by S. G. Night
Cowed, the gentry shuffled out of their seats, leaving the chamber in pairs until only the plain dressed man and Racath remained. After the last noble’s footsteps had faded into the tunnel, the man spoke again to Racath.
“You need not worry about your organization’s secrecy,” he assured. “I am the only Human among the Burrows who knows of the Genshwin. Your master and I deal back and forth between our respective undergrounds from time to time, help keep each other afloat. I assume that you are the assassin he told me he was sending to my city?”
Racath nodded. “And I assume that you are Jax Tollo, Duke of Milonok.”
“That I am,” Jax answered. He looked Racath up and down searchingly. “You should mind yourself carefully while you’re in the Burrows. It’s easy to tell you’re not from around here.”
“Oh yeah?” Racath said, raising an eyebrow.
The count nodded. “While those idiots across the river think of us as little more than street thugs, the people here in the Burrows treat us as true nobility,” he inclined his head, smiling sharply. “And propriety would usually dictate a bow when in the presence of the Duke of Milonok.”
Racath returned Jax’s smile — his was just as razor-sharp. “Don’t take it personally. I don’t bow, as a rule.”
“An interesting rule,” Jax said. “But probably not one that would win you much favor. Here, or across the river.” He didn’t sound offended. It was more like he was casually commenting on someone’s dancing technique.
Racath shrugged indifferently. “An upright spine is more valuable to me than favor.”
“Hmm…” Jax said thoughtfully. “What a novel perspective…perhaps Io needs more of your sort.”
Racath smiled again — this time it was genuine. “At least someone thinks so.”
“Enough pleasantries, then,” Jax said magnanimously, cracking his knuckles one by one. “What does Mrak bring to my table today?”
“Two men,” Racath answered. “One is a Dominion Intelligence officer by the name of Felsted. The other, an agent of his, a handler who deals with confidential informants. Mrak’s information says that they’re supposed to be hearing from someone the day after tomorrow, someone who’s going to sell out the Genshwin.” He flicked his Stinger open and closed menacingly. “All three have appointments with Azrael.”
Jax nodded slowly. “Sounds serious. What do you need from me?”
“I was told you could point me towards Felsted,” Racath said, crossing his arms. “From Felsted, I should be able to get the name of his agent, and after that I’ll need whatever information you might have to offer on him so I can find where he’s meeting the informant. The Genshwin are prepared to offer any price to—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Jax interrupted, waving his hand. “The survival of the Genshwin is more important to me than money. I’ll be satisfied enough knowing that the bastard is dead.”
Racath cocked his head. “Excuse me?”
“Felsted,” Jax clarified. “I’ll gladly point you toward that one for free. He’s had his fingers fishing into the Burrows for almost a year now, trying to weed out some of my most important syndicates.” He gave a dispassionate shrug. “I’ve been trying to have him killed since Talvel of last year. But he’s careful, knows that he’s earned more than a few enemies on this side of the river. He’s a tricky little faul, I’ll give him that, and my people don’t quite have the skills to get to him.”
“I do.”
Jax grinned. “Of that I have no doubt.” The Duke leaned forward in his chair, rolling his shoulders out like a great cat stretching in the sun. “Felsted lives in the eastern city. Pennyworth District, a little community set aside for people in the Demons’ employment. His house is the ugly square thing with a horrid stained-glass window on the front. Little multicolored shapes all fit nicely together. What’s that called again? Tesse-something…tesselay…?”
“Tessellations,” Racath supplied absently, his mind already preoccupied forming a plan.
Jax snapped his fingers. “That’s the word! Hideous little window, probably costs more than everything in this room. You can’t miss it.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“I hear that Felsted is crazy about his schedule,” Jax replied. “Writes down everything. You find his ledger, and you should find the name of that agent you’re looking for.”
“And when it’s done?” Racath inquired. “Where can I find you?”
“Depends,” Jax shrugged again. “When will Felsted be dead?”
“Tonight. Before midnight.”
The Duke chuckled deep in his chest. “You work fast. When did you say the agent would be meeting his informant?”
