Ravelin reached Viago’s place towards the tail end of happy hour. He wasn’t sure why beer gardens insisted on calling it that. From what he’d observed, people seldom seemed overjoyed to be there.

Outside in the cheap seats was the usual crowd of hard youths and laborers from the fabricator yards, faces swollen with drink and curdling tempers. The knives would be going in a minute, Ravelin reckoned. Violence was the main attraction for most of the garden’s patrons. They certainly weren’t here for the rotgut: rumor had it that the its main ingredient was wood varnish siphoned off from Stahlka shipyards.

As if to confirm this theory, Ravelin saw a gnome coughing up his guts into the gutter, leaning so far in that his wispy long hair swirled in the filth. Ravelin stepped smartly round the impressive torrent of vomit and swaggered up to the door of establishment, which was flanked by a pair of towering ogrish in footmen’s attire, muscles bulging out of the frills.

“Evening,” he said, craning his neck to look up at them, “Name’s Ravelin—I’ve come to see the good Hetman.”

“Ravelin, eh? This name we know. What making you think we are not coming to see you?” one of them rumbled, the shingles dangling from his tusks rattling softly. Ravelin counted several human finger bones among the beads, and smelled the rank, rotting teeth in his head.

“Haven’t you heard?” Ravelin replied, taking care not to flinch, “I’m all paid up.”

“I is hearing different,” the ogre said, leaning in close, swinish eyes alight with glee, “I is hearing you are short this month again. And maybe soon,” the brute mimed a chopping motion to the back of his trunk-like neck, “Shorter still.”

Ravelin seized a tusk and yanked the ogre down sharply till their heads were level, his spare hand whipping into his coat and flipping out the hatchet. His friend was just beginning to pull up his arm for a hammerblow when Ravelin wedged the spike into the gap between the fangs and gave the axe head a hearty twist.

“Uaarrffgh!” the ogre stamped and howled as the tusk wiggled loose in his gums. He tried to pull away, but Ravelin had him where it hurt most, and applied the principle of the lever to maximum effect. The ogre sank to his knees, tears and snot streaming down his face, bloody spittle dripping from the corners of his lips.

“Taller than you, at least,” Ravelin told him. He shot the second one a hot glare and felt extremely gratified when, instead of pulping his head like a cantaloupe, the footman turned and thumped on the door. A narrow hole shuttered open and a tinny voice inquired:

“Wot is it?”

“There be a guest for the Hetman,” grunted the ogre.

“Is he decent?”

“No, a right evil bastard.”

“That so? I’ll rustle up the committee, settle his account.”

“Just me, Twixt,” Ravelin leaned in and spoke into the slit, “What happened to the old doorman?”

“Oh, it’s Ravi! You’ll have to excuse those two chuckleheads, they’re new. As for Stubbs, he tied the knot last week so Viago gave him some time off.”

“He and Elizadora finally made terms?”

“More of an unconditional surrender on his part, actually.”

“So he really went and married a whore,” Ravelin whistled, “Diad preserve him.”

“Don’t talk that way about love, son. ‘Tis a higher mystery.”

“Here’s another one for you: why does Viago keep you around when you keep hiring specimens like these?”

Ravelin worked the spike free with a wiggle and was pleased to the ogre whimper. He let the footman stand back up, rubbing at his jaw.

“Those two are meant to stand by the door and look pretty. As for me, I wouldn’t need any help putting you down,” Twixt replied, the pleasant twang of his voice going taut as a tripwire. The slot in the door swung open on hidden hinges and Twixt came flying out, all four angry inches of him hovering in the air on a pair of transparent wings. The pixie held a bit of steel in his hand the size of a needle, bright like a sliver of glass except for the tip, which glistened black and wet.

Ravelin found himself taking a careful step back.

“Only a joke,” he said.

“See me laughing?” Twixt asked, flying closer, the pricker mere inches from Ravelin’s face.

“Go boil your arse in a teacup, tiny,” Ravelin said, forcing a laugh. Twixt started chuckling too, and after a moment’s hesitation so did the ogrish. Soon all four of them were slapping each other’s backs and carrying on like the best of friends.

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“Come in, son,” Twixt said, “You’re expected.”

Ravelin didn’t know if that was meant to sound encouraging. He never really knew where he stood with this thimble-sized lunatic.

He ducked inside where the smell of sawdust and sticky floors hit him like a wall. Iron chains dangled from the girders of the low ceiling, brushing the heads of the chancers allowed within, all of whom spoke in whispers and walked hunched over like penitents come to beg for forgiveness.

He won’t see me bowing and scraping my knees, Ravelin thought. I’ve done my due diligence. Now let’s see if he holds up his end.

There was a whirr of oiled metal as something massive plunged from the ceiling. Ravelin’s guts felt the tickle of an old, well-worn fear.

The machine was fashioned from great hoops of brass, limbs protruding every which way in disturbing asymmetry, each one terminating in a whirring, bladed tool or grasping pincer. Thick cables unspooled out of its bulbous rear, attached on the other end to a gantry that ran across the ceiling, completing his resemblance to a monstrous spider hanging from a steel web.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite fly on the wall,” Viago said. The gnome was cocooned in the belly of the autoharness, his wrinkled, misshapen head being the only part of him that was visible. A shiny patch of brown, mottled skin took up most of the gnome’s face, the rest being frozen in a permanent sneer. The burn was a remnant of his days running dark as a chancer, before he decided to switch to the sales and distribution side of the trade. Nobody had ever plucked up the courage to inquire as to the cause of this rearrangement of his external features, seeing that such a question would inevitably lead to Viago rearranging of all their internal ones.

