Prisoner of Fate (21 page)

Crystal stared at the young man as she slid her hand inside her maroon tunic and withdrew a thin silver chain. At the end hung an opal kangaroo tooth. ‘No one but my dead husband and Lin know about this,’ she whispered.

‘And me,’ Chase added.

B
right morning sunlight spilled across the ochre-red bedroom tiles and splashed against the white walls, and the wash of the waves whispered from beyond the window. Lin rolled onto her side to stroke Crystal’s hair that spread like a dark mantle across the lilac pillow. ‘You aren’t serious about this thief, are you?’ she asked tremulously. Crystal opened her green eyes and stared into Lin’s querying blue eyes. ‘You are serious!’ Lin exclaimed, withdrawing her hand. She sat up against the quilted bedhead and folded her arms. ‘Do you really believe him?’

Crystal sat up as well and shook her hair into place. ‘He knows details no one but my immediate family could know.’

‘Like what?’

‘Details,’ Crystal replied enigmatically.

Lin frowned, annoyed that Crystal was keeping secrets from her. ‘They could have interrogated your grandfather.’

‘There are some things he wouldn’t tell anyone, if he didn’t want them to know. And he had ways to prevent information being forced out of him by crude methods.’

‘What if this thief works for the Seers? They could have used spells to make your grandfather confess what he knew.’

Crystal kicked aside her bedclothes and headed for the bronze dolphin-shaped wash jug on the cupboard.

‘I’m taking a calculated chance,’ she said. ‘If his ruse is to lead me into a trap, it’s a masterful one because I can’t see it.’ She poured cold water into the shell-shaped basin and scooped it over her face, and reached for her crimson towel. Refreshed, she retrieved her bright blue tunic and a pair of black trousers from a high-backed chair, and began dressing.

‘Where are you going?’ Lin asked.

‘Into the tunnels,’ Crystal explained.

‘Deliveries?’

Crystal laughed. ‘No. Chase claims there’s a secret door down there. He’s going to show it to me this morning.’

‘A secret door to what?’

Crystal smiled cheekily. ‘To a secret.’

‘What kind of secret?’

Crystal sighed. ‘Apparently it’s something to do with the Demon Horsemen and my grandfather.’

Lin clambered out of bed, saying, ‘Can I come?’

Tightening the laces of her tunic, Crystal replied, ‘If you want. But I’d rather you stayed here to look after business matters.’

‘Who else is going?’

‘Hunter and Mast.’

‘You can’t be serious, Chase?’ Hammer said, aghast. ‘The Joker can’t be trusted.’

‘She’s a black widow spider, mate. She’ll use you up and then she’ll kill you. It’s common knowledge,’ Tiny warned.

‘I’ve made a promise and I’ll keep it,’ said Chase, squinting against the early morning light filtering through the dirty window panes of the Three Barking Dogs tavern. ‘There’s no harm in that, is there?’

‘There is where she’s concerned,’ Tiny snarled. ‘Remember Door the Trembler?’

‘Why?’ Chase asked as he caught the bartender’s attention. ‘Three more ales.’ The bartender, a young man with a shaggy mop of black hair, held up a hand with three fingers and nodded.

‘He did some work for the Joker. They found him hanging from a butcher’s hook under the bridge. They’d mutilated his knackers, mate. Stuffed them in his mouth.’

Chase placed three pennies on the sticky bar as the ales arrived in pottery mugs and handed a mug to each of his friends. ‘So what was Door supposed to be doing in the first place?’

Tiny shrugged. Hammer said, ‘I heard he was meant to be keeping an eye on someone else’s business for the Joker. Spying.’ He looked around as if making certain no one overheard what he said.

‘Well, there it is, then,’ said Chase. ‘She didn’t do him in. Her enemies did. And he wasn’t exactly minding his own business, was he?’

‘If he hadn’t had anything to do with her in the first place, he’d still be alive,’ Tiny argued.