“Somewhere, sometime, the day after tomorrow,” Racath said. “The 13th.”
“Right then,” Jax said with a note of finality. “If you can really pull that off, then I’ll be in the tavern upstairs, midnight tonight. You bring me the name and Felsted’s ledger, and I’ll give you what I can on the agent. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Without so much as a nod, Racath turned to leave, his long stride carrying him to the chamber’s exit.
“Genshwin?” Jax called after him. “A moment, if you please?”
Racath looked back over his shoulder at the Duke.
“I’d like your name, if you’d be so kind.”
Beneath his hood, Racath smirked, then continued toward the tunnel. “I told you,” he said. “My name is Death.”
——
It was just past one-o’-clock when Racath reemerged from the Westside Inn and back onto the streets of Milonok, tucking his weapons into the folds of his Shadow. He knew the general vicinity of Pennyworth District, and also that the offices of Dominion Intelligence (where Felsted was undoubtedly working at this time of day) was several blocks away from the place. That left Racath plenty of time to scope out Felsted’s home.
It took him almost an hour to navigate the shanty hodgepodge of the Burrows, cross the Bridge, and work his way to Felsted’s neighborhood. The people in the streets of the Pennyworth District were an almost sickening contrast to the ragged beggars across the river. Here, everyone was finely dressed, neatly groomed. They spoke to each other in pedantic, obsequious tones that marked them as the kind of people who had been afforded the rare privilege of education, and then squandered it with the Dominion.
Racath’s clothes were dirty, and that earned him disdainful sneers from those that passed by him. He wondered what would happen to people like this if he were to drop them into the heart of the Burrows — if their puffery could survive the raw horror of the real world.
Just as Jax had said, it didn’t take long for Racath to find Felsted’s house. It was a full three stories tall with a cube-like exterior that boasted motifs of pre-Occupation architecture. As the Duke had described, a gaudy bay window of stained-glass stuck out of the wall adjacent to the front door. Its red and yellow glass made a sickly perfect pattern of meshing geometric shapes, flush as a miser’s stack of coins. It made Racath think of a colorful tumor.
Casually as was possible, Racath slipped out of the thin crowd on the street and up onto the covered porch. He fit himself into position at the front door, leaning his back on it as though he were waiting outside for someone to arrive. Offhandedly, he fished a thin metal sliver from his belt and negotiated it into the keyhole.
The skeleton key was another of Alexis’s creations, a device that could open practically any lock. Racath felt it shiver and twitch in the lock as its rotendrial mechanics mated perfectly with the tumblers. He twisted the skeleton key, and the bolt slid open. He put his weight against the door, slipping smoothly into the house as it opened and shutting it quickly behind him.
The first thing Racath noticed was the lock on the door. Or rather, the locks. It was one of the most intricate systems of security that Racath had ever seen. There was only one keyhole, but when it locked again, four separate deadbolts appeared to hold the door shut.
Gratefully, Racath wouldn’t have to worry about it later. Alexis’s skeleton key was single-use only: once it had mated with a lock, it couldn’t be reversed and used on a different keyhole. However, after it had been slaved to a specific lock, it would open that lock just as easily as the original key. Racath pocketed the device and turned his attention to the rest of Felsted’s home.
The house was dark, lit only by the colored daylight that filtered through the stained-glass window in the sitting room. The place was empty. No servants to speak of. The owner undoubtedly could have afforded them, and their absence suggested several possible aspects of Felsted’s character. Was he a recluse, then? Too proud to enlist the services of others? Self-sufficient enough to have no need? Or maybe he was just paranoid. After all, servants talk, and Racath could imagine that gossip was the last thing a Dominion Intelligence officer wanted in his house.
And so, with the place to himself, Racath began to inspect the home. First, he investigated the kitchen. A medium sized table adjacent to the plentifully-stocked pantry caught his attention. An array of stylized glass and porcelain chemical apparatus filled its surface. Each was oriented into orderly, uniform positions, as though they had all been given assigned seating. While the arrangement was utterly impractical, it was definitely tidy, not to mention ascetically pleasing. Racath hated it.
