He approached the door, on which the paint was flaking and tried the handle. It resisted. Despite the flecks of rust on it, the lock was evidently still sound. He stepped back a pace and knocked, in the manner he’d learned in the watch, loud, resonant and peremptory. Echoes were his only answer.
This was a setback he hadn’t been expecting, although he supposed Sam’s comment about the lawyer’s irregular habits ought to have prepared him for the possibility. Frustration boiled up in him and he clenched his fists. Reluctant to accept defeat so close to finding an answer, he examined the building carefully.
It seemed a little shabbier than its neighbours, but other than that there was nothing to distinguish it. He assumed that van Crackenmeer was somewhat less successful in his chosen profession than the lawyers surrounding him. A small side passage separated the building from the one adjacent, and after a moment’s consideration he followed it, finding, as he suspected, that it led to a small landing stage on one of the innumerable back canals which threaded the city. Presumably the local lawyers used it to hail a water-coach, or be dropped off by one, when they couldn’t be bothered to walk wherever they happened to be going.
Rudi walked out onto the narrow platform, the timbers creaking under his weight, and looked around. The thin ribbon of water was deserted, save for the usual coating of flotsam and scum, and lapped against the pilings languidly. The rear of van Crackenmeer’s offices backed on to the waterway, an open window looking out over the canal too far away to reach. Rudi was about to turn back, disappointed, and try again after he’d seen Artemus, when he noticed the drainpipe clinging to the wall between the window and the corner of the house.
Telling himself he was insane, Rudi clambered up onto the handrail edging the dock and leaned out, trying to reach the pipe. It was just too far, wavering tantalisingly less than an inch beyond his grasp.
Muttering prayers under his breath to whichever deities might have happened to be listening, he inched his fingertips outwards, right to the limit of his balance. And beyond. For a moment he toppled sideways, bracing himself for the shock of cold water, then his scrabbling hands found chill metal and clung grimly.
The downpipe creaked and shifted under his weight, then took it. Muscles burning with the strain, Rudi brought his legs over, balancing his left foot precariously on the spout.
Heart hammering, he reached out for the windowsill, hoping that he’d judged the distance right. If not, he faced an unenviable choice between an ignominious plunge into the murky water below, or hanging there until somebody noticed him, probably followed by a long and uncomfortable conversation with his colleagues from the Tempelwijk watch. After a moment, his groping hands found some purchase, and with a sigh of relief he was able to hitch himself over to the window.
After that, pushing the aperture slightly wider was the work of a moment, and he was able to worm his way through. The hilt of his sword caught on the sill. He had to free it before he was able to get inside, and he blessed the foresight which had made him leave his bow back at the barracks.
He regained his feet and looked around, finding himself in a musty room stuffed with papers. Shelves of them lined the walls, broken up into pigeonholes, each of which bore a faded paper label. Squinting in the feeble sunlight which somehow managed to elbow its way into the room through the coating of grime on the window glass, Rudi glanced at the nearest one and found a name printed in neat, fussy letters. Molenwijk. He looked at another. Strossel. After a moment the notion that they’d been filed in alphabetical order occurred to him. That meant that somewhere around here should be…
“Magnus.” Sure enough, one of the wooden compartments bore the name von Blackenburg. He bent to examine it, his elation evaporating as he realised the box was empty. “That can’t be right.”
But it was. As he turned away disappointed, something else caught his attention. Deep, recent scratches in the wood of the shelf. They seemed familiar, and after a moment he recognised the same scoring which had marred the door in Magnus’ house. His scalp prickled. There was only one obvious conclusion to draw from that: Hans had been here ahead of him, and probably the sorceress too. Apprehension began to displace his disappointment. Could his old adversary still be on the premises?
He dismissed the thought almost at once. Hans was hardly the stealthiest of individuals, even after his transformation, and he’d made enough noise getting in here to have attracted the attention of anyone still in the offices. He was alone, he was certain of that.
