by Tom Lloyd
For a man of the Watch, this meant ancient enemies now lived side by side; gangs of immigrants and locals waging silent wars of conquest and survival. Gold flowed into the city and caught every man, woman and child in its deceitful grasp; birthing a thousand new crimes unheard of when I was a boy.
Without the divine mandates handed to the Seven Tribes we had only ourselves, our faith in our ruler and no more. Our laws were the product of fine minds, not scripture, while the very imposition of the law on Narkang was a yoke the people chafed under.
Growing up in the lawless time before the conquest, I gave myself body and soul to this new order for reasons more than idealism. Narkang had changed. Narkang had become better for all the simmering tensions it contained, far from the city of violence and corruption it had once been. I spent many a faithful year in the service of truth and the law, but then a day came when my world changed – the day I discovered truth was not the holy absolute I had once trusted it to be.
By the time of the following events I had found myself content with life as never before. A wife, two daughters and a son gave me a happy home, while a collection of promotions and unfortunate demotions had seen me to my most comfortable post; fifty officers and a modest diocese under my command. The politics of the city I happily left to those better suited to it, and in turn I was rarely bothered by that treacherous world. It was in this capacity that I awoke one crisp autumn morning, head fogged with wine and wife growling like a she-bear at the exuberant youth who’d barged his way past the maid who answered the kitchen door.
Crimes within my district are normally under my sole authority, but this morning I was dragged from my bed to find my horse already saddled and myself well behind events. An undiplomatic order, relayed verbatim by that dear foolish boy serving as my assistant, told me that my superiors were waiting upon my arrival.
The traders of the Kingsroad all recognised my uneasy style of gallop and called bawdy encouragement as I passed. Arriving at a whorehouse close to the docks it was instantly obvious that something dismal was afoot.
The building was as any other in those days; young, untreated wood made with as much haste as skill. Though newly-built and in the flower of its youth, the building seemed to sag under the weight of its existence and the grime of the area. My men lingered silently outside under an oppressive fog of gloom, as thick in the air as opium-smoke. By contrast my journey had been through that invigorating crispness one only finds in autumn, so their manner was all the more unexpected.
I clattered to a halt and was immediately struck by a sense of guilt at violating the quiet. When Count Antern exited the building to greet me, even he seemed to wince at the sound of his own voice. As adviser to the king and member of the City Council, Antern was far my superior, but one I had met frequently in the course of city business. The Commander of the Watch reported to him in effect so Antern’s presence at the scene of a crime was an ill omen, one compounded by the silk handkerchief he held to his mouth and the grip he had on his rapier hilt.
My relationship with the count was reserved. He had the attitudes and ideals that came with a long pedigree, but an intelligence worthy of respect. For his part I was a commoner no different in status to his manservant. To his credit Antern didn’t dismiss me as worthless or a fool as many of his peers did, but we would never be friends and it was a fact neither of us needed to acknowledge.
Today he was as affected by the atmosphere of this place as the rest. He gave me only a distracted nod before gesturing me inside. A yellow lace curtain that bore the establishment’s ill-reputed name hung over the door. I pushed it aside and entered an opulent common room of lounging chairs and sofas surrounded by brightly coloured drapes. On the walls was a host of paintings. In the light of day and this strange mood, the images looked ridiculous and grossly crude.
The corrupting stench of opium rushed up to greet me, laced with the scents of fire-spices and rich tobacco. Two young ladies sat weeping gently with my sergeant looming over them. His expression was grave and he stood so close I wondered for a moment whether the girls were suspects or in need of protection. Both were wrapped in yellow shawls patterned by songbirds – the mark of the house – but aside from those they wore only plain shifts. Without the powder and paint of their trade I was struck by their plain and childlike faces. My daughter was older than both and the thought of her working in such a place sent a cold chill through me.
I caught my sergeant’s eye, but that place had even got to my grizzled deputy. He kept his silence as I was ushered up a thin stairway off to the left.
