by Jack Conner
“Ah, look, it’s little Dottie,” Melias said, bending down to pet a ginger cat, and Stevrin admired the way she did so. He didn’t miss the look of interest in Dr. Reynalt’s eyes, either. Melias had become quite the star of the Divinity recently, and it was easy to see why. Stevrin had to check himself from snapping at the doctor to put his eyes back in his head.
They moved on, cats prowling the hallways around them, slinking around the corners. The so-called Sisters of the Divinity fed the local strays, and the pests were always lurking about, tripping Stevrin up.
In the distance, jazzy music played, and girlish laughter tinkled. The noise came from the parlor, where the Sisters entertained johns.
“Almost puts one in the mood for dancing,” Dr. Reynalt said, nodding his head in time to the beat.
“Yar, shoulda brought me dancing shoes,” said Maynard, shoving the Returner before him—Tollie. Stevrin wasn’t sure why Reynalt had wanted the creature brought along, but he was glad it was hooded and bound, and that several of Reynalt’s servants had accompanied them ...and that they’d brought guns. A collar around Tollie’s neck connected to a rod, and Maynard gripped it tightly with both mismatched hands.
“Here we are,” said Melias, leading them into the solarium.
Had this been daytime, sunlight would have shone down through the arching glass canopy, but now only the stars and one moon wheeled overhead, and they were mostly hidden behind the creeping black smog. Melias showed Stevrin and Dr. Reynalt’s company past the throng of Sisters (there must have been thirty) that had gathered, Stevrin supposed out of morbid curiosity, to a certain stretch of marble floor.
There the dead man sprawled surrounded by winter-blooming plants, red and gold and pink. The solarium had been converted into a sort of greenhouse, and it was warm and fragrant. The dead man was, or had been, or would be (if Dr. Reynalt could get him going again) tall, wiry, with a receding hairline and a plum-colored birthmark on his right cheek. As there was no electricity in the solarium, torch-light and lamp-light threw a hellish glow on the corpse and made fire seem to dance in its glassy, staring eyes.
Immediately, Stevrin could tell this one was different from the others.
“He’s got his guts out,” he said, to no one in particular.
Dr. Reynalt harrumphed. “Indeed he does.”
Like the previous victims, the dead man had been slit like a fish from his crotch to his sternum, but unlike them his intestines lay on the floor, arrayed about him like a halo. They almost looked like nightmarish wings fanning the air, as though he were some angel winging through the night. He didn’t smell like an angel, though. He smelled like shit. A few flies buzzed about him, lighting on his still-glistening guts. Several scented candles jutted from the bloody floor, surely placed there by the Sisters to mask the stench.
They didn’t work very well. Melias wrinkled her nose and waved a fan before her face, and Stevrin longed for a cigarette to drive away the odor. He’d been tasked with carrying a lantern and a satchel of alchemical ice, and he sat his burdens down and eagerly fired up a smoke. Dr. Reynalt showed no reaction, but he was probably used to such smells.
Maynard leered down at the spread-eagled, gut-encircled corpse. “Some choice parts in there, I reckon,” he said, “if’n he don’t wake up properly. Hear that?” he said to Tollie, giving the creature a good shake. “You don’t behave we’ll take ya apart for spares.” He started to chuckle, but a sharp look from Melias shut him up.
“He was a client of mine,” she reminded him. “Even if he was a gangster and a son of a bitch.”
“You found him like this?” Reynalt asked her, indicating the body on the floor.
She nodded hesitantly. “He was found like this, but it wasn’t me. Vallie?”
Even more hesitatingly, a girl about Stevrin’s age or younger stepped out from the gathering of Sisters. Pretty but pale, with long curly black hair, she had huge dark eyes rimmed with redness, as though she’d been crying recently. Stevrin recognized her as a runaway who’d been adopted by the Sisters last year. Until recently she’d lived in the Roost, like Stevrin and the rest of the orphans.
Nervously, obviously afraid of Dr. Reynalt, she edged over to Melias, who wrapped a protective arm around her.
“Tell him what happened, dear,” Melias said.
