The Masked City (3 page)

At this time of night Berwick Street’s market and fabric shops were closed and the street was dark apart from the ether-lamps. Now would be a good time for their pursuers to make their move.

As if on cue, the two men began closing in, as a third man stepped round the corner ahead of them. He was scruffily dressed, his ragged-cuffed coat hanging open to reveal a loosely knotted cravat at his throat, over a partially unbuttoned shirt. His cap was pulled down low over his face, shadowing his eyes. ‘Hold it right there,’ he snarled.

Kai and Irene stopped.

‘Now, we can do this the easy way,’ the ruffian said, ‘or we can do it the hard way. Me and the boys, we wouldn’t want to hurt you unnecessarily, right?’

‘Oh no!’ Irene gasped, in an effort to seem unthreatening. ‘What is this?’

‘Just a bit of necessary violence, miss,’ the man said. He took a step forward. She could hear the other two coming up behind them, faster now. ‘Now if you stand away from this young gentleman here, me and the boys won’t have no reason to bother you.’

It must be because Kai was carrying the bag. Melancourt couldn’t have had time to warn them that she might have unusual abilities. Well, Irene wasn’t going to turn down an advantage.

‘Then what reason do you have to bother
me
?’ Kai enquired. He passed the bag to Irene and she took a step back, giving him room to manoeuvre as she retreated towards the side of the street. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see lights flickering off in upper windows and curtains twitching open. For a moment she thought she saw something move on the top of the opposite roofline, but she couldn’t be certain, and the danger at street level was more immediate. Fortunately she had absolute faith in Kai to handle three street thugs on his own. He probably wouldn’t even break a sweat.

The man in front of them slipped a small heavy cosh from his pocket, weighing it in his hand in an experienced-looking manner. Trained gentlemen of the street, then. A little bit more than recruits from the nearest pub.

Irene turned to look at the two men approaching from behind. Their gait had shifted from a brisk walk to a casual lope. And now that she could see them more clearly in the lamplight, their cheeks were thick with whiskers, heavy eyebrows met above their noses, and their fingernails were definitely not quite right.

Werewolves. She hadn’t been expecting werewolves.

There were no actual laws against being a werewolf in this alternate world. However, unless one happened to have money, they were firmly stuck in the social class devoted to manual labour and casual thuggery. Werewolves tended to hang together in extended pseudo-family groups in big cities, fulfilling entire labour shifts in factories or on the docks, or simply running protection rackets. Irene had never tried to find out what werewolves did out in the countryside. Perhaps they pursued a wholesome outdoor life, only hunting rabbits, but somehow she doubted it.

Fortunately it took a great deal of time and slobbery effort at the full moon to transmit the werewolf taint. So the immediate danger didn’t lie there. But they were tougher than the average human, and hard to slow down in a fight - unless one was willing to do serious damage.

‘We’ll be having that bag you just passed to your young miss there,’ the first man - werewolf, rather - grunted. He licked his lips. His tongue was a bit too long for comfort. ‘And then you’re going to take a little message to whoever it was employed you, if you know what I mean.’

‘I wouldn’t recommend this,’ Kai said, sliding his right foot forward in what Irene vaguely recognized as an obscure martial arts stance. ‘If you gentlemen would simply tell me who hired you—’

The two behind him suddenly dashed forward, grabbing for Kai’s arms. But Kai had clearly anticipated this. He smoothly reached back to catch their wrists, then swung them violently forward with their own momentum. Then, when he yanked them back again, they both almost fell. One swore. The other was silent, but he licked his lips with a nasty glint in his eyes.

‘Oh, we’ve got a smart rusher here,’ the first man said. ‘Circle him, lads. Let’s show him some respect.’ As he spoke he shifted to his right, his boots scuffing on the pavement, but didn’t yet move in towards Kai.

‘I’d still like to know who sent you gentlemen,’ Kai said. His posture remained loose and relaxed. He didn’t take his eyes from the leader of the three, but Irene was sure that he was watching the others as well. It was easy at times to forget that he’d spent a period as a semi-criminal in a high-tech cyberpunk world. He was probably used to this sort of confrontation. It might even feel nostalgic.

