The Fifth Ward--First Watch

by Dale Lucas

  Creeper lifted his own glass of brandy. “To Freygaf,” he said, poured out a measure right on the fine carpet, then drank himself. Torval followed suit with his ale.

  Once more, Rem was embarrassed. They’d been pouring out libations for Freygaf for at least three or four days. Why did he keep drinking before the offering? Though the pouring of libations for the recently deceased was not common custom in the courts of Hasturland, it was certainly not unheard-of—especially among the common classes. He should have known that. He resolved never to put a cup to lips again in Torval’s presence unless Torval had already done the same.

  Torval swallowed his first mouthful of ale, stared into his cup. “Was it you?” he asked.

  “No,” Creeper said flatly.

  Torval seemed to study the bony little apparition for a moment, before finally nodding and exhaling through his nose. “He’d owed you money in the past. I thought perhaps—”

  “Freygaf hasn’t been in hock to me for a year,” Creeper said. “Not since you stepped in and settled his last debt. He’s been in here a few times—the cards and the dice still called to him—but he hasn’t gotten himself in trouble again with my sharks the way he did before. For all that time, he’d been smart and sensible. With me, at least.”

  Torval frowned. “What does that mean?”

  The Creeper swirled his brandy. Rem took a sip of his own. Gods, it was good stuff! He hadn’t had a taste of apple brandy this good in years!

  “I’m loath to speak ill of the dead,” Creeper said, “but you shouldn’t be so surprised that Freygaf ended up a corpse, Torval. His best quality was his friendship with you and his insistence that he was a man of the law. Other than that alignment, he wasn’t a nice man, and he wasn’t into the most savory of midnight activities.”

  Torval was clearly controlling the urge to throttle the Creeper where he stood. He swirled his ale but wouldn’t take another sip. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”

  “I have no intention of saying any more,” Creeper answered, “not because I’m trying to make it hard on you, but because you’ll be incredulous and you won’t believe me. Suffice it to say, Freygaf kept odd company and was guilty of some dirty deeds. Dig deep enough and you’ll find evidence of it. Then, you can come back and tell me that I told you so, and I was right.”

  “You don’t think I’d know my partner better than you, you scheming little spider?”

  “No, I don’t,” Creeper countered, a tad bitterly. “You only knew one side of Freygaf, Torval. The best side. All the naughty bits were exposed when he ran in my circles. Those are the bits you never knew of … or at least, never cared to see.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Torval demanded.

  “Aren’t you a wardwatchman? Go root it all out for yourself.” Creeper answered. “You’ll believe evidence and your own eyes more than you would my words. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to introduce me to your new partner.”

  The Creeper turned his dark gaze on Rem. Suddenly, Rem felt violated. There was something in the robber baron’s eyes that made him profoundly uncomfortable. Rem felt naked … leered at. Desperate to avert his gaze, Rem looked to Torval, silently asking if an introduction was in order.

  “His name’s Rem,” Torval said, before Rem could introduce himself, “and if you make any move to get your hooks in him, I’ll burn this place to the ground. With him inside.”

  Those words struck Rem like a sucker punch to the gut. The meaning was clear: Torval wouldn’t brook Rem spending any of his off-hours in the Creeper’s gambling and pleasure den. Clearly, this fellow and his particular brand of vice were above and beyond—or rather, below and beyond—the everyday vice that Torval could countenance in a partner or a friend.

  “Do you like the brandy, Rem?” the Creeper asked.

  Rem stared into the glass and nodded. He did his best to sound flippant and casual. “I do. It’s good.”

  “Well,” Creeper offered, “it’s my pleasure to both entertain and accommodate the brave men of the city watch when they’re not busy watching. Despite your partner’s harsh words, you’re welcome here for a game or a tumble any time you like. First round’s always on the house.”

  “No, he’s not,” Torval said. “Welcome, that is. Come on, lad. Time to go.”

  Torval set aside his ale cup and Rem did the same. The dwarf had him by the arm and was leading him toward the door like a callow youth when Creeper spoke behind them.

