Prisoner of Fate (19 page)

C
hase crawled into the shadows on the street, coughing, and collapsed against a wooden slat fence at the front of another house, clutching his stomach that ached from the punches delivered by Crystal’s bodyguards. He wiped the back of his right hand across the base of his nose, smearing blood across his upper lip and cheek, and swore viciously.
So much for doing the right thing by the rich bastards
, he thought bitterly.
The old man’s granddaughter is nothing but a precious bitch protected by thugs.
He spat and got to his feet, balancing against the fence. His body had taken enough brutal punishment in recent days.
I have to find something less dangerous to do
, he mused.

Light spilled from the front door of the house and two men appeared, armed with hand-held foreign peacemakers. One held a lantern high to expose Chase at the fence. ‘Fuck off or we’ll shoot you!’ he threatened.

Chase staggered away, ignoring the insults sprayed after him. In the past, he had only ever come to the Northern Quarter for quick, lucrative thieving. The rich people lived under the protection of their private
bodyguards, and with the blessing of the king’s city watch they were a law unto themselves when it came to dealing with anyone suspected of illegal activities. He dodged people going home from their day’s shopping, melting into the evening shadows to escape the attentive eyes of their personal guards, until he reached the thoroughfare named after the Carter family whose fortunes were made transporting goods throughout the kingdom. On the street he was just another citizen, albeit a poor and miserable one, in transit from one quarter to another. As far as the authorities knew, he had perished in the Bog Pit and dead men didn’t walk the streets. The time tower near the palace began chiming the twentieth hour.

Passing safely over King’s Bridge was always an uncertainty given the random moods of the Kerwyn soldiers responsible for monitoring the comings and goings of ordinary folk. He’d crossed earlier in the evening in the company of a merchant band, sidling in behind them to avoid attracting the soldiers’ attention. When he surveyed the few people crossing now, their figures lit by the great wire-lightning lanterns hung at equidistant points along the thoroughfare, he saw no groups large enough to make his presence inconsequential and cursed his luck. Wiping as much blood from his face as he could without the benefit of a mirror, he summoned his inner strength to overcome the bruising aches of his beating at the hands of Crystal’s bodyguards.

Three soldiers huddled by a bridge column were chatting and laughing, but one turned to watch as Chase began to cross the bridge. Chase focussed ahead as if he was utterly unconscious of the soldiers’ presence and counted his paces on the wooden surface.
Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.

‘You!’

Chase kept walking.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.

‘I said you! Stop right there!’

Eighteen.
He stopped. And waited. He heard running footsteps. A figure bolted past and two pursuing soldiers nearly knocked him over. ‘Get out of the way, idiot!’ a soldier screamed as he brushed past. The handful of travellers crossing the bridge stopped to watch.
The poor bastard, whoever he is, is running into a dead end
, Chase observed because the soldiers at the far end were going to cut off his escape. He sighed with relief that it was not him they were chasing and kept walking.

When he reached the far end of King’s Bridge, three soldiers were pushing a man against the wooden railing and shouting. Two more soldiers watched the proceedings lazily from their post. Chase strolled casually by, giving the event cursory attention without appearing too interested or too disinterested.

He was glad to reach the city centre where the people on the streets increased in number, along with the taverns, gambling dens and whorehouses, because he was in familiar territory. Small groups and individuals loitered outside establishments, but he carefully took note of a city watch patrol strolling leisurely along the centre of the street and shifted his path to avoid them. Noisy singing erupted from the Horse and Cart tavern as he walked outside the circle of light pouring from its crowded doorway, and from across the road in the Gambler’s Baiting House, a favourite haunt for those who liked to bet on fighting animals, came the sounds of cheering voices and snarling dogs. A group of men outside the dark facades of a block of shops silently watched him pass and a solitary soldier on horseback trotted by as he reached the brothels. ‘Hello, Chase,’ a silken female voice whispered from the shadows as he approached a candle-lit doorway under the painted sign of the Perfect Pleasures brothel.