‘I’ll just bet you would,’ the one on Kai’s left snarled. He sidled further round, closer to where Irene was standing by the wall, trying to get round behind Kai. ‘Pity that all you’re going to be able to tell them is—’

Kai moved in the instant of his distraction, turning to take a quick double step towards him. His balled fist slid into a straight punch at the man’s belly, and the man grunted and staggered. Kai opened his hand to strike with the flat of his palm at the side of the man’s neck, his face focused, solely interested in the proper form of the blow. The man staggered back with the force of the impact, spittle flying from his open mouth. The werewolf’s breath came hard and he sagged down onto his knees, hairy fists thumping against the pavement, eyes hazy as he struggled to stay conscious.

The two others rushed Kai, both growling at the backs of their throats, one trying to get in close and keep him occupied, while the first one used his sap. The whole thing devolved into a scuffle and a number of quick blows. Irene frowned as she saw Kai go down on one knee, and stepped forward to help. But the first thug came staggering to his feet and made a grab for her, his long-nailed hairy fingers circling her upper arm. ‘Now just you squeal nice and loudly so the gentleman can hear you,’ he began.

Irene glanced down at his feet, quickly. Boots. Boots with long heavy laces. That would do.
‘Your bootlaces are tied to each other,’
she informed him, feeling the weight of the Language in her throat.

She was a Librarian. And in moments like this, that fact was exceedingly useful. The world heard her words and altered itself in response. She could boil wine, open doors, down airships, bring stuffed animals to life - and far worse. Or, in this case, tie a pair of bootlaces together.

‘What?’ the thug asked, predictably confused.

She grabbed and pulled his arm, hard. But the thug, with a leeringly smug smile, kept his grip on her and stepped even closer - before falling flat on his face. His bootlaces had indeed tied themselves to each other.

Irene chopped his hand away efficiently as he went down, freeing herself. She wouldn’t be a very effective field agent if she couldn’t handle herself in a fight. The thug meanwhile was flailing wildly on the ground, so Irene kicked him hard in the kidneys. When she did it again, he stopped moving in favour of gasping for breath.
One less to chase us when we make our escape,
she thought grimly.

The sounds of combat had died down behind her as she looked over towards Kai. He was brushing dust from his coat sleeves in an unnecessary manner, and the two other thugs for hire were slumped on the ground beside him. One of them had his arm twisted at an unnatural angle, and the other had a nosebleed. The curtains in the windows above the street had stopped twitching, and the fleeting shadow had vanished from the rooftops. Melancourt must have decided to cut his losses.

‘Perhaps the gentleman with the sap would be kind enough to do some explaining,’ Irene suggested.

Kai bent down, pulled the first werewolf to his feet and propped him against the wall. The werewolf’s nails had receded, and his facial hair was back to the level of an extremely unshaven normal man. ‘Now that we’ve been through the preliminaries,’ Kai said, ‘could we discuss the matter?’

The thug gave a coughing grunt. He moved his hand carefully to his face, and when it was clear that Kai wasn’t going to try to stop him, wiped away blood and spittle. ‘Gotta say, you’re a bit more than I was expecting, guv,’ he muttered. ‘All right. Long as we understand that there ain’t going to be no official complaints and the like?’

‘Strictly personal,’ Kai reassured him. ‘Now, perhaps you’d answer my friend’s question. Who are you? And who sent you?’

‘I’ll be honest with you, guv,’ the werewolf said. He probed at his shoulder and winced. ‘Jesus, but you’ve got a kick on you. We met this woman in the Old Swan, a pub three streets over. Said you’d be coming down this way with a lady friend, and gave us your description. She told us she wanted your bag, and to give you a warning to stay out of other people’s business. But didn’t want either of the two of you dead. We were to hang on to the bag and she’d contact us.’

Irene nodded. ‘Can you tell me anything about the woman who hired you?’

He shrugged, then winced again. ‘Proper lady, full purse, but not anyone’s mark for the taking. Carried a parasol and had a knife in her sleeve. Evening coat, hat and gloves, nothing obvious, but top of the line. Her scarf pin looked like gold, but I didn’t get to do more than look. She had a man with her watching her back, but she was in charge. Dark hair under the hat, dark eyes. Nobody I knew.’

‘Was she a foreigner?’ Kai asked casually. It was slightly less definite than
Could she have been from the Liechtenstein Embassy, a local den of Fae and the dwelling of a certain Lord Silver, who has an ongoing feud with Vale?
But the thought was there.

