Hold The Dark: A Markhat story (11 page)

I lifted an eyebrow. “That’s not the way it works. If it did, why all the old mad vampires?”

“Because they insist on sustaining themselves with the blood of their own species. Because they succumb to the hunger that drives them to slay their own. Because the hunger takes over, bit by bit, until nothing is left of the person but the physical shell and an awful, irresistible thirst.”

“And you?”

“We at Avalante resist. Oh, we must have blood. Bovine blood, porcine blood, any blood, save that of men. And because we resist, we will be spared the madness.”

“And that works?”

Evis nodded. “During the War, the House had dealings with a group of monks, high in the mountains of Chinlong.”

“They make that powder that keeps wounds from going septic. Sin-see, or something like that.”

“Cincee,” said Evis. “A most effective substance.” He reached down, donned his dark glasses again. “But did you know these monks are halfdead?”

I sat back. I hadn’t.

“I have walked among them. I have spoken with a man four hundred years old. He laughed and he walked with a stick, but he was of his right mind. I will be that man, Mister Markhat. And I shall not be alone.”

“You drink no blood.”

“We drink no human blood.”

“Do the other Houses know?”

“They do not. They would see it as a sign of weakness. They would attack, and we would waste valuable resources defending ourselves. Better to wait. Better to bide our time. Because, Mister Markhat, time is what we have.”

“Unless Martha Hoobin crawls out of the ground a month from now and kills everyone in a nursery school.”

“Just so,” said Evis. He sighed. “I will not deny your logic. But is it not possible, Mister Markhat, that I find the fate of these young women as awful as do you?”

I thought of Sara praying, and Victor crying.

“Maybe you do. Sorry. I fear I was brusque.”

Evis laughed. “Forgiven.” He rose, strolled to a wine rack, and motioned at the bottles and then at me.

“No thanks.” I rose too. It seemed like a time for pacing, since we were all old friends now.

“So how do we find Martha, before the new moon?”

Evis sighed. “I had hoped the warehouse would provide us with a name. It did not. It has been vacant for six years. A man named Amralot bought it and keeps it empty because he owns the facility next door and he doesn’t want the competition. We are assured he knew nothing of what took place there, or of Allie Sands.”

I frowned, walked over to the nearest row of books, realized the titles weren’t in Kingdom, and moved on.

“I had a thought, last night,” I said. “It may be offensive. Depends on how you feel about the Church.”

Evis laughed. “How I feel about the Church is irrelevant, considering how the Church feels about me.”

“They’re still trying to find mention of a hotter part of Hell just so they’ll have somewhere to wish you. And that’s on Mercy Day.”

Evis nodded. “Go on.”

I halted. “Doesn’t this once-a-month new-moon midnight feast business strike you as a ritual? I’m wondering, Mr. Prestley. Are there any former priests in the ranks? Not necessarily in Avalante—but elsewhere maybe?”

“Bravo, Mr. Markhat. Are you still determined to refuse my House’s offer?”

I was taken aback, despite myself. “Angels and devils. You mean I’m right?”

Evis nodded. “I fear so. It was your comb that provided the clue.”

“My comb.”

Evis crossed to his desk, rummaged in a drawer, produced the comb. “It was indeed devoid of any traces of handling. Utterly. Completely.”

“Impossibly,” I added.

Evis beamed, behind his shaded glasses. “My word exactly.”

“So someone hexed it.”

Evis smiled, and forgot to lift his hand. “Not just anyone, Mr. Markhat. Our inquiries are sure on this point. This comb was recently subjected to a ritual cleansing, a cleansing so thorough it is, in essence, a new object. A cleansing so powerful it lingers for some thirty days. A cleansing unique in its utter eradication of all the marks of handling, or ownership.”

I nodded. Something was coming back to me—something about excommunication, about the property of the despised.

Evis saw it and nodded. “Indeed. As…what we are, we have some intimate knowledge of the Church and its rituals of cleansing. When the condemned is cast out, the Church seizes his property. In our case, the property is considered unclean. And so, rather than pollute its coffers, the Church permits an arcane ritual to take place. The Rite of Cleansing.”

“Must be more to this Rite than a few mumbles of Church-words and a wave of the censer,” I said.

“Indeed,” said Evis. “It is a powerful act of magic, performed in utter secrecy, by one of the few walks of sorcerers the Church will permit on sacred ground.” He put the comb down. “This comb was subjected to this ritual. I believe the others were too.”

