Shadowcloaks

by Benjamin Hewett

  Grimms looks down at me with hard eyes. He swallows carelessly and keeps his stride, doesn’t even drop me.

  I push harder.

  “You cut me, they kill you,” he says simply. “Easy as that, Mr. Steeps. Boss might want you alive, but this whole town is gonna blow like a haystack with heatworms. Don’t make my job any harder.”

  I ease up on the knife and everybody else eases up on the scowls.

  “This isn’t about taxes, is it?” I ask. “This isn’t about Lord Bailey’s trouble with the muleteers, or an early freeze, or . . . or routine collections. This isn’t even about you thinking I’m a Nightshade.”

  With the squad leader gone and the tension broken, Grimms opens his mouth for good.

  “No, you little bean-fart, this in’t about taxes. Not anymore. This is about retribution, and reputation. The King’s Due never arrived in Doward. Ector’s lord-in-charge was murdered on Deepwinter’s Eve, along with his entire family. Nobody steals from the King of Eastmarch, not even Tenebrous an’ his merry little band of jick-dabbers. The Grey Mules have lost a hundred companies in the history of Eastmarch, an’ we’ll lose another company by the end of the week, but when the next wagons roll out of Ector, there’ll be money on them, dammit, an’ a giant bag of Nightshade heads.”

  Grimm spits, and I notice tooth grit and blood in the spittle as it splatters the plaster of the building next to us.

  “Lord Bailey?” Lucinda whispers.

  “Dead,” Grimms says.

  “And his guards?”

  “Dead.”

  “And his children?”

  “Dead.”

  Lucinda’s hand is on her mouth. Her exhalation is half a sob, so piercing that it stops everyone dead in their tracks.

  Except Grimm. “Get yer asses moving,” he barks. “You think those glubshisting fugnuts are going to slow down?”

  Everybody moves.

  Lucinda’s face is pale, but she can’t seem to let it go. “How bad was it?”

  “They left the bodies swinging from the pennant wires,” Grimm growls. He elaborates a bit on the ‘Shades methods for dealing with Lord Bailey.

  I try to tune him out. As Lords go, Bailey was a decent man. He helped us escape on our way out of Ector and tried to keep the city reasonably honest. No wonder the city seems so hopeless.

  “Whatever happened in Ector last fall’s got the ‘Shades thicker ‘n ants and madder ‘n hornets,” Grimms says eventually. “Cap wants to know why.”

  “My friend stole their secret ciphers,” I say.

  Grimms grunts. “Yeah. I heard about that.”

  “Could this have been brewing before Magnus showed up in Ector?” Lucinda asks. “An operation like this takes months in planning. They must have pre-positioned themselves on Bailey’s serving staff or something.”

  “I don’t know, Lucinda,” I say. “I’m not sure they’d be patient like that.”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Grimms interrupts. “See a ‘Shade? Torch a house. That’s how this works. Nobody’s getting an interview. Except maybe you.”

  It’s quiet again as we march. There are people in the doorways watching us pass, but the streets are deathly still. The entire city feels like it’s been stuffed with dry kindling just waiting for a spark. Carmen may already be dead, burned alive in one of the houses the ‘Shades are living in.

  “What about Lady Selwin’s house?” Lucinda asks suddenly.

  Every city in Eastmarch has two separate governing houses. If the First Lord is dead, then there’s a good chance they went after the First Lady, too.

  Grimms says nothing. His face matches his name, carrying me like a bundle of firewood.

  “Grimms?”

  “Don’t know nothin’ about her.”

  We pass two smoking buildings. There’s a sentinel watching them burn and a conscripted bucket brigade throwing water on adjacent buildings. The sentinel nods, turns back to watching the front door, red-and-grey armband angry in the smoke. He has watchmen on the adjacent rooftops.

  “What about Upper Ector?” I ask. “The ‘Shades are bound to be thicker up there. They’re an entitled lot.”

  Grimms shakes his head. “Haven’t been up there. Don’t have enough men.”

  We march on, me carried like a child, Lucinda hobbling along draped over the shorter taxman. We round another two blocks, go down an alley near the waterfront, through an abandoned warehouse, and into an adjacent inn that has been conscripted for expediency.

