by Ben Galley
A realisation clattered into his head then, one that he cursed himself for not entertaining before. It was then that the queen spoke, and cut through his thoughts. ‘You will find those deeds, and this executor who thinks himself too smart for us. Then we shall order the Benches to war.’
‘I agree, Your Majesty. All I need is a week, perhaps two, before I can find him. I have the best people on the task.’
‘You had better, Lord Dizali, or I shall have you fed to my ravens. You have your time. Leave.’
Dizali bowed and made his exit. He wore a frown. The queen had never made a threat quite like that before. It made him all the more suspicious. When the door to his carriage slammed, once he was settled on the velvet bench and unbuttoning his coat, he grasped it. The eagerness. The anger. The rattle in her voice. Desperation strikes fiercest when a person is faced with their mortality, forced to take stock of what they have, or have not built.
‘Keystreet, driver,’ Dizali barked, and there was a tap of heels on the roof to acknowledge him. The ironclad wheels crunched on the gravel, and Dizali reached for his old greatcoat and tired umbrella perched unassumingly on the opposite seat.
*
Could the queen actually be dying? Surely the Almighty could not smile that wide for him. Victorious had ruled the Empire longer than any monarch ever had. For over five hundred years she had reigned, as only the other great kings and queens of Europe, Indus, and Africanus knew how—the Red Tzar, the Bitter Prince, Silent Affar, Belicista, the Lady Gotha, and of course, Victorious, to name a few. They were of an older race, one that had appeared in the ashes of the First Empire. Nobody had ever seen their true faces, and those that had either found themselves at the end of a noose or with their eyes in a dish. But however ancient they were, they did die eventually. That much was fact.
When Dizali thought too hard on the matter it troubled him deeply: to be ruled by such things as the like of her. Yet they were the founders of his kind, the high heads of the Order he belonged to. And so there was some credit due. But their time had come, Dizali sternly reminded himself. It was time for them to give up the world they had forged and move aside. They were relics to be deposed and overthrown. And Dizali would damn well see to it that he took the first step. He would lead this fractious Europe into a revolution. Governments will wear the crowns, not pompous kings and queens from a long-dead time. And then the Order will reign. He will reign. Dizali allowed himself a little smile. He hastened his pace as he headed east to Cheapside.
Now that the sewer-workers had been given a pitiful bonus and coerced, or in some cases beaten, back into employment, the drain-stench had faded to normal levels—well, in most districts. Cheapside still thoroughly offended the nose, as it always tended to. Dizali held a handkerchief over his face as he strode through the perpetual haze that Cheapside constantly flaunted.
He came to the door with the three red panels, and knocked three times. He paused, then knocked twice more. Curse this Fever and his theatrics, Dizali groused to himself as he waited for the scrape of bolts, of which there were a preposterous amount, and then for the inevitable jangling of keys. Then a grunt as the right one was found. Finally, a chirp of luck, the grinding of the lock, and the whining of the door as it yawned open, swinging, rather rudely, outwards onto the street.
Dizali had already learned that lesson, and stood far back. The monstrous twin was trained in crushing spines and squeezing heads, not in politely opening doors to Prime Lords. Upon the first visit, he had almost been catapulted into the adjoining wall.
Dizali stepped inward and nodded to the twin peaks of pale skin and blonde hair that stood either side of the corridor. He passed them his hat and umbrella and strode up the dank stairs into the darkness of the upper floors.
The walls were bare plaster and in places bare brick. Dizali ran his gloved hand over the cracks as he dug his heels into worm-riddled floorboards. A single gaslight hovered at the end of the corridor. It led him to a door, featureless and solid. Mr Rowanstone had a penchant for bolts, it seemed. This one was also covered in them, from top to bottom. Dizali rolled his eyes and smartly rapped a knuckle on the door.
*
Witchazel was dreaming fitfully. Flashes of eerie fiction vied with snatches of old memory for space in his dark mind. It was nightmarish, in a way.
He was in a carriage, tottering along the river-front. It was summer. Blossoms fell and birds chirped. There was a woman by his side, her face blurred and twisted. He knew her.
Something spooked the horses. He did not see it. The dream was too warped to know who or what.
A dog, no, a wolf sat in the carriage with him, and he knew its eyes to be hers. Maybe that was what spooked them.
He was careering down the slope now, too sluggish to jump, too heavy and bound by unconsciousness to escape. The screaming rose and fell. The carriage was turning, hurling them over and over, into the water, the heavy weight of something pressing them down. He could feel the heaviness of it, clutching him again. The ice-cold blast of …
‘Haaaaaaaa!’ Witchazel screamed wordlessly as reality wrenched him from his unsettled slumber into a freezing bucket of reality.
‘That’s better,’ said a voice: Fever.
Oh, how he had come to loathe the little man, how he despised him!
Witchazel panted and choked. The water was so cold it stung his eyes, and he blinked furiously. It took a few moments for the shock to die away and for shivering to take its place. Witchazel could feel every one of his bones rattling, emaciated as he was from the torture. Food had come days apart, sometimes not at all. This was another one of Fever’s little games, the foul criminal that he was.
‘What is it today?’ Witchazel spat. He had discovered that anger and backchat irritated Fever to the core. It seemed that Mr Rowanstone had a deadline to keep, and Witchazel was determined to beat him past it. It was a battle of schedules and silence, and the lawyer was intent on winning it. Whether the war would be won with it, he knew not.
