“I’m sure it’s fine. Aren’t you on the south side?” Samantha asked.
I nodded.
“Yeah, this is closer to Broadway Hill. The lowest level there is Three, and I couldn’t drop down farther to avoid the mess. I would’ve canceled, but I know how important this is.” She looked at me, her dark eyes fixating on mine for a brief moment before she looked away.
“Well, not sure how much use this translation will all be, anyway,” I said.
“Why?” asked Samantha. “Is the Aklo fake or something?”
“While we were looking at the crime scene there was another murder and everything got mucked up,” said Hannah.
Samantha blinked. “Another murder? Where?”
“Kiver’s new apartment,” I said. “In the Shangdi Building. Level... Nine.” I remembered the construction of Level Nine’s floor. Hokioi Taaka had been killed on Level Eight. Adderley on Nine. I scratched my cheek and mulled that over.
“Who?” asked Samantha.
“One of the elevated. A doctor named Frank Adderley,” said Hannah.
Samantha set her glass down and stared at us.
Hannah continued. “We followed Kiver there. Found a similar scene as the previous murder. But this one still had a body.”
“It looked like the work of the same killer,” I said. Hagen nodded.
“So? That doesn’t explain why translating the message won’t be useful,” said Samantha.
“The LPD showed up real fast,” I said. “Carl Bouchard.”
Samantha blinked and lifted her glass, taking a long sip then staring off into the air in front of her. “Millions upon millions of souls in this city and you run into him again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He gets around.”
“Why isn’t he on the front lines?” asked Hagen.
“Good question,” I said.
“Why is he up your ass?” said Hannah. “What did you do to piss him off?”
I had forgotten Hannah wasn’t around during my run-in with Bouchard. I quickly filled her in. When I had finished she let out a slow breath and said simply: “Damn.”
I nodded then stretched, feeling my lower back pop. “Sam makes a good point. Let’s take a look at those translations. There could be something there. People are dying and more could still die. I’d like to prevent that if possible. The city is already fighting itself. Murder, especially murders concerning Firsts, adds an extra complication to an already complicated situation. The sooner we can help wrap up the case, the better.”
“Think Kiver will still pay us? I mean, if we figure it out?” asked Hannah.
I had a thin hope that if we helped solve this there would be a reward, but did that matter any more? A Guardian’s job is to guard. To put others’ lives ahead of your own. I looked at my friends sitting around the counter. None of them realized how dangerous things had become for me. Losing the Kiver job had put me on the fast track to a collection. A week from now I could be lying in a Level Two gutter with gaping holes in my guts.
Still, I hesitated to tell them.
I thought back to what Samantha had said on the Broken Road. About trust, about how silence is not a form of protection. What were her words? “This isn’t Wal versus the world”? Something like that. She was right: I needed to rely on my friends.
Right then I almost told them everything. The collection on my head. The twenty-five thousand lira due by the end of the week. But the words were heavy in my throat. They lodged there, impossible to get out and hard to swallow. I looked from Samantha to Hagen to Hannah.
They smiled, joked, sipped their drinks.
Not right now, I thought. It’d take Samantha and Hagen some time to get the text translated. While they worked I’d go see the Society. Explain the situation. Then I’d tell them. The city was already on the verge of collapse. Stealing a happy moment seemed wrong somehow.
Samantha’s smile faltered as Hagen did his best impression of Bouchard. His cheeks flared, his chest puffed out. Her eyes, those pools of infinity, cut right through me. She read me like the dumb book I was. Her smile wavered slightly and one of her eyebrows ticked up. I wondered if she saw Argentum.
Then Hagen said something funny and she snapped out of her gaze and laughed.
Somehow I laughed along. It rang hollow.
ELEVEN
A COLD WIND CUT THROUGH THE STREETS and made the lights above my head sway. The shadows around me grew and shrank in the swaying light.
