by Ben Galley
Fever cleared his throat. ‘As I was saying, Mr Witchazel, Reginus and I battled it out for several weeks before I was sent to toil in his morgue. It was the disgrace of the family. My father told me if I was not fit to work on the living, then I was not fit to call myself a doctor.’
For all the sadness of his story, Fever made it sinister in the way he kept his smile. ‘But the morgue taught me more about the insides of a man than the theatre ever could. How much they can take, how far they can be pushed before they snap, or pop, or wither away. I began to hone myself on the dead. Then I moved to the living … when the lights were out and the nurses absent. Down in my morgue, picking them apart before putting them back together again. They told me things in their terror, between the screams. It was then that I realised what a wonderful career I could carve for myself. Literally. For secrets are valuable things, Mr Witchazel. People will do desperate things to hide them, and others will do despicable things to dig them out. I’m the despicable part,’ he said with a wink.
Witchazel was horrified to his core, but he flinched not a muscle. He barely even blinked. He simply stared at the putrid little man and wondered whether he had been born without a soul, or whether he had cut it out along the way.
‘You said “there used to be” a chief surgeon.’ He already knew how this story ended.
Fever chuckled again and waved his blade. ‘Perceptive as always, Mr Witchazel! I’m impressed. And you are absolutely correct. Reginus found his way to my morgue one night, suspicious, full of rage. All it took was one of his trophies to the back of the head, a cart, and a cloth. Nobody likes to ask questions of the dead, you see. I must have hit him hard. I had opened up his ribs by the time he woke up.’
Witchazel shook his head. ‘Is this supposed to scare me, to paint a viler picture of you than I already perceive? Because it’s not working.’
Fever Rowanstone just smiled and gestured towards the plate.
Witchazel knew what awaited him, but hunger drove him forwards once more. The skinny blade struck again, and this time it went right through, the glass tip grating on the plate beneath his hand. Blood poured as Witchazel retched with pain. Tears sprang to eyes already crusted with a week’s worth of tears.
‘Is it worth the pain, Mr Witchazel?’
Just a deep growl for an answer.
‘Is it?’ Fever leant close to yell in Witchazel’s ear.
Another push of the blade, driving even deeper.
‘Is the food worth it, Witchazel?’ Fever twisted it and the lawyer cried out afresh.
‘No!’ Witchazel could not hold it back any longer. ‘No, it isn’t!’
‘And are your secrets worth the pain, Mr Witchazel?’ Fever shouted, his voice cracking. ‘Are they?’
The lawyer could only gasp, curled up in pain. He mouthed something that might have been a no.
‘Answer me!’
Witchazel heard it first. Just a tap at the door, but to him it was the clanging bell of a rescue party.
Fever had turned a shade of red. He was too angry to notice the interruption. ‘Are secrets worth it?’
‘I think you have a visitor,’ Witchazel whispered between his ragged breaths.
Fever’s pulled the blade free. He heard it that time: a smart rapping at the door. With an irritated cough, he stood up to brush his suit down. ‘You better have an answer for me, when I return,’ he hissed before storming towards the door. Witchazel closed his eyes, clenching his hand to stop the bleeding. Bleeding would only make him weaker. Between his pained mumbling, he thanked the Almighty for knocks on doors. And for forgotten glasses.
*
‘What is it, you oafs? I …’ Fever gulped as he recognised the face in the gaslight. He promptly stepped outside, and closed the door behind him with a bang, sheathed his glass dagger, and bowed as low as he could manage. ‘Prime Lord Dizali, Sir, what a pleasant surprise!’
‘Mr Rowanstone,’ Dizali said, in a deep tone. ‘Stand straight.’
‘Yes, my Lord.’
‘You are red in the face, Rowanstone, and breathing hard. Tell me you are not losing your touch?’ Dizali queried, clearly unimpressed by what stood before him.
Fever straightened his waistcoat and bowtie before replying. ‘Absolutely not, your Lordship. I am merely trying to put the fear of the Almighty into Mr Witchazel, who continues to be stubborn, I’m afraid to say,’ he answered truthfully. The lawyer was getting under his skin. His clients usually broke in days. Fever had not spent a week with one since he first started out. It irked him chronically, like a splinter driven too deep.
