“What if he saw me with him? With your Decath boy?”
“So what if he did? Fei, I don’t think there’s a killer out there stalking the streets, preying only on women Durrel Decath shows interest in.”
She scowled at me, clearly neither convinced nor amused. “You’ll come?” she said finally.
“That’s the plan.” I was just kind of amazed she’d set it up.
At night, the Temple was all lit up, candles burning in colored glass lamps set into the walls, and massive iron chandeliers hauled up to the beamed ceiling. I almost smiled when I stepped in the great open doorway. (The Temple had doors, but only closed them in really inclement weather. Like an avalanche.) It looked like a festival.
I headed upstairs to the upper gallery, at a table just above where Fei was already sitting, her hair now spilling down her shoulders again. She was a little old for such a girlish display, but I had to admit, it worked. If I leaned forward just slightly, I had a wide, clear view of the chair opposite Fei’s, while still completely concealed by the balcony floor and railing. Fei had done her job well.
I’d already waved the serving girl away twice by the time Fei’s heavy came in, ambling through the common room. He was just as she’d described, big, strong, and scary. He had a curious sort of uneven gait, and as he swung himself into the chair across from Fei, I saw why. The sole of one boot was built up with blocks. Over the noise of the crowd and the unending raucous music, I couldn’t hear anything they said, but I saw everything. He looked to be in his sixth or seventh age, a little soft from hard living — but hard enough that I doubted the softness ever affected him much. He had thin, sandy hair, veined cheeks, and an uncertain beard that may have just been from neglecting to shave for a couple days. He planted his meaty fists on the table and ordered a drink.
I was ready to leave as soon as he sat down and I got a clear view of his face, but that didn’t seem fair to Fei. I’d roped her into this; I’d stay as long as she would. As I watched her smiling and drinking with him, my impression of her skills only grew. She was a natural actress, and no idiot either. After a few minutes, three more girls “happened” by her table, squealed with delight to recognize Fei, tossed their heads, and grinned a little less than demurely at the heavy, until his grizzled chin was nearly in his ale. If one of them hadn’t looked straight up at me, holding eye contact just barely long enough, I’d have thought it was a real coincidence. A minute later, Fei barked out a crass, unappealing laugh, shoved back, and stood up. She excused herself and slipped into the crowd. The other girls slid right into place, and Heavy probably never even noticed the difference.
Impressive. It almost made me miss having a partner.
A minute later, I spotted Fei near the stairs. She gave me one steady, significant look, then took a shadowed table in the back. I fed my way through the crowd and caught up with her.
“Well?” she demanded, her voice low and rough. “Did you see him?”
“I saw him,” I said evenly.
“His name is Alech Karst, and he works —”
“I know where he works,” I interrupted her. She looked surprised — but not quite shocked enough. “He works for Ragn Decath. He’s a guard at Charicaux.”
Fei’s expression was so wary and guarded that as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized she’d been going to say something else entirely. “Fei?”
“I don’t know about Decath. You might be right.”
“But that’s not where you saw him.”
More fidgeting. A decision, a deep breath. “He’s a Ferryman.”
I let out all my breath in one rush. She was serious. “Did you know that when he bragged about killing Talth Ceid?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. They come into the Bat sometimes, because it’s near the water. I hear them talking, usually about the money or the runs they do, out to Wolt or sometimes Tratua. Once I heard him say something about leaving a cargo locked in the hold of an impounded ship. They never went back for it.”
She said “it,” but I knew, from the haunted look in her eyes, that she really meant “them.” Sarists, or other unfortunates desperate enough to trust their fates to Ferrymen, trapped in a cargo hold, for days or maybe weeks. If they were lucky, Marau had gotten to them before the Greenmen did. For a moment, I couldn’t decide who I hated more — the Inquisition’s thugs who forced people to such desperate actions, or the Ferrymen who took advantage of them.
“Do the Ceid have dealings with Ferrymen?”
She drew a circle on the table with a nervous finger. “I never heard that,” she said. “But some of them — they’re local crews, but run by a bigger operation.”
