Half a Mimic - The Cutthroat Chronicles (A LitRPG Series)
Author: Davis, Deck
Date: 2022-04-14

Contents

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part Two

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Part One

Chapter 1

There was nothing outwardly wrong. Nothing I could put my finger on, anyway. I was sitting in my living room with a book about making whiskey on my lap. Times were rough and the land wasn’t producing like me and Pa hoped, so I reckoned that alcohol was the way to go. Brewing it, not drinking it. I was only twelve years old, though. It was gonna be tough persuading Pa to let me try something like that.

It wasn’t just us who were struggling, though we were at a disadvantage because we were inexperienced farmers trying to live off tough land. Pa had bought the cottage after Ma died, choosing it because its nearest neighbor was eighteen miles away, a guy named George Tennenbaum who was even more of a recluse than Pa.

It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded, though, because Pa was unnaturally gifted at learning new things. Sometimes he’d hitch the mules to a cart and travel to Freemantle, where he’d be gone for hours. When he came home he’d suddenly know how to dig irrigation ditches or how to reshingle a roof. Just like that.

Gentle heat drifted from the dying fire, flickering into a warm snooze after having chewed through its logs for the night. Pa only felled wood from dying trees and he only collected the twigs and branches that the other trees gave up willingly. He believed in balance. “Look after the land and it’ll look after you,” he always said, though he never provided me a source for such an assurance. Outside the window the night was heavy, and I couldn’t see much of the scuttergrass pastures and clay hills that spread for miles around Pinetree Cottage.

To my right, Pa was sitting in his chesterfield chair that nobody could use except for him. He was a strong man, with wide shoulders, big, hairy arms, and a large forehead. Maybe his forehead just looked big on account of his hairline receding, though. He didn’t like me mentioning that. Tonight, he was wearing the white shirt that he always put on after he finished working for the day. It was his evening shirt, as he liked to call it. A shirt to relax in that didn’t carry the stink of hard work.

Tonight was a night for warm fires and soft glowing lamps and being tucked inside, safe from the chill. The wind moaned outside the cottage, and a cow named Jenny mooed from a field two walls over from us. Apart from that, there was a gentle and comforting silence. It was always like that around the farm. Pa and I were comfortable without saying much unless we had cause to.

It was just as I turned a page in my book and listened to my Pa humming a song that I didn’t recognize, that something occurred to me. Something that made me sit upright in my chair.

It wasn’t my pa sitting there.

I couldn’t say why that thought suddenly came to me. I just felt it with all my soul. It was like a knife cutting into my brain and after that, I couldn’t shake it. Looking at him made my flesh creep. This was someone wearing Pa’s skin, I kept thinking. Wearing his skin like a winter’s coat.

Sure, it looked like him and sounded like him and acted like him. But it didn’t smell like him. There was a strange aroma, now that I thought about it. Sour and maybe bitter. Looking at him just gave me this dark sense of wrongness.

I wondered what I ought to do about this. It isn’t an everyday thing, suspecting someone is pretending to be your pa. I didn’t even know it was possible, and I tried my best to discount it. I read a little more of my book, but my attention skipped like pebbles across a lake. The feeling was just so strong.

My first instinct was to leave the cottage, hitch up our mules, Hessop and Jessop, and take the carriage to Farmer Tennenbaum’s house and get help.

No, I told myself. That wouldn’t work. For one, he wouldn’t believe me. It was just too crazy a story. He’d assume I was just a kid running away, and he’d make me get in his carriage and he’d bring me back. Another thing, it’d mean leaving Pa here. My real pa, that was. I assumed he must be somewhere around here.

I’ve always been a slower thinker but a quick decider, and I made my decision right then.

Yawning in what I hoped was a natural way, I closed my book and I got up and walked to the fireplace, where I picked up the black poker resting in a tin box. It was as long as my forearm and the tip was sharp. I prodded the burnt logs. I spat on them and heard them hiss.

“My birthday in two weeks, Pa. What you gettin’ me?” I said without turning around.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he replied, “Ain’t your birthday for a month.”

“Right. Must be getting the calendar mixed up,” I said. “Say. Ain’t it time we laid flowers on Ma’s grave?”

“Another six months until the anniversary. What’s with you tonight, Arch?”

So this thing, whatever it was, knew its dates. Had it taken Pa’s mind as well? Or was I wrong about all of this?

No, I wasn’t wrong. The feeling was truer than any I’d had in my life. A complete surety that I was right.

I turned around, and in two quick steps I was standing in front of the thing that was wearing Pa’s skin. I pressed the poker tip against its throat.

“Who the fuck are you?” I said.

The thing wearing my pa settled its hands on its lap. The gesture was the same as Pa used whenever he had something to ask me or to explain to me, but there was also something ever so slightly off about it.

“Since when did we allow language like that, kiddo?”

I pressed the poker harder, almost breaking the skin.

“Tell me what the hell you are.”

The thing swallowed and glanced across the room. The living room door was behind me. I knew I shouldn’t look back, not even for a second. I had to keep my attention on it.

“I think we’re rumbled, John,” it said.

Hearing my Pa’s name shocked me. My confusion only grew as its face started to change. Its eyes and nose and mouth melted and dribbled away like water being poured over a fresh oil painting.

It took two seconds but then my Pa’s face was gone and a shivering horror went through me as I looked at this thing which now had no face at all. It had no eyes, no nose, no mouth. It was like putty, and I reckoned I could have reached out and drawn on it with my finger.

Seeing it made me feel sick, and I reacted by gripping the poker hard and raising it ready to strike.

“Woah!” cried a voice.

Footsteps came from behind me. A hand settled on my shoulder and gently pushed down my hand, moving the poker away from the thing’s throat. I flinched, but the hand held me firmly.

“Easy, Arch.”

“Pa?” I said.

“Settle down now. I was just out there in the hall. You were never in any danger.”

“What the hell is all this about?”

“This is just my friend, Petr. He agreed to help me with something.”

I looked at the thing with the putty face, finding it impossible to reconcile this creature with something that had a name, much less the name of my father’s friend. Hell, I didn’t even know Pa had any friends. He’d certainly never introduced me to any of them before now. I always figured Pa was content for it to be just me and him.

“What the hell is this, Pa?”

Pa turned me around and guided me to my pine chair, where he made me sit down. “I’ll get you a brandy,” he said. “Stay put.”

It wasn’t as if I was gonna be walking around. Not with that thing in the living room. So I sat with my back firmly against the chair while Pa rummaged around in the kitchen, and I didn’t take my eyes off it for even a second.

Pa returned with three glasses. He poured brandy into each of them. Two fingers’ worth in two glasses, and half a finger into the other. He gave the smaller measure to me and gave a glass to Petr, who didn’t have a mouth. Petr took the glass anyway.

Soon, features began to form on Petr’s face. Bright, blue eyes first. Then a thin nose. Then pale lips. His cheekbones filled in and hair sprouted from his head until soon he looked just like a normal guy.

I gulped my brandy back and felt it burn my throat. I coughed. I’d only ever had brandy once before. That was when we used to have a bull and I’d been playing in the fields and wandered into the wrong one, and the bull chased me. Pa had given me a spoonful of brandy to settle my nerves. It had worked then, and the brandy was working now because I already felt a little bit calmer.

Petr raised his glass to me. “Cheers, Arch. Sorry about scaring you.”

I held my glass out to Pa. He laughed and said I couldn’t have any more brandy.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m calm now. See?” I held out my hand, which admittedly shook just a little, but Pa and Petr were good enough not to say anything.

“So what was that?” I asked.

Pa looked at Petr, who nodded.

“A picture speaks a thousand words,” said my Pa. “Which is why we showed you like this, rather than just explaining it. Now there ain’t room for doubt in your mind, you see? You better settle in and we’ll have a chat. Thanks, Petr. Appreciate your help. You get off home to Claire now. Sorry about the poker.”

Petr stood up. Pa fetched his coat, a great big fur coat that was wet with rain. Petr bundled it around his shoulders and pulled a woolly hat from the pocket and put it on his head.

“Ain’t no bother. It’s a tough thing to learn. Good luck to ya both. See you later, John. See ya, Arch.”

I was too distracted to say goodbye to him. Petr left the room and shortly after we heard the front door of the cottage open and then shut. Pa and I were alone. My pa, the real one this time, sat in his chair and crossed his legs. He wore a look on his face that said times were changing.

I looked beyond him and out of the window, where I could see Petr’s form disappearing into the mirk of the night. I didn’t know it then, but tonight was the first and last time I’d ever see him.

Pa poured himself another brandy and sipped it.

“You better be quiet and listen to me now. Listen properly. Don’t say a single thing until I’m through, and then you can ask questions until the cows come home. I’ll answer every single one. Even if it means talking ‘til it’s time for breakfast.”

“Can I ask just one right now?” I said.

“One,” he said, nodding.

“What is Petr? Is he human?”

“He’s a mimic. So am I and so are you, Arch. At least, you’re half of one.”

My brain couldn’t even begin to process that. Instead, I blurted out a question.

“Did you have to show me in such a godsdamned scary way?”

“That’s two questions. I said you could have one. Now shut up and listen.”

Chapter 2

Pa and I had fourteen cows, eight goats, and thirty-three chickens. That was just the beginning. We planned on getting sheep and a ram so that we could start lambing, because there was good money in selling wool. The empiresmen were fighting in the icy north, and they needed whatever thermals they could get. Right now, though, we didn’t have the gold to buy the animals.

We were also trying to cultivate five acres of clay soil so we could grow carrots, potatoes, and leeks and then rotate to whatever was seasonal. Pa had gotten me a book on farming and I’d read it cover to cover twice, and then made notes summarizing each chapter. I reckoned I knew a decent amount now. But with just the two of us and no artificed equipment, it was tough going, and it was rare when I didn’t end the day aching to the bone. Some days I was too exhausted to keep my eyes open after our evening meals. I always hated those kinds of nights because I loved reading, and working all day without getting my chief pleasure in the evenings made it feel like I’d been swindled. Pa, for his part, was content to play solo rummy or just to sit with a glass of brandy and look at the hearth. Maybe he was thinking about Ma. I didn’t know.

When I learned about Pa’s mimicry, though, there was no more question of being too tired in the evenings. The day after I met Petr, Pa made me work from sunup until sunset, and he didn’t answer any of my questions. When I kept badgering him, he just hummed to himself.

Now, though, our work day was done and we’d eaten our evening meal. I’d cleaned our plates and got Pa a brandy. I’d done my fair share. I wanted to know everything.

Pa crossed his legs and looked at me like he was enjoying seeing me so excited. “I remember when my own Pa told me everything,” he said. “It was like my world changed overnight.”

“Grandpa?”

“Yup. He’d have loved you, kiddo. You’re just like him in lots of ways.”

“What did he tell you?”

“First things first,” Pa said. “Do you know what a mimic is?”

I thought about it. I’d never heard of a mimic, but I knew the word. It meant to imitate something. And given what I’d seen Petr do, it wasn’t hard to work it out.

“Someone who copies what a person looks like,” I said.

Pa tipped his head side to side like he was a wine taster, except he was tasting the quality of my answer instead of a nice claret.

“Not quite. We can also copy a fella’s voice, his skills, his body, or even parts of his personality. Them’s the four mimic tiers, okay? Voice, personality, physique, and skills. If you acquire all of them from the same person, you earn the fifth tier. That tier’s what’s known as doing a full mimic. Indistinguishable from the real thing. Not many mimics can do that. That’s why something seemed off about Petr’s mimicry of me – it wasn’t a full mimicry, and your own mimic instincts told you that something was wrong.”

“Have you ever done a full one?” I asked.

“Once, but it’s dangerous. When you perform a full mimicry of someone, you’re replacing every aspect of yourself with theirs. Their personality becomes yours. Their hands are your hands. Their skills overwrite yours. Their foibles, their fears, their illness become your keepsakes. Some folks who’ve done a full mimic couldn’t return to themselves. Which brings me to the next point. Get your pencil ready.”

Over the next hour, Pa told me everything there was to know about being a mimic. I made notes on a blue paper pad that, until now, I had used to jot down notes from my farming book as well as ideas about the farm.

Pa told me how mimics had a certain amount of energy that they could use for mimicking, and once they ran out they needed to center themselves using meditation or by consuming a centering potion. I’d need to learn meditation, he said, but it wasn’t so hard. The main aim was sitting quietly and trying to settle your thoughts. He’d show me how to do it, he said.

In a grave voice, he told me about how practicing mimicry was outlawed in the empire on account of the potential for causing all kinds of trouble. A woman had once mimicked the duke of West Moreland for three months without getting caught, and by that time she’d given most of his land away to the serfs. They executed her but plenty of damage was already done because the serfs didn’t want to give their land back, and when empiresmen tried to take it there was a battle that ended with half the serfs dead.

The empire’s policy was that any known mimics were arrested and taken to holding facilities in the icy norths. After that, nobody knew. Execution, most likely. Maybe some of them were given the chance to work for the empire. Rumor had it the most dangerous and uncooperative mimics were taken way out east where they had jails in the middle of the desert that weren’t guarded well, because escaping into the endless sands was a death sentence in itself.

“On no account do you ever tell someone you’re a mimic, or perform mimicry in public. If you gotta mimic something, do the mimicry behind closed doors before you parade it around. Got that?”

“I got it, Pa.”

“Good. Because I’d…well. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you, kiddo. This is why I waited to tell ya. Needed to make sure you were mature enough.”

Pa settled his hands on his lap like Petr had done, only this time I could tell the gesture was genuine.

“Okay then. Let’s open the floor to questions,” Pa said.

“Open the floor?”

“It’s a figure of speech. Anyway. I’m sure you got lots of questions in that noggin of yours. You do on the best of days, so your head must be ready to pop right now.”

It was true. I had so many questions that they were like hornets buzzing around a hive and I couldn’t decide which to ask first.

“Come on, kiddo. We won’t get anywhere unless you start asking.”

I plucked a question from my head and blurted it out. “So you’re a mimic, and Ma wasn’t?”

“That’s the size of it. Your ma’s family were good old, regular products of West Narsdale. In fact, I think you could trace their roots back to the first settlers on that coast.”

“Did she know?” I said.

“Think I’d hold something like that back from the woman I loved? It didn’t matter to your ma. I never mimicked around her, though. That’s another lesson, Arch. Don’t use mimicry to fool the folks you love.”

“You fooled me when you got Petr to pretend to be you.”

“Ah. But I didn’t fool ya, did I? You sniffed him out. That’s because you’re half-mimic, son. Anyway. That was to illustrate a point, ya little arsehole. Now. Let’s see how strong that mimic blood of yours is.”

“Now?” I said.

“Yup. First thing we gon’ learn ya is physique. Okay? Know what that is?”

“I’m twelve, Pa. I ain’t a baby.”

