39. THIRTY-NINE
THIRTY-NINE
FANKALO
Location: Shrokan District, Seraphinden
Fankalo strode through Seraphinden’s Shrokan District toward the warehouse her crew had taken up for their two ten-days at port.
A sheen of smog from the district’s various industries clung to the stagnant air, casting a shade of gray across everything out of spitting distance.
The squat adobe buildings—which looked like Chaos had slung them onto the district in a drunken dice roll—had faded and cracked.
The air tasted of cracked adobe, too. And it smelled like smoke and shit.
That was the smell of opportunity.
It had taken her three years to get to this moment: she had an address for Kotar Avelius, and Calver was sufficiently distracted.
Like a shadow, Fankalo bent her way around corners and into alleys, slipping through the slightly-ajar door into their warehouse.
Azel, a recruited bodyguard, removed his hand from the hilt of his dagger and nodded to her as she entered.
Darkness shrouded the windowless space. She pulled a distortion lamp Calver had made from her pocket and activated it.
Hundreds of crates, doubling as scrap metal storage and an effective form of soundproofing, were stacked in tidy rows from floor to ceiling.
She wound through them toward a door at the far side.
Muffled shouting sounded from behind it.
She creaked the door open into a spine-crawling scene.
Blood splattered the floor, the walls, inky black in the low light.
A miasma of fear that stank worse than Shrokan’s lower wharf clung to the air.
Mitek hunched over a squirming form tied to a table at the room’s center.
Her Hand was so entrenched in his interrogation, he didn’t seem to have noticed her enter.
The man on the table loosed a shrill scream that sent chills over her skin. Good. That meant they had found Karack. She had expected it to take at least another day for Zeb and Mitek to track the gangster down.
Mitek’s knifepoint sat under the man’s chin. “Answer the fucking question if you don’t want to turn into scarlet art, like the last guy on the table.” Fates, he was getting a little too good at this act. “Where did you get the ruxechorin?”
Zeb and Cam stood in the room’s corner, arms crossed, faces unreadable. Fankalo skirted around the perimeter to stand beside them.
The man on the table blubbered, his dark hair smeared across his face, his words almost incoherent between sobs.
“G-Greeny! You’ll need to talk to Greeny.
Ask after him in Chira’na’s moss district.
” His arms strained against his bindings, and his legs scrambled and slipped on the table’s surface.
“I swear it! Just let me go. I-I have a family.”
Karak most certainly did not have a family. She’d researched him thoroughly. In fact, there were few who wouldn’t slice him open on this very table, presented with the opportunity, anonymity, and a sharp stick.
Mitek cupped his victim’s cheek. “Cheers, friend. That wasn’t so hard.
” He spun his knife once over his knuckles—his favorite stupid trick—causing Karak to wince before he plunged it into the table a hair’s width from the man’s hip.
It severed Karak’s belt. Mitek pulled it free and performed a brief audit of its purse’s contents as the gangster whimpered.
“You’re in luck. I’m going to let you leave this table with all of your limbs.”
Not true. They would let him go because they let everyone go. He would blab. They’d be gone by nightfall: signs of a struggle left on the floor, ratka charred against the wall. That would cause a splendid stir and gain them a free reputation.
Mitek’s face, dripping in shadow, was sheer malice.
“I have a task for you. Tell that bastard at the messenger station that I’m dropping the package with Captain Tragvola.
” Celestar was always delighted to play along with their games.
“If I have to tell him myself, it’s going to get ugly, and I don’t have time for ugly. Got it?”
“Messenger station. Tragvola. I’ll tell him,” Karak stammered.
Mitek pulled the knife free of the table again and cut Karak’s bindings. “Time for you to get out, eah?”
Karak scrambled to his feet, slipped on the blood pooled beneath the table, and sprawled across the filthy floor with a smack.
Mitek loomed over him. “And, ah, don’t make the mistake of opening your mouth.
Found you once. My money’s on finding you again, should I feel inclined.
” He held a leather-gloved hand to help the gangster to his feet, as if they’d just passed a good match in the ring.
Karak did not take it. He scuttled on his hands until he got his feet beneath him, then dashed from the room.
Zeb cleared his throat, and Mitek turned to face them. When he noticed Fankalo, his mouth split into a smile. “Bratty!”
“Chaos’s unruly bush, Mitek. You were a fated beast.”
