A few days later, my master spy sent me a report of his own. In stark contrast with his usual rambling missives, which ambled through a survey of his latest social engagements and reading materials and somehow left an impression of a meeting time and place at the end, this note was couched in a clear, efficient style. Elstera, Sigmund wrote, was not interested in having anything to do with the miscreants who’d framed her nephew, assassinated her assets, and then persisted in associating with her bitter enemy. However, as both her social and intellectual superior (fine, that was my interpretation), my brother had managed to extract information from her anyway.
The Hive’s headquarters, as we knew, was located on the islet in the middle of North Hook Channel, where the leaders also lived. To forestall assassination attempts, Djera Maha herself hardly left her island fortress anymore. On the rare occasions that she graced the mainland with her presence, she was surrounded by a swarm of bodyguards and hangers-on. She did take a boat to Brightstone once a week to attend services at the Sanctorium with all the nobles, both because she was devout and because she could.
Her former second-in-command, Karth Orris, had handled much of the onshore business. After his mysterious demise, a woman named Marne Booker had more or less assumed his role, and the Circle of Flame predicted that Djera Maha would soon officially appoint her as second-in-command.
In addition to the hitmen nephews, a number of Djera Maha’s relatives also lived on or frequented the island, mostly extended cousins with varying degrees of authority within the Hive. Some she trusted enough to deploy across the city; others she kept close to monitor their activities. And then there were the useless, ornamental ones who were hopeless at crime, whom she married off to nobles so they could enjoy their charity tea parties and Spiregarden Theater premieres. (Until they ran afoul of Irimina and us, anyway.)
When I relayed that last tidbit to my crewmates, Ash spent a good half-minute agonizing over whether he loved or hated the Hive. In the end, professionalism (and avarice) won out. “I have a plan,” he announced. “It’s likely to be risky, but what isn’t? And it’s likely to involve the Church.”
I didn’t even bother to roll my eyes at that. If I rolled them every time he obsessed over destroying the Church, my eyeballs would detach from their muscles and plop out of their sockets for Sleipnir to chase. As he was doing right now with the little rubber ball I’d gotten in Nightmarket.
Raising his feet out of the way as the dog barreled past, Ash explained, “If I spend a little more time working with Nyryx, we can install a ghost in whichever high priest presides over whatever ceremony Djera Maha attends. I can keep the ghost hidden while we orchestrate a catastrophe in one of the rituals.” Recognizing that his ecclesiastical terminology was off, but unsure how to correct it, he consulted our crewmate. “Faith, you’re the most knowledgeable here.”
Our resident ex-theologian didn’t waste time expounding upon the intricacies of Ecstatic rites. Instead, she objected with a pout, “But we did that already.”
“Yes, it’s a bit repetitive,” Ash conceded. He barely seemed to see Sleipnir when the dog dropped the ball in front of him, but he did nudge it absently with his toe to send it rolling across the carpet. “Is there such a thing, like a confession, where a priest would hold a one-on-one – or at least a fewer-on-one – session?”
Faith’s eyes lit up at some sort of private joke. “Weellll,” she drawled, sliding a sly glance in my direction, “there are certainly ‘reading rooms’ devoted to the…words of the Immortal Emperor, where they hold private sessions personally tailored to an especially prominent worshipper’s ecstasies….”
How she could make even tailoring sound salacious was quite beyond me, but I blanked my face and refused to react. (It helped that Sleipnir had just dropped his slimy, drool-coated ball right on my foot, and I had no intention of touching it. The ball, that was. But probably not my shoe either, until I’d rinsed it off.)
Balked, Faith redirected her innocent gaze back at Ash. “Confessions aren’t really a thing, because what would you confess to the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh?”
“Not sinning enough?” he retorted. “Being bad at partying? Not liking alcohol?”
Since he was probably right, she feigned sudden bewilderment. “Wait, are we murdering someone specific?”
“Djera Maha?” he reminded her.
“Yes…. Doing that in the Church is just such a peerless plan for putting her to death. I mean – why would we antagonize just one powerful, preeminent criminal organization when we could antagonize two, simultaneously?”
She made a very good point, but not, unfortunately, one that Ash was likely to accept.
“What if we strike when she’s on her boat on the way to Church?” I suggested carefully. “She’d still be on her way to her vice.”
“True,” admitted Ash. “Or on her way back.”
“Maybe on her back would be better,” I agreed. “Then she might be drunk.” On a personally-tailored cocktail of drugs and alcohol, no less.
Now that we’d ventured beyond the confines of the Sanctorium, Ash mused, “Another possibility is framing her second-in-command. We can capture Marne Booker and install a ghost in her, I can hide that ghost from attunement detection, and then it can take out Djera Maha for us. Certainly it would have more one-on-one time with her than we would.”
