by Adrian Selby
“Preparation needs to be made.” I said. “You’ve got good captains, we can get your quarter ready for the invasion of an army if you let me determine how it will be done.”
I glanced at his left hand, fussing at the drawstring of his kannab pouch. His teeth were green, stained with a breed from Iltrick or the Scarlet Coast. It must have been mixed with an opia, probably threaded with Enla root, another of the Virates’ great exports to the Old Kingdoms. He was looking for a rise, distracted by it when his own quarter was threatened.
“Give him your support,” was all he said to his captains.
I drank the Honour. As I waited for the rise I prepared my belt and took my journals and the letters, bound up in a satchel, to the cellar. Em, one of The Riddle’s serving girls, was waiting.
“Em, thank you. Does the landlord know you’re here, does he know about the box?”
She shook her head. She was fretful as a mouse, hard-worked and dirty. She drew no comment with her coming or going, nothing that the eye could lay itself upon, and through her I managed to get word out of the Indra Quarter to my men searching the Old Kingdoms for the Twenty.
“You need to put these papers in this box. Tell no-one except Achi, who you met some weeks back, or two other soldiers, men of the colour like me, Gant and Shale. I’ve been expecting them, but they won’t arrive in time to help me. Hide the box, then you get out of the Quarter until light.”
She nodded and took the satchel.
A hot wave rose with a dizzying rush through my guts and chest. I began changing, growing with the Honour, and shoved at her to leave until I had my breathing.
I would not be hiding in The Riddle. That would be merely where the fight will end.
The lamps were snuffed out across the Quarter, from the Back Lane, Linney Lanes and Blenner. The noise of the women and children that escaped what was to come echoed over from the riverside. One of Ostler’s caps, Senis, led a handful of his gangers with me across the Back Lane, all mist and mud, threading our way through the blades and ankle breakers that were dug in across the whole Quarter. Shouting had gone up at the end of the Linney Lanes. The houses between us and them were full of men, women and boys ready with bows, slings and sporebags. Senis led us up through a brothel that had been cleared out, though a cloying stink of petunia oil remained. I bid three men stay inside while he and a ganger joined me, climbing out onto the roof of the brothel, the tiles slick with damp, and darker here where these roofs nestled in the shadow of the great city wall behind them.
With the luta mix I had supplied to all those staying to defend their homes while I instructed them, we could see as bright grey outlines the men on the roofs further along the lanes where the militia were coming in, taking shots as the first sounds of smashing wood and clash of swords was on. The screams began, and both these men, on a brew stronger than they’d ever had, felt the surge that came with the sound of fighting.
I motioned us along the roof of the brothel to hop over to the next building. Senis would remain there, near this end of Back Lane, giving the signal to lay down the smoke when he was signalled himself to do so, an attempt to keep the militia and Post channelled into the Linney.
He made to jump the gap but as he did so he twitched, shot with a dart. He landed on the other side and one leg gave, the standing foot losing grip on the steeper side of the roof. He fell choking to the ground below. There were men on the roofs intersecting the Back and Linney lanes, all of which were lying flat, waiting with the smoke bags. A few lifted their heads up as they comprehended what they had just seen. I dropped to a crouch with the other ganger next to me, signed for him to check behind us. He leaned over the roof to look onto the Lane, then sat on his backside, before slumping back against the roof. A remarkable poison. I unshouldered my bow, considered the way they had collapsed, the line of the attack. The city wall. I span to face it. The figure up there was quick, my arrow vanishing past him. I didn’t wait. With my mouthpiece I alerted the gangers still inside the brothel and those on the roof opposite. The clicks and whistles were loud and close in the silence of these lanes, sounding like the crafted metal birds that came from Tarantrea. They were a code to talk to each other. I used the mouthpiece to bid them be alert for the killer. I heard choking, looked over, saw the outline of two men holding their throats and smashing their fists against the tiles, their bodies spasmic, then falling still. I dropped from the roof, caught the edge of it with my fingers, kicked through a window shutter and swung myself into a room. I laid titarum seeds along the ledge and floorboards just inside. Crushing them and inhaling the spores would cause vomiting, working through most masks.
