Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (27 page)

Zeb gave a low growl. Ben looked at Kal sharply. ‘Kal, if you know who he is, we have to get the Senate Guard to bring him in.’

‘
You
don’t run the Senate Guard anymore, Ben,’ Kal reminded him. ‘If they arrest this man, then Firehand will probably make him disappear—put him in some deep, dark cell and lose the key—and there goes your star witness. But either way, he’s too clever to get caught anyway, and far too slippery to let anyone hang any crimes on him.’

‘So what are you saying, Kal?’ Zeb said. ‘You’re going to try and befriend this guy?’

‘Yeah,’ Kal said, attempting to stand. She couldn’t sit around all day waiting for her bruises to fade. ‘I’m thinking of setting the kind of trap where I am the bait.’

* * *

Crab Corner was in the Lower East Side of the city, as far away as possible from, the heights of Arcus Hill. Here, the narrow streets were dirty and crowded, but somehow Kal managed to get around quickly. Nobody minded if you put a hand on their shoulder and pushed them gently out of the way; nobody stared at you suspiciously if you ran anywhere. In fact, people who were trying their hardest to draw attention to themselves, such as the soothsayer on the corner of Meat Street and Silver Lane, were being ignored by most passers-by.

‘When the rains fall, the scourge of Amaranthium will rise!’ he bellowed in Kal’s face as she tried to shimmy past him.

She looked up at the clear blue sky. ‘Not today then!’ she said. ‘Hey, do you know where I might find Will Straightarrow?’

‘Young Will?’ the soothsayer said. ‘Of course! Keep going, turn left at the crab, walk past Whalo’s temple and a hundred yards further on you’ll find the Dead Dog tavern. Will will be there playing dice!’

‘Thanks,’ Kal said, flipping him a shilling and continuing on her way.

Crab Corner lay in the shadow of Amaranthium’s seawall, and was so named because a hundred years ago the district had been plagued by an invasion of giant crabs. The Senate had refused to offer any aid to the beleaguered locals, until a week later when they were forced to send the legions in. By that time, three hundred people had died and the rest of the city was threatened. It took two whole legions and some heavy siege equipment another week to drive back the creatures.

Kal turned left when she reached the plinth that displayed the ancient shell of one of the monsters: the carapace was six yards wide and bristled with jagged spines. The claws were big enough to grab a victim and tear them in two. Kal had heard terrible stories about how fast they scuttled, and how they were able to smash through the flimsy walls of the downtown buildings. At least the grim tale had a happy ending: the locals didn’t go hungry for months after the plague was put down.

Kal could see the Dead Dog up ahead, decorated by multiple bill posters with Ganzief Greatbear’s face on them. She had been to the tavern many times, and knew a lot of the patrons, but this Will Straightarrow seemed to have the aura of a local celebrity. He must have risen to fame in the year she was away in Balibu. He had taken on the mantle of the King of Thieves and started spreading his ill-gotten gains around Crab Corner. His confidence must be sky-high for him not to worry about Kal betraying him to either the Senate or to the city’s crime lords.

The tavern was an old beamed building, furnished with lots of cheap wooden furniture. Men and their pets, and a handful of women, stood or sat around quaffing ale. The rushes that covered the flagstones were damp with spilt drinks. There was shouting and excitement emanating from a table in the centre of the room. Kal didn’t bother getting a drink—she would rather wash in the watered-down brew they served here, than drink it—so she wandered over to see what the commotion was about.

Will Straightarrow and three red-nosed, wrinkled old men were sitting around a wooden board that was full of colourful tokens and coins. Straightarrow was rattling a wooden cup to the accompaniment of a rhythmic handclap from the spectators. His opponents watched him intently. ‘Come on, William,’ one of them said. ‘Put us out of our misery.’

‘Double six will do it,’ Will said, then released the dice into a felted circle in the middle of the board.

Double six!
The crowd erupted, and the three defeated old men slipped dejectedly out of their seats while Will poured the money from off the board into his bag. Two new opponents had already sat down, and Kal had to leap forward, pushing men out of the way and spilling their drinks, to secure the remaining seat.

Will looked up and grinned. ‘Hello, Kal. So you managed to escape earlier, then? I did my best to lead those guards away. Have you come to try your luck against me?’

