THREE
The alley was dark and cold; half of the sparse torches had been blown out by the wind that always barrelled down its narrow path.
The shouts of sailors in the harbour carried on the salt-kissed breeze.
Aly skirted a puddle that reeked of piss, wrinkling her nose.
The hair rose on the back of her neck as she continued down the close, away from the sounds of life and into the strange stillness that always enveloped the Nuckelavee’s premises.
He loved his spectacle, she knew that was all there was to it, but it unsettled her all the same.
She stopped when she reached a window still occupied by a carved turnip head, its grotesque glowing face skeletal and monstrous.
“Samhain was yesterday,” she said into the dark.
A figure stepped out of the shadows, unrecognisable in the gloom. “And?”
“Your turnip head is still lit,” Aly said. “Doesn’t your boss know it’s bad luck to keep it up after Samhain? It attracts fae.” Fae weren’t real, of course, but it didn’t hurt to be a little superstitious when your business was as dangerous as the crime lords’ was.
“Fae like the Wulver?” The Wulver was the lupine fae after whom Grant had named himself. “I assume you’re here to see the boss?” Aly recognised the voice now as Fenella, one of the Nuckelavee’s lieutenants—the less scary of the two.
“Aye.”
“Have you got an appointment?”
Aly suppressed a sigh. They went through this every time. “Do I ever?”
“He’s busy,” Fenella said.
“I’ve got a message for him,” Aly said. “From the Wulver.” Of a sort. Grant didn’t know she was there, but her actions were in his best interests as much as anyone’s.
Aly could just make out the sight of Fenella crossing her arms in the dark. “You could have a message from Queen Méabh herself and it wouldn’t matter, I’m not letting you in without an appointment.”
Aly considered her options. Fenella was, she understood, a generally reasonable person.
They both knew better than to think either the Wulver or the Nuckelavee was worth coming to harm over.
With a bit of wheedling, she’d eventually decide she’d put up enough of a show of obstruction and let Aly through.
But Aly had a reputation to keep up, and she couldn’t let it get out that she was hanging about wheedling other crime lords’ door guards. If word got out the Wolf pup had gone soft, his enemies would be delighted. They’d take turns trying to catch her out and off her.
“I’m not asking you to let me in,” Aly said, her voice dropping to a growl.
She slid a hand to the small of her back and pulled out a knife, watching Fenella’s eyes widen as she pointed it at the other woman’s throat.
“I’m telling you to let me pass, or I’ll start chucking pieces of you through the window at that bloody lantern until your boss shows up himself. ”
Fenella stepped back, eyeing the knife. The blade glinted in the lantern light.
“Good choice.”
Aly kept the knife clutched in her hand as she pushed open the door and stepped into the low-ceilinged room.
It ran the full depth of the building, with a window on either end, and the only light came from more turnip lanterns, giving the entire room a ghoulish glow.
The Nuckelavee stood in the centre of the room.
He was tall and lean and pale at the best of times; in the eerie light of the lanterns, he truly looked like the human half of the equine fae that was his namesake.
All the crime lords named themselves after fae, and the Nuckelavee had chosen the nastiest of all the myths.
Several of his crew surrounded him, and as Aly’s steps sounded on the creaky floorboards they turned as one towards her, drawing knives and clubs.
Aly’s grip tightened on her dagger, and she slid her right hand to the small of her back, reaching for the second blade she kept hidden beneath the pleats of her frock coat, though she didn’t draw it yet.
“Weapons down, lads,” the Nuckelavee said. Nobody moved. “Now.” There was a general rustling of fabric and leather as his goons sheathed their weapons.
“Leave us,” the Nuckelavee said. His crew hesitated, then began to trickle past Aly to a door on her right, shooting glares and muttering threats at her.
When they were alone, the Nuckelavee turned his attention to Aly. His gaze slid over her skin like rancid oil. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Aly sheathed her knife, but kept her hand near the grip. “You’re to stop poaching salchs.”
The Nuckelavee went still as death. “Is that what the Wulver told you?”
Aly’s breath caught in her throat. She pressed her lips together to keep from showing him her surprise.
Grant hadn’t even spoken of the missing salchs to her, but everyone connected to salching knew about it.
