‘I’ll take it.’ Malum slid his chair back. ‘But it’s not much to me. I’ve got more money than you could even begin to imagine.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘No refunds!’ the trader insisted, holding up his palms towards the descending snow. The skies had turned a dull grey, and Jeryd’s mood wasn’t any more colourful.
‘I’m not after a refund,’ Jeryd said firmly, ‘I just want to know where you got this meat from.’
‘No say.’ The trader frowned.
Jeryd sighed as a fiacre rattled along behind him. He loosened his collar, to display the medallion of the Inquisition, making sure it was clear for the trader to see. ‘Investigator Rumex Jeryd of Villiren Inquisition. Now, will you tell me where you damn well got your meat from? Or do you want carting off to spend the rest of the week pissing into a bucket in the corner of some gaol cell?’
‘I can’t tell you. I . . . scared.’
Jeryd frowned. What the hell is he scared of? ‘I’m not sure I follow you.’
‘No say.’ The man’s eyes were wide; now and then he’d flick sideways glances towards the neighbouring alleyway as if he was being watched.
‘If you’re frightened, we can protect you,’ Jeryd offered. ‘The Inquisition will stop anyone from harming you as an informant.’
‘Very good.’ The trader gave a hollow laugh. ‘You think Inquisition tough, yeah? Not so tough as him. Not as scary.’
Jeryd grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him close to his face. ‘If you don’t give me a name, I’m going to haul you in for selling strange meat, so don’t fuck with me.’ He pushed him away.
The trader scribbled something down on a piece of paper, before he backed off, palming the air helplessly, and disappeared down an alleyway, abandoning his stall.
Jeryd read the note he had been given. It said simply ‘Malum’.
*
He had some paperwork to catch up with, and Nanzi was alreadaiting with his morning tea – a gesture he couldn’t get enough of. She was bundled up in various dreary shades of brown, a cardigaverlaying a shirt, and one of those long woollen skirts she alwayore.
When she enquired as to his romantic night in, he merely shrugged it off.
‘I’m not the romantic type,’ he lied, knowing his entire existence seemed a futile attempt to peel back the layers of his own sense of nostalgia.
‘Tell me,’ he asked her, ‘is there any gang leader the street traders are particularly afraid of?’
‘I’ve heard things . . .’ She glanced across to the door, as if checking it was closed. ‘There’s talk in there, occasionally . . .’ She tilted her head, indicating the rest of the Inquisition. ‘Some of the gangs keep good control over a lot of things going on in the city, let’s put it that way. I don’t know any specific details, but if payments were being made by the gangs to the Inquisition, to turn a blind eye to some of their more violent activities, it would not surprise me. But sometimes it is better not to ask about names in this organization – that would be heavily frowned upon, but I myself refuse to be caught up in such matters.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ he observed. ‘The good investigator always keeps well away from the temptations of such underhand dealings.’ He wasn’t at all surprised to learn that this sort of thing went on in a city as unruly as Villiren. The only question for someone like Jeryd, who increasingly convinced himself that his position here was only temporary, was how deep it all went. If the gangs were too strongly linked to the government, there would be no point trying to clean things up. He was, after all, attempting to lie fairly low, just in case any of his recent dealings in Villjamur came back to haunt him.
‘Is there any particular reason you need to find out more about these gangs?’
‘I came across some bad meat,’ Jeryd replied finally. ‘Bought some steaks of questionable origin from a trader who wouldn’t open up. Probably nothing in it, but I just want value for money. This’ll be pursued in my free time of course – everything done by the book.’
‘Do you have a lead?’ Nanzi asked cautiously.
‘I’ve got a name. Malum.’
‘King of the underworld,’ Nanzi whispered in awe.
‘So I’ve heard. I’m guessing there’s more than a few people in this institution prepared to turn a blind eye to such kings of the underworld. A little detective work is in order.’
*
Jeryd and Nanzi spent the rest of the day chasing rumours.
From bar to bistro to subterranean dens, they found themselves being passed among some of the most brutal-looking characters in the underworld. Gang types: Jeryd knew the look of them all right, the things they were saying to each other through their glances. It helped to have Nanzi with him – they displayed a little more restraint while she was alongside him.
Jeryd made sure that word got around that the Inquisition wanted to talk to Malum. The trail of leads seemed endless, but towards the end of that day Jeryd and Nanzi were provided with a firm address by a scruffy young kid with bad teeth. Not just an address – an address and a booth number.
Strange . . .
The kid insisted, ‘Come alone. Lose the woman.’ Then he scuttled off into the crowded iren.
Nanzi guided Jeryd through the snow to a back alley somewhere in Scarhouse, then she left him, as requested, alone and without another word. He was grateful for her tactful attitude.
A wooden board hung decrepitly above an iron door, a garishly coloured sign reading ‘Peep Show’.
A knock on the door and a hatch slammed open. ‘Fuck you want? We ain’t open.’
‘I’m looking for Malum. I was invited here.’ Jeryd glanced furtively behind him as the snow began again, always coming and going in bursts. A fiacre clattered by and Jeryd pulled down his hat; this was no place for him to be seen outside, in a strange city or not.
