“Maybe if I knew what ‘it’ was, exactly, I could give you a meaningful answer.”
“Right.” Asti looked down the street. The bakery was just a block and a half away. Standing a further half block away from it were four men, all tall and imposing. One of them was Miles. None of them were specifically minding the bakery. Instead they were watching the crowd in general, moving methodically along the street.
“Verci,” Asti hissed. “You found a back way into the bakery?”
“Well, sure,” Verci said. “There’s a ton of secrets in there, of course, I haven’t gotten a chance to—”
“Use it. Get Raych and the baby down below.”
“What is it?”
“Go!” Asti was off in a run, down a side alley. Once he was behind a wall, he glanced back to the street. Verci was gone. He would get in there and get his family secure. Asti relaxed a little. That was the most important thing.
He peered around the corner. Miles and his men were continuing to walk down the street, past the bakery. Were they scouting it or just checking the whole neighborhood? Asti considered the possibility that their presence had nothing to do with him. It was unlikely, but Asti couldn’t discount it. If he just ran, just hid, he’d never know.
If they were looking for him, then he’d need to know why.
Blast.
He checked over his coat and vest. He was carrying only two knives. He made a mental note to not go anywhere without being heavily armed. He wasn’t even wearing his father’s belt.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered to no one in particular. They were almost to the junction of Junk and Rabbit. Rabbit gave him a good, straight run away from Junk and the bakery. He palmed one of the knives and slid it up his sleeve. He walked back onto the street, taking a quick pace to reach the corner before they noticed him.
He stopped at an apple cart right on the corner. He put on the air of walking casually, stopping to muse over the apples while going about his day. The shop window behind the cart was dirty, but it still reflected well enough to see Miles and his men. Sure enough, after a moment, they spotted him and approached.
They made a slow approach, walking with purpose but without drawing notice to themselves. Asti was impressed. It confirmed that their intentions were not in his best interest. Miles knew well enough not to sneak up on Asti unless he actually was trying to sneak up. If he really wanted a friendly chat, he would have called out to Asti by now.
Time to make a move.
Asti grabbed an apple and spun, throwing it as hard as he could at the biggest, tallest one of Miles’s bruisers. It hit the man square in the forehead, and bounced back to knock Miles in the back of the head.
Asti hadn’t planned that, but it was impressive. For a second he was so surprised he forgot to run.
Chapter 22
VERCI SLIPPED DOWN THE ALLEY to the backhouse, which looked like it had been nailed shut and abandoned. He reached around the back to knock the catch that opened the real door. In a moment he was inside and latching the entry behind him. One thing he admired about Josie’s system—every secret entrance he found could be completely barred off from the inside. This place could be a fortress if he needed it to be.
He pounded up the narrow staircase that led to the apartments. “Raych! Raych!” He called out before he even emerged from the hidden entrance into the rooms.
“Saints, Verci, what is it?” She came into their sitting room, clutching the baby to her chest.
Verci stopped, glancing her over. He had to actually see that she was fine. “Just you and Corsi here? No one else?”
“No, of course not. What—”
“No time,” he said. He brought her over to the hidden stairwell. “I told you this place is full of secret places.”
“I know, it’s kind of—what are you doing?”
“Getting you where it’s safe. Come on.”
“Safe, what?”
He brought her to a room he figured was Josie’s lockdown room—hidden away by the ovens. It would be nearly impossible to find even if someone took a hammer to the brickwork.
“Someone came looking for Asti, and me. And that means you and the baby.”
“But Verci, I thought—”
“In here you’ll be safe,” Verci said. He pointed out the various features of the room. “There’s a tap for the well, a water closet right there, you can stay in here for days if you need to.”
“Days?”
He didn’t respond to that. “Over here there’s a cone and a lens. Put your eye to the lens, you can see out into the front room of the bakery.”
“Really?” She took a look. “That’s amazing. How . . .”
“Ear to the cone, and you can hear what’s out there. Now this is important.” He went to the door. “No one will find you two in here. There isn’t even a way to open this door from the outside once you pull this bar in. Which you’ll do as soon as I leave.”
“Leave?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Why would you leave?”
“Asti was going to draw those guys away from here. But he won’t be able to handle them alone. He needs—”
“I need you, Verci! Don’t leave me here . . .”
“This is the safest place you can be. I need to know you’re safe. And I need to know Asti is as well. You two and him are all I have.”
Raych nodded. “Go.”
“When I come back, if I don’t ring the bell over the doorframe twice, do not come out. Do you understand?”
“Don’t come out unless you ring the bell twice. Yes. What if you don’t come back tonight?”
Verci thought about it for a moment. “If I’m not back by dawn tomorrow, then Asti and I are both dead. But I will be back.”
“Go,” she said. “Go while I still can let you.”
He went out the door, back into the hidden staircase. In a moment he heard the click of Raych pulling the bar.
She and Corsi were safe. He went back out to the alley, and prayed to the saints it wasn’t too late for Asti.
Asti didn’t run, but only for a second. Then he turned down Rabbit and bolted as fast as he could. A shout from Miles and the scuffle of boots let him know the four of them were right behind him.
