Watcher of the Dead

by J. V. Jones

  When she reached the surface, she found, turned, and boarded the boat. It took a while. Many of her belongings were floating on the surface and she fished them aboard with the paddle. Not long after that she fell asleep.

  She dreamed of Chedd. A good dream. There were turtles in it.

  The current took Effie south.

  CHAPTER 34

  Watcher of the Damned

  ANGUS LOK LAY in the stinking filth of the drain culvert and watched the street. Men’s bodies were pushed to either side of him, huddling for warmth in the darkest and stillest hour of the night, the one before dawn. The men reeked of urine and the sourness of unwashed flesh. One man was jerking rhythmically, either insane or pleasuring himself. Maybe both. Angus ignored him.

  He was waiting as he had waited every day and night for the past four days, watching the crossroad of two streets, scanning for Sarcosa.

  The surgeon’s rooms were located in a house along the east-west-running street. Angus had arranged it so that whenever the surgeon left his home he had no choice but to move through this corner, which was to the east of his rooms. The way to the west, the end of the street which led down to the river and the water gardens, was flooded.

  Angus dismantled small sections of the city’s flood walls discreetly every night. It was the time that caused him the most anxiety—not the crow-barring of masonry and the resulting possibility of detection, but the fact that he was away from his watch. Anything could happen at night. Surgeons were called out for the dead, the dying, the sick, the hysterical, the seizing. A call might come at any time, a messenger sent running to the surgeon’s door. Come quick.

  It was Angus’ greatest fear that a call would come while he was maintaining the flood, and that call came from the Maiden. Sarcosa would leave and go to her and he, Angus Lok, would never know.

  Angus lived to know. The Maiden was hiding in this city and he needed to know where so he could send her to hell. The woman who had slain his wife and daughters in cold blood could not continue to live.

  He would die rather than allow it.

  Shifting his position, Angus warded against numbness in his feet and legs. He needed to be ready to depart any time. Any figure passing in the darkness might be Sarcosa.

  It was easy to find information once you had a name. Surgeons needed income like everyone else. They could not afford to keep themselves hidden. Inquiries, lightly pressed, at the gold market north of the water gardens and the Great Round east of the fortress had supplied the facts that Angus had needed. Sarcosa lived on the east bank, on this street. He doctored an exclusive clientele of lords and ladies, rich merchants, bankers, and captains-of-the-guard. He was said to have paid visits to the fortress. By several accounts he was a fine-looking man, silver-haired, dignified, striking in his black cloak and boots. His rooms were modest, as he chose to spend his money in other areas of his life—young prostitutes, Angus understood—and because of that, he rarely saw patients there. Sarcosa was a beck-and-call surgeon, attending the rich and privileged of Morning Star. He came to you.

  Armed with this information, Angus had investigated the street. He was cautious in his movements, as he could not rule out the possibility that the Phage knew exactly what he knew. The surgeon’s rooms lay directly east of the water gardens, the park of man-made canals, fountain walks and lily ponds where the rich and well-dressed displayed themselves on fine days. The street was quiet and boasted few businesses. Its character varied depending on its closeness to the water gardens. West was good, east bad. Drainage was a problem in the eastern section, and great ditches and culverts had been dug to divert floodwater. The sheltering walls of many of these culverts had attracted the most desperate men in the city. As soon as Angus had spotted the community of ragged, dirt-eating beggars on the far corner of the surgeon’s street, he had begun to design a plan. The beggars stopped water from running down their culvert by building a makeshift dam of scrap wood, rotten clothing, animal hides and dung.

  If they could block water. He could free it.

  It was easy. The west part of the surgeon’s street lay below the high-water level of the Eclipse. Break the floodwall downstream and water came pouring into the water gardens and the street, blocking off roads to the north, west and south. East was the direction the surgeon now had to turn to leave his street. East to this crossroads, past the watcher who was waiting there.

