‘I know, Mr Bristol, I mean Jackal. I know. That is simply a down payment. You get the other half upon completion. Isn’t that how it’s done?’
Bobo considered the offer. It was becoming obvious that Granit Ko’Iron wasn’t the mastermind behind the Helmawr assassination plot. Plus Bobo felt an acidic taste welling up in the back of his mouth just thinking about working for this guy. But five thousand credits was a lot of money. A scavving lot of money! And what did he care for the Hive City families. In his mind they weren’t much better than the Spire nobles anyway, feeding off the hard work of others. Of course, the point was moot as he wouldn’t be in the Spire long enough to finish the job anyway.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But a job like this will take some time. Two locations to scout, two trips through the wall, transporting rotting flesh. I’ll need at least a week.’
The prince nodded. ‘That should be fine.’
Bobo got up to leave. ‘Just one thing, Prince,’ he said. ‘I thought you said you leave killing to the lowlifes. And yet here you are, sending the “head in the bed” message.’
‘Oh, I don’t consider this killing,’ said Prince Granit. ‘The Hive City families are barely above those animals my brothers and I hunt down in the Underhive. But I would never go around killing real people, Spire people. That would be barbaric.’
Scabbs and Yolanda found themselves back in the Sump Hole. As far as Scabbs was concerned, they could just stay there until their money ran out. It had been a particularly crappy day. And, as usual, Yolanda blamed it all on Kal Jerico.
‘Scavving Jerico,’ she said, slamming her bottle of wildsnake down on the table so hard that a stream of the greenish liquid spewed out the top along with the little, wriggling snake. ‘Fall down a hole, have to run around half the hive to find our way back in, all because he wants to go off and play Spire wedding all day long.’
Scabbs was unsure how all of that had been Kal’s fault, but he knew better than to contradict Yolanda when she got started railing about how their partner was the bane of her existence and at fault for every bad thing that ever happened to her.
While it was true that Scabbs and Kal had gotten her kicked out of her gang when they brought her in for a double bounty – she was wanted by the Guilders for crimes she committed as leader of the Wildcats, while her father, Lord Catallus, had put out a reward for the return of his wayward daughter – was it really Kal’s fault that she’d never told the Wildcats about her royal blood?
Scabbs tried to drink his wildsnake in peace, letting Yolanda continue ranting. He nodded every once in a while, but mostly just kept his head down. After a while, he noticed that the bar had gone quiet. He looked up, wondering what had happened, but it was just that Yolanda had stopped complaining about Kal.
Scabbs scratched at his elbow for a minute and then noticed his bottle was empty. He raised his arm to call the bartender over and a cascade of dead skin drifted off and settled on the table.
‘Whaddya need?’ asked the bartender. He wiped the table down with a dirty cloth, sending the spilled drink, the wriggling snake and the dead skin all onto the floor.
‘Another ’snake,’ said Scabbs, ‘and some grub. What’s the cook killed tonight?’
The bartender shook his head. ‘Nothing for you two until you settle up this tab.’
‘Tab?’ asked Scabbs. The bartender held a grubby slip of paper in his dirt-streaked hand.
Before the bartender could answer, Yolanda jumped to her feet and grabbed the piece of paper out of his hand. ‘Lemme see that,’ she said.
‘Five hundred creds for damages?’ she yelled. ‘What in the hive is that for?’
The bartender shrunk back a little, but his need for payment obviously outweighed his fear of Yolanda. ‘Well, there’ve been more than a few brawls lately,’ he said. ‘And I charge all patrons involved a brawl fee. Plus your damn dog broke through my door this morning. That door was real, simulated wood grain. Irreplaceable.’
Scabbs couldn’t help noticing that he’d already replaced it.
‘My dog?’ asked Yolanda, advancing on him. ‘My dog? Helmawr’s rump, that’s Jerico’s scavving dog. Make him pay for it.’
‘That’s what I’m doing,’ said the bartender. Sweat started to bead up on his forehead as Yolanda continued to glare at him. ‘This is Kal’s table. You’re Kal’s people…’
‘I am not Kal’s anything!’ said Yolanda.
