Savage City, page 13
‘The thing is,’ Bouillon told her, ‘that we were a little surprised to hear that you’d married Katerina off to Mordicio’s son.’
‘Surprised!’ Gilles repeated the word, his voice high-pitched with outrage.
‘And we wondered if you realised quite what a stupid idea that was.’
The comtesse stiffened and her cheeks coloured.
‘And then,’ Bouillon continued, ‘we find that, not only have you married her off to Rabin Mordicio, a drooling imbecile, but that he’s lost her. You can imagine how upset we are.’
‘Rabin Mordicio.’ Gilles shook his head in disbelief. Then, suddenly unable to contain himself any longer, he left his post by the fireplace and started to pace around the room.
‘Oh, calm down,’ the comtesse told him. ‘I don’t know why you’re so upset, anyway. You never wanted anything to do with the child and she’s been nothing but trouble.’
‘It’s her dowry we’re worried about, you stupid woman!’ Giles yelled. His hands bunched into fists and he turned on her with barely restrained violence. Bouillon looked at him disapprovingly.
‘Oh, well. If money is all you’re interested in…’ she said, as if disgusted by such base matters. The fact that Mordicio’s bribe to her even now nestled beneath the cushions that supported her plump bottom did nothing to diminish her expression of disdain.
Gilles and Bouillon exchanged another look. Bouillon raised one eyebrow in an unspoken question. His brother shrugged helplessly.
‘Yes, well, what we’re concerned about isn’t money. It’s the lack of it.’
‘What do you mean?’ the comtesse demanded, looking uneasy for the first time since her brothers-in-law had returned.
‘I mean that we don’t have Katerina’s share any more.’
The comtesse, for once, was speechless.
‘Those damned herrings,’ Gilles muttered, and for a moment the comtesse thought that he’d finally gone mad, but then she understood what he was talking about.
‘But the herring shoals were very good this year,’ she reminded him.
‘Exactly. But we thought that they wouldn’t be. Sooo…’ Bouillon trailed off, too embarrassed to continue.
‘So we sent our boats up to collect salted fish from Kislev,’ Gilles finished for him. ‘Then the herring came in. They were so plentiful and cheap that we could barely give our salted stuff away.’
‘But Franz’s share of the business is supposed to be worth almost a hundred thousand crowns!’
‘Yes,’ Bouillon said, taking some small comfort from his sister-in-law’s distress. ‘It is. Imagine how surprised Mordicio will be.’
The three of them imagined it.
It wasn’t much fun.
‘So we’ll have to try to annul the marriage,’ Gilles decided.
‘Getting to be quite a habit of ours, isn’t it?’ Bouillon sniggered, quite inappropriately in the comtesse’s opinion. ‘I’ve got a feeling that she’ll be happier separating from that pig’s bladder Mordicio’s son than from the strigany.’
‘No, we can’t do that,’ the comtesse said. She’d just remembered how much of Mordicio’s gold she’d spent on repairing the fire damage from the wedding. Even if she wanted to return his… gratuity, she wouldn’t be able to.
‘Why not?’ Gilles asked testily.
It took the comtesse a moment, but then inspiration struck. ‘Because it will look a little suspicious if, a day after Katerina disappears from his house, we annul the marriage. He’ll think that we’re hiding her.’
‘So let him think that,’ Gilles snapped and prowled back to look at the fire. ‘The old goat can think what he wants to. We have the men and the steel to deal with him if he gets cocky.’
‘But not,’ the comtesse reminded him, ‘the money.’
Bouillon rubbed his chin and stared into space.
‘The first thing to do,’ he decided, ‘is to find our beloved niece. Once we’ve got her, there are a thousand things she can accuse Mordicio’s son of. Some of them are probably true. And even if we don’t get the marriage annulled straight away, we can keep it locked in the merchants’ court, which will be just as good.’
Gilles frowned. ‘How will we find her?’
‘Considering that she only has one friend in the city, I’d suggest starting with Florin d’Artaud,’ Bouillon said.
The comtesse’s nose wrinkled with distaste.
