Passages

by Olan Thorensen

  To avoid being seen hanging around the hall, he alternated observing from different distances, walking behind clusters of pedestrians and pretending to be a group member, and finally, in the afternoon, going to the roof of a three-story building two hundred yards away. There, he sat in the shadows with a view of the guild hall’s street entrance.

  Satisfied he’d seen enough for the first day, he returned to the inn, this time walking the five miles. Famished, he ate at the inn’s combined dining area and small pub. He retired to his room to think about the guild hall and people’s goings and comings. From the degree of traffic in and out of the building, he estimated close to a hundred men and a few women worked inside. Another approximate hundred or more, mainly men, visited the building for anywhere from a few minutes to several hours every day.

  He didn’t see Dumon Klinster or Dumonote Rynlow. They either had business elsewhere or had come to the hall before Mark arrived. The next day, Mark left his room two hours before sunrise, so he could observe early arrivals. He found a good position on the rooftop of a two-story building a hundred yards away and on the opposite side of the street from the hall.

  When he took up position, he saw a different man at the door—this one armed with a musket. At the ring of a cathedral bell, the armed guard was replaced by the doorman Mark had seen the first day. The two men exchanged words, and the night guard walked away. Over the next few minutes, two similarly armed men exited—the only people leaving, as other men began arriving and going inside.

  So, thought Mark, looks like three armed guards at night—one at the door and two inside. The big assumption is that they don’t keep armed men inside during the workday. Now . . . where’s Klinster and Rynlow?

  Mark’s early arrival succeeded in letting him spot one of his quarries. It was light enough for Mark to see clearly when a carriage stopped, and a slender, red-haired man exited. Rynlow. The doorman opened the hall door and let the man pass without checking his business.

  “Asshole number one,” said Mark, mumbling before he looked around to confirm he was alone on the roof. “Now where’s number two?”

  More men arrived, but none appeared armed.

  “The first three men must be guards or night watchmen or whatever they’re called here, but no one is obviously armed during the day.”

  Hours passed. No Klinster.

  “Well, is he somewhere else, did he come in the back, or does he work from home?”

  Mark resisted the itch to start observing the rear entrance because he’d risk not seeing the dumon arrive in front. If he didn’t watch the front entrance an entire day, he could miss Klinster’s arrival.

  Mark had brought food and water. He kept constant watch on the front entrance all day, except for twice urinating at the opposite side from his perch. Once, someone came onto the stairs to the roof. Mark ducked behind a set of chimneys for five minutes until the person left. While hiding, Mark used the time to first silently curse and then pray Klinster didn’t choose to arrive then.

  He ended his surveillance when the dim light precluded his identifying anyone. By the time most of the guild staff had left for the evening, six commonly dressed men entered the hall.

  I bet that’s the evening cleaning crew, thought Mark. I didn’t see such men leave in the morning, so they probably finish cleaning and leave earlier.

  Satisfied he’d seen all he could this day, he caught a dayworkers’ wagon returning to near his inn, which saved him from walking the five miles for the second time that day.

  While eating and finishing the one stein of beer he allowed himself, he decided he’d observe the rear entrance the next day. Three days later, it dawned on him that he kept missing Klinster because the dumon lived in the building, probably on the top floor with the different window arrangement.

  The next day he returned to observing the front entrance. At mid-morning, Klinster, accompanied by three other men, exited the front door and got into a carriage. Two hours later, the four men returned.

  “That’s it, then. The son of a bitch lives there.”

  To confirm it, the next day Mark changed position to a three-story building directly opposite the guild hall’s top floor corner with the series of adjacent windows. What he hadn’t noticed before was a small balcony just large enough for one person. At mid-afternoon, a man opened a glass-paned door and stepped onto the balcony. Klinster.

  “All right, motherfucker. I’ve got you spotted. Now how to get to you?”

  Mark missed the last workers’ wagon by seconds. He saw it leave the pickup point when he was a block away. However, he had made the same walk enough times that the route back to the inn required only minimal attention while he plotted his next moves.

