Three hours later, I crouched in the street, cleaning my hands with snow and drying them on tail of my greatcoat. The corpse laid open in my back room, my sketches of its physical peculiarities pinned to the walls. Its malformed flesh and bones were very similar to those described in The Veil of Flesh. More importantly, the lumps of bone on its hands had, indeed, grown over rings. One bore the sign of an owl’s head, and the other bore a sigil-marked topaz. The former meant the wearer had belonged to the Vigilance of the Snowy Owl — Sovereign Domenico Lament’s personal guard. And the latter meant the wearer had belonged to the Banishat.
Which was a very interesting and very concerning combination. What, I wondered as I scrubbed off, was Domenico up to?
“Hey, Ratsie!” Dram-a-tick Dick hurried down the snowy street toward me, covered in layers of ragged coats. I stood and thrust my hand into my pocket, reflexively searching for sixpence. Dick never sought me out unless he had information to sell.
“Got some news,” he said, holding out a hand. “Maybe that kiddy napper you asked about.”
I handed him the coin.
“What do you know?”
“Malkin, Tommy Malkin — a strapping great hulk I overheard exercisin’ his jaws down in Lud’s. I ain’t seen him in Dockside for months, see, and here he was tonight all dimbered up and letting slip hints about making big chink in the kiddie biz. So I figgered…” He gave me a wise grin.
“You saw him tonight?”
“Just now. I came here as soon as I wised up to what he was sayin’.”
“Excellent,” I said, reaching in my pocket and fishing out another sixpence. “Thank you.”
Dick tipped me a cocky salute and hurried off to get drunk on his newfound wealth. I stood in the snow, considering my options.
It was already past one — I’d heard the sanctum bells ringing earlier. I was familiar with Lorencz and Droit’s usual patrol pattern, but chances were good they’d abandoned it to investigate the warehouse death. Locating them now might be difficult, and I didn’t want to lose this lead.
A group of kidnappers had helped the Banishat nab five children for an illegal experiment a few months ago; an experiment I’d played a small part in ending. Now Droit and Lorencz were looking into all of the kidnapping cases that came to the Dockside Watch, and Nobilis Michael Aronson was offering a significant reward for information leading to the kidnapper’s arrest. I didn’t have their resources, but I had my own modest set of contacts. The kind of people I knew didn’t feel any moral distress at the thought of kidnapping and child slavery, but they did have a deep and abiding interest in gold.
If Dick’s tip turned out to be correct, he’d never need to sober up again. However, if I wasted time trying to find Droit and Lorencz, Malkin might move on, and I didn’t even know what he looked like.
I locked the cellar door and headed to Lud’s.
Lud’s was a dingy, sunken tavern one street into the Chifes and not far from my tenement cellar. The air reeked of unwashed bodies, but it was warm. I unbuttoned my coat as I walked down the muddy stairs into the crowded room. Eyes weighed and measured me, flickering over the dark stains on my greatcoat and the short, jail-length cut of my hair before sliding away again.
“Hey, Ratsie,” Lud said as I pushed up to the bar. “What’ll it be?”
“Blue ruin.” I slid a few pence across the table he used as a bar. I prefer whiskey, but Lud watered his whiskey down to the consistency of brown water. Gin was cheap, so he served it straight.
“There’s a card game in the corner,” he said as I tossed back the drink. The liquor burned all the way down, but the rush of warmth that followed was welcome. He refilled the glass. “Nupson’s losing. You might be able to take his place.”
“Is the deck clean?”
“What do you care?” he asked, laughing. I let the comment pass. I have a sharp eye for tells, but it doesn’t help me against marked cards.
“What’s for dinner?”
Lud dished me a bowl of barley soup, thin and barely seasoned but warm against the winter chill. I lingered over it, looking around the bar and listening.
Tommy Malkin wasn’t hard to locate, laughing with his cronies in a corner. He was in his early twenties and over six feet tall, with the lean muscles of a second-story worker. His clothes fit well and he had the clean, polished look of a man who was slumming, but his patterns of speech and easy confidence told me he wasn’t any stranger to the Chifes.
