Blood Under Water

by Toby Frost

  Elayne had thought that the tile on Father Coraldo’s body had come from the New World. Perhaps the priest had been there too. She wondered what he had done: discovered a criminal conspiracy, or decided to do a little illegal business of his own, and been crossed in the attempt? She thought about Arashina, and her talk about the Inquisitors twenty years ago. Churchmen of a sort, all of them.

  The New World Order.

  She returned to the entries about the two hulls. There was a delivery address. Varro had sent the parts – or whatever he had made with them – to a warehouse near his boatyard. That was sloppy, but then nobody had been expected to check.

  Not until now. It was time to talk to Hugh.

  ***

  “So what’s the job?” Falsi called to Orvo over the thwack of oars against the lagoon. Behind him, he could see the two galleons that marked the edge of the city proper. They were ancient things, decommissioned from naval service and permanently moored in place. Huge waterwheels jutted from their sides instead of cannon, turning in the tide to wind up the clockwork that powered the rotating gun-turrets and watchtowers of the city armoury.

  There was a choppy wind out in the bay, and the two paid rowers had to work hard. One of them locked his oar, and the boat lurched. Swearing, the man freed his blade and they started up again. It wasn’t dangerous weather, not yet.

  “Morts,” Orvo said. “The gravediggers brought up some stiffs a couple of days ago. They say they were putting them in the hole when they started thrashing about.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s true, but you’ve got to check, you know…”

  “It’s not those three Anglians and that woman, is it? The ones who tried to escape? You said they’d been buried out there.”

  “No, it’s not them.” Orvo looked uncomfortable, Falsi thought. Perhaps it was just the rocking of the boat. “They’re good and buried. Why d’you ask?”

  “Just wondered. Aren’t we going to need masks, in case it’s the Grey Ague bringing them back?”

  “There’ll be masks when we get there,” Orvo said.

  The Isle of Graves lay low and dark before them like a giant crown sitting on the water. Its perimeter wall backed directly onto the lagoon. Behind the wall, trees stood on small hills. Falsi thought that the trees seemed trapped by the brick wall, like animals in a pen.

  The main dock reminded him of the facade of a grand house. Nobody came down the steps to greet them. Orvo took the looped rope and tossed it over the mooring-post. He was strong as well as fat and, sweating, he drew the boat in close.

  As he stepped onto the land, Falsi wished that he had brought a friend. He looked up at the stern white gatehouse, at the neat peak of its roof and the squat buttresses, and thought that it would not have surprised him to see a rotting face pressed against the round, porthole-like windows, the mouth gaping with the endless hunger of the undead. He wished his mastiff was here, or a priest. They buried that priest out here as well – or at least that’s what Orvo said.

  The rowers handed up boat-hooks. They had wide heads to shove the revenants back, ending in narrow spikes to drive home a finishing blow. You had to puncture their skulls, or else smash them apart. That would turn them back into corpses.

  Orvo nodded to the boatmen. “Stay here.” He walked up the steps, to the great gates.

  “We need more gear,” Falsi said as Orvo pushed his key into the padlock. Orvo opened the gate and beckoned him through. He’s going to lock me in there, Falsi thought. He’s going to shut me in and row away. Oh God, he thought, and he stepped through.

  Orvo followed him and pulled the gate closed behind them. He slid the bolts. “Morts can’t work bolts,” he said. “They’re too stupid.”

  They looked across the gardens. The lawns were pleasant in the morning sun. The walls blocked the wind, and only the tops of the trees swayed. The tombstones looked as if they’d grown here. Dotted among them, the robed figures of angels seemed genuinely at peace.

  “It’s not bad here,” Falsi said. “All things considered.”

  Orvo pointed. “We need to go over there.”

  They started up the path, carrying their boat-hooks over their shoulders like labourers. Their boots crunched on the stones.

  “Been a hell of a week,” Orvo said. Falsi thought, Yes, so hellish you couldn’t even show up for the last few days.

