Old Man's Ghosts (16 page)

Enchei sat in the front of the small boat as he was rowed across the Crescent by a long-haired, long-limbed boy young enough to be his grandson. Whether the youth had heard his grandfather mutter such a stream of curses before was another matter, but the alarm on his face told a story.

‘Old, I’m getting too damn old,’ Enchei hissed, gaze fixed on the Lawbringers on the far bank as they spoke on the shore. ‘Bastard was right there, should’ve cut his fucking head off and worried about the rest later. Stupid indecisive old fool.’

He’d been following the two Wyverns at a distance, only to discover they weren’t the only ones in the wake of his Lawbringer charges. There had been a third man, one Enchei recognised only too easily.

How in the lower hells did they latch on to Narin so fast? Or was it Rhe somehow? What do these bastards know? Did they get so much out of Serril they were set the next morning?

Narin’s destination that morning had been a kick to the gut, though he’d feared it would happen.

I bet that puffed up cockerel Serril ignored me. I had half a mind to demand he refused to admit anything about me – tempt him into spilling everything out of spite, but I thought they’d go in with threats and he’d realise he was out of his depth.

Enchei lowered his head, wanting to say a prayer for the man who didn’t deserve the horrible death he’d have received. He had despised the man, but it was a petty, mundane unpleasantness Serril had possessed, nothing more. A paper-pushing bully could become a monster, Enchei had seen that before, but Serril hadn’t been one – just a fool living in a sheltered world.

‘Should’ve followed him, tracked him back to his nest,’ Enchei growled, spitting in disgust at himself into the water. ‘Burned them out while I had the chance, even if it meant Narin was left alone.’

But even as he said the words, his stomach clenched and a memory came flooding back to him. It came fractured and disjointed; distorted images and sensations as much as anything else. A flash of grey skin and red eyes, of falling and a blinding pain, of grief and guilt piled high upon his shoulders.

Vague and insubstantial as it was, it stood with the last memories of his daughters in the vanguard of his ghosts and hurt him just as bad. Once before he’d done something similar – left the comrades he’d been shadowing on a calculated risk – and the price haunted him to this very day. Everything traced back to that decision, that failure of judgement that had left two brothers – and a sister-in-arms, dead in a distant field.

A rare luxury,
he reflected once the memories had lessened their grip on him.
Few men can trace so much of their life all back to one moment, one rash decision. But every turn of the cards for me has come from that single hand. Thirty years and more laid out in the divination of my actions.

‘Never again,’ he whispered to the heedless waters of the Crescent. ‘A failure I’ll not be scarred with twice.’

They reached the other side and Enchei tossed a coin over his shoulder to the boatman. The youth had to juggle to catch it, but the aging warrior’s attention was elsewhere, snagged on a more recent memory. The sight of a man he’d met briefly in a tavern, followed into a secluded corner by two Wyvern warriors. Enchei knew the likely outcome of such an encounter and what he’d do in the same situation.

So will two enemies become one? How’ll that change things? And who’s really in charge? Is this Sorpan a go-between, or something else?

Enchei nodded to himself, a grim look on his face as he began to hurry through the streets to catch up with a sight of Narin.

Looks like I’ll be taking a walk through the home district soon, see if any familiar faces are in town.
He grimaced.
Hard not to see my ghosts on those streets. This week’s shaping up to be a real barrel of laughs.

The attic of the stone house on the bridge was shuttered and dark when Sorpan made it up there. He paused halfway up the steep steps, looking around for Sharish and her charges before intruding further.

‘You got the other two?’ came Sharish’s voice from behind the brick chimney stack in the centre. ‘Bring them up.’

Sorpan nodded as he looked around at the attic room. It lacked any sort of furnishings, though a pair of small braziers flanked the chimney. Four figures sat toward the sides with their heads tilted uncomfortably forward by the slope of the roof – two of the House Smoke mercenaries and the Wyverns he’d sent over with Kebrai. All were tightly bound, the mercenaries glaring murderously at him as though he was their betrayer, while the Wyvern warrior castes just stared, dull-eyed and empty.