  Angus had followed Sarcosa on every trip he had made over the last four days and nights, ghosting behind him, an unremarkable figure in a dun-colored coat. The surgeon had tended rich dowagers in their manses while Angus had stood outside in the shadows, looking in. When the surgeon had taken dinner in a well-favored tavern, Angus had waited at a safe distance, far down the street but in sight of the tavern door. He had accompanied the surgeon to a mummer’s show and followed him later as he stopped at a small house to leech a patient. Later still the surgeon had visited a pleasure hall. Angus joined him for the long walk home.

  When the sick called for Sarcosa he no longer arrived alone. A shadow trailed him, sometimes at a distance as far as three hundred feet. Look and you were unlikely to see it. But the shadow always saw you.

  Angus barely slept. He ate scraps off the street, bread slid from vendors’ stalls in passing, chunks of boiled meat thrown into the culvert as a charity by the Bone Priests. He drank the water. With every day he became more invisible, as if dirt and raggedness and desperation were magic concealing him from people’s eyes, and the more he gathered about him the less detectable he became. He recognized this and used it. Above and beyond that he did not care.

  He lived for one thing.

  Men and women in the culvert, the beggars, the shit-eaters, the insane, did not question his right to be among them. They recognized their own truth in his eyes. All here were lost or losing something.

  No one challenged him to a fight.

  Angus lay in the collective warmth of their bodies and did not rest. Dawn glowed in the eastern sky and the city stirred. A street vendor rolled out his brazier and set it upstreet and upwind of the culvert. Business had been good since the flood. A group of maids in white caps and white aprons headed for the markets, empty baskets in hand. They crossed the street well before the culvert and averted their gazes as they passed.

  A runner boy came racing down the street from the north and muscles in Angus’ belly tensed. Runner boys meant messages. Messages could lead to calls.

  The surgeon’s rooms were located in a house a third of a league down the street. Angus could not track the boy to the address. To follow him down the street would leave himself too exposed, so he waited. If the Phage knew what he knew and wanted to assassinate him, they would watch the house.

  After a quarter hour the runner boy returned, message delivered, and headed back north. Angus stayed in position. Men in the culvert were rising, scratching their beards, shaking themselves off, pissing downstream. Few spoke. The smell of sausages grilling on the brazier was a shared torture. Not for the first time Angus wondered why the men in the culvert didn’t simply rise up and overpower the vendor.

  He decided they weren’t quite desperate enough.

  Spying a tall figure moving east, Angus stilled. It was Sarcosa in his black cloak, gloves on, boots polished, slender leather satchel slung sideways across his chest like an arrow case. He approached the crossroads and turned north. Angus forced himself to wait.

  As he counted to twenty, he watched for other watchers. He had been Phage himself once; he knew the deal. Satisfied that all was normal, Angus rose and left the culvert. He did not look back.

  Morning Star was still coming to life. Geese on the riverbanks honked as a small and pale sun rose through clouds. Delivery carts hurtled along the streets, draymen warning bloody murder if the way ahead wasn’t cleared. Angus kept to the walls. Sarcosa was a hundred feet ahead, walking briskly with a sense of his own importance. He turned east, away from the river. Angus turned along with him.

  The area here w
as comfortable; manses and law courts, whitewashed taverns and stables, temples with stonework carvings showing the sun and morning star in opposition. Sarcosa stopped abruptly and rapped on the door of one of the manses. He was granted swift entry and the painted white door closed behind him. Angus glided past and kept going.

  Five minutes later he approached the house from behind. The back door was swung open and the courtyard was in use. A laundry girl was boiling blankets in a bath over a fire. Angus continued moving along the lane. Sarcosa’s daylight visits could be a problem.

  Two houses down he spotted a fat and ancient maid sitting on a bench in her master’s courtyard, doing little save looking exhausted. “Day, Mistress,” he called to her.

  She turned her stately head and inspected him. “We give our alms to the chapel house. On your way.”

  Angus ignored the direction. “Just saw the doctor step into the house two doors down. Bad business?”

