by J. M. Martin
Otalo looked up the front of the building. Rosettes and other ornaments were carved into the stone facade; he stared for a moment at the head of a lioness. A sign of Hathhalla, the Goddess of Vengeance and the jailor of Hell; strange for a University building. He frowned. This doesn’t feel right. She didn’t come this way. “Right; find the night porter, find out why the door is open,” he hissed. “We’ll keep going, catch up with us when you can.” Horne nodded and he disappeared inside the doors with the two Myles.
Otalo, Casseyo, and Lodrigo moved slowly up the street. When they reached the end of the block, his instincts said to turn left; and when they reached the next corner, left again. He started to wonder about where Jonas’s territory ended; he knew they were very close to Mud Street where the Squire held sway, and once across the King’s Road and into the High Quarter that would be the territory of the Red Wyrm, a full-fledged Prince of the Guild. The Squire had gained his Mark in the Guild from Bad Mowbray, and so could be counted on to do his duties, but the Red Wyrm was a rival to Mowbray and Guizo both, and—
Otalo was about to turn right when he froze, scabbard held out to the side to warn his fellows to stop. He sniffed the air deeply. Jasmine, again. Or whatever it is. Strong this time. He crept forward down a dead-end alley to a small square behind the Magisters’ quarters, and a large carved door waiting in between two shuttered shop fronts. He looked at it for a moment, then reached out and gave it a small push. He stepped back to the side as it swung open silently, revealing a dark passageway. Far too many open doors around here. Djara the Dark Moon, door between worlds, laughs at us.
He turned back to Lodrigo. The man was sweating and grimacing, leaning against the shop shutters next to them. “Wait here for Horne, or Jonas, then come in with them to back us up, yeah?”
Lodrigo nodded glumly. “Sorry, boss.”
Otalo pulled his stock back over his mouth and nose, and then moved slowly into the building’s ground floor, Casseyo following and opening up the shutter on his lantern a little to light their way. The stone hallway slid off into the dark, and a stone staircase led up. The building was old; certainly as old as the Magisters’ quarters next door. Otalo paused at the staircase, and with a nod of his head indicated that was the way they would go.
“How do you know which way she went?” Casseyo whispered.
“Do you smell it?” Otalo asked. “I think it’s jasmine. Smelled it back where we got ambushed.”
Casseyo frowned. “I don’t smell anything.”
Otalo sighed in exasperation. “Come on, then, just follow me.”
He was certain of the scent now, faintly lingering before him, leading him on. A small voice in the back of his head said trap, but he pressed on regardless. The first floor landing was empty, short plastered hallways angling off to individual apartments. He wondered how many people lived in the building; it felt empty, deserted, like an ancient ruin, but rationally he knew that students and Under-Magisters would pay a pretty penny to live near the back of the University like this, so it should have had plenty of tenants. His nose and his instincts were telling him up, up again, and so he looped around to the staircase to the second floor and padded softly up the steps, Casseyo close behind.
They had stepped out onto the second floor landing when the scream saved them. The scream had presumably been intended to startle him, freeze him up, make him flinch or step back, panic; instead after years of fighting all he did was react, jabbing out with the wooden scabbard, catching the desperate man leaping out of the darkness with sword held high. Otalo’s scabbard struck the man square in the apple of his throat, abruptly ending his scream with a squelch. And then the hall was filled with fury and clubs and daggers and fists. Trap, again, he had time to think.
Otalo laid about him with both sword and scabbard, not bothering with trying to aim, just intent on clearing some space around him as he was buffeted by bodies and blows. Casseyo’s lantern hit the ground and rolled, sending a gout of oil flaring up; Otalo couldn’t see what had happened to Casseyo himself and didn’t have time to look, as someone was trying to get him in a headlock. He grunted as he took a couple of blunt blows across his back trying to drive him downward, and he sensed sharp steel dangerously close, questing for his innards. Urgently, he shook two bodies off, slamming one of them into the plaster of the wall, and then bringing his sword down repeatedly on the other before leaping forward to backhand a dark shape with his wooden scabbard.