As I studied him, Malkin looked up. His eyes locked with mine across the room and I immediately gave him a respectful nod, letting my gaze drift past. He didn’t buy it and continued to glare. I pretended I didn’t notice.
“What?” one of his pals asked, following his gaze. “Oh, it’s Ratsie.”
“Who’s Ratsie?” Malkin slurred.
“Nobody,” his friend said. “Just a bone-boiler for the made men.”
“Yeah?” Malkin stood, staggering. “So why’s he lookin’ at me? You wanna boil my bones, Ratsie?”
The people between us began drifting to either side, moving slowly to avoid giving offense. I shifted the bowl of soup to my left hand and dropped my right into my coat pocket. My fingers touched the scalpel and curled around its handle. My heart was speeding up, my breath coming faster. Another panic reaction.
“Didn’t mean nothin,’” I said, matching his speech pattern and struggling to keep my voice steady. “C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.”
His upper lip curled up in a sneer. “Yellow?”
I nodded, dropping my gaze. For a moment everything hung in the balance. Then he spat on the floor.
“I hate yellow sonsabitches,” he snarled. “You know who I am?”
I nodded again, hoping to appease him. He grinned, proud that his reputation had spread this far.
“I’m Malkin the Tomcat,” he declared, “and guess what cats do to rats?”
He lunged at me and I threw my soup bowl into his face, then dodged to the left. In the split second he jerked aside, I pulled the scalpel out of my pocket and held the blade tucked between two fingers, glancing around. The other patrons, bored and looking for a show, were forming a wall to hem us in. I wasn’t going to get any help from that quarter.
“Bastard!” Malkin lunged at me again, barley soup dripping from his face. I grabbed the nearest tankard and threw it at him. He tried to dodge, failed, and roared when it hit him. Then he barreled forward, swinging. One of his blows caught the side of my head and I staggered into a chair, then grabbed it and swung it around. Malkin batted it aside, teeth bared. He was swaggering now, a confident drunk. He’d taken my measure and discovered that I was, indeed, yellow.
Blood trickled down the side of my face. I stood, panting and shaking, and waited for his next move. I wanted to shrug off my heavy coat, but I didn’t dare make myself vulnerable for even the small amount of time it would take to slide it off. Malkin was drunk but he was far from incapacitated.
“C’mon, you shitface little coward,” he taunted, showing off for the onlookers. “Show me what you got.”
I shook my head, allowing him to see my apprehension. Malkin sneered.
“C’mon now, stow it, the both of you,” Lud said, stepping forward. “Ratsie said he’d buy you a drink, Tom. Sit down and I’ll pour it for you.”
Malkin swore and took another swing. I saw it coming and ducked.
“Anything you want,” I pleaded. “I’ll pay. I don’t want a fight.”
“I hate cowards,” he sneered.
“Just let him buy you the drink, Tommy,” Lud warned him. “If you beat the crap outta Ratsie, his pals will hear about it.”
“Yeah,” one of Malkin’s buddies chimed in. “Ratsie in a threesome with Red Dog and the Firebitch.”
I hunched my shoulders and Malkin grabbed one of the tables, heaving it at me. I couldn’t dodge fast enough, and the table’s ungainly bulk knocked me to the floor. Malkin pounced on me like his namesake and knuckles slammed into the side of my face. I tasted blood as my teeth cut the inside of my cheek. I slashed out and felt my scalpel drag across flesh. Malkin yelped, jerking backward, and I scrambled out from under him. Blood streamed between his fingers as he held his face. The cut was thin, but it would sting.
It would also raise the stakes. I pushed myself back to my feet, watching his anger blossom. This wasn’t a fight I was going to win on my own.
Very few were.
“They say you’re a kiddie-slaver,” I said loud enough for everyone else to hear. “That you snatched a bunch of baby becks. There’s a bounty on your head, you know. Good yellow gold, no questions asked, to whoever hauls you in.”