‘Maybe,’ Chase conceded. He glanced at the small table away from the bar where a solitary old man, grey head against the dark wooden wall, was already asleep.

‘So what are you actually doing?’ Hammer asked.

‘Can’t say,’ Chase replied.

‘We’re mates,’ Tiny said. ‘We won’t tell anyone.’

‘If you don’t know anything, you can’t tell anyone,’ Chase told them and drank. When he caught his breath
again, he said, ‘I will be away up to three days, though, so can you both look out for Passion?’

Hammer winked. ‘I’d look after your sister any time,’ he said, and grinned.

‘It’s bad enough knowing she has to do it with men to make a living,’ Chase complained, ‘without knowing my friends want it as well.’

‘She’d only give it to Hammer if he was paying for it anyway,’ Tiny chimed in.

‘She’d give my money back afterwards, mate, when she realised what she was getting.’

‘That’s my sister you’re both talking about,’ Chase warned. He smiled to show them no offence was being taken, but inwardly he wished she didn’t have to work to feed little Jon and herself.

‘You got a job yet?’ Tiny asked.

‘There’s no one wants me,’ Chase answered. ‘I’ve run out of places to try.’

‘Then how did you pay for the ale?’

Chase grinned. ‘Some business chap in the markets wasn’t careful with his purse this morning. I’m looking after it for him.’

His friends nodded approval. ‘The skills haven’t been lost, then,’ said Hammer.

Chase shook his head. ‘It’s easier when the victim’s head’s full of euphoria.’

They laughed. ‘Now I could go some of that myself,’ Tiny decided. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m in,’ Hammer announced.

‘Another time,’ Chase said. ‘I’d better go to my appointment. She’s expecting me.’ He slid off his barstool and fossicked in his pocket, drawing out a red leather purse. ‘Give this to my sister. There’s about eight shillings still in there. Take a shilling each for yourselves and get some good stuff instead of that trash you get from Blind Cat.’

‘We can get it for free by listening to an acolyte,’ Tiny stated with a grin. ‘A little religious education never hurt anyone.’

‘What about you? You’ll need some money,’ Hammer suggested.

‘If I need it, I’ll borrow it from someone. Perk of the trade,’ Chase replied, grinning as he headed for the little tavern door.

‘You just take very good care of yourself,’ Tiny reminded him. ‘You can’t trust a rich bitch. They don’t get rich by being nice to people like us, mate.’

‘So our policy is simple,’ Seer Word explained. ‘We win the hearts of the people. First, through the free distribution of gifts of food. Second, through the free distribution of euphoria. And finally, through spreading the word of Jarudha.’ The Seer paused. ‘Well?’

Prince Shadow shook his head. ‘You already take a big risk sending your acolytes among the poor.’

‘They gain converts,’ said Word, ‘but slowly,’ he admitted. ‘Free food and euphoria make the people want to listen. We’re already experimenting with it and they come in their droves.’

‘Food? Euphoria? How will you fund giving these things away?’ Shadow asked.

‘We can’t afford to keep giving goods away. Food, we can organise. As we acquire converts, we learn who can give food and we call on them to share some of their produce with the church. Euphoria is the problem. Your acquaintance, the Joker, has a monopoly on its supply and we need you to either convince her to supply it for free to us or for you to break her monopoly.’

Shadow rose from his seat and crossed to the window in the small apartment. He looked out over the roof of the palace, noting the gold ornaments on the ornately
carved guttering draped with bird shit and smiled at the ironic image. ‘Mrs Merchant is a non-believer,’ he said. ‘Money is her god.’

‘Her god is a false god,’ Word replied, ‘and we should destroy it.’

The prince turned to the Seer. ‘Of course, if we break her drug trade monopoly, we also get her euphoria supplies.’

‘Precisely,’ Word said. ‘We need more euphoria than she currently delivers. She knows we need it, so she’s extorting the highest price she can for her services and her product. As servants of Jarudha, we can do nothing about her monopoly. But you are a man of power, a prince among men, and you can make her change her mind on this matter—with the right kind of persuasion.’