The hallway behind was getting brighter; something was on fire. A shape plowed into him from the side, a sharp dagger slashing across his doublet but thankfully not getting much past the thick outer layer. He dropped his scabbard and grabbed and twisted, bringing the body across him and into the wall. His legs slid out from under him and he felt a sharp pain in his side, but he managed to wind up on top, and he brought the pommel of his short sword down twice onto a weeping eye socket before raising himself up and reversing the sword, pushing blade into throat. He rolled quickly, flailing his sword wildly in case someone was trying to get the drop on him, but he found himself temporarily and tentatively alone.
Behind him, part of the wall was aflame, silhouetting several struggling bodies as Casseyo tried very hard not to die. Otalo staggered to his feet, preparing to charge, and could only watch in relief as Horne came flying up the stairs and into the mass, a steel-hafted small axe flashing down onto someone’s bald pate, instantly splitting it open. Tall Myles was bounding up the steps next, and he was already yelling out: “Fire! Fire! Stop the fire!”
Otalo knew without having to look that his quarry was not amongst the dead and dying sprawled around him; they were expendable, her servants. Hoping that one of the others might know a charm to douse the flames, he turned and staggered into the dark of the hallway, certain that he was on the right track. She’s close.
A twist and a fumbling turn and he found himself opening a door out onto a covered stone walkway that ran around the inner wall of the building’s tight, L-shaped interior courtyard. He shook his head, trying to get his eyes to focus in the faint starlight. A shape fled before him, and he began running in pursuit, passing shuttered windows and a door on his right, the drop over the parapet to the courtyard below on his left. Past the bend in the L it looked like the walkway terminated at a blank wall, part of the building projecting forward into its path, the onetime doorway there bricked over. His heart leapt into his throat even as he spotted the ladder down from the roof above, and someone descending it. He could hear shouts and cries from ahead.
He rounded the bend and came to a stop, panting.
#
He thought he heard a scream and a commotion from somewhere below him, echoing up through an inner courtyard shaft, breaking the silence of the night. He turned away from the parapet and walked over the flat roof until he stood looking down at the dark courtyard below; it was like looking down into a well at night, into a pool of inky blackness that seemed to have no bottom.
Conrad frowned. Did I imagine it? he started to think. And then he heard something for sure; metal on metal, muted screams, a distant, thudding crash.
He spotted an open trapdoor and ladder down into the walkways that circled the walls of the courtyard. He moved with excitement, loosening his sword and dagger in their scabbards, and then climbing down as fast as he could manage on the rickety ladder.
As he stepped onto the stone of the walkway, he could hear someone moving at speed. A hooded figure appeared, a woman running around a corner towards him. “Halt! Who goes there?” he cried out, drawing his sword, but to his surprise the woman didn’t stop running until she had thrown herself into his arms; if he hadn’t turned his sword aside she’d have run herself through.
He had time to register piercing blue eyes filled with fear, pale skin, a flash of full lips that instantly commanded his attention. A heady perfume filled his nose, marking a Lady of rank and position. “Oh, sir!” the woman breathed, panic in her quavering voice. “Help me! They mean to kill me!”
Not on my Watch, he thought grimly.
#
A man stood tall and imperious several paces away, a red surcoat with a golden wyvern clutching a black starry circle in its claws over his gorget and mail hauberk—the sign of the night patrols of the City Watch. Short blond hair blew in the breeze. “Stand your ground, you black bastard!” the man yelled in a sharp voice, used to command. He had a heavy broadsword out, pointed at Otalo, while the other arm shielded a woman behind him, who peered furtively and intently at Otalo from under the hood of her cloak, her eyes narrowed to inscrutable slits. She was, Otalo realized with a pang, beautiful to look upon.
Where the fuck did he come from? Otalo wondered with a sinking feeling in his heart.
“That’s one of them, my Lord!” the woman said breathlessly into the blond man’s ear. “The most vicious of the lot! He intends to have my honor, and my life!”
The blond man scowled. “You brutish devil! Did you think the whole of the City Watch under the sway of your Guild? Did you really think someone like you could have the run of the city? Leave now, or die.” He stepped forward, but the woman clung to him from behind, pulling him back.