  “Seek, and ye shall find, Torval,” Creeper cooed. “Just as the sages say. Just don’t be surprised if you don’t like what you uncover.”

  “Thanks for the ale,” Torval growled, and shoved Rem out through the loft door. Rem half expected to see everyone in the common room waiting for them, bravos and sellswords with their blades at the ready, whores sporting sharp dirks and garrotes, patrons eager for the show of two watchwardens being rushed and trounced by the criminal colluders in Creeper’s court.

  But in fact everyone in the common room seemed to have forgotten about them. At some tables, the games of chance went on apace, while others went about the work of putting their tables and chairs and contests back together again. Songs were sung along with the minstrel band, and the whores and their jacks made googly eyes and cooed like doves and bartered for their preferred currencies. Rem led the way down the stairs from Creeper’s loft and Torval followed. His silent fuming was like a bed of banked coals at Rem’s back, pulsing, waiting to be stirred and taste the air before once more becoming a raging fire.

  They left Creeper’s Court with little more than they started with. When they were about a block away from the place, Rem turned to Torval. The dwarf was lost in thought, eyes downcast, mouth set in a thoughtful frown. Rem reminded himself to hold his tongue—he was the junior half of this partnership, after all—but his anger got the better of him.

  “What was all that about?” Rem demanded.

  Torval’s trance was broken. He looked at Rem like he’d just spoken Quaimish. “What?”

  “I asked you a question,” Rem snapped. “Just what was all that about? You walked me into that place completely unprepared, you almost got us killed, and on top of that, I didn’t even get to finish my drink!”

  Torval’s face screwed up, his own anger rising. “Now see here, Ginger—”

  “Don’t call me that!” Rem said. “Not Gingersnap, not Freckles, not Bonny Prince. The name’s Rem—or have all those head butts you doled out rattled your memory?”

  “Our only chance to get straight answers from the Creeper was to force him to treat with us and unbalance him. Pure shock and awe. It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Did it?” Rem asked. “We have nothing more now than when we started.”

  Torval hove up into Rem’s face and snarled his reply. “That’s one name off the list,” Torval growled. “You don’t like the way I work, slither back to Ondego and beg for another partner. Otherwise, shut your gob and follow my lead.”

  Rem almost responded, then realized he had nothing to say. The dwarf was right. Unorthodox his methods might be, but they did get results. Rem took a deep breath, calming himself. He waited, expecting directions from Torval. None came.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Well what?” Torval retorted tartly.

  Rem threw up his hands in surrender. “Where to next? I’m guessing that the Creeper didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know?”

  “No,” Torval said shortly. “No, of course he didn’t. Surely …”

  Rem knew that Torval was lying. Creeper’s insinuation—that Freygaf was not the man Torval thought him to be, and that if Torval dug deeper, he would find irrefutable proof—was still working on the dwarf. Clearly, Torval really had thought Freygaf’s worst secret was his gambling problem. The idea that there might be more to learn—more hiding beneath the surface, to be learned only now, when Freygaf was dead—clearly didn’t make Torval happy.

  Rem would say nothing of it. First and foremost,
he didn’t know Freygaf, and therefore, wouldn’t assume that whatever terrible things the Creeper said of him were true. Beyond that, though, there was just the issue of being right and honorable: you didn’t defame the dead when you hadn’t known them in life, no matter what they were guilty of. Thus, Rem could only make suggestions about their investigation, or posit lines of inquiry. He didn’t want to blight Freygaf’s memory, nor did he want to try to replace him.

  Thus, Torval had to lead the way.

  “Partner,” Rem said gently. “Where to now? I’ll follow wherever you take me.”

  Torval seemed to awaken from a daydream. He eyed Rem suspiciously for a moment, then seemed to look sad. Finally he shrugged and cocked his head northward.

