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

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The Viper and the Urchin: A Novel of Steampunk Adventure (Bloodless Assassin Mysteries Book 1) Page 16

by Celine Jeanjean


  He ran out of the room and Rory rubbed her forehead. What was she missing — why the ridiculous behaviour this morning?

  Longinus returned with a matching green hat adorned with a frothy white feather. It was set on his head at a rakish angle. He paused in the doorway, striking a pose. Rory sighed. Someone wanted them dead and he clearly meant business, and all she had to work with was this: a posing buffoon covered in silk and lace, who had quite possibly lost some of his sanity to the night.

  “Let’s go,” she said, heading for the door.

  Maybe food would help.

  “What a beautiful day!” Longinus cried as they stepped outside.

  Rory looked at him in confusion. Had he lost his sight as well as his mind overnight? Was this some elaborate prank? The sky was still full of roiling clouds, so thick and low they almost touched the taller rooftops.

  “It puts me in such a poetic mood,” continued Longinus. “The shining sun stirs my soul and sets my senses soaring, surpassing all summits to the skies above.” He smiled at her, then his face froze. “I don’t have my writing box. I cannot let that line go unwritten.” He ran back into the house.

  “What are you on about?” she called after him. “There ain’t no sodding sun today!”

  “Poetic license, Rory, poetic license.”

  Rory waited, tapping her foot.

  When Longinus finally came back out, she did her best to pretend the poetic outburst hadn’t happened and tried to engage him again.

  “Look, I get that you don’t want to talk about who’s after us, right, but can you at least tell me what he looks like? Then I can see if it matches the man I saw.”

  Then she could work out if it was just the tall man or if he had a partner.

  “I have a hankering for something a little rustic today,” replied Longinus, “so we’re going to the Great Bazaar. There’s a man there who sells the most divine little pastries made with plantain. Simple but oh so full of flavour. Oh, Rory, the culinary delights you still have to experience! Sometimes I think that being as ignorant and obtuse as you are is in fact a gift, for everything is new and wonderful to your stunted senses.”

  “Fine, ignore me all you want — I know you’re hearing what I’m saying. I’m gonna try again after we’ve had food.”

  Longinus didn’t reply.

  Chapter 29

  The Great Bazaar spilled beyond the confines of its circus, like a stain spreading out through the weave of the city. The meaner stalls had set up in the shade of the lanes, their owners selling second-hand toys and clothes, only slightly rusted cogs, cracked earthenware and pottery, small clockwork items in need of repair, tools with a few years left in them, and other similar items. Here and there puddles of rainwater reflected the grey clouds, looking from the distance like huge silver coins dropped from the sky.

  The markets were busier than normal, as always in the run up to the Revels. Visitors, merchants, and street performers converged on Damsport this time of year, so that the streets around the Great Bazaar were swollen with people, like so many rivers after a flood.

  Rory and Longinus walked past the stalls, the sellers calling to them, hawking their wares. Lengthy negotiations took place around them — the further you were from the Great Bazaar, the more ruthless the negotiating. Out here, the purchase of a piece of dirty yellow linen could take over half an hour as each party tried to squeeze the other for every last coin bit.

  Rory and Longinus followed the lanes as they wound towards the Great Bazaar, and the closer they got, the more the noise grew. When they stepped out of the lanes and into the Great Bazaar proper, the noise exploded into a cacophony of sound, no longer kept in check by the walls and houses of the lanes. It was as though they had pierced a membrane. Human and animal voices mingled into an unintelligible roar, interspersed with the sounds of metal being beaten, machines hissing steam, and instruments being played with varying degrees of skill by street performers.

  Rory and Longinus had arrived in the book section, where there were no stalls: books were simply piled up in tottering towers over thick rugs to protect them from the filth that flowed out of the Wet Market at the centre of the Bazaar. The towers created a maze through which customers strolled. Each section of the maze was guarded by a bookseller ready to leap out at anyone making more than the briefest of eye contact with his books.

  “I know a shortcut,” said Longinus.