“How many of these Cleansing sorcerers are around? There can’t be many.”

Evis stepped closer. “There are only seven in all of the Church.” One is away in Galt, and has been for two years. One is old and feeble and hasn’t risen from his bed in nearly as long. The rest—well, I have the names of all the rest.”

“Five names. Only five.”

“Three are an hour’s walk from here.”

“You think one of them did more than hex the combs?”

“Perhaps so, perhaps not,” said Evis. “But even if they were not party to the fates of Miss Sand and the others—even so, they sold or allowed to be sold Church property, property that had been seized and Cleansed. That, or they are performing their art for clients other than priests. Either way, Mr. Markhat, they know the ones we wish to know. They have seen them. They have dealt with them. They may well collect the young women, as well.”

“You don’t know that.”

Evis sighed. “No, I do not. But we are out of time, Mr. Markhat. Miss Hoobin is next, unless we prevail.”

“So why not drag all five of our Church wand-wavers in here and start pulling off toes until one of them talks?”

“That was my initial strategy,” said Evis. His expression was deadly serious. “The House, though, refused to entertain any such notion. A call to arms by the Church—well, you see our dilemma. We cannot approach any of these men directly.”

I sat. “All right.” I’d been kicking a notion around since dozing off last night. I’d crafted my plan around hunting a halfdead former priest, and maybe I’d been wrong about that. But since I’d been right that the Church was involved, my notion hadn’t suffered. If anything, I had fewer calls to make.

I took a deep breath. Evis was right. Miss Hoobin was facing her last few hours above the bricks, unless Evis and I found her. “I have an idea. But it needs something to work.”

Evis whirled his chair around and plopped down into it. “What is this thing?”

“A name. A special name. We need to scare our comb-hexing friends, and Markhat won’t work, and Avalante might not. I need cold-sweating, pants-soiling, pale-faced terror, and I need it right now.”

Evis frowned. “Castor Sims?”

Sims was a Senator, noted for his fondness of the gallows.

“Scarier.”

“Violin Otal.”

“He’s dead.”

“He was indeed,” said Evis, flashing a toothy grin. “But he won’t be for long, much to the dismay of the persons who killed him.”

I shook my head. “Forget Senators and generals and remember what’s at stake here. Let’s keep the fires in the cook stoves, shall we? Give me a name. Someone who owes the House. All they’ve got to do is look grim and nod yes when asked if they’ve hired a finder named Markhat. That’s it. Now give me a name, Evis. Give me a name or I can’t make this work.”

Evis lipped his lips.

“Encorla Hisvin. That is as high as the House may reach.”

I grinned. Hisvin the Black. The Corpsemaster. I understand the Trolls had added him to their pantheon of devils, during the War. Parts of the Serge out West were still burning, where he’d swept his spells across the rocky hills. Better still were the tales told of his exploits after the War, as he cleared the parlors and drawing rooms of the Regent’s many critics in a variety of colorful and lingering ways.

“High enough.” I gulped back a spurt of misgivings over having a creature like Hisvin know my name. But I’d started this. Now I had to finish it.

“Now then. Here’s what I need you to do.”

Chapter Eight

And so, after lo these many years, a prodigal, if not entirely repentant Markhat returned to the bosom of Father Church.

Evis’s black carriage rattled jauntily along. It was mine for a time, and Halbert the driver called me “sir” and meant it. With my new black hat and Halbert opening all my doors, I was having a difficult time feeling contrite or the least bit in need of tearful confession.

I had just enough on my mind, though, to keep me from singing. Evis had answered most of my questions, but one thing still nagged at me, all the way to my first stop at Wherthmore Cathedral.

Why, pray tell, had we disturbed poor Allie Sands at all? Say everything I’d surmised about a new-moon vampire blood-feast was true. Say a renegade Church sorcerer was involved. Say one of the major Houses was footing all the bills and minding all the cloaks while the slaughter commenced. Say it was all true.

Why in Heaven’s name would you leave a moldering halfdead-infected corpse behind, buried in a grave so shallow it could claw its way free at the first hint of an easy meal?

Why not just dump the blood-drained body in an alley as the lads scurry home to floss their teeth before sunrise? The dead wagons will roll and the ovens will burn, as the saying goes, rain or shine. What’s one more well chewed corpse?

