Weapon of mercy, p.4
Weapon of Mercy, page 4
part #6 of Weapon of Flesh Series
Cold dread roiled Benj’s gut, his time-honored instinct kicking in. This was big, way bigger than a constable sergeant could deal with.
The question is, what in the Nine Hells can I do about it?
Chapter III
The heat and noise of the blacksmith’s shop faded as Lad followed Dee down a steep flight of stairs. At the bottom, a long corridor ended at a door guarded by a man and woman, both armed to the teeth. From their calluses and scars, he judged them well versed in the use of their weaponry. The guards scrutinized Lad, but simply nodded to Dee, knocked on the door, and opened it.
Inside, several assassins crowded around a wide table strewn with maps, inkwells, and blackbrew mugs. A few others stood by attentively. Lad scanned all their faces. At Dee’s glance, he shook his head. None of these were among those who had seen Lad when he and Mya ran into a patrol of Enforcers their first night in Tsing. Dee had agreed to keep Lad’s identity a secret if possible. With any luck, he’d never encounter any of them, and his assumed identity would hold up.
“Dee! Good! You’re back.” A tall, raven-haired man with a warrior’s build waved them over to the table.
Noncey, of course, Lad thought, noting the man’s numerous weapons. He hardly needed Dee’s introductions—his descriptions had been spot on—but nodded politely. Master Hunter Embree also fit the profile of his vocation, his analytical eye roving over Lad from head to toe, lingering on his old scars and his maimed left hand. The Master Enforcer, however, was not what he expected, lithe and beautiful, with faintly pointed ears peeking from beneath her shimmering blonde hair, rather than scarred and brutish as most Enforcers seemed to be.
“And you must be Bloodhound.” Embree stepped around the table and held out a hand to Lad. “Funny that Mya never mentioned you.”
“No, it’s not.” Lad shook the hand, matching the Hunter’s attempt at a crushing grip exactly and interpreting the effrontery in Embree’s eyes. The Master Hunter had failed to track down Mya and regarded his presence as an insult. Lad couldn’t have cared less. “I’m not a member of your guild.”
“Well, if you can find Mya, I don’t care if you’re a member of the Prostitutes Guild.” Clemson shook his hand as well, her smile friendly.
“So, do we call you Bloodhound?” Noncey shook his hand and grinned. “You must be pretty good to have earned a nickname like that.”
“Yes, and yes, I am.” Lad was willing to be polite, but he wasn’t about to offer explanations. The sooner he found Mya, the sooner he could go home.
“Fair enough.” Clemson gestured to the map-strewn table. “Let us show you what we’ve got so far.”
“Please.” Lad shared a glance with Dee. “Time’s not on our side or Mya’s. I’d like to see the place where she was kidnapped before any potential clues degrade beyond use.”
“We already searched the place thoroughly. The trail ends in a laundry, and there’s no trace of where they went from there.” Icy distain rimed Embree’s words.
“With all due respect, Master Embree, I haven’t searched it.” Lad met the man’s eyes without fear or rancor. “I don’t have to prove myself to any of you. If you don’t want my help, I’ll leave.”
Embree wrinkled his nose. “Well, if balls was all it took, you’d have found her already!”
“There’s no harm in letting him try,” Noncey said sharply.
“None at all.” Clemson nodded curtly to Dee. “Use my carriage. Jolee, go with them.”
“Yes, Master.” A huge woman stepped forward with a covert wink and tusky smile at Dee.
“I’ll go as well,” Embree turned to another assassin. “Orvis, coordinate our search patterns with the Blades and Enforcers.”
“I don’t need any help.” Lad glanced at the massive Jolee. “Or protection.”
“You don’t understand.” Embree took a step forward, his posture stiff. “I’m Master Hunter here, and I say I’m going with you. I can save you time by showing you what we’ve already found.”
“Can we just stop the pissing contest and get moving?” Dee snapped.
Lad looked at Dee in surprise. His time in Tsing had changed the meek assistant into someone willing to stand up to both Lad and a master, technically his superior. Lad nodded to Embree. “You’re right, of course. Time is our first priority.”
Embree flashed a tight smile. “Good. Let’s go.”