  Information, its receipt and transfer, were irresistible. The ancient head nodded. “That so? Can’t say I’m surprised the way that poor man’s heart’s been playing up.”

  “Wife driving him hard?”

  The woman chuckled. “Not unless she’s doing it from the grave. The only woman he has to contend with is the maid. Runs herself ragged for him, she does.”

  “Blond girl, the one doing the laundry out back?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  Angus made a swift farewell and left. The woman watched him with some suspicion as he walked down the street.

  He took a slow circuit of the house. This time as he passed the door he stopped and rapped hard on the wood.

  “Elise!” came a cry from the front of the building. “Can you get that? The surgeon and I are busy.”

  Judging the cry was loud enough—and intended—to reach the laundry girl in the back courtyard, Angus moved on. His concerns over who had answered the door when Sarcosa arrived were now gone. The master had answered it himself.

  Sarcosa took his own good time at the house, emerging over two hours later. He treated himself to a midday meal at one of the fine whitewashed taverns and then headed north to make another call.

  The Fortress District was the most monied part of the city. Here, in the shadow of the Burned Fortress, lived the city’s most venerable occupants. High lords kept houses within call of the Lord Rising, and rich and powerful public servants lived within walking distance of Burned Bridge. The streets were so quiet you could hear the fortress gate descending. When horns broadcast the Lord Rising’s movements, the Fortress District learned of them first.

  Angus had never liked it; bricks made for high walls and unfriendly neighborhoods. He liked it less now. Fewer people on the streets meant he was more detectible. Private guards posted outside private manses watched him as he approached and kept watching until he moved on. He slowed his pace, dropping back from Sarcosa. Crossed the street.

  Sarcosa approached a house at the far end of the street, a limestone manse with the kind of detailed stonework that took masons years to complete but in reality just trapped the bird shit and the dirt. It had actual glazed windows, diamond-shaped panes set in lead. The door was clad with iron panels. To the left stood a guard wearing the kind of bright, gilded uniform that undercut a fighting man’s dignity but pleased rich ladies. The guard knocked for Sarcosa, as if it were a dangerous endeavor better taken care of by a professional. Perhaps it was. Knuckles on an iron door.

  Entry was granted and Sarcosa disappeared into the house. Angus wanted a look in those windows. He re-crossed the street.

  The guard saw him coming and flexed his weapon arm. He was holding a steel halberd with a nasty hook assemble under the blade.

  “Got any coppers,” Angus said, holding up his hands to show they were empty, “for a veteran of the Morning Guard?”

  The guard shook his head. “Sorry, friend.” He didn’t sound sorry and he wasn’t a friend.

  Angus walked past him, toward the window. Unable to resist, he approached it and peered in. An old and bewigged lady was sitting on a high-backed chair with Sarcosa at her feet. The surgeon was unwinding a stained bandage from around her black and swollen ankle. Detecting movement they both looked up, but Angus was already gone.

  The guard called out a choice selection of curses as Angus paced down the street.

  An hour later Sarcosa left the house. Angus followed the surgeon as he made a third call to a tower manse on River Hill to the east. This call was also unproductive—a man with a thickly bandaged head met Sarcosa at the door—and Angus waited in the next street until the surgeon was done.

  It began to rain. Angus took no shelter. When Sarcosa came into view at the end of the street, Angus fell in his wake. It was getting late now. Taverns lit their lamps in expectation of the night. People were dashing home with the day’s purchases, cloaks pulled over their heads. Mothers stood on doorsteps and called children out of the rain and into the warmth. Angus turned his thoughts away from the dangerous territory they represented. He thought about his man-made flood. The rain would be good for it, maybe even remove the need for an adjustment later tonight.

  Sarcosa stepped down a side alley and into a pleasure hall. It was different place than the one he had visited last night. Angus was immediately alert.