King Hawkeye leaned against the parapet on the old section of the palace wall to watch the fleet of ships sailing between the harbour headlands out to the ocean. The cream sails bowed under the steady breeze and the ships heeled to starboard, white water churning from their sterns. It had been a long time since a Kerwyn army had headed from the city to war. Hawkeye’s father was king then, and he had sent the army by land to the south to quell a rebellion of the tribal chiefs who were intent on freeing their people from the city’s yoke of taxes.

Hawkeye’s decision to send an army north was made after excessive provocation from a rebel faction pillaging outlying districts, raping and killing people who wouldn’t join their cause. He was sending troops to crush them.
Negotiation is best done with arms
, he contemplated.
Then your enemies know you are a force to be respected and they know their place in the scheme of things.

A sudden pain surged through his chest and he was overwhelmed by a wracking cough. He clutched the parapet to stop falling, the old stone rough under his soft hands, and he coughed and spat a clot of blood over the edge. Sweating, he fought for breath, his knuckles white from his desperate grip, until he felt the fresh air spreading through his chest. Then he focussed on the sails again, trembling and pale. He knew he was going to be dead in a matter of days, not months. His surgeon urged him to make peace with Jarudha, and His Eminence, Seer Scripture, came to offer him absolution. ‘Why?’ he wheezed when Scripture invited him to ask Jarudha for forgiveness in preparation for entering Paradise. ‘Jarudha hasn’t shown any interest in my life so far. If anything, he’s been wholly absent.’

‘Jarudha is always with you,’ Scripture assured him. ‘Even if you don’t believe in him, he still believes in you.’

Now, perched on the old walls built by the dead slaves of dead kings four hundred years ago, he felt a strange sense that he was being watched—not by Jarudha but by the ghosts of his predecessors who probably also stood on this spot and contemplated their mortality. To which god had they prayed? From which god had they sought forgiveness? His studies in history showed that the Jarudhan sect was barely two hundred years old, born out of the collapse of the old Ashuak Empire to the east and the rebirth of an even older culture almost half a millennium past. To whom had the kings who built this old relic of a wall prayed if there had not been Jarudha then?

He cleared his throat by spitting blood again. With precious few hours left of life, he still had so many unanswered questions. He wanted his firstborn to be king, but Inheritor was not a strong man. Inheritor needed the edge of ruthlessness that existed in Shadow.
What will happen
? he wondered, watching three seagulls spiralling on the currents above the ocean.
Will my second son act against my eldest? Will Jarudha answer my questions only after I die? Who will rule after me
? He groaned as a second sharp pain tore at his chest and swore at the sky, knuckles whitening as he clutched the cold stone.

T
he steep steps into the tunnel were wide enough for three people to walk abreast comfortably. The bodyguard, Mast, led the way, Lin and Chase flanked Crystal, and Hunter silently trailed the group. ‘There are wire-lightning lights along the entire tunnel,’ Crystal explained to Chase, pointing to the lamps fixed against the wall above head height, as they descended. ‘We use them when it’s busy.’

At the base of the steps they entered a broad, square chamber with five exits. Four exits were clearly signposted, leading to the west coast, the palace, the city centre and the city east. The chamber was swept clean and a small pile of boxes filled one corner. ‘So which way are we meant to go?’ Crystal asked.

‘Your grandfather said we had to go along the north tunnel,’ Chase replied.

‘This one, then,’ Crystal said, pointing to the unmarked, dark opening. ‘How far in?’

‘He said the full length. He said it would take us three days.’

‘Three days!’ Lin blurted. ‘We can’t be away for three whole days, Crystal. There’s a shipment due tomorrow afternoon from the Fallen Star islands.’

‘Are you sure that’s what he said?’ Crystal queried.