Turning to leave, he froze suddenly and bent to examine the floor. Something white was just visible under the lowest shelf of the filing racks, jammed into the narrow crack between the piece of furniture and the floor. If one of the papers had fallen unnoticed as Hans removed them and been kicked by a careless foot, it would have ended up about there…
Hardly daring to hope, he squatted down, as though he were examining tracks in the forest, and pulled it out carefully. It was indeed a sheet of paper, folded, with a faint discoloration across the join where a seal had once been. With a mounting sense of excitement he unfolded it.
“Yes!” The involuntary exclamation escaped him before he could suppress it, and he strained his ears, fearful of discovery once more. If he was wrong about being alone, he’d just betrayed his presence in no uncertain terms. After a moment, hearing no raised voices or hurrying footsteps, he relaxed again and examined the letter he held.
It was short, and unquestionably from Magnus. Rudi perused it slowly, sounding out some of the longer words under his breath, quietly elated at being able to decipher so complex a document without prompting or assistance. After a date less than a year ago, the missive continued:
My dear Cornelius,
Your fears are well founded. As the time approaches, we can expect further attempts to prevent the von Karien heir from coming into his inheritance. As yet our enemies remain unaware of his identity, although the Reifenstahl woman undoubtedly suspects. So far, however, I believe I have successfully hidden my own part in the affair from her.
I will discuss all this in detail with you and the rest of the grandchildren on my next visit to Marienburg.
Warmest regards,
Magnus.
His mind reeling, Rudi read the brief note again, taking inordinate care over every word. They still came out the same, so his inexperience with letters didn’t seem to have betrayed him.
Their meaning continued to elude him, however. He’d never heard of the von Kariens, and so far as he knew neither had anyone else in Kohlstadt. Apart from Magnus, of course, and perhaps if the merchant’s suspicions were true, Greta Riefenstahl. The healer was dead, though, burned by Gerhard along with her cottage, so there was no way to find out for sure. Unless she’d mentioned it to her daughter, of course. He resolved to ask Hanna the next time he saw her.
Perhaps he could visit her at the college after he’d been to see Artemus. It wouldn’t be that much of an imposition, as she’d intimated that she was half expecting to see him today when they’d met that morning. Besides, she needed to know that Gerhard was in town. He could hardly have told her that while Gerrit was standing right next to him. For some reason, the image of her kissing Kris the previous night rose up in his mind at that point and he forced it away angrily. It was none of his business. He had no right to feel resentful, and anyway this was much more important.
Tucking the letter away carefully inside his belt pouch he approached the door to the narrow room and opened it cautiously. As he’d expected, the lock had been broken, the wood splintered and the surface scored by the mutant’s talons.
He paused then and almost choked. The room beyond stank of blood and recent death. Dropping his hand to the hilt of his sword, he advanced into the centre of it and looked around. It was obviously van Crackenmeer’s private office. The large wooden desk and the bookshelves lined with leather-bound books made that abundantly clear.
Rudi examined the door, finding that once again it had been forced by in
human strength. The lawyer had evidently fled in here and tried to bar it, but the effort had been futile. He was sprawled on the floor behind his desk, his throat ripped out, glued to the threadbare carpet by most of the blood his body had once contained. In life he had evidently been corpulent, the flesh of his face and belly sagging sadly, like a badly-stuffed sack.
Rudi had seen enough violent death, and caused enough of it himself to be all but inured to the sight, and felt little more than irritation and disappointment that once again his attempts to contact Magnus had been blocked.
Sighing, he turned away. No doubt Hans and the horned sorceress had searched both room and corpse thoroughly and removed any clues to Magnus’ whereabouts. That meant they were closer to finding him than Rudi was. Cold sweat prickled his back at the thought. If they got to the merchant first they would undoubtedly kill him, and the answers he sought would be lost for ever. All he had to show for coming here was even more confusion.
Nevertheless, he supposed, his adversaries might have missed something. They’d left the enigmatic letter behind, after all. Encouraged by the thought, he turned back to the lawyer’s corpse.