Otalo raised his hands, holding the sword lightly in his right and opening the palm of his left and bringing it to his face. He tugged his stock down, revealing his nose and mouth, his neatly trimmed goatee. “Please,” he pleaded quietly, gasping for breath. He was slowly aware of aches and pains, his back on fire, a wet feeling down his right leg and into his boot, sweat and maybe blood dripping into his eyes. “Please listen to me. She isn’t who you think she is. She’s one of the Nameless. An acolyte of Ligrid, a concubine to the Devil.”
The blond man laughed. “Is that the best you can do? A baseless insult to an Aurian Lady from a black cur? Your words reveal you for the low character you are. On your knees, dog!”
Otalo heard a commotion from behind him, someone’s boots moving quickly on the stone walkway. He felt very tired all of a sudden, and could only hope it was someone on his side. He heard Jonas’s voice ring out angrily. “What are you doing, you fucking fool? King of Heaven, man, she’s one of the Nameless!”
Otalo could see the blond man looking at Jonas behind him, frowning, confused, the wheels turning, comprehension slowly dawning on him. Otalo thought his heart would break. No, please, he thought. Not like this.
The hooded woman caught Otalo’s eyes and held them. Hers were a piercing blue, and he thought them amongst the most striking that he’d ever seen. She smiled at him as her hand came up and around in front of her would-be protector’s throat, and her sharp, glistening dagger cut him open from ear to ear right under his chin, right above the plate of his gorget. She started to laugh, a rich laugh of deep, ancient pleasure as blood sprayed from the cut in a high arc and the man’s eyes went glassy. His broadsword clattered to the stones and he gurgled as he slumped and fell, his empty hands clawing at the parapet.
Otalo launched himself the last few yards, leaping over the struggling Watchman and slamming the woman back and up into the ladder bolted into the wall, her head cracking into one of the iron rungs, the force of the collision enough to send her dagger flying. He drove the tip of his sword up under her rib cage and towards her heart. She coughed blood into his face, and focused her eyes to sneer at him, still laughing. “I curse you to be my slave in the Six Hells, you f—” she started to hiss, but he pushed again, and her eyes went wide, and her face and body went slack, the last of the air in her lungs slipping out of her with a sigh.
After a long moment, he stepped back, and let her body fall to the stones, his sword still buried deep within her. He turned and looked down at the City Watchman. The man wasn’t moving, a pool of blood slowly expanding on the walkway, his dilated eyes fixed on nothing. Otalo leaned his back against the wall, and slid down until he was seated, and held his head in his hands.
You have to be patient with them, son.
#
The fire had thankfully not been hard to put out, and their luck had held; no fatalities, but plenty of bleeders and bruises that needed closing and bandaging. Casseyo had somehow come out of the melee at the top of the stairs without a scratch. He was helping bandage up Otalo when they turned and saw the Gilded Lady stepping out onto the walkway, several of her ladies-in-waiting behind her, armed with rapiers and bearing torches. Jonas stood respectfully behind them. The Gilded Lady wore a high-necked brocade dress with puffed sleeves that glinted lightly in the torchlight with some sort of dark metal studs and a chain of office, made from gold coins from dozens of different cities, nations, and centuries. Gold eyeshadow and thick black eyelashes were the only makeup on her pale skin, her black hair pulled up into a braided bun and pinned with a broach. Under the collar of the dress Otalo could see a black choker over her apple, and he thought back on all the times he’d heard Guizo talk about the good old days, back when she was a man named Cole the Killer, back before she called herself the Gilded Lady. He and Casseyo bowed deep.
“Master Galluessi. Is it her?” asked the Gilded Lady in her deep, instantly recognizable voice. “The last of Lady Siovan’s known acolytes?”
“Lady Allas Thorodur, if I am not mistaken,” said Otalo grimly, coming up from his bow. Bad Mowbray and his men had gotten to the High Priestess herself on the first night, when the butchery had been hardest and fiercest, and it had been all cleanup ever since, hunting the Nameless they had slowly and secretly identified over the preceding weeks and months as their quarry went to ground. “Ariadesma said she’d be a hard one, and sure enough she’d had time to organize a couple of ambushes for us.”
