I’d been honest when I told Sawbones that Mylera wouldn’t deem broken bones just cause for delinquency, and so my cast and I showed up on time at the Red Sash Sword Academy. I even improvised a lesson on how to fence with an injured arm, which seemed like a useful life skill for both the upper echelons of street toughs and the young (non-Anixis) nobles who sometimes found themselves in duels over affairs of honor. (Living members of House Anixis never got into un-premeditated duels, especially not over ill-defined concepts such as “honor.”)
What I did not do was spew Faith’s kitten story at my students, who, while curious, had learned early on that Miss Glass did not tolerate prying. In any case, they were mostly hoping for a grisly story, which I invented on the spot, and that was that.
Since Ash and I had decided to blame the Hadrakin for our recent murders, I casually mentioned within earshot of my class that I’d heard Iruvian assassins were searching for General Helker’s battle plans. I knew that the nobles would immediately question their parents about the rumor, and the ensuing investigation would spread it further and take some heat off our crew.
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Unfortunately, Ash and I couldn’t disseminate disinformation fast enough to prevent the Bluecoats from grabbing Nyryx for interrogation, an act that provoked a passionate debate over whether we were obligated to bail her out.
According to Ash, “We have to save Nyryx! She’s been a good friend, and we owe it to our friends not to let them fall into – ”
“She is not our friend!” I interrupted. “Anyone who would do something as horrible as buy a Hollowed body is not worth our coin.”
“Nyryx is our strongest ally in the war against the Church,” he pointed out, as if I cared about his and Faith’s little vendetta.
“We don’t need allies like her,” I told him flatly. “That’s not who we are.”
Changing tack, he demanded, “What do you have against Nyryx anyway?”
Did he need to ask? “She bought a Hollowed body! That’s – that’s – that’s reprehensible!”
“And what exactly is wrong with a Hollowed body?”
In the heat of the moment, I couldn’t articulate any more cogent moral argument than: “It’s just wrong! You can’t do things like that! It’s almost as bad as being a demon!”
Ash was actually taken aback. “What?” he yelped. “Okay, that is an entirely separate conversation!”
“No, it really isn’t! Didn’t I tell you how they make Gualim? They take perfectly good human beings and they – I mean the Demon Princes – make them dream about a spire and go there and get Hollowed and – ”
Behind us, the common room door banged shut.
“Wait!” Ash cut off my lecture on the intricacies of the creation of U’Duashan City Guardians. “Wait, where did Faith go?”
While the two of us were bickering, Faith had snatched a pouchful of slugs from our coffers and slammed out of the railcar. As one of the local drunks informed me later, she popped up at the Docks precinct and (easily) bribed a Bluecoat to free Nyryx and explain why he’d targeted the prostitute in the first place. It turned out that a peddler named Malik who loitered on the eastern end of the Docks with a cartful of dubious wares had tipped off the Bluecoats about how she was “a shady character what knows things.”
“Oh,” tsked Faith with a sententious shake of her head. “What is the Imperium coming to? If you ask me, this Malik character needs to be taught that good citizens don’t lie to officers of the law.”
Eyes bright at the sight of shiny slugs, the Bluecoat happily agreed that, indeed, the peddler needed a refresher course on civic virtues.
While I personally would have left Nyryx in jail, I had to confess that neutralizing Malik’s potential threat to us was a good use of a second coin.
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That bit of unpleasantness resolved, Ash headed to the temple to pray to That Which Hungers, and I returned to surveying him. Although I’d intended to suborn his servants as I had Irimina’s, I quickly discovered that like Elstera, Finnley Tyrconnell selected his staff with extreme paranoia. After a great deal of hassle, I finally identified a likely candidate: a footman with a sick father who desperately needed money for medical bills. As a testament to his loyalty (and his discernment), the footman kept me waiting for two days while he agonized over the betrayal, but in the end he reluctantly slipped me a copy of Finnley’s social calendar.
Poring over his schedule, I noticed that the number of parties was petering out, which suggested that he’d finally realized I wasn’t hiding among the Doskvolian aristocracy. Telling myself that I needed to muddy the waters – but mostly because I couldn’t resist messing with him – I arrayed myself in secondhand finery and showed up at the next party on his calendar. Of course he was surrounded by the usual herd of adoring hangers-on, but I lingered under a gaudy gilt sconce until he glanced my way and, just as his eyes widened, melted back into the crowd. Giggling at his confusion, I sailed on home.
