Calistari’s enormous frame rose and fell with each labored breath. The color drained from the fat merchant’s light-burned face as Vantanible’s men hauled him away.
“Enjoy your time in Lottimer,” Nichel Vantanible told the shepherds. “You’ll be escorting Calistari’s crate back to Unterberg, only it’ll be empty this time. And you, Toler. Make sure you get yourself home safe. My daughter misses you.”
With that, Nichel Vantanible followed his men out of the warehouse.
Blatcher gave Toler a bewildered look.
The look Andover Mays gave him was quite different. “His daughter misses you, Glaive. We better get you home safe.”
Toler felt the blood rush to his cheeks. Everything had turned out so well, he almost didn’t mind the embarrassment.
17
The night was pleasant and warm, the streets of Tristol alive with apathy, crowded with the bodies of the poor and hopeless. Smoke billowed from barrel fires where alleys stretched into the dark. Shadows leaned against weather-stained brick frontages, figures hunched in languor, embers glowing at the end of their acrid narcotic wraps. Wind whipped through the streets, kicking up miniature tornadoes of dust and garbage.
Hyll Shapperton strolled along, as casual as someone without a destination might be. He reached the corner, where a boarded-up fuel station sat decaying, and turned west. A set of shops ran along the next street, spray painted murals with broken doors and shattered windows, their insides glutted with debris. At the far end of the intersection, Shapperton watched the three shepherds enter one of the six gates that led into Tristol Village Square.
He followed them inside, lit a cigarette, and tucked himself against the wall of the courtyard to watch them stagger toward the warehouse. The last shepherd looked back and nodded at him before they went inside. Shapperton began to count out five minutes.
The hinges creaked like tortured things as he slipped into the dealer shed a few minutes later. He made his way along the rows within the cavernous expanse until he reached Calistari’s crate. The door was wide open, the lock pried off and broken on the floor. No one was around, just as Toler had promised. Shapperton glanced up at the coachman’s seat, where he’d spent so many sore hours on the hard bench, driving the horses through heat-riddled lands.
His was the most thankless job in the caravan, made even more so by the fact that he worked for a cruel man like Jakob Calistari. He’d slaved away his entire life to earn enough to get by on, and to do it he’d spent months at a time away from his family. He was getting too old to work, and the expenses hadn’t stopped coming. Since no one else was going to thank him for all his years of service, the shepherd had arranged to thank him at Calistari’s expense. Toler had gotten one of the merchant’s seamstresses involved using nothing more than a bit of his charm and a two-foot of copper. After that, it was only a matter of setting the merchant up to take the fall for them.
Shapperton drew his knife and retrieved the leather bag from within his coat, then set to work, knowing his time was limited. The stitches came undone easily, and he took care to replace each doll face-up in the same place he’d found it.
Standing in the doorway, his bag full and jingling with product excised and ready for delivery, the coachman glanced down at the dolls. An ocean of unseeing faces smiled up at him. They would never speak a word of his passing, their brains removed for his benefit.
The ammunition would bring in a tidy sum. With it, he and the shepherd would ruin Jakob Calistari. Shapperton almost flicked his cigarette butt on the ground out of habit, but he refrained, remembering that the shepherds would be back with the merchant any minute now.
That was the problem with merchants. Always so concerned with getting the best of people that they never saw the bigger picture. What Calistari had amassed in wealth, he lacked in vision. What he was inspired to keep out of greed, he would lose because of that same greed.
As for Toler Glaive, Shapperton thought him to be a man of the best kind–the kind who watched over the people who needed it. Toler Glaive knew what it meant to be a shepherd.
The old coachman left the same way he’d come in–smiling.
THE END
Afterword
I hope you’ve enjoyed The Shepherd. For a limited time, I’m offering a free copy of the next book in the Aionach Saga, The Infernal Lands, to readers who post a review of this book at their favorite online retailer. Just send me an email at
[email protected] with a link to your review and let me know the ebook format you prefer. It is with my deepest, sincerest appreciation that I offer you my thanks for giving a brand-new author a try.
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