“Which you appear to have won through in your usual fashion,” said the Gilded Lady with a demure nod of her head. “Well done, sirrah. If the reports from the other crews are accurate, then we’ve gotten as many of them as we’re likely to get, and the rest will melt into the shadows. Your man Lodrigo will live, by the by; my Ladies are sucking the poison out.” A not so demure smirk flashed across her face.
“Thank you, my Lady.” Otalo nodded in relief, and then eyed the bodies with wroth and sadness. He shook his head as his gaze fell on the murdered Watchman, the man’s pale throat a livid gash in the torchlight. “Doesn’t it make you angry? I mean, we’re hunting the fucking Nameless for them in the night, and here’s the kind of man that would spit on us in the cold light of day.”
The Gilded Lady smiled. “It would make me angry if we were doing this for them. But we’re not. We’re doing this for us. For me and mine, for you and yours. No man or woman is safe from the Nameless, but they stalk the margins and the shadows more than most, the places where we live and walk. When they want a child to play with, it ain’t usually some nobleman’s son that goes missing; when they’re looking for fresh quim to work over, it ain’t usually some high-born lady that winds up pulped and bleeding out. No, we’re their natural prey: the peasant, the commoner, the dispossessed, the poor, the weak, the criminal, the dregs. And if we don’t protect our own, we know sure as the Six Hells that they fucking won’t,” she said, kicking the dead Watchman in the shins for emphasis.
She turned away, and then looked back over her shoulder. “Do not spend another moment mourning that man. Jonas told me what happened. He made a choice, and he paid for it. It’s no one’s fault but his own. Dispose of his body as you wish. And give my best to Guizo.”
She turned and disappeared back into the building as Jonas stepped out onto the walkway with the Tills in tow. “Right,” he said cheerfully, rubbing his hands together. “No point fucking around. The dead aren’t going to throw themselves away, and the night ain’t getting any younger.”
Otalo glanced at Casseyo, then with a baleful expression looked down at the dead Watchman.
#
In the end Otalo couldn’t bring himself to simply disappear the man’s body with those of the Nameless. So they left him there, his throat opened, his life’s blood poured out in a great puddle around him, to be found by whoever came to
investigate the noises during the night. At least then he’d get his funeral pyre, and the prayers of his family and temple and comrades-in-arms in the City Watch to guide him on the Path of the Dead. As to his fate when he reached the Place of Judgment and stood before the Judge of the Dead, well, there was nothing Otalo could do about that. If the man had been faithful to the Divine King, then an angel would appear and claim him for the Heavens. If he hadn’t, then the Judge would send him to his appointed place in the Underworld, or in the Six Hells.
Celebrations of their purge of a coven of the Nameless Cults would have to wait. They’d left bodies scattered over a swath of the city, and it was darkest night by the time they’d been loaded onto wagons and trundled down to the barge that would take them out to the Harbor Wall; morning would find the smoke of fires hanging over the bay from the burning pits there for the third day in a row.
It was almost dawn by the time Otalo had reported to Guizo and headed home. As he trudged up the steps to his apartment, Otalo mused about his boss; Guizo the Fat was not known as “the Fat” without reason. His great bulk had not been seen outside the meeting house in the Forum in which he sat for many a year—perhaps even within living memory. Otalo had never seen Guizo anywhere else; his boss was there at the back table of the meeting house first thing in the morning, and still there deep in the night when Otalo left. He’d never seen Guizo sleep, or need to take a shit or a piss. That’s why he’s so fat. He’s just storing it all up for when the day finally comes that he decides to get up and try walking again. He chuckled to himself but there was, in fact, something altogether uncanny about the performance that whiffed to Otalo of high sorcery.
But, in truth, there were worse bosses to have, and at least Guizo was one of his own. He’d started to feel like he was being worn thin, running out of patience, and at least with Guizo and his crew he didn’t need to be constantly on edge.