Chapter 8 #2
The weathered wooden building stands taller and broader than any of the sagging shops around it, its doorless front entrance gaping like a monster’s maw.
The sigil for Inganne, godlen of creativity and amusement, beams overhead in orange paint, with weathered illustrations of larks and butterflies fluttering around it.
We’re going to take in a show? Julita asks doubtfully.
“You’ll see,” I mutter, and push myself onward.
As I climb the two creaking steps outside the entrance, raucous laughter reaches my ears from inside. At the other end of the dim lobby, the stands will be at least half full of locals who needed to brighten their day.
The theater’s erratic crew of actors put on comedic pantomimes, puppet shows, and short, silly plays twice a day, charging about the cost of a slice of bread and accepting said slices—or other items—in trade instead of coins if that’s all the patron can give.
They can afford to offer their entertainment cheaply because they get a kickback from the theater’s other use.
Instead of heading on into the auditorium, I veer toward the first door on the right. A shallow carving of Kosmel’s sigil barely shows above it in the dim light.
Any unwitting person stumbling on this doorway would take one look at the darkened, musty stairs on the other side and turn around. I march on downward, wrinkling my nose at the pungent mildewy odor that I’m not sure is totally conjured.
If anyone did venture this far in a fit of daring curiosity, they’d be stymied at the bottom of the stairs. By all appearances, they end at a small, empty, earthen-walled room so dark you can only make out the faint outlines of your fingers when holding your hand in front of your face.
But if you know where you’re going, you slip around the left side of the stairs and make a sharp right that should have you walking straight into their underside.
Instead, the moment your head would crash into the boards, you find yourself in a passage so black your hand might as well not exist at all.
Five steps forward, three left, ten right, two left again. I can’t help wondering whether the criminals who built this passageway were inspired by the college or the other way around—or whether magical security can’t help evolving to use the same methods.
With the last step, I walk back out into the earthen room. I lope up the steps and pass through the now-silent lobby. This version of the theater is only a conjured echo of the real thing.
The moment I emerge from the entrance, I’m faced with a mass of activity that’s vividly real.
Crow’s Close—named after Kosmel’s favored bird in recognition of the role the godlen of luck plays in the success of any illicit endeavor—takes its name quite literally.
The narrow strip of dirt road with wooden buildings packed on either side is entirely enclosed, stopping at a dead end about a hundred paces in either direction.
The only way in and out is through the theater.
Well, the only way I know. No doubt the crooks who make this place their permanent residence have other escape routes.
The strip looks like a macabre version of the commercial street near the palace. Conjured illusions gyrate over the shop doors, but with imagery like skulls and weaponry. The lights in the windows glow amber, crimson, and violet in the dusk.
The shoppers are a scruffier lot, with dreary clothing and scars aplenty. Most wear hoods like my own to shade their faces, the more cautious concealing their features with simple masks as well.
But I’ve got no reputation in the outside world that my presence here could threaten.
The place to get the latest underground gossip is the pub right at the northern dead end, Brew & Dagger. I slink through the strip’s other patrons toward it.
The sign over the dark wooden face shows a dagger jabbed into a mug of beer next to the pub’s name. The conjured image hovering in front of it mimics the logo, with the blade rising and dropping back into the mug, making the illusionary glowing liquid slosh over the rim.
The inside of the pub smells like stale alcohol and acrid hazebloom smoke. I hop onto one of the empty stools by the scratched-up counter and ask the new bartender for an amber spritz.
As she mixes it, I let my gaze drift around the room, searching for any familiar faces I know will be happy to wag their tongue.
Before I land on one, I get a volunteer.
“If it isn’t Ivy. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
At the voice behind me, I tense inwardly before I’ve swiveled around to face the speaker. Milo smirks at me, his hooded eyes as dark as his five-o’clock shadow.
Back when I was sixteen and less good at controlling my impulses—and my hormones—Milo seemed like a good option for dealing with those hormones periodically with no strings attached.
We’d only had a couple of hookups when I found out that along with perfectly respectable forgery, he has a side-business picking out kids as young as eight for the mines, and my already limited attraction to him snuffed right out.
Four years later, he still hasn’t quite caught on that I’d sooner fuck a donkey than get down and dirty with him again.
I grit my teeth and smile tightly back at him. Milo does like to hear his own voice, so this could make my job here easier. As long as he keeps his hands to himself in the meantime.
I take on a careless tone. “I like to make sure I’m missed. But every now and then I get a craving for an amber spritz that no one makes like this place.”
He thumps his tankard onto the counter next to where the bartender has just slid my own glass. I curl my fingers around the cool surface, planning on keeping my hand and at least part of my gaze on it at all times while Mr. Can’t Take A Hint is hanging around.