  Here Grimms slows to exchange brief news with the doorman, who is standing under a stone lintel carved with a large jackass. I can’t see an original signpost, but there’s a leather warrant nailed to the doorpost that reads The Rented Mule.

  Fitting.

  Men are eating at a table. Tax Watch men, but not from the ship. They’re splattered in mud and blood and they eat as if they haven’t had food for days. One of them tells a joke about a Nightshade begging for mercy, and a little fire returns to their faces.

  “. . . mercifully rammed my sword right down his throat. It’s a good thing too, ‘cause he almost got me with his boot spike.”

  “Right you are. And ain’t nobody complaining,” a skinny one says. “Captain said this’d be a special assignment. Baiting, trickery, and smash-mouth skirmishing.”

  “Remember how we used old, dying Rooney to draw out those two ‘Shades in Dowardwall?”

  Their faces say they do, and their bitter grins say they’d sentence their own friends to death, and themselves, if it meant bringing down another ‘Shade.

  So much hatred. So much pride.

  In the alcove by the stairs there’s a scribe furiously taking dictation from an older man. The hourglass by his inkwell is dribbling out the last blood-grains onto the pile of sand that’s come before. The man talking to the scribe has a wistful, earnest look on his face.

  “. . . an’ scribe me now this,” he says, rubbing his tired and stubbled face. “‘Tell Jenny an’ the boys tha’ we held ‘em off until Jasper found a tunnel out. ‘Neath that hulk on Lantern street. An’ I never said it before, but I reckon I’ll say it now, ‘cause you ought to know it, Jenny. I love you. I loved you like I ain’t never loved another woman.’” He glances up at the hard, wiry scribe but there is no judgement, only the solemnity of one taking down last letters.

  “You write that?” the older man asks nervously, peering at the words. Obviously he can’t read.

  The scribe nods.

  The creaking of the stairs and clomp of the rescue squad’s boots obscure the rest of the conversation, but it doesn’t matter. The same words are scribed in the heart of every man who loves and yet marches inexorably toward death. They are chiseled in my own.

  I close my eyes and feel the echoes of his loss, even as I feel strength flowing from my ring, returning to my leg, coming from somewhere above, maybe the attic or rooftop. I feel a sliver of hate come with it, and a sliver of peace.

  The man sitting by the door at the end of the hall kicks it open for us, too tired to stand as we pass into the command room, its center table piled high with maps and daggers and one Nightshade ring.

  “Help yourself,” says the door guard. He points to a pile of goods in the corner, things that nobody has taken the time to sort and organize. “We’ve been compromised. This may be your last chance.” But with me being carried, and Lucinda supported, neither of us is in shape for rummaging.

  The captain, the one from the boat, is propped up on a cot, arm in a sling, a couple of his lieutenants gathered close around him. Nobody is looking at the table, the door, or Lucinda and me. It’s like we’ve walked in on a private moment.

  Everyone is looking at Cap, and Cap is looking straight at Santé with an unmistakable smile on his face. The other lieutenants don’t seem bothered by the favoritism. “Pan’s beard, I love you boy,” Cap says, “but you need to get your ass moving now. Otherwise this planning goes to hell.”

  “Yessir,” Santé grunts, and he turns away with
out another word. He doesn’t spare a glance for Lucinda and me as he strides past us. Instead, he leans forward like a man willing himself to do something he hates. His heavy footfall accelerates to a run in the short hall, and he hits only every fifth step on his way down the stairs, wildly more sure-footed than any meatbrick has a right to be.

  “We’re here, Cap,” Grimm says finally, clearing his throat. “Found them, just like you said I would.”

  Grimm finally puts me down. I straighten, finding I can finally put weight on my leg, though it hurts to high heavens. The exposed skin around the stab wound is pink, but the wound already looks three weeks old. I look at Lucinda, but she just shrugs and stares at the table in front of us.

  I brace myself on the table as well and study the maps, noting several houses marked with red paint and smudged out. Nobody seems to care that I’m looking at their carefully drawn-out plans. “What’s this about reviewing my accounts?” I ask in my bravest voice.

  Everybody ignores me.

  The captain coughs something red into his handkerchief, tries to sit a little straighter, muttering something to Grimms, who has joined the lieutenants on the other side of the table. Most of them aren’t much better off than Cap.