The Society of Collectors operates chapterhouses all over Lovat. I hadn’t been inside many but they seemed to style themselves after a typical office or upscale bank. The larger ones in more elevated sections of the city are grandiose. The floors are marble, the hallways are lined with pillars. The desks are massive and made of a wood that no longer grows in the Territories. Smaller offices, in the lower warrens of the city, have more humble trappings. Three of four desks with typewriters, cork boards, filing cabinets, and coffee pots. Wood paneling covers the walls, dotted with old wanted signs and faded inspirational posters featuring rivers, mountains, and soaring birds with words like, “teamwork,” “courage,” and “persistence” written below them. They all have their own teletypes. A few even have telephones. Usually they’re operated by a single employee sitting idly, puffing blue smoke in a worn suit, waiting for contracts to come over the wire. When a job comes in the employee dutifully takes down the assignment and then pastes it up on the wall alongside its case number. If a collector wants the job they inform the employee who then telegraphs the other offices and lets everyone know who has volunteered and the job is carried out.
My dealings with the collectors have been limited. I didn’t know where to find a chapterhouse. That meant I had to check with a directory agent near Saint Olm’s who told me the nearest was in a warren to the south named New Holly. The chapterhouse was on Level Five. To get there I needed to take a lift up to Level Six then catch a monorail to the warren and then find the place.
I had left Hannah, Samantha, and Hagen back at shop. I offered to go find some food and figured I could stop in at the chapterhouse. I was no good to them until I could square this, anyway. The food run gave me the opportunity to get my troubles with the Society ironed out. I felt like a man at the gallows, bag over my head, noose around my neck, just waiting for the floor to drop out.
What was that? Out of the corner of my eye I swore I saw movement. The flurry of robes, the tilt of a pointed hood. A gargoyle. I snapped my head left, peering down an alley. I wished I had my gun. Those things were really starting to get under my skin.
I felt uneasy. Exposed. I could use some protection. My gun—a hefty five-shot revolver called a Judge—and I had been in more than a few scrapes together and its weight at my side would have been welcome, especially walking into a Society chapterhouse. But it could also land me in jail. Lovatine law restricted citizens from carrying weapons. I had skirted the law before but when I got back after Methow I had vowed to keep my nose clean. But this was before Aklo showed up at murder scenes, the gargoyles started appearing, and a Society contract was placed on my head.
The alley was empty, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I was being watched. I knew what that meant, of course. The faceless things were the ancient servants of the Firsts. We had faced them a number of times now. They aren’t any species I recognize. Hell, I’m not even sure if they are mortal. I’ve seen them shrug off gunshot wounds and disappear into clouds of smoke. Umbra might look like living shadows but at least when you shot them they left a body. Gargoyles didn’t.
I decided to talk with Hannah and Samantha about them when I got back to Saint Olm. They would want to know.
I found a lift east of Hagen’s shop. I stood shivering at the stop in the cold, pulling my jacket close around my chest, burying my hands in my pockets, and watching the people of King’s Station move past. It was late. The streets were pretty clear. A dimanian and a maero youth dressed all in black with red armbands ran past, whooping and shouting, and
chanting something I couldn’t make out. The Breakers, it seemed, were getting more and more bold. Behind the youths came a crowd of kresh in winter robes. In their clawed hands they carried signs that read, “WE NEED FOOD” and “END THE BLOCKADES” in thick block Strutten. Protestors. Things in the city were heating up.
A bell dinged and I turned to watch the lift slowly rise from the shaft below me and come to a stop. I boarded the empty lift and the bored cephel conductor nodded at me, clucking a half-hearted greeting in Cephan. I smiled and returned his greeting. I moved to sit in a chair near one of the heaters. I had three levels to go and I appreciated the warmth near the back of the lift.
I leaned back in my chair and settled in, watching the girders pass as the lift began to rise.
We were halfway to Level Four when a voice over my shoulder said, “Fancy meeting you here.”