“Right. My fault. I’m tryin’ to get used to being a teacher. Okay. Well then. Physique is the most effective deception there is, and that’s ‘cos we’re a vain species, kiddo. Some folks don’t look past the shop window.”

“So I can copy how people look?”

“Not just how they look. Their physiques, too. If a fella is strong, you might be able to mimic that strength for a while. Now, look at me.”

“I am.”

“No. Look at me,” said Pa. “And don’t look away until I tell you.”

I found it strange to stare at my pa for hours. I kept laughing and he said “Why are you laughing?” and I told him he was pulling a face. He said he wasn’t. He said I ought to take this seriously or I could stick to just tending to the animals and never learn anything else. He told me that this was my heritage, what he was teaching me, and laughing at it was like laughing at my past.

I didn’t want Pa to think I was disrespecting his side of the family. So, I got serious. I stared at my pa until there wasn’t a single part of his face I couldn’t have drawn exactly, if I was a decent artist.

When Pa’s eyelids started drooping, we took a break and he made coffee. He initially wasn’t going to make any for me on account of the late hour, but I asked again and he relented. He brewed up and then brought the steaming cups into the living room, passing one to me.

“That’s another thing,” Pa told me. “Art. It’s useful to practice sketching. Helps you look at things and learn how to really see ‘em. Helps you acquire likenesses quicker.”

At first, that seemed to make sense. But then something stuck out to me. I realized I hadn’t said anything about art. I’d just been thinking about it, about how I knew Pa’s face so well that I could have drawn it from memory.

“How did you know I was thinking about art? Did you just read my mind?”

“I once took a carriage ride with a soothsayer from Old Brooke Falls. It’s amazing the abilities a mimic can pick up when he’s in close quarters with folks. But we’ll get around to that.”

“We can use folks' abilities?” I said. “Like, I could mimic a mage? Or a swordsman?”

“Stop slapping the horse’s ass to get him to go faster, kiddo. Push him too much and he’ll bite ya.”

“Huh?”

“Another figure of speech. Just settle down, that’s all. There’s a lot we gotta discuss.”

It was a week before the full moon, and the corn stalks had risen, though they weren’t giving us any treasure yet. It’d be maybe sixty days for them to reach harvest, which was too long. The worst thing was that one cow had died of clostridial disease and three chickens had been killed by a fox. The clostridial disease wouldn’t spread to the other cows, thankfully, but it meant we lost an animal and couldn’t even eat its meat. After we discovered the blood in the chicken hutch I helped Pa reinforce the chicken wire and the hutch, but he said we needed a new dog to protect them, really.

That night, we’d eaten our evening meal of mutton stew and wheat bread, which we used to mop our bowls clean of gravy. I was sitting in my pine chair. Pa was in his chesterfield. I was watching him intently like I was a sculptor looking to carve his face into marble. I was making rough drawings in my sketchbook. My art still wasn’t great but it wasn’t as bad as it had been a few weeks ago.

“Don’t you get sick of me looking at you?” I said.

“Wouldn’t be much of a teacher if I got sick of it.”

“But it’s been weeks, Pa.”

“Might be months before you get it. Or it might be tomorrow. One thing I can sure as shit say - if you give up now you’ll never get it. Now shut it, will ya? It’s one thing putting up with you starin’. Another having to listen to you whine.”

I picked up my pencil and I stared at Pa’s nose, deciding to focus on getting the likeness of that right. As soon as I put the pencil against the paper a throbbing pain in my temple made my hands relax their grip.

I dropped my pencil. I got this sickening feeling like fingers were inside my face, kneading my skin and stretching it from the inside. It hurt bad.

Pa got to his feet and squeezed my shoulders. “Just breathe through it. Breathe.”

“It hurts.”

“Focus on my voice. Breathe.”

“What the hell’s happening?” I said.

“Eyes on me. Deep breaths.”

I fell off the chair and hit the floor cheek first. It didn’t knock me out cold but it was a few seconds before I got my senses. Pa put his hands under my armpits and helped me up. “Easy now.” He supported me across the room and to his bedroom where there was an old dress mirror that used to belong to Ma. He hadn’t taken many things of hers to Pinetree Cottage. He didn’t want to live in a grave of memories, he said. But the mirror was something he couldn’t part with.

He sat me down on the edge of the bed. I still felt a bit woozy and my eyes were watering. I blinked until they were clear.

Pa pulled a dirty shirt off the mirror. “Look.”

I looked into the glass. I saw my height, normal as normal can be. It was my body, alright. Skinny, but growing.

But it wasn’t my face.

I leaped to my feet and got closer to the mirror. Staring back at me, his features stretched over my skull, was my pa. My pa’s green eyes and his high forehead and receding hair. All of it staring back from my own head.

My legs felt weak. Pa put his hand on my back. “Sit down. That’s it.” I vomited onto the floor. He rubbed my back. “First time’s horrible, kiddo. I mimicked my ma, first time I did it. Gods rest her soul. Scared the ever-loving fuck out of both of us.”

When my stomach felt firmer and my legs weren’t as weak, I stood in front of the mirror again and stared at this miracle. I stared at the exact face of my Pa fixed on my body. It was unnatural. It didn’t have any right to be there, having that adult face on my twelve-year-old body. But there it was.

When I got over the shock of it enough, I asked Pa something that I was wondering. “You said I could mimic physiques, but this is just your face on my body.”

“You ain’t a good enough mimic for full physiques, Arch.”

“How long did it take you?”

“For a full physique mimic?” said Pa. “A fortnight maybe.”

“It’s taken me three and a half weeks just to copy your face.”

“You ain’t full-blood like me. You’re a half-mimic, and I’m damn proud of you for what you’ve done.”

Now that I was getting over the shock of it, I became aware of a ball of white light pulsating in the corner of my vision, like it was hovering in the room with me.

When I focused on it, streams of light unraveled like thread and then formed words.

Skill gained: Physique Mimicry

The ability to mimic the physique of a person. Usually beginning with mimicking looks, and later advancing to full physique mimicry.

Reward: 1 basic mimic crystal

Physique added to mimic vault:

John Wild [Face]

Effects:

+ Honesty

++ Impatience

Chapter 3

I watched the writing floating in the air for a while. It seemed to move according to my gaze. I tested it. It floated up to the ceiling and then down to the floor. When I wanted to see through it, I could. And when I wanted it to disappear, it did. Testing something, I discovered I could recall it and read it again any time I wanted.

“So…what the hell’s this?”

“Are you seeing the writing?” said Pa.

“Yeah,” I said. “Can you see it too?”

“Nope.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“They call it a herald. All classes get ‘em when they learn a new skill or even when they use their skill, depending on if there’s something they need to know. Some folks think the herald writing comes from the class’s Watcher. I reckon Watchers are too important for that. The way I see it, every Watcher must have a scribe or something.”

“How much of this is true and how much is just folks saying stuff?” I said.

“Now that, kiddo, is a matter of belief. I reckon the Watcher has something to do with heraldry text, but I’m not sure what. Anyway. One thing that isn’t open to interpretation is the text itself. It’s there, ain’t it?”

“It is.”

“So, what’s it say?”

I told Pa about his face being added to my mimic vault, and how honesty and impatience effects were listed underneath it.

“Your mimic vault. What’s it like?” asked Pa.

“Big and bare. The ceiling is really high. Otherwise, it’s not much to talk about.”

“You vault is in your mind, kiddo, and that means it’s yours to shape. You can add to it. Maybe put some lamps in there. A hearth fire. A nice couch.”

“But it’s just in my imagination.”

“So? That doesn’t mean you can’t make it a nice place. Now, what did you say about those debuffs?”

I told him again about the honesty and impatience effects I had earned from mimicking him.

“Ah. Honesty and impatience, eh?” Pa said.

“Yeah. That’s what it said. You gonna explain or what?” I said. I knew that was a rude way to speak to Pa but it was like the words just came out. I didn’t mean to be so eager for him to get to the point, but I couldn’t help it.

“Slow down,” said Pa.

“Slow down? You’re talking like you got years to explain this. I need to know right now!”

I felt myself getting worked up now in a way that never normally happened. I was always calm. But for some reason, it felt like Pa was taking centuries just to get to the point of all this.

Pa got a look on his face like he was about to get cross with me, but then he mellowed. “Right. It’s like this. There’s a clean way of acquiring mimicry and there’s a dirty way. The dirty way is the fast way, alright? A fella can take five weeks to acquire a mimic aspect or he can take five hours.”

“Alright, so what does it mean? Get to the point.”

He gave me a sharp look. I knew I’d spoken badly, but I couldn’t help it. He carried on.

“The dirtier you acquire a mimic aspect, the more chance you’re gonna get what we call debuffs. If you acquire an aspect cleaner, you’ll get buffs most of the time. Buffs are good things. Debuffs are bad. Get it?”

“I get it. So, feeling like this, like you’re taking a godsdamned age to get to the point. That’s a debuff?”

“Language, kiddo. You’re still speaking to your pa.”

“Godsdamned ain’t a swear word.”

“Alright. But try and watch that tone.”

I tried to fight down the impatience growing in me, but it was tough. “Okay. Alright. I’m calm, I promise.”

Pa crossed his left leg over his right and settled his hand on his lap. “Okay. So. You said that ‘impatience’ had two pluses next to it, right?”

I nodded.

“Well then. That’s only a moderate debuff. They’re measured out of five.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “You said debuffs come when you do a dirty mimic right?”

Pa nodded.

“Well, it took me ages watching you before I got the mimic aspect. How’s that classed as dirty? Ain’t like I rushed.”

“Because you’re new to this. For you, five weeks is a rush. Didn’t you get a feeling inside you like you could stop acquiring or you could carry on if you chose to?”

“Kind of. Didn’t know that’s what it was.”

“Think of it like stretching back a bowstring. Pull it back enough and you can let her loose. But keep pulling and building up that tension and you’ll fire it truer. Okay? A dirty mimicry is good in a pinch, but the debuffs it brings ain’t worth it half the time. Think about it. You’re feeling mighty impatient now. Doesn’t feel too good, does it?”

“You’d know,” I said. “I supposedly got it from you.”

“Yeah. But consider this. I’ve lived in my own head for a long time. I’m used to my foibles, alright? I can control them better. You ain’t used to them. Getting buffs and debuffs from mimicry is like putting on a stranger’s shirt and expecting it to fit perfectly. It ain’t gonna. It’ll seem weird to you, if not downright nasty sometimes. Mimicry’s got a price.”

“Okay. I get that.”

“On that point, kiddo, be careful who you mimic. I once mimicked a fella who had chronic arthritis in his fingers, and I weren’t ready for it. Let me tell you, that was a horrible day. I couldn’t even make a fist without getting blinding pain, but I had to keep mimicking him. Anyway. That’s another tale for another day. But gods. What a fucking pain that was.”

“Language,” I said.

“It don’t apply to me. I’m the adult.”

I looked in the mirror again, where Pa’s face stared back from my own head. “Me too, apparently.”

“You got my looks but you ain’t got my wisdom. Anyway, back to what we were talking about. The writing that you’re seeing is all normal. Nothing to worry about. Now just wait a second. And…yup. There it is.”

“What?”

“Look down.”

A small, jagged crystal formed at my feet. It was dark blue and rough in parts and smooth in others. The middle was much darker than the tip. I picked it up, wondering where the hell it had come from. I knew the strange writing had told me I earned a mimic crystal, but it was still a surprise to see one form from nowhere.

“We could sell this, Pa. Get a new cow, maybe.”

Pa ruffled my hair. “Nice of ya to think of us. But if anyone else touches that other than you, kiddo, it’ll break into nothin’. That there is a gift from the Watchers.”

“The Watchers? The hell are they, anyway?”

“Folks way up high. Gods, you might call ‘em, though that ain’t entirely accurate. Still, the word will have to do for now. Every class has a Watcher. When people learn a skill in that Watcher’s class, or if they use a skill in a way that pleases the Watcher, they get a crystal as a reward.”

“Ok. So…the gods are real then? They’re actually real and they’re looking down on us and judging what we’re doing?”

“Don’t be lookin’ so pale, like your world’s turning over on itself. They ain’t actual gods, whatever a god really is. They don’t interfere with the way the world works in any case. They just watch for their own class.”

I picked up the mimic crystal and held it firm. It didn’t feel like it would just disintegrate if someone else touched it, but I wasn’t about to doubt my Pa. I tried peering inside it to see what it held, but the color was too dark. Even so, it seemed to thrum with energy. “So this is a kind of gift for learning the physique skill?”

Pa nodded. “A basic mimic crystal. When you start getting better at mimicry and do something interesting with it, you’ll get better crystals.”

“If I can’t sell it, what am I supposed to do with it?” I said.

“Throw it on the floor.”

“Huh?” I said.

“Go ahead. Throw it on the floor.”

“But it’s a gift from the gods.”

“Told you. They ain’t gods. Just trust me, kiddo. Throw it on the floor.”

I held the mimic crystal with both hands. I gripped too hard and a jagged point of it cut my palm, so I wiped my hand on my shirt then adjusted my grip. With the crystal above my head, I tensed my arms and then threw it on the floor.

The crystal shattered and a burst of dark blue light shot from it. The light swirled around me, faster and faster until it flooded into my mouth, eyes, and my nostrils.

Basic mimic crystal opened:

- Physique aspect gained: Rulf Gunnarsson’s beard

- Costume gained: Priest’s cassock

- Item gained: Minor centering potion x1

Though I had apparently been given a beard, a cassock, and a potion, only the potion itself was present in the room. It was beside my feet, a glass vial smaller than my thumb and sealed with a wooden cork. The liquid inside was dark purple at the bottom and lighter at the top near the cork. I picked it up and turned it side to side and watched the liquid swish around.

When I told my Pa what the crystal had supposedly given me, he said, “The beard and the cassock don’t exist materially. They’re mimic aspects that have been added to your mimic vault. You ain’t got much of a vault yet, kiddo. Just my face and the beard and the cassock. Try looking at your vault.”

“How?”

“Just imagine it.”

It seemed too simplistic an instruction to me, but the moment I imagined the word ‘vault’, I saw it in my mind’s eye. A great vaulted room with limestone walls and a cold, wooden floor. The ceiling was maybe thirty feet above me. There was nothing in the vault except my father’s face hanging from a pin on a wall, which looked weird as hell, a beard sitting on a shelf nearby, and a black cassock hanging from a hook in a great oak wardrobe.

The image was so strong that I felt like I was there. Almost like being in a dream, where everything is real to you. I could walk around the vault without physically moving my body at all. I paced across it, and I even heard my feet make pattering sounds on the marble.