As he’d expected, the man had nothing on his person which might help, although his purse contained seventeen guilders, a scattering of silver and a handful of pennies. After a brief struggle with his conscience, which pragmatism won, Rudi transferred the money to his own. Van Crackenmeer didn’t need it anymore, and with Gerhard in town anything might happen. One thing he’d learned from his sojourn in the city was that in Marienburg money could solve a lot of problems.
The desk contained nothing of any help either. One drawer was locked, which raised his hopes, but when he forced it he found the only thing it contained was a collection of crudely-printed woodcuts which made him blush and return them hastily to where he’d found them. Reluctant to give up, he turned his attention to the bookshelves. Most of the volumes had titles like Van Meegren’s Compendium of Statutes on the Importation of Antiquities or Case Law of the Admiralty Assizes, which he skipped over, his slow reading speed taxed to the limit by the density of the text on their spines.
On the verge of giving up, he stepped back and examined the shelf from a distance. He hadn’t needed to be able to read to deduce meaning from the traces invisible to others in the wilderness; perhaps it was time to start thinking like a tracker again. Sure enough, when he came to look at the pattern of volumes as a whole, something seemed subtly wrong about them. One book stood a little proud of the others, as though it had been recently removed and replaced. Unlike the rest of them, it had no lettering on the spine.
Hardly daring to hope or expect anything, Rudi reached out and plucked it from the shelf. The pages inside it were hand written in a language he didn’t know, but as he turned the leaves he felt the same sense of rightness he’d experienced that night in the woods outside Kohlstadt, when he’d been drawn to the gathering in the clearing.
Something stirred in the depths of his mind, and he paused. The page he was looking at was a sketch map, and after a moment’s thought he recognised a couple of the landmarks. That was the Doodkanal, a cross on its banks marking the location of the warehouse where he’d first seen Magnus and confronted Hans. The second was on the Schwartzwasserstraat and obviously pinpointed the von Blackenburg mansion. A memory stirred, of the triangle of landmarks on the map he and Hanna had found in the hut he’d shared with his father, and he scanned the page eagerly, hoping to complete a similar pattern.
“There!” Buoyed up by elation he was barely aware of having spoken aloud. A third mark, deep within the derelict area of the Doodkanal, caught his eye. Memorising its location was the work of a moment and he closed the book—considering his options. Taking it with him was pointless, he couldn’t read the language it was written in, but leaving it here would be dangerous too. Hans and the sorceress might return and find it after a more thorough search.
There was only one safe thing to do. Hurrying into the back room he pitched it out of the window and into the canal. It floated away, becoming steadily more waterlogged, and after a moment it vanished from sight. With a sigh of relief, Rudi returned to the outer office. Leaving by the front door would be a risk, he knew, but he doubted that anyone would notice him and he wasn’t about to take his chances with the drainpipe again if he could avoid it.
He reached the hallway, finding it unexceptional in every respect. Beside him, next to the door of the office, a narrow staircase led upwards, presumably to the living quarters above, and another door at the end of the hall stood open, revealing a small kitchen next to the records room. Sure there would be nothing there to detain him, Rudi hurried to the front door and stopped, perplexed. The door was locked, he knew that, but there was no sign of a key. Hans or the sorceress must have taken it with them, hoping the barred door would delay the discovery of the lawyer’s body.
There was nothing else for it, he would just have to look for a spare. If he couldn’t find one, perhaps he could trip the lock with the point of his knife somehow.
He jumped, startled, jolted out of his reverie by a loud hammering on the door. As the initial surge of adrenalin kicked in, he forced himself to breathe slowly and calmly. There were no windows here, no one could tell he was inside and if whoever was standing beyond the door had a key they wouldn’t have bothered with knocking. He strained his ears, hearing a murmur of conversation outside in the street, but the speakers were keeping their voices low and none of the actual words were distinguishable. It sounded as though there were two of them though, a man and a woman.
