“Hope so,” Verci said. His eyes narrowed on Asti. “You have a plan, and not one for getting Tyne.”
His brother knew him too well.
“True,” Asti said. “Well, it ties to Tyne.”
“What is it?”
“Someone is buying up the lots in the alley,” Asti started. He hadn’t quite put things into words, the thoughts still coalescing in his mind.
“We’ve got an offer on ours,” Helene said. “Not much, but with our share here, we can get someplace to flop for real.”
Asti nodded. “Cort said he’s got an offer. Lots of people on the other side of the alley have them, and most are taking them and splitting.”
“What, exactly, is Cort going to do with Yenner?” Verci asked. “He said he’d take care of him, but not kill him.”
“I think you’re happier not knowing,” Asti said. He wished he didn’t know what Cort planned. Cort had laid it out, a rather elaborate plan involving acids. Asti had seen plenty of horrible things, done some horrible things, but the cold, calculated way that Cort had spelled out his intentions gave him a shiver.
“Probably so,” Verci said. “He’ll meet us at the stable after?”
“Sure that’s a good idea?” Helene asked. “We’re gonna have a lot of cash there.”
“I’m not worried about Cort in terms of the money,” Asti said. “If he wanted that, he’d sell his lot. If it was just about money, we should all sell our lots.”
“What do you think we should do?” Verci asked.
“We don’t take any offer. We keep the plot, pay our debt according to the plan.”
“Why?” Verci asked. “Raych will really hate that.”
“Because it will be a stick in their gears,” Asti said. “Tyne clearly wants the land, all of it, so we don’t let him get it all. One plot is all it takes.”
“So we should take our offer?” Helene asked.
“Unless you can afford not to,” Asti said. “But it’d draw a lot of direct fire on you. Verci and I can take it.”
“We can?” Verci asked. “Asti, I—”
“I’ll keep it on me alone if you want, brother.”
“Fire doesn’t work that way, brother.”
“I’ll make it work that way,” Asti said.
“Pff,” Verci scoffed. “Josie couldn’t keep fire off the alley.”
“You’re right.” Asti laughed. Then he stopped walking and stared at Verci. He was right.
“Oh, blasted saints, Asti. You think—”
“What, what?” Helene asked.
“Blessed and blasted saints,” Asti muttered. “Why didn’t we see it?”
“See what?” Helene demanded. She and Mila stared at Asti and Verci.
“We even joke about it,” Verci said flatly.
“What?” Mila asked.
“Like I told you, Mila,” Asti said. “There’s not a pot in North Seleth that the Old Lady doesn’t have a finger in.” It was obvious. The Old Lady had to have known about the fire, and Tyne.
“What do we do?” Verci asked.
“You two,” Asti said, pointing at Mila and Helene, “go back to the stable and make the drop, like everything is normal.”
“Is everything not normal?” Mila asked.
“Yes. It is fine,” Asti said. “Come on, brother.”
“Where are you two going?” Helene called as they ran down the road.
“To the sewers!”
“Blazes, this isn’t right,” Helene muttered. Mila trailed behind her like a lost dog. The night—the whole gig—was one of the most skunked she had ever seen, and she had seen some gigs that really had gone into the creek. The last thing she needed was to have to take care of a little girl as well as handle a nine-hundred-crown drop.
“I’m not a little girl, Helene.”
Blazes, she had said that out loud. “You’re underfoot.”
“Was I underfoot when I helped stop the carriage? Or took out two of the guards?”
Helene spun to face Mila. “Keep your blasted voice down.”
“What?”
Helene grabbed Mila by the collar and pulled her into the closest alley. Mila grappled at her hand until Helene slammed her back into the brick wall. Helene lowered her voice to a raspy hiss. “Would you mind not bragging about your role in a major crime in the middle of the street?”
“I—” Mila stammered and looked at the ground.
“That’s what I mean by ‘little girl.’” Helene let her go. “Come on. We need to not skunk up the drop.” She left the alley and doubled her pace to the North Seleth Inn.
Mila caught up to her. “You do know where we have to do the drop, right?”
Helene didn’t. “Blazes. Rutting well don’t.”
“Who does?”
“The chomie does, that’s who.”
They entered the inn’s grounds and walked up to the stable, Helene not bothering to miss the tripwires. Julien and the chomie needed to know she was coming. Mila fell behind, avoiding the lines. Silly girl.
Helene gave the knock on the door, and in a moment Julien opened it.
“What’s going on?” He still held the crossbow nervously.
“We’ve got to do the drop,” she told him. She took the crossbow from him and went over to Kennith, sitting in the carriage with the statue. “Where is it?”
“What?”
“The drop,” Helene said. “We’ve got to go do it.”
“Where’s Verci and Asti?”
“Not here,” Helene said. “But it’s nearly three bells, and we’ve got to get going. So where are we going?”
“We—wait. What happened to Asti and Verci?”
“It’s a long story.”
“They told us to do the drop,” Mila said, closing the door behind her.
“Oh, they did?” The chomie didn’t look happy.
“Yes, they did,” Helene said.