I walked out of the room and signed to the other gangers Senis and I had left in the brothel to take positions at the end of the long corridors on the ground and first floors. I waited on the second-floor passageway, closed my eyes and put my hands to the walls. Fully risen on the Honour, I absorbed through my palms the song of this structure. A whisper of a hinge, two rooms along to my left; someone was there. I had a vial of a mandrake decoction, counted to two and threw it at the doorway to that room. The floorboards beyond creaked, a step away from it. I ran along to the doorway and stabbed my sword through the wall as I approached, in case they were waiting, before throwing another vial into the room. The room was empty, just the odour of crushed titarum seeds mixing with the mandrake. Where had the assassin gone? It had not caused any choking, implying he or she was using some remarkable plant. I retreated back to the corridor before the mandrake and titarum got into me. There was a chirp of a mouthpiece downstairs, I ran to the stairwell, and one of the younger men gasped out Senis’s name before hitting the floor somewhere below. I signalled to the others to put down sporebags and meet at the stairwell that threaded through the heart of the brothel. They were isolated in the corridors; they needed to stay in sight of each other. But I was too late, failing to appreciate what we were up against.
The sound of swords striking was sharp in this empty place, and another of the gangers was run through, a thick mukey gasping as a blade repeatedly stabbed him. Moments later the last ganger must have spat his piece, crying out as he ran to meet the killer. I leaped off the rail to the corridor on the first floor, and threw a limebag down the lower stairwell to hit the ground floor. The firelight was almost blinding with the luta mix in my eyes, an incandescent white rippling across the entrance hall, splashes of it sparking up and spreading along doorframes. The assassin had killed them all; we were alone in the building.
I threw caltrops either side of me, to cover the corridors to the left and right. He was on this floor, I could feel it, but I couldn’t place him. The boards in the corridor were rigged with trips and loose floorboards, the rooms as well, all but one.
I backed into it and gummed over the door cloth strips of the titarum, that would rip if the door were opened. Then I readied my bow for a shot.
I crept to the window. I signalled out with my mouthpiece to those across the lane, to put smoke down as was the original plan. There was a step outside the door. I let the arrow fly, low and slightly off centre from the noise. It punched through the door and into the wall beyond. The next step I heard, a crack of wood bending against a nail, was in the room next door, remarkable for the silence and speed of his movement. He could smell the titarum, and that would mean he could smell me, knew exactly where I was stood. This was plant as good as any I had used. Could it be him? The flames were finding their voice on the ground floor, a heavy smoke rising as the building caught. I sensed his absence. I leaped through the open window behind me and into the smoke that filled the Back Lane. With my mouthpiece I called for support at the alley that separated Linney Lane from the Back and bade those near to keep an eye above them. He would be in no rush, despite how close he must have come to engaging me. He knew well enough to position and reposition himself until, like me, he felt he had the decisive advantage.
I called to those on the rooftops to mark the position of any Agent they saw,
for none would be here yet except him, though he was no Agent.
Three more gangers approached. I signed for them to maintain a full view around us as I moved us away from the Back Lane through to Linney.
Bowstrings hummed above us, where the Linney lane came to a dead end, on the far side of which was The Riddle. The gangers up there signalled he was on the roof of the building that closed the end of the lane off. I signalled for four of them to make the jump to the rooftops towards him and I led my three into the first building on the left, aiming to get to its roof and follow them.
An old man was sat in a chair near open shutters as we entered. He had a broom across his lap, waiting to offer some defence of the place. He gave the boys with me a nod as we went through to the stairs leading up. Shutters opened out front and back of the hovel, so we split and climbed through each under cover of those moving about on the rooftop opposite.
