Chapter 1 – Poor choices
If things went bad, then tonight would be work for knives.
The moonlight glistened on the slick surface of the canal. The oily water rippled as the small, flat-bottomed barge drifted through the stillness of the night. The walls of the canal loomed high either side of him, dark and greasy, slick with scum and mossy growth, but Bail kept his eyes fixed firmly on the way ahead. In one hand he gripped the guiding pole, slicing it through the water to dig into the silt below and gently ease the skiff through the labyrinth of canals that laced the city like a spider’s web. He rested his other hand on the rim of his belt. His grip featherlight, and never far from the daggers strapped to his waist. He’d left his sword behind.
After all, Bail reasoned, if things went bad, then tonight would be work for knives.
There was a soft plopping sound away to his left and Bail stiffened, his free hand tensing towards one of the daggers. He caught sight of a shape, bobbing and dipping along the water’s surface, wet fur painted a silvery black in the moonlight.
Just a rat.
His hand returned to his belt.
From under his hood he watched the creature for a few moments as it struggled through the greasy mire. The rat’s movements seemed strained and desperate, as though it was having second thoughts about its decision to drop into the canal for a midnight swim. That would be something, Bail smirked grimly, if even a rat couldn’t find comfort in the filth of this city.
A shadow passed over Bail’s boat as he drifted under a footbridge and he returned his attention to the way ahead, nudging the pole to correct his course.
For another half hour he guided the flat-bottomed barge through the quiet, dirty waterways, all the while picturing the layout of the system in his head. All the bends and turns that kept him away from the busier parts of the city. At one point he passed under another bridge—this one wide enough to accommodate two wagons side by side—and he shrank into his seat as he heard movement overhead. Shuffling footsteps and men’s voices, blathering and inaudible.
Bail quietly pushed the boat further to one side of the canal, creeping closer to the shadows of the slime-covered wall. One of the men said something that drew hacking laughter from the others. They sounded drunk, their laughter bawling out of them in coughing whoops. A shape appeared over the bridge rail, silhouetted against the moonlit clouds above. The man leaned over the edge and heaved loudly. A sputtering trail of vomit came clattering down into the water just to Bail’s right, splashing him with specks of muck. Bail didn’t flinch. Didn’t move.
More laughter sounded from above and the vomiting man groaned. He wiped at his face with the back of one sleeve and muttered something to himself. Lamenting his last drink, maybe. Or motivating himself for the next one. Or perhaps just congratulating himself on the successful evacuation of his stomach. He hawked deeply and spat into the canal before turning back onto the bridge. One of his companions said something and another bout of laughter echoed down to where Bail sat unmoving in his little skiff.
Bail waited for the drunk men to move away, by which time his boat had drifted further along the canal and gently touched against the high wall to his left. Using the pole, Bail carefully pushed the boat away from the cut stones. Not far now, he thought, his eyes fixed once more on his route through the city.
After a few more minutes of gently working his way through the murky waters, Bail’s destination came into sight. It was a dilapidated little wharf, running alongside a particularly filthy part of the canal wall. The wood of both the piles and the boards were warped with the constant damp of the waters below and he imagined more than one of them would be loose. A barrel was tied off to one side, behind which a set of rough, stonecut stairs led up and out of the canal. Above that was a large building that blocked out most of the moonlight and cast the whole area into even deeper shadow. It was the same warehouse that Bail had investigated from the streets above, earlier that day. During his reconnaissance he’d noted all the routes in and out—including the waterborne one that he had subsequently decided would be his best way of approaching it.
He had arrived
The skiff had enough momentum left to carry him straight to the wharf and so Bail judged that he wouldn’t need the pole anymore. He quietly lifted it from the water and laid it down inside the boat. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the surrounding area for any signs of movement. Any signs of an ambush. Satisfied there were none, he slowly eased himself into a crouching position. His legs had gone numb after sitting in the uncomfortable skiff for so long and he wriggled his toes in a bid to loosen the muscles. As he neared the wharf he stepped from the boat, turned quickly and bent low to tie it off, his movements swift and silent.
