“Finding him in here couldn’t have been easy,” Lizanne commented.
“Ah.” Julesin grinned as he shoved Mr. Stubby’s corpse aside. “The point where you play for time by attempting to elicit information. Even though we both know how I found him.” He stamped a foot on the floor, calling out, “Time for you to say hello!”
There was a short pause then the sound of ascending footsteps, Lizanne’s experienced ears discerning the overlapping thuds which indicated two climbers. A creak of rusty hinges drew Lizanne’s gaze to a trap-door in the centre of the room, finding little surprise in the face that appeared as it rose. Makario studiously avoided looking at her as he ascended into the attic, keeping his gaze lowered as he shuffled to one side. The second figure to emerge was truly unexpected. A tall man in a long ragged cape, features hidden by the hood. No sack this time, Lizanne noted as the creeper slammed the trap-door shut and paused to regard her before turning to Julesin.
“We haven’t gotten to it yet,” Julesin said. “She’s Blood-blessed, right enough, but I’d wager she’s not Cadre. Meaning she’s either employed by private interests within the empire or . . . something far worse. A true appreciation of her circumstances might loosen her tongue.”
The hooded creeper stood in silence for a long moment then went to the table, a surprisingly strong and far from skeletal hand emerging from the cape to rest on her penknife. “I was sure you’d use this on yourself before you even made it through the grate,” Constable Darkanis said, drawing back his hood to reveal familiar, broad features. “Must be losing my touch,” he added with a humourless smile.
Lizanne replied with an equally bland smile of her own. “This, I gather, is your retirement plan?”
Darkanis shrugged. “Twenty years labour in the arsehole of the empire deserves more reward than a pittance of a pension.” He paused for a moment, his hand moving from the penknife to take hold of her other knife, the one she had taken from Dralky. Darkanis stepped closer, all semblance of the affable professional she had met at the gate vanished now. She could see a deep well of fear in his eyes, the kind of fear that tended to override restraint or pretension to morality.
“Something worse, you said.” Darkanis kept his eyes on Lizanne as he addressed Julesin. “What kind of something?”
“Ironship something,” the Blood-blessed replied, Lizanne hearing the uneasy sigh he tried to hide. “One of their Exceptional Initiatives agents. The kind of trouble you’re not paying me enough to deal with.”
“Seems to me you dealt with it well enough,” Darkanis observed.
Julesin moved into Lizanne’s eye-line, looking down at her with an air of grim contemplation. “Exceptional Initiatives doesn’t forget, or forgive. You can run for ten years, twenty even, and you’ll still one day find yourself staring into the eyes of a Blood-blessed they sent to kill you, and they won’t be quick about it.”
“All true,” Lizanne assured Darkanis.
“So you are Ironship,” the constable said, leaning down so his face was level with hers. “Why did they send you here? Was it for this?” His hand disappeared into the folds of his cape and came out with a small fragment of rock. “Do they know about this?” He held the rock up before her eyes, turning it so the light caught something in its surface, a thin vein of white metal.
Not white, Lizanne realised. Silver.
“So, that’s it,” she said. “You found silver in the mines. Or rather, one of your informants found it and you failed to report it to your superiors. That alone would earn you the firing squad, but you didn’t stop there, did you? Hiring Julesin here to run operations within the walls whilst you creep back and forth every night with your sack full of ore. Very clever. It does make me wonder why you’d go to the bother of trying to foment discord amongst the gangs. Getting Makario to find you a bomb-maker and so on. He’s been working for you since he arrived, I assume? Another scared new-comer you steered towards the Miner’s Repose.”
“And very useful he’s been.” Darkanis glanced over his shoulder at Makario, still standing with his head lowered. “I wouldn’t feel too bad,” Darkanis told him. “This bitch would happily rip your balls off if her masters told her there was a profit in it.” He turned back to Lizanne, looming closer. “It’s time for a new dawn in Scorazin. Time to sweep away the gangs, institute some real order, profitable order. To do that, this place has to burn for a time.”
“Leaving Julesin at the top of the heap when the fires die down.” Lizanne inclined her head in reluctant admiration. “And free to mine the silver without interference from the gangs or the constables.”
“Yes.” Darkanis stepped closer still, Lizanne wrinkling her nose at the stench arising from his filthy cape. “They know, don’t they?” he said. “Ironship. They know about the seams. That’s why you’re here.”
“My employer neither knows nor cares about your petty corruption. We have larger concerns at the moment.”
“You’re lying!” He clamped a meaty hand on her throat and began to squeeze. Lizanne clenched her jaw to keep her neck muscles tensed against the pressure, but he was a very strong man. “This city sits atop the richest seams of silver anywhere in the world.” Spittle flew from Darkanis’s lips as he snarled into her face. “And you claim they don’t care. I haven’t spilled so much blood and risked everything to see it stolen from me now!”
Lizanne dragged air in through her nostrils as the constable lifted her up, chair and all, squeezing harder. He raised his knife in his other hand, poised and ready to slash at her eyes.
“What do they know!”
Grey mist began to creep into the edge of Lizanne’s vision as Darkanis shook her, a rushing sound in her ears telling of an imminent loss of consciousness.
“You’re wasting your time,” came Julesin’s drawl, faint and barely audible through the haze. “They’re trained to resist such crude methods.”
Another final squeeze and Darkanis let her go, the chair thudding to the boards and coming close to tipping over. Lizanne allowed herself a few convulsive gasps before reasserting control, forcing her hammering heart into a steady rhythm with a breathing sequence learned in her student days.
“See?” Julesin said to Darkanis. “You could take that knife to her nethers and she still wouldn’t talk. I’m afraid a more invasive approach will be necessary. If you’re determined to extract what she knows.”