I crossed the room and stood in front of a shelf. Nearby was Pa’s face hung up on a nail like it was a mask. On the shelf was Ralf Gunnarsson’s beard. I examined it. I didn’t have a clue who Ralf Gunnarsson was, but his beard was big and thick and red. I imagined it belonging to some kind of warrior from the icy north, or maybe a hunter who lived alone in a log cabin in a forest. When I looked at the beard using my mind’s eye I saw its properties.

Ralf Gunnarsson’s Beard

Mimicry aspect: Physique

Type: Facial feature

Effects: + Inspire cheeriness, + Determination

I knew enough now to realize that 'inspire cheeriness' and 'determination' were buffs. There weren’t any debuffs. That meant that gifts given by the Watcher of Mimicry were considered to be ‘clean’ mimic aspects.

When I asked Pa about the beard and who it had come from, he told me, “I don’t know Ralf Gunnarsson from a cow’s arse, either. That don’t matter. The beard came from a mimic crystal, so it’s a gift from the Watcher of Mimics. It’s yours now.”

“It’s mine to mimic?”

“Yup. Some mimic aspects are acquired by yourself, and some are rewarded to you by the Watcher.”

“And the real Ralf Gunnarsson, wherever he is.”

“What about him?” said Pa.

“Is the poor guy walking around with a bald face?”

Pa laughed. “Mimics don’t take things. They imitate them. My face ain’t disappeared, has it?”

“Nope.”

“So why should a fella’s beard? Try it. Try on the beard.”

“You’re enjoying this, ain’t ya?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” said Pa. “You know how long I been waiting to share this with you, kiddo? Only person I’ve talked about it with since your ma died is Petr, and a few weeks ago’s the first time I saw him in years.”

I suddenly felt very sorry for my Pa and how lonely he must have been since Ma died. What with him having to keep his secret while trying to get a farm up and running and taking care of his son. I resolved to work even harder on the farm. Not that I was slacking off, but I wanted to pull more than my weight to make up for the years that Pa spent doing things on his own.

“Come on,” said Pa, clearly excited.

I focused on the mirror and imagined Ralf Gunnarsson’s beard appearing on my mimicry of Pa’s face. It was a strain. The beard appeared and then disappeared, and I started to sweat. Mimicking two different things felt like I was lifting mental weights. I tried harder and this time a thick, firebrand beard appeared and covered half of Pa’s mimicked face. The beard was so long it reached my chest. It was a strange sight, this flame-red beard on pa’s pale face with his greying, receding hair. It didn’t really fit.

As soon as the mimicry held firm, mimic text appeared and told me I’d gained two buffs: inspire cheeriness and determination. The inspire cheerfulness was a buff that worked on others, whereas determination was for me. I didn’t feel much different, though.

Pa looked at me and grinned widely. It was like he was suddenly happy. I never saw him like this. He just wasn’t a cheery guy.

“See? What did I say? You picked it up as easy as a goat chewing grass. This calls for a celebration, kiddo! We got any beer?”

“Hang on a sec, Pa. We aren’t done, are we?”

“You don’t want to take a break?”

I felt tired. It was already late and we’d been talking about mimicry for hours. I hadn’t eaten since after we’d finished our work for the day, and my stomach was feeling tight. Even so, there was this feeling inside me pushing back whenever I thought about resting. It must have been the determination buff from the beard.

“I got a few things to ask,” I said. “And something I wanna try.”

“Be my guest,” said Pa.

Next, I accessed my mimic vault and brought from it the priest’s cassock. The effort of keeping Pa’s face and Ralf’s beard while wearing the black religious frock was too much, and I couldn’t do it. So, I lost the beard and brought the cassock forward instead.

Within a second, I was wearing it. It was a black garment that reached to my shins and covered every part of me save my head and my feet. It was a little like a mage’s robes, I guessed.

I stared at the mirror, unblinking, and I looked at the weird sight of Pa’s face on my thin body, which was covered by a black priest’s cassock. The three disparate images seemed too much for my brain to reconcile, and I felt a dull headache growing. Even so, a mimic herald message appeared to me.

Costume mimicry activated: Priest’s Cassock

Black clerical clothing worn by the clergy.

Effects: ++ Inspire trust

“So just like that and I’m wearing it?” I said.

“In a roundabout way. The cassock doesn’t exist. It looks like it does and it’d feel like it does if I was to touch it, but it isn’t really there. That’s why you can’t take it off and sell it or anything like that. Now get that stupid thing off. You gotta learn to conserve your mimicry, and we got lots of things to talk about.”

Chapter 4

It was getting near midnight and the lamp was burning low. We didn’t usually keep lamps burning so late on account of how expensive oil was. “Being asleep is the cheapest thing there is,” Pa used to say. I once read that you could make candles out of duck fat, and sure enough, a family of ducks lived in a creek near the cottage, but it seemed like a pretty pathetic end to a life in my opinion, ending up as a candle that was stored in a cupboard in case of emergencies. As such, I didn’t bother the ducks.

Tonight was a special night, however, and Pa didn’t say anything about me keeping the lamp burning while I stared at the reflection in the mirror. I just couldn’t get over seeing Pa’s face staring back. And then seeing two Pa’s when he looked in the mirror at the same time.

Soon, my mimic energy emptied. The feeling was like being slugged in the gut so quick that all the air was sucked out of me, only it wasn’t exactly a painful sensation. Just uncomfortable. My face became soft like putty. My mimic of Pa’s forehead turned runny and his nose started getting soft like some kind of gloop. It was like my face was an artist’s palette with colors splotched all over it and mixed together.

“Hey, Pa? You got a second?”

He came rushing into the room and he put his hand over my eyes. He seemed on edge. “Don’t watch the change if you can help it. Whether you’re changing back into your own self or mimicking someone else, don’t watch unless you don’t have a choice. Especially now. Your brain ain’t ready for it.”

It was a few minutes before my face was my own again. I felt disorientated but not overly so. Not like when I first mimicked Pa and felt sick. In fact, I was ready to start acquiring more things to mimic and add things to my vault, alongside the beard and the cassock. I couldn’t wait to build up my skills and my vault.

“Can I do this with anyone?” I said.

“Copy ‘em?”

“Yup.”

“If you take the time to acquire their physique. But think how long it took you to get mine, and you only acquired my face. Most folks won’t let you just stare at them for so long. People don’t like it when someone else is peering into them so deep. Better to build up your mimicry before you start using this on strangers. Here’s a tip for ya. If you wanna acquire a physique, then sign up for a still life art class.”

“The kind where folks sit there and draw a naked model?”

Pa laughed. “Don’t have to be naked. But yup. Models who sign up for those classes expect to be stared at. And they usually have good physiques. It’s a good place to mimic. Theatres are good, too. Actors can’t get enough of you staring at ‘em.”

“Can we go to a theatre tomorrow?”

Pa shook his head. “We still got a farm to run, kiddo.”

“Then how am I supposed to build up my vault?”

“Let’s start simple. A fella’s voice is the easiest thing to acquire. Doesn’t take long and you don’t have to be watching ‘em all the time.”

“But there’s only you and me around. It’s gonna be ages until I can practice.”

“Guess you still got that impatience debuff,” said Pa.

“I ain’t mimicking you now though. Suppose this must be impatience of my own.”

“Try and get a grip on it. Remember what I said. We gotta be careful and never reveal what we are. I’m trusting you here, kiddo.”

I nodded. “I will. I just want to learn, that’s all.”

“I know you do. I was the same.”

After learning how to mimic my Pa’s likeness, he forbade me to mimic him ever again. Only if he told me to, and he said he wouldn’t be doing that. I didn’t blame him. I reckoned Pa could easily have mimicked me if he wanted to, and I wouldn’t have much liked it, either.

Even so, that left me without much opportunity to practice. We didn’t often see many folks at the farm. Pa wasn’t too sociable a guy and he’d only gotten worse in the years after Ma died. His friend, Petr, lived in a commune two hundred miles away with his wife and eight other mimics, and he wouldn’t be visiting again any time soon. Most mimics didn’t spend much time around each other. Petr and his commune were an exception, Pa said. It was dangerous for mimics to crowd in one place.

If one got busted by the empire, then everyone was in danger. The empiresmen had handbooks on how to deal with mimic infestations, as they called them. When a mimic was discovered they’d close the town or city gates and station guards at every conceivable way out. Then they’d interview every person one by one, even if it took weeks. Pa said they had ways of rooting out a mimic.

So, without anyone to practice my mimicry on, I was forced to get creative. I tried using it on a chicken called Betsy-Loo but all I got was my boots pecked by hens who didn’t like me hanging around their hutch. Then I tried it on my favorite cow who I named Arnold even though she wasn’t a bull. It never worked though. Maybe I ought to have been grateful for that, thinking about it.

Now that I knew I was a half mimic, my daily chores lost any luster they’d once had. I still did them because Pa said hard work was the foundation of character. I checked the chicken hutch and collected eggs every morning. I looked in on the goats grazing in the scutch grass. I filled the half-cut tin drum in the rye field with water for the cows. I still did these things out of duty but I did them with much less verve than before.

One night I made dinner for Pa and me. He was never much of a chef and I was glad to take over the duty just for the sake of our tastebuds. That night it was rump steak with a pepper butter sauce and potatoes that I sliced and fried in duck grease until they were crispy. Pa cleaned his plate in minutes and then went out back for a smoke. He always forgot to shut the door and the house filled with the scent of his tobacco. Then he came back and rubbed his calves and said, “My hands ache something fierce. One of these days I’m gonna seize up, Watchers witness it.” I made us some coffee.

“Ask you something?” I said.

Pa settled into his chair and loosened his laces then kicked his boots off. His socks had started the day white but were dark brown now from where muddy water got into the holes in his boots. “What do I always say?”

“I can ask. But you won’t promise to answer.”

“Right.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment.

“You gonna ask or what?” said Pa.

“Okay. It’s two questions, actually.”

“Here we go. Okay then.”

“Right,” I said. “You said that a good mimic can acquire skills from folks. So why ain’t you ever just mimicked a farming skill?”

Pa looked at the ceiling. “You hearing this, Ma? You hearing this if you’re up there? Your no-good son is insulting a guy who just wants to put his feet up for the night.”

“C’mon, Pa. I don’t mean it like that. But still.”

“Okay. It’s like this. You can’t afford to get too comfortable mimicking stuff all the time. If the only skills you have are ones that you acquire and use through mimicry, then what would happen if your mimicry was taken away? You’d be left with nothing.”

“Can that happen?”

Pa nodded. “I heard of it. Yeah. I’m not saying don’t mimic skills. It’s a useful thing to do. But where you can, learn and practice skills the old-fashioned way. Thew way that means you can’t ever lose ‘em.”

“Alright, Pa.”

“You said you had one more question.”

I nodded. I breathed deeply. “Are you human?”

Pa spat out his coffee. He laughed so hard that his eyes were watering. When he calmed he took a sip of coffee but then laughed again and breathed the coffee into his windpipe and then spluttered until he was redder than a beetroot. I stood up and started walking toward the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“Bed, if you’re gonna laugh at me.”

“Come here, kiddo. Sit down. Sit down. Good. Now listen. I’m sorry for that. You just tickled me. Caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect you to ask that.”

“It just doesn’t seem right, what we can do.”

“Well tell me something,” said Pa. “Are mages human?”

“Some of ‘em.”

“Well then.”

Three weeks later Pa needed to go into Freemantle to buy some wormer medicine for the cows. He normally hitched our mules Jessop and Hessop to his rickety two-seater and then went on his own. But I told him the mules could easily pull the both of us and besides, I was getting sick of seeing the same old things day in day out.

Pa thought about it and said, “Fine. Time you saw something of the world even if it’s only Freemantle. I was working up to this at some point anyhow. Hop on.”

“Serious?”

“I am. But you gotta see something first.”

Pa’s face changed. Gone were the features I knew so well, replaced by the entirely different face of an old man with stern eyes and a crooked nose. It wasn’t just his face, though. His whole body changed. Gone was my pa’s strong build and broad shoulders, replaced by an old fella who’d blow over if a fairy breathed on him.

“This is why I never took you to Freemantle. Not until you knew what I am.”

“Why’d you need to mimic just to go to Freemantle?”

“Because a mimic’s gotta be careful. The fewer people who know me, the better.”

“What about me?”

“You’re a half mimic, and you’re not gonna have the same worries, son. Besides. Nobody knows you.”

That was the first time I ever visited a town, that day. Twelve years old and I hadn’t ever been in a place with more than one person in it. I’d always wanted to accompany Pa on his trips, though he was cautious about towns, and now I knew why. It must be nervy, going to places full of people who’d get you hanged if they knew what you really were.

Part of me had always wondered what it’d be like to go to school in the town. Sit there in a classroom with a bunch of other kids and learn stuff and make friends. But a larger part of me loved working on the farm, and I reckoned I wouldn’t have given it up if I got the choice.

Pa squeezed my knee and asked if I was okay. I think he was worried because he kept looking at me sidelong. But I said I was fine, and it was true. He was the one who was nervous about it, not me. I wondered what got him so on edge.

“Listen. Don’t be talking to anyone about what you learned,” he said.

“You think I’m stupid?”

“Course not.”

Pa steered Jessop and Hessop off the carriage road and through a gate on the north side of town, where the stables were. He paid a couple of stable hands who looked like brothers to take care of the mules, and he told Jessop and Hessop to behave and not bite the stable boys.

“Don’t be misbehaving like last time,” he said. “I ain’t paying for another healer mage to try and sew a fella’s arm back on.”

The stableboys looked at each other and then at Jessop and Hessop, who were happily munching on hay and looked just about the farthest thing away from being able to rip a boy’s arm off.

Pa laughed and flicked two silver coins to the stable boys and then told me, “This way, kiddo.”

The first thing we did was go to Princeton’s Livery Supplies because they sold cow dewormer cheaper than a place called Hugh’s Heiffers, which was where folks normally went for anything cow-related. Then we went to Mungo & Daughter’s dry goods and bought beans and salt and pepper and other preserves and spices to stock the cupboards with. Pa deferred to me on that, since I was the better cook of the two of us.

When that was done I was pretty much finished with the town. As much as it didn’t scare me like Pa had imagined, seeing so many folks and hearing so many noises and smelling so many things was a little strange. Besides, it wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as I had imagined. It was mostly just folks doing their chores like we did at the farm. Just a different kind of chores, I supposed.

“Pa,” I said, “The stable’s that way.”

“We ain’t going home just yet.”

“Where are we going?”

“For the reward that we deserve for riding our asses all the way out here.”

Pa took me to a tavern called The Brass Knuckle where ale was served in three-pint jugs that were difficult to hold, and the floor was covered in sand to make it easier to sweep up blood and vomit, and the windows had to be kept open because their chef was a drunk who mistimed all of his pastries and they were always venting out the aroma of burning food.