That was true, but, rather like Sigmund, I hadn’t adopted the requisite blasé attitude towards ghosts yet. “Can we find one that knows enough about assassination?”
Ash instantly dismissed that hurdle. “We can find someone who can help us find one. I like the idea of hurting the Church…but I do recognize the audacity. Thoughts? Faith? Isha?”
Since I’d already voiced my opinions, Faith jumped in with the shockingly helpful hint, “Would it be more effective to use your family’s disguise magic?”
“You mean, to infiltrate the Hive ourselves?” Ash asked, startled, as if the idea had never occurred to him despite his own sister’s official role as Hive mascot.
“Or we could infiltrate the Church,” Faith allowed.
“I vote for impersonating a Hive member,” I put in, before I found myself garbed in clerical robes and exchanging pleasantries with demon-human hybrid monstrosities.
Faith’s brows knit, and her lower lip jutted all the way out.
Before she could protest, though, Ash acknowledged, “Fair enough. We can certainly get one of them installed in a private reading room.”
I summed up our choices: “So either we have a ghost possess Marne and carry out the assassination, or I dress up as her and carry out the assassination.” Neither option particularly excited me.
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Mistaking my reluctance, Ash reassured me, “If Tess can manage it, then I’m sure you’re capable.”
That wasn’t the source of my hesitation in any way, shape, or form. (Haha.) But at least the Slane family rituals were divine rather than demonic in nature, however grotesque they might be. Slowly, I said, “I’d rather impersonate Marne myself, than entrust such a crucial mission to a ghost.”
“I trust you, Isha,” Ash replied firmly, as if lack of self-esteem were all that was holding me back. “If that’s something you want to do, I’m all for it.”
I couldn’t help it: I glanced at Faith.
She dimpled right back, oozing sugary sweetness. “I would never say no to a monstrous murderer masquerading as Marne!”
Marvelous.
So good to know her real opinion of me.
In his characteristic dry tone, Ash said, “Delightful, Faith,” before ushering us onto more pressing concerns. “We’ll need to sow some seeds so people won’t be surprised by Marne’s betrayal. I assume she’s loyal, otherwise Djera Maha wouldn’t be considering her for second-in-command. I can fabricate letters – but that’s a separate matter. Now, if I were doing this…the boat isn’t a bad choice, and certainly easier than the island, but that said, the reading room in the Sanctorium is also a good option. It’s private, it’s intimate, it’s a good place for revelations if your second-in-command wants to murder you…. Isha, presumably you’ll have to fake your death? Because I don’t think you want to keep reprising your role as Marne.”
Not really, especially since we intended to trigger a bloodbath within the Hive. Although…if I simply took over the organization, I’d gain instant access to a lot more resources for anything that Sigmund and I might want to achieve. But I quickly dismissed the fantasy. Running a shadowy, Imperium-wide, extra-legal organization was much more up my brother’s alley than mine.
To my shock, Faith contributed, “Alternatively, we can possess Marne and have her return to the Hive the next day babbling stories about how she was ‘out sick.’”
Coming from her, that was disorientingly constructive. I cocked my head to one side and scrutinized her body language, trying to determine whether her suggestions were genuinely meant to be helpful, or were secretly unhelpful comments meant to get us all killed. With her, you could never tell.
In the end, we decided to play that part by ear, depending on what would cause the bloodiest infighting in the Hive. We also opted to assassinate Djera Maha in the Sanctorium rather than on the boat, because Ash and Faith could provide backup, and it would be easier for me to escape afterwards.
Also, the last time I jumped into a canal, it didn’t go so well.
That decided, north to the Docks went Ash, disguised as a downtrodden ex-Crow in search of employment. From the dockers, he learned that Marne Booker oversaw the smuggling end of Hive operations. Although she had once lived onshore, the shake-up in the Hive after Karth Orris’ death meant that she now dwelled on the island. However, she still commuted to the Docks every day to supervise her many contacts among the merchants and in the Dockers’ Guild. In fact, it was under her auspices that Skannon Vale had amassed so much berthing capacity. She used to attend Church on the Docks along with the mid-level Hive members, but now she conveniently accompanied Djera Maha to Mass at the Sanctorium every sixth day.
I, on the other hand, made a beeline to the Leaky Bucket to ask Bazso what he’d done with that bee-tattooed docker Pickett caught all those months ago.
“That guy.” At the memory, Bazso made a face. “You don’t kill Hive members. You just don’t.” He scowled and flexed his fingers, expressing what he thought of that restriction. “So, you know, we tossed him back. I assume he’s back on the docks.”
While his own restraint obviously still rankled Bazso, I (and presumably the docker) was grateful for it. Dressed as a fellow docker, I quickly located my quarry among a horde of laborers who were unloading a ship. After tailing him for a few days, I identified his routine: Every day, he went from his flophouse to his job to the fighting pits to the nearest pub and then back to his flophouse to pass out from exhaustion and drunkenness.