‘You promised results, Rowanstone.’ Dizali sighed in a way that Fever was not very used to, a way that spoke of disappointment.
‘And you shall have them, my Lord, but I need more time.’
Dizali gave him a withering look. ‘There are many luxuries in this world I can afford, but time is not one of them. I need something I can print. I need those deeds, and I need them today, not tomorrow, or next week. Today.’
‘Yes, my Lord, but he is resilient. He needs ti—’ But a hand silenced him.
Dizali sniffed, eyeing him up and down. Fever felt smaller than he usually did. ‘No, what you need is me.’
Fever frowned. ‘My Lord?’
‘Out of the way, Rowanstone. I will speak to him.’
‘But my Lord, the contract stipulates that …’
Dizali loomed over him, his face like thunder. ‘Damn the contract, Fever, I am the one paying the coin. I will decide how we run this operation,’ he barked.
Fever could do nothing but bow his head and acquiesce.
‘Good man,’ Dizali said, before nudging him out of the way and reaching for the door’s handle.
If Fever had hoped to join the Prime Lord within, he was sorely disappointed. Dizali practically shut the door in his face, and Fever staggered back to rub his nose. He clenched his fists, took a breath, and told himself not to panic.
He had known that taking a contract from a Prime Lord was going to be trouble.
*
‘Mr Witchazel,’ Dizali announced, slamming the door. The difference in voice was enough to jolt the lawyer into an upright position, never mind the fact he recognised it. ‘This is not the first time we have met, is it?’
Witchazel blinked at him, apparently stuck between frowning, smiling, or spitting. He chose the latter, smearing Dizali’s shoes with whatever saliva he managed to drag out of his dry mouth. The Prime Lord glowered.
The lawyer was a pitiful sight. He was slumped in a wooden chair, a plate of food on his knee. Witchazel was shirtless, and his ragged trousers did not do much for his decency. The rest of him was curled up like a gnarled branch. Dizali could see every bone in his body, his skin was so taut. He looked like a tramp, not the well-to-do lawyer who had sat with them through long meetings, when Karrigan had called his cabinet to Harker Sheer.
Dizali put his handkerchief to his nose again as he got a closer look at this man’s downfall.
The bruises scattered like dark pebbles on a white canvas, a painful kaleidoscope of blues, blacks, and purples, even a little yellow and green for good measure. There was an enormous dark patch on his left ribs, and a sharp lump that sent a shiver up Dizali’s spine. Here and there little streaks of blood cut patterns and shapes across his chest, marking where the needles had danced. His face looked as though it had been introduced to a mangle, so bruised and misshapen was it. And he looked tired, so very tired. His thinning black hair hung across his face in matted strands and there was a week’s worth of greying beard starting to gather on his gaunt cheeks and jaw. His hands were tied behind his back, it seemed. An unseen cut was dripping blood on the floor.
Witchazel stank, pure and simple—a reek that only a man forced to stew in his own piss and sweat and worse for a week could manufacture. Dizali breathed through his handkerchief as he crouched down to stare into the man’s wide eyes. Wide not with fear, but with realisation. A smart man, this Witchazel. He would h
ave to tread lightly.
Witchazel shook his head. ‘So it’s you. Karrigan would be ashamed to have called you his friend,’ he muttered. ‘He told me all about your kind before he passed.’
‘Then Karrigan would still be a fool, as he was in life,’ Dizali replied. So much for lightly. ‘The head of a lamprey Order sat at Karrigan’s own table and yet the old Hark had not a clue. At least he was wise enough to see it coming in some form. No man can grow so big and stand so tall without attracting the Order’s attention. Not even the Bulldog.’
‘So you feel entitled to take what he built? When it rightly belongs to his family? To his son?’ demanded Witchazel.
Dizali smiled like a fox who has found the chicken coop unlatched. ‘Yes I do, and do you know why?’ The Prime Lord reached inside his greatcoat and pulled out a paper, neatly folded. It wasn’t hard to smell the fresh ink over the reek.
‘What’s that?’
‘This,’ Dizali waggled it in the air, ‘is a newspaper. Tomorrow’s newspaper in fact.’ Dizali unfolded it so Witchazel could squint at the front page.