Scabbs was amazed that the bartender hadn’t fled, or been killed yet. He did, however, move back behind the bar as he spoke next.
‘Fine, but Kal Jerico and associates cannot drink or dine in the Sump Hole until that bill is paid.’
Yolanda crumpled up the bill and dropped it on the ground. Scabbs could see every muscle in her neck and shoulders tense up. He completely expected her to pull out her sword or laspistol and drop the bartender where he stood. Instead, she grabbed the bag of creds they’d earned from Sonny’s head and dropped it on the bar.
‘There should be enough there to cover everything,’ she said through clenched teeth, ‘including this…’
Yolanda walked towards the door, her breach cloth flapping against her thighs in a staccato rhythm to the heavy beat of her boots on the floor. Two metres from the door, she pulled out her laspistol and fired three quick shots, hitting the hinges and the latch. She raised one leg and kicked at the centre of the door, sending it flying into the street, trailing smoke from the holes she’d burned through it.
She didn’t even look back as she called to Scabbs. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Looks like we’re working again tonight.’
Scabbs didn’t want to go, but knew the consequences of staying would be far worse. He scrambled to his feet and ran after her. As he looked down at the remains of the door, lying in pieces on the street, Scabbs shuddered. He wondered if perhaps going after Nemo and Feg would be safer than staying with Yolanda.
‘Mr Feg,’ called Nemo. ‘Mr Feg. Wake up!’
He flipped a switch on his console, which sent electricity coursing through Vandal Feg’s unconscious form. The huge body twitched uncontrollably, shaking so hard it threatened to tear apart the scaffolding holding Feg’s body suspended off the ground.
‘I think you killed him, boss,’ said Seek. Or was it Destroy? Nemo never could tell them apart. They wore nearly identical outfits – leather vests over skin-tight shirts and leather trousers tucked into thick work boots. One wore a red shirt and red bandana over his head, while the other donned blue. The colour coding didn’t help though, as he couldn’t remember which twin wore which colour, and he was pretty sure they sometimes switched.
‘I rather doubt that…’ Nemo decided to just leave off the name. He had no time for an argument. ‘Mr Feg is actually quite a bit stronger than he even appears. However, let us err on the safe side shall we?’
Seek and Destroy looked at each other and then both shrugged at the exact same moment.
‘Seek,’ said Nemo, ‘If you would be so kind as to administer an ampoule of adrenaline to Mr Feg’s heart, please?’
The twin wearing the blue bandana scooted over to the medi-pack and picked up a syringe with a long needle. He crawled under the apparatus which held Feg off the ground and positioned himself beneath the huge man’s chest, avoiding the tubes coming out of his neck and back that now hung limply around his face and chest.
Feg’s mechanical arm had been removed and set aside, but the tubes seemed to be permanently attached, so Nemo had ordered them left alone. Now he wished he’d pulled the damn things out himself as Seek seemed to have gotten inextricably intertwined with them.
‘Just jam it into his chest before he does die,’ screamed Nemo.
With that Seek plunged the needle hard into Feg’s exposed sternum and depressed the syringe all in one swift stroke. A moment later, Vandal Feg opened his eyes and screamed.
‘I’ll
kill you all. I’ll pound you into sludge! I’ll rip your hearts out and eat them while they still beat.’ As he screamed, Feg thrashed around in the scaffolding, trying to free his feet, head or hand.
At some point, he must have finally focused on Seek, who was trying to escape but had gotten caught in the flailing tubes. ‘You’re first, blue boy,’ he said and snapped his head forward, trying to bite Seek in the face.
Seek screamed for help, but his brother had doubled over in laughter. As soon as Seek extracted himself from the tubes he launched at Destroy, tackling him to the ground. The two started kicking and biting each other as Feg continued to scream.
At this point, Nemo had had enough of both Vandal Feg’s unwillingness to cooperate – even to the point of near death – and the twins’ inability to concentrate on the task at hand without devolving into a brotherly brawl.