  He navigated the maze briskly, waving away any booksellers that tried to approach him. Rory stuck close to his heels. Once out of the book maze, they passed the clockwork merchants, the cloth sellers, skirted around the spice and dried herb quarter with its pungent, brightly coloured mountains of spices, and reached the assault on the senses that was the Wet Market.

  The Wet Market was the centre of the Great Bazaar, and therefore the very heart of Damsport. But whereas most hearts pulsate, pumping out life’s blood, Damsport's heart dripped.

  Live fish and crustaceans dripped sea water onto the cobblestones, and dead fish dripped murky viscera. Blood dripped from meat cleavers, whey from cheesecloths, ale through the cracks of poorly constructed barrels, and piss from table legs, attesting to the passage of a stray dog. Milk dripped from jugs, from udders, from chins; berries dripped juice, makeshift awnings dripped leftover rainwater, and priests dripped holy water.

  Sweat dripped from the faces of porters, bent under heavy loads, wine dripped down the chins of those checking its quality, and snot dripped from children’s and old men’s noses.

  Fat dripped from sausages, dripping dripped from fried fish, vinegar dripped from prawn dumplings, eaten by hand straight from enormous bamboo steamers. Beer dripped from spilt tankards, mud-coloured tobacco water from water pipes, wine from broken bottles, brandy from over-hurried gulps, fire liquor from glasses dashed onto the cobbles, tea from teapot spouts, and more urine dripped from over-refreshed men.

  All of it drip-drip-dripped onto the Wet Market’s cobblestones, found its way to the gutters, and trickled off along each of the Twelve, gathering speed thanks to the gentle downward slopes, and carrying the lifeblood and stench of the Wet Market out to the rest of Damsport.

  Thirteen, however, always remained dry: the cemetery was uphill of the market and appropriately so, for the dead have no need of life, nor blood.

  Longinus made his way through the market, pushing through the crowd effortlessly. As Rory followed him, she marvelled at the difference clothes could make. Where once she was regarded with suspicion by all, shooed or even kicked away, now stall owners called out to her, trying to attract her attention.

  “Tongue, heart, liver, we got them all,” shouted a girl of no more than ten. She sat on the stall table itself, legs swinging from its edge. Around her, offal hung from hooks, already giving off the rich and sickly smell of meat left too long in the heat. An older woman, no doubt the mother and stall owner, had set up a hammock amongst the meat, hanging it from two larger hooks. She was fast asleep in it, her mouth open.

  “Eyes,” called another girl. “Every kind of eyes you could want. We got sheep, we got camel, we got fish, we got snail, we got — hello, miss, care for an eye or two?”

  Rory shook her head.

  “Maybe you want to buy some starmole eyes?” asked the girl with a grin.

  Starmoles were well known in Damsport for being eyeless. The little creatures had been discovered during the attempted dig of the new underground cistern, and had become something of a mascot for the city.

  “Aye, I’ll buy them on Never’s day,” Rory replied.

  “Shame for me you ain’t foreign,” replied the girl. “I could do with selling starmole eyes today.”

  “That so? You selling them for double price to foreigners, I bet.”

  “Triple price sometimes. Starmole eyes are as rare as they come.” The girl winked.

  “What kind of eyes do you pass off as starmole eyes?” asked Rory, curious.

  The girl turned to grab one of her jars.

&n
bsp; “Well, well, haven’t we gone up in the world,” said a sarcastic voice to Rory’s right.

  Rafe swaggered towards her.

  “Every time I see you,” he said, “you change. First a bath, now new clothes. Really, like I said before, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me. I’m touched, but not interested.”

  “Oh, go away,” replied Rory, annoyed that she couldn’t come up with a better response.

  “Why? Are you going to claim that the Great Bazaar’s yours, too? What a powerful property magnate you must be.”

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think, I know.” Rafe’s smile widened.

  “Ever heard of modesty?”

  “A waste of time.”

  Rory looked around for Longinus to tell him they were leaving, but there was no sight of green silk anywhere.