‘ “Hark heir tipped for treason”.’ Witchazel’s mouth fell open, unashamedly horrified. ‘That’s a lie. A damn lie! He’s just a boy!’
Dizali shrugged, turning the paper around so he could read it out. ‘It says here that he set Lord Serped’s riverboat alight and fraternised with the creatures known as the Shohari, telling them how to attack Fell Falls, therefore aiding them to begin the war the Kingdom of America now fights on its western frontiers. Who knew? Tonmerion Hark is a traitor. Attacking a lord is the same as attacking the crown. It is treason. A long drop and a short stop. You see, Witchazel, I have one of my best men tracking down that boy right now. Let me tell you, he is not in any mood to fail. This is a personal errand for him, as well as an order from me. Tonmerion killed his brother the night of the fire,’ Dizali said triumphantly, folding the paper and stowing it away again. He picked at his nails as he waited for Witchazel to take it all in.
The lawyer was sharp indeed. ‘And as such the Hark estate reverts to his aunt Lilain Rennevie.’
‘That it does,’ Dizali nodded, then hummed to himself. ‘But then again, once she is proven to be a traitor also, she dies, and it reverts solely to you.’
‘You’ll never get your hands on a single brick of the Bulldog’s empire,’ Witchazel spat again, missing this time. ‘It’ll be auctioned off. Dissolved.’
‘And that is why you’re going to tell me all of Karrigan’s dirty little secrets. He had to be hiding something. How else could he have built so much? Tell me what I need to know. Reveal him for the traitor he is, save the boy.’
‘I will tell you nothing,’ Witchazel hissed. The ageing lawyer had spirit, he had to give him that.
‘Then the boy dies, and his blood is on your hands. I’ll leave you in here to think about that while you rot,’ Dizali said in a low voice, leaning close.
‘How very generous of you. Allow me to repay the favour,’ Witchazel replied, his eyes turning hard. With all the strength he could muster he swung out an arm. Somehow he had slipped his bonds.
Never leave something that can be turned into a weapon in a room with a prisoner. Gavisham had told Dizali that once. That idiot Fever had left a glass with Witchazel. All it had taken was a quiet shattering, the longest, sharpest shard, and a strip of cloth from his shredded trousers for a handle. Such was the weapon currently flying through the air towards Dizali’s jugular.
But the Prime Lord was a man of fast reactions. He slammed his fist into Witchazel’s forearm, hearing a dull crack, and leapt forwards to throttle him. The two men fell to the floor, Dizali pushing down and squeezing with strong hands.
Witchazel gurgled and spat as he slowly turned red. But he was far from pleading for his life or begging Dizali to stop. He was laughing. The bastard is laughing. And Dizali knew why.
The Prime Lord released him and got to his feet to wipe the stink from his hands. He picked up the makeshift knife and prowled the cell, examining it as he waited for Witchazel to catch his breath.
The lawyer was still chuckling: a broken, wheezing sound, but still mockery, as if he knew a secret the Prime Lord did not. ‘You can’t kill me and you know it. You need me. I know your game, the Clean Slate. You think I am that pathetic? Without me the estate is broken down, sold away and auctioned off to charity, out of your clutches. And without Tonmerion? I will tell you now, Bremar Dizali, that if you kill that boy you’ll never see the deeds. You’ll not get so much as a finger of dust from Karrigan’s empire!’ Witchazel hissed, defiant to the end.
Dizali growled. ‘Do you think you can win, and I will just let you stroll away? Then again, perhaps I will, and let the hundred or so other lords tear you to pieces, because I know what will happen when the word gets out that the Hark family are all traitors. Only one final piece to wipe off the board: you, Mr Witchazel, and they will not respect your safety nor importance as much as I do. I prefer to do this in the eyes of the law.’
Witchazel narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ve been tied to a chair in a cell and tortured for seven days. You speak of respect and legality?!’
Dizali snapped his fingers. ‘They will kill you as quick as looking at you. They will have their bidders waiting at the auction houses, their charities positioned to invest their coin in “reputable” companies. The Bulldog’s empire will fall to the true dogs of this city, and be ravaged like a lame deer. Is that what you want?’
‘Better that than to a lamprey like you,’ Witchazel spat. ‘I think that’s how Karrigan put it.’
