The Viper and the Urchin: A Novel of Steampunk Adventure (Bloodless Assassin Mysteries Book 1)

by Celine Jeanjean

  They turned into a quiet lane that led to Susie’s. The coffeehouse fronted a neat square, full of clean cobblestones and well-dressed people.

  Inside, the coffeehouse was dark, but of a rich and comfortable darkness, the kind that invited secrets and whispered confessions. The room they stood in was small, with just two tables surrounded by plush velvet chairs.

  A woman glided out from behind a polished teak counter.

  “Longinus, my dear, what a pleasure to see you,” she said in a low voice.

  “The pleasure is all mine, Susie, as always.”

  “Follow me, please.”

  “First, I have a favour to ask of you, my dear. I’m awaiting word from a few, er, slightly unsavoury characters. Street urchins to be precise. I knew I could count on your discretion should they have a message to leave with me and —”

  “Say no more,” replied Susie, raising a hand. “I’ll be sure to inform you of anyone looking for you.”

  “Thank you, much obliged.”

  Susie bobbed her head and led them to an adjacent room. It was long, like a gallery, and in the middle of it were little booths surrounded by high partitions of thick, red-wine-coloured velvet. A few small stained-glass windows allowed a little sunlight to filter in.

  The glass was set in a pattern of diamonds, some sections coloured, others plain. All were full of bubbles, so that the world outside was blurred beyond recognition, and the people walking past the windows were little more than light brown shapes that warped and changed as they moved from one pane to the next.

  Vapour lamps on tables and in sconces cast a dimmed light over the gallery. As they walked past the booths, Rory glanced at people within talking in low, confidential voices. Deliciously rich smells wafted out from each booth, and her stomach rumbled. Loudly. Much as she was loathe to admit it, this coffeehouse smelled nothing like the coffee she had experienced, which was little more than a bitter, muddy-coloured water.

  As they sat down, Longinus whispered something to Susie, who nodded and padded off.

  “What was that?” whispered Rory.

  “I ordered us food and two butterscotch coffees. You’re not ready for real coffee yet.”

  Rory bristled.

  “You know less than nothing, remember?” said Longinus. “Besides, butterscotch coffees are amusing.”

  Susie appeared at the booth once more, bringing with her a little trolley on top of which were two odd-looking contraptions, and several dishes covered with vermeil cloches. Rory stopped herself from whistling her appreciation. The cloches would be worth a small fortune.

  “You better be paying for this,” she whispered to Longinus, hoping Susie didn’t hear. “Cos I sure can’t.”

  “Don’t be crass.”

  Susie placed the dishes on the table and lifted the cloches, revealing a dish of duck with chocolate and cherry sauce, fish stuffed with chilli, lemon and ginger, and a bowl full of little blueberry beignets, generously dusted with confectioner’s sugar. Rory’s mouth watered.

  She then received one of the contraptions, and Longinus the other. She peered at it, trying to guess how it worked. It was shaped like an hourglass, with an axis through its middle that joined onto a frame, holding the contraption upright. There was a spout at the top of the hourglass, and beneath the lower part was a wide candle with a red, alchemical flame. A little rod poked out from the bottom of the frame, connecting it to a little platform on which was a chiselled vermeil goblet.

  Rory picked it up, but Longinus slapped her hand.

  “Leave that. Wait till the coffee’s ready.”

  They tucked into the food, Rory wolfing hers down with her customary speed. Some habits were hard to let go of.

  “Slow down,” said Longinus. “Or you’ll have nothing left to enjoy with the coffee.”

  As though it had heard its cue, the hourglass swung slowly around its axis, until it was horizontal. A thick black liquid poured out of the spout and into the goblet. Golden swirls of butterscotch ran through the coffee and smoke rose up from it. Rory sniffed it. It smelled rich and comforting. It smelled like… She licked her lips, trying to place the scent.

  “It smells like stories,” she said at last. “Like a book I found on the docks when I were a kid.”