‘Yes,’ Chase confirmed. ‘He said we’d need food and water to travel it.’

Crystal turned to Lin. ‘I’ve been part way along. It’s blocked by a gate at a T-junction. We’ve never used it because we didn’t believe it went anywhere except as an exit into the northern countryside. I didn’t know it went so far.’

‘Your grandfather didn’t mention a gate,’ said Chase. ‘He said it was blocked by a fake door at the far end.’

‘I’ve never been there,’ Crystal repeated. ‘But there is a gate and I couldn’t open it.’

‘We’ll need some tools then,’ Chase suggested.

‘You can’t go now,’ Lin argued. ‘There are matters to deal with here. This shipment’s the big one. You know how important it is.’

Crystal turned to Lin. ‘I know how important it is. That’s why I’m putting you in charge of it while I’m gone.’

‘Crystal!’

‘What, Lin? Can’t I trust you to do my work well?’

‘Yes—but…?’

‘But what?’

‘
Three days
, Crystal.’

Crystal laughed. ‘I’ll be in good company. I’ll have Hunter and Chase to look after me. Besides, it’s an adventure. And it will be a mystery for everyone else to wonder where I’ve disappeared.’ She hugged Lin. ‘It’ll puzzle my enemies if they learn that I can disappear whenever I want.’ She stepped back and said, ‘No one else is to know where we’re going. Hunter and Chase will be with me. Lin, you and Mast must pretend that you have no idea where I’ve gone.’

‘What if
he
asks for you?’ Lin asked.

‘Not even him,’ Crystal instructed. ‘He can learn that I’m not automatically available just because he wants me there.’

‘Is that wise?’

‘I provide him with a very special deal and he knows that. Without my business he would lose his popularity with the Seers very quickly.’ When Lin didn’t pursue the matter, Crystal turned to Hunter and said, ‘Act discreetly. Organise two backpacks with food and drink from Cook for the three of us. If Cook asks why you want the food, tell her that I’ve ordered you to go to the Fallen Star islands to sort out a matter there. Bring whatever tools Chase thinks we might need to get through a gate. If anyone asks what you’re doing with the tools, tell them you’re organising equipment for a client.’ She faced Chase and asked, ‘I presume you’re ready?’ Chase nodded. ‘Then wait here for Hunter and I to return. If anyone else happens to come down here, show them this.’ She withdrew a playing card from her tunic pocket and handed it to Chase. He turned it over and saw the joker. ‘Good,’ Crystal continued. ‘The adventure begins shortly.’

The tunnel to the north was carved through rock and earth, shored every five paces by wood and earth buttresses. It was only a handspan higher than Hunter’s head, and after a short distance it narrowed to two armspans wide. Unlike the first room and the other tunnels, it had no lamp emplacements, although occasionally there were the rotted remnants of torch holders in the walls and the ceiling was flame-blackened. Hunter led, carrying a lantern and wearing a backpack with rope and oil. Chase followed, carrying a second backpack and a shovel and a small crowbar. Crystal brought up the rear. After beginning the tunnel trek in silence, Chase broke the mood by asking, ‘How far along until we reach the gate?’

‘Almost half a day,’ Crystal replied. ‘I came down this tunnel about five years ago. My husband never
used it and neither did my father, but I was curious to see where it went. My father didn’t let me in the tunnels anyway. Will told me about the gate, but he didn’t believe the tunnel led anywhere significant. The T-junction has tunnels that go out to the ocean and into the northern section of the city.’

‘What about your grandfather? Didn’t he tell you anything about it?’

‘No,’ Crystal answered.

They walked on before Chase asked, ‘Who are you meant to meet tomorrow?’

‘An associate,’ Crystal replied.

‘Why was your friend so concerned?’

Crystal grabbed Chase’s shoulder and turned him around. ‘My business matters are none of your business.’ She stared at him with her green eyes sharply focussed. Hunter stopped and turned to see what was happening.

