He laughed. “I was a lawyer, yes. Before the War. Nevertheless, I wound up in the infantry. I took a Troll arrow at Potter’s Hill.”
I sat upright. “Potter’s Hill? Summer of seventy-four? I was there.”
The halfdead finished writing, signed the page with a flourish, tore the paper out of the book and slid it across the desk toward me. “There was a halfdead in our regiment. We’d spoken, become friends, of a sort. He saw I was dying, asked me if I wanted to—to take a chance.” He shrugged. “I do not recall my reply. But I woke up dead two nights later. Funny old thing, life.”
I took the receipt. It was all there, neat and legal, one silver comb, on temporary loan for sorcerous inspection, blah blah blah.
Potter’s Hill. Hell, he’d died right under my nose.
“All right,” I said, tapping his comb. “One veteran to another. Mind if I keep this one to show around?”
“With my compliments.” He slipped his notebook back in his pocket, and his golden pen. “One more thing, Mr. Markhat.”
“And what is that?”
“We are aware of you and your efforts. Others may be aware of these things too. Persons not as well disposed toward you as I and my House.”
“I get that a lot,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll put two strings on my screen-door tonight.”
He shook his head.
“You need not waste time at the Velvet. We’ve done that already. Martha’s abductors were never on the grounds, nor were they in association with anyone employed there.” He raised a gloved hand when I started to speak. “Please, Mr. Markhat, accept this as truth. It cost us—dearly—and I am convinced it is accurate.”
“So forget the Velvet,” I said. “That doesn’t leave me with much. Because the only other thing in her life was her home, and her brothers—and you can accept this as truth—they had nothing to do with this. Nothing at all.”
He nodded. “We reached the same surmise.”
I shook my head. “I still don’t understand any of this.” I sensed our conversation was nearly over. “But thanks, all the same.”
He made a little dip with his head. “And thank you.” He rose, stopped, looked up at me like he’d just thought of something. “I have an idea.”
“Do tell.”
“I am forbidden to divulge the details of certain delicate matters to you. I am bound, by honor and oath, to obey this stricture.”
“I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do otherwise.”
He grinned, put his hand quickly over his lips. “Still. I have several errands to run this evening, finder. I am hardly to be blamed if you follow me and perhaps draw your own conclusions as to the nature of my actions.”
I rose too. “Forgive me, but trotting along behind you strikes me as a good way to wind up on the dead wagon in the morning. What if one of your friends mistook me for a common thief or a light snack?” I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
“That is a problem. But happily, I have a coach. My driver is discrete. If you have a dark coat, you could come along, and I assure you no one would be the wiser.”
“What about your oath?”
He shrugged. “The House, as I said, values initiative. If I’m asked if I was followed, I can honestly say I was not. And if they ask if I invited you to ride along with me, well, I should have to confess, but I doubt that I’ll be asked that particular question.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Miss Hoobin has, at best, four days. My efforts to locate her have proved fruitless, as have yours. You lack the time to learn what I have learned. I lack your ability to move about unnoticed, and move about in the daylight. I give you my word you will not be harmed. I give you my word you will be returned here safely well before sunrise.”
He took off his glasses, looked me eye-to-eye. “I am halfdead, Mr. Markhat. That may well deny me a place among the saints, but does it truly guarantee me a throne beside the devil?”
I looked him in the eye. No saint ever had such a face, or such a stare.
“I’ll get my coat. And call me Markhat. Mister is for old folks.”
Evis smiled a pointy smile behind his hand. “Call me Evis. Shall we go?”
We went, the devil and I, out into the night.
Curfew, quoth the Regent, is Rannit’s greatest achievement since the War.
That statement is usually followed by a lot of prattle about peaceful co-existence with our halfdead brethren and statistics twisted to prove that the only groups preyed upon by said brethren are burglars and street gangs. Honest folk, we are assured, folk tired from a day’s honest work, folk at home and in their beds, these folk have nothing to fear from the halfdead.
I sat alone across from Evis. Beside him, on either side, sat two more halfdead, both taller and wider than he. They too wore gloves, and black, high-collared shirts that nearly covered their skin. They smelled of strong fire-flower cologne and new leather boots. Their hats were worn low, their faces were turned down and their chests never rose, never fell.
The driver, surprisingly, was human, as was the man seated beside him. Occasionally they’d exchange a muffled laugh or curse as the carriage lurched over a pothole. Hearing their voices was comforting to me, the sole human passenger in a carriage full of halfdead.
I watched the dark streets roll by through the glass over Evis’s shoulder. Streetlamps guttered and sparked. There was still light in a few windows, and more than once I saw it extinguished as we passed.
We left Cambrit, followed Stewart to the crossing of the Edge Street sewer canal, then veered off down an alley and turned south.
Evis peeped over my shoulder, watched the streets roll by through the window at my back. He’d put his glasses away, and his dead eyes shone now and then in the passing light of streetlamps.
“Do you miss it?” he asked, looking out at the dark. “You cannot appreciate it, under the Curfew.”
The carriage rolled on. I caught sight of a drunk, who saw the halfdead carriage, worked out who it bore and dived clumsily into the sewer canal.
“Miss what? The night?”
Evis nodded.
“It looks so different now. So…bright. There are shadows, to be sure, but light too. Silver light.” He shrugged. “I merely wondered if you ever missed just walking down a street, beneath a half-f moon.”
The turgid water closed over the drunk. If he ever surfaced, I never saw it.
“Oh, not much.” I felt it best not to advertise my recent spate of Curfew-breaking, lest his silent friends prick up their ears. “How about the sun? You ever miss that?”
A streetlamp splashed faint light into the carriage, and I looked away from those eyes before I could stop myself.
