Valan disliked the people from both cities for distinct reasons; he felt the people of Stormhaven thought they were better than everyone else, looking down their noses at their unruly neighbours. Tarantum’s populus almost seemed to revel in their abject status. It was a strange feeling and one that did not sit well with him at times.
The smell in the twenty-fifth, and lowest level of the Drops made Valan heave. He set off up the levels towards home. Running up the steps would have been energy-sapping for a normal man but as the son of a god, Valan bounded up them, making it to the upper levels quickly. Once outside, the air was cleaner and could be breathed relatively easily without the need to cover ones mouth.
A light shower of rain began to fall into the high-edged dustbowl that was Tarantum, causing Valan to stop and look up the central shaft that was open to the sky and served to ventilate the underground city. The rain pattered against his face and he imagined it washing away any doubt or remorse that may linger about the killings he had just committed.
Valan wiped the rain from his face and ran his fingers through his hair before turning into the wide tunnel that served as his street.
A group of men who were gathered on the street corner parted as he walked towards them. Unkempt and bearing scars, each carried several knives and had a tattoo of a scorpion on their left shoulder.
‘Night, Valan,’ the youngest of the men said.
Valan opened his eyes wide and looked towards the entrance of the tunnel. The rain continued to fall and Valan could see the fires in the darkness, dotted around the edge of several of the levels.
‘So it is.’
Scowling at the young man, Valan pushed past him and walked on down the street to his home.
The young man stood in shock, unsure of his transgression.
‘You were told not to speak to him,’ one of the older men said through gritted teeth. ‘You only speak to Valan when he speaks first.’
Valan walked to the front door of his single-roomed dwelling and, after unlocking the door and checking the small coin he had wedged between the frame and door was still there, which it was, he made his way inside. Barely ten foot square, its walls and ceiling were rough orange stone.
Lighting a few candles, Valan lay on his straw mattress with his hands behind his head and thought about how the night had gone; the mark was dead and he had come back home alive, so all in all it had been a success. But as he lay in his hollowed-out chamber dozing off he could not help but think about the dying man’s last action.
He was doomed and had no reason to lie, he thought. So why write what he did? Was he trying to trick me before dying or was it a case of mistaken identity?
Just then the shutter of his window rattled.
Valan opened it. A black cat gazed in and began rubbing its head against the window frame.
‘Shadow.’
Letting Shadow in, Valan closed the shutter and fetched some salted meat. He then poured some water into a bowl. Lying back down Shadow jumped beside him onto the mattress. He broke the meat into small chunks and ate some, giving Shadow every other piece. Valan smiled as he lightly scratched her neck and could feel the vibration of her throat as she purred.
‘How was your night, girl?’
Shadow looked up at him with big yellow eyes. Still purring, she kneaded the rough mattress with her front paws.
‘Sounds like you had quite the night.’ Valan said, stroking her head. ‘Me? Now that’s a different story. Tonight I may have killed an innocent man.’
The next morning Valan was awoken by a banging on the door.
Startled from his sleep he sat up and looked around, disorientated. Slumping back down into his bed he pulled the blanket over his head and growled at whoever was on the other side of the door. The thumping continued, louder than before.
Shadow sat bolt upright at the bottom of his mattress. She stretched and then yawned.
‘All right, all right,’ Valan shouted.
He hauled himself to his feet and went over to open the door. A bulky man with a shaved head and tattoos covering his arms and chest, including one of a scorpion on his left arm, stood on the other side.
‘Oh, it’s you. Come in and wait while I get ready.’
The man ducked under the doorframe. He entered the room and began looking around.
‘So, how’d last night go?’
Shadow hissed as the man approached. Darting across the room she jumped up onto the window ledge.
‘What’s up with your damn cat?’
‘She’s not my cat; you never really own a cat, Brexoth, you merely lease it from time to time.’
‘What’s its problem?’
‘Nothing. She’s just a good judge of character, that’s all.’
‘Did the guy say anything last night?’ Brexoth asked, still inspecting the dwelling.
Valan’s home was little more than a hovel. A square stone trough, covered by a half-broken shield served as a commode and his weapons lay spread out upon a small table.
‘I cut his throat before he had a chance. What makes you ask?’
‘I just thought he might have begged for his life.’
Brexoth walked to the window and extended his hand to pet Shadow. The cat swiped its claw at him, hissing, before jumping down and taking off into the corner.
Once again Brexoth moved towards Shadow. Valan put out his arm, blocking Brexoth’s path.
‘Take the hint. The cat doesn’t like you.’
‘I get the feeling it’s not the only one.’
There was an awkward silence as the two men looked each other in the eye.
Brexoth was the first to flinch; he made a ‘humph’ sound and then reluctantly backed off.
Valan tied his sandals and when he had finished both men stepped onto the street. After letting Shadow out, he closed the door then locked it.