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While I was taunting him, Faith headed to the Sensorium to relax in her own inimitable way – via a memory of bloody Iruvian infighting.
Madame Keitel was just as nonplussed as my archivist. “Why?” she demanded after staring at Faith for a very long time.
Handing over vials of memories distilled from the Hadrakin, Faith explained flippantly, “Well, recently I was telling a story about a group of Iruvian assassins, and I became curious about how likely they were to kill themselves in a fit of intrigue.” When Madame Keitel continued to goggle at her, Faith shrugged. “The mind wonders.”
Holding up one of the vials and watching light filter through the electroplasm, Madame Keitel inquired, “So by ‘infighting,’ did you mean upper-class politics or the Iruvian underworld?”
“High-class assassinations would be ideal,” Faith assured her earnestly, “but I wouldn’t expect professionals to sell those memories to the Sensorium.”
At that, Madame Keitel gave her an inscrutable look (inscrutable to the archivist, at least; I had no doubt that Faith could have pontificated at length – and with much alliteration). “Yes,” she pronounced at last. “I can probably make this work for you.”
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In an impressive display of initiative, the archivist managed to get his hands on the memories Faith had brought in, and he listed them for me. Although she’d returned to the crime scene too late to recover any useful fragments from Ruka, Faith had extracted some usable pieces from Na’ava, mostly murders and crazy cultic rituals. Na’ava, it appeared, had never left U’Duasha, much less Iruvia, prior to this mission. Somehow, I didn’t think her Doskvolian adventure lent itself very well to a travel brochure.
“You know,” remarked the archivist casually as I paid him, “Mistress Karstas is surprisingly good at makeup. She’s been coming in every week for as long as I’ve worked there, and she’s never aged a day.”
That caught my attention. “How long have you been working there?”
“Ten, no, eleven years now,” he corrected himself. “My wife wanted me to ask Mistress Karstas for beauty tips, but, well….” He let his voice trail off.
“I see.”
Faith didn’t look a day over twenty-five, which meant that she’d frequented the Sensorium since she was fourteen at the oldest. But that couldn’t be right, because even to the average (i.e. undiscerning) eye, fourteen-year-olds looked significantly different from twenty-five-year-olds.
I resolved to take a closer look at Faith the next time I got a chance.
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This turned out to be surprisingly hard, since Faith spent the next few days traipsing all over Doskvol. Keeping her promise to Tocker, she ducked in and out of banks and law firms, badgering and charming clerks until they surrendered confidential information on the Helker children. There were two, as we’d discovered in our initial surveillance of the general: The elder was a sixteen-year-old daughter named Polonia, and the younger was a son, Andrel, aged thirteen. For the moment, they were still living in the family mansion in Brightstone, guarded zealously by a prune-faced governess. After thoroughly investigating the adoption process and peppering their neighbors with questions about the children’s interests and mental states, Faith “happened upon” the family solicitor in a Charterhall bar. She joined him for a drink and commiserated with him over the disarray of the Helker affairs.
“They don’t have any close relatives,” said the lawyer, a trusted former colleague of Tocker’s. “No aunts or uncles, just extended cousins – and those are swarming like sharks. Everyone wants a piece of the estate.” Morosely, he drained his whiskey in much the same way Sawbones would have. (I winced.)
Faith merely signaled the bartender to bring him another glass. “Well, that’s perfectly understandable, isn’t it? In my experience, sharks, being aquatic creatures, want nothing more than to invest in terrestrial property,” she said in the most soothing tone possible. “But I have every confidence that such a capable, competent counselor as yourself has matters well in hand.”
“Weeelll.” The lawyer looked unconvinced that he deserved so much praise – or so much free liquor. “But to answer your earlier question, Polonia and Andrel inherited a fair amount, mostly from their mother, and they receive a monthly allowance from the trust. Which is overseen by a private banker Tocker trusts – trusted.” He polished off another glass of whiskey. “So yes, the children are cared for. For now.” Only then did he realize that he didn’t actually recognize Faith. Frowning, he peered at her. “Who are you again, miss?”
Faith bounded out of her chair. “A concerned friend of the Helkers.” She patted him on the arm. “Thank you ever so much for the information. You’ve been most helpful!”
“Wait, miss!”
But Faith was already out the door and trotting determinedly towards Six Towers. I followed her just long enough to watch her disembowel a juicy ghost and feed its electroplasm to Cricket, who swirled around her almost trustingly.
