ELEVEN
The pub was full of the thrum of conversation and the smell of hops, tangled with the honey-sweet smell of whisky. Aly ordered a pint and sat at the edge of the bar, her mind circling round and round Edzan’s reaction to the blackmail letter and what it said about Grant.
And then there were the Nuckelavee’s words, when Aly had accused him of poaching Grant’s salchs.
Is that what he told you? Tell your boss to look in the mirror.
Her stomach curdled at the memory. The way the Nuckelavee had said it .
. . He suspected Grant of something, something that he was keeping from Aly.
She couldn’t shake the thought that the Nuckelavee knew what Grant was blackmailing Edzan to do, and it wasn’t to vote against giving the guilds more power.
One of the few things about her relationship with Grant that she could trust was that he didn’t lie to her.
He trusted her enough to be his deputy, and he gave her a lot of free rein to do her job.
It was one of the reasons she had become his deputy in the first place.
She was good at what she did, and she knew it—and she liked that.
And Grant knew that trusting her to do her job meant trusting her with the information she needed to do it.
He sometimes concealed things or told her he’d explain later and never did, but he’d never outright lied.
If that had changed, then he was into something bad.
And Aly had to get out.
She watched the pretty bartender pull her pint, her tightly coiled black hair swinging as she bent her head over. Grizhne was always good for information. She earwigged on all her patrons, but she also confirmed her gossip before spreading it.
Aly hadn’t decided yet if she was going to help the DI who’d arrested her.
There wasn’t much he could do if she disappeared into the city’s underbelly and didn’t surface when they’d arranged to meet.
She’d had to give her address when she’d been arrested, but the flat Grant kept for her was in a nice part of town—the sort of neighbourhood the police didn’t want to go barging into to find a petty criminal.
But it didn’t hurt to see what information she could gather now. And if Grant was keeping information from her, then perhaps she’d share a bit more than Erskine had anticipated.
“Did you hear about that dead burgess, the one they found with his throat slit on Wednesday?” she said, as Grizhne handed over her ale.
Grizhne rested her elbows on the bar and leant closer, her dark skin gleaming in the firelight. “Who’s asking?” Her expression was closed off, revealing nothing.
Aly tightened her grip around the glass of ale. “I am.”
“As yourself or as the Wulver’s deputy?”
“Does it matter?”
Grizhne gave her a level look. “Aye.”
“As myself. He doesn’t know I’m asking.” She eyed Grizhne, hoping for some softness in the other woman’s expression.
It was a problem of her own making, Aly knew that, but the loss of trust from her neighbours had been the worst consequence of taking up with Grant.
So many of them now believed, as Yvaani did, that she would take their secrets back to him at a moment’s notice, with no regard for the consequences to people she’d once counted among her friends.
“Am I supposed to believe that, when the poor soul was found in your boss’s territory?”
Aly swallowed sharply, the alcohol stinging her throat. “Was he?” Her voice came out as a croak.
Grizhne stared at Aly for a long moment, her eyes narrowing as she assessed Aly. “You didn’t hear? He was found on Glassmercat Close.”
Aly spluttered on her ale. That was right in the heart of Grant’s territory, a stone’s throw from the salching market he’d been leaving. Poor sod hadn’t got far at all before he’d been offed.
Grizhne’s expression softened. “You really didn’t know, did you?” A patron further down the bar called for her, but she shushed him, waving a dismissive hand in his direction. “I take it this wasn’t the Wulver’s work, then?”
Aly shook her head, presenting a confidence she didn’t feel. “No, he would’ve dumped the body in the Nuckelavee’s back garden.”
“Do you think it could have been the Nuckelavee?”
Aly frowned, considering. It was tantamount to a declaration of war, dumping a body in another crime lord’s territory.
There weren’t many crime lords who would be bold enough to do that.
The Cailleach, perhaps, but she had no grudge against Grant.
“I don’t think so,” Aly said. “He wouldn’t do that without making sure the Wulver knew it was him.
” There was something brewing between the two of them, but if or when it came to a head, it wouldn’t be with an unclaimed dead body.
