Tales of the Old World (44 page)

“That’s just it,” de Wit said. “They haven’t made any demands yet.” He pushed
a folded scrap of paper across the tabletop. “Just veiled threats.” Sam unfolded
it.

We know the truth about you and van Groot,
he read.
You’ll hear from
us again soon.

“Short and to the point.” He shrugged, and finished his drink. “Luckily for
you, so am I. Thirty guilders a day, plus expenses.” He half expected de Wit to
argue, but the alderman merely nodded.

“Don’t take all week. I don’t have a bottomless purse, you know.” He counted
out thirty gold coins, and tucked the now empty bag back into his belt. “The
first day’s fee up front, as usual?”

“That’ll do fine,” Sam said, slipping the money into his own purse and
calling for another round of brandies. He glanced at the slip of paper again,
folded it, and handed it back. “What do you think it means?”

“It seems to imply that I was involved in van Groot’s criminal activities,”
de Wit said at once. “Which is ridiculous, of course. I was the only man in the
entire ward with the guts to stand up to him.”

“He’s not exactly been missed,” Sam conceded. The death of their leader had
broken the back of van Groot’s gang, and although his lieutenants had carved up
most of his illegal enterprises between them, their activities since his demise
had been on a far smaller scale. De Wit had been quick to capitalise on the
gratitude of his fellow tradesmen to run for office, and both his political and
financial affairs had begun to prosper as a result. Sam waited until de Wit had
climbed laboriously to his feet, banging his head against one of the rafters in
the process, before asking his final question. “By the way, and just between the
two of us, were you doing any business with van Groot before he died?” The
alderman flushed.

“If you really believe that, I’ll have my thirty guilders back right now,” he
said. Sam shrugged.

“For thirty guilders I’ll believe anything you ask me to,” he replied
cheerfully.

With his purse now considerably heavier, and several of the finest
restaurants in Marienburg within easy walking distance, Sam saw little need to
hurry home. Not that he had one in the conventional sense; he rented half a
dozen rooms in different districts, moving between them as the mood took him, or
his current job dictated. One happened to be in the heart of Alfons’ home ward,
so he decided to sleep there that night, hailing a water coach and crossing the
Reikmouth the easy way rather than taking the circuitous route across the single
mighty bridge which linked the two halves of the maritime city. The boatman
dropped him in the heart of the Winkelmarkt, navigating skilfully through the
maze of narrow canals which threaded the island chain, leaving him on one of the
innumerable landing stages which could be found within a few hundred yards of
almost anywhere in the city if you knew where to look.

Waiting a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, Sam climbed the
rickety wooden stairs to the alleyway above, hardly needing to see his way at
all. His lodgings were only a couple of streets away, and he’d used this landing
stage so often he could have found his way home from there blindfolded; or at
least blind drunk, which he had done on several occasions. Tonight, though, he
was still sober, despite the amount of drink he’d taken on board, ballasted as
it had been by enough fine food to have sunk a small carrack.

The alleyway seemed deserted at first, no surprise at this time of night, and
he quickened his pace towards the flare of torchlight marking the wider street
which crossed it. As he did so one of the patches of shadow ahead of him seemed
to move, detaching itself from the darkness of a doorway. Sam glanced behind,
seeing another flicker of motion cutting off any possible line of retreat down
the alleyway. Fine, he’d just have to keep going forwards then. Breaking into a
run, he drew a dagger from his belt.

If the man waiting for him was surprised by this, he gave no sign of the
fact, simply walking forward in an unhurried fashion and bracing himself to meet
the halfling’s attack. If anything he seemed amused at the idea of his prey
being able to mount any effective resistance. Well, the cemeteries were full of
humans who’d underestimated a halfling opponent, Sam knew, having put a fair
number of them there himself over the years.

As he closed with his assailant, a faint thread of unease began to prickle
behind his scalp. The man stood as though he was holding a weapon, but his hands
were empty, and something didn’t seem quite right about them.

Almost at the last minute Sam realised what was wrong. Though the would-be
assassin’s hands were bare, his arms showing pale where they emerged from his
enveloping cape, their outlines were blurred, a haze of darkness hovering about
them, swallowing the light that oozed into the alleyway from the street beyond.
A clear sign of sorcery.