I started, then turned, and saw Rulon Argentum sitting in the chair behind me. My heart jumped. He stood and slipped around the line of seats to stand before me, motionless. He was wearing a heavy coat—expensive from the look of it—with wide black wool lapels that matched his hair. His hands were in his pockets, his white-metal face was frozen in that stoic expression. The narrow eye slits seemed to regard me suspiciously.
Was he looking for me? I couldn’t be sure.
“I’m working on your money,” I said, my voice cracking and betraying any feigned confidence. Argentum, however, oozed it. A sleek threat of a dauger, wearing his self-assurance as easily as his coat.
“I hope so, for your sake,” he said. “You have five days remaining.”
I ran my hands through my hair and chuckled awkwardly. “Yeah, I know. Funny, I’m actually on my way to talk to your bosses. See if I can’t—”
“You are what?” Argentum snapped. He stepped closer, gripped the front of my jacket, and pulled me to my feet. We now stood face-to-face at the back of the lift. He was so close I could feel the warmth emanating from behind his mask and hear the words whistle as they escaped from the narrow mouth slit. “You were going to talk to whom?”
I narrowed my eyes slightly.
“Your bosses. See if I can’t work out a payment plan.”
“They won’t talk to you,” he said. He released his grip with a small shove.
“Sure they will. They do—”
“No,” he interrupted me again. His composure had fallen away. There was venom in his voice. “I am your point of contact with the Society. Me alone. We discussed that.”
I took a step back, trying to put a bit of distance between us. I didn’t want to be standing too close to an angry collector.
“I don’t think we did,” I said carefully. “Besides, what does it matter? If I can get on a payment plan, then—”
“Well, we have discussed it now. If you have something to say to the Society, it goes through me.” He tapped his chest.
Fine. I could play this game.
“I want to work out a deal,” I said.
He laughed, the sound hollow. “No. No deal.”
“The Society has done it before.”
“On some contracts, yes. This is not one of them. There will be no deal. The money or your life. You have five days.”
The bell at the front of the lift dinged. The cephel conductor yawned and clucked out our arrival at Level Four. No one boarded. I was alone with an increasingly angry collector and a half-asleep conductor.
“Look, I got a gig and it promises to pay well, but it might take longer than a week. If I’m dead I can’t get your money. So I figure we set up a payment plan. It’s better business and I don’t have to be dead.”
Argentum thought on this for a moment and then shook his head. “No.”
The doors at the front of the lift closed and we began to rise once again.
The fear and nervousness that had leapt to the surface when I saw him now drained out of me. Anger replaced it. The Society worked with contracts. I knew this to be true. It was partly why they were able to make so much money. The interest rates are incredible but it’s amazing what folks will agree to when their life is on the line.
“Yeah? Well, then I’ll need to go to the Society directly,” I said, forcing the words out and trying to keep calm. I really missed the Judge.
“I said no,” Argentum said, stepping forward to give me a harder shove. I was slammed backward into the wall of the lift and my head bounced against the hard glass. I blinked away bright flashes.
“Hey,” I said dumbly, but Argentum wasn’t stopping. A fist caught me in the jaw before I had a chance to duck.
Stars exploded behind my eyes and my ears rang. I slipped down to my knees, a hand gripping my jaw and the other keeping me from rolling over.
“Look, why don—“
Argentum kicked out but I was able to see that coming. I grabbed at his foot with my free hand and caught it. Twisted. He grunted and I gave the leg a jerk, pulling him off balance for a moment. He wavered but didn’t go down.
I rose quickly, feeling a popping in my knee that shot waves of pain up my leg. Another punch came my way but I blocked it with a forearm and sent a punch of my own at his gut. I missed as he stepped back and regarded me.
I breathed out in gusts, trying to catch my breath before the next assault.
The conductor clucked angrily at us, waving an arm.
Argentum drew a long fillet knife from inside his coat and whipped it around in the air before him. My mouth went dry. In the reflected lights of the lift the blade glowed white.
“Hey,” I said, pressing myself against a windowed wall. “Hey. You said I had five days.”
