by their parents, moulded to fill a certain role since before their birth.
‘We build our future in the shadows,’ he said. ‘We do not build with them.’