“So first Asti doesn’t show up at the gig. The little bird vanishes, then shows up and says, ‘Oh, come see where Asti is.’ You and she take Verci away and come back without him, and say, ‘Oh, we need to do the drop!’”
“We need to do this, and, unless I’m wrong, we don’t have much time.”
“How do I know once the drop is made I won’t end up in the creek like the Rynaxes?”
“They aren’t in the creek you stupid cho—” Instinct made her arm twitch, raising the crossbow slightly.
Kennith jumped off the carriage and stepped to the side, grabbing her wrist and pulling out a small, curved blade. “Don’t even think of pointing that at me!”
“Put the knife down!” Julien shouted.
“Where are Asti and Verci?” Kennith asked.
“We don’t—”
“Knife DOWN!”
Julien smashed a fist against a support beam, cracking it. Kennith startled, dropping the knife and letting go of Helene’s wrist.
Helene put the crossbow down. “Jules, honey, knife is down, all right? Crossbow is down. Everyone is calm.”
“Yeah, calm,” Kennith said, voice quavering.
“Listen, Ken,” Mila said. “Asti missed the gig because he got grabbed, grabbed by the guy who let the alley burn down. He got the better of them, though. So he and I tied up that guy, and brought Helene and Verci over to hear him talk. He told us who had the alley burned down.”
“So?”
“So they’ve got a plan to do something about it, and they had to check something out.”
“Check what out?”
“I don’t know, Ken. I really don’t. They went to do that, told us—all four of us—make the drop. They did that because they know we can, all right? They trust us to get it done.”
Kennith’s shoulders relaxed. He nodded his head slowly. “Yeah, let�
��s get it done. Julien, let’s get the thing on the carriage.”
Helene let out a deep breath. Mila did good, she had to admit. She bent down to pick up the crossbow. When she stood up, Kennith was right in her face.
“Let me tell you, lady,” he whispered. “You call me what you almost called me there, your cousin won’t get a chance to help you. Get it?”
“Got,” Helene said. She held up the crossbow, careful not to even come close to pointing it at him. “We’re going to need this, right?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” Kennith said. “This is a big drop. Night can still get skunked.”
“So,” Verci said as they stood on the bank of the creek, looking over the sewer entrance, “what are we looking at?”
“You tell me,” Asti said. “This is a hot run, no prep, with only a glance through the path.”
“Target?”
“Getting into the inner sanctum of the most paranoid woman we know, without her knowing until we’re right on top of her.”
“And what, exactly, are we going to do when we are on top of her?” Verci asked.
“Confront her,” Asti said. He was surprised it was even a question.
“Well, I had to ask,” Verci said. “I didn’t want to start asking questions while you’re being stabby.”
“No stabbing,” Asti said. “Not at first.”
“Good.”
“All right, back to it,” Asti said, rubbing his hands together. “This is a hot run, no prep, target always expecting something—”
“It’s only hot if she’s in there and awake.”
“There’s a nine-hundred-crown drop happening tonight,” Asti said. “She’s not sleeping until she knows it’s done.”
“Right,” Verci said. “Easy as blackberry pie.”
“What does that mean?” Asti hated when Verci said that, which he’d gotten in the habit of since he married Raych.
“Not that easy,” Verci said, hopping down into the creek bed. “You’ve got to get the right balance of flour and lard in the crust, for one.” He scanned over the stone masonry surrounding the sewer entrance, a hole in the bank only about five feet high. “Eggs, honey, and cream need to be just right. You have to control the heat of your oven precisely. Too cool, you end up with a soggy mess. Too hot, you scorch the whole thing before it sets.” He pointed along the upper edge of the entrance. “Spider wire.”
Asti crawled down. “You know too much about pie.”
“Baker’s daughter for a wife,” Verci said. He leaned up close to the wire, a cord so thin Asti could barely see it stretched out across the top of the threshold. “If I were to guess, this just rings an early warning in her office.”
“Right,” Asti said. “City workers and such would have a legit reason to come in here, she can’t do anything more.”
“But she’s probably got earhorns and peepholes rigged, so when the bells go, she can look and listen.”
“So mouse quiet in there, eh?”
Verci nodded. “Mouse quiet.” Gently he tapped the side walls of the entrance. “Spider wire will only be at the top. She wouldn’t want any at ground level, or the water flow and rats would set it off constantly. That works in our favor.”
“Anything at ground level? Spring plates?”
“Probably not in the sewer itself.” Verci knelt down and put his hands in the waste-filled water, cringing slightly as he did so. He patted the stonework on the ground. “That would take more cash than she’d be willing to spend, too many people could notice it, and it would go off too often.”
Asti nodded. The Old Lady was paranoid, but she was also thrifty. As many protective measures as she’d take, she wouldn’t spend too much on them. “Her doorway is about a half mile in.”
“We have to presume more spider wire across the ceiling the whole way there, so we have to crawl,” Verci said, standing up again. “The passage between the two doors, though, is heavily alarmed. She knows we know about it. Probably several people know about it.”
“What are your guesses about it?”