Abruptly, without warning, the lock clicked. Taken completely by surprise as the door swung open, revealing a couple of cloak-swathed figures and a sliver of the street outside, he had no time to do anything other than bring his sword up into a defensive position.
“Locks? No problem.” The woman who spoke had half-turned to address her unseen companion and Rudi had a moment of formless familiarity before she turned to face him. “Sigmar’s hammer, it’s you!” She began to draw her own blade.
“Alwyn?” The last time he’d seen the mercenary sorceress she’d been sprawled out unconscious along with the rest of her companions, the night he, Hanna and Fritz had escaped from Krieger’s band of bounty hunters.
“Damn right.” An expression of anger curdled her features and she moved into the attack. “Surprised to see me?”
“Wait.” Her companion stepped over the threshold and Rudi’s blood turned to ice. Gerhard smiled thinly. “I told you, I want him alive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Don’t worry.” Alwyn hesitated, on the point of lunging at Rudi. “I’m not about to throw thirty crowns away. But you didn’t say anything about bringing them in unharmed.” Rudi tensed. He’d seen enough of the mage’s swordsmanship not to underestimate her abilities, although she was far from the most formidable fighter in the group. He’d learned a lot since the last time they had met and he ought to be able to hold his own against her. Unless she employed magic against him, of course, but he’d picked up enough knowledge from Hanna and Kris to be sure she wouldn’t resort to spellcasting unless she had to. Even the routine use of magic had its dangers and in the rough and tumble of combat when she wouldn’t be able to concentrate undisturbed, the chances of something going wrong were far greater. All in all he would be safer engaging her straight away and taking his chances with her fighting abilities. While she hesitated, he cut at her torso, making her jump back reflexively, blocking the blow with her blade.
“Just back off. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“What you want doesn’t come into it, Chaos-lover.” Alwyn rallied and seemed on the point of renewing her attack when Gerhard put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Go and fetch the others. I’ll deal with this.”
“Whatever, you say.” Alwyn stepped away, breaking contact with Rudi and re-sheathing her sword. “You’ve got the money.” Then her outline shimmered, in the manner Rudi remembered from
the time they’d spent travelling together, and she vanished.
Rudi breathed a little more easily and stepped in to challenge the witch hunter. If he could finish this quickly, Gerhard’s over-confident air might work to his advantage. One opponent would always be easier to defeat than two, and if he could take him down fast enough he should be able to get away before the rest of the mercenary band returned. No telling how soon that might be, though.
“So I’m worth thirty crowns, am I? I suppose I ought to be flattered.” He aimed a cut at Gerhard’s head. To his surprise the witch hunter stepped back and evaded the blow without drawing his own weapon.
“You and the girl as well.” Gerhard stood poised, ready to evade again, keeping his hands well away from the sword at his belt. Remembering the knife concealed up his sleeve, Rudi remained wary, alert for any movement which might betray an intention to throw it. “Put your sword away. We need to talk.”
“I’ve heard everything I care to from you,” Rudi said. “And I’ve seen what you’re capable of. Back off, or I’ll split you where you stand.”
“I don’t think so.” Gerhard’s voice was as calm as ever. “You might have killed a couple of bandits on the Altdorf road, but you’re not a murderer. Killing in cold blood is very different to doing it in the heat of self-defence.”
“You’d know more about that than I do,” Rudi said. As he’d feared, it seemed his journey to Marienburg had left traces the witch hunter had been able to follow.
“I don’t enjoy killing, whatever you may think. But sometimes it’s necessary.”
“Of course it is. Frau Katzenjammer was a real menace to civilisation.” Conscious of every moment that passed, Rudi edged forward, the tip of his blade pointed unerringly at the witch hunter’s throat. Gerhard sighed, but showed no sign of giving ground.
“You saw what her son had become. There was no telling how far the taint in that house had spread.”
[Blood on the Reik 02] - Death's City Page 25