He left the knots loose, just in case.
With the barge secured, Bail cast a glance around the tops of the canal walls once more. Though he was confident there were no watchers, it was difficult to be sure and he was grateful for the reassuring weight of his knives. Bail drew his hood back, dropped to his knees and leaned down into the barge, slowly lifting clear the straw-packed, wooden box. He tucked it under one arm and straightened before moving towards the stairs. They were slick with grease and worn round on the edges, but Bail ascended them with a graceful ease and peeked his head over the top as he came level with the street above.
All was quiet.
Just ahead of him, the warehouse loomed. A monolith in the night. He saw again the two huge double doors that he had observed earlier, in the light of day. They were nearly three times the height of a man, allowing for all manner of wagons and carts to pass between them. Bail had watched as the trundling vehicles had loaded and unloaded their wares through those enormous portals. They were closed, barred and chained now, but one of the bay doors had another door set inside it, this one a more conventional size—and with a more conventional lock, too.
With another furtive glance to the darkened alleyways surrounding the warehouse, Bail padded away from the relative safety of the canal’s edge and crept deeper into the shadow of the warehouse, the box still tucked firmly under his arm. He reached the door and turned his back to it, again scanning for signs of alarm. There was nothing, but he tested one of his daggers all the same, drawing the blade an inch or so clear of its sheath to ensure it wouldn’t stick. Just in case.
Finally satisfied that he was alone, Bail turned and gently placed the box at his feet. He dropped to one knee and pulled two thin tools from inside the folds of his long coat. He deftly began to work at the iron lock of the door, listening closely for the telltale clicks as he sought to charm it.
It didn’t take long, though the shuddering clunk as the lock fell open was louder than Bail would’ve liked. He stooped to pick up the box once more and then eased his way inside, quietly drawing the door shut behind him.
Inside the warehouse it was dark as pitch, and the smell of damp from the canal was replaced by a shroud of must. There was a bank of grimy windows but they were set high in the walls—nearly twenty feet above where Bail was crouched—and what little moonlight managed to make its way inside was blocked by the towering stacks of cargo and boxes that filled the warehouse from floor to ceiling in ragged rows. Bail didn’t mind though, the darkness provided ample cover and his eyes were good enough to pick out what he needed to see as he carefully made his way through the warehouse.
After a time he saw a flickering orange light gently outlining a stack of crates someway to his left. Moving silently towards it, he recognised the glow and his nostrils picked up the faint scent of oilsmoke in the stale air.
A lamp, Bail realised with disdain.
The spindly idiot’s going to get us both caught.
Cursing inwardly, Bail peeked around the stack of crates and saw a figure—a man—clad in a long cloak, a closely pressed shirt and dress trews. A burning lamp dangled meekly from one skinny arm. Even in the gloom of the warehouse racking Bail recognised the weak frame and nervous posture.
The scholar.
The man was only half-turned towards where he was hidden, and Bail took a moment to observe the shadowed areas nearby. After a time, Bail frowned and stepped out from his hiding place.
‘Put the lamp out, scholar,’ Bail sighed. ‘Before you bring the Watch down on us.’
The man startled and spun to face the direction of the voice, nearly dropping the lamp in the process. Bail grimaced. If a mysterious light didn’t draw the city watch then a raging warehouse fire damn well would. The swaying lamplight highlighted the crags in the man’s face. It glinted off his thin-framed spectacles. His face was a picture of surprise and alarm.
‘Wha—I thought…’
‘You thought I’d be coming in through the front door?’ Bail interrupted, fixing his gaze on the man’s nervous, darting eyes. Bail shrugged. ‘I decided on a…less auspicious route. Now fix the bloody light. At least dim it a little, man.’
