131 Days [Book 2]_House of Pain

by Keith C. Blackmore

  “Excuse me,” Borchus said softly, and the woman jumped. She grabbed at the fabric covering her neckline, glaring at him with a mixture of horror and surprise.

  “My apologies,” Borchus offered.

  “You damn well should be sorry.”

  “I am.”

  “You frightened me right and proper,” she declared, pulling on a strand of straight black hair.

  Borchus nodded.

  “You shouldn’t be back here anyway. What are you doing here? I don’t know you.”

  “Ah, I was wondering if Sindra still works here?”

  “Sindra?” The woman scrunched up her face unpleasantly, revealing yellow teeth. “What do you want with her?”

  Borchus smiled. “Well, that would be my business, wouldn’t it?”

  “Besides frightening honest women like myself in back alleys?”

  No, that’s only a pastime, he thought, but what he said was, “My apologies again.”

  “Who are you, anyway?” she queried, her nose flaring as if smelling treachery.

  “I’d rather keep that secret for now. As a surprise for Sindra. If she’s within.”

  “Ohhh… surprises, eh?”

  “Uh… yes.”

  “You look like a pit fighter. A bit short, but one nonetheless. Are you one?”

  “I’m not.” Borchus rattled his head in mild annoyance. Whoever she was, she’d gotten over her surprise quickly enough.

  “Well, you look like one.”

  “Well… I’m not.”

  “I love the gladiators, the games of the season. Love the fighting, the killing. Ah.”

  Borchus almost forgot to speak. “I can return tomorrow…”

  “No, that’s fine. Just a moment.” The woman fluttered her fingers at him. “I’ll see if I can find her. We have Gurga about, anyway. If you do anything bad, he’ll squash you.”

  Borchus held up empty hands as the cleaning woman withdrew inside. Squash. The word hung in his mind, and he sighed. Too many louts had thought he’d do that very thing but had died because of it. The faces of dead men clouded his memory.

  But then a beast of a man came into view, rendering Borchus thoughtless and equally speechless. Black breeches covered the brute’s legs while a beige shirt, untucked, lay open almost to the navel. An oily tangle of hair burst from the parting of cloth, and Borchus couldn’t stop staring. Premature gray hair covered the head and face of the ogre, for that surely wasn’t a man. The sweating giant stooped to clear the upper frame of the doorway and glared at him.

  “You see him, Gurga?” the woman’s voice asked from somewhere inside.

  “The little fella?” Gurga rumbled in a voice that might shatter bedrock, hooking a thumb over a belt that could have stropped steel. A spiked club hung from that band of leather, intimidating enough for Borchus to deem it best not to react to the “little” comment. Gurga’s mouth skewed up to one side in distaste, and the great rug that was his beard moved with it.

  “Aye, that’s him!”

  Gurga sized Borchus up and down, unimpressed. “You want to look?” the big man growled out of a corner of his hairy maw.

  “All right,” another woman’s voice answered, and Borchus faltered, recognizing it at once. Some things didn’t change.

  Sindra edged around Gurga’s girth. Older, her hair tied back, also graying but only in sparse strands, and her face and throat a little more lined, she gazed upon Borchus with those enormous brown eyes of hers––which he believed were her best features––and stopped in her tracks. Puzzlement clouded her face, which despite the years, had aged well. She took no offence to him sizing up her modest white dress in return.

  She slowly drew breath. “Oh, sweet Seddon above.”

  “Wha?” Gurga asked, his dense brow furrowing as he looked from Borchus to Sindra.

  “Yes, what?” chirped the first woman from somewhere inside.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Sindra said, blinking. “Telda, get back to that roast. And mind what you’re doing with the sauce.”

  “You want me to kill him?” Gurga asked, rubbing his chin.

  Sindra shook her head.

  “Smack him?”

  That earned a scowl from her, and Borchus bit back a smirk. Many a time, he’d earned that very thunderstorm of a glare. Several times, lightning had accompanied it and scorched the air.

  “None of that.” She exhaled testily before she flashed those liquid pools of night at Borchus. “Well, not yet anyway. Stay here.”