One evening, when the man had had a few beers and was winning his bets on the no-holds-barred rounds, I laid a bet of my own on the same fighter and joined him to cheer on “our guy.” Under cover of all the hooting and hollering, I hinted that I was on the market for a job with better pay and greater security, and that I’d heard that he might know people who were hiring. In his euphoria at the (pitiful pittance of) money he was making, the docker revealed a lot more than he should have about Hive recruitment procedures. It wasn’t Mistress Booker but Master Helker, the dockmaster, to whom I needed to talk, he explained between swigs of ale. (That was news to me, but not entirely surprising.) Mistress Booker’s job was to make sure that everything ran smoothly, to check shipping manifests and inventories, the like.
“Wha’s she like?” I called over the roar of the crowd. “She a slave driver like some of ‘em Coalridge foremen?”
“No, no,” he yelled back. “She’s jus’ – she’s jus’ – ” I thought the word he was looking for was “conscientious” or maybe “meticulous,” but after a few tries, he settled for, “She works ‘ard! An’ she ‘spects us to work ‘ard too!”
“Sounds like a good boss then! And a good woman!”
Glugging the rest of his ale, the docker bent down to shout into my ear, “Yes, ‘cepting that she loves weird, freaky stuff! Spends all ‘er free time at the Menagerie. Even gives money to Cap’n Rye. She loves circuses an’ freak shows an’ things what just ain’t right.” He shuddered. “Critters what jus’ shouldn’t be.”
“Oooooh.” I faked a shudder of my own. “Anything else I should know about ‘er?”
All that I got out of him was that Marne Booker held her alcohol well, went to Church regularly, and primarily associated with other Hive members, none of which was particularly useful or unexpected. Casually, I then asked about all that dock space the Hive was buying up. Since we were obviously fans of the same fighters and well on our way to becoming best buddies, the docker told me everything he knew: Right around the time Master Vale died, all the Hive dockers had been told to expect a really, really big shipment. They were even preparing extra-industrial-strength cranes to unload it.
“What do you use extra-industrial-strength cranes for?” I asked, injecting a dose of awe into my voice.
“Dunno! We never got enough space an’ then they stopped talkin’ about it!”
Ah, well. Of course a lowly docker wouldn’t be privy to Hive leadership plans, but it had been worth a try. There was someone else we could question about all that mysterious berthing capacity anyway.
“We should talk to Marne about that dock space after we get her,” I said once I’d scrubbed the stench of the fighting pits out of my pores and rejoined my crewmates in the railcar.
“Yes,” agreed Ash. “And a freak show seems like an excellent opportunity.” He switched into panhandler mode: “How fortuitous that there is an extremely exclusive event featuring the craziest creatures imaginable! Only for the most elite and wealthiest of our sponsors, of course! This is the date; only our platinum-class donors get to see it before it goes public. Marne shows up: ‘What is this? Where’s everyone else?’ And then Isha walks out.”
I liked the idea. “Sure. Where should we do it, though?”
Despite its hoity-toity name, Captain Rye’s Menagerie was actually a shoddy collection of rusty cages and tubs of black canal water in the middle of a muddy field that nobody else wanted. Occasionally the Captain held special viewings (for which he charged extra admission, of course) in a raggedy tent that might once have been striped a cheerful red and white. There was no way the thin fabric would provide the necessary privacy for our score.
Still in that bizarrely helpful mood, Faith piped up, “If the creatures are small and aquatic, we could rent a spa. I hear there’s a good one in Silkshore? The one where all the murders happened? Which has really cheap rates for the rooms?”
At the prospect of a steep discount, Ash chuckled. “We can set it up through the Captain, so it’s mostly a legitimate Menagerie event, but only invite four patrons, three of whom happen to be us. It wouldn’t be so unusual from the Hive’s perspective: Marne goes off to one of those things that Marne goes off to, and then Marne comes back.”
“We’re not actually buying one of those creatures, are we?” I asked warily. Somehow, I didn’t think Sleipnir would appreciate sharing the railcar with a ravenous, tentacled monstrosity.
Or maybe it wasn’t Sleipnir who would mind.
Luckily, Ash didn’t like the idea of paying for a new pet (as opposed to adopting one off the street). “I’m sure we can bribe the Captain to organize an event himself. Of course, we’ll exaggerate how epically weird this creature is, but in reality it’s not important – because it’s the last creature Marne will ever see.”
To Ash’s and my surprise, however, the whole affair required significant haggling, because Captain Rye turned out to be inordinately arrogant and protective of his reputation (what reputation? I wanted to ask) and his zoo. Finally, for the exorbitant price of one coin, he reluctantly agreed to lend us some leviathan spawn for a private viewing at the Moon’s Embrace Spa.