Had to be the number of bites, I decided. But I doubted that the Watch did anything but shove the bodies into the ovens, after they’d made a thorough forensic examination of the victim’s pockets or purses. Still, the blood-culters had to be cautious, I decided. It would only take one sharp-eyed Watchman and one Hill doctor to realize what was happening.

I watched poor folk scamper out of my way through my clean glass windowpane and mulled that over. The thing we’d raised had been rotted—but thinking back, I decided it hadn’t had any hands.

Had she been left out of sloppiness? Maybe. Taking Martha Hoobin merely because she worked at the Velvet wasn’t smart. Could be the ceremony had run late and the principals had left and the mop up crew had just decided to pull up a few old street cobbles and leave the body there, rather than risk hauling it outside in the dawn.

Or maybe Evis and his pale, well-groomed agents had been noticed, and Allie Sands was someone’s way of saying hello.

I hoped not. But I didn’t need Momma’s cards to see the likelihood of such a thing.

We passed the Velvet, and I waved to Hooga, who didn’t see me. I found myself hoping Darla would be out on the street, but she wasn’t, and we passed.

Wherthmore is Rannit’s largest, oldest church. It was built so long ago the Brown River has since changed course. The two knee-high granite walkways that extend from the steps, it is said, once led right down to the jetties and the wharves. Now, it takes half an hour just to get from the Brown River to Cambrit, and another half to get to Wherthmore.

The cathedral itself soars up five stories—impressive when it was built, but merely average now. It’s made of pink granite, festooned with scowling demons and topped off with triumphant if pigeon-spotted angels, right hands upraised, wings outspread as they descend from the heavens to alight on the Church and bestow blessings on the faithful.

Soot—black thick soot from the crematoriums, soot no rain will ever wash away—has left all twelve of the big oval stained glass windows so black you couldn’t make out the scenes laid within them.

Find in that what metaphor you will.

Halbert stopped the carriage, set the brake and tied the ponies. Then he opened the door, made a little bow and winked.

Half a dozen red masks watched the show.

“I won’t be long,” I said, stepping out.

Halbert just nodded, and marched away, and I stepped into the cold shadow of an angel’s stone wings and made for the steps of Wherthmore.

Two priests, two halls, two rooms. That’s all it had taken to get me from the front doors to the office of one Enris Foon, First Hand of the Holy Arm of Merciful Inquisition. That, and the name of Hisvin, which I’d spoken often and loudly.

I sat in a straight-backed chair and wondered if there was a Second Hand, or perhaps a Right Foot, until a priest so low he lacked a title or a mask wordlessly ushered me in to see Enris Foon himself.

His office was nothing special. Church title or not, it wouldn’t be fit as a closet at House Avalante. My own spacious accommodations rivaled it for cleanliness, for instance.

Enris was seated at a rickety pine desk. He held a mask on a stick before his face, and from the churning of his neck muscles and the smacking behind the mask, I gathered I’d interrupted his lunch.

“Are you of the flock, my son?” he said, after a particularly spirited round of chewing and swallowing.

“I’m my own flock. And I’m here on business. You can put the mask away.”

He lowered the scowling red mask.

He was maybe seventy and thin and bald and he didn’t get much sun. He had close-set brown eyes and a hawk nose. What hair he did have was all in his eyebrows and his ears. Both could have used a cut, or at least a comb.

“All right.” Give him credit—he said it without rancor. “What can the Church do for you today?”

“I’m looking for something.” I pulled a sheaf of papers out of my coat’s breast pocket. Evis had supplied the whole thing, from the silk paper folder to the gold-leaf tie to the readily visible skull-and-spider seal of Encorla Hisvin himself.

Father Foon saw, but he didn’t bat an eye.

“Ten years ago, a barge called the Embalo sank up around Gant. On that barge was a big crate. In this big crate was a smaller crate. In this smaller crate was a chest—a chest a foot long and half that high and half that wide.” I shaped a box in the air with my hands. “It was lead, and it was sealed. The gentleman who lost it wants it back.”

“I see,” said his Handedness, looking genuinely perplexed. “And you think I know of this item?”

“Probably not. But I think you might know about this.”

I’d reached again into my pocket as I spoke, so I pulled out the silver comb and thumped it down on his desk.