“I miss you every day I don’t see that pretty face,” Milo says, with so much grease to the words you could slip and break your arm on them. My magic bristles in my chest before I rein it in.
He’s never actually hurt me… but I’d rather not give him the opportunity.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve found plenty of other things to keep you busy.
” I take a sip of my drink, enjoying the tartly sweet flavor.
Brew & Dagger really does make the best cocktails.
“I heard there was a bit of a commotion in Slaughterwell… a couple of days back? Something about a noble getting stabbed? That’s your main haunt, isn’t it? ”
Milo’s eyes twitch to the side, which tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about, despite the noncommittal answer he gives me. “Another day, another body. There was a woman found yesterday—pretty stripped down, so what she’d had on before must have been nice, I guess.”
In my head, Julita lets out a sputter of indignation. I ignore her and give another casual nudge. “Anyone bragging about doing the deed?”
“Not that I’ve heard. The whispers about it have been more confused than anything. Whoever offed her, they slunk away fast.”
He shakes his head in grim approval. I don’t see any reason to distrust his answer.
No one around here knows who killed my ghostly passenger. I guess that’s not totally surprising, given that it was probably one of her own, not an outer-warder.
It can’t hurt to see if I can stir up any more information, though.
I bring my glass back to my lips. “Mustn’t be good for business, having the bigwigs from the hill poking around investigating the crime.”
“Oh, our bigwigs got things cleaned up quick so that wouldn’t happen.
” Milo tips his head toward the door—toward the building that’s both temple to Kosmel and gambling hall in the center of Crow’s Close, where the most powerful crooks rule the roost. “They got to her before any official alert went out, disappeared the body, all’s well. ”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Having the Crown’s Watch poking around wouldn’t be good for your business either, huh?”
Milo has always been put out that I won’t share the secrets of what I do when I’m not in this place. I can only imagine how he’d exploit the revelation that I’m the one people call the Hand of Kosmel.
If he thinks I’m bringing up the dead woman out of concern for my own criminal activities, that’s fine with me. It keeps him off the scent.
I let out a light chuckle, but my thoughts are whirling. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Florian’s underworld would cover up Julita’s murder.
Tensions have risen in the past few years. The Crown’s Watch started cracking down more violently on all sorts of crimes—at least, those that affect the citizens they care about—after King Konram officially inherited the throne from his father.
I suppose it’s not surprising that the powers here would rather remove any additional excuse for royal law enforcement to come nosing around.
What does he mean, disappeared the body? Julita demands. They couldn’t have just dumped me in a random hole and called that it.
Oh, they could have. I swish a little more alcohol around in my mouth, unable to answer her here and not sure what I’d say anyway.
All trace of her murder will have been wiped away. Other than whatever bits of clothing or jewelry she had on her that desperate scavengers stole, there’ll be no sign she was ever in Slaughterwell.
It isn’t just that her friends at the college haven’t found out she was murdered yet. If I don’t say anything… they’ll never find out at all.
They’ll never know just how serious the situation is. Just how far the prospective scourge sorcerers have gone to stop their own crimes from being discovered.
The men might assume she got scared and simply ran. They won’t even know to mourn her.
The full reality is obviously sinking in for Julita too. Her voice roughens with a mixture of outrage and dismay.
They can’t just— I was slaughtered right here in the city! The Watch should be looking into it. And the fringe scum threw me away like a soiled rag? How am I… How is anyone… It isn’t right.
I shift restlessly on my stool and take a larger gulp of my drink.
Milo leans closer. His beer-sour breath gusts over my face. “If you’ve got a mind to stick around for a bit…”
“Sorry,” I say, not at all apologetically. “I could only drop in for long enough to grab a quick drink. Good to see you’re doing well.”
I drain the last of the spritz and slide off my stool. Milo makes a grab for my arm, but when I jerk out of the way, he doesn’t follow me.
I stride back out to the street, both my mind and my stomach stewing with everything I took in.
Julita pipes up again, sounding more collected but still raw. What are you doing now?
I could leave and tune out the voice in my head until she fades away or dislodges herself in her frustration. It still isn’t my business. It’s not my problem to solve.
But she’s here. I’ve got her.
I’m the only person who knows what happened to her who might care enough to see that her story doesn’t end with its final chapters missing.
The assholes who did this to her aren’t just a threat to the haughty rich in their fancy castle of a school. Their experiments in vicious magic could destroy every person I’ve spent the last eight years trying to help.
If I turn my back on my ghostly guest, I’m turning my back on all of them.
And that might be even worse than anything I’ve done before.
I set off toward a shop with a tendril of greenish smoke wafting from a side window. “I’m going to ask a few more questions. And then the next time we see your friends, I’ll tell them everything I possibly can that’ll take those bastards down.”