Pa bought a three-pint jug of Drow’s Lament dark ale and asked the barman for two glasses, one smaller than the other. The barman seemed to know Pa because he said, “Here you go, John.” We took a seat near the snug. Pa let me have the chair nearest the open fire. At first, I was cold, but pretty soon I had to take my coat off. He poured himself a full pint and me a half. It wasn’t the first time I’d had beer, but this stuff was stronger than what we had at home.

Pa took a sip of his drink. He had beer foam on his mustache, so he wiped it off with his sleeve. Nobody was sitting anywhere near us, but he spoke in a whisper all the same.

“Now listen. Let’s say I went missing and you went into Freemantle to report it and the guards asked you to describe me. What would you say?”

I thought about it, expecting a trick question. “Tall. Strong. Grey hair.”

“Hey. Enough of the grey. I ain’t all grey yet, present face excluded. It’s nice that you can reduce your dear old pa to three things, by the way, but okay. So tall, strong, and grey. Now. If you said that, the guards would tell you that there are five hundred men who’re tall with grey hair in town. So you’d need to narrow it.”

“Beard?”

“Okay. That brings it down to three hundred maybe. Think about it Arch. What makes one person different from the next?”

Here was the trick, I guessed. Or not quite a trick, but an answer Pa was prodding me for. “The way they behave?”

“Right.” He leaned close to me. He’d already drained his ale in less than a minute. He went to pour himself another but stopped himself. Pa never drank too much, except on the anniversary of Ma’s passing. “Now you already know about taking a person’s likeness. That’s only one aspect of the illusion. You wanna wear a person’s skin, you gotta know exactly how they wear it.”

“Their skin?”

“Figure of speech. Looks will only fool at a distance. The next thing you gotta learn is how a person acts. Are they scared of anything? Are they friendly? Do they like to dance? What’s their opinion on dogs? How often do they smile? All these things you gotta try and absorb, Arch. Not just to fool people. It’s a foundation for the good stuff. When you get good at this and you mimic folks’ personalities you can start mimicking their talents, too.”

Chapter 5

Four days after I turned sixteen, Pa told me there wasn’t much more he could teach me about mimicry. “You’ve drunk that well dry,” he said.

I’d learned how to acquire a person’s voice. To speak in timbres low and high. To absorb accents and strange ways of saying the same word. I learned how to watch a person and really see them and to affect their features on my own. I learned how to watch a man or a woman for their skills and, through my half-mimic blood, wield them as my own. Even if I couldn’t manage it for very long. Most importantly, I learned self-restraint.

“Even a full mimic struggles using their abilities for long periods,” said Pa. “You’re only half a mimic. Take my advice and go easy, when you go at all. Mimicking is like running. The more you train, the longer you can do it for. An’ if you exert yourself then it don’t half feel horrible.”

Pa showed me how to copy a person’s posture to supplement my mimicry. How to walk as they walked. How to study a person from afar and how to acquire cleaner mimicry by learning about them from rumors and newspapers. He taught me to be patient and discover details of their lives and their histories. Such particulars were the fertile soil from which better mimicry could grow.

For all this, I hadn’t yet achieved true mimicry - that full mimicry of a person’s looks, thoughts, personality, skills, and their very essence. I was nowhere close and, being a half-mimic, probably wouldn’t ever manage it. Even Pa had only done that once in his life and he’d almost paid dearly for it.

It was a full moon night and dapples of pale light spread over the fields outside our home, which was now bare of cows, goats, and chickens. Hunters had driven grey wolves from the north and sent them migrating in packs that were desperate and brave enough to surround carriages and leave behind wheeled caskets of blood and gore. Packs crossed east through forests of oak and elm and they sniffed out living heartbeats on farms all across the county. When we lost our first goat and Pa said it was wolves, we took turns spending the night on the decking outside our home. I’d acquired a focus skill from watching the guards in Freemantle, so I never fell asleep. But the wolves were as crafty as we were vigilant, and animal by animal they picked us clean.

“So now you know,” said Pa.

“Now I know what?”

“I’ve shown you the secrets of your blood, kiddo. What there is to show anyhow. The rest is up to you.”

“I’ll practice.”

“I don’t just mean that,” he said.

“Then what?”

“What do you see outside?”

“Our garden,”

“Anything else?”

“Scutch grass?”

“You see a whole load of nothing. Been thinkin’ for some time now that we can’t stay here. Maybe I can. I’d get by. But this ain’t a life for you, kiddo. Your ma wouldn’t have wanted you getting skinny and living in a cold house. Now, I’ve taught you things you can use if you do it warily enough. It’s up to you to decide what you use ‘em for.”

“I hadn’t much thought about it,” I said. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

“Then you better think. You got seven days.”

“Huh?”

“Seven days. I’ll give you what gold I can spare to get you started. You can take one of the mules. Jessop. He likes you best. You got your clothes and your books and whatever else you fancy. I won’t be nitpicking over what’s mine and what’s yours.”

“You’re kicking me out?”

“If that’s how you want to put it.”

“Why Pa? What’d I do?”

“It ain’t about that,” he said. “Okay. Look. Maybe I ain’t kicking you out as such. What I’m doing is I’m putting a ladder up against the grave and I’m letting you climb out before someone comes along and starts shoveling mud in our faces. There’s nothing doing here. You know it and I know it. Wolves have taken everything we worked for. But you’re young enough to find something fresh. You’re sixteen. It’s time you made a life for yourself.”

“You think I’d just leave you here?”

“I ain’t giving you a choice. You leave in seven days. If you ain’t gone then look, I ain’t gonna carry you off the property. But I won’t say another word to you ever again. We’ll live here like strangers.”

I thought maybe I was talking to the whiskey here and not to my pa. He’d always liked a finger of whiskey in the evening. But he didn’t have much left and he was drinking it slowly. Not even a glass a night. So that wasn’t it.

The next day he didn’t say anything about our conversation. It was like it’d never happened. I spent the afternoon helping him fix shingles on the roof and we had lunch in the grass and then we worked until the sun was setting. When it was dark we had a dinner of mashed potatoes and mashed carrots with a gravy I’d made out of onions, celery, mushrooms, and salt. Neither of us bothered to watch for wolves anymore because we had no animals they could take. We passed the evening well enough. Then, by bedtime, I decided I better know where I stood. So I asked him if he meant what he’d said the night before and he said he did.

I reckoned that maybe he was mad at me because the animals were taken. Like I could have done more. So I decided to work harder. We were planting asparagus and broccoli in the acres east of the house and hoping they’d take. I spent all morning and all afternoon and most of the evening turning soil.

The next day I decided our lives would be easier if we had a well instead of having to walk to the stream every day carrying buckets back and forth or having to rely on the rain barrels we placed under the gutter. I started a circular dig, lining the sides with masonry bricks from an old dismantled shed so that groundwater didn’t sleep in. I used a strength physique that I’d mimicked from a blacksmith in Freemantle, and I got maybe eight feet deep that day. In the evening we ate swede soup with flour dumplings and Pa finished the last finger of his whiskey. Then he told me “four days” and went to bed.

Nothing I did could shake him from what he’d said. He was always a stubborn man. But it’d always been stubbornness in my favor. Like teaching me skills even when I wanted to quit. Or making me work day and in day out until I developed a work ethic I was proud of. Now it was like his stubbornness was set against me.

The dreaded seventh day came and all day I felt nervous as hell thinking about how he was going to kick me out and how he’d do it. How it’d feel to say goodbye to him and to leave the house where I’d grown up. That afternoon I walked past Pa’s bedroom and his door was closed and I thought maybe I heard him crying. But that couldn’t be right. Even thinking about that being possible shook me, like one of the pillars propping up my whole belief system was being hammered to pieces. My Pa didn’t get scared or worried. He didn’t regret things or ponder about things. He just did what he reckoned was right.

When he emerged later in the evening his eyes were dry and stony and he was holding a rucksack. He threw it at my feet.

“Since you ain’t packed. I did it for you.”

“You’re really doing this?”

“I’m not gonna sit here and watch you waste your youth. You gotta understand that, kiddo. You’re sixteen. Plenty of lads leave their homes at that age. One day you’re gonna understand that the crueler thing would be for me to keep you around.”

“Pa.”

“Don’t think I don’t want you here. It ain’t that. I’m doing you a favor. If we cling on to this place, then by the time we finally gotta admit that it’s not gonna work you’ll be twenty-five. Twenty-six. Too old for an apprenticeship. Say you look for work and folks ask what you’ve been doing the last ten years. What are you gonna tell them, that you wasted a decade running a farm into the dirt? Naw. I won’t let that happen.”

“Don’t you think it should be me that decides it?”

“Sometimes you don’t know what’s best for yourself,” said Pa.

“Listen. How about this.”

We heard horses outside the house. I stopped talking. I went to the window and lifted the curtain slightly to look out. Four men on horseback approached by the north path. The moonlight shone on them like they were righteous crusaders. Their horses blew steam from their nostrils and into the night sky. One of them was carrying a flaming torch. They split into twos and rounded the house.

“Pa.”

He joined me at the window. He drew back. “Get your bag.” He left his bedroom and crossed the landing and went into my room where he reached to the ceiling and pulled the rope to the attic. The hatch opened and he heaved down a set of wooden ladders.

“Up. Get on the roof. When they’re in the house, climb down and head to Crosser’s Pass. For gods’ sakes avoid their horses, wherever they tie them. When you get to the pass stick to the woods. You know the way to Freemantle.”

“I ain’t leaving you.”

“I told you. Seven days is up.”

“Did you know they were coming?” I said.

“I didn’t. But life’s got a way of making coincidence seem like plans. You weren’t gonna leave, but now you ain’t got a choice.”

“Who are they?” I said.

“Looks like empiresmen to me.”

“What’d they want with us?”

“They want me.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because they’ve been looking for a long time, and such men don’t believe in the sunk cost fallacy. The longer a person looks for something the more important it seems to become.”

“Why’re they here?”

“Remember I told you when I did a true mimic and it didn’t go well for me?”

The front door burst open. Men trampled into the house and stomped down the hallway. One of them ordered the others to search the downstairs rooms. Then he started walking up the staircase.

Pa thrust my rucksack into my hands. I took it. He shoved me toward the window. I put the straps over my shoulders.

“I’ll get a solicitor in Freemantle,” I said. “They’ll take you there at first, won’t they? Before they do anything else? There are holding cells in town. I’ll find a solicitor and get you out.”

“Go on, kiddo. Now.”

“Pa.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 6

I knew the fields around our house just about as well as I knew anywhere, and it was an easy matter to slip away without spooking the empiresmens’ horses. About half a mile from home I considered heading to Farmer Tannenbaum’s house, but I knew he wouldn’t help me. He was even more of a loner than Pa, and it was said that he shot at trespassers using a crossbow and that he sometimes set his dogs loose.

Taking a route through a pasture that didn’t belong to anyone, I ran under the moonlight for five miles. Only then did I start to lose my way a little. So I walked around until I could see the road that Pa and I used to drive the carriage on. The carriage road led to Freemantle, but I didn’t actually walk on it. I stalked through the brushland alongside it, and I kept careful watch to make sure nobody saw me.

I headed to Freemantle like Pa said, where the town gates were closed on account of it being nighttime. Freemantle was the biggest town for miles and it was used by most of the farmers in the region as a place to buy supplies and get their animals looked at by Bill Sanders, the town vet. Most trips to town inevitably involved drinking lots of beer in the Anvil & Hammer or the Red Lion taverns. For all that, though, it was a small town compared to most places, and it had a close community. The town council had long ago voted to keep the gates shut and manned after sundown.

I watched the guards from a group of trees maybe five hundred yards away, where I could see the glow of their lanterns illuminate their cheap leather armor and iron swords. I was out of breath from running so much, but I didn’t feel tired in my body. I was too on edge for that.

Focusing on my problem, I needed a way to play this so the guards would let me in. It was standard practice to question anyone entering the town after the taverns closed. A sixteen-year-old kid who didn’t live in Freemantle and had a rucksack of all his possessions with him was sure as shit going to raise suspicion. It wasn’t illegal for me to be out at night, but I didn’t want word spreading about my visit.

Accessing my mimic vault, I tried to mimic the priest’s cassock but it didn’t work properly. The flowing black garment appeared on me for just a second before fading away. I realized I’d used up a heavy amount of my mimicry energy by practicing over the last few days, and I hadn’t let it replenish well enough.

I opened my coat and took from the inner pocket a small glass vial of centering potion. I drank it and felt a sweep of energy inside me. Now, when I mimicked the priest’s cassock, the robe stayed on me. I wasn’t done there, though. I was only sixteen years old, and there weren’t many teenage priests wandering around late at night. Though I looked old for my age, I wasn’t taking any chances.

Costume mimicry activated: Priest’s Cassock

Effects: ++ Inspire trust

Physique mimicry activated: Ralf Gunnarsson’s Beard

Effects: + Inspire cheeriness, + Determination

Ralf Gunnarsson’s beard hid a good portion of my sixteen-year-old face. It also warded away the chill, and I resolved to start growing a beard of my own. To complete the illusion, I took my wooly hat from my rucksack and pulled it over my head. Between the hat and the beard, only my eyes and nose could be seen. In the dark of the night, the guards would be hard-pressed to see enough of me to get suspicious. Finally, I reckoned that although my voice was deepening, I didn’t sound old enough to be a priest. I mimicked Pa's voice to hide my own.

I approached the guards. These two fellas were probably the least athletic of the town guards, chosen for night shift because it was rare anything would ever actually happen. Even so, boredom might make them more curious than usual.

When I got to them, they stood taller and put one hand on the hilts of their swords, without actually drawing their weapons. The taller guard wore a fur cloak over his leathers. He wore boots that weren’t a proper pair. One was newer than the other. He looked me up and down. Then he smiled.

“Well hello there, father! You’re a nice sight on this wretched night, let me tell ya. I don’t know why, but you’ve made my evening, you have.”

That must have been the inspire cheerfulness buff from Ralf Gunnarson’s beard. I half wanted to meet this guy who was so cheery that even his beard provoked smiles.

“What are you doing out so late, father?” said the other guard. He was smaller than his colleague and held an iron-tipped spear as well as being armed with an iron sword. The spear was taller than he was.

I repeated the story I had been rehearsing when I came up with my plan. “I was traveling to the church in Pasture’s Reach, but bandits hit the carriage I was on. I’m the only one who made it away.”

“Fucking hell, if you’ll pardon my language. I’m sorry to hear it,” said the taller guard.

I nodded solemnly. “You’re pardoned.”

“Listen. Breck here will get the gates open. Why don’t you go knock on the Wooly Ram tavern? It closed a couple of hours ago, but Islop won’t mind being woken up. Not to feed a man of the church. And if he does mind, then you tell him to come see Ted at the gate. I’ll put him straight.”

