“There’s no need for you to keep apologizing for…that. Not to yourself and certainly not to me.”
“Really?” Locke ran one finger up and down the side of the half-empty bottle. “Seems I can see a different story in your eyes, whenever I make the acquaintance of more than a glass or two. Outside a Carousel Hazard table, of course.”
“Now, hold on—”
“It wasn’t meant as an unkindness,” Locke said hurriedly. “It’s just the truth, is all. And I can’t say you’re wrong to feel that way. You…What is it?”
Jean had looked up, distracted by a wheezing sound that was rising behind Locke. The dockworker had half risen out of her chair, and was clutching at her throat, fighting for breath. Jean immediately stood up, stepped around Locke, and took her by the shoulders.
“Easy, madam, easy. A little too much salt in the ale, eh?” He spun her around and gave her several firm slaps on the back with the heel of his right hand. To his alarm, she continued choking—in fact, she was sucking in absolutely nothing now with each futile attempt at a breath. She turned and clutched at him with desperate strength; her eyes were wide with terror, and the redness of her face had nothing to do with her suntan.
Jean glanced down at the three empty ale cups on the table before her, and a sudden realization settled in his gut like a cold weight. He grabbed Locke with his left hand and all but heaved him out of his chair.
“Back against the wall,” he hissed. “Guard yourself!” Then he raised his voice and shouted across the tavern, “Help! This woman needs help!”
There was a general tumult; officers and sailors alike came to their feet, straining to see what was happening. Elbowing through the mass of patrons and suddenly empty chairs came an older woman in a black coat, with her stormcloud-colored hair drawn into a long tight tail with silver rings. “Move! I’m a ship’s leech!”
She seized the dockworker from Jean’s arms and gave her three sharp blows against her back, using the bottom edge of her clenched fist.
“Already tried,” cried Jean. The choking woman was flailing against him and the leech alike, shoving at them as though they were the cause of her troubles. Her cheeks were wine-purple. The leech managed to snake a hand around the dockworker’s neck and clutch at her windpipe.
“Dear gods,” the woman said, “her throat’s swelled up hard as a stone. Hold her to the table. Hold her down with all your strength!”
Jean shoved the dockworker down on her tabletop, scattering the empty ale cups. A crowd was forming around them; Locke was looking at it uneasily, with his back to the wall as Jean had insisted. Looking frantically around, Jean could see the older barkeeper, and one of his assistants…but one was missing. Where the hell was the one who’d served them those cups of ale?
“Knife,” the leech shouted at the crowd. “Sharp knife! Now!”
Locke conjured a stiletto out of his left sleeve and passed it over. The leech glanced at it and nodded—one edge was visibly dull, but the other, as Jean knew, was like a scalpel. The leech held it in a fencer’s grip and used her other hand to force the dockworker’s head back sharply.
“Press her down with everything you’ve got,” she said to Jean. Even with the full advantage of leverage and mass, Jean was hard-put to keep the thrashing young woman’s upper arms still. The leech leaned sharply against one of her legs, and a quick-witted sailor stepped up behind her to grab the other. “A thrash will kill her.”
As Jean watched in horrified fascination, the leech pressed the stiletto down on the woman’s throat. The dockworker’s corded neck muscles stood out like those of a stone statue, and her windpipe looked as prominent as a tree trunk. With gentleness that Jean found awe-inspiring, given the situation, the leech cut a delicate slice across the windpipe just above the point where it vanished beneath the woman’s collarbones. Bright red blood bubbled from the cut, then ran in wide streams down the sides of the woman’s neck. Her eyes were rolling back in her head, and her struggles had become alarmingly faint.
“Parchment,” the leech shouted, “find me parchment!”
To the barkeeper’s consternation, several sailors immediately began ransacking the bar, looking for anything resembling parchment. Another officer shoved her way through the crowd, plucking a letter from within her coat. The leech snatched it, rolled it into a tight, thin tube, and then shoved it down the slit in the dockworker’s throat, past the bubbling blood. Jean was only partially aware that his jaw was hanging open.
The leech then began pounding on the dockworker’s chest, muttering a series of ear-scalding oaths. But the dockworker was limp; her face was a ghastly shade of plum, and the only movement visible was that of the blood streaming out around the parchment tube. The leech ceased her struggles after a few moments and sat down against the edge of Locke and Jean’s tables, gasping. She wiped her bloody hands against the front of her coat.