  “I could burn the building down in the middle of the night. If I plan the fire correctly, Klinster won’t be able to escape. But what if there are others in the building?”

  Mark’s anger at Klinster was as strong as ever, even if the blaze had cooled to a cold determination. However, his lack of moral qualms about killing Klinster and Rynlow didn’t extend to innocents. If possible, he wanted to enter the hall when only Klinster and the three guards were inside, which meant sometime in the hours before the working day began. That plan seemed like the best option because catching the dumon outside the hall might be a chancy proposition. The dumon seldom left the hall and, when he did, was always accompanied by two men who had the rough, alert look of bodyguards. Mark decided getting to Klinster had to happen in the hall at night. It would minimize the potential of killing innocents and would be better for him to flee in darkness after the confrontation—assuming he survived.

  His surveillance pointed to three guards at night—one at the front and two inside. He didn’t count guards as a protected class of workers. The door guard carried a large key that he used to open the door when he allowed the occasional authorized early evening visitor inside. On the one evening Mark stayed to watch these after-work-hour visitors, they all left again before midnight. One of them was a well-dressed young woman who stayed two hours. Mark could guess her business with Klinster.

  However, a serious issue complicated his planning—he didn’t know the layout of the building’s interior. His only experience was limited to the entry foyer and part of the second floor. He couldn’t walk in and ask for a map, so he needed another source of information. The solution was obvious.

  The next day, he waited until early afternoon before riding his horse to the vicinity of the guild hall. On previous days when Mark watched the hall, Rynlow left by carriage within minutes of cathedral bells signaling the workday’s end. For an hour and a half, Mark rode and led his horse to public watering troughs, all the while staying within the first three blocks of Rynlow’s carriage route. He couldn’t keep constant surveillance on the hall, but when a carriage passed him that looked like Rynlow’s, he rode behind it to a posh neighborhood set along a river. The twilight worked in his favor because he could follow closer than in daylight. Just as he began to worry that he looked too out of place for the surroundings, the carriage pulled into the drive of an expansive house.

  Mark stopped and dismounted at the edge of the property, about fifty yards from the house and partly screened by shrubbery. A lit lantern hanging next to the front door of the house let him identify Rynlow.

  The following morning, Mark waited two blocks away from Rynlow’s house and along the route back to the hall. He’d noticed that on half the days, Rynlow arrived at the hall only about mid-morning. Mark suspected he knew why the dumonote was late those days.

  On cue, Rynlow’s carriage passed Mark’s position before deviating from the normal route by turning east. Mark followed a hundred yards behind and mingled with local traffic, so he didn’t think he would be noticed even if the dumonote and his driver were checking.

  The carriage pulled into the yard of a building with scores of workers lined up at a kiosk. It looked so similar to large factories Mark had seen in old newsreels and movies that he suspected
it was a cloth-making facility. Rynlow’s carriage bypassed the main building to stop at a smaller structure attached in the rear.

  Mark had seen all he could for now, so he left to find shops to purchase items he needed. Later, he found an open field two miles away, staked his horse, and took a nap on the ground, using the saddle as a pillow.

  It was a moonless night when he returned hours later to the presumptive factory. After watching and listening for half an hour, he decided there were no guards or night watchmen. He tied his horse within a small grove of trees to the rear of the factory, climbed over a six-foot wooden fence, and crept to the attached windowless building with two large double doors. Heavy metal locks hung on the outside of both doors. He walked around the sides of the building and found an opening fifteen feet off the ground. At about the height of a basketball rim—ten feet—a beam with an eye hook fixed into the bottom of the distal end stuck out from the opening.

  He had played basketball in high school, though football and wrestling were his main sports. What he lacked in jumping ability, he had made up for in aggressive defense and a decent shooting touch. What he had never done was dunk the ball or even come closer to the rim than six to eight inches. Still . . . that was “Earth Mark.” The new Mark was more toned and muscled than in his first life. From experience, he believed the AI’s claim that he would have more energy.