“But I’ll tell you this,” Aly went on, leaning in. Grizhne leant in as well. “I know what he was doing round there. That burgess, member of the city government? He was buying magic.” She raised her voice on the last couple of sentences, pitching it to carry through the pub.
As she’d hoped, this statement attracted attention from the other punters, though not quite in the way she’d imagined.
“He was buying magic from the Wulver?”
Aly whirled round towards the tall, wiry person who had spoken.
Leslie had left the Guild of Apothecaries—or possibly been expelled; they were cagey about the details—some years ago, and now made a living providing medical treatment to those with injuries obtained in less-than-legal circumstances.
If Aly had known them when Grant had broken her fingers, she wouldn’t have tried setting them herself, and her middle finger would be much less squint today.
Leslie often worked at salching markets, healing those who were weak or even unconscious from giving too much of their magic.
And, to Aly’s good fortune, Leslie was one of the rare people in the underworld who actually liked her, after she’d protected them from an entitled customer at a salching market who had been enraged at the prospect of waiting for Leslie to heal a salch before he could take his fill of magic.
“Aye,” Aly said, stepping closer to Leslie. “On Tuesday.”
Leslie shook their head. “That doesn’t make sense.” Their dark hair was in a long plait today and it swung with the movement of their head. “He usually bought through the Caoineag.”
Aly’s fist tightened on the handle of her tankard.
Grant offered nothing that the Caoineag didn’t do better.
The sole advantage he’d once had over her was an utter disregard for his salchs’ welfare, but Aly had put a stop to that and ensured that all Grant’s employees understood the importance of cutting off customers before they took too much.
The Caoineag provided a cleaner, more comfortable environment for customers—and, last Aly had heard, at a lower price.
She threw herself into a chair next to Leslie. “How much does she charge these days?”
“Two shillings, I think.”
“The Wulver charges double that.”
Leslie cursed under their breath, stretching out their long trousers-covered legs. “Of course he does. And how much of that do you see?”
Aly gave a tense smile. “Not enough, for what I do.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.
Perhaps Gibson had gone to the Caoineag’s first and been thrown out because he didn’t have the money.
He’d seemed surprised to turn out his pockets and find nothing, but that could have been a ploy.
Her stomach clenched at the thought that she might have been swindled.
Worse, though, was the prospect that he might have sought out Grant’s market in particular, and the more she considered that, the more she feared it might have something to do with Grant blackmailing Gibson’s colleague.
She needed to talk to Erskine about this.
He was a copper and, worse, he was a copper she fancied, and those things combined meant she should stay far, far away from him.
But she also, inexplicably, thought he was trustworthy.
Perhaps it was the way he’d let her go when he realised he didn’t have his warrant card on him, instead of hauling her to a station house or using his substantially greater strength to search her pockets anyway.
Or perhaps it was because he’d believed she wasn’t the killer, and hadn’t just kept her locked up because he wanted to close the case.
It was all rather thin, and maybe it was simply that she wanted to be in his bed and was trying to justify her feelings.
But he’d treated her with more respect than any guard had since she’d left her mother’s house, and she knew better than to give him anything he could hold over her head.
She’d tell him what she knew about Gibson, he’d find the killer, and they’d part ways forever.
The wind blew in off the sea, funnelling down the canal and swirling Aly’s kilt about her knees.
A rag and bone man punted past, his rickety gondola piled high with threadbare fabric.
Aly shifted from foot to foot, squinting towards the end of the street.
There was still time to turn away and renege on her agreement with Erskine.
Her feet stayed firmly planted on the cobblestones. Something was going on, something that might involve Grant, and Erskine’s investigation was the best way to find out what it was.
“There you are.”
Aly jumped, her heart leaping to her throat, fearing for one wild moment that Grant had found her. Her heart steadied as she looked into the cool grey eyes of the DI who had arrested her.
“Any news?” he asked, leaning against the wall next to her.
Aly nodded, wetting her lips. “Aye, you could say that.” She took in a breath.
“Tuesday night wasn’t the first time Gibson was here buy—was here.
” She’d almost tripped up and admitted he’d bought magic through her.
“He’s been coming a few times a week for the last year.
” She turned her head to Erskine. “To buy magic.”