Nemo flipped the switch again, and electricity crackled all along the scaffolding and Feg’s suspended body. That, for the moment, shut him up.
Nemo pulled a web pistol from a small compartment in his chair. The pistol had been liberated from Spire security some time ago and Nemo had paid a high price for it. He used it only in emergencies, but his stress level had now reached breaking point.
He pointed it at the squirming twins and fired. A tangle of sticky, milk-white threads spread out from the gun, enveloping the twins in their gooey web. They tried to struggle, but the threads hardened almost instantaneously, trapping them in their brotherly hug.
‘Boys,’ he said. They stopped struggling and looked at him. ‘Once you are free, I want you to go to the docks and look for the item Mr Feg retrieved from the royal transport. He is proving most difficult to reason with.’
‘What’d he take?’ asked Destroy.
‘You will be looking for a small box,’ said Nemo, showing the size with his hands. ‘No bigger than a medi-pack. It will most likely be within a bag of some sort, perhaps a suitcase or a duffel. He must have hidden it in the docks or the tunnel before he met you.’
‘We’ll find it for you, boss,’ said Seek.
‘Yes,’ said Nemo. ‘Yes, you will. Do not come back until you do, understand?’
The boys didn’t respond.
‘Do you understand?’ he growled.
‘Yessir,’ they said in unison.
Wotan stood atop the lone Spire guard on duty at the wall and barked. He’d leapt at the man several minutes earlier, driving him to the ground and landing on his chest. Since then he’d barked almost incessantly at the man, occasionally stopping to growl and snap at his face.
The guard had started screaming from the moment he’d been able to draw a breath again and hadn’t stopped except when Wotan growled and snapped. Then he just shut his eyes and twisted his head back and forth.
The metal mastiff heard footsteps run up behind him. He stopped barking and turned to growl at the approaching men. Three men in identical uniforms to the guard at his feet skidded to a halt about five metres away from Wotan.
‘Great, holy Emperor!’ said one of the men. ‘What in the Spire is that thing?’
Wotan barked at them and then opened his mouth wide and plunged his head down towards the exposed neck of the guard beneath him. He sunk the tips of his teeth just into the man’s soft skin. Several small trickles of blood dripped off his spiked, metal teeth onto the marble courtyard.
‘S-stay back,’ said the guard.
‘I’ve got a clean shot,’ replied one of the men.
Wotan wasn’t sure what they were saying, but he didn’t like the tone of the last one’s voice. He growled again and clamped down a little harder, breaking the skin in several more places.
‘N-no,’ said the guard beneath him. ‘Don’t. Just get it off me.’
‘How?’ said another man.
‘Needler?’
‘Nah, it’s metal.’
‘Electricity?’
‘No. You’ll kill me, too,’ whined the pinned guard.
‘Rocket launcher?’
‘No!’ screamed the guard, which just made the mastiff dig its teeth in deeper.
Wotan got tired of the men arguing back and forth. He stepped off to the side of the guard, keeping his mouth clamped on the man’s neck, and started moving towards the huge open wall. He’d found in the past that gentle pressure on the neck will make most men quite pliable.
The guard was no different. Instead of allowing his neck to get ripped open, he scooted himself along behind the metal mastiff as he inched towards the opening.
‘Where’s it going?’ asked one of the men.
‘It wants to drag Harrell into Hive City.’
‘Let it.’
‘We can’t open the wall.’
‘Why not?’
‘Harrell’s got the only key.’
Wotan and the guard had reached the crack in the enormous wall. The mastiff began growling and exerting more and more pressure on the man’s neck. The guard reached into his pocket and fished out something small and golden. He tossed it towards the other men.
‘Open it,’ rasped the bleeding guard. ‘Maybe it just wants to leave.’
‘There’ll be hell to pay afterwards.’
‘Won’t be our problem. None of us were even here.’
‘Right.’
‘Right.’
‘Okay.’