‘Word is out about this already,’ commented the count wearily. ‘Only the two who found them are still here, the others ran for the nearest tavern.’
‘Just what has happened?’
Trepidation had banished the last vestiges of sleep’s peace and I turned to look Antern in the face. He waved me on, nudging my elbow to direct me up the stairs.
‘Best you see yourself.’
The closest to a warning of what awaited me was a puddle of vomit just outside the doorway to the highest room. When I raised an eyebrow at Antern I saw no trace of embarrassment on his ashen face, he merely indicated that I enter.
When I had finished bringing up my hurried breakfast, my sergeant appeared at the top of the stair. For a man who had fought on a score of battlefields, even he was reticent about re-entering that room. I shall refrain from describing it. Suffice to say that when the door had been broken down, it was clear that no simple drunk did this. I could hardly believe any man capable of such a thing.
‘Do you recognise those symbols on the wall?’ The count spoke to me through his handkerchief and I quickly followed his example. The stench of torn bowels was nearly overwhelming.
On the wall above the bed was some semblance of writing and a variety of arcane shapes, bloody lines painted in haste. Not anything a simple thief-taker could understand, but I noted them down all the same. The script had an arcane styling, grouped into four distinct sections and centred about a cross within a circle.
I stepped closer, observing that the centre symbol had not merely been painted on as the rest appeared. The killer had employed some sharp tool to scratch lines into the wood, numerous short straight cuts that combined to form the whole symbol. This design had then been carefully smeared with the life-blood of these fallen women. The implement had cut deep into the wood, but left a wide path. I compared it to the edge of my dagger. No knife produced such a mark.
‘Three glasses.’
My sergeant indicated the table below the window with the stump of his left wrist. His practised eye drank in each inconsequential detail as he moved about the room, careful not to disturb anything. He paused over a platter of food and inspected it carefully before crouching to inspect the large stain on the rug below.
‘This ain’t blood here – it’s wine,’ he said, sniffing the dried red mark.
‘But that is,’ I replied, pointing to the congealed mess in one of the glasses.
‘So we have a murderer who threw away his wine to fill the glass with blood. A person who tore these girls apart and left with the door secured from the inside. Damn.’
I opened the window. There was blood on the outside too, smeared above the lintel and towards the roof. It wasn’t a climb I’d have liked to attempt.
The room was a scene beyond anything I had ever imagined. Scarred into my memory, the horror was to plague me in the dark corners of night for years to come. The week that followed the discovery was spent in a tiring and thankless hunt for clues or witnesses – to the profit only of stern notes from my commander and the City Council. Meanwhile terror had gripped my ward and a name haunted the streets as it did my dreams.
Vampire.
Sunset on the following Prayerday found me on the balcony of the watch-house. Beside me stood my assistant, the innocent fourth son of a suzerain who was to be groomed for the office of Commander of the Watch. Brandt was good company for a man prone to melanchol
y. A light-hearted and spirited youth, he had served me well for two seasons by then and remained undaunted by the horror of the monster we sought. At the tender age of fourteen winters Brandt still had a lot to learn, but already had developed the unswerving loyalty that made many love him. It is a cruel irony that this devotion to duty would be the very reason he died, when over the years he had become one of the finest young men I had ever known.
My heart broke as I heard of his foolish bravery on the walls of the White Palace. So many times I had told the eager youth to leave battle to his soldier brothers, but he had stood back to back with the Lord Isak against that final ferocious breach. It is said he saved the entire city that day; certainly the king himself gave thanks at Brandt’s funeral and his ashes still occupy pride of place at the temple of Nartis. His heroism, and I call it nothing less, was the inspiration of my greatest fury; the democratic decision of Brandt’s watchmen to seek glory with their king on the field at Moorview. Perhaps his example went even further than that. They also suffered terrible injury, but emerged in glory.