Nodding, Vallie—Vallissa, Stevrin had heard was her full name—said, “I was just comin’ out from a ...a date, you know, and wanted a little privacy.” To cry, Stevrin heard, though she didn’t say it. He knew the life of a prostitute was a difficult adjustment for most girls, especially the young. He hadn’t been aware Vallie had even started yet. Most girls didn’t start so early, not here. “I was taking a look at the stars, what you can see of them. That’s when I tripped over something. ” She nodded to a footprint in the tangled mess of the dead man’s intestines. “I must have screamed loud enough to wake half the Sisterhood.”
Reynalt nodded understandingly, and Melias patted the girl’s head. “Thank you, dear,” she said. “You can go.”
Vallissa withdrew, but not before throwing Stevrin a sidelong glance—and, to his surprise, a small smile. Then she was gone. She wasn’t bad-looking, he supposed, but compared with the voluptuous Melias ...
The doctor knelt beside the corpse and inspected a tattoo on its forearm—a stylized shark. When Stevrin saw it, he swore.
“That’s one of Boss Sorris’s men,” he said.
Dr. Reynalt arched his eyebrows. “So it is.”
“What?” Melias said. “What am I missing?”
When her eyes fell on Stevrin, inviting him to explain, he looked down at his battered shoes and said, “Well, so far all four bodies’ve been from different Bosses. You gotta figure they’re used to losin’ a man here or there, but they start to lose more’n one, well, they’re gonna start lookin’ around. And the first body found was a Sorris man. This one makes two.”
“Oh.” Melias looked pale. “I see.”
The other Sisters muttered among themselves, and Stevrin noted fearful tones, and for good reason. Madam Agatha was independent, unaffiliated with any Boss. That was the whole purpose of the Divinity, that the girls were free. And since this was the Commons, an area where several Bosses’ territories met, it had been constantly warred over for many years and no one Boss had ever successfully been able to lay claim to it—thus strengthening Agatha’s position. She and her original crew of prostitutes had vowed never to serve under a Boss again.
It also meant that they didn’t have a Boss to protect them.
“The Bosses don’t talk much with each other, of course,” Dr. Reynalt added, “otherwise they’d have already realized something was amiss. But now all it will take is for Boss Sorris to ask his boys where this one went off to tonight, and if it’s the same answer he got when he asked where the first one went off to ...”
The fearful murmuring among the gathering intensified. Stevrin felt sickly.
It was in this attitude of apprehension that a loud throat cleared imperiously, and the gathering quieted on the instant. Immediately a path formed through the prostitutes, and all turned to regard the august presence of the leader of the Sisterhood, Madam Agatha de Mar.
“Good evening, Doctor,” she said. Tall and thin, draped in black mink, she was ancient, but her emerald green eyes still radiated fire and power. Her makeup was heavily but artfully applied, and her expensive perfume had been laden copiously. She smoked a cigarette, a dark, fragrant affair perched on a long-stemmed cigarette holder, and she tapped its ash onto the floor with regal ease. In her other hand she gripped an iron-tipped cane.
“Good evening,” Dr. Reynalt returned, smooth as ice, even as flies attended their gory feast below him.
“I see you’ve found Jaek there.”
“Was that his name?”
She inclined her head. “Jaek Colter, a high man on the Sorris ladder. Been comin’ round here for the last few years. Though not happily.”
“He liked to
use his fists as much as his cock,” Melias said. “We banned him once for six months. We only let him back so as not to anger Boss Sorris.”
“Then I won’t feel too badly for him,” Reynalt said.
“Nor should you.” Agatha blew a dramatic cloud of smoke at the ceiling. Everyone watched her, awed by her sheer presence. Stevrin was impressed by how she could command a scene with such a simple prop. He renewed smoking with a new outlook.
Agatha’s eyes flicked to Tollie. “More money down the drain, I see. That’s the fourth one that hasn’t Awakened properly.”
Reynalt winced. “Not my best streak of luck, I admit. Hopefully this one will be different.” He patted Jaek’s chest, then gestured to Maynard, who seamlessly passed him a saw. With no further ado, Reynalt started sawing away at the corpse’s neck without a thought to any onlookers. Some of the Sisters gasped. One retched. Madam Agatha looked cool as could be.