A powerful family like the Ceid would be just the outside support a crew of Ferrymen could use. “What have you heard about the Ceid?”
Fei shrugged. “I don’t know about Karst, about Ferrymen, but once I heard someone bragging about how he’d ripped off a shipping family on the Silver. Said he and a couple of skells took them for some cargo that was supposed to go to the army. Medicines, I think. They sold them right out of the crates on Temple Street. Temus never said the name of the family, but it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“Wait — did you say Temus?”
She glanced past me, as if waiting for a threat to melt out of the shadows. “He’s just a Temple Street lowlife, nobody special. I haven’t seen him in a few weeks, though, so don’t even bother asking.”
“No,” I said slowly. The hum of the crowd seemed to dissipate, until all I could hear was a shrill, nasal voice crowing, Give Temus a taste, sweetling! “I can track him down. Did Karst tell you anything useful just now? Anything else about killing Talth Ceid?”
She shook her head. “I asked him, but all he would say is that the job wasn’t finished yet. He also said Lord Durrel would never go to trial, but I couldn’t get him to tell me what he meant.”
I didn’t like the sound of that one bit. I palmed a gold crown from my sleeve and slipped it into her hand. “You can go. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Karst. He won’t bother you.”
“I made sure he won’t,” Fei said, her voice fiery. “And this finishes the debt between us. Don’t come looking for me again.”
I nodded, watching her slip back into the bar. As she crossed the gallery, her skirts slipped, the hem falling lower, and she twisted her dark, loose hair around the back of her head and tightened up the laces of her bodice. With that closed, prim posture she could walk right past Karst’s table, and he’d never even see her. I wondered what she’d do now; she might not be able to go back to the Bat for a while. But I didn’t worry. Fei had a way of working things out for herself.
What did it all mean? Why were Ferrymen patrolling the Charicaux grounds? There was no way I could believe Lord Ragn was involved with those people. But Talth? That was a much more credible leap. Though what did Durrel’s neighbor at the gaol have to do with any of it, and what had Karst meant when he said Durrel’s case would never make it to trial?
The next day I was back at the Keep as soon as they lowered the drawbridge. Something was wrong here, very odd, and I should have seen it days ago. The top floor of the gaol was for prisoners like Durrel, nobs and courtiers, gentlemen, ambassadors. Not a seldom-bathed gutter boil like Temus. Some local trash ripping off the Ceid, and getting a prince’s accommodations at the Keep in return for it? No wonder he’d seemed so cheerful as a prisoner. Maybe he’d hit on a way to cancel his debt against the Ceid — by spying on the man accused of killing one of the family. At any rate, Temus was involved, and I was going to find out how.
I paid off the guard and rushed down the cell ring, almost eager for Temus’s entertaining abuse today. Not that I thought I had a rat’s chance in a Gerse kitchen that he’d answer my questions, but —
Things were too quiet. I could still hear the Talancan spy, weeping piteously down the row, and that annoying drip of the rooftop gargoyles, but no rotten vegetables flung into my path, no rude whistle,
no screeching cackle as I approached. I stopped to peer inside Temus’s window, bracing myself for the slam of his filthy, wiry body against the door, but there was nothing. Raising myself up on tiptoe to look into the cell, I saw that it was empty.
Something was very wrong.
Slowly I turned to Durrel’s cell and tapped gently on the door. After a pause, I heard the sound of Durrel peeling himself off the bed, then leaning heavily against the door. His breath was ragged as he coughed out my name.
“Where’s your neighbor?” I demanded, not bothering with greetings. “What’s happened to Temus?”
I heard the quirk of amusement in his voice, even now. “He said you’d miss him.”
“You’re not funny. What happened to him?”
“He got out. What in Marau’s name’s the matter?”
I yanked myself up to the window. “He got out? When? How?”
Durrel was staring at me as if I were the deranged one. “Yesterday. Said it was time for his hearing, and a guard I’d never seen before led him away.”
“What kind of guard?”