At the time, slate roofs were still infrequent in this burgeoning part of the city. Though Narkang is now famed for its purple slate, it was predominately thatch that bore a gilt edge for those precious minutes before the ghost hour. Wrapped warm against the breeze, we could see much of this side of the city and almost the entirety of our district. What we thought we might see amid the gloaming I am unsure, but there Brandt and I stood – waiting for our questions to be answered.
From that balcony I could smell the sea’s salt and spices roasting in the market. I stood with my elbows upon the wooden rail, staring out into the reddening sky while Brandt rested his chin and scrutinised those below. He was a fine mimic and constantly studied the manners of others, taking great pleasure from his unseen vantage even as the shadows obscured his view. When the whistles started to call a second act of tragedy, he and I were among the first to hear the piercing calls of my officers.
‘Do you think it’s happened again?’ he asked me, a tremor of anxiety in his young voice.
The calls were clipped and repeated – a crime discovered and help required rather than officer in danger. The difference between the two was speed. The latter brought your comrades riding as though the creatures of the Dark Place were close behind, while in the second they would canter, eyes scanning for anyone hurrying away.
‘Gods, I hope not,’ murmured I, with a thought to going home. The scents on the breeze had reminded me of the dinner that would welcome me there.
‘If it has, what will you say to the commander?’
‘What I said last time, I suppose. I’m a thief-taker. Not a priest, not a mage, not a soldier. I understand the minds of men. Who can say how a monster thinks?’
Brandt strained his eyes in the fading light to place where he thought the choir of whistles was coming from.
‘It is rather close to the whorehouse,’ he ventured.
‘Sure?’ I asked, a cloak of doom settling about my shoulders.
The boy turned his hazel eyes up to meet my gaze and nodded. ‘It’s close.’ His ears were sharper than my own and the evening was clear. ‘Nearer to us I’d guess, but close.’
With a sigh I returned to the cramped corner that served as my office, retrieving my sword, cloak and gloves before descending to the stable.
‘Well, Captain, what do you make of that?’
I looked at my trusted sergeant, a gruff war veteran not much prone to displays of emotion. Now his face was thunderous, his one great fist clenched so tight the effort caused his whole body to tremble. When I peered into the room my sentiments echoed his.
‘I don’t think I’ll be wanting my supper no more. Gods, what a mess. If it weren’t for the symbols I’d say this was a whole new problem.’
The room was a ruin. What had probably been a family meal was now utter devastation. Whatever had been in here had torn the furniture apart in addition to, what according to the neighbours, had once been a family of four. Those same neighbours had refused to investigate the tumult emanating from these rooms, the top floor of a building that contained three other families.
Such was the thrall fear and rumour had over the district, they had barred the doors and sat in prayer through the chaos. This had happened late at night, yet none had dared investigate and only much later gone to fetch the Watch. No doubt donations to the temples would again rise once word got out, something that was likely to be soon with the crowd gathering.
‘Tell me what happened,’ called Count Antern, as his bodyguards battered a path for himself and another man I didn’t recognise.
I was unsurprised to see Antern there so soon, he was said to be the king’s spy master after all. No doubt half the guard were in his pay. With a glance at his companion – a slender individual wearing expensively tailored clothes and an eye-patch, the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat extending down to the small point of a beard common among the city’s duellists – I began to tell what I knew.
‘A family now. The same creature, I assume. More of those symbols, but this time it looks like a bear went berserk in there. Only clue’s a scrap of velvet snagged on a chair. You had word of those symbols yet?’
Antern had promised to enlist one of the king’s wizards to decipher the bloody writing, but no word had been forthcoming, much to my annoyance.
‘A bear you say?’ purred the other man, cutting Antern’s attempted reply short. ‘I’ve never seen one that could write before, might be a valuable creature. Still, I suppose that explains why it’s able to dress in velvet.’
My temper almost got the better of me, but Antern came to my rescue and got there first.
‘This is, ah, Nimer. A man of special qualities, the king feels. He is here to assist the investigation – you will extend him every courtesy.’