A bit of blood spattered the doctor’s face and ran down his lips. He actually licked some off. “Interesting arrangement,” he continued conversationally, as his arm moved back and forth. He indicated the spread-out intestines with his chin. “The others were gutted, too, but their guts had been folded neatly, stuffed back in and their bodies rolled over by the time they were found—to conceal this macabre detail, I imagine.”
“Indeed,” said Agatha. The two spoke as if there were no one else in the room.
“The murderess must have been disturbed before she could finish—by Vallie, I imagine—or at least before she could hide what she’d been doing to the body,” he went on. “But why spread out the intestines in such a manner? It seems not only ghoulish but somehow ...ritualistic.”
Agatha raised her eyebrows, simultaneously blowing out another fragrant cloud. “Any thoughts?” There was an unusual edge to her voice.
He stared at her for a moment, then: “No. As a matter of fact.”
That seemed to gratify her. “Typical. Well, you’d better hope that one wakes up better than the others. I really don’t know what we’re paying you for. If you can’t wake one of these bastards up and get him to tell you who killed him, I simply must rethink this whole arrangement. I’m not made of money, you know, much as the tabloids would have you believe otherwise.”
“Come now, Agatha. You know I don’t charge full price when my labors aren’t met with success—unlike yourself,” he added with a small smile.
She returned the smile, just as small. “My customers are never unsatisfied.”
He chuckled.
“The killer must be outed,” Agatha went on. “Even now one of the Bosses might be getting suspicious.”
“Quite,” Reynalt agreed, with just the hint of a grunt. Sweat streamed down his brow. “A renegade prostitute killing johns is bad enough, but when the johns are powerful Bosses’ men—ah!”
The head popped free, and he held it up by the hair, grinning. Only a few droplets of blood fell from the ragged neck wound.
“Stevrin,” he called.
“What? Oh.” Stevrin shook himself. He’d been hypnotized by staring into the eyes of the dead man. Self-consciously, aware of many living eyes on him, he shoved the ice-filled satchel toward Reynalt, and Reynalt stuffed the head inside.
“That should do for the brain. Now for the rest.” Reynalt stood, wiped his sweat-soaked brow, and handed the bloody saw to Maynard. “Do for the arms and legs, would you?”
“If I must.” Grumbling, Maynard bent over the corpse and continued what the doctor had begun. Stevrin knew they would whittle the body down into easily transportable and concealable pieces.
Tollie growled and shook his head, as if to rid himself of the hood. Dr. Reynalt’s gaze swung from Agatha to the huddled group of Sisters. Then he stared at Tollie. “I think now might be the opportune moment.”
“For what?” Agatha said.
Reynalt ripped off Tollie’s hood. As Tollie blinked his eyes, Reynalt swept a hand toward the prostitutes.
“Does anyone look familiar?”
Tollie stared eagerly around the room, fixing the women with his horrid gaze. Slaver bubbled on his lips and ran down over his chin. A growl worked its way up from deep in his chest.
“That’s right,” Reynalt said. “Do you see anyone that you might hold a grudge against? Someone, perhaps, that stabbed you to death a few nights ago?”
He growled louder, drooling.
The prostitutes cursed and backed up.
Agatha stomped a high-heeled foot. “Really, Doctor, this is quite obscene. Dare you sic that thing on my girls?”
“It’s what you hired me for, isn’t it? To have one of the victims identify its killer. Perhaps even a poorly Awakened one will serve the purpose. It has eyes, does it not, and a brain, however addled?”
While Maynard had gone to carve up the fresh corpse, the custody of Tollie had been relinquished to one of the gun-toting subordinates. The subordinate, however, insisted on retaining hold of his gun and thus only held the rod that bound Tollie with one hand. When Tollie’s eyes suddenly bulged and it lunged forward with reckless energy, the rod jerked free of the subordinate’s hand, pulling the man off balance so that he flopped flat on his face.
The creature rushed the Sisters. Screaming, they fell back.