One of the men came up to the wall, inserted the golden object into a small hole and turned it. From the other side of the massive wall, Wotan heard the blare of the siren wind up as the crack began to widen. He released the pressure on the man’s neck slightly as he kept an eye on the wall.
Once the crack had grown large enough, Wotan unclamped his jaw and loped through the opening. On his way through, he had to dodge around and through the throng of Hivers coming the other way. He recognized several from the lines earlier. All of them were screaming.
‘Freedom!’
‘To the Spire!’
‘Finally!’
‘I’m coming home, ma!’
Wotan ran on. He wanted to make sure he made it out of the courtyard on the other side before the blare of the horn began to signal the closing of the wall. He remembered what had happened last time.
‘You agreed to do what?’ asked Kauderer.
The two men had arranged to meet every twelve hours so Bobo could update Kauderer on his mission. Bobo had followed a long, convoluted set of protocols to get to the meeting place. First he’d hired a specific private room at the Kitty Club and asked for Brandi, Sandi and Candi.
That part he’d enjoyed, but the fun had ended much too quickly. Once the girls got going, being quite loud and boisterous to cover his escape, Bobo slipped out of the room through a rear exit. This put him on a deserted street not far from an arched gateway.
Bobo peered into the darkness in either direction, making sure he was alone, and then slipped through the arch. Suddenly, he was outside the Spire, standing on a bridge between the Spire and the grand library. He stopped and stared at the pinpoints of light dotting the blanket of night above him. The white marble façade of the Spire loomed behind him like a massive shadow as he crossed into the grand library.
Only scholars, scribes and students were allowed here, and then only during the day, as the library had no internal lighting, relying on natural sunlight for all those studying inside. This made the library the perfect spot for a late night rendezvous.
Bobo slipped across the bridge and entered a series of numbers into a data pad, which gave him access to the library. He then had to wend his way through the stacks, pull out a particular volume and make his way to a study carrel.
Kauderer had been waiting in the carrel opposite him.
‘I took a job for Prince Granit of Ko’Iron,’ said Bobo. ‘I couldn’t exactly turn him down and maintain my cover as a crack assassin.’
<
br /> Kauderer grumbled something under his breath. Bobo found it little easier to talk to the hawkish man in the dark. Even though he couldn’t see that sharp nose pointing down at him, the man’s eyes still found a way to pierce the gloom and glare at him over the top of the carrel.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Bobo. ‘The wedding is in three days and I told Granit I would need a week to do the job. ‘I can just leave him hanging. Serve the impudent fool right anyway.’
Silence reigned in the dark library for several minutes before Kauderer responded. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have a better idea.’
‘Oh no,’ said Bobo.
‘Oh yes,’ said Kauderer. ‘You’re going to do the job and finish well before deadline. I’ve got an operative in Hive City that can deliver the head tonight. You scout out the Greim estate and I will contact you before morning.’
‘And why are we doing this?’ asked Bobo. ‘Won’t this mess up trade relations or something?’
‘House Helmawr cares very little whether Ko’Iron or Greim or anyone else controls the iron contract. We get our cut no matter what. But doing this job in one night will launch your reputation into the stars.’
‘And then,’ said Bobo, ‘whoever wants the future Lord Helmawr dead will come a-calling for the miracle worker, huh?’
‘Exactly.’
‘That’s actually a pretty good plan,’ said Bobo, adding a late, ‘Sir,’ at the end.
‘Why, thank you,’ said Kauderer, and Bobo could hear the ice chilling on each word. ‘You have no idea how much your praise means to me.’
Bobo got up to leave, but Kauderer cleared his throat. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ he asked. ‘The money?’
Bobo tossed a wad of credits over the top of the carrel.
‘This operation is costing House Helmawr plenty,’ said Kauderer. ‘This twenty-five hundred barely covers your wardrobe.’
Bobo slipped out of the study carrel and made his way back to the stacks to shelve the book. As soon as he was certain he was out of ear shot, he muttered. ‘Smug bastard. No better than that white-haired freak.’ He patted the extra twenty-five hundred in his pocket.
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