  “Dammit,” she muttered.

  Why couldn’t he have waited? She glanced around, craning her head, but she was too short to see very far across the crowd.

  “I have to go,” she said to Rafe, but he fell into step with her.

  “Why, are you on an errand? A quest? An adventurer searching for an adventure? I could be your sidekick, you know. Or your love interest. There’s always a sidekick and a love interest in stories.”

  “Thought you said you weren’t interested.”

  “Well, obviously. But I’d allow you to be.”

  “Ain’t you generous.”

  When she still hadn’t caught sight of Longinus, Rory began to worry. Rafe said something but she paid no attention, her eyes still scanning the crowd for green silk. He stood in front of her and she tried to walk past him, but he blocked her.

  “Not very polite to ignore me like that.”

  “I have to go, I’m looking for someone. It’s serious, alright? I don’t have time for you.”

  “No time for your love interest? You’ve got your priorities all wrong.”

  “Dammit, let me go!”

  “Fine. Tell me your name first.”

  “Rory. Happy?”

  “Never. What about the name of the person who did that to your face? Was it the man with you at the baths?”

  Rory stopped scanning the crowd and gave him a cool look. “That ain’t none of your business.”

  He hesitated over his answer, his face serious for the first time. Then he sketched a mocking bow. “As the lady wishes. You seem to have it all under control, anyhow.”

  Rory pushed past him and into the crowd, her worry for Longinus quickly turning into panic. She reached the cooked-food section of the Wet Market, and still there was no sign of him. She spotted a half-empty cart that had been left unattended, and she clambered onto it to get a better vantage point. The crowd moved around her, shifting in a myriad of colours, but nowhere could she see Longinus’ distinctive green waistcoat.

  When she looked to her right, her eyes alighted on a man who stuck head and shoulders above the crowd. His nose was hooked and his features dark. He was staring at her. Rory froze. The man’s eyes flicked to a point slightly to her left, and he began to push through the crowd. Rory looked at the direction he was headed, and at last saw a flash of emerald green.

  Longinus.

  She leapt off the cart and dove into the mass of people, scurrying as quickly as she could. When she spotted an upturned crate, she jumped on top of it to reorient herself. Longinus wasn’t far, but she could make out the man moving swiftly through the masses towards him, like the shadow of a shark underwater.

  She ran hell for leather, not caring who she knocked into.

  “Longinus!” she called. “Longinus!”

  She could just see him ahead, and she did her best to go faster, shoving and pulling people out of her way. She felt, too late, a hard wooden edge against her thighs, and she flew headfirst into a stall selling curried fish balls. Two very large, very hot, and very full copper pots crashed to the ground, while the stall top fell off its trestles.

  People cried and shouted as Rory picked herself up, wincing at the burn on her arm from one of the copper pots.

  “You crazy girl,” shouted the stall owner. “You pay me for this, you hear?” He made to grab her but Rory ducked, speeding off towards Longinus.

  “Come back here!” shouted the stall owner, giving chase.

  Rory ducked and weaved through the crowd, narrowly avoiding the stall owner’s grasp.

  When she finally reached Longinus, the stall owner got a hold of her collar and yanked her back.

  “You pay me what you owe me right now!” he roared.

  At the same time, Rory saw the tall man break through the crowd. He hesitated as he saw the scene, then turned and melted back into the crowd.

  “What have you done now?” asked Longinus.

  “She your daughter?” asked the stall owner. “She knocked my stall over, cost me a day’s trading.”

  “Not a problem,” replied Longinus smoothly. “How much do you normally make in a day?”

  The stall owner paused, gauging Longinus’ clothes.

  “Ten jinn in silver,” he said.

  Rory knew full well that he was lying, but she was more concerned about getting out of the Bazaar. They were far too vulnerable here. In this kind of crowd, a knife between the ribs was an easy thing for a professional.

  Longinus paid up, the stall owner pulling out his portable scales to weigh the coins. Satisfied, he left with a final warning look for Rory. She grabbed Longinus’ arms.

