CHAPTER
One
Draped in beggar’s rags and leaning on a cane, Jean-Claude lurked at the entry to Three Brick Alley, awaiting his quarry. Loose strips of transparent linen covered his eyes, and his face itched under layers of the best stage makeup alchemy could provide. He’d been here through the tolling of an hour, precious time slipping through his fingers. Apprehending a shape-shifting spy was not something one could jot down on an agenda, but he had only one day left to manage it.
Passersby went about their business, steering well clear of the blind and stinking beggar. Jean-Claude trusted that his young co-conspirator, lurking in an even narrower alley across the way, had not become distracted. She had proven herself a professional despite her tender age.
The chatter on the street rippled, like a herd of cows muttering to one another at the scent of predators nearby, a swift rumble of noise and then watchful silence.
From up the street came a surly mob of Last Men, a particularly desperate breed of doomsday cultists. Young, lean, and angry, they wore long feast-day robes, but went with hoods thrown back to display shaved heads tattooed with row upon row of saintly icons, each one defiled. Their leader had a disfigured omnioculus—the Builder’ eye, blind and bleeding—emblazoned on his forehead.
Jean-Claude stumbled from the alley wheezing, “Alms for the blind.” He held out a tin cup and blundered headlong into the nearest tough. The cultist fell, Jean-Claude collapsed backward on purpose, and “accidentally” barked the leader’s shin with his cane.
“Filthy whoreson!” the leader growled. “Break his legs.”
His bodyguards stepped in to give Jean-Claude a kicking.
“Builder bless,” Jean-Claude said, holding up his hands defensively and rocking wildly. “Builder bless. I mean no harm.”
“The Builder’s dead, vermin.” The mob piled on Jean-Claude, punching and kicking, blows that would leave bruises but no worse thanks to his failing to be a easy target. Jean-Claude wailed quite piteously.
“Stop!” came a high, shrill voice. “Please stop! Don’t hurt my papa!” A young girl, somewhere between eleven and thirteen squeezed through the press of men, fell to her knees, and covered Jean-Claude with her body.
“Out of the way, girl.” One of the brutes grabbed her by the hair and dragged her off Jean-Claude. “You’ll get yours next, I—Breaker’s breath!” He leapt back and shook his hand, recoiling from the field of open sores and blisters that covered her face.
Jean-Claude sat up, the bandages on his face falling away to reveal blackened skin, cracked and rotting, dripping with pus. “Pox and plague take you all.” He spit up the wad of rice and curds he’d been holding in his cheek.
“Pest! They’ve got the pest!” shouted one of the Last Men.
Jean-Claude lurched to his feet. “Boils and blisters on your balls!”
The first ruffian bolted, and the rest followed like a shoal of aerofish fleeing a leviathan.
Jean-Claude nodded to his young accomplice. They withdrew down Three Brick Alley until they came to a dark junction where several buildings didn’t quite line up.
Jean-Claude’s heart raced and his lungs burned from the exertion, but he looked down at the girl, Rebecca, and asked, “Package delivered?”
Rebecca was on loan from St. Josephine’s Home for Foundlings, which was a front for the most lucrative urchin gang in the city. An incomparable pickpocket, Rebecca could steal a man’s wooden teeth if he smiled at her. Alternately, she could play the part of a putpocket and plant a prize on a person.
Rebecca was already scrubbing the makeup off her face, or at least smearing it more evenly. “Of course. They was distracted enough I coulda taken their boots.”
Jean-Claude pulled at a small vial of wood spirits and started scrubbing off his makeup goo. The stinging liquid chilled his face and left his skin raw. He handed the spirits to Rebecca. “Don’t get it in your eyes.”
Her nose wrinkled but she splashed it on her face and got to work peeling off boils and blisters to reveal a face full of freckles. “What’s that marble thing for anyway?”
The contraband in question was a contraption that Capitaine Isabelle had contrived: small metal sphere, not much bigger than a marble, with a tiny sliver of chartstone inside. She’d actually gone on at some length to explain to him how it worked, showed him some very detailed technical drawings which he nodded at politely and completely failed to comprehend.
Jean-Claude arched an eyebrow at her. “Why do you want to know?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Weren’t too long ago the Last Men was just a pack of nutters standing on street corners screaming, ‘Builder’s dead!’ Used to throw rocks at ’em. Never bothered with their pockets ’cause they never had anything worth taking. Since Burning Night, they ganged up. Started recruiting hard and beating up folks who won’t pay bribes. Makes lean pickings for me. Now you show up, la reine’s man, and says, how ’bout we put these marbles in their bags. So I think what’s they done to get the nobs mad at ’em?”