  He backed off thirty feet, raced forward, and leaped as if going for a dunk. His right forearm hit the beam, so much higher than he’d expected that he almost lost his grip when gravity counteracted his leap. His left arm flew up, and his fingers clamped to the beam.

  He hung in surprise for several seconds, then, with a heave, pulled himself up onto the beam and into the building’s opening. He was in a large room with a wooden plank flooring, bins of fiber of some kind, and boxes of something stacked along two walls. One moon and the stars gave enough light through the opening for him to find a ladder going to the ground floor. He listened. No sounds.

  Careful in footing and grip, he descended the ladder to where there was even less light. His dark-adjusted eyes let him suspect he was in a work area. He stood for several minutes, waiting for his eyes to further adjust as much as they could. Gradually, he began to detect shapes that might be machinery, a suspicion confirmed when he stumbled into a wooden frame he identified by feel—a traditional Frangel loom. He walked while using his hands to find more looms until he came to something different. It took him only seconds to recognize a speed loom from Tregallon.

  “Son of a bitch,” he mumbled. “They might not want me to speed up cloth making, but I bet they plan on getting filthy rich themselves on my looms and spinners.”

  His instinct was to set the building on fire to destroy his machines—if he couldn’t use them, why let the guild? He stood in place several minutes, warring with his options.

  “I can’t,” he yelled. “If Klinster is killed and the Tregallon machines burned, it’ll be like posting a notice ‘Mark Kaldwel was here, you assholes!’”

  Klinster must have enemies. If Mark had a chance to cast blame on other potential assailants, it would be foolish for him to draw suspicion to himself.

  He froze and listened. Had anyone heard his outburst? Nothing after two minutes. He laughed.

  “Okay, so I can’t set a fire,” he said, softly this time. “But hey, the spinning and better looms will be out there, even if I don’t get the credit. Maybe it serves me right. What I do know is that neither Rynlow or Klinster will benefit.”

  Three evenings later, Mark lurked in bushes near the front door of Rynlow’s house. The innkeeper’s one-horse cart he’d rented for the day waited, tied within a grove of trees. On cue, the same carriage came up the drive and stopped at the house. Rynlow exited and said something to the driver, who then drove off. The dumonote went to the front door. Up to this point, everything had been routine until Rynlow pulled out a key to unlock the door.

  From twenty feet away, Mark burst out of the shrubbery. The dumonote reacted too late. Mark slammed him against the house’s masonry wall, stunning Rynlow.

  Before he could recover, Mark stuffed a cloth ball into the dumonote’s mouth and secured it with a gag tied behind his head. Rynlow struggled futilely, as Mark tied his hands behind him and his feet together.

  Standing to look at his handiwork, Mark surveyed the area for witnesses. The night was quiet. No one was in sight.

  Rynlow fought against the bindings, and Mark realized someone might hear the muffled sounds. He pulled the body upright to put his mouth next to Rynlow’s, a knife at the dumonote’s throat.

  “You feel this blade?” Mark whispered. “I can easily cut your throat. You’ll bleed out right here for someone to find you. Shut up and you might live.”

  Mark had no qualms in lying, at least to this man.

  Three hours later, in the deep basement of an abandoned building a mile from Mark’s inn and farther away from the center of Brawsea, Mark stood over the bound body of Dumonote Rynlow. Once heir apparent to be the next Cloth Guild Dumon, he was now a lifeless lump. At first, the man had resisted giving information, and Mark wondered whether he would ever come to grips with what he’d done to break another human. He feebly consoled himself that it was nothing compared to what Rynlow’s men had done to Holt Firman. In the end, Mark gave the sobbing man water, wiped his face with a wet cloth, told him he would be released, and then shot him in the back of the head when he wasn’t expecting it. It was the closest to mercy Mark could manage.

  However, Mark now possessed a description of the Cloth Guild hall structure, including the layout of the dumon’s residence, the number and placement of guards, and the cleaning workers’ night schedule.