‘Rose,’ he said. ‘Do you have to surprise men like that?’

A young woman, her long dark hair piled loosely on her head, a green shawl wrapped provocatively over her shoulders, emerged from the darkness. ‘My clients find it mysteriously exciting,’ she crooned and smiled. ‘Looking for Passion? Or can I help?’

‘Hmmm,’ Chase pondered, mischievously giving her the once-over, noting how her heaving powdered cleavage was teasingly peeking from the top of her gown. ‘I think I’d better see Passion,’ he said with a grin.

As Rose leaned forward to kiss his forehead, she noticed dried blood on his cheek. ‘Been fighting?’ she asked, drawing back.

‘A woman said no,’ he answered.

She laughed. ‘Passion’s in the red room. Business is quiet tonight.’

He entered and walked along the narrow, low-lit hall that was draped sensually with mauve cloth until he reached a lamp-lit red room adorned with paintings of men and women in acts of sexual union. The thickset, dark-skinned and muscled Wahim, recognising a familiar face, pointed towards a plush red settee and three young, scantily clad women. The middle girl with red hair stood and approached. ‘You’re hurt,’ she said, stroking her brother’s cheek.

‘Nothing much,’ Chase told her. ‘What time are you finishing tonight?’

‘I haven’t had a client yet,’ she replied. ‘Is it urgent?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I can wait. Can I go clean up?’

Passion took her brother’s arm and led him through a small door into a bathing area reserved for the working girls. A steaming wooden tub dominated the room’s centre and white porcelain wash bowls sat on a wooden slat cupboard against the far wall. White
towels were piled on shelves. Passion spoke briefly to one of two women in the room and then told her brother, ‘Lavender and Sunrise will wash you and get you some clean clothes.’

‘I can wash myself,’ he complained, and Lavender and Sunrise laughed.

‘Getting shy, Chase,’ teased Lavender, an older woman who he knew was responsible for the working girls’ health and cleanliness.

‘Just not in the mood to get too excited,’ he replied cheekily.

‘Relax,’ Passion told him. ‘I’ll be out in the red room. Come and talk to me when you’re changed.’

Chase waited for his sister to leave before he stripped off his dirty and torn clothes and climbed gratefully into the hot tub. While Lavender went in search of spare men’s clothes, Sunrise leaned over the tub and began scrubbing Chase’s back.
Having a sister in this profession has some benefits
, he decided as he enjoyed the sensual pleasure of being bathed.

‘So she wasn’t interested?’ Passion asked as she sliced a small portion of cold roast lamb.

‘Not even when I told her the old man’s secret,’ Chase explained. He leaned against the window frame, savouring the warmth of the morning sun as he gazed into the narrow alley where three children were playing football. ‘You know who she is, don’t you?’

‘Mrs Merchant?’ Passion asked. ‘Of course I do. Everyone knows the Joker. Her people supply euphoria to the Perfect Pleasures. Why?’

‘Just reminding you who she is. When she says she’s not interested, she’s not interested.’ He subconsciously touched the purple bruising across the bridge of his nose.

‘So now what will you do?’

He shrugged. ‘Who cares? I tried to do the old man a favour. I can’t help it if his granddaughter doesn’t want to believe me.’

‘But
you
believed him. You said so when you first came back last week,’ she reminded him as she handed him a serve of lamb before she sat on a cupboard bench beside the window. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘The kids out there,’ he replied, and sighed. ‘Remember when we used to play that game?’

Passion peered past her brother into the alley. ‘That was a long time ago.’

‘I’m sorry you had to grow up so quickly,’ he said, looking at her. ‘I should have found some employment that meant you didn’t have to work in the Perfect Pleasures.’

‘The Perfect Pleasures is not too bad,’ she reassured him. ‘There are worse places.’

‘But you’re still my sister,’ he insisted protectively.

‘I’m your
older
sister,’ Passion retorted with soft annoyance. ‘I don’t need my little brother to look after me.’ She slid off the bench and sat at the small table. ‘Are you going to do anything else about this old man’s story?’

