by Jackson Lear
We moved away. For as bored as those two were, if they found a couple of mercenaries poking around then they’d have to report it and the orphanage’s reputation would suffer. How greatly it would suffer I had no idea, but there’s only so far down from ‘orphanage’ you can get.
I turned back to Kel. “Did Día work near you?”
“No. Uh … I go this way.”
South. She worked in the east. Wonderful.
“We don’t have time for both,” said Lieutenant.
The kid probably had more answers than looking over whatever road Día disappeared from would give us, and if we returned with more questions later on the sting from Sesta Silvia’s cane might have encouraged him to forget everything he saw and heard in the last few days. “All right. Take us to the dye house.”
The kid walked on, his chin practically stuck to his chest as he led us to his work place.
“This other orphanage of yours, did you know the boys who were taken?”
He shook his head. “They were older than me.”
“You saw them, though? This isn’t a story you heard?”
He hesitated, still with his chin on his chest. “One I heard about. He went the summer before I got there. The other, I was there. That’s when I saw the ghost.”
“And the second time you saw it?”
“The same night Día saw it. I was at the window. It jumped to the other side of the street like it was escaping, then it stopped and looked back. It saw me. I think it even smiled. Then it jumped away.”
“This was happening while the girls were screaming?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone see it fly? Hover? Or only jump?”
“Día, Melda, and Sayle said it flew through their room and hovered over Día.”
Lieutenant squinted at me. It was the mixing of two styles of movement that he didn’t like. Ghosts were ineffectual and couldn’t be seen by the masses. The only way you could see it was if you’ve been awake for days on end. These things could drift with the wind, they could hover, they could probably even fly about. They didn’t jump, though. That was limited to something physical. If this ghost of theirs was human shaped then it couldn’t fly or hover.
In short, the squint I got from Lieutenant looked like he was dismissing everything the kid was saying. Chalk it up to a case of a sleepy youngster, a room full of screaming girls who had been trying to speak to the dead, and a lot of overactive imaginations.
“In your old orphanage, what were the names of the two missing boys?”
“Luuko and Saylen. I’d seen Saylen. Everyone talked about Luuko going missing.”
“And that was the first time you heard of someone going missing like this?”
He nodded.
“What happened to them?”
By now the kid would’ve put a lot of theories together. His guess was likely to be better than the watchmen who had come to listen to the grieving sestas. “It was the Eyeless Ghost. It chose them to be taken.”
That killed all usefulness the kid had for Lieutenant. No one wanted to hear that the prime suspect in a disappearance is a children’s horror story used to keep wandering kids inside at night.
“Was there a note left behind for Luuko and Saylen?”
“I don’t know.”
Lieutenant held his hand out, halting us. One guy was dead ahead, sucking on his first cigar of the day. Back against the wall, one heel up, barely awake. Definitely not someone who works a dawn to dusk job.
We doubled back and found a detour to the dye house. No matter which road we took, there was no escaping that smell. Putrid odors rampaged through town, stale urine and what must have been pungent rotting fish. The smell was now caked into every wall this side of the river, sealing it there forever.
“What does Día look like?”
“Brown hair.”
“What else?”
“She has some freckles.”
“Is she tall? Thin shoulders? Wide shoulders? Round face? Long face? Big nose, small nose? Has all of her teeth? Pretty? Ugly? Big ass? What?”
His eyes widened at the mention of some of her features.
“Does she have a birth mark on her upper thigh where no one is supposed to see it?” I asked.
Kel blushed and shied away.
“Where?”
He rested one finger on the side of his chest. “There. It’s the size of a thumb print.”
“Good. And the rest of her?”
“She’s not short, not tall. She has a nice smile and a nice laugh. She has all of her teeth.”
“And the rest of her is average?”
He nodded.
What the hell an average thirteen year old girl was supposed to look like, I had no idea. Neither did Lieutenant by the bored look across his face.
“She liked to dance,” mumbled Kel.
“Did she stand up against bullies?”
He nodded.
“Did she do that for other people, or just herself?”
“For others.”
With any luck she would give whoever had kidnapped her a hard time, forcing them to be more careful than usual.
We rounded the corner, coming face to face with the front of the dye house. I almost puked from the stench. My eyes certainly watered like I had just been hit in the face with chopped onions and cracked pepper. I admit that some of me standing with one hand against the wall was because of the last time I was there. Even after twenty years, some things hadn’t changed in the slightest. That putrid smell still got to me, a mix of sharp oils and stale urine. No one ever talks about it later on but I’m sure we’ve all had that job; soaking cloth in barrels of urine which went off a month ago, wringing them out and getting splashed yourself, wishing your arms were longer so you wouldn’t get it all over your clothes and feet. Then you let it dry and you have a lovely white tunic. And that was just the urine; everything else in the dye house was just as bad. Your hands would come back covered in sores, in bizarre colors like you’ve had to fight off a werewolf or a creature made of venomous sludge. Some kid out there, right now, was crushing up beetles, ants, seashells, and grass, trying to turn it into a liquid. Blacks, blues, reds, greens. Make it too watery and someone will slap you across the back of the head. Slap them back and you end up knee deep in urine, stomping on fabric until someone else takes issue with their treatment and you can finally breathe again while your replacement gets to suffer.