“Hardly at all.”
The driver pulled back his reins and spoke, and the carriage slowed, pulled to a halt.
“First stop,” said Evis. His companions stirred, exiting the carriage with all the sound and fuss of a dropped silk handkerchief. “Wait here with the driver, won’t you? My friends and I will see that the site is safe. We’ll call for you, when that is established.”
I shrugged. “Sure.
Bon appetite
.”
He smiled, moved and was gone.
I slid over, peeped out the window. The halfdead were gone. Evis had left the carriage door open, so I climbed slowly out.
We were parked at the corner of Gentry and Low. The stench of the canal, a block behind us, rode the night, thick and choking. Weathered brick buildings, two and three stories tall, formed a canyon that blotted out most of the sky.
Rannit is packed with once thriving commercial districts that, for one reason or another, fell into decay. The streets zigzagging off Gentry are some of the oldest. What were once breweries and foundries are now warehouses, hulks and shells, home to rodents and pigeons and failing businesses making a doomed last stand against oblivion. No lights shone in the broken windows, no smoke rose from chimneys, no shapes moved behind the doors. Before the Truce and the Curfew, you’d also have found squatters lounging in the alleys and making their beds in the empty stoops. Now, though, the buildings are empty and still.
“Cheerful, ain’t it?” asked the driver, in a whisper, from his perch atop the carriage.
He held a glossy black crossbow, as did his grinning human companion. Crossbows are illegal inside the city limits. I eschewed to point this out.
“Rent’s cheap, though,” I whispered back.
“Shut up,” hissed the driver’s friend. “Boss said keep it quiet.”
“You boys know what the Boss is up to?” I asked.
They both chuckled. “Yeah, right,” said the driver’s friend, so faint I could barely hear. “We’re in on all the House policy meetings.”
I shrugged, expecting as much.
“They ain’t so bad,” said the driver. “Best job I ever had.”
They fell silent, after that. After a few moments, the driver’s friend jerked and started, fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulled out something that looked like a pocket watch, fiddled with it briefly.
“The boss says you can go and have a look,” said the driver, to me. “That way. You’ll be met.” He hooked a thumb in the direction the halfdead had vanished.
I sauntered off as if it were noon, and I was going for lunch at Eddie’s.
I’d gone maybe twenty feet when one of Evis’s halfdead companions glided out of the shadows and fell into step with me. “This way,” he said, in a voice that sent literal shivers down my spine. “It is not far.”
I followed his lead. His face was cloaked in shadow, and I was heartily glad of it.
Faint light flared ahead, outlining a door and the gaps between the planks of a boarded-up window. “There,” said my pale guide, halting. “I shall keep watch here.”
I thanked him and went.
The door was open. Someone had simply grasped the knob and pushed until door and frame tore free from the wall. I stepped past it, into a small room lit by a guttering candle standing in the middle of the floor.
The room stank of rot and rat. I shut my mouth and looked around—bare cracked plaster walls, a single window and the wood floor curling and warped and stained from the leaks that had ravaged the ceiling.
A single door was set in the far side. It, too, had been forced open, struck with such force that most of the doorframe was hanging splintered beside the wall.
Evis stepped through the opening. “There is more. We are too late—but there is more to see.”
He donned his dark glasses, nodded at the candle, turned and vanished back through the broken door.
I picked up the candle and followed.
The door wound down a long dark hall. Walls, floors and ceiling all bore water damage, but the warped pine wood floor had been repaired in two places. Recently, too, the nail-heads shone of new-beaten iron in the light, which meant they hadn’t had time to rust.
The hall abruptly ended. I stepped down, nearly stumbled, onto a cobble-brick floor, and my candlelight lost sight of any ceiling, and all the walls. It did illuminate the backs of four black-clad halfdead, who stood in a small circle a dozen steps away.
Evis and his dark glasses turned to face me.
“They are friends. They do not see you.”
“Wonderful.” My mouth was so dry I spoke in a ragged whisper. My new friends didn’t turn, didn’t leap, so I licked my lips and took a step toward them. “What is it we’re seeing?”
I wasn’t seeing a thing, aside from vampires and a flickering ring of shadows and floor-bricks.
“Blood was spilled here. Spilled in such quantity that it rushed onto the floor.” He indicated the area, which the halfdead surrounded. They pulled back a few steps, and Evis motioned me forward. I took my guttering candle and went.
All I saw were bricks, just like all the others—black and smooth and rounded over with age and wear. Half the old buildings in Rannit were built over even older roads, just like this one. The builders merely scraped the dirt off the cobbles and called it a floor.
I knelt down, put my nose near the cold baked clay. If there was any blood there, it was too old and too faint for human eyes and a stub of a candle to see.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, rising.
“Do,” said Evis. “You see no trace because soon after the blood was spilled, the floor was cleaned. I suspect they used a mop and tanner’s bleach. My associates and I can still smell the traces though. Some must have run between the cobbles.”
“Rannit’s got more blood-stains than pot holes,” I said. “What makes this one special? What does it have to do with Martha Hoobin?”
Evis sighed.
Then he frowned.
“Mavis. Torno, Glee, come here.”
Three new vampires appeared and glided near, their ghost-white faces turned down, their dirty marble eyes turned away from my light.
“What the—”
Evis raised a hand and the halfdead stopped still, faces down, beside me. I shut up.
A moment passed. I strained my ears, since my eyes were proving useless. I heard nothing at first—then, faintly, I made out scratching, like a mouse in a wall, chewing away. I held my breath but couldn’t locate the source.
Evis put his dark glasses away. “Dear God,” he said, in a whisper. “Dear God.”