‘What can I do?’ he asked. ‘How do I know what he was saying wasn’t just madness from being locked up?’

‘If he really was a Seer then he wouldn’t be making up anything about the Demon Horsemen.’

Chase looked at her. ‘You believe that stuff?’

‘I go to the temple,’ she replied. ‘Yes. I believe it.’

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Well, I thought I didn’t. When the old man said there was a plot going on to overthrow the king and put Prince Shadow on the throne so that the Seers could call down the Demon Horsemen, I thought he was totally crazy. There’s no Demon Horsemen.’

‘The Seers say they exist,’ Passion said. ‘The acolytes talk about them in the temple.’

‘But he said the Demon Horsemen will kill everyone, and if that’s what the Seers want then they want to kill us all.’

‘Only sinners,’ she corrected. ‘Good people will go to Paradise.’

‘The old man said
everyone
will die. That’s what the Seers are really planning to make happen. That’s why he wanted me to tell his granddaughter.’

‘If his granddaughter doesn’t want to know anything, tell someone who is important.’

Chase snorted, and asked, ‘Like who? Prince Inheritor? If the old man’s story is true, I could get in a lot of trouble trying to find out who needs to know what’s going on. I can’t run around accusing Prince Shadow of plotting to overthrow his brothers. That’s an instant public beheading. I don’t even know if I do believe the old man’s story now.’

‘It must be partly true if you think his granddaughter recognised the secret when you told her.’

He nodded, and said, ‘The whole meeting was really strange.’

‘How?’

‘Well, to begin with, I don’t think the person I spoke to was really Mrs Merchant. Her maid seemed more affected when I said the secret name.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I mean I think Mrs Merchant was pretending to be her maid and her maid was pretending to be her so as I wouldn’t know her real identity.’

‘But she’s been seen in public a lot of times,’ Passion argued. ‘She’s one of the richest people in the city. Even the princes know her.’

‘But I’ve never seen her before. Have you?’

‘Well, no. But that’s only because we don’t go over the river.’

‘That’s my point. She didn’t want me to know who she was. She probably thought I was there to rip her off or do something else. The old man was gaoled seventeen years ago and I doubt she’s seen him since.’

‘She probably didn’t know he was still alive,’ she said. ‘Did you tell her you met him in the Bog Pit?’

‘Yes. But I don’t think she believed that. Who gets out of the Bog Pit alive, except people who are maimed for life?’

‘You did.’

‘I was lucky.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

Chase looked out at the children and saw a tan dog skipping playfully around them. A thin, brunette woman was hauling a small dogcart, loaded with washing, along the alley and a man was singing a cheerful ballad as he plucked a chicken in a doorway across the alley. ‘I’m going to forget it,’ he said. ‘I need to find some work.’

C
rystal Merchant pondered the memories of times with her grandfather as she sat in the daylight of her bedroom window. She never imagined that she would ever hear anyone speak of him after her father told her that the old man was dead. She couldn’t understand why he had been arrested when he was initially imprisoned. The grandfather she knew was honourable and honest, a man who berated his own son, her father, for trading in the notoriously corrupt drug business. Then to learn that he’d been accused of treason against the king, of conspiring against the king’s sons and his Seer colleagues, shocked and devastated her. She couldn’t imagine that Sunlight would be capable of political manipulation and treason. She had always doubted his guilt, but there was nothing she could do and, despite her father’s efforts to gain clemency from the king for her grandfather, he died alone and unvisited. To have someone arrive on her doorstep after fifteen years claiming to have known him was a miracle, if there were such events, and even though logic clearly showed that the visitor was far too young to have known her grandfather a yearning part of her heart
wanted to believe it to be true. She wanted a magical explanation for the stranger’s unheralded appearance, one like the stories her grandfather shared with her when she was little about heroes and magical events. She wanted her grandfather to have magically survived all the intervening years against the odds.