The scholar took a moment to absorb the instruction and then gave a hurried nod. He scrambled the oil lamp up closer to his face and began to fiddle with the dial on the front, dimming the light emitted through the glass window.
‘Better?’ he asked, nervously.
‘I’d prefer you put it out completely,’ Bail replied, cocking his head to one side. ‘But it will do.’
‘Good,’ the man nodded again, his skittish movements reminding Bail of the rat in the canal. ‘Good,’ he repeated, before swallowing hard. ‘Did you bring it?’
Bail paused for a moment, considering the absurdity of the question. He imagined a world where he would’ve taken such risks to meet with this moron in the dead of night without having brought what was promised. In such a world he would clearly be an even bigger moron than the man now standing before him. Or insane, he reasoned.
‘Of course I brought it,’ Bail responded, shifting the box nestled under his arm a little higher. The scholar’s nervous face lit up with a glimmer of excitement. ‘But you’ve made some poor choices,’ Bail continued, immediately tempering that excitement with more than a touch of concern. Bail stiffened and tipped his chin at the man. ‘I’m changing the terms of our deal.’
The scholar’s face fell further still, his eyes flitting momentarily to the more shadowy parts of the warehouse before returning to Bail.
‘B…but we had an agreement,’ he stammered, trying—and failing—to add an edge of steel to his voice.
‘We did,’ Bail agreed, his expression blank and unwavering. ‘But the agreement was that we meet alone.’
The man shifted nervously again, his eyes betraying him once more as they flickered towards another stack of crates, this time to his left.
‘Your men breathe so loudly I could hear them from outside,’ Bail sighed. ‘And they smell worse than the bloody canal, a blind man would know they’re here. Our agreement was to meet alone, and so our agreement is void. As for the terms of our new deal…’ Bail narrowed his eyes at the man. ‘I want double.’
Several shapes began to peel away from the shadows. Bail reasoned there wasn’t much point in them trying to stay hidden once he’d called them out like that. Or maybe they just didn’t like skulking about in the shadows. Perhaps they saw some cowardice in it. Bail couldn’t relate, staying hidden seemed nothing but sensible to him.
There were five in total, each holding a weapon. Three carried clubs, one man gripped an iron rod and Bail saw another had a set of metal knuckles wrapped around his bunched fist. They stepped further into the light cast by the scholar’s lamp, revealing clothes that were filthy and tattered, and cheap shoes worn thin from years of doing dirty work in even dirtier places.
Street thugs, Bail reckoned, with a grimace. Some of The Cobbler’s boys, no doubt. Men of short imaginations and even shorter tempers. Men who only really spoke one language.
Violence.
All of them were broad-shouldered and flat-faced. Seasoned brawlers, from the looks of them. They watched Bail with a leering kind of hunger. A need to fight. To hurt. To kill, even. The one closest to Bail was dressed in grease-stained trews and a dirty shirt. He sported a weathered waistcoat tied tight across his large chest. The middle button was missing and the garment strained as the man folded his thick arms across his chest. A short, studded club gripped tightly in one fist.
‘The deal stands,’ the man declared, his gruff voice carrying an unsurprising mix of arrogance and disgust. He grinned a sick grin at Bail, revealing a crooked set of stained teeth.
‘I don’t recall making a deal with you,’ Bail told the street thug, then he peered over the man’s shoulder to where the scholar was standing, now shrinking away from the very real threat of ensuing violence. ‘And—I must say, scholar—I’m surprised you hired such filth to act as your muscle. I thought you’d have higher standards.’
The scholar shrank away further still at that, even wincing a little as the words echoed through the closeness of the warehouse. The arrogant smile vanished from the waistcoat-thug’s face.
‘Who’re you calling filth?’ the man growled. ‘You’re a fucking Turned.’
Bail gave a thin smile, showing his sharp canines. He felt their eyes move from his teeth to the angles of his pointed, elongated ears. Bail could feel the revulsion in their hard-eyed stares. He could feel their loathing. Their need to hurt him. Like a pack of hounds, tensed and ready. Only waiting for the order to rip and tear. To savage him.