  “Come on,” he said, and set off. “Let’s search Freygaf’s chambers.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Freygaf had kept quarters in a rather gloomy courtyard tenement on the north side of the Fifth Ward, near the city walls. His neighborhood was quite lively, even now, after dark, with market stalls, sidewalk winesinks, curbside dice games, and all sorts of after-dark revelries keeping the streets full and the air thick. Pine torches crackled and bled inky smoke. Post lamps were lit. Residents in upper windows and apartments called down to those in the street and vice-versa, some to complain, some to greet, others to issue challenges or invitations.

  “Charming neighborhood,” Rem said to Torval as they marched through.

  More than once, locals recognized Torval, stopped him, and offered their condolences. Clearly both the dwarf and his partner were well-known here, and given at least some measure of face-to-face respect. Torval took all offered condolences with few words and little apparent interest. He was on a mission now, and he couldn’t afford to be slowed or distracted.

  “This is the Knot,” he explained to Rem. “One of the roughest neighborhoods in Yenara, but also one of the liveliest.”

  “Seems to be a spirited locale,” Rem offered, scanning the boisterous street before him.

  “You have no idea,” Torval snorted. “They’re all hustlers—every mum, every da, every grandmother and babe on feet. They see to their everyday tasks, then spend their off-hours reveling and working odd angles in pursuit of a little extra coin or fair trade. They’re good people, all in all—just don’t trust them farther than you can throw them.”

  Rem nodded. Duly noted. Still, he could see how this neighborhood could seem attractive to someone after a while. There were friendly shadows and a welcoming closeness amid all the buzzing and bustling—it was the sort of place that only city locals might know of or appreciate, and that could leave a mark on anyone who stayed there long enough, engendering their affection even as their pockets were picked.

  Torval led them off the main avenue and through a series of winding alleys. Even here, in the narrower quarters of the Knot, there were street hustlers and gamblers and open doors leading into cellar taprooms. Finally, they came to Freygaf’s shabby, crowded tenement, with its long, narrow courtyard and rising tiers of rooms and colonnades.

  “I would assume the wardwatch has already searched Freygaf’s rooms?” Rem asked as they mounted the stairs.

  “Aye,” Torval answered. “But I’d like to poke about a bit on my own, if you catch my drift.”

  Of course, Rem understood. Torval was Freygaf’s longtime friend and partner, after all. Rem wagered Torval would note any number of clues or strange indicators of interference that an indifferent watchwarden might not have caught upon their own inspection of Freygaf’s quarters.

  They climbed three flights of stairs, strolled down a lengthy, narrow hallway open to the air, and finally, Torval stopped before a certain door. He waited for a long time, staring, as if unsure whether he should enter or not. Rem hated to see the blustery little fellow waver so, and tried to offer him a way out.

  “Torval … are you sure you want to do this?”

  Torval looked to him, as if startled that anyone stood beside him. “What do you mean?”

  Rem shrugged. “If Freygaf was your friend, what does it matter what he may or may not have been involved in? Does that really affect your friendship, such as it was?”

  “Don’t be daft, boy,” Torval spat back. “If my so-called best friend has been lying to me for years about whatever rotten pies he’s had his dirty fingers in, I need to know, because everything he did reflects on me.”

  “How—”

  Torval raised a finger. “Shut up and listen,” he hissed. “We’re watchwardens, boy. It might not mean much to many, but that means something to me. I only keep my share, I always watch my partner’s back, and I never break my word. That’s the source of all my honor, such as it is. That’s my code. Without it, I’m nothing. And if anything Freygaf did in life sullied that, or made it seem as if I was compromised, well … I can’t let that stand. I can renounce a dead friend as quick as I can a live one—but first I’ve got to know the truth.”

  Rem nodded. “All right, then. But what about revenge?”

  Torval seemed to smile a little—a grim and deathly smile that only warriors and killers were capable of. “Revenge comes either way. Even if Freygaf was dirty, he didn’t deserve to be beaten and broken and left by the bloody canal.”

  He turned toward the door, then offered as an afterthought, “At the very least, I should’ve had the chance to beat and break him myself, if he was lying to me.”

  With that, he raised his stout little leg and kicked in Freygaf’s door.

