By my reckoning the business with Snorri had bought me in the region of six months’ grace but it never hurts to sound willing. Besides, the main thing when tied to tables by criminals is to remind them how much more valuable you are to them when not tied to a table. ‘The gold was right in my pocket. I think I must have lost it in the panic.’
‘Tragic.’ Maeres lifted a hand, cupped his fingers and a man came from the shadows to stand at his shoulder. A dry rustling accompanied his advance, and stopped when he did. I didn’t like this one at all. He looked too pleased to see me. ‘Another fire with no survivors.’
‘Well …’ I didn’t want to contradict Maeres. My eyes slid to the man beside him. Maeres is a slight fellow, unremarkable, the kind of little man you might find bent over the ledgers at some merchant’s office. Neat brown hair, eyes that are neither kind nor cruel. In fact remarkably similar to my father in age and appearance. Maeres’ companion though, he looked like the sort of man who would drown kittens recreationally. His face reminded me of the skulls in the palace catacombs. Stretch skin over one and press in some pale staring eyes, and you’d have this man, his smile too wide, teeth too long and white.
Maeres clicked his fingers, snapping my attention back to him. ‘This is Cutter John. I was telling him as we came in just how unfortunate it is that you’ve seen my operation here.’
‘O-o-operation?’ I stuttered the question out. Victory could be measured now by a lack of soiling myself. Cutter John was a name everyone knew, but not many claimed to have seen him. Cutter John came into play when Maeres wanted to hurt people more creatively. When a broken finger, amputated toe, or good beating wouldn’t suffice, when Maeres wanted to stamp his authority, set his trademark upon some poor soul, Cutter John would be the man to do the work. Some called it artistry.
‘The poppies.’
‘I didn’t see any poppies.’ Row upon row of green things growing, here under Builder-lights. My Uncle Hertert – the heir-apparently-not, as Father liked to call him – had made countless initiatives to cut the opium supply. He’d had town-law out on boats patrolling God knows how many miles of the Seleen, convinced it came upriver from the port of Marsail. But Maeres grew his own. Right here. Under Hertert’s nose and ready to go up everyone else’s. ‘I didn’t see a thing, Maeres. I ran into a door for godsakes. Blind drunk.’
‘You sobered up remarkably well.’ He lifted a golden vinaigrette to his nose, as if the stink of me offended him. Which it probably did. ‘In any event it’s a risk I can’t run, and if we have to part company we may as well make it a memorable event, no?’ He tilted his head at Cutter John.
That was enough to let my bladder go. It wasn’t as if anyone would notice, soaked and reeking as I was. ‘C-come now, Maeres, you’re joking? I owe you money. Who’ll pay if I … if I don’t pay?’ He needed me.
‘Well Jalan, the thing is, I don’t think you can pay. If a man owes me a thousand crowns he’s in trouble. If he owes me a hundred thousand, then I’m in trouble. And you, Jalan, owe me eight hundred and six crowns, less some small amount for your amusing Norseman. All of which makes you a small fish that can neither swallow me nor feed me.’
‘But … I can pay. I’m the Red Queen’s grandson. I’m good for the debt!’
‘One of many, Jalan. Too much of any denomination waters down the currency. I’d call “prince” an over-valued commodity in Red March these days.’
‘But—’ I’d always known Maeres Allus for a businessman, a cruel and implacable one of a certainty, but sane. Now it seemed that madness might be spiralling behind those dark little eyes. Too much blood in the water for the shark in him to lie quiet any longer. ‘But … what good would killing me do?’ He couldn’t ever tell anyone. My death wouldn’t serve him.
‘You died in the fire, Prince Jalan. Everyone knows that. None of my doing. And if a hint of a rumour floated behind Vermillion’s conversations. A whisper that you might have died elsewhere, in even less pleasant circumstances, over a matter of debt … well then, what new heights might my clients reach in their efforts not to disappoint me in future? Might there be ladies of ill-repute who would recognize Cutter’s latest bracelet and spread the word as they spread their legs?’ He glanced toward Cutter John who raised his right arm. Dry bands of pale gristle encircled the limb, rustling against each other, dozens of them, starting at his wrist and reaching past his elbow.
‘Wh-what?’ I didn’t understand what I was seeing, or perhaps some part of my brain was sensibly stopping me from understanding.
Cutter John circled his own lips with one finger. The trophies along his arm whispered together as he did so. ‘Open wide.’ His voice slithered as though he were something not human.
‘You shouldn’t have come here, Jalan.’ Maeres spoke into the silence of my horror. ‘It’s unfortunate that you can’t un-see my poppies, but the world is full of misfortunes.’ He stepped back to stand by Daveet at the door – the lights flickering across his face providing the only animation, a shadow smile there and gone, there and gone.
‘No!’ For the first time ever I wanted Maeres Allus not to leave. Anything was better than being abandoned to Cutter John. ‘No! I won’t talk! I won’t. Not ever.’ I put some anger into it – who would believe a sobbing promise of strength? ‘I’m saying nothing!’ I strained at my ropes, rocking the table back against its legs. ‘Pull my nails. I won’t talk. Hot pincers won’t drag it from me.’
‘How about cold ones?’ Cutter John raised the short handled iron pincers he’d been holding all this time in his other hand.
I roared at them then, thrashing, useless in the ropes. If one of Maeres’s men hadn’t been standing on the table legs it would have tipped forward and I’d have gone face first into the flagstones, which bad as it sounds would have been far less painful than what Cutter John had in mind for me. I was still roaring and screaming, working my way rapidly toward sobbing and pleading, when a hot wet something splattered across my face. It was enough to make me unscrew my eyes and pause my bellowing. Although I’d stopped yelling the din was no less deafening, only now it wasn’t me screaming. I’d drowned out the crash of the door bursting open, too far gone in my terror to notice it. Only Daveet stood there now, framed in the doorway. He turned as I watched, slit from collarbone to hip, spilling coils of his guts to the floor. To the left a large figure moved at the edge of my vision. As I turned my head the action shifted behind the table, another scream and a pale arm wrapped in bracelets made from men’s lips landed on the flagstones about a foot from where Daveet’s head hit the stone when he tripped on his intestines. And in one moment there was silence. Not a sound save for men shouting far down the corridor outside, echoey in the distance. Daveet appeared to have knocked himself out or died from sudden blood loss. If Cutter John missed his arm he wasn’t complaining. I could see one more of Maeres’s men lying dead. The others might be dead behind me or taking a leaf from my book and sprinting for the hills. If I hadn’t been tied to the damn table I would have been overtaking them on the way to the aforementioned hills myself.
Snorri Snagason stepped into view. ‘You!’ he said.
The hooded robe he’d been wearing when I ran into him was half-torn from his shoulders, blood splattered his chest and arms, and dripped from the scarlet sword in his fist. More of the stuff ran down his face from a shallow cut on his forehead. It wouldn’t be hard to mistake him for a demon risen from hell. In fact in the flickering light, blood clad and with battle in his eyes, it was quite hard not to.
‘You?’ The eloquence Snorri had demonstrated in Grandmother’s throne room had wholly abandoned him.
He reached for me, and I shrank back, but not far because that fucking table was in the way. As that big hand came close I felt a tingle on my cheekbones, my lips, forehead, like pins and needles, a kind of pressure building. He felt it too – I saw his eyes widen. The direction that had led me, the destination that had drawn me on … it was him. The same force had led Snorri here, and set him among Maeres’ men. We both recognized it now.
The