‘Ah yes. D’Artaud. Nice lad,’ Gilles reflected. ‘I don’t see why you didn’t marry her to him. His brother’s quite well off by all accounts.’
‘My daughter will never marry that vagabond,’ the comtesse snarled.
‘Fancy him yourself, do you?’ Gilles leered.
‘How dare you,’ the comtesse barked. ‘In fact, get out of my chambers!’
‘Your chambers? I don’t remember you paying–’
‘Come on Gilles,’ his brother cut in. Much as he enjoyed these family blood sports, now was hardly the time. ‘Let’s go and find our niece.’
Gilles grunted with disgust and, turning on his heel, stomped out of the room.
The comtesse didn’t rise to see her brothers-in-law out. She was too busy thinking about how she might hold on to the coin that Mordicio had given her for arranging the marriage.
All in all, she decided, it would be best if her daughter disappeared for good.
The comtesse watched the fire die. Yet even when the flames had gone, her eyes still shone, glittering in the darkness like diamonds.
Despite the bone-aching chill of the place, the waiting man felt none of the cold. His gaunt frame shivered, but even as he rattled the lantern he clutched in one bony hand, he felt warm. Hot, even. The flames of hatred that burned inside his scrawny old chest were more than a match for the subterranean temperature.
He paced about in the clammy darkness, his boot heels clicking on stone. Usually it was anxiety that set him to scuttling back and forth. Tonight, though, it wasn’t anxiety, it was impatience.
After an hour, the first faint breeze stirred the frozen air. The man turned to face it. It had come from the passageway that led up from the depths to this hidden meeting place, and brought with it the whiff of something bitter and poisonous.
‘About time,’ the man grumbled to himself and pulled at his beard disapprovingly. But he had to wait for another five minutes before the liquid blackness of the deep hole spewed out its occupant.
‘Welcome,’ the waiting man said, hiding his irritation. ‘Welcome. It seems that I have another little piece of business for you.’
The thing that he had summoned chittered excitedly, its teeth as yellow as butter in the lamplight. ‘Yes, yes,’ the assassin squeaked, and its tail thrashed the ground with excitement. Ever since it had returned from its last mission, it had been hoping to work for the manthing again. Or for anybody else who’d pay in warpstone. The assassin wanted more, wanted it badly. More of the stuff which even now waited in the lead box the manthing carried.
‘Do you remember the girl that you weren’t to kill last time? Red hair, white skin. Killed lots of your friends.’
‘It’s a lie!’ the assassin hissed, his thoughts still befuddled by what was in the lead box. ‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘Yes, my fellow. Yes. I know. But now I want you to.’
The red beads of the assassin’s eyes swivelled upwards to study the man-thing’s face. Even beneath the agony of its need it was surprised by the cold hatred it saw there. It was quite impressive, for a human.
‘So I kill the female. Yes. But you pay first.’ The assassin edged forward, revoltingly human fingers stretching out as greed sharpened its rodent face.
‘A little bit now,’ the man said, ignoring the stink of the thing’s breath as it drew near. ‘Yes, I think a little bit is all that will be good for you right now.’
Skrit’s tail flickered back and forth behind him and, as if by magic, a curved shard of steel appeared at the end of it. ‘Pay now,’ Skrit insisted, his nose wrinkling as he snuffled at the box that the man still clung to.
The man’s face remained impassive as he watched his confederate twitch and shudder. ‘No.’ The man shook his head and, for once, decided on absolute honesty. ‘I won’t pay you now, because if I do, you will have more than enough to kill yourself. And looking at how far you’re gone, I think that you will.’
The assassin took a step back, peeled its lips back from its fangs, and made a shrieking, gurgling sort of sound.
‘Yes. I’ll kill the female quick. Now you give me warpstone quick. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ the man said and tossed over the leaden box.
The assassin snatched it out of the air, pressed it into the broken stone of the floor, and prised the lid off with a twist of a knife. The cancerous green glow lit up the joyous snarl that creased the assassin’s snout, and the air filled with the sour tang of ammonia as it urinated in sheer delight.