In moments, they were in a carriage headed back across the river into Midtown. Thankfully, Jolee perched on the vehicle’s boot, since she wouldn’t have easily fit inside. The three men rode in silence. Embree eyed him throughout the ride, but Lad ignored him. He wasn’t here to make friends. He was here to find Mya and go home.
Down one of the more industrial streets of Midtown, they pulled up in front of a brick factory. The smoke belching from its stacks trailed the scent of brimstone and ash across the city on the sea breeze. In the courtyard, workers loaded huge wagons as teamsters struggled to keep their heavy draft horses in check. A burly man with a bushy red beard glared as they walked into the factory proper, but didn’t stand in their way.
“Is this a guild-owned business?” asked Lad as they followed Embree through the sweltering factory.
The Master Hunter shook his head. “We found no connection. The foreman said some strangers came in offering a lot of money to rent some space. The owners apparently didn’t even know about the old smuggler’s hideout beneath the building. They were pissed off about the damage we did in our raid, but a few gold coins and a warning shut them up.”
Finally, they came to a door guarded by a single man in a worker’s apron. An assassin, no doubt; his hands sported the wrong calluses, and he looked far too clean to be a real laborer, not to mention the numerous small weapons that Lad spotted hidden about his person. Nodding to Embree, he opened the door and stepped aside. Through an office and a concealed door, then they descended a long stair, the air cooler with every step. At the bottom, the way teed into a dank passage.
Dee pointed to the left where the corridor led into darkness. “That’s the way we came in, through a partially flooded sewer tunnel to the river.”
Lad could smell sewage and mold. He nodded and turned to follow Embree the other way, where two more assassins guarded an opening.
Dee continued his account. “There were Alchemist guards at the door when we arrived, but Mya took them out.”
Lad fingered the splintered wood of the door frame and inspected the door itself, leaning against the wall beside the opening. “She broke down the door?”
“Yes.”
Lad stepped into the vaulted room and swept the chamber with his gaze. It had been beautifully appointed once, but now everything—the lush carpets, the furniture, the tapestries, and even the stone walls—were pocked and torn. The room stank of scorched vegetation, and bits of charred vines and burned leaves crunched under his feet.
Dee pointed to a tattered bed. “The boy was there. When I lifted him, overhead tapestries fell, releasing thousands of little black seeds. They sprouted everywhere, and vines grew fast.” His voice quavered before he swallowed hard and continued. “Mya threw me and the boy clear, but she was entangled and couldn’t rip free.” He pointed to a spot on the carpet. “She was right there when last I saw her.”
Lad knelt where Dee indicated. The leaves on the charred vine were burned beyond recognition, but he crumbled a piece and tasted it—bitter, ashy, with a hint of mustiness. A distant memory surfaced. “Dragons’ bane vine. Not very common, but effective at restraining without killing. These here were sprayed with winter-cap mushroom tea, the only way to make it release its hold...barring fire, of course. That’s how they got her out.”
Embree cocked an eyebrow. “Well, you do know something...”
“It’s also something an Alchemist would know.” Lad brushed through litter on the floor: burned vines, tattered carpet, and bits of shredded cloth. A spot of color caught his eye, a thumbnail-sized swatch of dark silk. Holding it to his nose, he sniffed. It stank. He looked back down the long passage into the darkness. They came in through the sewers. “Do you remember what Mya was wearing?”
Dee’s brow furrowed. “Of course. Black trousers, a maroon silk shirt—”
Lad held up the swatch. “This color?”
“Yes!” Dee snatched it, stared at it as if he might conjure Mya out of the tiny piece of cloth. “The vines were stuck to her clothes. She tried to tear them loose.”
“How did you know?” Embree asked, his tone skeptical.
“It stinks of the sewer.” Lad started a slow circuit of the room. A gaping hole on the back wall was hinged on one side with a stone slab of identical shape except where the edges were chipped and crushed. A dark tunnel extended beyond. “You think that’s where they took her out?”
Embree pointed to a smudge on the wall near the door. “Yes. A blood trail led us to it.”