He shook his head. ‘If she was, it weren’t obvious. Sounded normal enough. Posh accent, like you both.’

‘And nothing memorable about the man?’ Irene was grasping at straws here. ‘Or about her scarf pin?’

‘Well, I’d know him again, miss,’ the thug said. ‘But it’s not like I’m your Mr Vale, is it? Not like I can take one look at him and tell you where the …’ He visibly moderated his language. ‘Where the mud on his shoes come from. And her scarf pin was just a pair of hands shaking each other - nothing special.’

This had been far too easy. Irene turned to Kai. ‘He isn’t telling us everything. Make him talk.’

Kai stepped forward, and the werewolf flinched back. ‘Wait! You said you weren’t going to hurt me!’

‘Actually, he never said that.’ Irene focused. The Language could be used to adjust a person’s perceptions. It didn’t last long, but it could be quite effective in the right time and place. She addressed the werewolf.
‘You perceive that my friend is a truly terrifying person who is willing to do anything to make you tell us the truth.’

Fiddling with people’s minds was on the dubious side of ethical, but, Irene reassured herself, it was preferable to actually beating the information out of him.

He folded before Kai could reach him, cringing and baring his neck. ‘All right, all right!’ he babbled. ‘So we followed her outside, didn’t we? And we saw her take a private cab to the Liechtenstein Embassy to meet her husband … That’s what she told the driver. And he addressed her as “my lady”!’

Now that was rather more useful. While the woman wasn’t necessarily nobility, there couldn’t be that many women at the Embassy who’d rate that form of address.

‘But are you sure that was for real, and not just to fool you?’ Irene asked.

Despite his position, the werewolf looked smug. ‘Naah, it was for real, and you know why? Because the man who was driving the cab, my mate George knew him. He’s a regular Embassy driver. Even if she wanted to pull a fast one on us, the driver was for real.’

‘His name,’ Irene said crisply.

The werewolf hesitated, looked at Kai again, then gave in. ‘Vlad Petrov,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t know no more than that.’

That sounded honest enough. And now they had a name to work with. ‘I think this gentleman has told us everything he can,’ Irene said to Kai.

‘I would agree.’ Kai turned back to the thug. ‘But let’s not run into each other again, hmm?’

‘You said it, guv,’ the thug agreed enthusiastically. ‘Least said, soonest mended, like my old mum always used to say.’

Kai didn’t bother asking what that was supposed to mean. He stepped back. ‘Good evening,’ he said. He offered Irene his arm and they strolled away together. They weren’t followed.

They turned the corner. ‘What do you think?’ Kai said quietly.

‘Very low-grade types,’ Irene replied and watched Kai nod in agreement. ‘And careless of whoever hired them. They were lucky their new employees didn’t attack the wrong people. And that whole business with the bag and “Don’t contact me, I’ll contact you.” She really didn’t want them getting in touch.’

Kai nodded again. ‘But I can’t quite see it as being Silver. Thugs aren’t really his style. Even if he was interested in the Stoker book. Our mystery Fae woman knew we’d be coming from the auction, with the bag - so surely she’d come from there herself. Perhaps she was Melancourt’s patron.’

Irene had to agree with the first part of that. Silver - or Lord Silver, if she absolutely must - was far more likely to arrange duellists with whips and rapiers, or have assassins descend on their house at midnight, if he really felt the need to express himself in that way. ‘Another Fae makes sense,’ she said. ‘But the timing’s off. I’m not sure someone could have been at the auction, left at the same time as us
and
managed to hire those werewolves to attack us.’

Kai frowned, thinking. ‘She could have left early and then hired the werewolves to intercept us - in case we got the book.’

‘True.’ They were almost at Oxford Street now. ‘But it seems a bit haphazard, and really a very
careless
way of handling matters.’

‘I know you’d do better, if it was you,’ Kai said graciously.

Irene gave him a sideways look.

‘I mean in terms of a planned operation,’ he added hastily. ‘Something well-organized and efficient, without trusting the first ruffians you come across to do a good job or being totally outmatched. It was a compliment, Irene. Really.’ He couldn’t entirely hide his smirk, though.

‘Planning now saves trouble later,’ Irene said firmly. ‘And there was someone watching from the rooftops. Someone of rather better quality than those men. I couldn’t get a good view of him - or her,’ she added thoughtfully.