“Celyn, what is this —”
“What kind of guard?”
Durrel looked at me, a furrow beneath the fall of hair. “Big fellow, ruddy, losing his hair.”
“Karst,” I breathed. “Pox, pox, pox.” The job’s not finished yet. I spun back to the hall, looking down toward the guards’ station. It took so little — a gold crown, a couple of silvers — for me to bribe my way into Durrel’s cell whenever I wanted. What was the price of a guard’s uniform and a blind eye? “That wasn’t a guard,” I said. “He’s a Ferryman. And he’s been claiming to have killed Talth.”
He was silent for a moment, just looking at me through the bars, digesting this. “Then what does he want with Temus?” was what he finally said.
“That’s what I want to know.” Were Karst and Temus working together? “I have to go.”
“Celyn, wait —”
I turned back.
His face was set as he gripped the iron grille, but all he said was, “Wherever you’re going, be careful.”
I didn’t linger long enough to respond. Back at the guards’ station, no amount of coinage could persuade the guard to tell me who Karst really was or where he’d taken Temus, but from the chilled expression on his normally greedy face, I was pretty sure they weren’t headed to any magistrate’s hearing. The hearing that never, ever happened.
I tore down the long spiral staircase, but halted abruptly halfway down. There was a sound trailing me on the stairs — footsteps behind me, trying not to be heard. I ducked back into the shadows, tense and ready. When a pair of filthy boots came into my sight, followed by scrawny legs and a stained red uniform, I made a grab for him.
“Mmph!” I had my arm around the neck of a small guard — no older or bigger than me — who was struggling in protest. I let him go, and, coughing, he sagged against the closed stairwell wall.
“I’m sorry!” he gasped out. “I didn’t mean to startle you!”
“What do you want?” I didn’t recognize him, but he had an indecisive and furtive air. “You look like you have something to say.”
The little guard nodded, rubbing his throat. “I work the dock level, round back,” he said. “Usually. My name’s Stotht. I’ve seen you visiting more than once.”
“And?”
“I heard you asking about that prisoner who was transferred yesterday.”
“Do you know something?”
Stotht glanced past me down the stairs, back up where he’d come from, then leaned in closer. “I saw them together, heading down through the cellars. A while later, the guard came back alone and told me he’d give me a gold crown if I could deliver a message.”
“What kind of message?” I asked, my blood cold. “What did it say?” Belatedly I realized Stotht probably couldn’t read.
“No, it weren’t a letter,” he said. “He give me a little pouch, said to take it to this big house on the river, and be sure to wear my uniform.”
“Do you know which one?”
“Not who lives there. Just some big house in Nob Circle with a red roof and guards outside.”
“Charicaux.” Stotht looked surprised. “What was in the pouch?”
“I didn’t look,” he said. “But it weren’t coins; I could tell by the weight. Something soft, wrapped in cloth, maybe.”
I could feel myself frowning. What did it mean? “Thank you,” I said. “That’s very helpful.” I made to move on, but Stotht’s little body was in the way.
“I’ve seen you in and out of here,” he said again, conversationally. “Who’re you visiting? Your brother?”
“My — what?” I had to get rid of this kid. I dipped into my bodice for the last of my meager supply of bribery money, not quite liking the way Stotht’s eyes followed my hand, and pulled out a couple of copper marks.
“I don’t want any money,” he said earnestly. “But . . .” he paused. “Can I call on you at your home?”
I blinked, incredulous. Well, why not? “Fine,” I said. “I’m in the Temple District. My name’s Fei.”
He was still thanking me as I headed back down the stairs.
A message to Charicaux? To Lord Ragn. This was getting more and more tangled. My thoughts turning in on one another, I followed the stairs down to the cellars, where Stotht had seen Karst take Temus, drawn on by a sickening thought. What if Karst hadn’t grabbed Temus to free an accomplice — but to silence one?
The stairs continued downward, into service passages, unused kitchens, and the charnel. Moving deliberately so I didn’t call more attention to myself, I followed the steps down into the dank, dripping darkness.