At first, it hadn’t seemed abnormal. It was dangerous, illegal work, and when a salch died their body was usually weighed down and shoved in a canal.
But now salchs were leaving the markets they worked at and never showing up again, and that was new.
That pointed to another crime lord setting up a new salching market without any safeguards.
And Aly’s money was on the Nuckelavee. He had form. “Do it, or there’ll be consequences.”
“Well, I’m not involved in the salching business anymore. Your lot saw to that.” The Nuckelavee’s eyes glittered, reflecting the flames from the lanterns. “And I haven’t been poaching.”
“Aye, the Redcap claimed he was innocent, too.” He hadn’t, in fact; he’d boasted about the children he’d killed when Aly had caught up to him.
“Remember him? He screamed loudly enough to be heard in Faerie before I was through with him.” And she’d vomited up enough afterwards it was a wonder her stomach remained in her body.
She suppressed a shudder at the memory. Grant had told her to make it last, and she had.
She’d obeyed, too, when she’d been told to make sure that a few identifiable body parts—his head, his tattooed forearm, his scarred hand—should wash up on shore as a reminder to the others.
The Nuckelavee’s face twisted. “Tell your boss to look in the mirror.”
“You’ve been warned,” Aly said, turning and leaving before she slipped up and asked him to explain. If she did that, it was all over. A deputy who didn’t know what her own crime lord was up to was an even better target than one who wheedled another crime lord’s staff.
She stalked back to Grant’s rooms, rolling over what the Nuckelavee had said in her mind. He’d seemed earnest, so much so that Aly questioned her assumption that he had started salchmongering again.
Earnest or no, he was right about one thing: Grant was up to something, something he was hiding from her, and she needed to find out what before it was too late.
It wasn’t even about the missing salchs; she couldn’t shake the uneasiness she’d felt at his reluctance to tell her either what was in Edzan’s box or what he intended to do with the contents.
It all added up to Grant concealing his actions from her—his deputy—and there was no way that ended well for Aly.
At best, he would box her in until she was forced into something he knew she would object to, and she knew from experience that refusal at that point was far, far worse than obedience.
She turned into a narrow close that stank of hops.
Grant’s rooms were above one of his breweries, with his office linking the legitimate space with the illegitimate.
It had struck Aly as particularly irresponsible when she’d found out it was possible to walk from a pub, up the stairs, through Grant’s office, and into his salching concern, until she realised that it wasn’t possible at all, not unless one was Grant or one of his few trusted lieutenants.
No one else was able to find the hidden catch on the wall that made it slide open.
And no one, not even those who knew it was there, would be able to see the illegitimate side of his business from the street.
From where Aly stood, there was only the massive room with the brewing vats on the left, and half a dozen sash windows on the right, all of which could be accounted for in the corridor up the stairs from the pub.
There was no sign of the diamond-paned casement windows she knew existed in the long, narrow room where Grant housed his salching business.
They simply didn’t exist on the outside of the building.
It was a quirk of working with Grant that Aly had long since learnt to accept.
Magic was as much a part of the fabric of Mossburgh as the damp sea air, seeping into the stone walls as readily as the moisture did, gathering every time someone lit a candle or heated water for washing.
Most folk didn’t notice it, the thrum of magic as pervasive in the air as the sound of gulls or the splash of waves against the pier, and even those who did notice it couldn’t figure out how to manipulate it, so removed was it from the familiar magic that propelled water buses and sparked fires.
But Grant had. He’d created caches all over the city that could only be accessed by those he trusted, and he’d created an entire business space the same way.
The door Aly approached was hidden away in the back of the close, where a narrow stone wall joined Grant’s brewery to the building behind it.
To an outside observer, it was close to, but not in any way related to, the brewery.
Aly wasn’t sure if there’d been a small storage closet or other space before, or if the wall had been bare and Grant had hired a joiner to build a new door.
Rain-flecked specks of green paint stuck to her fingers as she pushed the door open, ducking beneath the low lintel, and climbed the dark, rickety staircase.
Somehow, everything in this space felt ancient and ready to fall apart, even though, given Grant’s age, it couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.