‘You’ve not started? Good.’

Sorpan ducked down briefly to attract the attention of the two now-docile Wyverns who stood at the foot of the steps. At his command they followed him up into the attic, the taller of the two thumping his head against the sloped ceiling in the dark.

‘Desert’s breath!’ Sharish exclaimed. ‘Keep them from touching anything!’

Sorpan looked up at the ceiling and blinked once, twice. ‘Gods above,’ he said, with the hint of a smile on his face.

Across the entire four panels of roof were symbols and wardings, painted on the wood in something that didn’t show up to normal eyes. Arcane shapes and scripts interspersed by a full set of divine constellations. Even Sorpan, who could see clearly in any light, had not spotted them at first and needed an old invocation woven into his eyes to read them.

‘Crouch down, careful of the roof,’ Sorpan instructed the two as Sharish re-checked the symbols.

‘There are shackles there,’ she said distractedly, running a finger over the surface to ensure there was no dent or damage.

Sorpan was relieved to see the wild shamaness was all business now. What she’d proposed to do sounded, to his informed ear, perilous and complicated, so Sorpan had already resolved to be well clear if she wasn’t taking due care. Reassured, he set about bringing the docile Wyverns to the shackles indicated and securing them alongside their fellows.

‘Now what?’ he said once Sharish had returned to her workings around the chimney stack.

She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Here to learn a new trick?’

‘Would it be safe?’

The tanned woman gave him a lupine grin, all white teeth and intent. ‘Compared to what?’ she laughed. ‘Cinnamon tea and pastries with Priest? Another bottle of Ivytail with your friend the tattooist?’

‘Sure, compared to them.’

She nodded. ‘Long as you don’t do anything stupid, you’ll be fine. This house has so many wardings it’s a surprise any of us can find the damn place!’

Sorpan nodded and sat on the floor, taking a moment to arrange his long coat around him and ensure his personal defences were just as secure. Sharish fetched a tarnished brass bowl from the floor and continued with her work, using her finger to paint an invocation on the side of the square chimney stack above the unlit brazier.

Sorpan checked the other side and realised she’d already done one there; a star of protection with a complex character in the centre that Sorpan guessed was the word for
hellhound
in some demon script.

‘Sit here, legs under you,’ she instructed as she drew a small brass-bladed knife and went to the first of her bound captives. The mercenary strained at his shackles and tried to kick out at Sharish, but he was securely fastened and a few hefty kicks to his midriff drove the fight from him.

‘I’m not going to kill you,’ she said firmly to the man, ‘just take a little blood for the bowl. The more you fight, the bigger the cut needs to be before I get any in the bowl. I can kick seven shades out o’ you first if you prefer. Unconscious is fine, but dead’s no use.’

If the man gave any sort of response, Sorpan didn’t see it, but Sharish seemed satisfied that her message had got through and bent with her knife. Good to her word, she made a small nick at his throat and held the bowl underneath it until a small trickle had run in. She repeated the job with all their prisoners, calling over her shoulder to Sorpan as she did the last.

‘Light the braziers.’

He obeyed, pinching a few twigs from each until they burst into flame and dropping them back onto the rest. He could smell an oil of some sort on the kindling, faintly infused with lemon grass, so it quickly caught and the light of their orange flames began to dance around the attic.

Sharish fetched the pale twisted-tines staff she used to summon the hounds and set the head on the top of the burning braziers, pouring some of the bloodied mixture from the bowl over it. The liquid spat and crackled over the wire twisted all around the head, sparks flaring up all around it, and this she touched to the invocation sigils above the flames. They burst into life and Sharish hurried around the chimney to do the same on that side before the oil burned out.

Once both were lit she took her place on the far side from Sorpan, where he assumed there was another star of protection, and stuttering bursts of light immediately began to illuminate the room. Sorpan found himself holding his breath both in fascination and alarm as he watched the light flicker around the room, taking on a life of its own. The flashes intensified without warning, a searing staccato flurry that made him flinch as though the light cut right through him.