“Useless,” she said to the utterly silent crowd. “Her warm humors are totally stifled. I can do nothing else.”
“Why, you’ve killed her,” shouted the eldest barkeeper. “You cut her fucking throat right where we could all see it!”
“Her jaw and throat are clenched tight as iron,” said the leech, rising in anger. “I did the only thing I possibly could to help her!”
“But you cut her—”
The burly senior officer Jean had seen earlier now stepped up to the bar, with a cadre of fellow officers at his back. Even across the room, Jean could see a rose-over-swords somewhere on every coat or tunic.
“Jevaun,” he said, “are you questioning Scholar Almaldi’s competence?”
“No, but you saw—”
“Are you questioning her intentions?”
“Ah, sir, please—”
“Are you naming a physiker of the archon’s warrant,” the officer continued in a merciless voice, “our sister-officer, a murderer? Before witnesses?”
The color drained from the barkeeper’s face so quickly Jean almost wanted to look behind the bar, to see if it had pooled there. “No, sir,” he said with great haste. “I say nothing of the sort. I apologize.”
“Not to me.”
The barkeeper turned to Almaldi and cleared his throat. “I beg your absolute pardon, Scholar.” He looked down at his feet. “I’m…I’ve not seen much blood. I spoke in wretched ignorance. Forgive me.”
“Of course,” said the leech coldly as she shrugged out of her coat, perhaps finally realizing how badly she’d bloodied it. “What the hell was this woman drinking?”
“Just the dark ale,” said Jean. “The salted Verrari dark.”
And it was meant for us, he thought. His stomach twisted.
His words caused a new eruption of anger throughout the crowd, most of whom had, of course, been recently drinking the very same ale. Jevaun put up his arms and waved for silence.
“It was good, clean ale from the cask! It was tasted before it was drawn and served! I would serve it to my grandchildren!” He took an empty wooden cup, held it up to the crowd, and drew a full draught of dark beer from the cask. “This I will declare to witnesses! This is a house of honest quality! If there is some mischief afoot, it was nothing of my doing!” He drained the cup in several deep gulps and held it up to the crowd. Their murmuring continued, but their angry advance on the bar was halted.
“It’s possible she had a reaction,” said Almaldi. “An allergy of some sort. If so, it would be the first I’ve ever seen of anything like it.” She raised her voice. “Who else feels poorly? Sore necks? Trouble breathing?”
Sailors and officers looked at one another, shaking their heads. Jean offered a silent prayer of thanks that nobody seemed to have seen the dockworker taking the fatal cups of ale from himself and Locke.
“Where the hell is your other assistant?” Jean shouted to Jevaun. “I counted two before the ale was served. Now you have only one!”
The eldest barkeeper whipped his head from side to side, scanning the crowd. He turned to his remaining assistant with a horrified look on his face. “I’m sure Freyald is just scared shitless by the commotion, right? Find him. Find him!”
Jean’s words had had precisely the effect he’d desired; sailors and officers alike scattered angrily, looking for the missing barkeeper. Jean could hear the muffled trilling of watch whistles somewhere outside. Soon enough constables would be here in force, sailors’ bar or no. He nudged Locke and gestured at the back door of the tavern, through which several others, plainly expecting much complication, had already slipped out.
“Sirs,” said Scholar Almaldi as Locke and Jean moved past her. She wiped Locke’s stiletto clean on the sleeve of her already-ruined coat and passed it back to him. He nodded as he took it.
“Scholar,” he said, “you were superb.”
“And yet completely inadequate,” she said, running her bloodstained fingers carelessly through her hair. “I’ll see someone dead for this.”
Us, if we linger here much longer, thought Jean. He had a nasty suspicion that the hands of the city watch would offer no safety if he and Locke vanished into them.
Further arguments were erupting throughout the room by the time Jean finally managed to use his bulk to knock a path for himself and Locke to the tavern’s rear entrance. It led to an unlit alley, running away in either direction. The clouds had settled across the black sky, blotting out the moons, and Jean slipped a hatchet reflexively into his right hand before he’d taken three steps into the night. His trained ears told him the watch whistles were about a block to the west and moving fast.