I sighed. “If only I had the gold to pay the man for food and lodging. The bandits took it. All I grabbed was this rucksack, but it isn’t mine. It appears to belong to a sixteen-year-old boy judging by the clothes. Luckily, my build is slight.”

Ted the guard opened a coin purse on his belt and clutched a few silvers in his hand and gave them to me. He pressed them into my hand, and with his other hand, he slapped me gently on the shoulder. “Go and get your head down on a pillow, father. No need for you to be walking around cold and hungry on a night like this.”

“Bless you,” I said.

The smaller guard grabbed the huge plank of wood that was laid across the gates and he lifted it off and pushed the gates open. The hinges squealed, and a lamp in the window of a nearby house was lit.

Just as I was heading through, the taller guard spoke.

“Father?”

I turned around. “Yes?”

“Would you…uh…say a prayer with me? Only I’ve been feeling guilty. Haven’t been as attentive to spiritual matters, of late. It’d mean a lot.”

“Of course I will.”

I stood with the guards and muttered a prayer thanking the Glorious Father for blessing the gate of Freemantle, and I prayed that the lands around the town would have bountiful harvests and that the taller guard, Ted, would be rewarded for his piousness with a new matching set of boots. When I was finished Ted seemed to expect more, so for good measure, I prayed that every child born in the town in the next five years would have a thick crop of glorious blond hair. He seemed satisfied, if not a little perplexed, after this.

“Good night,” I told them both.

“Night, father.”

I was used to entering Freemantle via a gate on the far side of town, near the stables. That was the one that Pa and I used on our rare trips here. The main gates led me into a wide street with shops on either side of it. Trinket shops and apothecaries and tailors. Shops designed to catch the eye of newcomers entering the town. The shop windows were dark and gloomy, though their wares were still on show. Crime in Freemantle was so low that theft wasn’t much of a worry. It wasn’t like anyone would ever trick their way past Ted and Breck or something.

I wandered in the dark, a lost priest looking for a tavern. When I hit Rigmarsh Street I started to recognize where I was, and after that, it was a simple matter to find the Wooly Ram. I knocked on the door. A lamp came on in the window of a nearby house but was quickly extinguished.

A hatch slid open on the door. I could just about make out a face.

“Hello?” I said.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Ted said I should come and see you.”

“We’re closed.”

“I’m a priest, you see, and I was waylaid by bandits and find myself without coin.”

“A priest?”

I nodded solemnly.

The door opened and a rush of warm air hit me. Standing there was Islop, the landlord, and behind him was the empty and dark tavern.

“Come in, father. Come in. My. That’s a lovely beard. You don’t see such pure red hair much these days. Lovely.”

Islop was a big, bald man with a joyful disposition made even more cheerful by Ralf’s beard. He was even polite enough to hide his displeasure at being woken up after he’d only just gone to bed. He was ready to heat the oven and cook me supper, but I told him that something cold would be fine. He seemed relieved.

He fetched me a great hunk of cheese and some rye bread, along with a tankard of beer. When I offered to pay him he refused and said that it was his good deed for the year. That was fortunate, considering I didn’t know if Pa had put coins in my rucksack like he said he was going to do. I felt mildly guilty taking Islop’s charity, but in truth, my head was still reeling from what had happened tonight.

Islop gave me a room on the far end of the second floor and apologized that he couldn’t give me one with no neighbors, but the elf couple in the room next door shouldn’t make much noise. I thanked him and headed into the room and locked the door.

Inside was a bed with a duck feather mattress, a small desk for writing, a night table next to the bed, and an oak wardrobe to hang clothes in. On the desk was a half-burned candle. I stood there a moment, feeling strange. I’d never slept away from Pinetree Cottage before.

I sat on the bed for a minute and stared blankly out of the window. Then I decided I better get a grip on myself because I had a lot to do. The empiresmen would be bringing Pa to Freemantle right now, I hoped, and I needed to find a solicitor in the morning.

In the corner of my vision was a mimic herald, as Pa said they were called. It was a ball of white light in my peripherals that only I could see. When I looked at it, the herald’s words appeared in front of me.

Physique mimicry improved through use.

You can acquire physique mimic aspects quicker than before.

Reward: 1 x average mimic crystal

I had been practicing mimicry for years now, and I knew to wait patiently until the mimic crystal formed. When it did, it was an almost circular, very smooth crystal that had a yellow tint.

I smashed the crystal open by banging it on the edge of a little night table next to the bed. It opened on the third try and a puff of yellow smoke spilled out of it. I quickly opened the window to vent it, and the subsequent night breeze seemed to knock any drowsiness from me.

A voice spoke from the hallway outside my room. It was Islop.

“Are you alright, father?”

“Yes,” I said. “Just stubbed my toe. Several times.”

“Alright. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Once I was sure that Islop was gone, I read the mimic herald from opening the crystal.

Average mimic crystal opened:

- Dagger hand of Leroy Hosk [Skill]

- Face of Paul ‘Skinner’ Black [Physique]

- Average centering potion x2

In the mimic vault in my mind, I headed to the skill area, where the dagger hand of Leroy Hosk was represented as the wooden carving of a hand holding a dagger.

The face of Paul ‘Skinner’ Black was on a hook on the vault wall, next to my pa’s mimicked face. Whoever Paul Black was, his face was older than Pa’s and full of wrinkles that bit deep into his skin. I reckoned it would go well with Ralf Gunnarson’s beard, maybe.

I examined both the dagger hand and the face to see their effects.

Dagger hand of Leroy Hosk

The quick knife play skill of Leroy Hosk, outlaw.

Aspect: Skill/Ability

Effects: ++ knife fighting, + calm under pressure, + quick to anger

Face of Paul ‘Skinner’ Black

Aspect: Physique

Effects: ++ inspire fear

The face was a strange one. The effect was that it inspired fear, but it had both a plus and a minus next to it. I guessed that meant that ‘inspire fear’ could be seen as both a buff and a debuff, depending on the situation. Made sense, I supposed. There might be folks I wanted to scare, and folks that I didn’t. Pa said that the Watcher of mimicry took his gifts from random folks, but I couldn’t help wondering who Paul ‘Skinner’ Black was and why he provoked fear in people.

Thinking practically, it interested me what would happen if I mimicked it at the same time as mimicking Ralf’s beard, since the beard inspired cheerfulness. Would the two effects cancel each other out? I guessed I could try it, but I didn’t want to use up all my mimicry energy.

In any case, I didn’t want to ponder it anymore. I was exhausted to my bones and I had a lot to do in the morning. I took off my boots and, while still fully dressed, spread out on the bed and closed my eyes.

Chapter 7

It was a while before I learned what happened to Pa.

I only slept for four hours that first night away from home, and after that, I sat on the end of the bed and I watched the sky, looking for the first hint of the morning sun. Before it rose I climbed out of the Wooly Ram window, since I wasn’t mimicking now and if Islop saw me, he’d find it pretty weird to see a sixteen-year-old boy leaving a priest’s room. The red-bearded priest might have been a character I had created, but I didn’t want to ruin his reputation while he was still useful to me.

Outside, I headed away from the Woolly Ram and toward the center of Freemantle, where I milled around the darkened streets until day broke and the town woke up.

There were two solicitors' offices in Freemantle. One was Poole Legal Matters who owned the whole of the second floor of a big stone office building, supposedly the oldest in the town. The other was Jenkins, Jenkins, & York, who operated out of a wooden cabin way over near the east wall, next to a scrap metal dealer’s yard.

Neither of them would entertain the legal requests of a sixteen-year-old boy. I couldn’t even get a meeting with anyone. All I got from the Poole Legal receptionist was a patronizing smile and a suggestion that I go ask my folks to come back with me. Never mind that a sixteen-year-old is deemed old enough to go die in service of the empire.

Jenkins, Jenkins, & York did their own receptionist duties as well as their solicitor work, but when I knocked on their door they took one look through their window and then just turned their backs to me.

I decided that if they wouldn’t meet with me, then maybe there was someone else who they should make acquaintance with. When I went back mimicking the face of Paul ‘Skinner’ Black, the office manager of Poole Legal Matters looked visibly shaken. She could hardly stammer out a word. A solicitor in a fancy blue suit came out of the office.

“Claire? Is everything alright?”

“There’s…a man here to see you, Mr. Poole.”

The solicitor took one look at me and he took a step back toward his office.

I realized that it was the buff/debuff of 'inspire fear', the one that Paul Black’s face came with. It had worried the office manager so much that she didn’t dare order me to leave. However, it was having the opposite effect on Mr. Poole, who wanted nothing more than for me to get the hell out of there.

“I think you should go,” he said.

I told him I wanted legal advice and asked what the hell his job was if he didn’t deal with guys like me, but he wouldn’t entertain an argument. I didn’t want to cause trouble and bring the attention of the guards, so I left. Word must have gotten to Jenkins, Jenkins, & York, too, because the whole office was ‘out to lunch’ when I went calling on them while wearing Paul Black’s face.

So, I was failing to find legal representation for my pa in his arrest. But that wasn’t my only problem. I still hadn’t even heard any news of Pa being brought into Freemantle.

I reckoned that the guards who arrested Pa last night would have to bring him to Freemantle, because it was the only place around here with a holding cell. Since he wasn’t here yet and I couldn’t get a solicitor, I decided to keep watch for Pa. A stream west of the town gave a good view of the gates, and I stayed there all day on the pretext that I was trying to catch trout with my hands if anyone asked. Nobody did. The only person who came near the stream was a small boy filling up two ceramic jugs. He rolled up his trousers to his knees and stepped into the stream and filled the jugs one by one, then walked away singing to himself.

The day passed and the sun began to set, and I still hadn’t seen anything of my Pa. So, making sure nobody was around to watch, I mimicked the priest’s cassock and Ralf Gunnarsson’s beard, and I put on my wooly hat and went back into town.

At the Wooly Ram, Islop was delighted to see me. In fact, thanks to the cassock’s inspire trust buff and Ralf’s beard’s inspire cheerfulness, most folks were happy when I approached them. Two loggers who’d journeyed to Freemantle to buy new sawblades bought me a couple of beers. When I drank them, a blacksmith’s apprentice named George said he’d finance me a stew dinner if I’d say a prayer for his sister. I felt guilty about that one and decided I really would pray in earnest for her, even if I wasn’t religious. Way I figured it, if a god was listening then he’d listened to honest prayers even if they were spoken by a liar.

Islop gave me one more night in the room and said that he’d have to charge me after that because his wife Reyetta had been working their accounts and wasn’t pleased with his generous nature. Still, he said he’d give me the room for two coppers a night, which was good. Since Pa had put three gold coins, four silvers, and twenty-eight coppers in the rucksack for me, I could afford it.

“Pleased to have ya staying with us, father,” said Islop. “Say. Could you bless my beer barrels?”

“I surely can,” I said.

I stayed in Freemantle for four days and no empire guards arrived with any prisoners at all. Not a single carriage. On the morning of the fifth day, I drank a centering potion and once again mimicked the beard and the cassock. I was going to have to be careful with my mimicry from now on. I only had one potion left, and it took me hours of meditation to restore a decent amount of mimicry.

Wearing this mimicry, I visited the jail cells in Freemantle under the guise of spreading the Holy Word to the criminals. The duty guard didn’t look too enamored with my proposition, but I hinted that there might be a place in one of the seven hells for a man who stood in the way of God. He relented.

I took a walk through the hallway between the cells, three of which were occupied. One of the men was just a drunk who was in there until he slept it off. The other was a horse thief, and the third was a whore who killed her patron, the reason for doing so she wouldn’t divulge. She was the only one of the three criminals who would be taken to the empire court in Pennywrote, the empire’s capital.

Before I left, I stopped by the desk of the duty guard. He was a middle-aged man with bright eyes and pale skin, and he was reading a book on fencing.

“Have you had any new prisoners lately?” I said.

“Just the whore.”

“Nobody else?”

“No, your honor.”

“It’s father,” I said. “Not your honor. Your honor is for judges.”

“Right you are.”

“Are you expecting any new prisoners to arrive?”

He set his book down and grabbed a huge leather-bound tome. He wet his finger and flicked through the pages. “No,” he said. “Nothing expected.”

“Thanks. May the gods bless you.”

“Gods?”

“All of ‘em.”

I left Freemantle that day.

Over the next few months, I wandered for miles and visited any towns big enough to hold jail cells, as well as any villages small enough where rumors spread easily. I didn’t want to spend my coins because that’d leave me in trouble when they were gone. So, when I needed food or coins I wore the cassock and played on the religious guilt of folks who reckoned that flipping a coin in my direction absolved them of their sins. I’d never been religious, but I still felt a little guilty taking their gold. Then again, the way I saw it, a guy had to do whatever he could to get by. The world didn’t run on fair and it didn’t make adjustments for it.

Up and down the region I tramped, but no matter where I went or who I asked, I never got word about Pa or about any high-value prisoners. Eventually, I ran out of places to ask.

Six months later, I was working in a tavern on Hosthorpe Road in a quarry town called Yellow Bowdale. Bowdale wasn’t much of a place. It had been built for the quarry workers and their families, and over time it had grown until other folks settled here. Even so, the quarry families outnumbered other residents three to one, and as such, many of the shops and taverns had something quarry-related in their name. The Mason’s Arms, the Stone Worker. That kind of thing. Visitors weren’t paid much attention around here, though, and that suited me just fine.

The tavern I worked at was called the Star & Garter. They employed me to wash pots and haul barrels in and out of the cellar. The owner, Lammy, took a liking to me without me needing to use any mimicry. He even let me work the bar when Shawna or Roger called in sick. He had to teach me how to pour pints of beer and change the barrels, but once I mastered that, the job was easy.

When Roger left to travel to the Corsica Isles, Lammy gave me his bartender role full-time. The pay was decent, but the real perk was that I got free meals from the tavern kitchen. I took a room in a bedsit. It was mainly for the younger quarry workers who didn’t have families, but it hired out rooms when they were going spare. Almost every coin I earned went straight into a safe at Yellow Bowdale Savings Trust bank, sitting there until I could hire someone to track Pa down.

I only found out what happened to Pa by sheer luck. Call it the good or bad variety, considering the news, but either way, it was luck. A tavern drinker named Thorpe Hardy told me about it, not knowing it was my Pa he was speaking about.

It happened one night when I was working in the Star and Garter. It was a quiet night. The kind where a guy can feel a little down on himself. I was lonely. That’s what it was. My ma was long dead. I hadn’t seen my pa in months. I had nobody. So I did something stupid. Wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.

I went into the tavern bathroom, where I looked into the mirror and I drew on my inner mimicry. From my mimic vault, I pulled the appearance of my Pa and I let his features grow into my own face. I watched my ears shrink. My nose bent crooked from when Pa broke it in his youth. My chin narrowed, my hair greyed and receded around my temples. And then I found myself looking at my Pa in the mirror. I just stared at him. Seemed like I’d been in there for hours. I just looked and looked.