Worse still, it didn’t belong there. Why would Felsted keep a complete chemist’s lab table in his kitchen? Puzzled, Racath checked the pantry for a possible clue. He found one.
The foodstuffs that loaded the pantry were methodically sorted and organized. But what snagged Racath’s eyes was a glass cabinet boasting several small shelves. Each shelf played host to almost a dozen decorative beakers that matched the motif of the chemical equipment. They stood in stiff lines, like a phalanx of porcelain sentinels. Clear labels were meticulously pasted on their faces, written in nauseatingly perfect handwriting.
Penicillamine. Flumazenil. Sodium Nitrate. Jaborandi leaves. The names meant nothing to him; only Alexis could possibly make sense them. One label, however, he recognized. Deathwatch Stem Extract.
Piss. They were counteragents, all of them. Antidotes. Nearly three dozen beakers full of extracts, powders, and compounds. Apparently Felsted was paranoid. The deathwatch was particularly problematic. Racath knew that particularly distrusting people would mix it with their meals; while it didn’t act as an antidote on its own, it was supposed to turn bright orange when it touched any sort of toxin.
So. Poisoning Felsted was out of the question. Racath proceeded to explore the rest of the first floor, examining every tiny detail he could find, trying to glean as much about the Human as he could. In the sitting room, he found a checkered xardez board, its pieces of polished black and white wood misplaced, as though a game had been interrupted halfway through.
He inspected the ivory-colored faction of pieces, the side that traditionally belonged to the host (presumably, Felsted). The white pieces made a solid wall across the board in opposition of the other player’s onslaught. Most of the white peons clustered together into a tight nest around his king piece. Arranged as it was, Felsted could make no possible offensive maneuver without compromising his defense. On the other hand, Racath couldn’t find any sort of viable assault that black could make to counter the barricade of peons.
Maybe paranoid wasn’t strong enough a word.
In an alcove near the stairs Racath found a small shrine, complete with candles and an onyx statue of figure with chitinous scales etched into its massive chest and helmeted face. It looked disturbingly like Vrag, the Demon Racath had killed in Vale. He knew who it was supposed to be though: Amaranth, the Mnogo deity of honor and duty.
It came as no surprise to Racath to find the idol here. As far as the Demons’ lore went, Amaranth was supposedly the creator of social hierarchy and order, and thusly the patron to bureaucrats like Felsted.
Racath fought the urge to break it.
“I hope you prayed for safety this morning,” he muttered to himself as he left the shrine and ascended the stairs.
On the second floor, he moved from room to room, searching out the fine minutia of Felsted’s deepest, most sordid whims. He found Felsted’s bedroom: a large penthouse filled to the brim with diverse amenities, all carefully placed in fine accordance with their surroundings. A grand, circular bed dominated one corner, closely neighbored by a vanity table and a pair of dressers. A large double window overlooked the street outside. The place was immaculately clean, everything polished to a fine glimmer.
Fauling neat-freak.
He checked the window. The latch that held it shut was too complicated to open from the outside. Unlocking it now as a means to reenter later wouldn’t work either. If he’d judged Felsted correctly, he was the kind of man who checked all the locks in his house every night. Twice. Probably for fun.
Racath left the bedroom and returned to the hallway to check the last door. It was a heavier wood than the other doors, the knob cloyingly over-decorated. The kind of thing that a pompous bastard would put over a study or office.
Upon entering, Racath stopped short, mid-step over the threshold. The study was vast, high ceilinged and carpeted with plushy maroon fabric. Twin drapes of heavy velvet dominated the wall, drawn across a hidden window. A desk made of the same wood as the door, its surface hosting pen, ink, paper, and other assorted stationery material. And behind the desk there was a shelf — a big shelf — covered from end to end in rows of…Racath gasped.
Books. Felsted had books. Dozens of them, leather-bound and bright. More books than he had ever seen outside of the Velik Tor library. Racath could smell them, could taste them in the air, their pages just waiting to be stretched open. Just waiting for someone to read them.