Sunlight the Seer knew about magic. He secretly told his granddaughter how he had access to magical items in the Jarudhan temple, although he never brought any home to show her. ‘They belong to Jarudha,’ he explained, ‘and it would be wrong to borrow them, even to show you, my precious child.’ She witnessed the acts of magic performed by the Seers in public venues as part of their worship to Jarudha, and she marvelled that her grandfather held so important a position in the city. She idolised him. The news of his death in the Royal Gaol left emptiness in her heart that took years to heal. If only there was magic in the young man’s visit, and not some cruel hoax by one of her business competitors.

Crystal tightened the laces on her favourite blue tunic before going downstairs to the lounge. The servant girl, Apple, was dusting the furniture. Crystal greeted her and headed towards the passage to the stairs and the house’s lower level where the kitchen and storerooms were located. She passed the kitchen, acknowledging Cook who was chopping carrots, and exited through the servant entry door onto the grassed area atop the cliff overlooking the bay.

A soft sea breeze greeted her with the brine tang of the ocean and the air refreshed her face. Drawing deep breaths, she surveyed the grey-blue water until her eyes rested on the distant bluff across the bay and the yellow stone buildings of the Royal Gaol. Her grandfather had been imprisoned there. He died there. She knew of other people who were sent to the Gaol
and to the ancient caverns beneath it. No one escaped from the Bog Pit. Prisoners either died inside or were horrifically punished. That, of course, was the fundamental flaw in the tale of the young thief who visited her. He claimed he was imprisoned in the Bog Pit with her grandfather, and that in itself was an impossibility. What puzzled her since the thief’s visit was that none of her people had uncovered clues as to who sent him, and why. She had plenty of enemies because of her monopoly on the city’s drug trade. Some had tried to kill her in the past, just as they murdered her father, but she outsmarted them. Yet neither her network of contacts, nor her spies, nor her protectors could give her information to unlock the mystery of the unknown thief, the identity of his patron, or the motive for his visit. Her only hope remained the information that Hunter might have found by tracking the thief and Hunter was probably already waiting inside.

She re-entered her house and ascended to the business chamber. As she hoped, young Hunter was waiting in the company of her companion, Lin. ‘What have you learned?’ she asked as she sat at the table.

Hunter glanced at Lin before saying, ‘He’s a strange one, Mrs Merchant. People I spoke to say he’s dead.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Well, he was sent to the Bog Pit for stealing from the palace.’

Crystal’s eyebrows rose. ‘He got inside the palace?’

‘That’s what they’re all saying,’ Hunter answered.

‘Who do you mean by “they”?’

‘People on the streets who know him,’ Hunter explained.

‘So he’s a professional thief?’

‘Has been all his life,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘Got a reputation for being one of the best. Never gets caught, which is probably why the authorities don’t really know
anything about him. I asked a couple of the older soldiers and they’d never heard of him.’

‘But you said he was caught and thrown in the Bog Pit.’

‘He was, Mrs Merchant. First time he was ever caught. Normally they hang a thief for being in the palace, but they thought he was a first-timer so they sentenced him to a few weeks in the Bog Pit and then he was to have his arm severed as an example to others.’

‘And he escaped? No one escapes from there.’

‘Apparently he did. The authorities reported him as having died inside the Bog Pit, but he’s clearly very much alive.’

Crystal looked at Lin who shrugged to show her disbelief. ‘So who is he?’

‘His name’s Chase Goodenough. No one knows much about the parents, except that his mother ran off with a soldier and was never seen again and his father was killed in an accident in Miner’s gold factory. He and his sister survive on their own in one of the warrens in the Foundry Quarter. His sister’s a whore at the Perfect Pleasures on Main Way. He doesn’t have many friends as such, but then he doesn’t have enemies either. Mainly he hangs around the brothel, looking after his sister.’

‘So for whom does he work?’ Crystal asked.