“Freyald,” said Locke as they moved through the darkness together. “That rat bastard barkeep. That ale was aimed at us, sure as a crossbow quarrel.”
“That was my conclusion,” said Jean. He led Locke across a narrow street, over a rough stone wall, and into a silent courtyard that appeared to border on warehouses. Jean crouched behind a partially shattered crate, and his adjusting eyes saw the black shape of Locke flatten against a nearby barrel.
“Things are worse,” said Locke. “Worse than we thought. What are the odds that half a dozen city watch wouldn’t know which bars were safe for off-duty hours? What are the odds that they would come to the wrong fucking neighborhood?”
“Or drop that much pay on drinks for a bar full of the archon’s people? They were just cover. Probably they didn’t even know what they were covering for.”
“It still means,” whispered Locke, “that whoever’s after us can pull strings in the city watch.”
“It means Priori,” said Jean.
“Them or someone close to them. But why?”
There was the sudden scuff of leather on stone behind them; Locke and Jean went silent in unison. Jean turned in time to see a large dark shape hop the wall behind them, and the slap of heels on cobbles told him that a man of some weight had just landed.
In one smooth motion, Jean slipped out of his coat, swung it in a high arc, and brought it down over the man’s upper body. While the shadowy shape struggled with the coat, Jean leapt up and cracked the top of his opponent’s head with the blunt end of his hatchet. He followed this with a punch to the solar plexus, folding the man in half. It was child’s play after that to guide the man facefirst to the ground with a shove on the back.
Locke shook a tiny alchemical lamp, little more than a thumb-sized vial, to life. He shielded the wan glow against his body and let the light fall in only one direction, on the man Jean had subdued. Jean obligingly took back his coat, revealing a tall, well-muscled fellow with a shaven head. He was dressed nondescriptly in the fashion of a coachman or servant, and he threw a gloved hand across his face as he moaned in pain. Jean set the blade of his hatchet just beneath the man’s jaw.
“M-master de Ferra…de Ferra, no, please,” the man whispered. “Sweet gods. I’m with Merrain. I’m to…look after you.”
Locke seized the man’s left hand and peeled his leather glove off. By the pale lamplight, Jean saw a tattoo on the back of the stranger’s hand, an open eye in the center of a rose. Locke sighed and whispered, “He’s an Eye.”
“He’s a bloody fool,” said Jean, glancing around them before setting his hatchet down quietly. He rolled the man onto his back. “Easy, friend. I pulled the blow to your head, but not to your stomach. Just lie there and breathe for a few minutes.”
“I’ve been hit before,” huffed the stranger, and Jean could see that tears of pain gleamed on his cheeks. “Gods. I marvel at the thought that you need protecting at all.”
“We clearly do,” said Locke. “I saw you in the Thousand Days, didn’t I?”
“Yes. And I saw you give up your glasses of ale to that poor woman. Oh, fuck, my stomach is like to burst.”
“It will pass,” said Jean. “Did you see where that missing barkeep went?”
“I saw him enter the kitchen, and I never looked for him to come back. Didn’t have any reason to at the time.”
“Shit.” Locke scowled. “Knowing Merrain, does she have soldiers nearby against need?”
“Four in an old warehouse just a block south.” The Eye gasped several times before continuing. “I was to take you there in case of trouble.”
“This qualifies,” said Locke. “When you can move, take us to them. We need to reach the Sword Marina in one piece. And then I’ll need you to carry a message to her. Can you reach her tonight?”
“Within the hour,” the man said, rubbing his stomach and staring up at the starless sky.
“Tell her we wish to take her up on her earlier offer of…room and board.”
Jean rubbed his beard thoughtfully, then nodded.
“I’ll send a note to Requin,” said Locke. “I’ll tell him we’re leaving in a day or two. We won’t be around much longer than that, in truth. I’m no longer confident we can walk the streets. We can demand an escort to fetch our things from the Villa Candessa tomorrow, close our suite, put most of our clothes into storage. Then we’ll hide in the Sword Marina.”
“We have orders to guard your lives,” said the Eye.
“I know,” said Locke. “About the only thing we’re sure of is that for the time being, your master means to use us, not kill us. So we’ll rely on his hospitality.” Locke passed the soldier’s glove back to him. “For now.”