  Gurga’s glare reappeared, and he directed it at Borchus.

  Sindra stepped outside and circled the agent, the hem of her long dress just grazing the alley’s fitted stone. She studied him from top to toe before scrutinizing his face.

  “You cut your hair. And beard.”

  Borchus shrugged. “You’ve gone all modest. You used to…” he cleared his throat, “expose more.”

  “I was younger then.”

  “Still young.”

  But the compliment didn’t flatter Sindra as Borchus hoped it would. He recalled then, this was Sindra, who used to confide in him her scornful amusement over any man and his attempts at sweet talking. That memory burned him––he’d just made a fool of himself in her eyes. She was a woman who traded barbs with the best of them and won—him included.

  Trouble was, as pitiful as it sounded, he meant the compliment.

  “How many years have you been gone?” she asked in a hushed, incredulous tone.

  Borchus cleared his throat. “I don’t remember.”

  And Sindra smiled, a cutting sickle of teeth carefully maintained, ready to let loose a scathing barb of a reply or a killing lance of sarcasm. He’d seen it before, chuckled at it before. Now he braced for it.

  But she simply shook her head in slow dismay instead, sparing him.

  “I can smack him,” Gurga offered again from the doorway.

  Sindra shushed him with a hand and a dirty look.

  “He’s eager to crack some heads,” Borchus observed.

  “Only yours.”

  That wasn’t something he needed to hear.

  “Gurga is our main enforcer, for reasons I’m sure you appreciate.”

  “He’s a tall one.”

  Sindra shrugged. “Oh, he’s a savage. Most times, he’s only intimidating. When you’re that big, you really only have to look unfit in the head to make the patrons behave. He’s been with us now for almost ten years, and not one person has openly challenged him. Not one. Think on that when you consider who frequents here. And if I give the nod, he’s quick to rub troublemakers into a cow kiss outside.”

  All the while, a suspicious Gurga considered Borchus, quietly chewing on something that didn’t appear ready to go down his gullet. It was difficult to imagine the enforcer looking pleasant.

  Sindra continued, “There hasn’t been a—”

  “Where’s Hadree?” Borchus interrupted, wanting to change the subject.

  “Dead.”

  That shocked the agent, and it showed on his face.

  “Nine years now,” Sindra informed him, unflinching. “We’re not sure what happened there. He was old, though you couldn’t tell him that. Near sixty-nine. He was tending the bar when he dropped a mug and collapsed right there. His heart simply stopped, or so the healer said. We buried him outside the city the next day. Underneath the shade of a tree.”

  The sounds of passersby from the main street rustled into the abrupt silence. The news of the man’s death stunned Borchus.

  “I’m sorry,” he offered, meaning it in the most respectable manner possible while seeing the cantankerous old bastard in his head. Hadree had been a fair man and could discern the good from the bad.

  “We’ve long gotten over it,” Sindra stated stoically. “Though there are times I can still hear his voice. Or even expect him to come through the front door, swearing at someone from the common market. So, where have you been?”

  Borchus hesitated before answering. The revelation of
Hadree’s passing softened his stance on keeping his past secret. Perhaps that was Sindra’s plan. She was crafty that way. “I’ve been in and out of Sunja. The city and the country. I had to leave abruptly, for fear of bloody reprisal from an employer.”

  “What about?”

  “Ah.” Borchus smiled feebly. “Some information I was given wasn’t entirely truthful. In fact, looking back, someone might have recognized who I worked for and used it to their own advantage while ensuring I appeared to have profited at the expense of my employer.”

  “Outsmarted? You?” Sindra asked, the barest twinge of amusement in her voice.

  “Yes.”

  She chuckled, the bell-like quality surprising him. He’d missed it. “Wasn’t funny at the time.”

  “And you up and left without word to anyone?” Sindra probed.

  Not even you. “Yes.”

  “With no word for all these years. Until now.”

  Borchus nodded in defeat. “It wasn’t that kind of departure, Sindra.”

  “What kind was it?”

  “The kind where one ran as fast as one could. Without any goodbyes. And without looking back.” For fear of your safety.