Jean-Claude grunted approval at this line of reasoning. Orphans grew up fast on these streets, but Rebecca was quick and bold even by those standards.
Jean-Claude drew forth his hunter’s eye, a device that looked like a timepiece the size of his hand. He flipped open the lid and showed her the face. Instead of watch hands there were three needles with beads that could slide along their length showing distance and direction. All pointed in the general direction of Uptown, and the third bead was catching up with the first two.
“The marble was a prey marker,” Jean-Claude said, which was more evocative to his mind than sympathetic resonance nodes, which was what Isabelle called them. “Works on the same principle as a ship’s orrery. That black needle points to the prey marker you just dropped off. The other two are the ones we planted earlier.”
“The ones I planted.” Rebecca looked rather more skeptical than impressed at this fine bit of engineering. “If you want to know where they’re going, why not just follow ’em?”
“I’ve been following them,” Jean-Claude said. “The problem is, I can’t be everywhere at once. Also, their new leader, Hasdrubal, is a Seelenjäger. He can hear you and smell you and get away before you ever catch sight of him.” Jean-Claude wasn’t fond of shapeshifters at the best of times, but since he’d started hunting Hasdrubal, he half believed he was chasing a ghost. Now he was running out of time. After months of preparation, Isabelle’s ship was scheduled to loft tomorrow on an expedition to the top of the world, and Jean-Claude would be damned if he’d be left behind.
“So why’s la reine care about the Last Men?” Rebecca asked.
“Because their leader is one of the men behind Burning Night,” Jean-Claude said. A foreign spy and agent provocateur, Hasdrubal had helped the old roi’s estranged son depose him. The usurper had come within a heartbeat of claiming the crown before Isabelle had stopped him.
Since Burning Night, all the rest of the conspirators had been captured, killed, or chased away, but Hasdrubal remained at large. Spymaster Impervia wanted him interrogated for his knowledge of the Skaladin spy network, and la reine herself wanted to mount his head as a trophy and send it to his master, the Tyrant of Skaladin, as a warning.
Jean-Claude levered himself to his feet, his knees creaking. “Thank you for your help.”
“Where are we going?” Rebecca asked.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” Jean-Claude said. “I’m going to fetch allies. You are going about your business.” Not that he liked the idea of sending her back to the orphanage. Children deserved to be raised, not just trained to fetch like dogs, but at least she had a roof over her head and some measure of protection.
According to his hunter’s eye, the Last Men seemed to be gathering well outside their normal territory, and given their garb he thought he could guess where. It was time to muster his reinforcements, set an ambush, and hope Hasdrubal put in an appearance. Jean-Claude must catch him today.
Rebecca folded her arms and said, “I don’t have to follow the marks. I just have to follow you. So you either have to waste time trying to lose me, which I’m betting you can’t, or you can let me help.”
Jean-Claude glowered at her. “I appreciate your courage, but these people are dangerous. Hasdrubal especially.”
“Which means you need all the eyes you can get.”
Jean-Claude bit his tongue on another rebuff. She’d already dug her heels in, he didn’t technically have any authority over her, and there wasn’t anything he could do short of stuffing her in a barrel that would keep her from following him.
“One question,” he said. “Why?”
“Because they turned me inside out last week and I means to get my own back. Besides, maybe la reine needs a pickpocket.”
Jean-Claude snorted at her audacity, but in truth l’Empire did need its share of sanctioned smugglers, thieves, spies, and other scofflaws. Perhaps he could find a place for her in Impervia’s service.
“Very well,” he said. “You can come with, but you’re in the army now, and I’m your sergeant. You do as I say and no buts about it. Deal?”
Her eyes narrowed, “You’re not just going to tell me to go away.”
“Where we’re going, I need someone who can stay out of sight and scout for me.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Uptown Temple,” he said. Today was the Feast of Saint Cynessus and all the Last Men had been wearing feast-day robes. Given that they generally despised the Temple and defaced all ritual objects, it seemed a strange choice of raiment unless they meant to blend into the worship crowd and stir up trouble.
“Deal,” Rebecca said.
* * *
The oration for the Feast of Saint Cynessus the Blind had already started when Jean-Claude, Marie, and Jackhand Djordji arrived at the temple with Rebecca in tow. The worship hall was packed like a pickle barrel. Jean-Claude’s hunter’s eye pointed to all three of his prey markers being inside. Yet with everybody in feast-day robes, many with hoods pulled up, it was impossible to pick the Last Men out of the crowd.