“I have to go,” said the kid.
“Wait. Kel?” I ignored Lieutenant’s glare beside me. “Listen, I’m going to try and come back. It might take months. It might even take a year. But I’d like you to keep your eyes and ears out for me, okay? If you see anyone, hear anyone, and think that they know something about Día, tell one of the sestas. They’ll be able to find me. And if they don’t, when I come back, I want you to tell me. No matter how stupid it sounds or how impossible it feels, tell me everything.”
Kel nodded at me. “They’re really going to kill her, aren’t they?”
I was certain of it. “I’ll do what I can. If I find her it’s because you’ve been able to help me, okay?”
He nodded again, turned, and shuffled into the dye house with his head down, shoulders stiff, fists clenched.
Lieutenant stared at the back of the kid as he walked off. “He’s been up all night and is ready to burst. Another sinister mage in the making.”
It sure seemed that way. Lieutenant grabbed me by the arm, pulling me away from the foul stench carried along the wind.
“How old were you when you first tried to use magic?” I asked.
“Ten, I think. You?”
“Twelve. I tried to drop a bucket of piss on my boss.”
“How’d that go for you?”
“Badly, but at least I never had to set foot in a dye house ever again.”
Lieutenant smirked with a quick look over his shoulder. “That place?”
“The one and only.”
“I won’t be surprised
if we see that kid trying to join us by the end of the season.”
I could only hope. More often than not, the kids with a grudge – the would-be mercenaries – don’t have the sense to join a company before trying to seek out vengeance on their own. Someone like Kel, with a shank in one hand, isn’t going to be much of a threat to a professional kidnapper. At least if Kel was to join us he’d live long enough to learn how to use a blade effectively.
“He might be onto something though,” admitted Lieutenant. “I don’t mean the ghost, but if four kids from two orphanages are missing then maybe someone is using these kids for dark magic. There’s always someone trying to push the boundaries, someone who has no problem drinking a kid’s blood because they think it will make them immortal. And to write a note you need an education. Educated mages are drawn to texts like there’s some long lost secret that only their superior intellect can decipher. And they can plan things out better than us. Whoever did this, they did it well.”
We squeezed past an old lady selling bread from a basket bigger than herself.
“So, how did they do it?” asked Lieutenant. “Stuff her in a basket? A cart?”
“Probably. We’re close to the outskirts of town. Not as many witnesses here. Broker’s Wharf could’ve used a boat to take the other kids away.” I allowed Lieutenant to simmer on that for a moment. Farcourt was on the outskirts of town as well, to the north. So far we hadn’t heard of any orphans being abducted from under our noses.
“Where are we going, anyway? Isn’t the center of town that way?”
“We’re going to see where she was taken.”
“No. No way. The longer we’re out here, the more we’re going to be seen. Folks around here pay protection money so that people like us don’t bother them.”
“Then we won’t bother them. And it hardly matters if we take a moment to look at a street. We’re not due back for hours.”
“What if the Captain asks Greaser, Smoker, and Third-Eye what took us so long?”
I stared ahead, trying to figure out how to kidnap a girl from the street without anyone seeing me. I know it is possible to hold someone perfectly still against their will, but that level of magic is exhausting. It wears off quickly and the only reason you would even bother is so you can manacle their hands before you lose your concentration. If you’re on the verge of death when you prepare that spell then you might even have enough time to gag them and manacle their feet. But at that point you might as well just drug their drink so they pass out. Much easier.
“What’s to say this won’t happen in our territory?” I asked. “Plenty of businesses use orphans. One of them might be fond of whichever ever kid is taken, fond enough to expect our help in getting them back.”
“No. This is only the second time in however many years that we know of–”
“Fourth.”
“Second that we know of. That kid isn’t exactly a reliable witness, not if he thinks a ghost took her. A note was found only twice, right? For two girls who went to the same orphanage.”
I stopped. Looked around.
“What is it?” Lieutenant pressed himself up against one of the walls, peering around the corner. “Who did you see?”
No one, but it was just as bad.
With one quick look he had me pegged. “Oh bloody hell, we’re lost, aren’t we?”
I stared up at the buildings, trying to make sense of them all.
“Didn’t you grow up here?”
“Yeah.”
“Right on these streets?”
“In this area, yes. These streets are new.”
“These have been here for a hundred years, look at them.”
“They’re new to me.”
It was baffling all right. I’d spent the first fourteen years of my life in Red Hill and the surrounding area. Granted, the first five or so weren’t all that memorable and the last five was mostly sneaking out at night when the whole quarter had a very different feel to it. I’d probably be just as disorientated in some areas of Farcourt because I’ve only ever seen it at night.