‘No one, Mrs Merchant. He’s a freelancer. None of the mercantile families or anyone of importance have ever heard of him. He steals what he needs to keep his sister and himself going, and nothing more. He doesn’t even fence anything valuable, just goods that can be sold easily to the Main Way hawkers and can’t be traced.’

‘You got someone watching him at the moment?’

‘Hefty Saddler’s keeping an eye on him while I’m back here,’ Hunter explained. ‘He’s a good mate of mine.’

‘Thank you, Hunter. You’ve done well.’

‘There’s just one other thing, Mrs Merchant.’ Crystal nodded for Hunter to continue. ‘The last couple of days he’s been going around the factories and shops in the Foundry Quarter asking for work.’

‘So?’

‘Well, according to the people I’ve spoken to, he’s never tried to get work before. It’s like he’s looking for an honest living all of a sudden.’

‘Maybe he learned the error of his ways in the Bog Pit,’ Crystal suggested.

Hunter shook his head. ‘No, Mrs Merchant. People that know him say that’s just not in his nature. He’s a born thief. He’s so good at it he wouldn’t be happy doing anything regular.’

‘People can change,’ Crystal said. She thanked Hunter again and dismissed him. When Lin and she were alone in the lounge, she said, ‘So, what do you make out of all this?’

Lin smiled slightly, and replied, ‘Hunter may be right. He’s a strange one.’

‘Someone’s going to a great deal of trouble to hide,’ Crystal said. ‘Maybe there’s a new player in the field.’

‘Perhaps you need to have the boys talk directly to this Chase and get the truth from him.’

Crystal pondered Lin’s suggestion for several moments. Finally she said, ‘Or we can try his sister.’

Chase heard the crying and yelling before he rounded the corner. In the alley, a man was pushing another younger man viciously in the chest and a woman was slumped on the ground, cradling the head and shoulders of a young woman in her arms. Three people were watching the fracas. ‘It was bad stuff!’ the older man yelled. ‘Your poison killed her!’

‘Let me go!’ the younger man pleaded. ‘It wasn’t my fault!’

The older man swung his fist and felled the younger man, and started kicking his victim on the ground. One spectator, a young man, walked towards Chase. ‘What’s going on?’ Chase asked, as the young man went to pass him.

‘Carver’s daughter just died from some bad euphoria. He’s blaming her boyfriend,’ the young man explained hastily, and walked on.

Chase stared at the tragic scene, but it was none of his business so he followed the young man back into the street. Further along, three boys were lying against a wall, giggling wide-eyed, an empty euphoria drawstring purse on the ground beside one boy’s outstretched hand, a telltale purple stain on the ground. It seemed to Chase that the drug use was worse than ever. He had been a user for a long time, since he was nine, and he’d enjoyed the drug’s kick, especially when times were bad for Passion and him. Everyone used the drug. Passion relied on euphoria to get through her hours with the customers at the Perfect Pleasures, like many of the girls did. It was an easy escape from the misery of daily life in the city. He could do with some at the moment to get through the boredom of hunting for work.

The bootmaker’s hanging sign attracted his interest, so he crossed the street to look in the window at the small display of shoes and boots, most of them made for working men. He opened the little door and stepped inside. ‘Can I help you, lad?’ a stout man asked from behind a low, cheaply-made counter.

‘Can you use some extra hands?’ Chase inquired, savouring the rich scent of leather.

‘Is there a sign in the window?’

Chase glanced at the display shelf in the window. ‘Only selling boots,’ he said.

‘Then I’m not looking for anyone to employ, am I?’ the storeman said gruffly.

Chase nodded and retreated from the shop. Two shops on, he spotted a butcher’s plaque, so he smoothed back his loose hair and headed for the shop. He checked the window, but there were no signs except those hanging from the chunks of meat. Undaunted, he entered. The shop was empty when he stepped into the pungent smell of raw meat and offal. Sawdust littered the floor. He stared hungrily at the hunks of beef ribs and lamb shanks hanging from hooks behind the counter, and was tempted to help himself and run, but a man emerged from an adjoining room with a bloodied cleaver in his left hand, and inquired, ‘Yes?’