‘You the investigator?’ the voice slurred back.
‘Investigator Jeryd, yeah.’
The door clunked open and he was beckoned into the darkness by a grubby-looking dark-haired guy barely out of his teens.
‘I’m looking for booth three, apparently.’ Jeryd held up a slip of paper to the young man, who proceeded to ignore it completely.
The dark corridor smelled vaguely of stale incense. He could feel the enveloping damp. This place reminds me of an Inquisition gaol. Voices drifted towards him from rooms out of sight; conversations stuttering to a halt as they walked past. Now and then he heard a groan or two, then strange guttural noises he couldn’t recognize.
‘In there.’ The young man gestured to one side.
‘Thanks.’ Jeryd now faced a narrow wooden door with the number three carved into it, and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
A wooden stool had been placed before what looked like a large window; only blackness was apparent beyond. A bucket, some towels, there was very little else, just the bare cold stone. Jeryd shuffled towards the stool and peered at the darkened glass, his pulse quickening in the silence.
The tension mounted as he continued staring into the weird window, but he couldn’t discern a thing. He tapped it with his knuckle – this was thick stuff.
Light suddenly sparked and flared on the other side of the glass – where he now noticed a figure sitting slumped in a chair, wearing a stylish long coat, and a mask, half-concealing short brown hair. Lingerie and chains were draped over a meat hook to one side, and three or four silver-framed mirrors leaned against the walls, presenting this well-clad figure from unusual angles.
‘Investigator Jeryd,’ the man said. ‘I hear you’ve been asking for my name. Got a lot of people asking after me recently – clearly, I’m a popular guy.’
‘Yeah, that’s correct. You’re Malum then?’ Jeryd couldn’t figure out a way around the glass, which was set deep into the stone. A tiny metal hatch to one side seemed designed for dropping in coins.
‘I am indeed. And there’s no way in, Jeryd,’ Malum replied coolly. ‘There’s no point
looking. They’re specially designed by cultists for safety.’
‘Safety for who?’ Jeryd asked.
‘Right now, your own – but mostly for my women.’
‘Do they normally just sit there?’
‘They strip behind the glass for money, and lonely men gagging for excitement drop a coin in that hatch to the side.’
‘And the men . . . ?’
‘Watch,’ Malum replied, ‘or masturbate. There’s no sex, the women are protected. Everyone’s happy.’
‘How come I couldn’t see you until you turned that lantern on?’
‘Cultist glass – it’s good stuff. I got a lot of contacts.’ His tone changed. ‘Get to business: why were you asking for me by name?’
‘Someone gave me your details in connection with some bad meat I was sold.’
Malum laughed. ‘That it? Just meat?’
‘I’ve reason to believe that there is meat of questionable origin being circulated in this city. The trader said you helped put it about. All I want to know is where that meat is coming from.’
‘You got guts, coming here, asking for this.’
‘Either that, but quite possibly because I’m stupid.’
Malum grunted a laugh. ‘I like you, investigator. Look, people are beginning to ask those kind of questions, and I don’t like to have my name associated with such triviality. Tell you what, you leave me the fuck alone if I give you a name and an address?’
Jeryd could see through the tough-guy talk, but didn’t want to anger him. ‘Agreed.’
‘Voland. That’s who we get it from. I’ve done some business with him recently – other than distribution – and to be honest, I’m not happy with what he provides. He’s known to me as the niche-maker, among other things, and he’s let me down over poor equipment that just stopped on the job. I’m more than happy to see trouble go his way, by way of the Inquisition. So you see I’m not unreasonable.’
‘What did he do?’
‘You ask a lot of questions.’
‘That’s what I get paid for – not that you can call it much.’
‘People have niches – and remember, I’ve got a permit from the portreeve for this establishment. Look in booth seven on your way out, and you can see some of Voland’s work. I’ll put the light on and activate the glass. And never ask for my name again – otherwise I can’t vouch for your safety.’
Light faded to black, then something clicked inside the hatch to one side. Jeryd opened the little drawer and picked up a piece of paper with an address written on it. ‘Thanks,’ Jeryd said, though he didn’t know if Malum was even there any more.
Voland . . . a strange name.
Pocketing the note, Jeryd got up and exited the room. He lit a match to navigate the corridor and found booth seven at the far end. He twisted the handle and the door slipped back smoothly. Behind the display area, a soft light shone down from above, illuminating a vibrant, crimson-walled area. Jeryd approached thinking about niches and what that might mean, when he spotted the woman’s body on the floor.
No, not a woman.
A . . . thing.
Jeryd pressed his hands against the glass to steady himself, his stomach churning at the sight. Garbed only in white lingerie, the woman-creature possessed the legs of some animal, like a horse – though he couldn’t tell precisely. Hunched in a foetal position, on closer inspection her entire body possessed the texture of fine fur, splattered with blood, a trail of which issued from her mouth. A horn protruded from her forehead, like in some mythical beast, while blood-stained blonde hair tumbled across the floor. And all of this – all of this mess – was highlighted by three other mirrors allowing a full view of the vileness on display.