  I strain to listen in on their hushed conversation and I can tell that Lucinda is doing the same.

  “Was it a trap?” the captain asks. “Was she there?”

  “Aye.”

  “And a Dreadlord?”

  “Aye. One of the weaker ones. Probably killed his lover in her sleep, or something like that.”

  The Captain’s eyes are calculating through the pain, formulating questions in his mind and then discarding them, obviously trying to winnow down to the most important ones. “Not Karkus, then. Or Ragus. Did you have to rip Mr. Steeps free yourself?”

  Grimm shakes his head. “Timing was off, Captain. It should’a been over by the time we got there.”

  “But . . ?”

  “Pint-Size stabbed himself rather than be taken. And Little-Mrs-Paladin mus’ have spooked the Dreadlord.”

  The Captain grins across the table at me like a shrewd, old, banker-priest. “Gods what a find you are, Mr. Steeps. A thief who pays his taxes and kills Dreadlords.”

  “Acquisitioner. And I haven’t killed anyone.”

  The air in here is suffocating. I can feel the Nightshades around us, feel them creeping across rooftops and through alleys. I can feel it in my ring: four full ‘Shades and a small platoon of their shadowboys, apprentices who will likely never wear rings.

  “They’re coming,” I say.

  “Of course they are, Mr. Steeps. Why do you think I brought you here? They’ll want to eliminate our headquarters and the famous Teamus Steeps all at once, a target that can’t be ignored. They’ll be so angry they’ll come in hot. Just the way we like them. Stupid and overconfident.”

  “You’re a decoy,” I whisper incredulously. “We’re decoys.”

  The Captain’s bloody smile is all I need to see. “Aye, Mr. Steeps, and the cards are flying fast.”

  I flex my fingers and draw my remaining dagger. “My wife needs me.”

  He looks at my dagger, now pointed at him, and gives me a flat look. “You going to do their work for them?”

  I feel his whispered question as much as I hear it. It scorches my soul. “Where do you stand, Mr. Steeps?”

  Lucinda doesn’t let me mull this over. “He stands for light.” She shoves the man supporting her away and loosens her sword, forces her damaged leg into motion, stumbling but finally taking the weight on her own. Pan, but she heals fast.

  There are shouts above and below us, the thumping of footsteps on the roof and the smell of smoke from adjacent buildings.

  The Captain sees my despair. “You’d never have made it to her, Mr. Steeps,” he says. “There are too many of them, even for a full company of the Greys. They’re on this city like maggots on a dog’s carcass. This way, at least, your death will mean something.”

  Words I remember Tom saying come to my lips unbidden. Strange words. Words that open the small doors to sludge-trickles of power. It’s a weaker magic, much weaker than the soul-beat power I can harness when Red’s around, but wondrous all the same. My dagger sparks as I repeat them under my breath. It feels like swearing.

  Cap should be terrified but he only smiles, jerks a little as a shock travels between us. “A curse, Mr. Steeps? We haven’t even discussed your accounts yet.”

  I ignore him, mostly, trying to decide where they’ll come through first. “I have one account, Cap,” I say angrily. “Number five, Redemption Alley.”

  “You only paid on one account. But the tax records at the prefecture say that when Mr. Leblanc died . . .” For a moment his words are obscured by rending wood and plaster as someone huge crashes through the wall. “. . . value of your services here should cover costs,” Cap finishes with a shout.

  There are shadowboys everywhere, coming through the hole in the wall and from downstairs, and no time to think.

  A trap within a trap within a trap. For me. For tax men. For Nightshades. Chaos.

  Lucinda and I move together. We aren’t one mind and heart, but we flow through the shadowboys, through the smoke, chaos, and spraying blood. I catch a glimpse of one Nightshade gutting Cap’s second lieutenant. The man roars, trying to smile as he gouges out the same ‘Shade’s left eye. The other second lieutenant spins, blade whirling, fending off three shadowboys at once while another Nightshade puts his blade through Cap’s neck, beheading him.

  The third ‘Shade. Where is he?

  Something shifts in the floor beneath us.

  The third ‘Shade. I can smell him. I can feel him breathing down my neck.

  The floor collapses beneath us and a blade passes over my head. Suddenly we’re falling into a larger room below. Torches flare in the dark. A double squad of pikemen leap forward, launching themselves at the falling Nightshades. Shadowboys fall gracelessly amid the rubble, breaking ribs and arms, but the ‘Shades twist and turn, like cats finding their feet in midair.