Chase smiled. ‘I’m looking for work. Any work.’

‘None here,’ the butcher abruptly replied.

‘I can do anything. Sweep. Clean.’

The butcher’s eyes narrowed. ‘Can you dress a side of beef?’

‘No,’ Chase admitted, ‘but I can learn quick,’ he added, eagerly.

‘No use to me, lad. On your way. Unless you want to buy something.’ Chase shook his head and withdrew.

Outside again, he looked up and down the street. The apothecary sign hung above a small crowd of people. He crossed the street to see what they were doing. ‘Latest crop and clean!’ a woman was spruiking beside the shop door. ‘One shilling a bag! Straight from the Joker’s own stock! Fresh!’ Customers were buying their euphoria fixes. One shilling was a week’s wage for most people, but Chase saw that some were leaving with ten or more bags.

An elderly man grabbed Chase’s sleeve and tugged at it. ‘Lend an old man a shilling, son?’ he wheezed. ‘Show some kindness.’

Chase pulled his arm free and pushed through the crowd to the store’s doorway, but a brawny arm blocked his entry. ‘Get back in line, mate,’ a deep voice warned. He looked up into the solidly framed and bearded face of a man in his early thirties. ‘I won’t warn you again, mate.’

Chase backed up, but someone grabbed his sleeve again and he turned to find the same old man, pleading, ‘Just one shilling, son. That’s all I ask.’ Chase walked away from the bustling scene, wondering how much money the Joker, the granddaughter of old Sunlight, was siphoning from the city poor. For himself, his morning was a disaster. The small shop owners didn’t want anyone to work for them. As much as he hated the idea, he’d have to try for work in the factories.

‘No luck today?’ Rose asked as Chase slumped into a chair in the red room.

He shook his head. ‘No one’s hiring. Couldn’t even get a job as a cart boy at the iron foundry.’

‘Perhaps you should try along Main Way. Plenty of houses need bodyguards. You could even ask Rose.’

Chase laughed. ‘I couldn’t work in the same brothel as my sister. I’d be checking out who she’s getting as her clients. It’s bad enough when I come to pick her up.’ He brushed back his hair and asked, ‘Is she around?’

‘She’s with a client,’ the bouncer’s rumbling voice informed him from the doorway to the hall.

‘Thanks, Wahim,’ Chase said. ‘I might go and check out the Come On Inn.’

‘Isn’t that asking for trouble?’ Rose cautioned. ‘They know you there.’

‘Easy pickings, though. And I’m broke.’

A door opened in the hall and a girl’s giggle mixed with a man’s deeper chuckle. A moment later, a waiflike figure appeared in the doorway, naked to the waist,
with long, messy blonde hair reaching over her shoulders to her hips. When she saw Chase lounging on the chair beside Rose, she laughed and loosely covered her breasts with one arm while she passed a small bag of coins with her free hand to Wahim. Then she approached Chase, leaned forward to kiss his cheek coquettishly, and exited to the tub room. ‘You are such a slut, Mouse,’ Rose called after the girl. She put an arm on Chase’s shoulder and said teasingly, ‘She told Passion she’s in love with you.’

Chase screwed up his face in mock alarm, laughed and replied, ‘I know. Passion keeps trying to get me to ask her out.’

‘And?’ Rose asked.

Before Chase could answer, he heard a muffled scream from a room along the hallway and rose from his chair. Wahim held up a cautionary hand and waited. They heard a second, strangled cry at which point Wahim strode into the hall with Chase behind him. Beyond the third door, they heard the desperate sounds of a struggle and a man swore. Wahim pushed the door open. Inside the candle-lit room was a naked man sitting astride Passion on the floor, one hand gripping her throat, the other raised to hit her. Wahim grabbed under the man’s armpits and hoisted him aside, against the bed, while Chase pulled Passion to her feet and ushered her from the room.