The sound of shouting and screaming was getting louder, the far end of Linney was becoming a slaughter despite the defences slowing and crippling many who did not know where to step. For those who survived there would be a reckoning when this was over, because the other slums did not come to help them.
The first of the boys that got a grasp of the roof tiles and put his head up took an arrow in it. I was beneath him, helping him up when he fell backwards, away from the shutter and into the mud below. To move would give away my position. Not to move meant the two on the other side of this hovel climbing out of the shutter there were also dead. I heard a man shout for arrows on his target, heard the shots pass through the air above me outside.
The one shouting began choking, then footsteps as one of the gangers with me had got onto the roof, the other side of its arch. He fell swiftly, hitting the ground below. The one remaining ganger came back through to the room I was in. I raised a hand to still him.
The assassin was in control. He had been so since he killed Senis. For the first time I could remember I had been outmanoeuvred, utterly. At every turn he had the ground advantage. He knew my position and positioned himself accordingly. I needed to change that.
I remembered the Agents that had been seen at the wareshouses on the riverside. They would be moving towards The Riddle where they believed I’d be holed up. There was the tactical advantage. Superior soldiers with better plant and, not being allied with the assassin, would be hostile to him. I needed to bring him close enough to them to cause him to consider them, dilute his attention.
There was a pall over the quarter now, from our smoke and the fires, obscuring the streets. Even with luta it would be difficult to see into.
I signed for the ganger with me to swap my wamba and fieldbelt for his jerkin, and for him to run for the riverside. He looked at me in shock as I handed it over, would have said something but for the urgency of my instruction, for I was leaving myself few options against such a foe as this without a belt. I kept back a couple of the pouches I thought I would need later. I would make it to The Riddle under the smoke that had now spread throughout the quarter.
He took my bow and we descended.
“Thank you,” I whispered, “your family will be taken care of if you don’t make it.”
It helped him to hear it; he had been flinching with every sound, aware he was far out of his depth. He headed out to Blenner, attempting to make it across the avenue that Blenner and The Riddle intersected on, and past The Riddle’s stables to the dock buildings.
The Agents would be busy there; at least forty men armed with bows were intended to slow them or finish them, a killing zone and most of the buildings rigged with trips.
As the ganger left I closed my eyes, feeling the world about me. There was a stillness that gave me the confidence the killer had taken the bait. I climbed up to the roof where he had just been and looked across to The Riddle, a rough but busy inn at this northwest edge of the riverport. I saw the smoke eddy where the ganger had run, I heard the slapping of someone running along tiles on rooftops just south of The Riddle, then saw the silver outline of the killer pursuing him. I had a shot, but a miss would turn the advantage the ganger had bought me. The killer moved over those tiles as surely as on grass, as fast as a horse. Once he’d dropped off the house out of sight, heading for the dockside, I dropped down myself. I had no gangers here, all dead. There was screaming from those injured or dying, the blast of horns from militia as they moved towards me and The Riddle, making their force seem larger than it was, but only a few of the Quarter remained to offer resistance now. The gangers had the best plant that could be concocted, but the sporebags of the Agents, the oilbags that gave off noxious vapours, easily overcame their masks and brews and they were dying in their homes.
As I approached The Riddle, I signalled to those on the roof of the inn and the heavy main door opened to admit me.
“What the fuck is this, Kailen!” said Ostler as I entered the bar-room. “My crew are being butchered by some Agent seems you can’t lay a finger on yourself and my quarter is being butchered otherwise while Darin waits for his masters to clear us out.” He had a captain with him, the rest of his men spread through the inn.
“Bar the shutters, no bows, lock us in. We gain the initiative.”
“They’ll burn it down,” said his cap.
“No, they will want to know I died; they won’t risk it.”
“Fuck you, Kailen,” said Ostler, “we’re going, you can do this yourself. I’m not dying here at the hands of an army of Reds for some shit you did when I was swaddled.”
“I’ll be sure to tell your mother you ran.”