  “How so?” he replied, looking between the trees. He’d never seen a mort before. There were special squads for this sort of thing, elite units of the Customs and the army that dealt with natural disaster and the Grey Ague. After fire, the Council of a Hundred feared nothing as much as plague.

  Killing morts isn’t proper Watch business, Falsi thought. Assuming we actually manage to find them. And then, with a creeping unease, Assuming there are any to find.

  “Oh, just things,” Orvo said. “These Anglians, for one thing.”

  Falsi nodded, feeling his heart start to accelerate. “But that’s finished now, isn’t it? I mean, they’re all dead, so who cares, right?”

  A little chapel stood on the hill about forty yards away. It was a pretty little place, shining in the sun. The front door opened, and two men walked out.

  “Look over there,” Falsi said. The men wore long coats and masks, like plague doctors. The masks covered their heads, ending in cones over their faces, packed with enchanted herbs.

  “They’re helping us,” Orvo said.

  The masks made them look like crows. Each beaked man held a staff. Falsi knew at once that they were not his friends.

  “They’re still alive, you know,” Orvo said. “Those Anglians and the woman with the scars. They got away.”

  “I thought so,” Falsi said.

  “You didn’t think anything,” Orvo replied, not raising his voice. “You knew.”

  “What is this?” Falsi demanded. His heart had risen in his chest, pressed against his ribs like a bird trying to break out of its cage.

  The plague doctors were still coming, unhurried.

  “We need to talk, you and me,” Orvo said. He looked nervous too.

  Falsi stopped walking. “Talk? You can talk to this,” he said. His hand was smooth and swift, and suddenly there was a gun in it. He glanced at the two doctors. “Stop there!”

  “That thing’s not loaded,” Orvo said. “And if it is, the powder can’t still be dry.”

  “We can find out easily enough,” Falsi said. “That’s enough!” he shouted up the path. “Stop there!”

  “You heard him,” Orvo cried. “Wait!”

  The men stopped, and their beaked heads exchanged a glance. They stood in the path, waiting.

  Falsi didn’t feel scared any more. Wild strength ran through him, and suddenly he felt sharp, keen, as if he might go berserk at any moment. He wanted to vent this craziness, to whoop or laugh. He thought, If I start laughing now, I’ll never stop. Fighting his voice down, he said: “Who put you up to this?”

  “Nobody ‘put me up’.”

  “Was it Azul?”

  “I don’t know who that is.” Orvo’s voice shook as if it was about to break. The wind picked up, making the treetops hiss.

  “Yes you do. Did he kill the priest? Did he get you to do that?”

  One of the doctors leaned in towards the other. They were making a plan.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Orvo said.

  “Who did?”

  Orvo said nothing.

  “Come on, man, it’s a fucking priest! They killed a priest and tried to have us hang four people who’d done nothing wrong. It’s one thing to take a bit of money on the side, but God almighty, you can’t go along with that. Right?”

  “It was Azul,” Orvo said. “One of his men did it. I thought—”

  He lunged. Orvo’s hand grabbed the barrel, tugged, and the gun banged and kicked in Falsi’s hand. Orvo took a step
back, half-bent at the waist, his face screwed up like a baby about to howl. He sat down with a soft thump. Falsi smelled cordite.

  Blood ran from Orvo’s hand. It was pressed against his chest. The tip of his middle finger was missing, but most of the blood leaked through from the hole in his chest. Slowly, he pitched onto his side.

  Something touched Falsi’s hand. He glanced down and saw a droplet of rain on his wrist.

  Falsi looked back up the path, as though he had been caught stealing. The masked men paused for a moment and began to move towards him. They broke into a slow, lumbering jog. Falsi glanced at the boat-hooks, then over his shoulder towards the gates. He looked between the men and the gates, trying to make a decision. Then he ran.

  ***

  Two dogs were gearing up to fight in the road. Giulia watched them as she walked, a memory teasing the back of her mind. Varro’s records had proved more interesting than she had expected, and a full perusal had taken up most of the afternoon. It was almost four, almost starting to get dark.