What the hell was this Voland producing? What kind of person . . . what kind of city permits this stuff? Who would even pay to see this?
Niche-maker.
Jeryd ran to a bucket in one corner of the booth and promptly vomited.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Dead forest after dead forest, and littered with snow: it was a landscape on constant repeat. Anything deciduous had long been killed off, and only various evergreen species persisted, banking up steep slopes into the dark distance. The horses helped them trudge northwards through the thick woodlands of Folke, the beasts insouciant of the hostile environment, just plodding along, showing fright at nothing.
Randur felt as if the four of them were now quite alone, despite these elusive beings that shifted behind serried rows of tree trunks. For the first couple of hours each day, Munio would hardly shut up, but after that they found the contemplative silence comforting. The only utterances then were instructions to guide them along certain well-trodden routes, or over difficult terrain.
Metal constructs, gargantuan rusted skeletons, their foundations buried deep in the earth, leaned towards the sky. Blood-tinged sunlight filtered through their even-latticed configurement, and the travellers’ path took them directly underneath, between the thick shadows. Vegetation had not fully reclaimed these relics, the first exposed structures he’d witnessed in a long time.
People talked of such remains being found off the southern coast, but they had long since formed artificial reefs, and become almost living things once again, contributing to the natural cycles. Rumours intimated there were also abandoned cities to be found, civilizations completely lost to the ocean. Before him now was a sense of history on Earth so compelling that he felt as though he himself barely existed at all.
Stranger, though, was how last night he’d experienced weird dreams of fur-covered creatures – with wings – swooping down to stare at him; and when he lurched awake to see what the hell they were, there was only the eternal calm of the night sky above him. It had happened for two nights in a row now, as they sheltered among ancient ruins. Their ghostly presence disturbed him.
*
On the third day they joined old pathways that would die away suddenly into the overgrowth. They’d cut their way through two small, dead communities, then along open tracks between desolate logging camps, or scarred and ragged opencast minescapes. Rika and Eir both seemed eager to understand the Empire’s diverse territories better, and questioned why these communities were all abandoned.
Randur told them just what the Empire signified out here.
‘When the Imperial armies claimed this island hundreds of years ago they declared they’d impose infrastructure and order. They sent the local tribes packing – unless they were considered civilized, which, roughly translated, meant abandoning their old ways for those of Villjamur. Quite a few were also forced into slavery.’
‘I heard of prisoners committing serious atrocities against soldiers who merely asked them to work . . .’ Rika said, defensively.
‘Did you ever question, my lady, the source of your information? They were indigenous races who didn’t want foreign soldiers disrupting their communities. Empire folk claimed it’d ensure great wealth for everyone. Well, that great wealth was sucked off to the trading cities, primarily Villjamur and Villiren. And even then it mostly fell into the hands of the few people who controlled the forges, especially those manufacturing weapons of war. They made a fat pile of cash, and more war always meant more business. They relied upon constant warfare, in fact. In the real histories, ones that weren’t rewritten by Empire-employed scholars, the people of Folke were heavily repressed and their will broken through season after season of starvation. A few local rebellions brought more military here, and then, a few decades back, once the population had submitted completely, the formerly booming markets changed – or the Council collapsed them. Different metals were now required, and these original mining communities were killed off. Just like that. And large numbers of people were forced to leave the island. So that’s why you’ll see ghost towns all across this island, and maybe it’s the same on other islands, too, I don’t know.’
Munio remained utterly silent, already knowing this potted history.
‘And the people out here . . . a
re they angry with the Empire?’ Rika asked.
‘Probably just bitter these days, more than anything. But what can they do? They’ve no control over their own lives. But what annoys me, you know, was back in Villjamur no one had a clue about what was going on here. They just heard the party line about the fringe world from the Council, and never thought to ask questions. The news recovered was exaggerated or incorrect. They assumed that anyone who tried to protest or resist the oppression was simply encouraging evil. Those who objected to Imperial ways were branded terrorists.’
‘If you hate the Empire so much,’ Rika said, ‘why are you now helping me?’
‘Because Eir wants to help you, and if that’s what she wants, so be it.’ He looked across at his love, but she didn’t know what to say to that. He’d already sacrificed a lot for her. It was a dangerous way of thinking – and he knew it – but his love was all he had right now. ‘Besides, you personally have played little role in history, and you yourself know how tricky people in the Council can be.’
‘I believe I can change things,’ Rika said. ‘Once I’m back in Villjamur, back in power.’
‘Best thing you can do, if you ask me, is decentralize that power. Just give the people back the land that was theirs.’
Rika looked thoughtful, and they continued in silence.
*
Down faded paths suffocated by ferns, along steep hillsides with rocks jutting from them like black broken bones. Snow staggered in waves across this hiemal forest.
Near dusk on the fifth day, they decided to take refuge in the ruins of what appeared to have once been a hunting lodge. Constructed alongside a sheer cliff face, it was crowded with spindly ulex plants, and leaned outwards as if the rocks behind had become animated and were pushing it forward. Coloured pebbles were mixed in amongst the masonry, the windows were all long since shattered, and the door was broken – but at least it was shelter.
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