Kal smiled back. ‘I don’t need luck,’ she said. ‘I am the master of every game I play.’

She examined the board in front of her. ‘I don’t know this one yet, though, so you’ll have to tell me the rules.’

The crowd roared with laughter. ‘It’s easy!’ Will said, handing Kal the cup filled with five dice. ‘We always let new players go first. I’ll explain the rules as we go, but for now there’s only one move you can make to start things off.

‘So come on, Kal—
roll the bones
!’

III.v

Bad for Good

Kal rolled a six, two fours, a three, and a two. She looked up at Will with a
well, what do you make of that, then?
expression.

‘The game is called
Demon Dice
,’ Will said, ‘and the aim is to call on the help of three gods in order to defeat the demons. Five
ones
will call Arcus to your side; five
fours
will call Banos; and five sixes will call
Lovath
herself.’

Kal was only half-listening. Looking over Will’s shoulder, she could see a familiar shape up on a shelf above the bar. A long tubular weapon made of gleaming brass and polished wood. A blunderbuss! It would be a mistake to complain about watered-down beer here.

‘You get four rolls though,’ Will continued, ‘before you have to pass the dice to the next player, and you can set aside any dice that you want to keep before each roll.’

Kal’s hand hovered over the board. ‘Okay, I think I get it …’ she said, setting aside the fours, and dropping the three remaining dice in the cup. ‘By the way, what are we playing for?’

‘I almost forgot,’ Will said. ‘Everybody put ten shillings in the middle.’ The other two players started counting out their loose change. Kal smiled to herself. They were playing for a grand total of two crowns. She added half a crown to the pot, and then shook and rolled the dice: another two fours and a two.

‘Two more rolls to try to get the last four,’ Will said, ‘and then you win a token to place on the board. Get all three tokens and all this’—he waved a hand at the pile of coins and they both laughed—‘could be yours!’

Kal worked out the odds in her head. ‘That’s a little less than one chance in three,’ she said, setting aside the fours and throwing the remaining die again: it tumbled across the felt, bounced back off the wooden rim of the board, and finally came to rest … a five.

‘One more chance, Kal! But when you pass the dice to my friend, Dene, on your left, he also gets to pick any of your rolls to set aside before he makes his throw.’

Dene was watching Kal with interest. Like Will, he was young and broad-shouldered, with an easy smile. The guy on her right was the same, as were the crowd of supporters rooting for Will from the sidelines: confident youths wearing casual but well-cut clothes. They weren’t your average downtown tavern patrons, that was for sure—they weren’t like the sad-faced labourers who spent half their wage on drink to get them through the night.

Dene’s eyes followed Kal’s hand as she picked up the die for her final throw. His mouth turned up in a half-smile and he even dared to wink at her!

Kal bared her teeth in response, put the die back down, and grabbed the four dice that she had set aside instead. She dropped
them
into the cup, shook it and tipped them out onto the felt, ruining Dene’s chances of completing a set of fours. She held his gaze, not looking down at the results.

‘Your move!’ she said, handing him the empty cup.

* * *

It was three hours later when Kal and Will stepped out into the late afternoon sun. Kal’s pockets were jingling with all the money she had won. ‘Let’s walk and talk,’ she suggested, ‘and I’ll buy you a bite to eat somewhere.’

Will didn’t seem all that bothered that Kal had shown him up in front of his friends. ‘Alright,’ he agreed. ‘What did you want to talk about? I’ve no money to give you right now, if that’s what you’re after. And that jewellery from Raelo’s … well, I might have fenced it off already.’

‘Let’s talk about your little den of thieves,’ Kal said. ‘You might want to keep the blunderbuss hidden under the bar, in case other people you’ve robbed make the connection.’

Will shrugged. ‘There are a lot of guns in the city these days. And I drink in a lot of different bars.’

‘Oh really?’ Kal said. ‘But how many of them have a sign above the door saying,
William Straightarrow: licensed to sell intoxicating liquors
?’

‘I see nothing gets past you, Kal,’ Will conceded. ‘What else did you notice?’

‘That there’s a brewery attached to the inn. If you ask me, that would be a good place to concoct your strange green fog of sleepiness that you used at the Snake Pit. By the way, Zeb is still wondering where her guards got to on the night of the robbery.’