When he was a child someone had once told Valan that he was destined for a life of despondency, such was the way for those without shadows, the bastard children of the gods. An outcast from society, he had been taken under the wing of local gang members who fed him and kept him safe. Fleeing from a merchant whom he had just pickpocketed Valan was amazed to find that he became invisible upon sprinting. When the gang found out about his powers he became their most valuable asset and pickpocketing soon led to drug runs, drug-runs progressed to burglaries, burglaries gave way to muggings, and then, after that, there was only one thing left. The members of the gang that had recruited him were all dead, and the gang itself had grown complacent and smug, no one more so than their matriarch.
Light from the central shaft illuminated the section of the street closest to it as life for the people on the fourth tier was going on as normal. Children played tag through the dimly lit passageways and tunnels, and rag-and-bone men haggled with the vendors in the flea markets about buying their wares or selling their goods.
As the men walked around the long outer circumference they kept one eye on the level above in case something was thrown or aimed at them; in the same way the people on the level below kept an eye on them. That was how things worked in the Drops of Tarantum: each level had its gang, each gang ruled its level and conflict between opposing gang members was a common and bloody affair.
Travelling between levels was only advisable in daylight and even then only when necessary; there was, however, an unwritten rule that passengers using the Rails were not to be targeted, killing them being regarded as poor form.
Making their way around the fourth level, the two came to one of the larger streets hollowed out of the rock; it looked like the others except for its increased size and the number of loitering gang members.
These gang members were sitting on wooden boxes on the pavement playing cards and dice games for a few coins while others sharpened or mended weapons. Some, sitting with their backs to the wall
, passed around a long pipe emitting a noxious-smelling vapour. Their ages ranged from youths in their teens to middle-aged men, but they all had short-sleeved tunics, with their arms exposed, and all had a tattoo on their left shoulder of a scorpion.
Brexoth shook hands with several of the men and nodded to others.
Valan ignored them all. He discreetly pulled the left sleeve of his tunic down past his elbow.
Whatever happened to this gang? he thought. The members before them used to be most fearsome men in the Drops. All this lot are good for is sitting around smoking Dimweed.
At the end of the street, the men came to a house with cracked roof-tiles and crumbling yellow brickwork; its windows were caked with grime and there was peeling black paint on its door. Half set into the bedrock of the tunnel and half out, the house looked unassuming except for the two guards standing outside, at either side of the door, with their arms folded. Swords lay beside them on the ground, the notches in the blades testament to the fact that they had had significant use.
As Valan and Brexoth approached, the guards stepped to the side.
Brexoth knocked on the door three times and waited. From inside, he heard shuffling. The door creaked open and a woman in her seventies with spectacles on the end of her nose stood in the doorway.
‘Come in, come in,’ Mother Jüko said in a gentle voice, as she stood aside to let the two men in. ‘Straight through to the kitchen now, and mind the step.’
The two complied.
The front room of the house was as unappealing as the outside, with dust on the furniture and ornaments, and mould on the walls, floor and ceiling. The back of the house, which was carved into the rock face, was a little more attractive with a stove in the kitchen giving off generous heat and a table near it that was laid with a red-and-white checked cloth on which sat a pot of jam, butter and sugar.
‘Sit down now, you’re just in time for breadcakes.’
The men sat down as the old lady shuffled over to the stove and put on thick cloth gloves before taking out a tray of golden breadcakes.
Transferring them to earthenware plates, she brought them to the table and set a plate in front of each man. Then she too sat and cut open a breadcake, smothering it in butter.
‘Now,’ she said, her mouth full. ‘Tell me all about last night. I hear there was a murder?’
She looked at the men in mock-shock.
‘Terrible tragedy that, eh? Dear, dear, awful stuff all together. But wait, I heard the murdered man was a slave trader.’
The old woman kept up the charade by faking a look of surprise.
‘Well, if that’s the case, he got what he deserved.’
She smiled a toothless smile.
‘Who told you he was a slave trader?’ Valan asked, the question out of his mouth before he realised what he had said.
The old lady’s chuckling stopped abruptly and the room fell silent.
‘Do you doubt me, Valan?’ she enquired, looking him in the eye.
‘What the fuck do you mean: “Who told you he was a slave trader”?’ Brexoth demanded.
‘Quiet, Brexoth,’ the old lady snapped.
Valan sat back in his chair, folding his arms.
‘I only asked a question. How do you know this man was a slave trader?’ Valan said calmly.
It took a lot to get him riled; he had lived through one hundred and ninety four winters, and having carried out over three hundred assassinations, there was not much he had not seen.
‘I get my information from a very reliable source, sonny, and if they say that this man was a slave trader then by the gods he was a slave trader,’ said Mother Jüko, with another smile.
He hated it when she called him sonny; if it sounded patronising, it was meant to. Regardless of their physical appearances, he was much older than her.