‘Lots more where that came from,’ the man told the thing, although it was barely listening any more. ‘All you need to do is to bring me her head. And Skrit?’
The creature looked up.
‘Kill anyone you find with her. Or see near her. Or who you think she might have looked at.’
‘For more stone?’
‘For more stone.’
‘Yesssssssssssss,’ the creature hissed. Then, suddenly paranoid, it closed the box and hid it within its ragged robe.
The man watched it go, scuttling off into the darkness like a giant cockroach.
He thought about how it would be to meet your death at the hands of such a living nightmare. It wouldn’t be quick. Ah well, the man thought with a smile, at least he wasn’t dying in vain. By the time he’d finished with Katerina even her mother wouldn’t be able to recognise her.
‘Monsieur d’Artaud, where have you been?’ Jeanette asked. ‘Why do you look so worried? What are you doing?’
‘Nothing,’ Florin told her as he herded a dozen complaining patrons out of the Ogre’s Fist. The last of them seemed strangely reluctant to leave his drink. Florin’s boot changed his mind. Having thus cleared the taproom Florin slammed the bolts closed on the door, wincing with pain as the metal touched the raw flesh on his palms. Then he spun around, pressing his back against the wood and the grumbles of complaint from outside.
‘Nothing’s going on?’ Jeanette asked him, openly sceptical from behind the safety of the bar.
‘That’s right,’ Florin agreed, and with a last nervous look around the empty bar gestured for Katerina and Lorenzo to go upstairs. After a night spent holed up beneath the relatively safe house of Madame Gourmelon, the three had decided to risk returning to the Ogre’s Fist.
‘And who’s she?’ Jeanette asked, scowling at Katerina’s back as she rattled up the staircase.
‘Nobody,’ Florin said, pushing past the serving wench to make sure that the back door was locked.
‘Nothing and nobody,’ Jeanette repeated, following him through.
‘Is anybody in the cellar?’ Florin asked.
‘Who do you think might be down there?’
‘No–’
‘Nobody,’ she finished for him, and clicked her tongue in disgust.
Florin slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her on the cheek. Jeanette tried to maintain her scowl as she wriggled against him, pressing her breasts against the hardness of his chest.
‘You know how much I think of you, Jeanette,’ he said, brushing a lock of hair back from her face.
‘Oh yes,’ she said with a pout. ‘Every time you want something.’
‘Yes,’ Florin said, and smiled with such sudden brilliance that she quite forgot to be annoyed. ‘That’s why I’m going to make you a partner.’
‘You mean…?’
‘That’s right.’ Florin nodded. ‘From now on you run the inn. You almost do anyway, but from now on you can keep a third of whatever you make.’
‘Oh.’
‘Thought you’d be pleased,’ Florin said and, with a slap on her nicely rounded rump, he left her to decide if she was disappointed or not and rushed upstairs.
He found Katerina waiting for him.
‘Are you sure you want to come with me?’ she asked as he pushed past her. ‘There’s no reason why Mordicio’s men would have recognised you.’
Florin stopped moving for long enough to roll his eyes at Lorenzo.
‘What?’ Katerina snapped. She was in no mood to be patronised.
She never was.
‘The thing is,’ Lorenzo told her as he copied Florin’s example and started to stuff clothes into a trunk, ‘we can’t take the chance. If Mordicio has even the slightest suspicion that we were there, then…’ He made a chopping gesture across his neck and did a passable impression of a man with a cut throat.
‘I see. Well, you’re welcome to come with me.’
‘And you with us,’ Florin said as he lifted a section of flooring. A tangled cache of weapons lay within the hiding place. They gleamed with the dark lustre of a thousand murderous possibilities. Most of them were cutlasses or cleavers, but amongst these was a leavening of other weapons. There was a crossbow, a heavily greased T of sprung steel. There were great blocks of spiked iron, which had obviously been forged to fit around fists bigger than any man’s. There were also a few contraptions that were so strangely crafted that Katerina took them to be no more than ornaments.