  “I remember the business, Borchus. I remember the risks. It’s just… surprising to discover that perhaps, under your cavalier demeanor and wit, the business caught up with you. I thought you were smarter than that. We were certain you’d been cut up and fed to the pigs somewhere.”

  “Always a possibility.”

  “What do you mean? You’re still in danger?”

  Borchus brushed his fingertips against his bare chin. “Thus my disguise.”

  Sindra folded her arms. “But you’ve returned to see me. Now. Why? You could’ve gotten word to us that you were alive years earlier, but you didn’t. No, you left and decided it was best to be forgotten, but you’re here now. You want something. You want me to do something.”

  From the doorway, Gurga’s grim but attentive face flicked from Sindra to Borchus with each exchange. He gripped the overhead frame and leaned out, squeezing his head and shoulders through the opening.

  But Borchus barely noticed him. Sindra––lovely, intelligent Sindra—had sniffed him out. Foreboding gripped his guts.

  “That’s it,” Sindra stated, sensing she was right. Her dark eyes bored into him, making him blink uncomfortably, and he cursed himself. “You want me to do something. What is it, though. I wonder…”

  “Could we do this inside?”

  Gurga growled and bared his teeth. Sindra warded him off with a hand. The enforcer snorted but heeled, touching the fearsome club hanging from his belt.

  “No,” Sindra said. “Here’s fine. I didn’t run back then, without a word to anyone. I just hoped you were alive somewhere and that perhaps you’d return with this grand story of why you’d left in the first place. Only you didn’t return when I expected you to. Not a few days, not a month, and certainly not a year. Even Hadree wondered about you. Yes, he did. He might’ve been a rotten punce to you half of the time, but he thought well of you. Highly even, I daresay, though he didn’t show it. He enjoyed your talks. And he died with that same puzzled expression you often left him with.”

  A pained scowl overtook Borchus’s features. That was a deep cut. Even for Sindra.

  “No,” she finally declared with nonchalance. “I don’t care what it is you’re about or want. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Things are simpler now. Without you.”

  “I’m organizing another network,” Borchus said, almost pleadingly. “You’re very important to those plans.”

  “Ah…” She arched her head back as if savoring something fragrant. “You want me to spy again. To pick up morsels of information from the gladiators.”

  “You were my best.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, I suppose. And the answer is still no. Years have passed, Borchus, and I’m but one thing that’s changed in our fair city. I suggest you stay with the life you found beyond Sunja and forget the one you left behind. That one chased you from the city and most of the people who knew you. If you go back to it, escape might not be an easy thing a second time.”

  “Sindra…”

  But she was done, already walking back to the door of the alehouse. Gurga moved into the alley to allow her entry. Borchus thought about pursuing the matter, but something in Sindra’s tone stopped him. Gurga noted his hesitancy and blocked him from following her, glaring a warning. Borchus had no stomach for a fight so early in the afternoon. Not with that beast of a man.

  So he left.

  Retracing the path he’d followed, Borchus mulled over the encounter with Sindra and felt undone by her piercing manner and stabs of truth. After so long, she still knew him too well. In addition, the news of Hadree’s passing had struck him hard, harder than he would admit to anyone. The old man had been a favorite of his as well, like an old, iron-willed uncle one continuously tried to impress, who dispensed nuggets of wisdom when most needed.

  Stay with the life you found beyond Sunja, her voice resonated, haunting.

  Borchus couldn’t do that.

  And Seddon above damn him for it.

  With the day’s heat breaking and a red evening setting in, Borchus returned to his cellar. The slab of wood serving as a door felt heavier than usual. Thoughts of Sindra occupied his mind all the way back, weakening him in ways he’d once believed impossible. He gripped the latch of the cellar door, pulled it too hard, and ripped a fingernail free for his effort. The wood slammed down.

  Borchus stood in the alley, favoring the sting of his bleeding finger, and stared hard enough at the lid to scorch it. He glanced both ways before stooping and trying again. That time he lifted the cover and got under it, descending the stairs into a vat of darkness smelling of earth and wood.

  Darkness.

  “Garl?” Borchus whispered, sucked at his finger, and spat blood.