  Longinus raised an eyebrow. “Not bad. Not bad at all for your first try. There may be hope for you yet. What you are getting is an aroma of leather, wood, and parchment, with a rather complex bouquet of library and a hint of tobacco.” He raised the goblet to his nose, inhaling deeply as he moved it in circles. “Quite delicious for such a juvenile little coffee.”

  He took a sip.

  Rory tried hers. It was delicious. Rich and buttery, with a slightly bitter note.

  “Did you keep the book?” asked Longinus.

  “Course not, I sold it to a second-hand book dealer.”

  He shook his head.

  “Yeah, well reading ain’t quite so important as eating when you’re living on the street, alright?” bristled Rory.

  They finished their food and coffee, and after Longinus profusely thanked Susie and paid the bill, they headed to Dr Corian’s laboratory.

  * * *

  Dr Corian rented rooms in a shabby-looking house. Being a respected alchemist obviously didn’t pay too well. The landlady told them which floor the rooms were on with a mouth empty of teeth but full of rice porridge.

  The stairwell was dank and smelled of cabbage. At each floor, Rory could smell the inhabitants beyond the doors. Stale alcohol here, the rich smell of disease there, stew on one floor, cheap tobacco on the next. They climbed up, Longinus keeping his hands and arms against his chest, looking around him with obvious revulsion.

  They reached Dr Corian’s rooms, but the door was locked.

  “Either he left willingly, or someone took his keys,” whispered Rory, pulling out her picks. Longinus nodded.

  The lock yielded easily and they stepped inside.

  Dr Corian’s lab was depressing, a far cry from Longinus’ anally tidy alchemy bench. Remnants of food on plates, half covered with mould and mouse droppings, were strewn about the room, as were dirty clothes, books, and mounds of paper. Everything was sprinkled with ash, and Rory recognised the smell of the cheap tobacco leaves some Damsians bought on the docks, rolling them by hand.

  Items that Rory recognised from Longinus’ alchemy bench were scattered about the room, although it was clear that Dr Corian hadn’t worked here in a while. In one corner was a sagging bed, the sheets yellow and rumpled. Rory thought back to the night she met him, how dejected he had seemed.

  “Wasn’t he supposed to be a famous alchemist?” she asked.

  “He was, but he fell into debt.”

  “Gambling?” asked Rory, thinking of Jake.

  “Who cares? The point is, his mind wasn’t sharp enough to keep himself in good stead. And that is why, my dear girl, he will never be the alchemist that I am.”

  “Obviously, ’cause he’s dead.”

  Longinus put on his gloves and picked up a fork from one of the abandoned plates. He wiped it on a handkerchief and threw the handkerchief away.

  “Bit unnecessary, ain’t it? You’re wearing gloves.”

  “Yes, and I have no interest in soiling them if I can avoid it.”

  “How many of those handkerchiefs do you throw away?” asked Rory. That handkerchief would fetch a good few coppers at the second-hand market near the Great Bazaar. She would pick it up when Longinus wasn’t looking — no sense in passing up on good money, after all.

  “As many as needed to keep me from coming into contact with this kind of filth,” replied Longinus distractedly. He used the fork to lift papers and peer under mounds of clothing. He sniffed a couple of the glass beakers, peered into a prism that broke the light into a rainbow of colours, and even went as far as to run a finger along a tool with a long, beaklike appendage.

  Rory sniffed the air. There was an odd yet vaguely familiar smell — like sulphur but sweeter. She re
alised she had smelled it on Corian the night she had met him, but had been too distracted by what had happened with Jake to pay attention. There was something else about that smell too, something that niggled at her.

  “He didn’t replicate my poison here,” Longinus said at last.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. He must have been working elsewhere, probably wherever the man behind all of this is based. If he had —”

  Noise coming from below interrupted him. Heavy footsteps were treading up the steps and voices called to each other.

  “His rooms are at the top floor,” said a deep voice.

  “Sod it, that’ll be the guards,” said Rory. She marched over to the window, throwing it open.