Nothing out of the ordinary there, even for Faith.
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When she returned to the railcar, looking as a smug as a sea creature that had just snapped up a valuable piece of real estate, Ash was waiting.
“Faith, my mother was interested in talking to us about a business proposition. She is very wealthy,” he assured her. “You might like to meet her? Anyway, she wants to meet us all.”
Blushing prettily, Faith brought her fingertips up to her throat. “Ash!” she cried, simultaneously delighted and terrified. “I don’t know! You’re going to introduce me to your mother? But we’ve only known each other for such a short time! I must wear my ruffliest dress so I can make the right first impression!”
As always, Ash ignored her.
And to her credit, Mistress Slane seemed entirely unperturbed by her son’s associate’s sartorial choices. “Ah, this must be the whole crew,” she commented when we entered her office.
Testier than usual, Ash informed her, “That should be obvious. And it should go without saying that our crew’s membership is not a public matter.”
He took a chair directly in front of her desk, and Faith slouched down all the way next to him and seemed to doze off, but I hovered until he waved impatiently for me to sit. I perched on the edge of a seat by the door.
“Of course.” Mistress Slane inhaled and sat up straight. “So, then. I understand that you are in the business of killing people.”
I thought Ash would object to her bluntness about “guildmembers of our profession,” but instead he matched it. “Yes. For sufficient amounts of money.”
“Good. As it happens, there is someone whom I would like removed. There is a small community of Tycherosi in Charhallow. We generally have little to do with them, because they are adherents of the Church. However – ”
Ash burst out, “Why the hell would they do that?” so loudly that Faith opened one eye.
“That’s an excellent question,” his mother replied. “I assume it’s out of hedonism and moral decadence.”
Faith’s eyelid drooped back shut.
“That said, they live in Charhallow, and they’re probably desperate for whatever joy they can find,” said Mistress Slane dismissively, echoing my archivist’s views on the district. “The point is that they’re disappearing.”
“Oh.” Ash drew a sharp breath.
“Normally,” announced his mother, “I wouldn’t care. They have abandoned us. But, on the other hand, there are very few Tycherosi in the city and we do need to look out for one another. I am also concerned that they appear to be disappearing around holidays that are important to the Church of Ecstasy, which makes me think that their curate is involved – which means that he needs to go.”
Both of Faith’s eyes opened this time.
“A ‘curate’?” Puzzled, Ash sounded out the term.
“I think a curate is the priest of a small parish-y thing, but I don’t know. I’m not very well versed in any of that.” From Mistress Slane’s tone, she had no intention of becoming any better versed in Church hierarchy, either.
“I have absolutely no objections to dealing with him,” Ash assured her.
“Good. Six coin then?”
“Eight has been our going rate.”
“I believe six is the standard in the city.”
While Ash regrouped, Faith inserted smoothly, “A standard rate of pay only gets you a standard rate of success.”
Ash chuckled a little before he followed up her argument. “We also provide special services. If there’s anything we should investigate, that’s also part of the deal.”
Pursing her lips and staring blankly into space for a moment, Mistress Slane considered his offer. “If you could expose his activities to the rest of his flock, and recover them from their ecstatic ways, that would be worth something.”
“Two coin, perhaps?” Ash hinted.
“It could be worth two coin,” she conceded.
He nodded curtly. “I’m sure we can find this out, but if you have a name for this curate, it will avoid any ambiguity.”
With distaste, she enunciated, “Kender Morland.”
“I have no objections,” Ash repeated, and then looked expectantly at Faith and me.
I’d been fiddling nervously with my cast throughout the conversation, but now I stilled my hand and gave a shrug of acceptance.
Sighing wearily, Faith addressed me rather than Ash: “I’m always happy to help some demons.”
“We’re not actually demons,” objected Mistress Slane.
Faith didn’t even bother to glance in her direction. “As you say.”
“We’ll get it done,” Ash promised his mother before she could retract the commission. “I am still mystified as to why any of us would want to worship the Church, although I suppose it has most of the city in its clutches, so why not some Tycherosi as well…. Is there anything else we need to know?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s all I have. Presumably, that’s enough to go on. You know where he is; you know who he is.”
“And that’s all we need,” Ash finished for her. “We’ll be back when it’s done.”
“Good,” she said, returning to her paperwork and effectively dismissing us.
To no one’s surprise, I was the first one out the door.