Forewarned in the nick of time, Sam ducked under the reaching hand, and
rolled, trying to ignore the hardness of the cobbles and the thin coating of
filth which adhered to his jerkin. A jolt of pain seared through his shoulder as
the groping fingers brushed against it, failing to close in time, and then he
crashed into the shins of the black-robed assassin. With a yell of surprise the
man fell, and Sam slashed at his throat with the dagger in his hand. A spray of
blood, almost as black as the shadows in the distant torchlight, fountained,
drenching the halfling in warm, sticky fluid.

Almost retching with revulsion Sam clambered to his feet, already searching
for the other man he’d seen, but the wizard’s confederate had obviously had
second thoughts despite the drawn sword gripped tightly in his hand. With one
look at the furious, blood-drenched halfling, he turned and fled.

Sam hesitated, considered going after him, and dismissed the idea. Whoever he
was, the fellow had a good start, and he’d never be able to catch up with him
now. Instead he began to search the body, hoping to find some indication of who
wanted him dead so badly.

“You! Shortarse! Stop right there!” A clattering of boots rang on the
filth-slick cobblestones, and the narrow alley was abruptly full of lamplight.
Sam stood slowly, and smiled without humour.

“Sergeant Rijgen. Who says there’s never a watchman around when you need
one?”

“Oh, it’s you.” Rijgen took in the blood matting Sam’s hair and jerkin, and
the crimson-stained dagger in his hand. “Self defence again, was it?”

“That’s right.” Sam nodded. “Two of them jumped me. The other one ran off
towards van der Decken’s boatyard.”

“Can you describe him?” Rijgen asked. After a moment of silence he shrugged.
“Thought not. Anything on the body?”

Sam shook his head.

“What did you expect? A strange tattoo, or a mysterious medallion? You’ve
seen too many melodramas.”

“What I expect is a bit of co-operation,” Rijgen said, then sighed. “You do
realise I should take you in, don’t you? But what would be the point? You’re not
going to tell me what this is all about anyway, and Captain Marcus would never
let me hear the last of it.” He sighed again. “Bugger off, while I clean up the
mess. It’s what I’m paid for, after all.”

“It sounds like sorcery, all right.” Kris nodded thoughtfully, and took a
long pull at his ale tankard. After cleaning up as best he could, Sam had sought
out the young magician in the taproom of the Dancing Pirate, a local tavern
where they habitually met. He’d made use of Kris’ talents before, and trusted
his judgement where magic was concerned. “The bad kind too, pure Chaos.” He
looked at Sam appraisingly over the rim of his tankard. “Lucky you’re a
halfling. A man would have been crippled by that spell, at the very least. It
wouldn’t have taken them long to finish you off after that.”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. It wasn’t the first time he’d had cause to be
grateful for his kind’s innate immunity to magic, and he doubted that it would
be the last.

“Do you know anyone who might be dabbling in that sort of thing?” Kris shook
his head.

“I wouldn’t want to,” he said, although he didn’t take offence at the
question. Unlike the Colleges of Magic in the Empire, the great university in
Marienburg taught elements of all the magical traditions in a fairly piecemeal
fashion, although it shared their abhorrence of Chaos; however, the line between
legitimate and forbidden thaumaturgy was rather more blurred here, and it wasn’t
always easy to tell when someone had crossed it. “I’ll ask around, see if
anyone’s been taking an unhealthy interest in the forbidden stuff lately.”

“I’d appreciate it.” Sam emptied his own tankard. “You know how to find me if
you hear anything.”

Whoever it was behind the assassination attempt, Sam thought, they’d be
unlikely to try again so soon; nevertheless he kept his eyes open as he made his
way home, and didn’t really relax until his door was closed and firmly barred
behind him. After that he slept perfectly soundly until the following day, when
the familiar sounds of the laundry below opening for business accompanied the
hearty breakfast his landlady brought up the stairs for him. She sighed as she
picked up his discarded clothing.

“You should have put these in to soak, Master Warble. I don’t know how many
times I’ve told you, cold water’s the best thing for blood.” She tutted under
her breath, and turned his shirt over, assessing the damage with a professional
eye. “I’ll do the best I can with it, but I’m not promising anything.”