Valan had rescued Jüko from a burning house when she was just a child. He had looked after her and, despite his reservations, allowed her to join the gang. Under his protection Jüko had scaled the ranks eventually becoming its leader. Valan had always loved and respected Jüko, but lately her decisions were making him question her.
Mother Jüko, as she now insisted on being called, had been the matriarch of the Scorpions for over thirty years and most of its members had never known anyone else as their leader. Despite her advanced age, when it came to making decisions, she had the stomach of a tyrant. Jüko had ordered men to be killed in their droves and had members of her own gang thrown off the Drops to their death when she deemed their crimes heinous enough. This reputation for severe punishment and merciless retribution had earned both her and the Scorpions notoriety, resulting in most people avoiding them and other gangs fearing them.
‘Fine, he was a slave trader,’ he said, taking a bite of breadcake.
The breadcake was dry; not even the smothering of butter Valan had applied could moisten it. Contorting his neck he eventually managed to swallow it and when he looked up Mother Jüko and Brexoth were both staring at him.
Valan had always killed without question, without emotion. He had single-handedly kept the other gangs at bay for decades; if one of them grew in power then he was dispatched, under the cover of darkness, to thin the herd. Far and away the most important member of the gang, Valan knew that were it not for him, there would be no gang. He also suspected that Mother Jüko hated the fact that there was someone more vital to the gang’s existence than she.
‘Anyway, he’s dead,’ Valan said. ‘He won’t be trading any more slaves.’
Even to his own ears, it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. But the mood in the room was black and he was trying to ease the tension.
‘Then you’re ready for your next target,’ Mother Jüko said.
Valan looked up at her and set down his food.
‘Another one? Is there anyone you don’t want killed?’ he said, only half-joking.
Valan had murdered many people, but never on consecutive nights. Killings put people and the authorities on edge and he found that city watch patrols were increased as a result. As a rule of thumb he never went out two nights in a row, preferring to let public unrest die down before going out again. It was looking like this was a luxury he was not going to be afforded.
Mother Jüko frowned, as if she were about to say something then seemed to reconsider. She drummed her fingers on the table, then took a note from a pouch in her apron.
‘The man I want you to kill lives on the surface. You’ll be home in no time,’ she said, as she handed him the note. ‘Here’s the address.’
‘What’s this one done?’ he asked, sarcastically, as he unfolded the paper.
Valan recognised the address instantly. It was in the more affluent part of the city; gated community, guard patrols.
‘He’s just moved to Tarantum. Calls himself an apothecary, turns out he has a penchant for experimenting on people, particularly children. Straps them to the bed and cuts them up while they’re still living. I want him gone.’
She emphasised the word gone, she did that when she thought there was any grey area in what she had said. Mother Jüko liked things to be black and white; grey areas were despised as they left doubt in people’s minds. She demanded her orders be carried out to the letter.
Two assassinations in two nights? Valan thought. Something’s not right. Is she trying to get me caught or, even worse, killed?
Folding the paper and putting it away Valan smiled warmly at Mother Jüko. He could sense her unease and so set about trying to reassure her, as well as try and find out why she was sending him out two nights in a row.
He reached across the table and put his hand lightly on top of hers, looking her in the eye.
‘Are this man’s crimes so bad that you need me to kill him?’
Valan could feel the tremor in Mother Jüko’s hand. Her pupils were wide and th
ere were yellow rings around the edge of her irises. Darting back and forth, her eyes flickered as though searching for something, and Valan could see that an emptiness lay behind them.
‘I want him dead,’ she said, coldly.
Valan shook his head forlornly and finished his breadcake in silence. He turned and saw that Brexoth was glaring at him, refusing to break eye contact.
‘Is something wrong?’ Valan asked.
‘You’ve been given an order. Why don’t you quit moaning and get on with it?’
‘What’s it like being Mother Jüko’s lapdog, Brexoth?’
‘I’m her bodyguard, actually, and her confidant.’
‘You’re neither,’ Valan snapped. ‘You’re an errand boy; a sycophantic lackey who’s good for chores and fetching things and not much else.’
‘Enough!’ Mother Jüko shouted.
She got to her feet, pursing her lips together. Her face red with anger she pointed to the door.
‘You can leave now, Valan.’
Valan rose from the table and left the house, walking past the other gang members who were gathered outside. He knew Mother Jüko and Brexoth were discussing him, Mother Jüko only dismissed him if their meeting had not gone well. It was something he was used to.
With the winter sun casting long shadows across the Drops, he made his way home. On the way he thought about the people he had been killing lately; he had been carrying out more assassinations now than he had ever done, for every person he murdered Mother Jüko had two more lined up waiting.
At home, having locked the door, he lay down and reread the address from the paper he had been given, forming an image in his head of the monster he would slay. Curling up, he decided to get some sleep; thanks to Mother Jüko, he was going to have another busy night.
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