Its hands were tied behind its back, but its mouth was free, and it snapped its teeth lustily. Incongruously adroit for a corpse, it leapt the headless body on the floor and alit on the other side, slipping for a moment in the guts, then righting itself and lurching onward. Whether it wanted to eat the girls or rape them remained unclear.
The doctor’s servants leveled their guns, but Reynalt shouted, “No! You’ll hit the girls!”
The doctor himself lunged at Tollie’s feet, but it was too fast, and he struck the floor skidding in the tacky blood.
Stevrin, with speed that impressed even himself, whipped out his knife and flung it at the creature’s back. The blade struck the thing and embedded to the hilt near the creature’s spine. The blow would have stopped an ordinary man. The creature, however, continued rushing the Sisters.
Thinking fast, Stevrin jumped at the discarded hood and snatched it up.
The women shifted and surged backward, nearly stampeding. Their screams filled the chamber. Tollie was almost on them.
A lone figure rose before the creature, brandishing a cane. Madam Agatha gave an enraged bellow and brought her cane down hard on Tollie’s forehead. Crack! Even before the blow landed, the creature had slowed, recoiling at her sudden presence.
Simultaneously, Reynalt and Stevrin grabbed its collar-rod. With one hand, Stevrin tugged the hood over Tollie’s head. Quickly the Returner quieted.
“Mad bugger,” Maynard said, and cuffed Tollie on the head.
The girls collected themselves and edged back toward Agatha, taking refuge behind her as if this old woman were the Divinity itself. Eyes flashing, Agatha said, “I think you should pack your bags and go now, Doctor—with all due haste.”
Reynalt, his face pale and slicked with sweat, nodded wordlessly. He glanced at Maynard, who returned to the fresh corpse. The manservant swore but resumed sawing.
“In just a moment, Madam,” Reynalt assured her. “In just a moment.”
Stevrin frowned, still puzzling over Tollie’s charge. He looked from the doctor to Tollie, then from Tollie to Agatha, and his frown deepened.
Chapter 2
“You really should post a guard down here,” Dr. Reynalt told Melias once the new body had been packed up in separate bags and she’d shown them back down through the sub-basements to the black-spanned door that led into the Below. “These are strange times, and I’m not the Below’s only traveler.”
“Oh, we’re quite well protected,” she assured him.
Dr. Reynalt raised his eyebrows, poised to set off through the doorway and down the stone-carved steps, into the system of great caverns that ran under the city. Stevrin started to bid him and Maynard goodbye, glad to return to the Roost and his bunk, but
Dr. Reynalt said, “Please, Stevrin, accompany me for a ways.”
“Thanks anyway,” Stevrin said. “I’ve had enough of the damned Below for one day.” The journey from the Warren to the Div had not been pleasant, as many of the tunnels were populated by the ruins of the Elders, and Stevrin loathed being near the structures.
“Fine.” Dr. Reynalt drew Stevrin aside. “There’s something I want to discuss with you.”
“Make it quick.”
“You know, you’re not a bad sort.”
“No? You either.”
One corner of the doctor’s mouth turned up. He appraised Stevrin shrewdly out of the corner of his eye. “That was a nice throw of your knife, by the way. And quick thinking with Tollie’s hood.”
“Yeah, well. Works with birds.”
“We could use a lad like you in the Warren. You’re fast and capable, if a bit rough around the edges.”
“This leadin’ up to something?”
“Hm, yes. You see, I’ve been thinking of taking on an apprentice.”
“You’ve got a regular mob of them, haven’t you?”
“Well ... none that are fully, shall we say, mortal. None that would be recognized by the laws of this country. None that could retain possession of my effects and estate.”
“Estate?”
“I meet so few young people with the necessary aptitude in the daily course of my life, Stevrin. The Warren is its own world, you know.” Dr. Reynalt grimaced, and for the first time Stevrin saw that a great strain was upon him. “The Guild of Alchemists is tightening their noose around me, lad. They’ve never forgiven me for leaving them—and taking my secrets with me. I fear they may kill me before I can pass them on.”
“You want to pass them on ... to me?”
“Perhaps. Once you’ve had some training. And someone will need to look after my people if I am ... Well. Things are worsening, lad. There’s something ... strange ... going on in this city.”