  The first thing Rem noticed was how dark and cramped Freygaf’s chamber seemed—a narrow room with only a bed, a chair, a small corner brazier, and a slop jar. Then Rem saw something else: a fleet black form, stark against the slate-gray darkness of the little room and its dearth of light. The form was bent over a banded chest on the floor near the foot of the bed, rifling through the contents and holding something that flashed in its hands.

  Torval saw the form, too. Likewise, the form saw them. Rem heard it draw a shocked breath and mutter a curse.

  Then it ran for the window.

  “Oi! Stop right there!” Torval shouted, and barreled into the room after the absconding thief.

  Rem followed for three steps, then skidded to a halt. He saw the thief go leaping right through the narrow window at the far end of the room. Rem was about to clap Torval on the back, to assure him that they could catch the thief if they turned and hurried back down the outer steps now and wasted no time, but Torval had another idea.

  Torval leapt through the window after the thief. He sounded a throaty battle cry (or was that a surprised curse?) all the way down. Rem hurried to the window to see what had become of his partner.

  He saw two forms moving in dark blurs in the shadowy, benighted alley below. The first was the thief, tearing out of the alley and onto the main street they’d come from. The second was Torval, rolling off a large refuse pile (which had broken his fall), getting his feet under him, then sprinting off on his stumpy legs after the fleeing burglar.

  Rem cursed, turned, and hurried out of the room. He ran into a laundress hauling an enormous basket of linens in the narrow hallway, knocking her sideward. Her laundry basket spilled over the railing of the walkway and went raining down into the courtyard of the tenement, three stories below. The woman laid into Rem with a stream of invectives, but he didn’t wait to hear just what she had to offer.

  He pounded down all three flights of stairs, skipping several at a time when he could and sometimes even leaping the rail. When he hit the ground floor and thudded out into the street, he searched. He saw nothing but a pair of boys tying a pair of cats together by their tails.

  “A dwarf? Running?” he asked.

  The boys pointed up the street, the way Rem and Torval had come from. Rem nodded and took off at a brazen pace.

  When he reached the main thoroughfare—which was crowded with stalls and barkers and gamers and children starting their own nightly games—he saw his quarry far off to the right: the thief, wending this
way and that through the crowd, knocking over tables, chairs, and anything else he could to make his path more laden and harder to follow, and stocky little Torval, thumping along behind at a speed that Rem would never have attributed to his short legs.

  “Stop that son of a whore!” Torval cried as he went. “Watchwarden coming through! Someone bring that bastard down!”

  No one listened. Rem debated which way he should go—follow directly or try to head them off—and finally decided on the latter. He ran forward to the first side street, took a right, and plunged headlong up another narrow lane between tenements, all the while scanning the alleys off to his left for signs of the fleeing thief.

  There! He saw him! The thief had turned right as well and was flying up a street that ran parallel to Rem’s own. Already feeling the strain of his speed, Rem willed his body to give him a little more strength, a little more stamina, and tried to pull ahead of the thief. When he felt he’d gained some advantage, he cut left down another alleyway.

  He watched, knowing with certainty that he’d see the thief barrel by at any moment, missing him by just a few seconds. Closer and closer to the mouth of the alley onto the thief’s street he ran—harder, faster, panting, a stitch in his side.

  Then someone bounced off the corner of the building to Rem’s right and came barreling into the alleyway.

  Right at him.

  There was no time to stop. Barely time enough to utter a startled scream. Then Rem and the newcomer in the alley ran right into each other, head-on. Rem saw stars, reeled backward, bounced off a brick wall, and collapsed hard onto the filthy alley floor. Vaguely, he heard the person he’d run into do the same. He blinked and blinked, trying to clear his vision. It was all constellations and fireflies.

  “Well, now!” he heard, and knew that Torval had found them. “What have we here?”

  Finally, Rem’s vision was clear. He managed to sit up, his head aching. Torval was snatching Rem’s collision partner to his feet and slamming him hard against the nearest brick wall. It was the thief, after all.