  His next action was to permanently disappear Rynlow’s body. In planning for this night, Mark had lacked a quick solution until he saw a wagon with a body coming from one of the worker encampments near his inn. He followed and witnessed the body being tossed into a pit by two men. After the men left, he approached the eight-foot-deep, fifteen-foot-wide hole and found it contained a dozen or more bodies—all men.

  Now, Mark loaded Rynlow’s body into the cart and steeled himself. He drove the cart to the mass grave and hobbled the horse, which reacted badly as soon as it smelled the pit’s contents. Then Mark worked as fast as he could. With a cloth covering his mouth to stifle the smell and wearing pants, shirt, and leather gloves he’d bought for this purpose, Mark tossed Rynlow’s naked body into the pit. He left it among several other fresh corpses lying on top of those in various stages of decomposition.

  Mark drove to a garbage dump only a few hundred yards away. There, he stripped off his blood-splattered garments and threw them and Rynlow’s clothing onto a burning pile of trash. He then dressed again and drove the cart once more toward Brawsea. Time was critical. The first workers would start arriving at the guild hall in four hours.

  After reaching the hall, he led the horse and cart to the alley in the rear and tied the horse to exterior piping—for water or waste, he didn’t know. He had to hope no one stole the cart while he was gone.

  He couldn’t hide his physical frame, but he could cause witnesses to confuse the pursuit if they thought there were two suspects. From under the cart’s driver seat, he pulled out an ash-filled stein he’d pilfered from the inn. He worked the ashes into his hair and beard. In daylight, it would look ridiculous, but in the dim light, the front entrance guard would see a big man with gray or graying hair—hopefully.

  The bored, musket-carrying night guard at the front entrance of the guild hall was the same one every night. Mark ran from the east alley, shouting, “Help! A man’s been attacked in the alley. Help!”

  The guard whirled to face Mark’s direction and raised his musket to port arms. When Mark was twenty feet away, the guard pointed the musket at Mark.

  “Stop!”

  Mark obeyed and leaned against the wall.

  “As I walked by the alley, I heard a man call out. He’s lying near the
back door of this building and seems hurt bad. He said to come here for help.”

  “You’ll have to get help somewhere else. I can’t leave the door.”

  Mark stood back up and shrugged. “Doesn’t make any difference to me. I don’t know the man. He said his name is Rynlow, and he’s a dumonote in the Cloth Guild. I’ve done my duty and told you. Do what you want.”

  Mark made as if to walk away.

  “Wait! Rynlow? You say that’s his name?”

  “Something like that. He could hardly talk, bleeding so much.”

  The guard rocked on his feet, caught in a conundrum.

  He’s probably been drilled to never leave his post, thought Mark. But he has to know that if it’s really Rynlow needing help and he doesn’t respond, he might be in even deeper shit.

  A stream of frustrated curses rolled from the guard’s mouth. “All right! Quick. Show me where he is.”

  Mark trotted to the alley, the guard close behind.

  “In there, behind those boxes. I’m not going in again. The man who attacked the dumonote might have come back. I’m not armed.”

  “Follow me. You’re not going anywhere until I find out what’s going on.”

  Twenty feet into the alley, Mark picked up a makeshift sap, a small cloth sack holding a fistful of pebbles. A blow to the back of the guard’s head resulted in a grunt, and the guard collapsed face-down on the brick paving. Mark checked him.

  Lordy be. Just like in the movies and books. Of course, they usually use wet sand, but you make do with what you’ve got.

  The man breathed deeply, which relieved Mark. He wouldn’t need his backup plan of using the heavy, eight-inch-bladed knife. He had bought it to replace the one whose tip broke while he dug mortar at Argah’s shop in Kaledon. However, the success of the sap blow didn’t mean the knife wouldn’t have a use prior to Mark’s entering the hall. He hurried back to where the sap had been and picked up a small bottle of cooking oil. He’d never looked into the oil’s origin, but it resembled olive oil in feel and smell.