And I watched him. I watched those eyes for any flicker of recognition. I watched that face for any hint of fear.

All I saw was a man wondering how best to get rid of me without pissing off the rich folks who’d employed me.

Which didn’t really mean much. I’ve met people who can lie with utter conviction, people who simply don’t live in their faces. He might have buried Allie Sands himself. Remorse just isn’t found in some hearts.

“And this is?” he said.

“This is a silver comb. One of two-dozen silver combs, of Lot 49, bound for Rannit via Gant. They were in the big crate that housed the smaller crate that housed the sealed lead box. They’ve started showing up in Rannit. My employer has deduced that since the combs have made their way up from the bottom of the Brown, that perhaps his box has too.”

The Hand frowned. “I still fail to see why you’ve brought this to me. The Arm cleanses items polluted by willful apostates. We do not deal in submarine treasure hunts.”

“This comb has been Cleansed. Which means that somehow it wound up, at least temporarily, in the hands of the Church. Which means the Church knows who owned it, what their name is and probably where they are right now.”

“Impossible,” he said. A hint of annoyance crept into his voice, and his face took on a trace of blush. “That object has never been Cleansed.”

It was my turn to frown. “My sources say it has.”

“And who, sir, are your sources?”

He had seen the seal, but I guess he hadn’t recognized it, and his panicked underlings hadn’t told him I’d dropped Hisvin’s name. My, my, there’d be some hellfire and brimstone discipline handed out, after I was gone.

“Encorla Hisvin. Perhaps you’ve heard the name?”

He paled. The man paled, and he gulped down air. I smiled a big wide smile.

“You have heard the name. How nice. Now then, why do you say this object has never been Cleansed?”

He put his hand down on his mask-stick, but he didn’t dare raise it.

“I am trained in the art of the Cleansing, sir, and I tell you that, had it been Cleansed, I would see plain the mark of the Church upon it, and I do not.”

Evis hadn’t mentioned any of this.

“Is this mark a physical mark?”

“It is not. It is a lingering holy affluence, visible only to one trained in my Art. And it is not there.”

“How long does this holiness linger?” I asked, watching him and letting him know I was doing so. “A month? Three months? How long?”

“For all eternity.”

I couldn’t resist a snort. “Let’s pretend I’m about to report back to my employer. Let’s pretend he wants to know how long this mystical invisible holy mark will last. Specifically.”

The Hand shook his head. “It is a permanent part of the object cleansed. As long as the item remains, so will the mark. As a reminder of the fate of those who tempt the wrath of the Church.”

I nodded. “I’ll be sure to mention that.” He blanched further. “So what you’re telling me is this.” I picked up the comb, held it in his face. “You’re saying that this was never Cleansed. You saying that since it was never Cleansed, that my employer can’t match it against a list of seized items. And since he can’t do that, he can’t use the names on that list to go a hunting for his little lead box. Is that what you’re telling me, Hand of the Holy?”

I made sure I raised my voice. Not just for the Hand’s benefit, but for those I heard tip-toeing about just outside his door. Word would spread, it would. Fast and furious.

“That’s what I’m telling you,” he said, after a deep breath. “It is the truth.”

Then he rallied. “Is that all you came to show me?”

“It is.” I put the comb back in my pocket, arranged my papers, put them away as well. “And if that’s all you’ve got to say, I’ll wish you a good day.”

I rose, and he rose, and a faint pitter-patter of feet hurrying away sounded from beyond the door. When the Hand made no move to show me out, I turned and got my hat off the rack and opened the door myself.

“One thing I forgot to mention. My employer isn’t out for blood. Not yet. In fact, if he gets his box back, he’ll be more inclined to pay those who assisted than to chase down those who hindered.”

“I cannot assist. Nor have I hindered. How dare you stand on holy ground and threaten a Hand of the Holy.”

“I haven’t threatened anyone.” I put on my hat and stepped through the door. “I’m just looking for combs, and a small lead box. Thank you for your time, Father Foon. Good day.”

I left. He was staring at the door when I closed it behind me.

Scurrying footsteps and closing doors preceded me all the way to the street. I stepped out into the light, squinted up at the faraway sun and let it chase a chill away.

“Shall we go?” said Halbert, from the curb. He knew the plan for the day, knew we’d be heading to four more Church mainholds, and a few other places besides.

I tipped my hat and climbed aboard.