The door opened. A man walked in.

I turned around.

His mouth dropped open and his face turned the color of ice and he stumbled back into the door. He tripped and banged his head.

“You. You,” he said, scrambling back and pointing at my face. “You.”

I offered a hand to help him up but he batted it away. He tried scooting away from me but he was already up against the door.

“You,” he said again.

Now I was in a jam. Something about me was terrifying him. It meant he must know Pa. I wouldn’t get him to talk while he was looking at the face I was wearing, but nor could I change back to my own face and give up that I was a mimic.

Instead, I backed away and waited for him to get to his feet. He sprinted out of the toilets and out of the tavern and into the night.

The next day, I hunted through Bowdale looking for the man and finally found him in a tavern below a guest hostel where he was staying.

Once I knew he was there, I used some of my coins to buy a fake empiresmen uniform from a fancy dress shop on Tucker Street. It would have been great if I had an empiresmen uniform in my mimic vault, but you could only get mimic garments from crystals and I’d never gotten anything empire-related from mine.

I pulled from my mimic vault the face of Justice Cornhyke, a regular patron of the Star & Garter. A man who always spent his time alone in the tavern snug with a beer glass in one hand and a book in the other. It made him easy to watch. Easy to acquire his appearance.

Then, wearing Justice’s face and my fake uniform, I approached the fella who I had scared so badly a day earlier. He was sitting in the tavern at a table on his own, eating a jacket potato with cheese.

“Sir,” I said.

He looked up. “Me?”

“I have a few questions for you.”

Thorpe looked me up and down. He saw the empire insignia on my lapel. He kicked the chair out across from him so I could sit down.

“Go ahead. What’s this about?”

“We’re trying to trace a missing man, sir. I have reason to believe you might know him.”

“I ain’t done anything.”

“You aren’t a suspect.”

“Then what?”

I described my father to him. It was all I could do not to shake the guy and demand answers but I stayed cool. I acted the way an empiresman would. When I was done, he nodded.

“I. Uh. Yes. I saw him.”

“Can I ask where he is?”

He looked at me strangely. “Well. He’s dead. I’m afraid he’s dead. Only…”

“Only what.”

“Only nothing. I had a scare yesterday. I was tired. You don’t need to hear about it.”

“Then let’s talk about what I do need to hear,” I said.

“Will this take long?”

“Depends how forthcoming you are. If you’d prefer to do this at the station instead?” I said.

He looked down at his dinner plate, the toast half-eaten. He put his fork down. “Go ahead. Ask what you gotta ask.”

That was how I learned what had happened to my pa.

This was how it went. Thorpe had gone north to Piker’s Port to earn gold skinning seals. He’d dreamed about it since he was a boy. I didn’t question him on that because Pa always used to tell me that if a job exists then there also exists a person who’d love to do it.

But Thorpe found out that the reality of seal skinning was spending days wandering icy tracks and hunting seals and hoping that there weren’t any polar bears nearby to take his kill or to take an even better liking to his flesh. It was nights huddled in a dormitory of twelve men who stank of fish and blood and sweat. It was getting paid a handful of coppers at the end of the month, once his food and dormitory costs were subtracted.

So Thorpe decided he was going to leave and travel back home to Bowdale, only the fella he worked for in the skinning ranch said Thorpe had signed a contract and would have to pay his way out of it. That left Thorpe with no coin to buy a seat on the steam carriages that went south. Luckily for him, he met a fella in a bar who put him in touch with another guy. There was an empire outpost six miles east, and they needed folks with strong stomachs who’d help dispose of bodies.

Thorpe took the job and they told him the bodies he was disposing of were fishermen swept to shore after a frigate sank two miles out. He and another guy named Harry Three Fingers hauled the bloated bodies out of the outpost. While he did, he got a good look at them all. Their faces scarred themselves on his brain.

One of them was the man who he thought he’d seen in a tavern bathroom a day earlier. My pa.

Part Two

Chapter 8

Ten Years Later

It wasn’t the first time I’d found myself in a jail cell. Wasn’t even the first time this month. Crucially, however, I’d never been sentenced to death before.

I had also never been inside this particular jail on the outskirts of Pennywrote city, near the north bay docks. Back when I visited Pennywrote three years after Pa died, I made a point of checking out this part of the city. I used to see them escort prisoners here in steel carriages with the doors welded shut so they couldn’t be opened from the outside. They were usually surrounded by ten or twelve guards wearing leathers of the empire and with iron swords half sitting in sheaths connected to leather reins, which were tied to their horses’ saddles. They cleared a route through Templeton Plaza and Huggert’s Ave in advance so there was nobody around and no chance of these criminals walking to freedom courtesy of friends lurking in the side streets.

No such luck for me. I didn’t have anyone who’d risk their neck for me like that. Not that I’d do the same for any other sap in here. Thing is, I never really expected to end up in Pennywrote Jail. I mean, I knew I was asking for it, what with the stuff I’d been getting up to over the last ten years, but somehow I never thought it would happen.

The night I got caught still felt like a dream, in a way. Even when I remembered it in the cold light of day. After they caught me in the gossipseller’s backroom covered in blood, they put steel shackles around my wrists and ankles, and they put a hood over my head. They made me walk out onto the streets and then took me somewhere. I couldn’t see where. At least, until I closed my right fist and used my mimicry.

Physique mimicry activated: Palm Eye of Vladimir Reisinger

Effect:

++ Third eye vision

++++ stomach pains.

Vladimir was a sight-mage and fifth in line to the Tusken throne, as he liked to brag. Through careful spell use and mana absorption, he’d grown a third eye in the center of his right palm. I had acquired that particular part of his physique when I traveled to Tuskeny as part of a merchant caravan delivering saffron and other exotic spices to the Tusken King.

Given that it’s hard to stare at a fella’s right palm for very long without him at least becoming curious about it, my mimicry acquisition had been dirty. That meant it came with a debuff, and boy, was this a hell of a debuff.

No sooner did I activate the mimicry than my stomach exploded with pain. It was so tremendous that I fell to my knees. The guards, who I couldn’t see thanks to the hood over my head, started shouting at me. One of them hooked his hands under my armpits and lifted me up. As he did, I opened my right palm.

Light burst into my newly-opened third eye. Looking through my palm, I saw that I was being escorted to a nearby carriage, where six other empiresmen awaited. The carriage was pulled by six mares, and it had the empire insignia painted on the canvas covering the passenger door. At least I knew where I was being taken, then. Such carriages only went to the jail in Pennywrote, the capital of the empire.

As another bout of pain coursed through my belly, I released the mimicry and felt blessed relief as the pain went away along with it.

It took eight hours to get to Pennywrote jail, where they finally removed my hood. Why I had to wear it in the first place, I didn’t know. It wasn’t as if the jail was a secret. Maybe they just didn’t want to look at or talk to me. I couldn’t blame them. After all, when they found me I’d been almost delirious with the ecstasy of revenge and I was drenched head to toe in blood.

In the jail, a bored-looking screw with tired eyes sat behind a desk and asked me questions. My name. Address. Occupation. While he talked to me I made a dirty acquisition of his voice. Didn’t take much, and I didn’t have any urgent use for it. I took it more out of boredom than anything else. There was no time to start acquiring his physique though.

“Name?”

“Arch John Wild,” I said.

“Job?”

“Considering you brought me here, guessin’ I’m now unemployed,” I said.

I knew being a wiseass wasn’t going to swing them in my favor, but favor’s a moot point when you’re sentenced to get the noose. Maybe I could have mimicked Ralf Gunnarsson’s beard to cheer them all up, but their smiles wouldn’t be much comfort when they realized that I was a mimic and sent me north.

The guard either didn’t get my joke, or chose to ignore it. “Ain’t much employment for murderers. Not that it’s an issue for you no more, given you’ll be hanging in a week.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Cos I got forms to fill,” said the guard. “Says here you killed a gossipseller. Why?”

“He got my Pa killed.”

“Huh? Then why in the ever-loving fuck didn’t you tell someone instead of taking it into your own hands?”

“It wasn’t like that. He saw my Pa doing something and he informed on him. Look, never mind. The result’s the same. I’m here, aren’t I? Let’s get on with it.”

One of the screws who’d brought me in raised a cudgel. He brought it down quick and hard, and blinding pain burst in my elbow. “Don’t get smart. You don’t have the currency for smart no more.”

“Shit fuck shit,” I said and tried to hold my elbow only for my shackles to stop me.

“Settle down, Hargreaves,” said the other guy who’d escorted me here. He was taller and older and had a thick grey beard that was well-groomed. Hargreaves, who’d just whacked me, was a little weasel of a fella. Young in the face and cruel in the eyes. A pathetic attempt at a beard covered his chops and chin. Patchy and sparse like overworked farmland.

“I’m allowed to hit him,” said Hargreaves. “Comes under justified use of force.”

“If you’re talking about two-twelve-B it states you gotta see signs of a physical threat from the prisoner.”

“He was talking smart.”

“If we started beating every fella in here who talked smart, our arms would be so sore we couldn’t hold our peckers to piss. Settle it down a little.”

Hargreaves narrowed his little rat gaze on me like I was the one who had stopped him. I stared back at him so he knew that he could hate me all he wanted and I didn’t give four fat fucks. While I was staring, I started acquiring his physique. I was already partway through acquiring his voice, but a voice is rarely enough to do anything useful with.

After the bored screw processed me, they made me take off my clothes and they gave me a bar of soap. The tall fella directed me to a cramped shower. Hargreaves kept clanging his cudgel on the pipes and telling me to hurry my ass up. I told him that if it was ass he wanted, then he had the wrong guy. When I was half dry they threw a heap of delousing powder at me and they cut off my hair before making me get dressed again. They escorted me up a steel staircase that wound up and up and up the jail past cellblocks that sounded like a zoo, and then we went further still.

We came to an outer door that led to a small wooden platform with a pulley. “On you go,” said the taller guard.

He and Hargreaves stood next to me on the platform. Hargreaves dug his cudgel into my ribs but he was quiet about it so the taller fella didn’t notice. I did my best to pretend nothing was happening. No way would I give the bastard an ounce of satisfaction. A guard that I couldn’t see turned a crank and set the platform moving up on the cables, going higher than the birds and all the way up to the peak of Pennywrote Jail. The wind sneaked in where my new jail clothes didn’t protect me.

“Cold one today,” I said pleasantly to Hargreaves. He dug the cudgel harder into my side. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s the spot.” He kicked my shin and this time the tall fella noticed and told him to cut it out.

They led me to a cell. Hargreaves shoved me in and said, “Night, my good sir. Hope you enjoy your stay,” in as sarcastic a voice as any man ever used.

As soon as he said that, I got a mimic herald message telling me that I had gained the basic acquisition of his voice. I decided to hold off on finalizing the acquisition because right now it’d be dirty, and I was sick of debuffs.

The guard clanked the cell doors shut and locked them, and then they left me alone.

As cells went, this one was bad but it was far from the worst that I’d been in. A tomb of grey stone with moss growing in the cracks in the walls. They needed repointing, and the decaying hollows invited in the wind. There was barely enough room to swing a cat, not that I ever met a fella who had cause to do that.

In the corner was a hole the size of my fist for squatting down on and letting loose upon the world. Pale moonlight sneaked in through a tiny arched window, but the cell wasn’t any better for the light. Some things are best left in darkness. A spill of moonlight glinted over the hay spread all over the floor, covering bloodstains left by the last occupants. Folks didn’t waste time scrubbing cells like these. Better just to spread hay and then rake it all up later.

On the windows, someone had taken a file or something to the bars, but they’d barely even marked them. Words were carved all over the walls. Stuff like ‘Gods help me’ or ‘Please let me live’. I never had time for dramatics, and I thought about finding a rock and carving something of my own. Like a price list for staying here. Ten coppers a night and a complementary hole to shit in. But I didn’t.

The only exit was an eight-foot archway blocked by rusted iron bars and with a gate that had three locks on it. Beyond was the hallway linking the other cells. Light winked from six wall lamps dotted four feet apart. Guards patrolled every hour. Their boots thumped back and forth down the corridor. Some of them glanced in the cells, but most of them ignored me.

For my first half-day here I made it my business to escape. First, I carefully watch the guards who patrolled the cell halls. I studied their bored faces when they passed by the mana lanterns, and I started acquiring their physiques. However, a passing glance didn’t help much in that regard.

Unlike full-blood mimics, my own mimicry took days to accomplish. Weeks, if I wanted to do it cleanly. Still, I had improved a hell of a lot since that first night when my pa showed me what I was.

Some tricks helped me acquire physiques, of course. Sketching was one of them, and I was a pretty decent artist now. Ask anyone at the Buck Tooth tavern, where I’d drawn an incredibly detailed cock and balls in the bathroom. But I had to really study someone’s appearance and to drink in what they were about before I could assume their form. I needed to study them so intensely that when I closed my eyes, I could see the exact hue of their eyes, the shape of their eyebrows, the curve of their nose, and the texture and the color of their hair. Even then I had to keep their form fixed in mind the whole time I was mimicking them, which made it hard to think about anything else.

The guards didn’t know I was a half-mimic, of course. If they did, I wouldn’t be in a cell. Not even one in the eaves of Pennywrote Jail, the most secure place this side of Ironhenge Fort. If they knew what I was, I’d already be heading north to where they took my pa, I reckoned.

Even though the guards didn’t know what I was doing when I stared at them, they didn’t like me watching all the same. Folks have an inner sense of when a mimic is looking at them. They don’t know it’s because I’m a mimic, of course, but an instinct in their heads tells them that they don’t like it.

One guard, a chubby fella with droopy eyelids and an expression like he was always tired, noticed me looking at him and hit the iron bars with his cudgel so loud that it hurt my ears.

“I look pretty to you or something?” he sneered at me.

“Beautiful.”

“Arsehole.”

After that, he must have spread the word because the guards always watched me suspiciously when they made their rounds.

Failing to mimic their looks, I started listening to them to acquire their voices. I reckoned it might be useful to mimic the way they spoke if nothing else. But they were careful with what they said in earshot of the cells and didn’t say much to us prisoners other than “shut the fuck up” or “what are ya looking at?” I sometimes heard them playing cards way down the hall, but they were too far away to listen to properly. It wasn’t good enough for me to hear their voices so vaguely. All that resulted in was a dirty mimic riddled with debuffs. To perfectly mimic them I needed to hear the exact timbre of their voices and for a perfectly clean mimic, I needed to see the way their lips made shapes as they pronounced things.

With my ancestral powers out of the question, I turned to more practical ways of getting out of there. I checked every inch of my cell. I inspected the metal bars on the window, working on the fixings to see if any were weak from rust or age. No such luck. Next, I examined the stone that the bars were driven into.