  The hall’s big ground-floor windows were open to the alleyway. Angus hung in their shadows and watched as Sarcosa took a seat at one of the benches. An alewife brought the surgeon something in a tiny glazed cup. As Sarcosa drank, a fair-skinned girl sat beside him. She was dressed in a tight sky-blue bodice cut low. Her cheeks and the exposed curves of her breasts were rouged. Her hair and skin was baby-fine; she couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

  Sarcosa called for more drinks in little glazed cups. He and the girl sipped and chatted as the hall filled with patrons. After a while they stood in unison and headed for the back of the large high-ceilinged room.

  Angus entered the hall. Light and heat from the stove dazzled him. Steam rose from his coat. A woman wearing a red silk dress whispered something to her friends and an entire table of people turned to look at him. Angus saw, judged and dismissed them.

  The alewife who had served Sarcosa began wending her way through the crowd. Angus continued moving. He had spotted a door in the back of the room and was heading toward it. The alewife saw this and moved at a tangent to intercept him. She was middle-aged, just turning to fat, and carried herself with some authority.

  She was trying to catch someone’s eye. Angus tracked her gaze to a burly man standing at the counter, chatting merrily with two girls. The man was unaware of the alewife’s attempt to hail him and he had not yet seen Angus Lok.

  “Hey, lovey.” The alewife was brisk as she approached Angus. She probably dealt with undesirables every day. “Outside, eh? We don’t want no trouble here.”

  Angus turned his head and looked her straight in the eye. “Go away.”

  It was spoken quietly, perhaps not even spoken at all. The alewife’s entire demeanor changed as she realized this was not every day. Her mouth closed. She glanced at the counter man. Angus did not need to look over his shoulder to know that he wasn’t looking back.

  The alewife gave ground.

  She swallowed and then said hoarsely, “I’m going to fetch the keep.”

  Let her fetch, Angus thought as he took the final steps to the door.

  It opened, and his heart beat with force in his chest.

  He closed the door. Swiftly and quietly he broke and jammed the lock. The door was flimsy, its hinges better suited to rabbit hutches than public places, but it was something. It gave him time.

  Turning, he surveyed the interior space. He was in a corridor lit by a pretty mica lamp that made the wood-paneled walls glow. Four doors led off the corridor; two on either side. A single chair stood against the east-facing wall. Some kind of dyed and decorative feather shawl lay upon it.

  Angus tried the first door, swinging it lightly open. The room was dark. I
t contained a posted and canopied bed, nothing else. He moved on.

  As he crossed to the second door he heard Sarcosa’s voice murmur softly, “This will not hurt.”

  There was a world of possibilities in those words, but Angus Lok recognized the tone. This was not a man talking to a very young girl he was about to bed. This was a surgeon talking to his patient.

  Angus Lok drew his longknife from the sheath that snugged his thigh. The blade gleamed orange in the mica light. It was two feet long, double edged, and forged by the Sull. They called such knives ghostmakers.

  Behind him, someone tried the door between the corridor and the hall.

  Angus exploded into motion. Give the Maiden an instant to react and you were dead. She was quicker, more skilled and more calculating than any other assassin in the north. Take her by surprise or do not take her at all.

  Angus kicked the surgeon’s door with such force he sent it upright into the room like a shield. Three figures occupied the small, dim space. The girl with the sky-blue dress was standing by a little table next to the bed. In some deep and intangible way she looked different than she had five minutes earlier when she had sat and coaxed Sarcosa on the bench. Not older, but wiser. Sarcosa himself was kneeling on the floor on the opposite side of the bed, a needle threaded with black surgeon’s silk in his hand. Both he and the girl were still, stunned with shock

  The third figure was already in motion. She had been sitting on the bed with her dress sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her hands were skinned. Angus could only imagine the pain she received as she drew her longknife.

  The Maiden did not blink.

  She rose like smoke, swaying and indefinite. There was a blur around her profile, an uncertainty, that was not human.

  As the pleasure hall door was kicked down in the hallway behind them, Magdalena Crouch and Angus Lok performed a dance.