Dizali struck him hard across the face with the back of his hand. His ring cut a line across the lawyer’s face, and Witchazel seethed as the pain sank in. For a long time, neither of them spoke.
‘Every man has his limit, Witchazel, and I will push you to yours. The boy will die if you do not tell me what I want to know: Karrigan’s secrets, and the location of the deeds to his estate,’ Dizali stated, cold and simple. ‘And then you will sign them over to me.’
‘And if a hair is touched on his head, you get nothing.’ The lawyer repeated his threat, but it was quieter this time, with less bite than before.
Dizali leant closer. This time Witchazel shuffled away. ‘I have grown accustomed to getting what I desire, Mr Witchazel. It is a habit I have grown most fond of. If you continue to defy me, the boy’s skin will not matter, trust me in that. Only what can be saved of yours. I will have Karrigan’s estate. I will have his name trampled in the mud as a traitor.’
Dizali made for the door. Just before his hands could turn the handle, he heard Witchazel chuckling. A hoarse, broken laugh, but mirth all the same, still savouring that secret of his. Dizali snarled and wrenched the door open.
When he had slammed and locked it, he turned to Fever. The little man was standing right where he had left him, in the middle of the corridor, nervous and fidgety.
‘My Lord,’ Fever began.
‘Your hand,’ Dizali interrupted. ‘Show it to me.’
Fever wrinkled his brow, confused.
‘Extend your hand, Rowanstone!’ Dizali snapped, making him flinch. Fever held out a hand, steady as a rock despite his nervousness.
There was a flash of glass as the makeshift knife slid from Dizali’s pocket and found its new home, deep between the bones of Fever’s hand. The torturer made no sound, he simply squirmed, mouth frozen into a silent scream of pain. Dizali left the knife in his hand and adjusted his greatcoat before walking away.
‘That would have been in your neck, if I had been Witchazel. Think on that, Mr Rowanstone. You have one week to find me the deeds,’ he hollered down the corridor. He left Fever to grunt and wheeze with pain as the torturer stared, wide-eyed at this new addition to his body, dripping blood on the stone floor.
*
The weather that evening was of a similar ilk as the day’s. The rain persisted, only now the breeze had returned as a gale. It howled under the carriage’s axles and through its wh
eels. The raindrops whipped the window, trying to drench whatever dryness was inside.
Dizali was ignoring it. He was busy with a small sheet of paper, eyeing each line carefully for a second time, making sure he had not missed anything.
Lordship, the search continues. I have his trail, heading east. I’m a week behind, no more, and catching up fast. I have also found a girl who claims to be a Serped maid, escaped the night of the fire. There’s something suspicious about her. I have taken her in for the walk and will find out what she knows. Could be useful. I will have more news by the next town. How goes our cause?
G
Ever the one for brevity, is Gavisham, he said to himself.
Dizali despised being held at the mercy of others’ competence, or in a certain torturer’s case, incompetence. It was a battle of wills now, as his pieces went about their business, and Dizali had never liked waiting. Tonight, at least, he would take matters into his own hands.
There came a smart knocking at the carriage’s door and Dizali shuffled to open it. It was his head lordsguard, Captain Rolick, a swarthy man in a uniform a shade too small for him, just so the muscle could show. The greying hair on his head was parted down the centre, slick to his skull with rain. He had a pitted face, scars of a younger life spent enduring the pox, and quick, dark eyes. He was no Gavisham, of course, but there was no other lordsguard in the city that could beat Rolick with a sword or to draw a pistol.
‘We’ve arrived, Prime Lord Dizali,’ Rolick said, in his thick northern accent. Even after the years spent in the city it refused to die away. ‘There was some trouble, but nought we couldn’t take care of.’
‘And quietly too, I note.’
‘As a mouse, Milord,’ Rolick stepped away from the door and gestured towards the mighty inner gates of the Harker Sheer estate, black and shining in the rain and lantern light. Dizali grabbed his umbrella and stepped out into the night.
A half-dozen lordsguards stood around the carriage. They were silent behind their cloth masks while the eyes that gazed back at him were impassive and hard. Rolick had brought the right men for the job, it seemed. The sort that saw nothing, heard nothing, and said nothing.