Malkin’s expression turned ugly as the other patrons’ expressions grew calculating. His hand vanished inside his coat and emerged holding a long, nasty-looking knife.
“Friends with the Firebitch, are you?” he growled. “I hate that skinny whore.”
“Out, out, out!” Lud roared, alarmed now. “Take your knives outside, you bastards!”
Malkin’s huge blade slashed the air and I turned and ran, sweeping my scalpel in front of me to clear a path. Swearing, the watchers jerked aside from its sharp edge and then backed away even faster when Malkin followed, his larger knife swooping back and forth in wide, drunken arcs as he chased me.
I bumped into someone who was moving too slow and Malkin grabbed my overcoat with his free hand. I twisted, slipping my arms out of the sleeves. The coat had always been too big for me, bought from a rag shop the same day I’d been released from prison, so it was easy to get out of, although I lost my scalpel in the effort. I sprinted up the stairs in my shirtsleeves, threw open the door, and risked a glance over my shoulder. Malkin tossed my empty coat aside and hurled himself up the stairs after me.
“Come back here, you squealing little fuck!”
The street was pitch black and covered with snow. My cheap shoe soles slid on ice as I scurried into the middle of the road and turned to face him, hands out in a placating gesture. Malkin’s bulk cast a long shadow, and when his arm jerked back, light flashed on the knife blade.
“Wait!” I shouted, ducking and twisting to one side. Too slow. Steel buried itself in my upper leg. I screamed as I collapsed.
“Gotcha!” Malkin shouted, triumphant. I rolled on my back, my mouth still open but no sound coming out, and reached for the knife hilt. The snow around me was spattered black with blood.
Malkin strode toward me. Terrified, I yanked the blade out of my leg. Tears of pain streamed down my face. Removing the knife left my wound wide open, but I didn’t think Malkin was going to give me enough time to bleed to death. I looked up, clutching his knife in my fist. Maybe —
“Yellow,” he sneered. His boot lashed out and kicked me in the wound. I screamed again, and he leaned over me, one hand clamping down on my wrist. I struggled, but he tore the knife out of my grasp with a short laugh.
I cringed, closing my eyes against what was about to happen. Then a wave of heat swept over me and Malkin jumped back, swearing.
“City Watch!” barked a blessedly familiar voice. “Break it up!”
I opened my eyes. Malkin was rolling in the snow, putting out the sparks of balefire that clung to his clothing. A moment later he was back on his feet and running away at top speed.
“Don’t kill him!” I shouted, as loudly as I could. It must have been loud enough — Captain Lorencz’s next bolt of balefire splashed against the wall as Malkin dodged into an alley. I clutched my leg, blood soaking my hands, and wiped my tearstained face on my shirt.
“Ax?” Snow sprayed as the captain slid to a halt next to me. “What’s going on?”
“I think he’s one of the kidnappers,” I said, forcing the words past my pain. Lorencz’s eyes widened.
“Droit!”
“I heard!” Droit sprinted past us.
“I thought you was autopsying our gink.” Balelight flared overhead, highlighting the bright red blood that spattered the snow around me. Lorencz’s eyes widened and she turned to the people gawking in the doorway. “Get me some bandages!”
“I need stitches,” I said. Shock was setting in at last. I welcomed its distancing clarity as I kept my hands clamped over the wound. “Did he cut an artery?“
“The hell would I know?” Lorencz’s sharp features were taut with concern. “Where’s the nearest doctor?”
“Hawkins. Southgate. Corner of Tealey and Brickall. Blue door.”
The balelight over us stretched and coalesced into an obscene parody of a horse.
“Tell Droit we’re at Dr. Hawkins’,” Lorencz snapped at the men staring at us from Lud’s doorway. “Fuck it up and I’ll set you on fire and throw your sorry arses across the Line to feed Yzyrchye, got it?”
Then she hoisted me up, and not even shock could keep the pain from sucking me under.