Chase shrugged. ‘Just asking,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t prying.’

‘Then don’t ask,’ she warned.

‘Everything all right, Mrs Merchant?’ Hunter asked.

‘Everything’s fine, Hunter. Go on,’ Crystal instructed. ‘Apparently we’re in for a very long trip.’

Chase kept to himself as the party trudged forward, pondering why he bothered fulfilling the old man’s request. The granddaughter lacked her grandfather’s graciousness, and although she was an attractive and intelligent woman, she was also a spoilt rich bitch used to getting everything her way. Add to that her drug business, which he knew from the girls’ gossip in the Perfect Pleasures had a very dangerous side for anyone who asked too many questions or didn’t pay for goods, and she had all the attributes of a singularly unpleasant person. His instinct scolded him for undertaking what it considered a stupid task. His conscience, the part of
him he could normally put aside to steal, urged him to do the old man’s bidding. Once the bag with the magical weapon was recovered, he could leave the rest to the granddaughter. She could take it to the princes and he could slide comfortably back into his normal life, and his conscience could leave him alone.

Crystal followed the thief, reflecting on the business she’d entrusted to Lin in her absence. The shipment of euphoria from the Fallen Star islands was the largest ever imported to the city. The entire cargo of three ships was promised to Prince Shadow who was acting as the middle man between the Joker and the Seers. Crystal stood to make twenty million shillings from the shipment, more money in one deal than her husband had made in his life. With it she could buy whatever she wanted, go wherever she pleased, have as many servants as she needed, and she would never have to work again. The deal and the shipment had taken three years to organise, from the initial contract, through the growing and purifying process of the plants into the precious purple powder, to the delivery scheduled for tomorrow. Because of the project’s enormity she knew she was obligated to be at the moment of handover, but she hated ceremony. The thief’s unheralded quest into the tunnels gave her the excuse that she’d been seeking to pass the responsibility for completing the deal with Prince Shadow—or his representative, should the prince decide that his presence at the handover might be imprudent—to Lin.

She studied the thief’s back, wondering why her grandfather—if the thief’s extraordinary tale was true—put his trust in such a person. There was nothing remarkable about him, no heroic status, no significant reputation except for the simple respect of the low-life community along Main Way. That he escaped from the
Bog Pit did arguably give him an heroic dimension, but then she doubted the validity of his escape story. More likely, someone in a position of authority arranged for him to escape and told him the secrets to get him close to her. Except that he knew about the opal kangaroo tooth. That enigmatic revelation had convinced her to at least test his story.

There was a friendly intelligence in his face, suggesting that he was someone who could be trusted in the right circumstances. If his story about meeting her grandfather was true, then perhaps that’s what Sunlight had seen too. ‘Does your sister like her work?’ Crystal suddenly asked.

‘What?’ Chase muttered. When Crystal repeated her question he shook his head as if he found the question irritating, and replied, ‘It’s what she has to do to live and pay for food and clothes.’

‘I understand that,’ Crystal said. ‘But does she enjoy, you know, having sex all the time with strangers?’

‘I don’t know,’ Chase snapped. ‘Do you?’

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘Your husband’s dead. What do you do for sex?’

‘I don’t just have sex with strangers,’ she retorted.

‘Then who with?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘And what my sister does is none of yours,’ he told her. The steady tread of boots replaced the sound of voices.

Crystal stared at the thief’s back, regretting her decision to follow his advice.

By the time they reached the T-junction, Chase was hungry, so he put down the tools and squatted to rummage in his backpack for an apple. Hunter studied the rusted gate that blocked the tunnel to the north. ‘This is it,’ Crystal said.

‘Let me see the gate.’ Chase approached, chewing his apple, and checked the metal bars carefully, exploring them with his fingers. He asked Hunter to scan the lantern closely over the carved arch as he searched for the mechanism that operated the gate.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘The way through,’ Chase glibly replied to Crystal’s question.

‘Did you really get caught inside the palace?’ she asked.

