Grim Solace (The Chasing Graves Trilogy Book 2)

by Ben Galley

  Temsa walked closer to me, looked up into my eyes and took some time measuring my lies. In the end they proved weighty enough to pass his inspection.

  ‘And what of your verdict?’ he asked me. ‘Will you continue to stare at these four walls, or will you do what’s best for your vapours and work with me? I have need of a locksmith tonight.’

  ‘Based on the late hour, I’d say you have nothing legal in mind,’ I replied.

  ‘If it’s not legal, it’s no fun, my father always said. Bless his soul.’

  ‘Sounds like a fine upstanding gentleman. Shame he had to go and conceive you.’

  Temsa’s talons dug into my uncovered foot, grinding against the stone beneath. My vapours refused to come free, as if he had impaled real flesh. There must have been copper in those gold claws. As he withdrew them, I hissed at the pain bounding up my leg.

  ‘Yes or no, shade? The hour is late indeed. Some of us still have lives to lead.’

  I played reluctant. At the very least, I’d get to stretch my lockpicking fingers. It had been too long since the lockboxes in the widow’s tower. ‘Fine. Yes.’

  Temsa blinked away the surprise as quickly as it had appeared on his face. Perhaps he had been expecting more of a battle. I shrugged. ‘No point fighting what I can’t fight, is there? I’ve had enough of that. Might as well do what I’m best at.’ At the very least, I could crack some locks while I waited for Temsa to drop his guard.

  ‘Smart shade.’

  I clapped my hands together soundlessly. The blue vapour of my fingers intermingled. ‘So, what have you got in mind?’

  Temsa bared a gold tooth. ‘An orgy.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  He took to circling me. ‘No event of mine, Caltro. Magistrate Ghoor’s. The good magistrate has a penchant for holding grand parties in the safety of his own home. Word has it they are very popular with the tors and tals. It’s a perfect opportunity to catch him unawares and claim a few extra spoils while I’m at it.’

  ‘Clever,’ I said, pandering to his scheming. ‘Who gave you the tip?’

  Temsa snorted. ‘I have my eyes and ears, living and dead.’

  I knew he meant the latter. The Cult. ‘Well, since you’re so flush with information, Tor, what are we talking? A vault? A safe?’

  ‘Vault. Like the others I’ve recently paid visits to, Magistrate Ghoor is old-fashioned. Has no belief in the security of our fine banks.’

  ‘Such a pity.’

  Temsa smirked. ‘You’re catching on.’

  ‘Thieves think alike.’

  I saw displeasure curl his lip. ‘I am a tor, Caltro. You’re the thief. And it is time to do your thieving.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I get any of the spoils?’

  Temsa looked about my room like a decorator given up on life. ‘A proper room, perhaps. Maybe one with a decent window. How’s that?’

  ‘I—’

  Before I could get further, he clicked his fingers and the guards grabbed me by the arms and muscled me along after him. Even though it would be temporary before my escape, I’d take a room over a cell or a wardrobe any day.

  Ani Jexebel was waiting for us in a small warehouse adjoining the tavern’s pyramid. The slanting walls were lined with figures in black armour. Each bristled with various degrees of sharp implements. Nearby, covered wagons waited with mules and horses lashed to them. Jexebel was standing beside the monster ghost, Danib. Both were wrapped in silk gowns that covered them head to toe, barely hiding the full suits of armour beneath. They looked like wardrobes with heads. As I was marched along, I idly wondered how quickly my manhood would have wilted after seeing those two arrive at an orgy.

  Temsa headed towards a carriage that was at odds with the rest of the gathering. It was a square box with gilded edges, with classic Arctian swirls and glyphs painted down its flanks. Two horses had the privilege of pulling it, and each wore a gigantic purple plume on their heads. How the driver could see over them, I had no idea.

  Before I was prodded into the coach by Jexebel’s gauntlet, another ghost draped a silk robe around me, one with silver thread spread like a ladder down its front.

  Inside, I was the paltry filling between a sandwich of Danib and Jexebel. Temsa sat opposite with far too much space to himself. He draped his hands over his ornate cane and stared at the three of us, a smile resting on his face. An uncomfortable grimace hovered on mine. I concentrated on ignoring the solid press of the armour-bound hulks either side of me.