“Hetman,” Ravelin nodded.

“You’ve got some nerve showing your face in this parts.”

“Heavens, Viago, but I’m not that ugly,” Ravelin replied, emptying the contents of his rucksack onto a nearby table. He saw the faces of the chancers around him brighten as the assortment of odds and ends came tumbling out, each one stranger than the last.

Among them were a pair of ceramic pots sealed at the mouth with air-tight rubber plugs which could not quite muffle the menacing sizzling sound coming from within, as well as a heap of fluffy objects that were like balls of wool, the strands composed of a crystalline material that scattered and broke the light like a thousand crumbs of sugar.

Viago ran a disdainful eye over it all before scooping them up with a spade, saying:

“Two solefires and a fistful of sparkies. I’ll give you fifteen hundred calors for the lot, and that’s being charitable. It’s not even halfway to settling your debt.”

“So what will?”

Viago extended a forelimb and sent a shower of sparks flying from the circular saw skittering in its palm.

“Let me put it this way. You’re going to miss being bipedal,” Viago told him, lowering himself with creaking cables, “I know I did. But all pain fades in time.”

The hetman’s immense bulk loomed over him and Ravelin fought the urge to hide under the closest table.

“Respectfully,” Ravelin said, “But what about my reward for services rendered?”

Viago arched his one remaining eyebrow.

“Oh, is that what you’d call pissing away my profits? Your boys lost all of last month’s take! They pitched it into a hole at the first sign of trouble, the gormless bastards!”

“No, hetman,” Ravelin gently corrected, “My boys stole all of last month’s take.”

One might’ve heard a pin drop in the silence that followed. The chancers sat up in eager anticipation, like hounds waiting on scraps of meat from the master’s lap. Viago’s limbs stretched out, slowly encircling Ravelin within the jaws of a delicate cage.

“In that case,” Viago leaned down till their eyes were level, “I find myself searching for a reason not to chop you into so much sausage meat.”

“First of all, it’d take forever to scrub the mess off your floorboards,” Ravelin grinned, “More importantly, you’d never recover your losses without my help. Muster and Spatz stashed it away, you see, all nice and secret-like.”

“Muster and Spatz…” Viago began, his face twisting in hatred.

“…will no longer be joining our social club,” Ravelin assured him, “But I got the location out of them, before the end. I’d be happy to recover your goods on my next run. Free of charge.”

“That won’t be necessary. Simply tell me where it is and I’ll send a crew along to retrieve it.”

“I insist,” Ravelin said, knowing that this knowledge was probably the only thing keeping him alive.

“Of course, I could just tear out of you here and now,” Viago raised his voice, “Though my instruments aren’t the prettiest,” he ran a scalpel down a taut metal cable so that it thrummed like a lyre string, “They’ll make any man sing.”

“I can’t carry a tune to save my life,” Ravelin said, knowing this to be the final throw of the dice, “But I’m always ready to dance.”

Time tiptoed on a knife’s edge. The room held its collective breath. Ravelin’s hand inched towards the handle of his hatchet. Viago saw this, and grinned. With a casual flick the hetman sent a sawblade limb darting forward, quicker than any eye could follow. Ravelin winced, expecting to feel a sudden lightness where his arm used to be, followed by the heady rush of arterial blood rapidly leaving his body. Instead, he found the hetman patting his shoulder with the flat of the blade.

“You’re a good boy, Ravi, and your word’s as true as silver,” Viago said with majestic magnanimity, “Which reminds me. Twixt!” he yelled to the front door, “Fetch me three nugs from the strongbox!”

There were murmurs of surprise in the crowd. Some looked as though their eyes would pop out of their skulls. Viago was paying Ravelin the equivalent of two runs under a full load. Twixt buzzed in, wings struggling under the weight of the satchel which he dropped at Ravelin’s feet. Three bars of pure silver clunked to the ground.

The message was clear: treachery paid well. Now every crew would think twice before filching from the hetman’s spoils, knowing that their friends would be only too glad to plant daggers in their backs for the reward.

Viago looked at Ravelin with smug expectation. Hating himself for breaking his own promise, Ravelin got down on his knees and scooped up his pay, conscious all the while of the looks of envy and disgust he was receiving. But the silver felt heavy and sure in his hands, and he felt the familiar thrill at its cold touch.

Another job well done.

“Now about your next run…” the hetman placed a fatherly claw on the back of Ravelin’s neck, “Let’s head upstairs, talk some terms.”

And with that, Viago drew himself up the cables and into the shadowed recesses of the atrium above.

“A lift would’ve been nice,” Ravelin grumbled, turning for the stairs.

He managed to drag himself to the first landing and out of sight before sagging against the wall with a heavy sigh, waves of relief washing over him.

Though he’d spent most his time in the wastes beyond the walls, this was the closest he’d come to dying all week.