  A length of wood lashed out and smashed across Borchus’s unprotected shins. He tumbled the rest of the way down, the door slamming above and enveloping him in pitch blackness. His side crashed against the earthy floor, jamming his arm into his ribs. He rolled onto his back, and before he could recover, a weight fell upon him, flopping across his body and robbing him of any wind remaining in his lungs. Stricken, the agent groaned as if kneed in the balls.

  “Borchus?”

  He wheezed out a whimper.

  “Borchus!”

  Garl.

  Hands patted him down as if he were ablaze. “Apologies, Borchus, apologies. I thought… I thought you were someone else.”

  “Who?” Borchus squeaked, the air beginning to return.

  “Them,” Garl blurted out. “The ones who… who I report to.”

  “What?” His voice gained strength.

  “No one saw you come here?”

  Borchus lifted himself up on his elbows and eventually rubbed at his tender shins. “What? No, of course not. Who is it you’re so frightened of?”

  The darkness seemed to pause, and for a moment, Borchus could just make out a shape against the light peeking in around the cellar door. Garl backed off and groped around in the darkness. He struck a flint and lit one of the few candles Borchus kept below. Beyond the orange light, Garl’s shaven face loomed worriedly, regarding the cellar door.

  “Shhh,” he insisted.

  Borchus listened and heard nothing. His attention moved from the candle and Garl’s face to the closed entryway above the stairs.

  “Can you hear them?”

  “No,” Borchus said and got to his feet. “And if someone was out there, they would’ve been in here already.”

  Garl blinked in the candlelight and looked toward the door once more. Borchus did the same, a sliver of paranoia sinking into his conscience.

  Still, the cellar remained undisturbed.

  “They could be outside,” Garl whispered.

  “There’s no one outside.”r />
  “They might have followed you.”

  “Who? And this time answer me, or I’ll twist your bells like a washrag.”

  For moments, Garl did not answer him, and Borchus had the sickening—and depressing—notion that his spy might be unfit in the head.

  Garl gathered up his crutch and beckoned Borchus back into the recesses of the cellar, around a corner, where a single cot waited. There, the beggar placed the candle in a metal cradle and left it, his clean-shaven face just beyond its glowing hue.

  “The streets of Sunja have become a dangerous place, Borchus. Very dangerous. There are killings that go unreported to the Skarrs, and even if the constables did respond, some say they wouldn’t do a thing. I’ve seen men like me be stabbed and left bleeding in the dirt because they didn’t have enough coin on them.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Garl took a breath and leaned in. “The streets. Have you noticed there are more beggars around these days?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there are. But some of them aren’t beggars. Some of them only wear the clothes and oversee the others, the real ones who plead for coin.”

  “And table scraps?”

  “That as well.” Garl nodded. “They’re always watching someone. The trouble is, you won’t know when they’re watching. If you had tossed me a coin and left, they would’ve been on me in moments for that very coin.”

  Impatience made Borchus sputter, “Who, by dying Seddon, who?”

  “There is a pack of rats ruling the streets. The leader is a snake called Strach. He has a number of beggars working for him. I’m not sure how many, but there’s many. Whatever they get—we get—we hand over to him or one of his brutes. If not, well, he’ll break fingers… twist bells. He’ll… he’ll put a knife into your eye and––”

  “They’re thieves?”

  Garl frantically shook his head, information gushing from him. “Not wholly thieves, though I’m certain it’s not above them. Strach is only one man with a few lads… but to rule, one only has to be ruthless. They’re one of many packs gnawing on Sunja’s bones. The Skarrs are pressed too hard with other matters to concern themselves with gutter shite like us. Some even say Strach pays the Street Watch to mind their business. He takes everything we might get or already have. Well, except food, that is. But if you don’t have coin when he comes around… he has men, and they… they punish you the first time. And you’ll disappear if there’s a next. I know of men who have vanished because they tried to hold coin back or even attempted to cross Strach and his lads. I know of others who’ve had their very eyes scooped from their heads. They’re animals, Borchus. Animals. You don’t know the pain these bastards inflict. They don’t look upon us as men or women anymore. We’re… we’re…”