And so Witchazel had endured his time with plenty of fire and spit, sleeping whenever he was alone, to keep up his strength. They had been relentless for the first few days. Every other hour, one of them had paid a visit to his boxlike cell—whether it was Fever, with his questions and cruel games with needles, or Sval, who liked to twist and bend things, or Sven, who liked to pummel and poke. Blood seeped, bones bruised, and then cracked before splintering. The gloves had come off, and yet somehow he knew they were still holding back. Witchazel knew it well, and that terrified him.
It was strange: he had never fully grasped the truth of the word torture until now. It was not simple pain and punishment, but powerlessness. That was the grain of its wood: to be incapable, at crueller hands than mercy’s, helpless to stop the beatings, the needles—helpless to aid Tonmerion. It had set a cold ache in the fibre of his bones. Almighty be damned if he would show his fear to Fever. He found solace in blaming the shivering on the cold water.
Yet for the last few days, he had been left adrift in complete silence and darkness. They had let him stoke his own fear. The last two nights had been spent trembling on the cold floor, nursing his searing breaks and numbing aches. Witchazel’s mind had run in ever-tightening mental circles until he felt the darkness close in for a fleeting hour or two. They wanted the estate. Gunderton had been right. Besmirching Karrigan was just the first step. The Clean Slate …
The stunted man seemed pleased with himself today. He was alone, and bereft of his usual briefcase, the one containing all his intricate tools and needles. ‘There’s cause for celebration,’ he said, finally breaking that false prophet of a smile, splayed across his face, ear to ear.
Witchazel grunted, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. ‘Is there now?’ he asked, wondering whether the absence of briefcase was actually more disconcerting.
Fever nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes indeed. You’ve been with us a whole week now.’
‘Huzzah for me,’ Witchazel ground out, b
efore lolling his head back and staring at the ceiling, playing as nonchalant as he could muster, as though the whole cell and torturer act was growing rather dull.
‘Every celebration needs a meal,’ Fever told him, before stooping down and picking up a metal plate layered with bread and sweaty cheese. The torturer held it out. ‘No doubt you’re hungry?’
Witchazel’s traitorous stomach gurgled at the very mention of food.
Fever beamed again. ‘I have my answer.’ The man placed the plate on Witchazel’s quivering knee and untied a single hand so he could eat. Witchazel could barely use his fingers, they were so sore, but hunger drove him past it.
A flash and a stabbing pain made him stop, hands trembling an inch from the food. His stomach growled, urging him on. But there it was: a fine glass dagger in Fever’s grip, its point resting between the bones on the back of the lawyer’s hand. A globule of blood had started to ooze.
‘Is the food worth the pain, Mr Witchazel?’ asked Fever, his face now a mask of concern and worry. He was still standing, his hand steady as stone.
Witchazel bared his teeth and reached his hand forwards to grasp a fat crumb of cheese. The dagger moved with him, just the very tip stuck in his skin. ‘It most certainly is,’ he muttered, in a hoarse voice.
‘Well, please, be my guest then.’ Fever swiftly withdrew the dagger and Witchazel stuffed the cheese into his mouth. The rich tang of it exploded over his dry tongue and clamping his mouth shut. ‘Some water?’ came the offer, and Witchazel nodded. Damn being recalcitrant and resentful, he thought. It was a chance to get some food, keep up his strength. Fever picked a glass from the floor. Witchazel gulped it down.
‘I shall tell you a story, while you eat, Mr Witchazel,’ Fever told him, cheerily twirling the glass blade around. If the lawyer’s tired eyes did not lie, it appeared to have an ornate jade handle, sculpted in the shape of a roaring dragon’s head.
‘If you must,’ Witchazel mumbled around his mouthful.
‘I was set to be a doctor, you see. My father was a doctor, his father was a doctor, and his father, and so on. A line longer than many of the royal houses of Europe, I’ll have you know. I was to be a surgeon. My father commanded it and so it was. From school to college to some of the finest universities this Empire has to offer, I trained and I trained. By the time I was twenty, I was offered a junior position at one of the finest hospitals in Brystol, Almighty’s Grace. Have you heard of it?’
Witchazel shook his head.
‘There was a chief surgeon there by the name of Reginus. A doctor from an even longer line than the Rowanstones, believe it or not. A man so decorated with achievements that he positively glowed when he marched through the halls of the Grace.’ Fever paused to chuckle nostalgically. ‘But he did not like me. No, Mr Witchazel, he hated me from the moment I first set foot in his theatre, and he looked down to see me there, hand raised to shake. I had the knowledge. I had the bedside manner, I …’
Witchazel interrupted with a snort.
‘…But despite it all he could not see past my stature. One morning, barely a month into my position, he demanded that I should either face the door or learn to operate on stilts, for I was too small and weak to be of any use to the infirm.’
‘Good man. Spot on,’ Witchazel flatly replied. He reached out for another morsel, and the dagger flashed down once more to puncture his skin. It went deeper this time. Witchazel recoiled and licked his bloody hand, cursing. Oh, how he wanted to rip that dagger from Fever’s grasp and plunge it into his heart. It was a thought that had crossed his mind more than once in the past week. He had made quite the habit of it.
‘Is it worth the pain, Mr Witchazel?’ Fever asked again, cold as Thames water.
The lawyer glowered with every hateful thought he had. Fever must have felt it, for he smiled again, still holding out the dagger. As Witchazel moved his hand, the blade came down again. The lawyer bared his teeth as he snatched a chunk of bread from the bloody plate and held it close, a large piece to give him time between stabs. Fever kept on smiling, not a twitch of impatience to be seen. The man was deplorably professional.
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 he can take, how far he can be pushed before he snaps, or pops, or withers 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 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 had 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 the newspapers 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.