  They can’t avoid the pike-tips though. One-Eye gets skewered, three pikes taking him through the middle all at once. Cap’s killer takes a pike in the thigh but spits poison in the face of his attackers and pulls the pike free. He sets his teeth and slaughters the pikeman with his own weapon.

  I roll away from the third, into the cover of another squad, forcing the ‘Shade to dance back. Lucinda lands heavily next to me and I realize there are still people fighting on the level above, around the edges where the floor hasn’t given way. I block a dart meant for Lucinda with a chunk of stone. The roof above us, above everybody, collapses.

  Now that’s a kill-box, I think as the world goes black again.

  #

  A pale man kneels, face on white marble, sobbing.

  She stands behind him, the woman who whispers on the wind, little more than a sculpture in grey and charcoal-black.

  Except for her hair. It is the color of blood and gold and sunsets. It flows about her like smoke.

  “Thomas,” she says. “Look at me. For once, please. It’s not your fault.”

  She’s barely even there, I realize, thin and insubstantial. A wisp that he doesn’t notice. But he does notice me. He stands and turns, eyes sweeping the rubble around him, the rubble of the Tax Watch headquarters. He turns in circles, looking at the piles of bodies.

  “You think this is an excuse, Mr. Steeps?” he snarls at the pile of stone where I’m buried. “Get up. Get up! Get up!”

  #

  I feel the floor go out from beneath as I wake, feel myself falling to cleaner air. I smell Santé’s sweat and feel his hands catching me and pulling me down farther. Beyond him there’s a whisper that only a Nightshade would hear, a voice I do not recognize.

  “Santé, we’re not supposed to be here. Everyone dies. Cap’s rules. It’s too risky otherwise. That’s how we do these things.”

  I think about putting a dagger in Santé’s gut,
for all the trouble he’s caused me, but I resist. If he’s disobeying Cap’s orders on this count, that’s all right by me.

  “Shut up, Henrick,” he says as he hands me down gently to a sloping stone passageway that definitely isn’t a sewer run. Lucinda crawls after me, moaning about her aching ribs. Just in time. The pocket of stone where we were collapses, blasting dust and stone chips into Santé’s tunnel.

  “Santé?” Lucinda asks incredulously as he helps her down, her arm flaring in his face and making him squint.

  “Shh.”

  Lucinda can’t be cowed like this. “Santé, you bastard, where are we?”

  “Shh-hh!” He says again, a note of urgency in his whisper. “Tunnel. Patrol found it last week below the sewer lines. We thought it was a Nightshade thing, but they don’t seem to know about it. It’s old and caving in. Gave Cap the idea to collapse a building on the ‘Shades.

  “You’re not supposed to be here?”

  “‘Course I am,” he says. “Special orders.”

  “Liar,” mumbles the other man. “We had our orders, same as usual. Smash what we can. Take it on the chin.”

  Santé shrugs his massive shoulders. “Know why I’m an officer and you’re still a grunt, Henrick?”

  “‘Cause you’re bigger, and better at sums?”

  “No. It’s because I know how to plan. And this isn’t just anybody. This is Teamus Steeps.”

  I can actually hear Henrick swallow his protest. “The Teamus Steeps?”

  “Yes,” Santé growls, “and his friend Lucinda, the Star-Arm I told you about from Fortrus Abbey.”

  “I’m from Ector,” she huffs.

  “Don’t care,” Santé says. He pushes a package into her hands. It smells like bread. “Grimms told me you didn’t have time to rummage. This is the best I can do.”

  Henrick helps me to my feet. I can’t see more than a tall, thin outline, backlit as he is by Lucinda’s glowing arm, but he seems younger than Santé. “There’s a sewer collapse about a block away,” he says. “Get into the up-shaft and get out.”

  “My men tell me there’s a nest in Upper Ector,” Santé adds in his grindy voice. “If you’re looking for your woman, Mr. Steeps, she’s probably there.” He pauses, and I wait to see if he’s got any other useful information. He doesn’t. Just his best wishes. “If you die,” he growls, “may the god of your choice rest your soul. The rest of us will remember just how you paid your taxes.”