I thought of the Judge. It was back at my flat. Sitting useless in a nightstand drawer.
“I think the terms will need to be readjusted,” he said as he stalked towards me. I scrambled away from the wall and to a center row of the lift.
“Hurry up!” I shouted at the conductor. “He’s crazy! He’s going to kill me!”
The conductor had stopped working the lift. We slowed to a stop. He stood there, his enormous eyes staring at me and then flicking to the tall dauger now stalking around the row of seats, blade in hand.
Argentum lunged at me and the blade caught the side of my jacket. It sliced leather but didn’t hit the skin beneath. I moved away, careful not to trip over the chairs bolted to the floor.
“Look, five days. I won’t talk to your bosses. Fine,” I shouted, breathless.
Argentum said nothing. I considered going to the cephel, knowing the octopoid creature could be helpful in a fight, but I didn’t want to endanger anyone else. I needed to get out of here.
I glanced at the windows. Outside I could see the shaft’s superstructure, a latticework of girders and beams. I knew service ladders ran up and down the shafts but I didn’t see one outside the lift. But there had to be one.
The doors moaned open and a blast of cold air swept through. We were still mid-trip, not near a station. I stared in shock as the cephel disappeared out the front doors, pulling itself up and outside the lift with its many arms. Escaping.
Now I was alone with this maniac.
Argentum took a quick look around the lift and then lunged at me. Carter’s cross, he was fast. This time I didn’t have a chance. The knife hit one of my ribs and then deflected upward. I managed to pull away before it got too deep or too far. Hot pain flared and I let out a curse.
The hasty lunge had placed the dauger’s arm under my armpit. I ignored the pain coming from my side and dropped my arm, locking Argentum in place. We were now face-to-face.
“You’re going to die, Bell,” he said. This guy was clearly no collector. So... who was he? Why was he after me?
I flashed him a pained smile as I brought my left knee up into his crotch. He deflated and howled, collapsing to the floor. Why do thugs like him always forget about that? Ridiculous.
A bolt of pain shot through me. I remembered what I had to do. Get out!
I moved to the open door of the lift. The cephel
was long gone. In the distance I could hear the wail of sirens. The law wouldn’t be on my side. Argentum—whoever he was—was posing as a collector. He was from one of the Precious Families. No cop would believe my word over his. No cop would stop a supposed Society member performing a collection. I needed to lose him and then lay low.
I leaned out the door. Gusts of cold air blew through my hair and beard. The gash was a sharp pain in my side, and I touched it gingerly. It was bleeding badly, and the fillet knife had cut deep. Argentum would recover quickly, and I was wounded. I had to go.
I looked up the way the cephel had gone. We were near Level Five. The entresol between Levels Four and Five was directly above. I could see the lights through a narrow space between the lift and the shaft. If I could get up there...
Behind me, Argentum stirred.
“Don’t think you can escape, Bell,” he shouted. I turned and saw him moving towards me on his long legs. His coat flared behind him. I had only moments. I slammed the lift’s lever into action and with a groan it began to rise. I leapt out, pushing myself into the open girders of the shaft and away from the rising lift. Wind whipped around me and the cold of the metal bit into my fingers.
I turned, saw legs appear in the open doorway. Argentum cursed and his shiny shoes disappeared as the lift slipped past the roof of Level Four and up into Level Five.
I breathed out. That bought me some time. I looked for a way down. I gripped the steel beam and looked for a way off the lattice. Birds and bats fluttered from their perches and chirped and squawked at me. I was invading their space.
Stairwells run next to most lifts. They’re rarely used in the more elevated levels, and closer to the Sunk you’re more likely to find them occupied by addicts shooting pitch into their rotting veins, but they’re always there. I began to look for one, moving along the girders and making sure not to look down. At this location Level Four was roughly ten stories high. Slipping and falling would not be pleasant.
If I was right, there should be a stairwell just around the corner. I moved for it.
Above me, I heard the lift stop.
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