Rabbit was a crowded road, filled with pedalcarts and street sellers, wooden signs and cloth awnings, and score upon score of people. Hawkers, buyers, newsboys, dicers, hatshakers, doxies, and dozers. Several hundred things to trip him up when what he needed was some clear distance between himself and the bakery. It was a hell of a run to have to make, especially since he needed to make it look like he was trying to lose the bruisers, without actually losing them.
Lucky this was his neighborhood. Three blocks south, he’d have been totally skunked.
Five steps into his run, he ducked under the elbow of a woman carrying a basket of cabbages. Two more steps, he bounded up onto a mulecart, used it to ramp up his speed so he could leap onto the stone doorframe ledge of one of the whitestone tenements. The ledge was little more than a foot’s width, but it was enough for him to take four more steps and jump down. He just landed on the iron banister with the ball of his foot and flipped down to the cobblestone street. Two more steps let him roll under a passing carriage and spring up on the other side, right in front of Jonet’s Clay Bowl. He glanced back at his pursuers, still trying to barrel their way through the crowd, and dashed into the restaurant.
Hot paprika and roasted garlic—the pungent odors of Fuergan cooking—assaulted Asti’s nose as he burst through the door, immediately arching backward to avoid colliding into a tray full of noodle bowls. He spun around and darted in the tight openings between the tables. Jonet ab Gessin yelled a few harsh, accented words at him as he pressed his way through to the back stairwell.
Seconds after he had left the floor, he heard the crash of bodies and the shatter o
f clayware hitting the floor. Asti bounded up the steps as more shouts in Fuergan were accompanied by the sound of several punches.
Asti chuckled. Jonet and his co-husbands wouldn’t care whose men the bruisers were. Never knock over a Fuergan’s food.
Asti sprinted down the corridor, pounding through the nearest bedchamber—which clearly surprised one of Jonet’s wives—and leaped out the window. Fortunately the window of the next apartment was open—Asti hated to crash through glass. He rolled to his feet and went right back to running as he flew out of the confused family’s apartment.
He ran down another corridor to the end of the whitestone, out another window, leaping onto the gutter drain of the next building. In the narrow alley he slid to the ground and rounded back out onto Rabbit.
He glanced back to see the four men still being harangued by angry Fuergans and bolted off down toward Fawcett. Near the corner he glanced back again. They had spotted him and were back in pursuit. Good. If he had actually lost them he’d have to do something really obvious to get their attention. That would have been unseemly.
Asti dashed back down Rabbit, ducking and weaving past the various human and inanimate obstacles that appeared in his path. He could tell by the clamor behind him that Miles and the others were coming like a cattle stampede.
He was only twenty yards away from Holver Alley, from the Gadgeterium. That was as good as any place to let himself get caught. He could even make it look natural.
He leaped up to grab a protruding beam from the husk of the building, choosing one that looked like it wouldn’t take any weight. It snapped as soon as he took hold of it, sending him back down to the ground hard. He was more than ready for it, rolling with the fall while keeping the broken beam in his hand. As soon as he was on his feet one pair of hands grabbed hold of his shoulders.
Asti smashed the beam across the bruiser’s head. The big man went down. Left with only a small piece of wood in his hand, he hurled it in the face of the next man racing at him. That one took it in the eye, and he dropped down, squealing in pain.
The third bruiser charged in with his fists first. Asti dodged to one side, grabbing the man’s wrist, then used the man’s own charge to throw him through the wall of the Gadgeterium.
Then Miles was on him. The other three were grunts; he could spar with them all day without breaking a sweat. Miles was a different story. He delivered a rapid series of blows at Asti’s head and body, which Asti barely repelled.
Asti struck back with a few powerful swings, which Miles efficiently blocked. Asti didn’t have time to drag this out. It wouldn’t be long before one of the bruisers was back in the game, and then he’d have more of a fight on his hands than he was ready for. He’d have to go for the kill, and there were already too many people watching, people who knew exactly who he was. The last thing he needed was for the constabs to get into his nose, and a few dead heavies would do exactly that. He had to take the whole business off the street.
Miles punched again, a little too strong, giving Asti the opening he needed to dodge to one side and grab his arm. He swung Miles’s whole body around, but Miles didn’t let him let go. They both went flying through another part of the wall of the Gadgeterium.
Clutching onto each other, the two of them went rolling along the cracked and ash-strewn floor. Asti used the confusion to draw the knife out from his sleeve and get it to Miles’s neck. At the same moment Miles pressed a knife to Asti’s neck.
“Good chase, Rynax,” Miles said.
“Not my best work,” Asti responded. Despite the lightness in both their voices, they kept their blades pressed firmly against each other’s necks. Miles only needed a hint more force to break Asti’s skin.
“So what are you doing, Rynax?”
“Me? I’m just buying apples when four guys try to press me.”
“Don’t even try,” Miles said. “You lost your place here, and you know the scraps of westtown aren’t worth spit. So like any pirie, you get greedy and think no one will notice you trying to carve a slice from a better pie.”