‘Silence your dog, scholar,’ Bail warned, his face hardening. ‘Or I’ll put him down’ He peered around the thug’s shoulder again, as though disinterested in even acknowledging he was there at all. ‘The new deal is for double the price.’
The men bristled, but no more. Bail knew they were waiting for some kind of signal from their leader, the man in the waistcoat. Before he could offer one, Bail spoke again.
‘So do we have an agreement?’ he asked, raising his voice so as to address the bespectacled man behind the gathered thugs. ‘Double the payment, or I walk away.’
‘You ain’t walking anywhere,’ Waistcoat snarled.
‘Ain’t ever gonna walk anywhere again,’ another man added, a twisted smirk scrawled across his pitted face. The group began to fan out around Bail, creeping forwards as they did so. Bail didn’t move.
‘Last chance, scholar,’ he sighed, placing his free hand atop the box. ‘From our last conversation you were more than a little eager to get your hands on this.’
‘Oh he’ll still get it,’ the waistcoated bruiser sneered. ‘He didn’t even have to pay us all that much for this job. Having a chance at one of your kind was enough.’
‘Having your last chance,’ Bail corrected the man, his voice firm but calm. ‘Unless you walk away now.’ He thought for a moment then offered a conciliatory shrug. Bail motioned down at the box. ‘And I suppose if you were interested in this then you would just rob him afterwards, anyway.’
Behind the advancing men, the alarm on the scholar’s face grew tenfold.
‘Be lying if I said we didn’t consider it,’ Waistcoat offered a shrug of his own, then his expression hardened. ‘But we don’t turn on our own kind. No, we’ll settle for beating you the rest of the way to hell, vampyr scum.’
Bail sighed again, then slowly bent to place the box on the floor beside him. He straightened and fixed his gaze on the lead thug, making a point to flash his teeth at the man for a second time.
‘By definition,’ Bail raised a solitary finger, his anger rising now, ‘I can’t be both a vampyr and a Turned now, can I? As all of you bastards are always so keen to point out, we’re not welcome anywhere. So which is it?’
‘Let’s fucking take him, Ned!’ one of the other thugs urged.
‘He’s stalling!’ another added.
‘He’s gonna run!’ warned a third.
The lead thug—Ned—tensed as he readied himself to charge, his men following suit.
‘Actually,’ Bail said, his voice calm and even. ‘I just wanted to put the box down.’ The men faltered, just long enough for Bail to offer a grim smile, little more than a sharp curl to the corner of his mouth. He shrugged again. ‘Wouldn’t want to break it whilst I kill you all.’
The men ran at Bail, clubs and rods and metal-covered fists raised high. Rather than shrinking away, Bail stepped in to meet them, whipping both daggers free from his belt as he did so. He ducked the wild swipe from the man nearest to him and surged upright with his right hand, the dagger slammed into the man’s stomach and he screamed as Bail wrenched it upwards towards his chest. Before the man could react, Bail had torn the dagger clear and spun away to meet the next attacker. This one stank of fish and was more blubber than muscle. He was slow. Cumbersome. Bail dodged the iron rod that was swung towards him and dragged his left-hand dagger over the man’s exposed jowls. The fish-reeking thug gave a gurgled cry and staggered backwards, dropping his weapon with a loud clang as his hands scrambled desperately at the free-flowing wound across his throat.
The next two men got in each other’s way. One of them was wearing the metal knuckles and needed to get in close to use them, and as he stepped forwards he half-blocked the other man’s path. Bail diverted the clumsy punch with his forearm and moved in even closer, he threw his forehead at the man’s face and felt his nose crunch underneath the blow. The man staggered back into his companion. Bail followed in and headbutted him again, smashing his face with a spray of blood and teeth and drawing a grunt from the man, part pain and part surprise.
