Husk: A Maresman Tale (3 page)

After that first shot, Jeb spent days on end cleaning the barrel, only to find on the next occasion the flintlock had a range of no more’n twenty yards and took longer than a crossbow to reload. Coupled with having to keep the black powder that’d come with it dry, thing weren’t worth spit. So, he was off seven-card, for the moment.

“Well, if you do, watch that one.” She jabbed a yellow-stained finger at Farly. “Got the gift, he has. Always knows when you’re bluffing. Always knows when you tell a lie, too.”

She blushed when Jeb gave her an enquiring look, then abandoned the bar stain and rubbed at a glass with the same dirty rag.

“Don’t believe I seen you here before.”—A husky voice with a bit of a twang.

Jeb studied his drink but angled a look out the corner of his eye.

The serving wench had a flush to her cheeks and a big welcoming smile plastered over her face. Seemed to be a twinkle in her eye, too, though it could’ve just been reflected lamplight.

“Ain’t been in here before,” Jeb said, keeping it simple.

Should’ve seen it coming a mile off. Moths to the flame, they were, women. Always the same, no matter where he went. Mortis claimed Jeb’s mother was a succubus, some kind of demon-husk that men couldn’t resist. Guessed he had half of what she did, only it worked on women rather than men. Had to be thankful for small mercies.

The atmosphere in the room chilled like a ton of snow had just been dumped on the roof. Didn’t need to look to know it was the big bloke again, no doubt all green-eyed and steaming from the ears. Jeb pretended to study the bottles above the bar, all the while leaving a trace of a smile to let the woman know he’d noticed.

The scent of her was strong in his nostrils as she bent over the counter, poured herself a shot, and knocked it back. Musk, and something sweet, like honeysuckle. Jeb tried not to breathe for a second or two, case it pushed him past the bounds of decency. But it weren’t just the smell that had him fired up. The way she arched her back and sighed when she turned round and leaned against the bar showed him a sight that was far from flaccid. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and gave a small cough. Peripheral vision told him Mountain Man was half out his chair, but one of the sailors got him to sit with a hand on the shoulder.

“Say, ain’t you one of them Maresmen?” the wench asked, looking at him pointedly.

“Yep,” Jeb said, finishing his drink and standing. He pushed back his coat and made a show of tightening his sword belt.

She must have caught the tension, turned a glare on Mountain Man. “Don’t you go upsetting the customers, Terabin Sweet. I seen you give them black looks of yours.”

She softened it with a blown kiss and a tinkling laugh.

Sweet’s face went a shade redder, but when his mates raised their glasses and gave good-natured jeers, he shook his massive head and forced a bashful smile.

“Good boy,” the wench said. “That’s a man who knows how to get some loving.”

Raucous cheers went up from Sweet’s table, and he joined in with them, but when he took a swig of his ale, it wasn’t hard to see he was still tight as an over-tuned guitar string.

“Maisie, you trollop,” the landlady said. “Them tables ain’t gonna clear themselves.” She rolled her eyes at Jeb.

“Sure thing, Miss Sadie,” Maisie said, as she flounced off, flashing smiles to all and sundry as she got back to work.

“And it’s Madam, not Miss, you little hussy,” the landlady said. “Madam Sadie.” She checked to make sure Jeb had heard, too. “Don’t know what’s got into her. Was always such a shy thing, but lately you’d think her the worst case of gutter trash, rather than a proper lady. You ask me,”—she leaned in close, giving Jeb a whiff of mutton that had him turn his head away—“there’s a man involved, and I don’t mean him.” She gave a nod that was less than subtle Terabin Sweet’s way. “Course, she could also be moonlighting down at Carey’s Hostelry. Wouldn’t be the first barmaid we lost to that whoremonger.”

“Reckon it’s a good thing she has you looking out for her,” Jeb said, his mind fixed on how to avoid giving Sweet further cause to challenge him—not that the brute looked like he needed much of a reason.

Madam Sadie huffed and proffered another refill, but Jeb waved it away.

“Need to be up with the dawn,” he said. If he hadn’t been so travel sore, he’d have started right away. The longer the husks were left, the more brazen they got. “You got that room ready?”

“Maisie!” Madam Sadie hollered. “Didn’t I tell you to make a room up?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m on it.”

Madam Sadie sucked in a sharp breath. “Won’t take her long, not once she sets to it. Besides, you’re wanted out back.” She inclined her head toward the door the fat man had gone through with his goons.

“Yeah?” Jeb said, raising an eyebrow.