  “Come on, we gotta go,” she said, still scanning the crowd nervously. “I just saw the man who’s after us. He was going for you, and I think he only stopped because of all the fuss.”

  Longinus jerked his arm away. “Unhand me. I will not be manhandled by the likes of you.”

  “Fine, but we got to go, come on.”

  “You can go, I’m staying right here.”

  “Longinus,” cried Rory in exasperation, “will you stop with whatever this is? I know you know —”

  “I told you not to talk about it anymore,” he snapped, walking away.

  Rory hurried after him. “Oh, so now you’re listening to me. Took you long enough. So, who is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Seriously, stop playing dumb with me. The man just now, the man in the crowd.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Oh, pull the other one. You know who he is. Why won’t you tell me? You want to get us both killed or something? What’s going —”

  Longinus spun around and bore down on her with such intensity that she shrank back.

  “Shut up!” he yelled. People around them jumped, looking to see what the fuss was about.

  He grabbed Rory by the arm and dragged her through the market.

  “Hey! What — Longinus, what are you doing? Let me go!”

  When they reached a deserted lane, he shoved her forward and released her.

  “I told you to stop talking about it. I said you weren’t to speak or do anything about any of this business anymore. How else can I make myself clear to you?” His voice shook. “Stop it, stop everything. Leave it alone. And leave me alone while you’re at it. Go away and crawl back to whatever hole it is you came from. And do not, and I mean it, do not speak of any of this again. You hear me?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Longinus marched away.

  Chapter 30

  Rory followed Longinus through the streets, calling after him, but he paid her no attention. Her attempts to apologise fell on deaf ears, as did her reminders of the danger they were both in. She kept an eye out for the man from the Bazaar, but she didn’t see anyone following them or paying them any particular interest.

  When they reached the house, Longinus let himself in and closed the door behind him, leaving her outside. She heard the sound of a lock turning.

  “Longinus,” she tried again, banging on the door.

  “Leave me be.”

  “I can break in, you know.”

  “Ha
rpie, shrew, harridan! Termagant!”

  Rory smiled. At least he sounded a little more like himself. Although she had no idea what that last word meant. Nor the second to last, for that matter. Probably not complimentary, though.

  “Longinus, come on. I said I’m sorry.”

  Silence.

  “Longinus?”

  She hovered by the door, unsure what to do next. Much as Longinus wanted her to leave it alone, she had no interest in waiting for the tall man to attack again. That was a good way to wind up dead in a gutter somewhere. More worryingly, she had recognised him. It had been a fleeting impression and she hadn’t had time to think on it at the Bazaar, but she had definitely seen his face before, and that unsettled her. Try as she might now, she couldn’t get any kind of handle on where or when that might have been.

  Not knowing what else to do, she eventually walked away and headed to the cemetery. The tall man had to have been there to leave the note for Longinus, and maybe she could find a sign of his passing, a clue to jog her memory. She climbed up to the roofs the first chance she got, moving carefully and glancing frequently around for any sign of someone following her, skin prickling with awareness.

  The roofs were as empty as always, and she made it to the cemetery without any trouble.

  * * *

  The cemetery had a very different feel in daylight. The voiceless cats were gone and, although the tombstones still protruded from the ground like badly aligned teeth, the crypts and the statues now just looked old and worn, rather than like ghoulish lepers. Two grave tenders, bent old men, moved methodically about the tombs. She stayed clear of them, ready with some story about visiting her uncle’s grave, but they paid her no attention.

  She climbed the hill and disappeared down the back where the slope was steep and the tombstones were sagging towards the sea. She found Longinus’ tombstone quickly enough. First, she examined the hole at the top in which Longinus had found the paper with his name. It was smooth and even, obviously carved by human hands. She could see nothing of interest, and a quick feel with her fingers revealed nothing more. She began to examine the surroundings. She was just about to give up the exercise as futile when she caught a whiff of something. A faint smell, like sulphur but sweeter. She sniffed the air, moving this way and that, trying to find the source of the smell.

 

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