But…Humans weren’t allowed to own books! The Demons had never allowed it. During the Occupation, they had burned any paper they find containing anything more than a cooking recipe. Places like this had been torched, burned to ashes. Then the ashes were burned too.
Or did that not apply to people like Felsted, those who pledged themselves to the Dominion. Did all of them get to keep their books in exchange of a little sucking up? It wouldn’t have surprised Racath. Pawns of the Dominion always got the better end of the deal.
It also earned you enough enemies to prompt you to buy an apothecary for your kitchen, too.
It took all the will power Racath had not to divert from his objective — he could have spent all day with these books, breathing in their treasure trove of ink. But he resisted. Instead, he forced himself to approach Felsted’s desk. He searched through its drawers until he found what he was looking for: a small notebook with the word ledger stamped in gold leaf on the black leather binding.
“Aha….” Racath sat in Felsted’s thickly upholstered armchair, propped his feet up indelicately on the desk, and cracked open the ledger. Flipping through the pages he found the calendar for the month of Deach.
“God,” Racath muttered to himself, squinting down at the squares that represented each day of the month. “He does write everything down. How can he stand to write so small?”
He found the square for today, the 11th, and struggled to read Felsted’s miniscule writing. “Work until 9; dinner at home, spinach salad, turnip soup…do you really schedule what you’re going to have for dinner?” He snorted in exasperation and looked down the calendar toward the next item of interest: Keirtag of that week, the 13th.
Zayne to meet his informant at 8, evening 11, evening - will return to me at home at 9, evening midnight to report over xardez game and tea.
“And we have a winner….” He stared at the tiny name, burning into his memory. Zayne.
Racath noticed the crossed-out words in the note. The line that slashed through the rescheduled times was precise, flat as an arrow. But it gouged deep into the paper, embossing it with all the affronted frustration of an anal-retentive bureaucrat who had been forced to modify his precious timetable.
Something
had pushed Zayne’s meeting with the informant back several hours. Racath made careful note of it.
He was about to replace the ledger in the desk, planning to steal it once Felsted was taken care of, when something written in the square for the 14th of Deach caught his eye: All out of jaborandi leaves!!! Visit Jameson’s apothecary in the Tillage Bazaar for more.
Jaborandi leaves…Racath remembered that name. One of the ornamental beakers full of counter-toxin downstairs had been labeled with it….
A sudden idea seized him. Almost jumping out of the desk chair, Racath skimmed the bookshelves, running a quick finger over the titles as he muttered to himself. He doubted that poison had been a topic of study in Felsted’s Dominion education, so he must have some reference manual handy to support his paranoid tendencies…
“Gotcha,” Racath whispered, pulling a tome bound in deep green leather from the shelf. Its spine read Common and Complex Toxins and their Counter-Potives.
Returning to the desk, he cracked the book open, skipped straight to the index and skimmed until he found the reference for Common Saa’hea Jaborandi. Flipping to the appropriate page, he found a detailed sketching of a flowering plant adjacent to a detailed summary.
The Common Saa’hea Jaborandi — a shrub that grows around the rim of Io’s Saa’hea Forest. Its leaves are an excellent source of the chemical nostrum pilocarpine, which serves as an antidote proven most effective against the diverse poisons of the Atropa belladonna, both natural and extracted…
Jumping back to the index, Racath located the page for Atropa belladonna.
Atropa belladonna — more commonly known as “deadly nightshade” or “divale”, is a perennial, herbaceous organism that grows in abundance on the peninsulas surrounding Milon’dor Bay. Its leaves, berries, and roots produce several active anti-cholinergic agents of high toxicity, such as atropine. While its berries are proven to be deadly only in relatively large doses, reports indicate that as few as two adult nightshade leaves prove lethal if ingested. Symptoms of nightshade poisoning include disorientation, phantasms and hallucinogenic delusions, febrile delirium, sensitivity to light, seizures, rampant heart rate, etc. While highly poisonous, the atropine found in the nightshade plant can act as an effective counter-agent against the beans of the…