When the stone around one bar chipped away at the merest tap, I reckoned I’d hit gold. Maybe I could dig around it and remove the bar. That one bar would give me a sharp piece of metal that would help me chip away the stone around the others. Then I could get rid of the stone by throwing it down the toilet hole in the corner of the room.

This came with problems. Namely, if I removed all the bars from the windows, I would presumably make my escape by climbing out. Then I’d have gravity to deal with. My cell was at the top of the city guard tower. I didn’t have the power of flight tucked away inside my mimic vault, which meant the window wasn’t the best way to escape.

Checking the rest of my cell didn’t reveal any vulnerabilities. This meant I had to ignore structural weaknesses and focus on human weakness instead. But in a way, that was the easiest of all. It just meant I needed to try to get a sense of the guards’ routines. Once you know a fella’s habits you can exploit them. An army lieutenant I once met near Fort Windsor taught me that.

So, I watched the guards, and what I discovered was this. Once every few hours, a metal clanking sound accompanied the thud of footsteps. That metallic banging noise was important. It meant that one particular guard was doing his four-hourly patrol. There were four guards in total. They worked in shifts.

I watched them all, trying to gauge what kind of guys they were. I looked at their clothes for a clue. Even though they all wore the same brown uniform I could tell a lot from the condition of each. I could sense which ones took pride in their job. If their uniform was starched and clean, it meant that particular guard took their job seriously and wouldn’t be susceptible to my tricks or bribes. If their uniform looked like crap? Then I was in luck.

The footsteps at the end of the hallway became louder. Thump, thump, thump. After every five steps came the clanking sound of a guard smacking his truncheon on the adjoining cells’ bars.

I gathered my thoughts and I planned what I was going to say. Soon, a shadow loomed in the cell archway. A cudgel struck the metal bars, and the clangs are echoed from each wall in my cell.

“Evening, Arch,” said the guard.

Guard Hargreaves’ uniform would have made some of the more conscientious guards apoplectic. It was full of rips and tears and shoddy needle and thread repairs. His shirt was splattered with the remnants of last night’s stew. His cuffs were stained with a red liquid that could have been blood or could have been tomato sauce. With the city guards’ twin hobbies of giving beatings and stuffing their faces, it was hard to tell. This told me that Hargreaves ate his meals with the dignity of a pig devouring mulch. It also told me didn’t give a damn about his uniform and didn’t give a solitary fuck about his job.

“Hey. Hargreaves. Got a problem,” I said.

“That’s Guard Hargreaves to you, lad.”

“Course, Guard Hargreaves. Haven’t had much opportunity to practice my manners lately.”

“If you want the chance to perfect them, there’s a cell at the end where rats are sneaking in through the gutter. I could always arrange a swap if you’re getting lonely.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. Not like I’m staying long, is it?”

Hargreaves smirked. “Set your execution for next week, didn’t they?”

“Next week. I’m looking forward to it. But like I said. I got a problem.”

Hargreaves didn’t say anything. Just waited for me to speak.

“Hypothetically, let’s say there was a man named Barch.”

“Sounds a lot like Arch. And this Barch is going to be bexicuted soon, is he?”

I laughed, despite its meaning that Hargreaves had some wits about him and might not be as easy to fool as I expected.

"Let’s say Barch stole lots of jewels, antiques, and all manner of things that pesky laws make it hard to shift. Maybe he stashed it all away somewhere until he could find a suitable buyer. Before that could happen, he was caught committing another crime. His plans were further hampered by his imminent execution.”

Hargreaves leaned a little closer to the bars. “Go on.”

“While Barch is trapped in his cell, he can’t remember where he stashed the loot. It’s something to do with the shitty slop they feed him in here. The size of the room, too. It constricts his thoughts. If someone were to help him get out maybe he could remember where the loot was. Maybe he’d be so grateful that he would reward this person.”

Hargreaves grinned, which I hoped meant that he was catching my drift. There was no hidden loot of course, but I’d figure that out later. The way I see it, tomorrow’s problems are tomorrow’s problems. Live for the day. There ain’t no other way. Pa and I were always working on the farm, building our future, and look what happened. So, for the last ten years, I'd barely considered anything beyond what I was gonna eat the next time I was hungry.

Hargraves took a big ring of rusted keys from his belt in the lock and open my cell gate. He grinned even wider when he stepped into the cell.

He took out his cudgel and whacked my collarbone with it. Right on the bone itself. The pain was something else and the throbs of agony were enough to make me feel sick. It was a good hit. I’d give him that.

“Trying your tricks? Trying to bribe me? Fellas hang from the noose for less’n trying to bribe an officer of the law, you know.”

“What are they gonna do? Kill me twice?”

“Don’t say that like it ain’t possible. You never heard of a necromancer?”

“They’re not wasting empire funds paying a necromancer just to punish a guy like me.”

“Thought enough of ya to bring you up to the Crow’s Nest, didn’t they?” said Hargreaves.

“Could say the same about you.”

His face changed. He still looked like a weasel, but he lost his humor. “You still got a week to go before we end your miserable life. There are ways of making a week seem like a year. Ever heard a man’s voice when he’s screaming so much, he’s worn away his vocal cords?”

“Ain’t had the pleasure. Tell me about it.”

Hargreaves looked at me. He could tell I was goading him. He just couldn’t work out why. It must have made him suspicious because he stepped back out of the cell and locked the door. He called me a stupid fucker and carried on with his patrols.

So much for that, but it wasn’t a complete loss. A hovering mimic herald in the corner of my vision unspooled when I concentrated on it.

Voice of Guard Bishop Hargreaves acquired

Purity: 78%

Effects:

+ Authority

+ Inspire unfriendliness

Voice mimicry improved through use.

You can acquire a cleaner voice in a quicker timeframe.

Reward: 1 x average mimic crystal

I couldn’t see an immediate use for Hargreaves’ voice, but there was no telling what opportunities might come up. I’d rather have it than not. Wasn’t like I was running out of room in my mimic vault.

Getting a mimic crystal was good, but it was risky to open it here in the jail where guards were probably gonna check my cell from time to time. Then again, I was due to die in seven days, so what did I have to lose?

The mimic crystal formed at my feet, and I quickly picked it up. The guards hadn’t done any kind of thorough search of my cell yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. I decided that I had better open it now.

Chapter 9

Before I could open the crystal, Hargreaves came back and stood in front of my cell. I slid the crystal into the sleeve of my shirt and casually strolled over to my mattress on the floor. I sat down and put my hands down on the mattress behind me like I was stretching out, and I let the crystal roll out of my sleeve. I scooted back again so I was sitting on it.

“Back so soon?” I said.

“You know something?” said Hargreaves.

Within seconds I was taking in his appearance and trying to acquire it in mimic form. Hargreaves stiffened and moved a step away from the bars and away from me. His face was like limestone and his voice was cold.

“Know what?” I said.

“The other fellas seem to like you for some stupid reason. They reckon you don’t deserve to be here. Not me. I know a wolf from a dog. I’ve had my eye on you an’ I know your tricks.”

“Tricks?”

“I’ll be watching you, laddie.”

I didn’t reckon a guy like Hargreaves could pick out a mimic. Much less a half-mimic who hadn’t even used mimicry in his presence. Then again, some folks have an inner sense for knowing when a mimic is looking at them.

Thinking about it, if Hargreaves suspected that I was a mimic, he’d have dragged me out of the cell and taken me to a more isolated one, before informing the governor of the jail. After that, some of the empire’s seedier organizations would get involved, and before I knew it I’d be freezing my balls off in the north where poor old Thorpe used to work.

So to Hargreaves, ‘tricks’ must have meant something different. I thought about the bar I had tried to free from the window and the debris I’d shaken loose in doing so. Had he seen it? I didn’t reckon he had. I’d gotten rid of it by throwing it down the toilet hole in the corner of my cell. Then again, maybe Hargreaves’ inner guard senses were telling him something.

If I had more time, I’d acquire a clean mimic of Hargreaves’ physique. It might have come with some kind of guard sense buff, and that would be useful. Unfortunately, time wasn’t a currency I was rich in. It’d be hard enough to even get a dirty mimic of the guy, with how little time I saw him.

Either way, I’d misjudged him. I’d counted on a lack of shrewdness on his part, and more fool me for doing so. I’d taken a chance and messed up and now I was going to pay for it. Despite the state of his uniform, Hargreaves seemed to be committed to his job. I had no doubts that he would warn the rest of the guards against my trickery. He wasn’t going to fall for my offer of imaginary money, and he wasn’t going to stand around chatting until I acquired his likeness and voice. I needed a different way to escape.

An idea came to me. Nothing was happening in my cell. It got me to wondering how exactly the guards punished men like me, who were sentenced to die. They couldn’t beat me because it was against their rules, so they must have punitive measures. They couldn’t take anything away from me because all I had was my cell and the crap hole in the corner. So what could they do? The answer to that might provide me with an opportunity.

“How’s the family, by the way?” I said.

Hargreaves looked as if he wanted to bring my execution sentence forward by a week. Like he’d happily put my head in the noose himself.

“You know. All this talking that you do. It makes me think that you’re lonely.”

“I’ve always been a lone wolf sort of guy.”

“No. I don’t reckon so. You just need the right company to open you up a little. What you need is a cellmate.”

“A cell full of rats by any chance?”

“Well. They never told me you were so bright.”

“Listen, Hargreaves,” I said.

“Who said you could use my name?”

“You’d prefer that I make one up?” I said. “Rupert? Malcolm? Stop me when I choose something you like. Gary?”

“That’s it. I’m sick to my balls of dealing with you. You pecked at me enough and now I’m tired of your stupid fucking face. Stick tight and I’ll be back and we’ll take you to a lovely new cell.”

Guard Hargreaves headed down the hallway away from my cell, whistling to himself. I think he was whistling the empire’s glory march, that horribly patriotic tune written for when we defeated a bunch of barbarians out west who were already half decimated thanks to some kind of wasting disease. I listened to his whistling become quieter and quieter.

Only when Hargreaves was gone did I turn away from the iron bars and smile. Far from being worried about the prospect of being moved to a rat-infested cell, I was delighted. For one, I used to have a pet rat called Louie when I was a kid. But that wasn’t why I was so pleased.

The way I saw it, if rats were getting into one particular cell, then they had to be coming from outside the jail. That meant there might be something special about that cell. Maybe it had a platform underneath it instead of a sheer drop. Whatever it had, it was a different cell. It might have a weakness that I hadn’t found in my current cell. A new roll of the dice.

Hargreaves was gone for a while and it’d be hours before another guard patrolled. I used that time to open the mimic crystal I had gotten from leveling my voice mimicry after acquiring the blunt tones of Guard Hargreaves.

Average mimic crystal opened

- [Trait] The pain tolerance of Stacy Jetters

Effect: ++ Pain tolerance, + Crass

- Mimic gel

Pa had told me about mimic gel during my training, and I’d finally gotten some in a mimic crystal once, maybe five years ago. It was a block of solid matter, cream in color like a bar of soap. If you rubbed it for a while it heated up and became gloopy, and then you could shape it around an item. When you did, it created an almost perfect copy of the thing. In a place like this, it was a prize.

I rubbed the mimic gel until it was just a little bit softer, then I put my hand inside my shirt and spread the gel under my left armpit to hide it from a pat-down. It wouldn’t copy my armpit, of course, because mimic gel didn’t imitate anything biological.

At lunchtime, a guard named Fitz slid a metal tray under the three-inch gap where my cell bars didn’t meet the floor. On it was a slice of cheese and a handful of raisins and a portion of chicken blackened to coal. That counted as gourmet in a place like this. I ate every scrap and kicked the tray back under the bars and shouted out my compliments to the chef. Nobody answered.

Fitz came around thirty minutes later and told me to stand back from the bars and he stepped in and left a wooden jug of water. Then he stepped out again and locked the door. I didn’t have time to even start a dirty acquisition of his physique.

I didn’t see anyone for four hours except a solitary guard who completed a pass by the cells without even looking at me. The daylight faded outside the tower. A shadow cut a line through the floor like it was dividing one part of my life from the next. Then the shadow disappeared completely and the night sky was completely black.

I was getting drowsy, but I knew I needed to be alert for when Hargreaves came back, and I knew the bastard was likely to wait until the most inconvenient time. I had to bite my lip and the inside of my cheek. Finally, two guards appeared at my cell.

Hargreaves was one of them. The other was a tall fella with dark shadows around his eyes and his shirt clean, pressed, and buttoned to his chin. He tapped his cudgel against the bars.

“On your feet. Good. Back against the wall. Turn around. Palms against the wall. Good. Now bring your arms behind your back. Good.”

They put manacles on my hands and around my legs just above the ankle. The metal bit cold. Hargreaves walked in front and the lanky guy strolled behind me. I stared at Hargreaves and tried to absorb more of his likeness. Watching the way a person walks is always a good way to acquire their looks. You can tell a lot about a person from their walk and their posture because every person carries themselves differently. Some folks are free and airy and they walk like the world isn’t a dark place. Others are straining under the weight of everything that’s ever happened to them in their lives and the depth of it shows in every step. Hargreaves tried to walk with a cocky strut, but I soon realized it was forced because every so often his shoulders would drop just a little. Watching him, I wasn’t too far away from getting his likeness. It’d be a dirty acquisition, but I didn’t have much choice.

They led me to the end of the corridor and around a corner and then down another stretch of the corridor where the limestone walls were illuminated by oil lamps fixed to the stone by metal bolts. We passed three cells. Two were empty and one had a guy in it. He was lying in a fetal position on the cot and he’d taken a shit in the corner. He was facing the wall. Finally, we came to the cell at the end of the hallway where I was hoping I’d find a way out of here.

Hargreaves stopped just short of the cell, so I couldn’t see what was inside. The tall guard went in ahead of me. He was gone for a few minutes and I heard the clanking of chains, and then he left the cell escorting a prisoner who had a bag over his head.

“I’ll take him to cell D,” he said.

Hargreaves nodded at him. He prodded me forward. “C’mon, Arch. Meet your new cellmate.”

Sitting in the cell, backed up against the wall with his hands on his knees, was a big beast of a man. Easily the biggest I’d ever seen. This guy looked like he’d been birthed from a gargoyle mother. If you’d told me they carved him from the side of a mountain I wouldn’t have been surprised. He seemed to be comprised entirely of muscle and tendon.

I decided there and then that I needed to achieve a clean mimicry of this guy’s physique. A clean physique mimicry came not just with someone’s appearance, but their bodily strengths and weaknesses. I already had a half-clean mimic of a circus strongman from when Pa was teaching me mimicry and he took me to the circus a few times. But my new cellmate was something else. Seeing a guy like this was like a birthday present for a mimic. This sort of thing got a mimic’s mind turning like crazy, and we can’t help but start the acquiring process.