“I have complete confidence in you, Frau Gutenburg.” Sam bit into a fresh
herring sausage with undisguised relish. “Your powers as a laundress are
exceeded only by your talents in the kitchen.”

“Get away with you.” Mollified as always by his appreciation of her cooking,
the middle-aged woman hesitated in the doorway. “There isn’t going to be any
trouble around here now, is there? Things have been going really well since that
nice Mineer de Wit got rid of van Groot. We wouldn’t want that sort of element
getting a foothold in the Winkelmarkt again, would we?”

“We certainly wouldn’t,” Sam agreed, and went off to look for the nearest
example of that sort of element he could find. The task was hardly difficult.
Van Groot had operated out of a small fish smokery, which his chief lieutenant,
Jan Alten, had inherited along with a low-grade smuggling ring and a brisk
traffic in stolen goods. A bordello catering mostly to the local merchants had
passed to the late crime lord’s other trusted confederate, Karin van Meeren, and
so far neither had shown much overt interest in moving in on the other’s
business; which hadn’t stopped them from circling one another like sharks, alert
for the first sign of weakness. Van Groot’s other main money-making enterprise,
a far from subtle but nonetheless effective protection racket, had been allowed
to quietly wither away by both his heirs, at least for the time being; neither
seemed willing to risk the wrath of the local tradesmen, who might just follow
de Wit’s example and refuse to cave in, with lethal consequences for the
would-be extortionists.

“Sam. Come in.” Alten looked up from behind a battered wooden desk in the
sparsely-furnished office he clearly liked to think gave the impression that he
was running a legitimate business. “What can I do for you?”

“You can talk to me.” Sam stepped over the groaning thug who had tried to bar
the door. “Your snotling here didn’t believe I had an appointment.”

“Mineer Warble always has an appointment,” Alten told the chastened guard,
who climbed slowly to his feet and closed the door with a venomous look at the
halfling as he did so. The racketeer sat back in his chair, his relaxed posture
at odds with the unease in his eyes that he couldn’t quite conceal. “What do you
want to talk about?”

“Someone tried to kill me last night,” Sam said. He shrugged. “Petty-minded
of me I know, but I tend to resent that kind of thing.”

“That was nothing to do with me,” Alten said hastily. It was precisely what
Sam would have expected him to say, but he let it go for now. “Can you think of
anyone who might want you dead?” Sam shrugged again.

“How long have you got?” he asked rhetorically. It was true that there were
plenty of people with power and influence who might sleep a little easier
knowing he was at the bottom of the Doodkanal, but there were just as many who
valued his services, and most of them were the same individuals. “But the
chances are it has something to do with the job I’m on.”

“I see.” Alten nodded. He hadn’t risen to his current position of eminence in
the League of Gentlemen Entrepreneurs by being stupid. “And this job involves…”

“Your old boss,” Sam told him. “Luther van Groot.”

“Luther’s dead,” Alten said flatly, with a trace of unease. “That scrawny
little baker stabbed him. Everyone knows that.” He shook his head. “Never would
have thought he had the guts. Just goes to show, you should never underestimate
people.”

“Sound advice,” Sam said dryly. It had been a couple of hours since
breakfast, and the smell of smoked fish was making him feel hungry again. “And
speaking of de Wit, do you know if he had any sort of dealings with van Groot
before he killed him?”

“Only the usual,” Alten said. “Luther sent a couple of the boys round to talk
about fire insurance, avoidable accidents, that kind of thing. When they came
back empty-handed he went himself.” A reminiscent smile ghosted across his face.
“One thing you can say for Luther, he never minded getting his hands dirty.”

“Not if there was money in it,” Sam agreed. “Know many magicians, did he?”

“Magicians?” Alten looked blank for a moment. “I don’t think so. But then he
never talked much about his personal life.”

“I didn’t know he had one,” Sam said.

“You’d have to ask Karin about that. He used to borrow girls from the
knocking shop now and again.” He glanced at Sam, with a surprisingly prudish
expression. “Nothing sordid, mind you. Just escorts for those dinners he used to
go to.”