  The carriage lurched onwards, and I listened to the sounds of myriad streets and their milling people roll by. Araxes never truly slept, but something about its air tonight seemed subdued, as if a fog had settled on the streets. I saw no such mist in the brief snatches of city I glimpsed through the shutters; just the hooded lanterns of closed shops, and the fleeting shine of blue as shades went about their business. I saw more of them as we swerved onto a high-road and rattled over flagstones built upon squat roofs. The going was faster with fewer peasants in the way. I could see why the rich had built their raised thoroughfares.

  The high-road led us deep into the city. As it turned out, Magistrate Ghoor lived near the Core Districts, far from Temsa’s lowly tavern. To attack a noble so brazenly in Araxes’ centre made him bolder than I’d thought him, and within me a poisonous weed took root: a hope that he would pull it off. The thief in me respected the challenge, but far too much for my liking. I cleared my throat, scrubbing that weed away. I received a sharp nudge from Jexebel in return.

  ‘Keep still,’ she growled.

  ‘Something to say, Caltro?’ asked Temsa.

  I groped for some words, an excuse to try and weaken his wariness some more. Thief’s banter.

  ‘This Magistrate Ghoor. What’s he done to deserve a visit from the likes of us?’ Us. No lines drawn between him and me. He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘His name was on the wrong list.’

  ‘Whose list? Yours?’

  Pointy interjected, making me flinch. ‘The Cult’s and the princess’. I heard him talk of both.’ As always, only I heard his voice.

  ‘You’re far too curious, Caltro,’ Temsa was saying.

  ‘I want to know this is not a dead-end job, pardon the pun.’ Now, puns need no pardoning, but I was playing a different Caltro tonight. I heard Pointy chuckling at the tor’s hip.

  ‘Impress me tonight, shade, and I will have more use for you.’

  I pushed him again. ‘When are you going after Widow Horix?’

  Temsa’s face became stormy. ‘Leave the widow to me.’

  ‘She still has my half-coin—’

  ‘You think too much of yourself, Caltro. You are not the glowing light at the centre of my plans. You are a cog in a machine much bigger than you know. Your freedom will come at my leisure. I told you, I will get your coin.’

  That nettled me, though I kept my tongue polite. ‘You don’t need to lecture me on cogs, Tor Temsa.’

  Temsa sighed. ‘Perhaps I should have opted for a less talkative locksmith. I cut the last one’s tongue out, you know.’

  ‘Harder to threaten a ghost with that.’ I stuck out my blue tongue. Impish, I know, but I was proving a point.

  Danib moved faster than thought, pincering my tongue with one hand and producing a copper blade with the other. The blade sizzled against my vapours, and I squirmed.

  Temsa was sniggering to himself. ‘Is it now? I’ve been a soulstealer for twenty-five years, Caltro. I know how to threaten men, dead or alive.’

  ‘Oo wom ime a memer ogthmeh,’ I gurgled, like a nursing infant grappling with my first words.

  ‘A better locksmith? What about that Evalon Everass? I hear she’s the best in the Reaches.’

  ‘I’m eh begth!’

  ‘Release him, Danib.’

  I rubbed my mouth, eyeing the big glowing lump with a sour face. ‘She wouldn’t work with the likes of you.’ At Temsa’s scowl, I added, ‘Whereas I am happy to.’

  ‘Happiness is for the liv
ing, Caltro, not for half-lives like you.’

  That put a cork in my unsuccessful attempt to lower his guard. I decided to distract him with my skills instead. I flexed my fingers as the carriage began to slow. An old habit, as I had no sinew to stretch, but it immediately brought a smile to my cheeks. I was there to pick a lock. A vault, no less. I could almost feel my old self again. Temsa was wrong; happiness could come to the dead, too.

  ‘We’re here,’ murmured Temsa as we jolted to a stop. The driver hauled open the door, showing us a square courtyard washed orange by two torches. They framed a wide door: a half-circle built of layered, varnished wood and black iron. I recognised it immediately: a Maxir door. Named after a doorsmith history had mostly forgotten, Maxirs were eye-wateringly expensive, designed to grow sturdier the more they were attacked. The harder the door was jolted, the tighter the springs held their bolts, the more the pins rattled down their channels into the frame. I hadn’t seen one in half a decade. Besides me, the only way through a Maxir door was to have a key, a battering ram the size of a house, or a polite invitation.