“Keller Cove is a pretty big pie,” he said.
“Not so much that we don’t notice you getting a flop, bringing in a group of running boys to shake the hat.”
“It’s a good place to shake,” Asti said.
“Shake west of the creek, where you and yours belong.”
“I don’t belong anywhere, Miles,” Asti said, his voice growling more than he intended.
Miles glanced over at his men, who were now grouped over by the hole in the wall. With a wicked grin, he looked back at Asti. “Oh, that’s not true, Rynax. You didn’t sell when you could have, so this place is all yours.” In a flash he swept out one leg while swiping with his blade. Asti fell to the ground, slicing Miles with his knife only superficially. He grabbed at his neck, blood seeping through his hands. The wound wasn’t bad, Miles wasn’t going for the kill. It was just enough to keep him down long enough for Miles to get to the exit.
“It’s quite fitting, Rynax. It may be a burned-out hunk of nothing. But it’s your nothing.” He kicked at one of the few supporting beams still standing, half ash and charcoal. It cracked through. He and his men laughed and ran out.
Asti clambered to his feet. Blood oozed from his neck as he made his way over to the hole in the wall. The walls around him creaked and cracked. One step smashed through the floorboards, his foot caught. With a wrenching yank, he pulled it free. The cracking and tearing sounds around him grew louder, more urgent. The old girl had taken all that she could. Asti stumbled out into the sunlight as the building crashed down.
Holding the blood in as best he could, Asti looked back at the collapsed building. He didn’t know when he had started crying; he just knew that he had been for some time. The beast in the back of his brain strained at its chains, screaming incoherently for blood, for pain, for all the blasted tossers to die. He clamped it down, held himself in check with every ounce of self-control that he had.
A hand touched him on the shoulder. He almost lashed out, his head snapping to look at whoever dared to come close to him, see who risked losing that hand.
It was Win Greenfield.
“Come on, Asti,” Win said. “Let’s get that looked at, all right?”
Asti nodded, letting Win lead him down the alley. He noticed his pants were torn, so he reached down and ripped off a strip and tied it around his wound.
“Can you speak?” Win asked.
“Think so,” Asti rasped out. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Looks awful.”
“They didn’t want to kill me,” Asti said. “I think if they had, they would have.”
Win glanced back at the mouth of the alley. “Were they—did those guys have something to do with the fire, Asti?”
“Them specifically?” Asti shook his head. “Don’t know. But they work for the man who had it done.”
“I didn’t know,” he said absently. They had reached the other end of the alley. Win looked at the pile of ash and debris that had been his home and shop. “I guess they didn’t care who died that night.”
“They wanted it all cleared out,” Asti said. “I don’t think anything else mattered.”
“Like clearing out bugs.” Win laughed emptily.
“Where are we going?” Asti asked him.
“Kimber’s. Doc Gelson is only half drunk by now.”
“Good enough.”
Kimber shrieked when Win carried Asti into her pub, and she quickly ushered the two of them to Asti’s old room. Asti caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror and could easily tell why. Not only was he covered in ash and blood, he was as pale as a Poasian. Win helped Asti onto the bed, and a moment later Kimber brought in Doc Gelson. Asti could smell a lot of cider on the old doc’s breath, but he still managed to sew a steady stitch. Win stayed sitting quietly on the edge of the bed t
he whole time.
“That’s it,” Gelson said when he finished stitching. “Rest up. I’ll have Kimber bring you something hearty to eat and drink. That’s what you need.”
“This is ugly business you’re in,” Win said once the doctor left. “What’s it all for?”
“I think you know what it’s for,” Asti said. “The man who did this to all of us, who took away our homes, our lives . . . there’s no justice he’s going to face. Not proper justice.”
“So it’s got to be you?”
“It’s got to be done, Win.”
“And you’ve got nothing else to lose.” Win nodded. “How can I help?”
“Win, that isn’t . . .” Asti started, but he was interrupted by the door opening again. It wasn’t Kimber, though. Verci was there with a fish pie and a glass of wine.
“I see you’ve been busy,” he said.
“Raych and the baby safe?”
“Of course,” Verci said.
“How’d you find me here?”
“Followed the trail of destruction to the alley and then the trail of blood here.”
Asti chuckled. “I wasn’t exactly subtle today.” He told Verci briefly what happened with Miles.
Verci flashed a nervous glance at Win. “So what will we do now?”
“For one,” Asti said, “you said you didn’t know if you could crack the vault quickly. So Win’s going to be our box-man.”
“Your what?” Win asked.
“You can crack locks and safes, yes?”
“Well, sure . . .” Win said.
“Then you’re our box-man.”
“Are you sure, Asti?” Verci asked. “I mean, with what went down today, we’re pretty well skunked.”
“We’re not skunked.”
“Are we not clear here, brother, on what we mean by ‘skunked’? How can we possibly pull off anything now?”
“Because it’s a degree of scale, Verci,” Asti said. “They think we’re small fish, trying to nibble their crumbs. They would never guess we’re hunting the big cat.”
The Holver Alley Crew Page 27