  Azul, she thought. So that’s what you’re called. She would need more information, but it felt good to have a name to hang on him, a target for her fury.

  One of the dogs had lowered its shoulders as if trying to bow, dipping low before the other. Giulia remembered Giordano, her lover years ago, joking about the Kingdom of the Dogs. He’d been an expert talker of nonsense, which had made him seem both funny and rebellious. He could take an idea and follow it to absurdity, and she’d join in, inspired, each adding to the other’s silliness until they were both laughing drunk.

  When Giulia had fled from Pagalia, her scars still raw and new, she’d lost touch with him. A year later Gio had been kind enough to write to her to say that he had found someone else, and the Kingdom of the Dogs was no more.

  Giulia kept on walking, tired and wistful. Water slopped softly on stone. The road was wide, for Averrio. On the far side, a lamplighter prodded a taper into a brazier. The Scola was only a street away.

  As she reached the Scola she realised something she had always known, but never quite put into words: that Giordano had been one of the greatest opportunities of her life, and that that opportunity would never be coming back.

  She turned the corner, into San Cornelio Square. There were men outside the Scola. She glimpsed blue surcoats and something dropped inside her like a rock. Giulia pushed her back against the wall, breathed in. She thought of Sethis, Hugh, Iacono the mapmaker, the trees at the bottom of the garden and the creatures who had sat in there with her.

  Not good.

  Five men loitered around the closed doors. Four wore dark clothes, but the light still caught on sword-belts and knives. The fifth was something else: taller and thinner than the others, dressed in a blue tunic; he swung a stick almost cheerfully as he watched the road, tapping it against his boot.

  Giulia shielded her eyes and peered at him from thirty yards away. It was Cafaro, Falsi’s rival from the Watch-house.

  Shit.

  She’d have to get in via the rear. She remembered the little dock at the back, facing onto the Great Canal. The gate there would lead into the garden, with its walls and thick foliage. Lots of cover. Yes, that would do.

  She walked back up the road and crossed to the shadows on the other side. The guards were clustered in front of the door, talking. Giulia slipped into the passageway between the Scola and the smart tenements that neighboured it.

  The wall was ten feet tall and too smooth to climb. No doubt the scholars wanted to keep their work quiet, and thieves away from their art. She kept close to the wall, in its shadow, following it down to the corner at the rear of the garden. The air was cold on her face and hands.

  Hugh, Sethis, Arashina – where were they? Inside the Scola, in prison, something worse? She smelled smoke from behind the wall, but she couldn’t hear the crackle of flames. She kept going to the corner.

  Giulia stopped, crouched down, and put one eye around the edge. She flinched back – a man stood on the jetty. A rowing boat lay low in the water behind him. Water slopped gently against the pier.

  The setting sun turned the man into a silhouette. The canal stretched away from his boots, full of the colours of sunset. It looked like oil. The man had a beard, long hair and a military crossbow. He wore a dented cuirass but no helmet.

  Mercenary.

  Giulia reached to her belt and drew her long knife. It felt reassuringly solid, as if its weight anchored her to her task. She flexed her fingers. If you’ve hurt Hugh, she thought, if you’ve so much as touched him—

  Giulia stepped out behind him, onto the jetty. She lifted her hand level with the side of her head. A good blow would put him out cold.

  No boats were coming on the canal.

  His thumbs were hitched into his belt, crossbow wedged under his arm, and he sighed contentedly as he stared out across the water.

  Giulia covered the distance in long, bent-legged steps, her boots quick on the slimy wood of the pier. His back rose in her vision like a cliff as she approached, and she raised the knife higher, tensed the muscles in her arm and willed him: Don’t look round. Don’t look round, you can’t see me—

  She swung the knife down. He started to turn and the pommel smashed into the side of his skull, sending a judder of force up Giulia’s arm. The mercenary stumbled, his knees buckled, and he went down with a puzzled little groan, a tiny sound for a man of his bulk.