His fist travelled a foot or so between us before I turned it out with my left hand, carrying through to punch him. The cap was on edge, loyalty with Ostler, respect with me. Ostler wavered on his feet, hurt just enough to be stilled, but not enough to drop him. That would have been counter-productive. I glanced at his cap.
“The other gangers will bring you in, as one of Ostler’s caps, but don’t let me stop you.”
He nodded immediately, with surety. Ostler was blessed with good caps. He turned and headed up the staircase, whistling the orders with his mouthpiece.
I heard someone coughing, disastrous in this situation.
“Help me, Ostler, we can’t defend this bar, we need to control the staircase.” I stood at the end of an oak table. He took a deep breath and lifted the other end. We turned it over against the main door and jammed another table against the door that went through to the coop and stable.
Men were running past The Riddle for the dockside. It was a rout. I followed Ostler upstairs. From the best room the inn could offer I dragged a bedstead out and pushed it onto the staircase, limiting access. Now there were two floors to control, bunkrooms that deckhands and bargemen used on the long runs from the north.
The easiest access now would be the shutters of the window overlooking the roof to the stables. I waited in that room with the Cap and two of the defending gangers. The floor had spikes nailed into it behind the window, making it hard for anyone coming in to do so easily or quietly. There were calls out along Blenner as the militia and Reds moved up towards The Riddle. I could hear them pushing rakes, looking for the traps. The men on the roof above us began shooting. It lasted a few minutes. Then the banging at the bar door downstairs started. I went to the doorway at the end of this floor. At the opposite end, and in the middle at the second stairwell, gangers stood watching me as I pointed to the sounds of feet and hands scaling the walls and trying the shutters, the barest squeaks as they tested resistance. I could feel at least eight moving to the second floor. They signed the movement to the gangers in the upper rooms, who tapped the beams, messaging those on the roof.
Two on the roof were hit and fell. Then I heard swords, a thump as two grappled. More bodies hit the ground before it went still.
Downstairs there was a crack of wood. They were inside. Two gangers on the second floor were coughing, doing their best to muffle it but unable to stop. I realised then I had made a very serious
mistake. I gave in to my rage for a moment, kicked a door nearby off its hinges.
I lifted my mask and as soon as I tasted the air I knew it. Aconite. These men had been in here for a few hours, the first symptoms a difficulty breathing, swelling of the throat. Which had to mean the assassin had been in here prior to that, coating the rooms. He’d thought of everything.
“Why are you smiling?” asked Ostler.
“I have met my match, and learned a lesson I have taught others many, many times.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m sorry, Ostler. The plan I conceived by which you could defend your territory with conviction, to succeed in it and send a message to your foes, it has been undone by whoever has been killing Reds and gangers alike. If they weren’t killing Reds I’d think it was the work of a Fieldsman.”
“They’re the Post’s top assassins, right? Reporting to The Red himself?”
“Yes. While I doubt it is a Fieldsman, I had not planned for an intervention of that calibre. The rooms around us have been coated with a poison, it’s in the air. Take your men, shout down that we surrender, throw your weapons down as evidence. Your lives will be spared and you will see your families again, because if they kill you then they lose the other scapos not to mention the rest of the slums. Tell them I will be waiting in my room, take my sword as evidence of my intent.”
“I’ll be killed anyway,” said Ostler; “these men won’t follow me if I surrender to the fucking militia! You’ve given my quarter to Darin.” He shook his head, on the verge of tears. It was good for his men to see this. It would mean a lot to them. I leaned close to him, so his men would not hear.
“Your family is safe and happy in Harudan, Ostler, I’ve given you that. As one of my academy masters was fond of telling us, everything changes. You have militia in the building and a killer hunting me that will make certain of your death if you resist. I told you that you would be King Scapo by morning, a platitude you may have thought, but in the few weeks I’ve been here I’ve discovered more about you feuding scapos than you have yourselves in the years you’ve been killing each other over a few muddy streets. If not King Scapo by morning, then a year at most.