  “No, no, no!” said Longinus. “I am not dressed for a window exit.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “One doesn’t scramble around when wearing a cloak,” he sniffed, gesturing at the cloak covering his right shoulder. “It is both impractical and unsightly. If I had known there would be a window exit, I’d have dressed completely differently.”

  “Well, too late for that,” replied Rory, uncoiling her grappling hook and silk line. “Some things are more important than fashion, such as not getting caught by the guards.”

  She swung it and it caught on the gutter, neat as you like. She slipped on the gloves that Longinus had bought her and climbed onto the window-frame edge.

  “You coming?”

  Longinus looked at her like a cat might, if he were contemplating whether to pounce on a mouse.

  “Longinus?”

  “I’ll see you back at my house,” he murmured.

  “What, I—”

  “Guards!” shouted Longinus, startling her.

  “Stone the gulls, are you crazy?” hissed Rory.

  “Guards!!” he shouted louder, making shooing gestures at her.

  The footsteps on the stairs accelerated. They were at the door by the time Rory galvanised herself into action. Cursing Longinus, she scrambled out, climbing up using the silk line. She heard the guards burst into Dr Corian’s lab.

  “What’s going on?” said someone.

  “I caught a girl breaking into Corian’s laboratory. A filthy urchin…”

  Rory pulled herself up on the roof. An exclamation below told her one of the guards had stuck his head out the window and spotted her.

  “I came here to demand Corian settle a debt he owes me,” continued Longinus’ disembodied voice, “and I found her rooting around in his things. Not that there appears to be anything of value here.”

  Rory muttered more curses under her breath as she coiled her silk line. Nothing against conning the guards, of course, but still. A little more warning would have been nice.

  There were more shouts as other guards poked their heads out of the window, trying to work out a way to get to the roof. The houses had flat roofs in this area, bordered with a low parapet. That meant she couldn’t get quite as much acceleration as when the roof was sloped, but she should still be fine to make the jump across the lane. She peered over the parapet edge. Of course, there were more guards down in the streets, and they were all now looking up following the commotion at the window.

  She could still hear Longinus’ voice wafting up to her as he hassled the guards for the fictitious money Corian owed him, now that they had informed him of the man’s death. Rory had to admire his nerve, if not his team spirit. She ran to the other end of the roof to look at the situation below, but no sooner had she stuck her head over the parapet than someone shouted and pointed at her.

  She ducked back, cursing. Well, no point dilly-dallying, she was going to be seen jumping no matter which way she went. Might as well get cracking.

  Rory leapt. Shouts below told her she had been spotted, as expected. She sprinted to the other side of the roof, and jumped again. On and on she jumped, not bothering to map out a route at first. When she saw red-tiled sloping roofs up ahead, she aimed for them. Without the parapets to get in the way, she’d be able to jump far easier.

  By the time she reached the red roofs, the guards were trailing behind her. She could still hear their voices, but only faintly. Rory crested the first roof. The houses were terraced here, following the long curve of a street, and with the sun gleaming off the red tiles, they looked a little like the vertebrae scales of a dragon. She sprinted along the top of the roofs, dodging around chimneys, laughing as she pretended to climb up an imaginary dragon’s back.

  Chapter 22

  Rory made it back to Longinus’ house, still annoyed despite the run on the roofs.

  “Next time, give me more warning,” she told him as she walked through the door.

  “Why? You did an excellent job, just as I knew you would. I stopped by Susie’s on the way home, by the way.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  Rory nodded. That wasn’t exactly surprising. Urchins were lightning quick as far as gossip went, but even they needed a bit of time to gather information. She was also disappointed that Dr Corian’s rooms hadn’t yielded anything of more use.

  “Did you notice the smell at Dr Corian’s?” she asked.

  “Be more specific, I noticed a great deal of smells. Rotten food, unwashed clothing, sweat, sea novelwort sublimate, mediocrity…”

  “I don’t know,” said Rory. “It was a bit like sulphur but kind of sweet, too.”

  “Hmm, yes, I see what you mean. I have to admit it’s not a smell I’m familiar with.”