It was Marie who’d suggested they come around back. They could get a better view of the faces in the crowd from the balcony behind the dais.
A rectory was attached to the apse of the temple. Rebecca slipped in through a basement window and hurried to unbar the door. There was a time when Jean-Claude could have squeezed through that window. These days he’d get stuck like a cork in a bottle.
“What is it with you and strays?” Djordji said. “Never meets an urchin you doesn’t coddle.” As thin and knotty as an old rope, Djordji had trained the best fighters in l’Empire over the last half century. He’d also trained Jean-Claude, though he wouldn’t admit to it.
“She just followed me home,” Jean-Claude said. “I didn’t even feed her.”
“You bought her a fish pie on the way up here,” Marie said in a voice that sounded like it was echoing through a misty graveyard at night. Her whole form was white and bright as the silver moon Kore, and her expression was as blank as a porcelain doll’s.
“I offered everyone a fish pie on the way up here,” Jean-Claude said.
“Only because she was hungry,” Marie countered.
“It’s not like she can’t get her own,” Djordji said. “She picks about a dozen purses.”
Before Jean-Claude could retort, the door shuddered and opened, and the urchin in question poked her head out. “Come on.”
Jean-Claude led the way through the clerical residence and along the passageway to the vestry behind the dais. A startled usher hurried toward them, “Messieurs, mesdemoiselles, what are you doing—”
Jean-Claude doffed his hat and said, “I’m so sorry we’re late; the crowds were terrible.”
“But—” said the usher.
“Has the sagax arrived yet? We were supposed to meet him for private instruction.”
“No, but—”
“If he’s not here, we’ll just wait for him in the gallery. I think I see one of his attendants. Thank you. Builder keep you.”
Jean-Claude’s companions slipped by the usher while Jean-Claude kept him occupied. Djordji paused and peeked through the curtain separating the vestry from the dais. Beyond, the temple orator delivered the blind saint’s Exhortation of Return in the Saintstongue. The congregations of the Enlightened faithful chanted along, speaking words they believed without understanding.
“Sharpshooters in the window,” Djordji snapped. “Three by my count.”
Jean-Claude abandoned the usher. “Marie, countersniper.”
Marie unslung her twist gun. Jean-Claude peered through the draperies. The warm, golden light of ten thousand candles filled the temple instruction hall. On the dais, in elaborate golden vestments, the orator lifted the reliquary of Saint Cynessus from the altar and raised it over his head. The reliquary’s box, made of the finest burlwood, was engraved with the icon of a winged key with a blind eye for a head.
Up behind the clerestory windows, men with profane symbols tattooed on their faces took aim and cocked their weapons.
Jean-Claude rushed through the curtain, vaulted the guardrail, and plowed into the orator from behind. “Down!”
The orator collapsed in tangle of heavy limbs just as gunshots split the air. The reliquary flew from the orator’s hands, bounced off the altar, and arced toward the Enlightened worshippers, who shrieked in fear and confusion. A bullet spanged off the altar. The two temple knights who had been flanking the dais jerked and fell. Gouts of blood spurted from grotesque wounds.
Marie braced against the vestry doorframe and squeezed the trigger on her twist gun. Fire and smoke belched from the barrel. One of the assassins fell away. She ducked to reload.
Jean-Claude grabbed the orator and pulled him into better cover. “Why in Torment are the Last Men trying to kill you?” Killing an orator and terrorizing a temple service were the sort of thing a mad cult might do, but it was far too senseless for Hasdrubal.
“I have no idea!” the orator squealed, and covered his head.
Two dozen men burst from the crowd, howling like fiends slipped from the halls of Torment. They threw back their hoods to reveal their tattooed heads and produced a variety of weapons from under their robes. The frighted worshippers broke and stampeded, crashing through the main doors and into the street, trampling anyone who fell.
A half squad of temple knights raced from the side hall and charged the cultists. Gunshots from above sent one sprawling and screaming. A temple page sprinted for the reliquary. A mob of Last Men hurled themselves at the knights and drove them back. The chief cultist split the page’s head with a meat cleaver.
Marie leaned out of the vestry and pulled her trigger. Another sharpshooter fell. Marie had always been fierce in her quiet way, but her progress since she started combat training was nothing short of terrifying.
Jean-Claude pointed the orator at the vestry. “Go. That way! Rebecca, get him out of here!” That would get her out as well.
Copyright © 2020 by Curtis Craddock