‘Stupidly, yes,’ he confirmed, his concentration focussed on the floor where the gate slotted into the earth. ‘There’s a metal base under the dirt here. I want to see how deep it goes.’ He retrieved the shovel and started digging.

‘Why were you inside the palace?’ Crystal asked.

‘I was hungry,’ he replied, as he worked.

‘Hungry?’ she blurted in disbelief. ‘If you were hungry you could’ve stolen a loaf of bread at the markets.’

‘I was very hungry,’ he retorted. ‘So were several other people I knew. I needed lots of food.’

‘From the palace?’

‘Not just food from the palace. Also a royal item or two worth plenty of money to the right buyers so that I could buy lots of food.’

‘Why not rob some houses in the Foundry Quarter? Surely that would have been less risky.’

‘I don’t rob from poor people. I leave that job to the king and his taxes. I rob from people who have more than they need. Hunter, can you hold that lantern down a little?’

Crystal ran her fingers through her dark locks. ‘A thief with a social conscience? You expect me to swallow that lie?’

Chase stopped digging and looked up, his blue eyes glittering in the lantern light. ‘I steal to keep myself
and my sister and my little nephew, and sometimes our friends, from starving. I steal because I can’t get any work, or at least enough work to pay for our food and where we live and the king’s taxes. I steal because rich people like you don’t give me any other choice worth taking. If that’s called having a social conscience, then that’s what I’ve got.’

A thin smile graced Crystal’s lips. ‘People like me get where we get because we work hard and build businesses. I pay the king’s taxes too, and I pay a lot more than you’d ever imagine.’

‘Rich people like you are born into rich families and can expect to be rich when you grow up because there’ll always be money to help you on. You, and people like you, are used to it being like that. It isn’t like that for people I know. Don’t tell me about working hard to build a business. I see people in the Foundry Quarter and along Main Way desperately trying to run their little businesses, having started with nothing, ending up with nothing because they never have the cash to get started properly in the first place.’

Crystal faked a yawn, and said, ‘This is tedious. How long before you’ve dug enough dirt?’

His argument crassly ended, Chase ignored the question by burying the shovel blade into the earth and heaving aside another load. ‘Hunter? Can I have the lantern?’ he asked. He used the lantern to check the gate’s stone base plate. Then he stood and brushed the dirt from his clothes. ‘The mechanism’s broken and rusted, but the base is shallow. We can dig a hole under it more easily than trying to dig through either side wall.’ He handed Hunter the shovel, and didn’t see the young bodyguard’s scowl, or Crystal’s glare that ordered Hunter to help the thief with the digging.

The narrow tunnel beyond the gate had been long neglected. Tree roots and cobwebs punctuated the ceilings, and small collapses suggested the tunnel was in need of urgent repair. ‘This doesn’t look too safe,’ Crystal said.

‘Are we going back?’ Hunter asked.

Chase shrugged. ‘Doesn’t bother me.’

‘You said three days’ travel along this,’ she reminded him.

‘We must’ve gone almost halfway,’ Chase argued. ‘It certainly feels like it.’

‘Who knows what time it is outside?’ Crystal replied. ‘Down here we can’t tell the time.’

‘So you want to give up?’ Chase asked.

Her eyes narrowed, sensing his challenge. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We go on.’ When she heard Hunter sigh, she turned and asked, ‘Do you have a problem?’

‘No, Mrs Merchant,’ he replied obediently. ‘But I need to refill the lantern.’

‘Then get on with it,’ she urged. ‘We have a long way to go.’

Lantern refilled and relit, Hunter led the way, ducking dangling roots and sweeping webs aside. ‘I hate spiders,’ he muttered each time a thick portion of web wrapped across his hands.

‘Your father must’ve enjoyed adventure,’ Chase noted as he trudged on in Hunter’s wake.

‘My father travelled to many places,’ Crystal informed him. ‘He liked seeing the world.’