“And Jolee broke it open,” Dee added. The huge Enforcer cracked her knuckles. “We weren’t far behind them, minutes at most.”
Lad paused at the rust-colored smudge, sniffed it, scraped some off with his thumbnail, and let it melt on his tongue. “This isn’t Mya’s.”
“Oh, come on! You expect me to believe that you can identify her blood by taste?” The derision in Embree’s voice spoke volumes.
“I don’t expect you to believe anything.” Lad stepped into the tunnel, waving the others back. Sniffing the stale air, he detected the scents of numerous people—probably the Alchemists who took Mya and the Hunters who tracked them—as well as the one scent he sought. Dropping to his knees, he put his nose to the floor and breathed deep, shifting about until he located the source...a dried drop of sewer water. They’d carried Mya along here, and her dripping clothes had left a trail. “You were right. They took her this way.” He stood and strode down the tunnel.
“Wait!” Embree trotted up alongside. Plucking a crystal from a pocket, he brought it to light with a word and held it up to illuminate the tunnel. “The last thing we need is for you to fall in the dark and break a leg.”
Lad opened his mouth to protest—he could see better in the dark, and never tripped—but then reconsidered. The others had to see, and the fewer of his preternatural abilities the man knew about, the better. He couldn’t risk any of them learning his identity.
“Keep the light behind me,” he told Embree. “I don’t want to be blinded and miss a step.”
“Of course.” The Master Hunter followed a step behind, light held high, while Dee and Jolee brought up the rear.
They walked quite a distance, Lad continually inspecting the floor, walls, and ceiling for more hidden passages, but to no avail. The faint scent of sewerage, however, persisted. Eventually they arrived at another stone door, this one sporting a locking mechanism. Embree threw the bolt and pulled it open.
“This is where we lost the trail. It’s a laundry in the Wharf District.”
Lad stepped through the door, and his heart lurched with recognition. The room reminded him of the abandoned laundry where he’d taken Wiggen after rescuing her from the Twailin Royal Guard prison. Wiggen... That was the first time we... Blinking hard to clear his eyes, he forced his attention back to his task.
Barrels, bins, and tools cluttered the periphery of the large, low room. In the center, three massive cauldrons bubbled atop coal-fueled furnaces, lye-scented steam wafting up into wide vents. A sweat broke out on his brow with the oppressive heat and humidity. Wiping it away, he surveyed the area, assessing the operation.
The dirty laundry came down through chutes into bins on wheels, which would be emptied into cauldrons and agitated by mechanical stirrers. Heavy mechanisms tipped the contents of the cauldrons into large strainers set over drains in the floor, and the strainers would be lifted by chains up through trapdoors in the ceiling, presumably so the clothes could be dried and folded above. Though coal dust and lint littered the corners, the center of the floor was relatively clear, scuffed clean by many feet.
Lad advanced slowly, trying to detect any hint that Mya had been here or where they might have taken her. The sewage smell was nearly overwhelmed by the lye odor, but suddenly he caught a stronger whiff of it. On hands and knees, he squinted at the floor. Leaning close, he inhaled, shifted a few inches, and inhaled once more. Again and again he repeated this, finally sitting back on his heels.
“They stripped her and dropped her clothes here.” He traced the patch, perhaps two feet across, with his finger.
“Why would they strip her?” Dee’s voice shook.
Embree snapped his fingers. “Because she stank like the sewers, just like you did, Dee. A smell like that would attract attention.” He knelt, sniffed the area, nodded, and looked at Lad with surprised admiration. “Bloodhound indeed!”
“Stuff her in a laundry bag, carry her outside, and disappear. No one would think twice about someone carrying laundry out of a laundry!” Jolee’s thick brow furrowed.
Embree nodded as he got to his feet. “That’s the problem. No one did notice anything, and we’ve got no way to track her.”
Lad stared at the floor, thinking. They stripped her... An incongruous memory surfaced of Mya disrobing in the dark room of an inn during their trip to Tsing. Clothes... The kernel of an idea formed. Sweeping his head from side to side, he sniffed and peered about. “There are other ways of tracking someone. If we could find her clothes...”
Embree scoffed. “Her clothing wouldn’t do us any good. To track her with magic, we’d need something personal. Clothes don’t work.”