Unlike the prisoners’ floors, the cellars were unguarded, full of hidden, empty rooms, with stores of weapons nearby — knives in the kitchen, bone saws in the charnel. Karst could have taken Temus anywhere down here, but there was said to be only one exit from the cellar levels: Marau’s Door in the charnel, where executed prisoners were sailed back to the city. The charnel was a low-ceilinged room with niches carved out of the brick walls and the doorway on the river. I grabbed a lantern from the hallway and pulled my smock up to cover my face. Inside, there were two bodies waiting to be hauled away on the coroner’s barge, wrapped neatly in linen shrouds. I hesitated, considering one dark possibility after another. One corpse was far too large to have been Temus, but the second . . . Steeling myself not to gag, I peeled back the cloth from the face of the narrower body.
And saw nobody, just some poor, famished soul who’d no doubt died of starvation or disease in the Rathole. A dark, bearded face, too old to be Temus. Weak with relief, I pushed myself out the service door, onto the little outside landing. I gasped in great lungfuls of fresh, fishy-smelling air and leaned my head back against the curving brick wall of the Keep. I could tell by the angle of the view that I was on the same side of the tower as Durrel’s cell, and if I looked up —
I didn’t look up. A little rowboat was moored nearby, bobbing merrily on the sunlit river. Beneath the surface of the water, I thought I saw a shimmer of white. Coming closer, I gave the boat a little kick with my foot and sent it out into the river a few feet. The white shape bobbed higher through the murk, getting larger as the light struck it, until it turned over in the water, and I had to bite back a yelp of shock.
Temus’s wide, dead eyes — already partially nibbled by fish — stared back at me, his white, bloated body bumping the edge of the landing. I gave a squeak and stumbled back against the building. The waterlogged hair floated away from the ghastly face, and I saw an injury that was not attributable to Big Silver fish.
Karst had cut off Temus’s ear.
My heart lodged in my throat, I scrambled back inside the Keep, ran through the charnel — making the sign for Marau — and sprinted back up the staircase to Queen’s Level. I hit Durrel’s door at a run, and I heard him jump from the bed.
“I found him,” I gasped out. “Temus. He’s
dead.”
Inside, Durrel paled. “Are you sure?”
I recalled the ragged gash across his neck, the blank stare. “Someone slit his throat and dumped him in the river.”
“Who? Why?”
The first question we already knew the answer to; the second was the more worrisome. “I don’t know, but we have to get you out of here.” I tumbled the lock on the cell door and slipped inside, closing it quietly behind me. I told him what Fei had related to me, that Karst had boasted of killing Talth, that Temus had boasted of ripping off the Ceid; and what Stotht had just told me about his delivery to Charicaux.
“Why would Karst need to send a warning to your father?”
Durrel pulled away. “I don’t know,” he said. “I — he wouldn’t.”
And yet he clearly had, in language plainer than a letter: We can get to anyone, even inside the Keep. We can get to your son. I thought furiously, frantically. Right now the priority was getting Durrel safe. I backed off a pace, hiked my skirts to my knees, unbuckled my knife, and passed it to Durrel, sheath and all. “Keep this on you. If anything happens, if anyone comes —”
“Celyn, slow down.” But he took the blade and slipped it into his own scuffed boot. “Maybe we’re overreacting. This might not have anything to do with me.”
“The Ferryman who murdered your wife just killed a man and sent his severed ear to your father. I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but I don’t mean to keep counting the bodies. You need to get out of this place and somewhere safe.”
Durrel still hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “Won’t I be more secure in here than loose on the streets?”
The way he said that made me pause, the logic of the argument sounded familiar somehow, and infuriating. “No, that —” I shook my head, frustrated. “No. They know exactly where you are right now, and that’s bad.”
“All right,” he finally said. “If you’re serious about this, then let’s think it through. What are our options? You can buy me out —”
“We don’t have the money.” I was pacing, sure I could hear Karst’s heavy footsteps banging down the cellway, even now.