  “Really? Because Dr Corian smelled of it when I met him that night. If he was going to the baths to wash it off, it might have something to do with where he’s based or what he’s been doing. Either way, I think it’s an important clue. Also, I think I’ve come across it before — it’s familiar but I can’t place it.”

  “Have you now? Well then, that’s something. Let me see if I can’t replicate it.”

  “Alright, but you’ve also got to train me. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the blackmail just because someone’s out to kill me and replace you.”

  Truth be told, Rory was feeling a lot more threatened by the tall man than she would have cared to admit. When he had attacked her outside the guard headquarters, it had been nothing like what Jake had suggested. No warning to get out of the way, no offer of a bribe or deal. It had been pure, cold, efficient killing — at least it would have been, if it hadn’t been for the guard.

  She still wanted to solve the mystery of what had happened to Dr Corian, but more than ever now she wanted to be able to face an adversary with a rapier. She was all too aware that at the moment she was horribly vulnerable to attack, her only paltry defence being to stab with her little dagger.

  Chapter 23

  It had been hours of trying to replicate the smell at Corian’s rooms, and they were no closer. Much as Longinus loved tinkering at his alchemy bench, even he was growing tired of the endless manipulations. He presented Rory with yet another beaker. She took a sniff, and shook her head.

  He nodded, and with a sigh turned back to the bench.

  “I think we need a break,” she said. “My nose ain’t barely working no more.”

  “Yes, you might be right.”

  “And look, what a coincidence! I have a sword arm here —“ she extended her arm — “and it needs training. Perfect way to rest up from all that smelling.”

  “Alright, but just for a bit, and then we go back to identifying that smell.”

  “Sure. But it’s got to be proper training. I ain’t standing like no lemon holding out a rapier.”

  “That was proper training.”

  Rory threw him a glance, and Longinus was astonished to realise it was one that he himself had disseminated on many an occasion. Oh, please, it said.

  “Fine,” he said instead, too taken aback to think of a better answer. Anyway, sometimes it was better to go around an obstacle than to tackle it head on.

  Longinus went to his cabinets and retrieved the blunt rapier.
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  “Put on the gloves that I bought you,” he ordered. “You should always wear gloves when handling blades,” he added. “You will notice that despite my profession my hands remain smooth, delicate, my fingers long and fine, and devoid of calluses. Of course, in your case your hands are already ruined.” He sighed. “We shall have to make do with what we have. An assassin’s hands are just as important as his clothing, you know. Both are the sign of a consummate professional. There is no greater insult than killing someone whilst inappropriately attired, and that extends to the state of one’s hands. You see, while these little people are beneath us, we can still grant them the small respect of being impeccably groomed as we witness their final moments.”

  Rory looked like she was about to say something, thankfully thought better of it, and slipped her gloves on in silence.

  “Now. First, footwork,” said Longinus.

  What followed was again so unlike Longinus’ daydream of the Viper as a noble teacher that he not only found himself profoundly disappointed, but he wondered why on earth anyone would want to become a sword preceptor. There was no awe, no wonder on her part, no graceful imparting of his knowledge during which he could display himself at his best advantage.

  Instead, for the next few hours, he watched Rory butcher the art of footwork, then hack through the air with her training rapier as though she was trying to clear a path through an invisible jungle, and generally show a complete lack of grace and elegance. All of it punctuated by grunts, intolerable amounts of sweating, and the ridiculous sticking out of her tongue as she concentrated.

  Longinus had never known or cared much about women, but he had always been under the impression there was some natural grace to them, some femininity or other that gave them their charm. Not that Rory had any charm, but he had still expected there to be something feminine about her, somewhere.

  Evidently not.

  Longinus was subjected to several more days of torment as he watched Rory scramble around with the rapier, followed by more endless manipulations to try and re-create the smell from Dr Corian’s lab. They had no luck with the smells, and while Rory began to master some fighting techniques, she failed to pick up any kind of grace, no matter how hard Longinus tried.