‘Help yourself,’ Florin told her, picking out a stabbing sword for himself before rushing off to start rolling up his clothes.
‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ she asked as she picked up the crossbow and tested the mechanism.
‘They’re mostly from customers who couldn’t pay their bill,’ Florin shouted back from another room.
‘And who were too drunk to fight back,’ Lorenzo added, cackling happily as if at some fond memory.
Katerina selected a cutlass from amongst the confusion of weapons. It was a well-balanced object, and as sharply curved as one of Tabby’s tusks. The comparison brought a sad smile to her face as she checked the scabbard before buckling it to her belt.
Florin came back into the room, cramming a velvet hat onto his head and swirling a silken cape around his shoulders. He winked at Katerina, swept his hat off, and bowed.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘what a lovely cleaver that is you have strapped to your waist. And those rags – designed by the great Paravaldi of Tilea, no?’
Katerina laughed, exposing most of her sharp, white teeth. ‘And you, monsieur, must have stepped straight out of the duke’s palace. And, to judge by the smell of you, into a pigsty.’
‘This scent is the very latest fashion amongst the aristocracy,’ he replied haughtily. ‘Why, King Louis himself smells of nothing but griffon dung. As well as impressing the ladies, it gives the skin a certain lustre.’
Katerina laughed again. This time the sound of it was too much for Jeanette, who’d been eavesdropping below. With a jealous scowl on her face she pounded up the stairs to see what was going on.
‘Are you all all right?’
Although she was speaking to Florin she didn’t take her eyes off Katerina. They weren’t approving.
‘Yes, we’re fine,’ Florin said.
‘Thought I heard an ox being strangled,’ Jeanette said.
‘Ahem,’ said Florin, and wondered how to distract Katerina. By the flash of colour on her cheeks she seemed to have realised that she was being insulted.
‘This is Jeanette,’ he said. ‘She’s concerned about the livestock arrangements because she is my and Lorenzo’s new partner.’
‘What?’ Lorenzo cried.
No sooner had he asked the question than something pounded against the front door of the inn; something a lot heavier than a drunkard’s fist.
Florin was almost glad to hear it.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘The tunnel.’
‘What do you mean about Jeanette being a partner?’ Lorenzo demanded.
‘Nothing.’ Florin shrugged. Then, even as Jeanette began to shout her own complaints, he grabbed everything that he could carry and bolted down the stairs. He reached the bottom just in time to see the door bounce against its hinges and led the way through the back room and down into the cellar.
It was a dank place, although not an unpleasant one. The smells of wine and gin mingled with those of oaken barrels and beer casks. Florin dropped his gear onto the floor and attacked the stack of crates that leant against one wall. Katerina joined him, and the two of them started to sweat with the effort of clearing them away.
Lorenzo was too busy squabbling with Jeanette to help.
‘By Manann’s chamberpot, will you two be quiet?’ Florin cursed.
‘Then tell Lorenzo that I’m a partner,’ Jeanette demanded. She put her fists on her hips and pouted in a way that Florin usually found quite sweet.
‘She’s a partner,’ Florin told Lorenzo, who cursed long and loud. Jeanette smirked.
‘And perhaps,’ Florin grunted as he dragged the last of the crates away, ‘Jeanette will be kind enough to put these back over the trap door when we’ve gone. That is, unless you’d rather stay here and try to argue her out of her share?’
Lorenzo stopped complaining.
‘Don’t know why you didn’t cut her in sooner,’ the older man told Florin as the two of them stooped to lift the trap door. ‘After all, she does practically all of the work here.’ Florin opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again as the sewer stink roiled up to greet them.
‘Hurry up,’ Jeanette told them. But she was too happy to sound really urgent. It wasn’t just that she’d settled her claim to a partnership with Lorenzo that made her beam with happiness. It was also that she’d realised that Katerina’s lithe body and beautiful hair were about to be dunked into a river of liquid excrement.
Florin swallowed as he peered down into the eye-watering stink of the blackness below him. Swirls caught the lamplight here and there, and shone queasily.