“That depends.” Lad searched, peering under bins and rooting through the piles of bagged laundry. He wasn’t sure how much Mya had confided to anyone in Tsing, and he didn’t want to give away her secrets. “What I’m looking for isn’t really clothing. It’s a strip of black cloth, looks like plain linen, but—”
Dee’s eyes snapped wide. “Her wrappings!”
Lad stared at Dee, wondering again about the relationship between Mya and her assistant. If he knows about her wrappings...
“Wrappings?” Embree looked from Dee to Lad and back. “What kind of wrappings?”
Dee glanced at Lad with a look somewhere between guilt and defiance and stammered, “Mya wore...enchanted wrappings under her street clothes to...um...keep her cool. She has for years. She only took them off...uh...rarely.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this when she first went missing?” Embree scowled. “If we can find them, we can use them to track her!”
“I...honestly didn’t think of it.” Dee’s jaw clenched.
Embree cast about the room, his eyes drifting to the furnaces. “Mightn’t they have burned them?”
“Why risk having the wet clothing douse the fire and draw someone down here? They don’t look enchanted, they’d stink the same as her other clothes, and her kidnappers would have been in a hurry. And, like you, they wouldn’t think they could be used to track her.” Lad pointed to the cauldrons. “The easiest thing to do would have been to throw them in one of those.”
“Which means...” Dee dashed for the stairs, Lad and Embree on his heels. “They may still be here!”
At the top, they hurried past a startled woman sitting at a table sorting papers, through another door, and into the laundry proper. Here, however, they stopped short. Dee groaned as he gazed out across the vast and crowded facility.
Dozens of workers rinsed, wrung, and hung laundry on hundreds of wheeled racks. Once a rack was full, another employee wheeled it away and hooked it onto a slowly moving chain overhead. The taut chain lifted the racks up and away through a gap in the ceiling. On the far side of the huge room, the racks descended back through another opening, and workers removed the now-dry laundry, folding it on rows of long tables.
“Mya was taken three nights ago, correct?” Lad asked. At Dee’s nod, he approached a worker hanging laundry. “If something was washed three night ago, would it still be here?”
The woman laughed. “In this humidity? Course it’s still here! We ain’t got magic to dry things, just the sea air! Takes four days to run the process. Probably on a dryin’ racks upstairs,” she waved a hand vaguely overhead, “or bein’ folded.”
Lad flipped her a coin and returned to the others. “Embree and Jolee, check the folding tables. We’re looking for a long strip of black linen about three inches wide. Dee and I will look upstairs.”
“Right!” Thankfully, the Master Hunter didn’t argue. As he and the Enforcer hurried off, Dee was already dashing up the stairs.
Lad followed, but Dee had stopped at the top of the stairs, staring up in shock.
“This is going to be like trying to find one particular leaf in a forest!”
Lad had to agree.
A lofty network of huge gears propelled the rack-laden chain on a serpentine track up through the rafters—fully three stories high—past rows of high, open windows. Thousands upon thousands of garments, sheets, and other washables flapped in the sea breeze, and water dripped like rain to be funneled away by floor drains.
“You go that way.” Lad pointed to the series of stairs and catwalks that scaled the four walls. “I’ll go this way.”
Lad started searching, musing as he peered through the draped laundry. Had Dee learned about Mya’s wrappings by accident, as Lad had, or was the situation more...intimate? Did he also know what her wrappings concealed? That was a secret Mya had previously killed to keep. If Dee did know, then perhaps she had finally learned to trust someone besides herself.
“There!” Dee’s excited shout drew Lad’s attention. “There it is!”
Lad looked where Dee was pointing and spotted a long black streamer fluttering among the other garments. It was near the top of the run, well away from the walls and several turns from its eventual descent to the lower floor.
“Good eye, Dee!”
“But how do we get it?” Dee craned his neck. “There’s no way up there, and it won’t be lowered to the folding room for hours!”
“I’ll get it.” Lad examined the three-dimensional maze of chain, gears, and racks. “Just keep everyone out of here. I don’t want Embree or Jolee to see me do this.”