His grin widened and his chin lifted. “Thanks.”
“How fast do you expect he’ll open his mouth?”
Mitek flipped his knife into the air and caught it. “Faster than a shark in a bloody pond.”
“Speaking of which, where did you get all the blood?”
“Pig. Butcher just threw out the carcass. Said it got into moss runoff and the meat was tainted. I figured, better this than some unsuspecting street kid getting into it.” An early moss addiction was a death sentence.
Fankalo moved forward and dipped a finger in the substance smeared across the table. It was cold and tacky and made her nose shrivel. “A solid salvage.”
“Fucking brilliant, eah?”
She couldn’t help but smile at Mitek’s pride. He was proving to be more reliable by the minute. Now, if only she could do something about Cam… The crewman in question was openly taking a piss into the ground gutter in the room’s corner.
“I don’t know how much of that you heard,” Mitek continued, “but we’ve got a name on the dark market’s largest ruxechorin supplier.”
“Greeny, eah? I don’t think I’ve heard a more moronic moniker. Why not just go by Stabby?” Though she loved a good moron in power: they were so much easier to manipulate.
“Karak doubts he’ll budge on his holdings, though.” Apparently she’d missed that part.
“I’m sure we’ll find a way to persuade him,” Zeb grumbled through his salt-and-pepper beard, his voice scratchier than a pestle grinding stones. “Especially with the knack you’ve developed for scaring the piss out of the oligarchy’s worst.”
Mitek did make a very good Shadewalker.
“I was feeling especially inspired.” Mitek’s fingers tightened around the blade in his hand before he stashed it in the sheath on his calf. “His face was begging to be rearranged. The bastard was trafficking Shrokan orphans.”
Mitek had been a Shrokan orphan before her father found him. Fankalo didn’t know much about his early life—strange, considering how much he ran his bleeding mouth. Whenever she asked, he only made up a new stupid story.
“Speaking of which…” Mitek turned toward the far side of the room, where a curtain hung over a storage closet. He pulled it back. Two children, a boy and a girl, hugged at their knees. “It’s alright. He’s history. You’re with us now.”
The pair looked half-starved, deep hollows beneath listless eyes.
They might have been only a couple years younger than Fankalo.
Her stomach knotted. She was not her father.
She did not invite children aboard the Rapture.
Despite every argument Mitek put forth, she wouldn’t tie young lives to her path, knowing it would lead to war.
The girl’s eyes found hers and pleaded silently. Why hers, not their savior’s? Because she was a girl? Fankalo looked away. Chaos, who knew. The same fate might have befallen her too, had she lived a different life. She only had to look to Calver to know that she had been lucky.
“Ay. I’ve got something that might turn those frowns about!
” Mitek pulled the girl’s hands free of her knees and uncurled her fingers, setting Karak’s purse into her palm.
“That’s about four hundred silver notes.
A lucky score if I’ve ever seen one. I’m thinking you rightfully own it, all things considered. ”
Still the children did not move. They looked at the purse like it was a trick. Fankalo couldn’t blame them, given that the young man offering it had just threatened to flay their former captor alive.
Mitek’s smile twitched. “Ay, Cam,” he called. Cam stalked over, boots scuffing against the floor as he went. “Can you get these two into the mess? Get ‘em something to eat. I’ll make sure they’re situated soon.”
Cam grunted and tilted his head, first to the two children and then towards the door. They followed reluctantly.
Mitek turned to Fankalo. “What are you doing here? Didn’t expect to see you until we made it back to the Rapture.”
She pulled a map of Seraphinden’s Korshuva district from her pocket and unfolded it on the blood-smeared table.
“Calver is having one of his episodes. If there’s a time to pay Avelius a visit, it’s now.
” Calver became acutely present whenever they docked in Seraphinden.
They’d had the address for over a week, but she hadn’t wanted him to follow her.
With her brother now incapacitated, her Luck had all but danced at the opportunity she’d worked toward for three years.
She was going to find Methu’su. She was going to learn how to distort.
Mitek and Zeb moved to stand beside her, eying the map’s circled location. “I thought you seemed especially bright-eyed,” Mitek said. “Did he finally respond to your request for an audience, then?”
“No.” She wasn’t going to wait another three years. “But I have an address.” She tapped her finger on Avelius’s cross street. “And a couple of good scaling knives. So I’ve decided to invite myself over for tea. I’ll need you three to stand watch.”