Bail pushed both men backwards and spun again, just in time to block a swing of the short-handled club from the waistcoated leader. The blow glanced from Bail’s shoulder as he jumped backwards. If he hadn’t dodged out of the way it would’ve caught him right in the side of the head, and Bail reckoned it had been swung with enough force to cause him real problems.
The waistcoated thug—Ned—bared his teeth and moved forwards again. His movements more wary. Behind him, the man Bail had gutted was still screaming as blood from the terrible wound sluiced between his desperate fingers. The man whose throat Bail had slit was lying flat on his back, hands still raised to his neck. One foot twitched madly but otherwise he lay unmoving in a steadily growing pool of his own blood.
Ned feinted left, but Bail read it easily and caught the reverse swing with his forearm. He spun underneath the man’s grip, seeing the surprise on his face turn into pain as he wrenched the club-wielding arm down with a sickening crunch, snapping the elbow. Ned gave a howl of agony and dropped to one knee. Bail raised his free hand and slammed the dagger through the man’s eye, cutting his cry short with a jerk.
Bail wrenched the blade clear and looked to the remaining thugs. The one whose nose Bail had mangled with his headbutts was still writhing around on the floor, moaning and clutching his hands to his face. Bail strode over to him. He calmly knelt atop him—pinning the man’s shoulders with his knees—and slit his throat. Bail couldn’t see the last man, but the echoes of pounding footsteps fading into the darkness of the warehouse suggested that he had fled.
Bail moved over to the disembowelled man and slit his throat as well, more to silence the pitiful sounds of his weakening screams than through any kind of mercy. Bail straightened and slowly closed his mouth. He hadn’t even realised that his face had contorted into the animal-like snarl and he surveyed the scene with a dour eye. His mood had soured considerably since climbing out of the piss-stenched canal, and it had hardly been a good one when he’d been punting his way through it.
Bail snapped his head up, suddenly remembering why he was here in the first place. He scanned the darkness of the warehouse. The dim-lit oil lamp now rested on the corner of a crate, but of the scholar there was no sign.
Silly bastard ran as soon as things started getting ugly. Bail thought. Shit.
Bail knelt beside the nearest corpse and swiftly cleaned his blades on the man’s coat. He slid them back into their sheathes and then scooped up the box from where he had set it down, taking care to handle it gently. Then he made his way deeper into the warehouse. Might be I can catch up to him before he gets too far, he thought, dashing by a stack of precariously balanced chests.
As he neared the front entrance of the warehouse he saw that the door had been left ajar, no doubt by the fleeing men. Pale light from the street was spilling inside. Bail slowed and crept along the wall until he was level with the jamb. He peered round the open doorway and out into the street beyond. His eyes caught sight of movement.
Six men stamped into view, moonlight glinting off their flat-capped helmets. A Watch patrol. Shit. Probably drawn by the noise. Bail considered his options. He couldn’t run out after the scholar, the patrol would see him. He couldn’t fight them all, certainly not without putting a significant price on his head anyway. He couldn’t stay in the warehouse. There were plenty of hiding places he would surely be found eventually.
‘Shit,’ he breathed aloud this time, then turned and hurried back through the darkened lanes inside the warehouse. He made his way to the back wall, bypassing the corpses and finding the door that he’d entered through. Bail pushed it open and strode out into the night air, his nostrils once again filled with the damp decay of the canals. He quickly descended the stonecut stairs and placed the box back down inside the skiff. Muttering curses under his breath, Bail loosed the knots holding the boat in place and scooped up the guiding pole. He dug it into the side of the wharf—the boards offering a quiet creak of protest—and eased the little vessel away from the warehouse. He had just made it past the first bend in the dank waterway when a shout went up behind him as the patrol discovered the bodies, closely followed by a series of shrill whistles as they summoned other watchmen to the scene.
‘Poor choices indeed, scholar,’ Bail murmured, drawing his hood up and punting the boat deeper into the darkness of the night.