“For one, the whole floor is on gimbals. Slightly shifts with any weight on it.”
“I didn’t notice that.”
“It’s very subtle,” Verci said. “You really would have to have a feel for it. I know it’s not your thing.”
“Thanks,” Asti said. “What does it do? Defensive measures?”
“Don’t think so,” Verci said. “Last time through, I didn’t spot anything.”
“Were you looking?”
“Like blazes I was,” Verci said. “I wasn’t going to be caught like the stairs again. The passage is what she uses to let people leave, so she probably doesn’t have it trapped. The floor rings alarm bells.” Verci closed his eyes. “Yes, I remember now. A very light chime when we were walking out. And there are peephole lenses in the walls.”
“So we can’t step on the floor.”
“I’m betting those doors aren’t designed to be opened from this side,” Verci said. “And also to ring bells when they are opened.”
“So we can’t get in this way at all is what you’re telling me.”
“I didn’t say that,” Verci said. “It will just be very, very challenging.”
“But what will she do if we set off an alarm?”
“My guess? Run. Hide in a safe room.”
“How is that place not a safe room?” Asti asked.
“For Josie, the bunker under the bakery is almost a public storefront,” Verci said. “If she wants to go completely under, she can. And then she’ll send muscle for us.”
“I know, I know,” Asti said.
“If we get in there, and catch her, she might just send muscle on us anyway.”
“I know,” Asti said. “I was her muscle more than once.”
“We’re still going to do this?”
“Damn right we are,” Asti said. “If I’m right, she rolled over as Tyne blazed our whole alley. She doesn’t get to stay in her rabbithole after that.”
“Let’s do it, then,” Verci said. “Mouse quiet, my lead. If I call skunk, we skitter.”
“Your lead,” Asti said.
Verci got back on his hands and knees and crawled into the darkness. Asti got behind him, matching pace. Both of them went slow and quiet, taking care not to even splash the fetid water.
Helene kept finding her finger stroking the trigger of the crossbow. Driving back out the same night as a carriage smash with the merch was just stupid. Didn’t matter that Kennith had redressed the escape carriage so it looked nothing like the one they had pulled the gig in. Fact was, they were still carrying a giant jade statue that every stick in the area would have their eye open for. Covering the thing in hay and canvas didn’t help. Hay carriages don’t ride through Keller Cove at three bells in the morning. Certainly not with four people riding on it.
The whole thing screamed stolen merch.
The ride had been quiet, though. They only passed a handful of people, all on foot, all heads down. People who didn’t want anyone noticing them, either. Not a stick the whole time. They were deep into Seleth, so the Keller Cove constabs might not even bother coming out this far, and the Seleth ones didn’t care. Small blessing.
Kennith pulled up to a warehouse where the oil lamps out front were burning low. “That’s it.”
“All right,” Helene said. “Here’s the deal. I talk. You three keep your traps shut.”
“Why you?”
“How many drops of stolen merch have you done, Kennith?”
He thought about this for a moment, and then nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Good. Now take off your shirt.”
“What?”
“Everyone knows Ch’omik warriors don’t wear shirts.”
“I ain’t a Ch’omik warrior!”
She ga
ve a nod over to the warehouse. “They don’t know that.”
Kennith glowered, but took off his shirt anyway.
“One more thing, Ken. Things turn left, we need to bolt. Do not get out of the driver’s seat, get?”
“Got.”
“Jules, grab the sledge, then go up and knock.”
“What do I do?” Mila asked.
“Depends on how they play it. They might try and pinch us. Or not. We’ll have to see.”
Julien slung his giant hammer over his shoulder and knocked on the warehouse door. Last thing Helene wanted was a brawl, especially with Jules in the middle of it. But the sight of him holding that hammer might keep anyone from getting any ideas.
A moment later the door opened up, lamplight pouring out into the street.
“Get in here,” a deep voice growled.
Kennith spurred the horses, and they went into the warehouse. Someone shut the door behind them. As Helene had predicted, there were a whole mess of blokes in here, most of them armed.
One man, the one in a swank suit with silver buttons, stepped forward. “Do you have it?”
Helene stepped down off the carriage, keeping the crossbow loose in one hand, hoping to give all these blokes the right idea: that she had it, she could use it, but she wasn’t aiming it at anyone right now. “Wouldn’t come here if we didn’t.”
“Let’s see it.”
“Money.” Last thing she needed was to be stuck in a warehouse with a bunch of slugs with swords and only a giant statue and her crossbow as collateral.
“Show us you have it.”
“Show us you have the money or my friend starts swinging his sledge.” She cocked her head over to Jules.
The suit grinned. “We can take him down.”
“Not before he smashes your precious statue.”
The suit blinked.
After a moment he snapped his fingers to one of the other guys, who came up with a leather satchel. It was held open, full of notes of exchange.
“What—” Mila had opened her mouth.
“Good,” Helene said.
“But that—”
Helene reached out and smacked Mila on the back of the head. “Walk over and get the satchel.”
“Show us the statue,” the suit said.
The Holver Alley Crew Page 18