  We had the latter.

  Temsa swaggered assertively from the carriage, making us wait inside. House-guards loomed from the glare behind the torches. No questions, just lowered lances and a statement of, ‘Invitation, or leave!’

  The tor did not break pace, his foot, cane and talons making an interesting song on the courtyard’s sand and stone. He produced four envelopes and fanned them for one of the house-guards to examine. I watched the man’s eyes scan the lettering more than once. After a pause far too long for comfort, he waved a hand, and the other guards formed a channel towards the entrance. Jexebel and Danib plucked me from the carriage and practically carried me to the door. I let them, too busy admiring the Maxir design to care.

  A small hatch was embedded in the layers of wood and iron. It snapped open, and the house-guard thrust the invitations through the gap. We were rewarded with a clank and the ringing of greased cogs. The door cracked open, its jagged seam spilling lamplight across the courtyard, and we were ushered in.

  The starkness of the courtyard seemed to have sneaked into the atrium, and the two levels above that. Plain marble walls and carpetless steps led us upwards. Only half the oil lamps had been lit. I could see Temsa’s wary eyes shifting to Danib and Jexebel. They kept their hands straight by their sides, surreptitiously grabbing at weapons beneath their silk gowns. I just looked about, enjoying a change of scenery. Drab though it might have been, it was far more interesting than my cell.

  Pointy’s voice strode into my head. ‘Are you really going to help him?’

  ‘All part of the plan,’ I breathed, and the matter was left there. It wasn’t trust that kept the sword silent, I knew that.

  It seemed Magistrate Ghoor had a penchant for theatre. Our small party was left alone at the top of the stairs in front of an overwhelmingly plain iron door. The house-guards swiftly clattered down the stairs, ready to greet the next guest. Jexebel growled like a bear with a thorn in its paw.

  ‘Feels like a trap.’

  Temsa poked the door with his cane. There were no handles, no locks, no features of any kind. ‘Surely the good sisters couldn’t have made a mistake, m’dear.’

  Danib had already grown tired of the discussion and set his giant hands to the door. It was a simple riddle: with a mighty push, we were bathed in light and merry, cacophonous noise.

  A sprawling den of revelry and iniquity lay beyond the doors. My eyes, narrow in the glare of the shining braziers, torches and fire-breathers, flitted about, attempting to take it all in.

  Gossamer curtains hung at random from the domed ceiling, obscuring the true size of the hall and painting the various lewd scenes sapphire, emerald or copper. Draped in silks that left little to the imagination, crowds of guests swirled between the veils. They were either festooned in jewels and feathers, or daubed head to toe with coloured dyes and sparkling dust. Some wore masks decorated with antelope and beetle horns, others the patchwork pelts of desert cats. The guests danced and capered wildly between braziers and couches, whooping along to the battling melodies of a hundred harps, flutes and moans from about the hall. Miniature beetles, each as big as a wolf or desert hound, were led about on velvet leashes. I saw a brace of monkeys using the curtains as tree branches. Somewhere in the depths of the hall, behind the haze of pipe smoke, I swore I heard a cow lowing.

  Kegs of wine and beer sat on every surface not taken up by food or fornication. People lay beneath the kegs while others turned spouts above. Others looked on, cackling as the drunkards choked. Golden platters clattered to the marble every now and again, sending fountains of grapes, gritapples and roast shrews into the air. Laughter and cheers would follow as the strange rain pelted the crowds. I watched a wobbly pudding fly across the hall like a jellyfish plucked from the ocean. It collided with a curtain and slid onto a writhing mass of painted bodies. It barely halted the proceedings. Disturbingly, there were a few glowing figures in that tangle.

  I was proud to say that this was not my first orgy – I had once stumbled upon one during a heist, and spared a few moments with a very forceful lady lest she sounded the alarm – but it had not looked like this. This hive of lewdness was bedazzling, dizzying. It looked as if these people knew an apocalypse was coming on the morrow, and wanted to cram a whole life into one night. It was the distillation of all Araxes’ love for sin and debauchery, poured into one hall. There was no envy in me, no longing to have blood pumping through me so I could dive in. It was closer to horrifying than exciting. The complete abandonment of rules and civilisation wrinkled my lip. Had I been in the possession of a stomach I didn’t doubt it would have been turned.