“Boss wants a word. You know how it is.”

Jeb could guess. “He the mayor or something?”

“Sure acts like it.”

“Worried about how my being here is bad for business?”

She shrugged and pursed her lips. “Best not keep him waiting, lovey.”

4

B
ACK ROOM WAS
a windowless box lit by a smoking oil lamp. And that wasn’t the only thing giving off smoke, either. The fat man—Boss, Madam Sadie had called him—was wedged into a high-backed chair with an even fatter weedstick billowing from his mouth. Moisture glistened on his plump lips, and the dark stain of a recent meal was smeared across his chin; either that, or it was a shadow, like most else in the room. The wavering light gave a reddish tint where it touched but left half the place in darkness.

The drooling goon loomed off to one side, staring up at the biggest pair of jaws Jeb had ever seen, mounted over the peeling wallpaper. The other goon was smaller, leaner, but had a sharp look to him, like he knew how to stick a man and had grown accustomed to it.

“Maresman, Maresman,” Boss enthused, wagging his weedstick. His piggy eyes caught Jeb taking in the surroundings, stopped on the massive jaws. “White pointer. Largest shark ever seen in the Chalice Sea.”

Jeb shot him a frown. “Thought it was an inland sea.”

“Is now,” Boss said. “Don’t mean it always was. Some say there’s underground channels that feed it from the Sea of Insanity, but I don’t set much store by that. No telling what would swim through from Qlippoth if that were the case.” His cheeks puffed up to reduce his eyes to slits, then deflated when he laughed. “Couldn’t be having that, now, could we?”

Jeb allowed himself a frosty smile. “No, we couldn’t.”

The drooling goon swiveled his head away from the jaws and said, “Chalice Sea’s fed by the Origo River. Salty, that one. Folk say it widens into an estuary past New Jerusalem. Shark came in that way, if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Boss said, “so you just go right back to staring at them jaws, Clovis, and let the grown-ups do the talking, now, you hear?”

“Sorry, Boss,” Clovis said, and resumed his rapture.

The other goon was eyeing Jeb, cold as you like. His fingers twitched by his sides, as if he had some hidden blade to draw and couldn’t wait to draw it.

“This here’s Jones,” Boss said. “Though most folk call him Bones on account of his trade.”

Jeb could guess what that might be. Wariness crept through his muscles, tightened the skin of his face.

“Oh, nothing so bad as you’re likely thinking,” Boss said. “Tell him, Bones. Tell him what you do.”

Other than stabbing people
, Jeb thought of saying.

Rather than answer directly, Bones lifted the lamp and guided its light onto the wall opposite the jaws. A gator hung there—a gator big enough to have gone a few rounds with the shark, and maybe even won.

“Stuffed it myself,” Bones said. “Same as these others.”

He ran the lamplight around the room, picking out mounted birds, the heads of deer and boar.

“Taxidermy,” Boss said. “Bet you ain’t seen much of that before, have you, Maresman? Takes a good eye and a steady hand, which is why Bones works for me. Other kinds of qualities I need are a strong arm and a pliant brain. That’s where Clovis comes in. Pliancy’s about the only thing left of his brain, but that’s good enough for me, ain’t it, Clovis?”

A big dumb smile spread across Clovis’s face as he continued to stare up at the jaws. “Good enough for you, Boss.”

Boss’s demeanor turned suddenly stern. He ground his weedstick into the table; left it crumpled but still pluming a thready string of smoke.

“Sit down, Maresman, and let’s have ourselves a little talk.”

Bones came round the table and pulled out a chair for Jeb, waited till he sat down, then went back to his place at Boss’s shoulder.

“Folk round here call me Boss, but that’s more a description than a name.” He held out a pudgy hand. “Bernid Cawlison. You can call me Boss, if you like, though. I’ve kinda grown used to it.”

“Skayne,” Jeb said. “Jebediah Skayne.”

Boss’s hand felt limp and damp in Jeb’s grip, and it was smoother than a virgin’s thigh.

“Guess I’m the closest thing to a mayor Portis has ever seen; they just ain’t got round to realizing the need for one yet.” Boss let out a raucous belly laugh that had his chins jiggling. He shifted his weight on his seat and squeaked out a fart. “Pardon me. Tizzy Graybank’s haddock pie. Best there is, but comes at a cost. You eaten there yet?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Oh, you should. You must, even if it’s just to grab a pastry on your way out of town.”