Only then did I notice the golden clasp that held Nimer’s cloak and marked him as a servant of the king. Unassuming in size, but a contrast against the black silk and velvet of his doublet, the bee device was the personal emblem of the king. It declared him as a bad focus for my ire for only clerks of the council and King’s Men wore the bee emblem.
From the way his hand lounged on the hilt of his longsword, I could tell which Nimer was. Clerks tended to do little that endangered their eyes, while King’s Men were not expected to grow old, let alone emerge from their service unscathed.
‘Very well,’ was the best reply I could muster.
‘Now then, Captain, what is your best guess?’ Nimer asked in a clear, aristocratic tone. He was perhaps not quite as young as I had first thought, the small beard and clipped moustache belonging to a younger generation, but still I felt old by the way he looked at me.
‘With the last one, a vampire. With the two sets of symbols, a sacrifice for summoning daemons. With the mess and noise he made here, no fucking idea. I don’t think the symbols are even the same, ’cept for that cross in the centre.’
Nimer gave a strange little smile and tapped his cheek with one finger in exaggerated thought. After a few seconds he looked up and stepped through the wrecked doorway, into the despoiled kitchen. Curiosity was all I saw on his face at a scene army veterans found sickening. I tried not to wonder what were these ‘special qualities’ Antern had spoken of.
‘Interestingly enough I’m informed the symbols are most commonly used in the banishing of daemons, not summoning as you had quite logically surmised. As for the cross, it looks to be an elven core rune.’
‘Meaning?’
He looked up at me with the look a spider might give to a fly that had spoken out of turn.
‘Runic systems are not my forte, but leave the matter with me. If it proves to be important I shall rush to inform you. Now, don’t let us keep you from your duties.’
And that was my first meeting with the man called Nimer. A man with special qualities. A man who had answers to the strangest questions, and asked even stranger ones. A man whose mind seemed to be able to shrug off all conce
rns and mould itself to any bent or problem he required at the time.
I have no doubt that in another life Nimer could have been an actor without peer, but his stage was a greater one. I saw him most days after that, we even ate together once or twice. I found myself truly liking the man – for all that not once did I come close to understanding his brilliantly reflective mind. Some days he deferred to me and acted as my young assistant would, on others he adopted a regal authority that I obeyed without thought. The only consistent feature of the man was the remarkable colour of his one good eye, a pale blue glow that both bewitched and chilled.
One conversation we had during that time remains perfectly clear in my mind. Nimer had arrived at the watch-house one afternoon about a week after our first meeting. He claimed to have been just passing and called in to collect a copy of a statement. Having secured the papers he required, Nimer looked me straight in the eye and asked a most curious question.
‘When I was younger I knew a man who claimed to be a native of no single place. Having lived in this city from an early age, he nevertheless claimed lineage from four separate states, and called each one home. When I asked him why, do you know what he said?’
I could think of no suitable answer and merely stared in puzzlement. Nimer’s face blossomed to life for a moment and he gave me an affectionate pat on the shoulder before turning to leave. As he approached the door, his cool mocking voice called out.
‘He said, that way, no matter how successful he was in life, he would always have a cause to fight for.’
That was not the only time he bemused me, nor the only time I suspected I did not understand the full implication of his words, but it stayed in my memory as my lasting impression. That was Nimer’s way; to bewilder and puzzle those about him, and keep any answers he might have close, but always it was clear that he would have not bothered to perplex someone he lacked respect for. In themselves, I saw his games of condescension as a mark of respect and felt glad he was not my enemy.
The fact that he was a well travelled, highly educated Narkang native – possessing a face I didn’t recognise despite glimpses of the familiar – deepened my suspicions that he was an assassin of the king’s, perhaps separate even from his elite agents, the Brotherhood. A killer of breeding who possessed a ruthlessness none of the vermin on my streets could hope to match. It was an aspect I could never quite reconcile with the countenance he shrouded himself in, but I think I could have been a friend to the man I got to know over that time.