  Temsa looked on with a bored look, as if this was an average night for him. He prodded me with his cane. ‘They say whatever your thirst, Araxes can slake it.’

  I stepped backwards as two naked men, barely older than boys and covered in grease, sped past us snorting with laughter. A man – who to call obese would have been putting it kindly – came shuffling after them, completely devoid of breath. He grinned at us with wine-stained lips and hurried on. I tried to keep my eyes from his bare midriff.

  ‘Let’s find our magistrate,’ ordered Temsa.

  We waded inwards, picking a weaving path between the rainbow drapes and the moaning piles. Several naked figures clung to Temsa, cooing at his eagle’s claw. He did not thrust them away, and instead allowed them to whisper saucy things in his ears. I heard some of the offers and they did not sound appealing, even to one such as me, whose sexual interactions were beyond scarce and usually expensive. The more I watched Temsa, the more I could see him enjoying the attention.

  ‘The perks of tordom are many, Caltro,’ he opined, seeing my sideways glances. ‘It’s almost a pity to ruin this party.’

  I caught the roll of Jexebel’s eyes and pondered whether there was a crack forming in her loyalty.

  Pointy grumbled privately. ‘I’ve seen some parties in my centuries, but never like this.’

  Temsa’s naked partygoers were distracted by two men bathing in large marble seashells filled with pink wine. We continued our tour.

  After much wandering, we found a small ring of men and women in a secluded alcove, propped up on massive burgundy cushions. The group was a spectrum of inebriation. Three lovers were mid-fuck, yet each was so drunk they kept forgetting what needed to be put in where. One man had fallen asleep between the buxom breasts of an enormous lady, naked but for a silk shawl. I wondered if he had suffocated. There were worse ways to die. Trust me.

  ‘Emperor and Code bless you!’ announced Temsa as he strode into the circle. I was held back by Danib and Jexebel. I felt the latter’s breath on my shoulder, disturbing my vapours. A few heads rose from their goblets, eyes rolling about drunkenly. ‘I am Tor Boran Temsa. Who might you be, Tals, Tors, or Sereks?’

  ‘Drunk!’ yelled a woman with a ponytail protruding from the side of her shaved head. Raucous laughter came from
her fellows.

  ‘I hearda you. Heard the rumoursh,’ another slurred, a large man utterly covered in wine stains and crumbs. His bushy blond beard had been dyed purple, and his foot was resting on the back of a naked ghost. She was frozen in shape, eyes shut.

  ‘Me?’ Temsa beamed.

  ‘You’re the… the…’ He paused to belch explosively. ‘Quick rysher, ain’t you? Wash out for him, shenelmen.’

  A few of the others propped themselves up on their elbows, blinking like stupefied toads, then remembered they held wine in their hands and slurped away.

  Temsa spread his hands wide to the group. ‘And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?’

  The man looked around. He jabbed his fingers at the two immediately beside him: a woman busy trying to keep her head from lolling, and a pox-scarred raven of a man. ‘She’sh Tal Berinia. He’sh a sherek. I’m a Shamber mashistrate.’

  After a bow, Temsa took a seat on an empty pillow beside him. ‘Magistrate…?’

  The fat man took his time recalling the answer. ‘Ghoor!’

  Temsa took up a discarded goblet of wine and raised it as high as his crooked back would allow. ‘To change!’

  Ghoor needed no excuse to drink. ‘To shange!’ He banged his foot on the back of the ghost, and I heard her whimper. I pursed my lips. This man certainly didn’t look like he deserved his rank, his tower, or his life. Neither did any of the others, by my reckoning. In a way, perhaps Temsa was doing good work, lancing these boils from the skin of Araxes. I looked behind me and saw just how many boils there were. The skin of Araxes was pustulant, and it dawned on me then that Temsa might kill them all. The game of the City of Countless Souls was a lucrative one when played without mercy or moral.

  After a wink from their boss, Danib and Ani marched back through the rambunctious crowd and to the nearest doorway. Nobody noticed. The house-guards standing about the hall were busy grinning ear to ear, their eyes murky with wine. Most of them had somehow misplaced their armour.

  For half an hour, Temsa kept the drunks busy with idle chatter, dancing around vague politics and city rumours. Time and time again, a murderer was mentioned by slurring tongues. Temsa seemed to be the talk of the city.