A second great burst of light came, then another and another – six in all, interspersed with the frantic flames from the braziers and lesser flutters from the summoning staff. Alongside distant thunder Sorpan heard faint, mournful howls that seemed to circle the room, slowly growing in intensity as they came closer, but just as it seemed the monstrous beasts were about to crash through the roof and into the attic room, the braziers gave one final stutter of light and extinguished.

There was a moment of complete darkness that even Sorpan’s eyes couldn’t penetrate before normality reasserted itself and he watched the nearest of the Wyverns – once docile and empty – peer forward at him with predatory intent. A growl of throaty menace cut through the air, not quite human in tone, and Sharish chuckled from the other side of the chimney. Sorpan heard her grunt and push herself up from the ground.

‘Good boys,’ she whispered to the straining sextet as they tested the strength of their bonds and their growls mingled to one unearthly sound. ‘Now let’s see how you hunt.’

*

Narin returned to the Palace of Law with a heavy heart. It had been a morning of murder and Narin was not so old and jaded he didn’t feel the weight of it on his soul. While the death of Administrator Serril hadn’t been quite what he’d expected, the servants murdered in the Fett Warrant matched the tavern exactly. It had happened deep into the night, according to an Investigator who’d been standing guard over the carnage until dawn. The victims were presumed to be a local couple whose home opened on to the alley – their door was ajar and the bloodied footprints of a huge hound led inside, only to vanish in the middle of the room. Actual identification was predictably hard, for if anything the attack had been more frenzied than that in the tavern, but the neighbours were certain – as they were of hearing distant howls echoing around the surrounding streets.

Rumour was already spreading about the crimes, the locals whispering that it was the work of some secret blood cult from House Wolf, for who else would have such monstrous dogs to hand? Narin did his best to dampen down the stories as he interviewed the neighbours, but found it difficult when the most plausible alternative was demons creeping from the river. A search of the property unearthed nothing to suggest any involvement in the supernatural or criminal activities – it was an entirely typical low-caste household of modest size and even more modest possessions.

With the next of kin just one street away, Narin went to pay his respects, though of course they had already been fetched out by the fearful neighbours. Again he could offer no real assurances or explanations and while he had managed to stop himself from being sick at the scene, a sour taste filled his mouth the entire journey back. All the way, his stomach had lurched repeatedly as the scents of the midday trade began to emanate from the many eateries on his route.

Once inside the Palace of Law Narin went to Rhe’s desk and slumped into a chair. Rhe was not back yet from the other murder scene and Narin was glad to have a few minutes of quiet before they compared notes.

‘Why those servants?’ he wondered aloud, all alone in the partitioned section. ‘Were the hounds sent there by design? Did they go on a rampage or is this some sort of distraction?’

He leaned back and closed his eyes, head throbbing with fatigue. ‘If I were doing this, how would it play out?’ he muttered to himself, forcing himself to stay awake. ‘If I had a reason to kill the tavern owner, no doubt anyone else there is also going to be considered fair prey.

‘That leads me to the tattoo administrator and no doubt he leads me to someone else – but if this is about Enchei, how do the servants and an Eagle merchant figure? He doesn’t know them – I might not know all his friends, but I’d have heard mention of one I’m sure. So why? They follow a clear path and then deviate from it, but why?’

‘To disguise the path,’ Rhe broke in from somewhere ahead.

Narin jumped like he’d been stung, up on his feet and staring blearily for a while until he managed to focus on the Lawbringer standing before him.

‘Sorry, just resting my eyes,’ he muttered guiltily.

‘But thinking clearly,’ Rhe said. ‘You’re following the train of my own thoughts, so the choice of eyes open or closed is your own. With murders so obvious and brutal, our summoner is perhaps attempting to throw us off the scent by committing random killings to muddy the water. It’s the only explanation that satisfies me at present, as distasteful as it might be.’