‘They’re quite safe, I promise you,’ Will said. ‘We locked them away in the cellar. I’ll try and remember to set them free tomorrow. And as for the green fog—some of the lads are chemistry students at the university. We don’t use anything that we haven’t tested on ourselves, though!’

They walked until they reached the wharf, where Crab Corner met the harbour. The smell of seafood was making Kal hungry, and they wandered over to the food stalls, where fresh fish were being grilled. ‘Don’t you worry, though,’ Kal said, ‘that one day you’ll be found out, or even betrayed, to the Senate or to the crime lords?’

‘Every single day,’ Will admitted. ‘But we are experts at destroying evidence and maintaining a web of alibis. Hell, Straightarrow isn’t even my real name, for a start! Hey, fancy some jellied eels?’

Kal pulled out a handful of coins, but the girl selling the eels waved the money away. ‘Will doesn’t pay for his eels,’ she said, ‘and if you’re with him, then neither do you.’

‘Girlfriend of yours?’ Kal asked Will as they walked away. She tucked into her eels: they were chewy, and the mash that came with them was hot and soft.

‘No,’ Will said. ‘I just helped her out once when her father was in jail. He was caught selling fish cakes with added slivers of slug. I’m all for punishing frauds, but they didn’t have to smash his tools and equipment too.’

‘Aren’t you the helpful one,’ Kal said. ‘So who else do you hand money out to?’

‘Well …’ Will said. ‘You see that beggar over there?’

‘No.’

‘That’s because Jimmy Bobbin is now apprenticed to a carpenter in Shavings Street. Fourteen is far too young to be begging on the streets; too young to have lost an arm in a street fight that got out of control. We figured out that you only need one hand to saw if you’ve got a good vice to hold the wood steady.’

‘Why do you do this, Will? Why do you have to help people?’

‘It’s just the way I was brought up,’ he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘If you’ve got the brains, the energy and the means, then you have a responsibility to help others, wouldn’t you say? You’re wasted running around after Benedict Godsword and his slimy friends, Kal; you should join us. We’re not rum divers or ding boys: there is honour among some thieves, you know.’

‘Hmmm,’ was Kal’s reply. She had no idea what a rum diver or a ding boy was.

‘Isn’t that why you came here?’ Will asked her, with mock surprise. ‘I was hoping you were thinking about leaving Ben for me.’

The cogs in Kal’s mind turned around slowly as she sensed an opportunity. ‘It’s tempting,’ she admitted, with just a small hint of promise in her voice. ‘But I never leave business unfinished. Zeb still needs my help.’

Will shook his head. ‘The money that I stole from her—
from the rich senators who can more than afford it, rather
—has been put to work on several big community projects around Crab Corner. I couldn’t return it even if I wanted to. Which I don’t, by the way.’ He grinned. ‘It’s against the thieves’ code.’

‘Then help me catch a killer,’ Kal implored him. ‘That’s something worthwhile, surely?’

‘When a senator dies, it’s not murder—it’s politics,’ Will said sagely. ‘And I have no interest in politics. Let them kill each other. Do you think whoever winds up as consul is going to make any difference to the people around here?’

Kal glanced around the busy wharf. It was a mild summer evening, the day after Midsummer Night; a good day for winding down after a party, for taking a stroll and catching the sunset … except everyone here was working; fishermen were loading their boats with lobster pots ready to catch the dawn tide; shipbuilders were hauling planks of pine between workshops; seafood on ice was being packed into wagons for nighttime delivery to restaurants and kitchens around the city. For the people of Crab Corner, a public holiday only meant a mad rush to catch up afterwards.

‘There’s something I want to show you,’ Will said. ‘I’m building something—well, restoring actually—something that will level the playing field a little for the locals; close the gap between Crab Corner and Arcus Hill. It’s this way!’

They walked away from the wharves and onto Crab Common—a patchy strip of grass that was bordered by rows of identical tenements: narrow, crumbling five-storey buildings that were decorated, not with banners and flags, but with clothes and bed linen hung out to dry.

Kal grabbed Will’s hand. She had no illusions about her powers of seduction, but she knew how to be direct. ‘If you won’t help me personally, at least tell me what the word on the street is. You know what people are talking about; you told me so earlier.’