“Well, maybe I’ll do that, Mr. Cawlison,” Jeb said, “when I’m good and ready to leave.”

Boss held his gaze for a long moment. Bones’s fingers twitched ten to the dozen, and Clovis leaned in closer to the shark’s mouth to run his thumb along a serrated tooth.

“See,” Boss said, “we simple folk get anxious having a Maresman in town. Had our share of troubles with husks, I’ll grant you, but since that business with the wolf-men, we ain’t heard a peep; and that’s the way we aim to keep it.”

“Blood trail led here, Boss,” Jeb said. “You know what that means.” Anyone who’d lived through the wolf pack had to know; had to see the sense of Jeb being here before it was too late.

“I don’t see any blood,” Boss said. “Neither’s the sheriff. All I know is, the minute your kind show up, people start dying. Soon as folk know there’s a Maresman in town, they’ll get jittery, maybe even start to move out.”

Jeb opened his mouth to object, but Boss went right on talking over him.

“You know how the economy of a small town works, Jebediah?”

“Jeb.”

“Begging your pardon. Jeb it is, then. Let me tell you. Portis is built around the fisheries: folks to catch the fish; others to distribute them, fillet, cook, mend the nets, build the boats, feed the fishermen, tend to their… finer needs. You name it, every trade, every worker, every wage goes into maintaining our principal industry. Who do you think puts fish on the tables of the finest restaurants in New Jerusalem? See, Portis is a town and a business, with everyone playing a part. You put the frighteners on them and people start leaving, well, that’s gonna upset the flow of fish, and that would make me a very unhappy man.”

“Clovis not like Boss unhappy,” Clovis said, turning his vacant stare on Jeb.

Bones cracked his knuckles then went back to his finger-twitching.

“Mr. Cawlison,” Jeb said, “you got yourselves a whole heap of trouble, whether you want it or not. I turn tail and head on out of here, there’s every likelihood this husk’ll leave a bigger dent in your workforce than a handful of chickenshits looking out for themselves.” Not to mention, every other husk hunter in the region would likely show up, wondering why Jeb hadn’t got the job done, and that was a situation he’d sooner avoid.

Jeb got up to leave. A look passed between Boss and Bones, but then Boss waggled his fingers in the air.

“Well, if you’ve made your mind up you’re staying—”

“I have.”

“It wouldn’t exactly be neighborly of me to stand in your way, now, would it?” Boss steepled his hands on the table. “You be discreet, mind, and I’ll see to it you get all the help you need to have this dealt with real quick.”

Jeb eyed him coldly. That was one hell of a change of tune, and it only got his hackles up. Boss was hiding something, that’s for sure, but whether it needed to be any of Jeb’s concern was another thing entirely.

“Thank you, Boss. I appreciate that.”

Jeb turned and put his hand on the doorknob.

“One last thing,” Boss said.

Always was. Jeb didn’t grant him the courtesy of looking back over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“Apparently, you gave a coin to the Fana boy.”

That got Jeb to turn.

“Davy Fana,” Boss said. “Like to think of him as the village idiot. Oh, I got eyes and ears everywhere in Portis.” He fished another weedstick from his robe pocket and leaned over the lamp to light it. “Ain’t good for business, encouraging beggars. Between you and me, he ain’t right in the head, in any case.” Boss made a circle of his finger by his ear. “Not since the wolf-men, and what his sister done. No, take my advice and leave him be.”

“You telling me Clovis is any better up here?” Jeb tapped his temple.

“Eh?” Clovis said, but Boss shushed him with a wave.

“What’s different about the boy?” Jeb said. “This thing with his sister?” Had to wonder, what with Davy Fana having the residue of a husk about him.

Boss sighed and flicked ash from his weedstick onto the floor. “She off and left him years back, not long after the wolves were dealt with. Tragic story, but it ain’t the first. His daddy was killed about the same time. Word is, Ilesa did it. Whether that’s true or not ain’t for me to say. Trent Fana was a sleaze bag with a thirst for the booze, but that’s not uncommon round here. Mother was another thing, though.” He looked off into the shadows, as if remembering. “Abandoned the family when the kids were only this high. Shog knows where she got to. And as for Ilesa, last I heard she was seen down New Jerusalem way, probably whoring for a living. Course, that was a long time ago. Could be dead now, for all I know. Died of starvation, most likely, or the pox.”

Bones rolled his head from side to side. “Heard she was out near Malfen a few years back. Worked the guilds in New Jerusalem before that, till things went bad. Ended up in the brigand settlements for a time.”