Plus, twenty years away does strange things to your memory. You might remember clumps of information, groups of buildings with clear distances between them but no matter how hard you try you can’t remember how any of those groups link together, and when they do you’re all turned around as though every street has spun itself around to create a new city that looks almost like the one you used to wander through as a kid.
Then came a waft of roasted peat. The wind came from the east. Along with it was a hint of urine and tanning oils. The dye house.
“This way,” I pointed, through a shoulder-wide alley that headed towards the center of town. As long as we could find the river we’d be okay. But getting there would have us crossing blindly into controlled areas. Where those borders stopped and started were unknown to us. As long as Greaser, Smoker, and Third-Eye didn’t get stuck and need rescuing, we’d be okay. If anything went to shit and someone died, there would be no talking or fighting my way out of that one. I’d be killed by the company for breaking my oath. Right now, I was simply bending it.
Lieutenant looked over the narrow streets and far-away stares of the locals. Grief was a constant companion to these people. The lines on their faces were the result of hardship, not smiles and laughter. Famine hit us every four or five years and it usually hit us hard.
Lieutenant grumbled beside me. “We’re looking at a team effort, aren’t we?”
‘We.’ I couldn’t help but smile.
“Broad daylight, a note …”
“Something about an Eyeless Ghost,” I said.
“Funny that they saw a ghost right when some of them were trying to speak to the dead.”
“Someone to keep her attention, others with fail safes in case it doesn’t work the way they expected, and more to deal with accidental witnesses who popped up from nowhere.”
“Right. A team effort,” said Lieutenant.
That gave me hope. Teams are noticed. They’re also sloppy. A perfectionist might hire someone like-minded but there’s only one supremely good one among their ranks. The rest are lacking and need to be double and triple checked.
It also meant their mages had likely exhausted their abilities when they took Día and would have to recharge themselves. If a ghost was actually involved then it was for the purposes of dark magic. If so, they would use magic to kill her. To do that they would have to start tiring themselves out again so they could all benefit from her death.
She was still alive. Somewhere.
It was time to bend the rules a little further.
Chapter Five
“Where the hell are we?” asked Lieutenant, snapping me out of a daydream. “Are we heading back to the orphanage?”
“We’ll be okay.” As we headed through Red Hill I wracked my brains, trying to remember where everything lined up. The doors were painted a different color, we rounded one twisting corner to the next, and I must admit my brave face had become more for show than actual confidence. Worse still, the smells of cooking started to get to me. I hadn’t eaten since midnight. We were stumbling around looking for a three way junction somewhere in a tightly packed city. I stopped and asked if anyone knew where Relund’s was, Día’s workplace. The ones who knew pointed eastwards, just a few streets over. The orphanage was west. We were in the right area.
“We’re wasting our time,” said Lieutenant.
I asked if anyone knew where Día went missing from. No takers. How about if they had seen a sesta asking around? Success.
Lieutenant spoke quietly. “If the watchmen actually do their job then they’re going to be at the same corner as us at the same time.”
“Keep your sword handy.”
“Fuck you.”
Then, there it was. A three way junction, just like Nevah described. The wall rose straight up, angled inwards slightly, then went straight up again. There was even a broken bit of roof tile left behind. Thick. Gray. The thing that
held the note in place. I took it.
Lieutenant kept an eye on the street and windows above. The longer we lingered, the more we’d be spotted, if we hadn’t been spotted already.
I checked out the surrounding buildings. Mr. Fabulous was certainly busy annoying me at this stage, but as long as I didn’t stick my nose into other people’s business then perhaps we’d get out in time.
I’d like to say I followed his wishes.
“You’re the second person to ask about a missing girl in as many minutes,” said one lady at her window.
“Who was the other?” I asked.
“A sesta, I think.”
It would’ve been nice to have had a clear idea of when this happened, but ‘you’re the second person to ask in as many minutes’ could mean anything from, ‘she hasn’t even left my line of sight, that’s how close she is,’ to, ‘it’s now lunch time and she came by at breakfast.’
“Which way did she go?”
The lady waved her hand in one direction. Back towards the orphanage.
“What did she ask?”
“If I saw someone kidnap a thirteen year old girl.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone waiting for her?”
“I’m sorry, I was asleep last night. Long day. Tiring.”
“Does someone normally wait for her?”
“A boy. A friend, I suppose. Sometimes two boys, but always at least one. They walk home together.”
She didn’t know much else and claimed that she wasn’t in the habit of watching people. By now, she had my full description locked into place and would be talking about me for days to come.
“If you think of anything else, please let someone at the barracks know.” Before she could ask which barracks I was talking about, I led the way after the sesta.
“We’re not going back towards the city watch,” said Lieutenant.
“We’re not. They’re long gone by now.” Ahead of us, looking from one building to another and tracing Día’s usual route home, was a woman in a faded gray smock and basic sandals.
“Sesta Joa?” I asked.