  Yes! Giulia hooked her arm around his chest and tried to lower him gradually, to minimise the noise. Her foot slid on the slick timber and she dropped painfully onto one knee, the man flopping across her lap. She lowered his head onto the jetty. When she was satisfied that he was out cold, she stood up.

  The mercenary lay sprawled at her feet. Why not cut his throat, or put a stiletto into his spine? No. It wasn’t needed. She drew his sword and tossed it and his crossbow into the canal. Now to get this bastard out of sight.

  He was almost impossible to drag. She managed to roll him to the bottom of the wall, where perhaps he would be mistaken for rubbish, or a sleeping drunk. It would be wrong to push him into the water. Years ago, Publius Severra’s men had tried to drown her, and the thought of the cold water enveloping her made Giulia shudder. She would not have wished that on anyone.

  Well, almost anyone.

  The gates were closed. Giulia crouched down and checked the lock. There was a tiny gap where the door met the frame, and through it she saw that there were bolts on the inside. Shit, she thought, I won’t be opening that.

  Giulia pulled her leg up and put the toe of her boot onto the door handle. She took a long, slow breath.

  She drove up from the ground with her right leg, pushed down on the handle with her left, and grabbed at the top of the gate. Her fingers hooked over the top and she hauled herself up. She dropped down on the other side and froze.

  The garden was in disarray. The little wood was a damp ruin, dripping sadly where the conifers had once been fat with needles. The branches had been hacked down, the trunks scorched as if to cauterize the stumps.

  Damn, they didn’t mess about.

  She crept up the garden, keeping close to the wall. The ground was wet and tangled. Thorns snagged her cloak; trailing branches lay in wait to trip her. Suddenly the whole place was her enemy.

  That was why they’d wrecked the forest, she realised. It was an escape route. Burn the trees and you’d close the way out. She wondered if the others had been able to get into the forest before the Watch had destroyed it. Perhaps Hugh and the others were in Faery, trapped there. Or perhaps their bodies were piled up inside.

  Eight yards from the gate, she saw her first corpse. It was a man lying on his side in the bushes, his back a mess of red and brown. He’d been slashed from behind, a single long blow from shoulder to hip, probably inflicted as he tried to run away. She didn’t recognise his pale, empty face. Giulia crept
on, faster now.

  The second dead man lay beside the Scola’s back door, slumped like a drunkard. He was tubby, and his stomach stuck out in front of him. Blood had run from his neck, covering his chest in a black stain.

  Light moved on the right. Giulia pulled back and crouched down behind the ruined trees. A tall man emerged from the back door, a lantern on his belt. He carried a little bag, swinging it as though it was a cosh.

  Giulia slid the stiletto out of her left sleeve.

  The tall man crouched down beside the corpse. His sword stuck out behind him like a tail. He whistled softly and began patting the body down.

  Giulia stepped out of cover. The man had opened the corpse’s shirt, and was searching his neck for jewellery. Giulia crossed the ground in five long strides.

  He did not notice her until her shadow blotted out the lantern-light. He started to turn, but he was too slow. She hit the back of his head with her left hand, shoving his chin down, and punched her stiletto into the back of his neck. He spasmed, hand twitching towards his neck, and flopped across his victim with a sound like a saddle being tossed onto the ground. He lay there, his hands fluttering, then he was still.

  Giulia’s arm ached a little. It all felt very simple, as if she had been pulling a splinter. She raised her hood to hide her face, and went inside.

  There was just enough light to see. She crept down the passage with her weight on her back foot, keeping close to the wall to minimise the creaking of the floor.

  Giulia reached the bottom of a staircase and dropped into the deep shadow below it, wishing she hadn’t left her crossbow in her room. She waited, listening, head cocked to one side.

  No sound came from within the Scola. It had begun to rain outside, and the patter of water on the windows was like a brush on a drum. She felt alone and very small, but ready and unafraid.

  Giulia climbed the wide stairs two at a time. At the top she paused, listening. Still nothing. She approached the great hall, bracing herself for what might be beyond.

  The hall was empty, lit only by the moon. A little mechanical trolley lay in the doorway. Its clockwork innards spilled across the floor.