Distasteful?
Narin wondered as he tried to order his thoughts.
Tragic and entirely unsurprising, I’d have thought.

‘How long were you standing there?’ he asked.

‘Not long enough to hear anything I did not already know,’ Rhe said, at which Narin remembered the Lawbringer had already guessed Enchei was the likely quarry of these hellhounds.

‘Now what?’

Rhe looked Narin up and down. ‘Now you go home,’ he said without criticism. ‘You are no use to me half-dead and I’m sure it will be a few hours before our reports are gathered, so you might as well sleep.’

‘Home’s further away these days,’ Narin said. ‘I’ll go find a corner to crawl into here instead. Best I don’t run the risk of being followed back any more than I have to, anyway.’

The pale Lawbringer nodded and gestured back the way he’d come. ‘Follow me, I know somewhere nearby we can eat lunch in a private room. With luck today’s escort will find a way to join us, he and I can talk while you sleep.’

After a morning of walking Narin found himself physically unable to argue with the prospect. The most he could manage was to direct their path so, after leaving word of where they would be with Lawbringer Cailer, the pair headed out past the magnificent temple-like courtrooms that abutted the Palace of Law.

As it was they walked only a few dozen yards out of the Palace of Law’s defined grounds, Rhe taking him to the sprawl of inns that had been unofficially annexed by the corps of lawyers who served at the neighbouring Imperial courts.

While they stood out amid lawyers drawn predominantly from the black-coated religious caste, there was the advantage of a private guard for the whole complex and a number of rooms available for hire. Narin had never worked out the exact nature of power and control over those inns, knowing only that the buildings within the perimeter wall had been adapted and consolidated into four main premises, a cabal of prominent high-caste lawyers ruling each. He half expected to see Prince Sorote as they ascended the steps of the largest inn, but instead an aging clerk, stood behind what had once been a bar, welcomed them with all ceremony.

‘Lawbringers, how may I assist you?’ the man declared in polished tones. ‘Are you looking for someone?’

Behind him was a series of brass plaques and small wooden shutters that announced the presence of their permanent residents, with chalk boards at the furthest end for less permanent guests. Lurking in the shadows beyond the bar were a pair of young men also dressed like clerks but with cudgels hanging from their belts. One was a local youth, the other a dark-skinned Dragon, but they both had the same wary expression, which Narin recognised as one worn by most young brawlers raised on the streets of the Imperial City.

‘A private room and food for the rest of the day. Our names to remain off that chalk board, our presence to be denied unless it is to a female novice called Tesk who will be running errands for us.’

Narin blinked at the clerk as the man nodded with assent. ‘Or a bad-tempered old sod who you’ll know by his attitude.’

The clerk gave a nervous half-laugh. ‘So long as he’s not dressed as a lawyer, sir, that should be simple enough to work out.’

His fingers hovered for a moment, poised in indecision, then he pulled a key from under the bar and turned to the younger clerks. ‘Oniren, take the esteemed Lawbringers to the thief’s room.’ Again he inclined his head to Rhe. ‘If you’ll permit, sir, but that’s not a joke on my part. The room has a barred window and a strong door in case you want it. Oniren, after you’ve taken them fetch a plate from the kitchens.’

Oniren turned out to be the Dragon of the pair and after fetching up a candle he led them without speaking up two flights of stairs and to the end of a corridor. Narin noticed all the doors had locks with a grille-covered viewing shutter at eye level, but the door Oniren stopped at had the addition of heavy bolts on the outside. The room itself was as plain as might be expected; whitewashed walls making the best of the winter light that crept through the window, a desk below that and a table on the other side of a small fireplace.

As Oniren left for the kitchens, Narin employed the candle to light a pair of oil lamps and the already-laid fire, keen to drive out the winter chill that had permeated the room. Rhe stood to one side of the window as Narin worked, taking careful note of the faces turned in their direction. Only when Narin had finished with the fire, shucked off his heavy coat and unbuckled his sword, did Rhe glance back.