Chapter Three

Only the chameleon sees behind him. For the rest of us, best to have someone watching our backs, lest they sprout knives.

* Unknown Cutsonian philosopher. Thought to be the origin of the expression ‘to watch someone’s back’.

“So, I stabbed him,” Carrus finished.

“Alright,” Eve said. “Where is the body now?” That was Eve, ever practical. A solidly-build woman in her late thirties, Eve had done some whoring in another city before she got too old for it. It takes a rare person to come out of a whore’s life physically and mentally intact, but Eve was that woman. She had been Carrus’s first hire when he took over as manager of the Snake Pit, and she was the only person he trusted to help him cover up a murder.

“He’s in the closet,” Carrus said. “Cleaned up the blood in his office and stuffed him in there.”

Eve nodded. “Smell?”

Carrus made a face. “It was pretty bad. Shat himself. Cleaned that up too. Found some perfume and used that to cover it up some. It’s not exactly subtle in there though, and someone’s gonna wonder where he went soon enough. I don’t know what to do.”

“Okay. Seems to me we have two options. We can get rid of the body and pretend we don’t know what happened to him, or we can come up with a story for his death where you didn’t kill him.”

Carrus nodded. “Let’s just get rid of the body then. Easier to stick to our story if we don’t know what happened to him.”

Having a plan was good. Carrus had been a mess for the past two days before finally breaking down and telling Eve. He should have just come to her in the first place.

“Thank you,” he said after a moment. “For helping me. And for not, you know, turning me in to the city guard.”

Eve bared her teeth in what could loosely be described as a smile. “People who sell babies need killing. Far as I’m concerned, you did the world a favour. Least I can do is do you one in return.” Then after a pause she added, “You’re a good man Carrus.”

A knot untied itself in Carrus’s stomach and he smiled at his friend. He appreciated the simple reassurance almost as much as the help disposing of a corpse.

“Thank you.”

And with that, they set about covering up a murder.

Two days later Carrus was in his, formerly Denison’s, office working out what policy they could afford to take with people who beat the girls. Carrus would have liked to have banned them all. He had never had much time for people who hurt women, whore or not. But that wasn’t a viable option, too many of their best customers liked to rough the girls up at least a little. Thankfully, it also wasn’t practical to allow the customers to do whatever they wanted with their chosen whore. The Pit’s current policy was to fine customers who damaged the girls and ban them if they did serious damage. Carrus figured it wouldn’t take much belt-tightening for them to be able to extend that policy to include moderate damage, maybe even give the girls more time off to heal.

It wasn’t much, Carrus wasn’t sure it was worth the blood on his hands, but it was something.

Eve entered without knocking, a look on her face like she had just bitten into a maggoty apple.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“We have visitors.”

Said visitors entered behind her, not waiting for an invitation. In Carrus’s experience that generally wasn’t a good sign. That the visitors consisted of three professional thugs and Philious Bracken, the local crime boss, was a worse one. The thugs were big and mean, wearing their resumés on their faces and cudgels at their waists. Philious Bracken looked every bit the bastard that he was. He was tall and lean with a sneering face and scarred hands from splitting them on years’ worth of faces. He wore a long coat though it wasn’t particularly cold out and he looked at everyone in the room as though they were covered in their own filth.

“Hello Carrus,” Bracken said, his thugs fanning out behind him.

“Hello Philious,” Carrus responded. “What can I do for you today?” In the three years that Carrus had worked for Denison, he had seen Bracken no more than a handful of times, and never with the full entourage. This definitely wasn’t good.

“What a fortunate choice of words,” Bracken said with a grin. “I’m here to inform you that you belong to me now. I know all about your murder of Mr. Briggs and if you don’t do exactly as I say, I’ll see you hang for it. Now, here’s how this is going to work­­—”

“Mr. Bracken,” Carrus interrupted. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t heard from Denison in a few days, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead. It doesn’t mean that I killed him and—”

“Hold them,” Philious said, taking back the conversation. Two of his thugs took hold of Carrus while the other held Eve. They didn’t put up a fight, as they were outnumbered and outmuscled, and Bracken fairly obviously wasn’t here to kill them. Philious waited while his men restrained the two of them and then produced something from inside his coat. It was a piece of metal about the length of a hand but perhaps a little wider. He held it up to Carrus’s face and Carrus saw… himself.

Inlaid into the metal was a sheet of glass and behind that was an image of Carrus and Eve, lifting Denison’s body out of a trunk on a backroad outside of town. Some parts of the image looked like a strange blur, but it was clear enough that it was them disposing of a body.

“What…” Carrus said, at a genuine loss for words.

“Marvellous isn’t it,” Bracken said, making it clear that it wasn’t a question. “This little miracle is called a lumograph and is the result of a brilliant new device produced in Inveritus called a lumograph camera. All you need is a lightshaper and you can capture images of anything you see. Preserved forever, just in case you need to show them to the sheriff. And, in case you’re wondering, the folks over at the Academy who invented this are more than happy to testify to its accuracy. So, as I was saying. Here’s how this is going to work…”

Later that night, Carrus and Eve were in his office drinking heavily.

“So, what you’re saying is, we’re screwed,” Carrus said.

Eve nodded. They had spent the last few drinks going over each of their possible ways out from under Bracken and why each of them wouldn’t work. Getting the image back: They had no idea where it was. Simply killing Bracken: He had plenty of security and, on the off chance they succeeded, he was exactly the sort of bastard who would have set things up to release all his blackmail material upon his death. Getting some blackmail material of their own: How do you blackmail someone who is a known crime lord and likes to buy babies for his “uncommon appetites”? Everyone knew the kind of man Bracken was, but he had the sheriff under his heel, probably with a lumograph of him in some compromising position, so he could operate all but openly with impunity.

Their options were down to either feeling sorry for themselves or feeling sorry for themselves and drinking. They had chosen the latter.

There came a knock on the office door. It opened a moment later revealing one of the Pit’s bouncers, a man named Tarmigan.

“Hey boss,” Tarmigan said, coming in and closing the door behind him. “Couldn’t help but overhear. Sounds like you could use some help.”

“I don’t know what you think you heard,” Carrus said. “But we don’t need any help. We were just discussing—”

“How Philious Bracken is blackmailing you. I know. I thought something like this would happen once you killed Briggs, so I took the liberty of sending for some help.”

Carrus stared at Tarmigan dumbfounded. Tarmigan seemed completely different. His voice was no longer the calm-but-friendly tone Carrus was used to. Now he spoke with an air of command. He even seemed a little taller.

“I’ve reached out to Saladeen Hadon, the master thief,” he continued. “Assuming he’s interested, he should be on his way by now. Seems to me that stealing Bracken’s blackmail material is your best move.”

“What?” Eve said, looking as confused as Carrus felt.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of his fee.”

“Who are you?” Carrus asked.

“Consider me,” Tarmigan said, giving a formal bow. When he came out of the bow, his eyes had changed dramatically. Where once they had been hazel, now one was ice blue and the other a red so bright it almost glowed. “A benefactor.”