“Here’s your new cellmate, Arch. Arch meet Yulf. Yulf meet Arch,” said Hargreaves.

I nodded at my cellmate. “Pleasure’s all mine,” I said.

Yulf stared at me. He didn’t blink.

“Tell me something,” said Hargreaves. “Is snoring a problem for you?”

“You telling me Yulf here’s a snorer? Damn it. Just when I thought it’d be good to have some company.”

“You don’t like snoring then?”

“Ain’t on my list of things I enjoy.”

“Good. Because Yulf doesn’t snore at all. He doesn’t sleep, y’see. It’s a condition. Every three months or so he’ll drink a brew that puts him under like a bear crawling into a cave to hibernate. But until then he doesn’t get a wink. Some folks reckon this lack of sleep contributed to him slaughtering a tavern full of people. Using his bare hands in case you were wondering. I’ll leave you to introduce yourselves.”

“This guy killed a tavern full of fellas?”

Hargreaves nodded. “Don’t worry. Some ‘em were quick deaths. At least I think so. How long does it take to die when a guy tears your head off your neck with his bare hands?”

Hargreaves laughed and dug his cudgel into my ribs and then left the cell. The taller guy had returned, and it was him who shut the gate. The latch stuck so he grumbled “fucking state of this place” and opened it again and then shut it harder.

Hargreaves put a great rusted key in the locked and turned until it clicked. “Sweet dreams, princess,” he said.

Then they walked away and soon rounded the corner, leaving me alone with big Yulf. I wasn’t as excited to mimic him as I had been minutes earlier. I was slightly more concerned with preserving my life. What little of it remained, that was, given I was sentenced to die soon.

Every instinct in me wanted for me to stay backed up against the bars, far from Yulf. But my Pa and I used to use mountain dogs on the farm and I knew a little about handling things much more dangerous than you were. First rule: I couldn’t give this Yulf guy an inch. Couldn’t show him I was nervous no matter how much I felt it.

I decided to spend just a little of my mimicry, activating a trait I picked up from The Amazing Turgyle’s Fantastical Circus. Traits were hard things to acquire. To get a clean version, you needed to watch a person displaying that particular trait, and then discuss it with them to get a deeper understanding.

For this trait, I had watched Penny the Tightrope Walker perform her act at the circus, studying how she stayed so calm when walking at a great height. I must have seen her act four or five times, each time noting a different aspect. Then, one night, I posed as an apprentice scribe for the Freemantle Times, and I got her to agree to an interview where I asked her lots of questions about conquering fear.

I activated the trait I had gained from her now.

Trait mimicry activated: The Courage of Penny the Tightrope Walker

Purity: 65%

Effects: ++ bravery, + recklessness.

The effect was instantaneous. My fear of Yulf, even of my imminent hanging, disappeared like mist on a summer’s morning. I looked at the monster of a man and not a flicker of nerves troubled me. The logical part of my brain knew that wasn’t so good. Bravery was what I needed, but a dangerous lack of fear led to mistakes. I decided I wouldn’t mimic this trait for long. Just enough to show him I wasn’t scared.

I walked over to the mattress in the corner and reclined back on it. “Read any good books lately?”

He said nothing. That was a pity because acquiring a person’s voice was one of the easiest things for a mimic. Even a half-mimic.

I watched Yulf and started acquiring his likeness, but there wasn’t much else I could do. I sure as shit wasn’t going to touch him to start acquiring his physique. That was a shame because Yulf looked like he could tear this cell apart without much effort.

That was the problem, that difference between a person’s likeness and physique. Looks are good to deceive people, but a person’s real strength lies in their physique. Even if I acquired Yulf’s likeness, I wouldn’t get his strength unless I spent more time on the acquisition and did it cleanly. Likeness was paper-thin. Visual only. All it did was turn you into a kind of illusion, making you look like a person without giving you their speed or strength or anything else physiological. It was a good thing, really, because when you acquired physique you also mimicked their disadvantages like poor eyesight.

Yulf didn’t seem to mind me looking at him. In fact, he was staring at the cell window, entranced with the view outside which was of a big, grey cloud that was bulging and looked ready to piss all over the city.

There wasn’t much I could glean about the potentially homicidal maniac. So I sat further back on the cot and just watched him and soaked in his looks to acquire them. His craggy face of granite. His hair, dark red like old blood. I began to acquire his likeness much quicker than normal. Most folks don’t just let you sit there and stare at them. You gotta be sly about it. Not Yulf. He couldn’t have given a crap about me looking at him.

After a while, Yulf got up and walked to the window and grabbed the bars and for one second, I thought he was just gonna wrench them free. But he just stared out of it.

As time passed, I became more confident that this guy wasn’t going to murder me. As confident as I could be about a guy who had been jailed because he slaughtered a tavern full of people, anyway. I stopped mimicking Penny the Tightrope Walker’s courage to conserve my energy.

After a few hours, I said, “Yulf.”

He didn’t turn around.

I carried on. “Do you mind if I poke around the cell? Make a little noise maybe? No? Okay then. Just let me know if it gets on your nerves.”

I started tapping all along the eastern cell wall. I made sure to check every single centimeter of it, listening to the sound and hoping for something hollow. I had to stop when I heard guard boots coming from down the hall.

The guard was a woman who I didn’t recognize. She slid two metal trays under the bars. Yulf didn’t get up for his. I took it to him.

“Better keep your strength up,” I told him. “Hate to see a big fella like you waste away.”

He looked at me strangely and then nodded and took the tray.

I slumped against the cell wall and ate my cheese, thinking about how I was completely exasperated. I’d checked every part of the wall and there was just no way of escaping. It’s like they built this place to keep us locked up or something. Maybe I was going to have to admit defeat. The cell didn’t have weaknesses and the guards couldn’t be bribed.

“Yulf?” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“You like looking out of that window, don’t you? How would you like to go outside for real?”

I watched him, wondering if I just saw his lips twitch a little. It was hard to say for sure. “Just a thought,” I said, “but why don’t you rip the cell door from its hinges and then we can both just leave? Might be an idea. But it’s up to you. I don’t want to be puttin’ ideas in your head.”

If Yulf had even heard my words he didn’t show it. He certainly didn’t make any move to tear the cell door from its hinges. I was stuck.

Chapter 10

Time passes as quickly as you let it, my Pa always used to say. He meant that a person could either choose to occupy their time, or they could decide to do nothing with it. It’s that nothingness that seems to stretch time out like sourdough.

He said to me the time I faked a stomach ache to get out of farm work, preferring to spend the day in the house. I’d planned on reading all morning, afternoon, and evening. Pa had a gleam in his eye and he took the book away and told me that I’d recover quicker if I let my mind focus on it instead of on adventure stories. Sitting on the floorboards in my room with nothing to do but exist, that day had stretched to infinity.

By the midday, I was so bored I told my Pa that, would you believe it, I was feeling recovered and I could go feed the chickens but he said no. I should make sure I’m really okay. By the end of the day, I missed my having chores to do.

Up high in the Crow’s Nest in Pennywrote jail, it was hard to find ways to pass the time. There definitely weren’t any chickens to feed up here. It made me miss the hens.

One morning, I waited until a guard named Mulgrew went past my cell and along the corridor. Mulgrew was a young guard, athletic and lacking the beer belly that many of the older ones had earned from years spent in taverns. He was eager to impress and slightly nervous because of this.

When he was almost out of sight, I mimicked Hargreaves’ voice.

“Mulgrew. Get your fat arse back here.”

Mulgrew turned around. “Hargreaves?”

I didn’t answer. Mulgrew came back down the corridor. When he passed my cell he said, “You see Guard Hargreaves?”

“He just shouted for you. Said you’re to go see your supervisor.”

“Jenkins? He’s down in grand central.”

I shrugged. “I’m just the fella waiting for a noose.”

“Oh, shit. What have I done now?”

Mulgrew headed toward the double iron doors at the far end of the corridor, beyond which was the gear and winch platform that went down to the city-level floor of Pennywrote jail, where they kept the shorter-term inmates.

When Mulgrew was gone, I started looking around my cell, checking it for weaknesses and being louder about it this time now that Mulgrew wasn’t around. But just minutes later Mulgrew was back.

“Someone’s already taken the platform down. I’ll have to wait.”

Mulgrew went back on patrol, and I sat on my mattress. Yulf was staring at me. He didn’t say anything. He never did. Not the whole time I’d been in the cell with him. That was why I didn’t feel nervous about using some light mimicry in his presence.

Over the next few days, my routine became frustratingly consistent. Consistency is good for acquiring mimicry, but it is also the blanket that smothers the fires of opportunity. Chaos is what brings about luck and chance.

Breakfast was usually thick rolled oats soaked in water so they became a paste. Coffee so weak you could wash in it. Then nothing for hours until the afternoon waned and it was time for yet more slop. With the evening meal came the meat. Maybe chicken or pork. Always boiled and never seasoned. There’d be a helping of boiled carrots and sometimes an ear of corn. I offered to show the chef how to cook if they’d let me out of my cell, but none of the guards took me up on it.

Some of the fellas in the other cells were conditioned to jail life and if the evening meal was late they’d holler and shake their bars and spit as far as they could. After our evening meal, the oil lamps outside our cells would stay lit until the night peaked, and then they’d be snuffed to save oil – thank you for striking, oil workers - and we wouldn’t see or hear a thing until another guard made a pass by our cells in the early hours.

After five more days of this my good friend Guard Hargreaves broke the monotony when he appeared at our cell door. He looked as weasel-like as ever, wearing an especially dirty uniform as if he’d muddied it up for the occasion. His smile revealed a row of teeth that looked like turnips planted in gummy soil.

“Today’s the day, Arch. How’re you feeling? Nervous?”

It hadn’t escaped me that today was the day I was due to die. It’s the kind of date that sticks in a fella’s mind. I felt weirdly calm about it. That wasn’t because I was mimicking the bravery of Penny the Tightrope Walker. I guessed it was because a small part of me didn’t quite believe it and was holding out hope that this wasn’t going to happen. The human brain is capable of pretty wondrous things.

Scared or calm, execution or not, I knew one thing. Hargreaves wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of seeing even the barest flicker of fear on my face.

“Thought you had a few days off?” I said.

Hargreaves glowered. “Fucking did. But Mulgrew’s been given a leave of absence. He’s overworked, they’re saying. Hearing things. Reckon it’s stress. So here I am, canceling my trip to the lakes. Still. It’s always a show when the hanging day comes. Governor makes us learn all kinds of procedures so we don’t mess up the event. We can’t get none of them wrong. If we do we don’t get our hanging day bonus.”

“Must be tough for you.”

Hargreaves leaned closer to the cell bars. Then Yulf stirred from his spot over by the wall, and he backed away again. “Hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to ask you for a favor,” he said.

I leaned back against the wall and relaxed. “Why should I mind doing my pal Hargreaves a good turn?”

“Listen then. Just before they put yer head in the rope, they’re gonna ask if you got any last words.”

“I’ve been working on my speech nonstop. Let me ask you something. What’s the etiquette for thanking your executioner? Should I do it in my speech, or write him a post-execution letter that he’s not allowed to open until my neck’s snapped?”

“Hold that thought,” said Hargreaves. “Me and the boys have been betting on what you’ll say. Whoever gets the exact wording wins the full pot. There’s a few hundred in there. If nobody gets it right but someone gets close, they snag a quarter of it. If none of us are anywhere near then the pot rolls over to the next hanging. It’s a bloody nuisance let me tell you.”

“Bet it is.”

“So listen. Why don’t you just tell me what you’re going to say? I won’t repeat it word for word. I ain’t stupid, that’d look suspicious. But if I get the sentiment right, I’ll win a quarter of the pot. What do you say?”

“I guess the obvious thing I’m wondering is, what’s in it for me?”

“Well. If you’re not going to be a good sport. Suppose we’ll just have to get on with your execution.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m gonna die anyway, right? Might as well help you earn a few coins.”

“That’s the spirit. I always said you were a decent fella.”

“Right then,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about my last words. What I reckon is this.”

“Yes?” said Hargreaves, moving closer to the cell bars.

“You ready to memorize this?”

He nodded. “I am.”

“Okay then. My last words.”

Hargreaves moved even closer.

“I was thinking something like this. Hargreaves is a big, stupid goat fucker.”

It took the guard a moment to process what I said. Then his face scrunched up so he looked like a mad bull, and he pulled his cudgel from a sheath on his belt and raised it and stuck the bars five times until they were clanging and echoing.

Then he recovered himself and he put away his weapon. His tone became formal now. “Back against the wall please, Mister Wild. C’mon. Yulf, you stay put. Mr. Wild, step back tow-”

Hargreaves stopped talking midsentence. He spat out a spray of blood.

A dagger stuck out of his throat next to his Adam’s Apple, and the dagger belonged to a woman who must have slid out from the shadows. She stood tall and slender with long, red hair falling down her back and reaching to her waist.

She struggled to wrench the dagger free from Hargreaves’s throat and had to wiggle it a little before it slid away. “Get out, you fucking thing,” she grumbled. She caught Hargreaves’s limp body and gently eased it down so it fell silently to the floor. She wiped the dagger on his shirt and put it in an empty leather sheath on her belt.

I made sure I got a proper look at her. It was a mimic instinct, to take instant note of a person’s appearance in such detail. She was wearing a tight leather suit full of buckles and belts. She must have had half a dozen daggers on her. Dirks, hunting knives with ivory handles, parrying knives, and even knitting needles. She smelled heavily of booze.

I realized immediately that this woman was someone to learn from. As a mimic, you get the sense of who’s worth copying and who isn’t. Learning skills is tough and it takes a lot of careful watching and then quiet meditation and even interviewing the subject for their inner process. Despite the hardships, it’s almost always worth trying. Right then, I resolved to keep an eye on this lady and try to absorb some of her talents, like how she’d managed to creep up on Hargreaves and me without either of us noticing until she stabbed him through the throat.

The woman kneeled touched her fingers on Hargreaves’ neck. “Think he’s dead. What do reckon? Yup. Dead. You better come with me, Rattlesnake.”

I turned behind me to where Yulf was sitting. “Rattlesnake?” I said.

The woman prodded my bicep. “Well? Coming or what?”

She thought I was someone named Rattlesnake. Given that she represented my last chance at freedom on the day of my hanging, I wasn’t about to get picky about it.

“Sure. Let’s go.”

“Is your friend coming?” she asked.

Many folks would have left the supposed homicidal maniac behind. But Yulf hadn’t even batted a hostile eyelash at me, and I reckoned that Hargreaves had just been trying to lay on the frighteners on me with the tavern story. Plus, I was maybe twenty-five percent toward a clean acquisition of his physique. I was reluctant to put such a whopper of a catch back in the water.

“Yulf?” I said. “What do you think, old pal? I’d hate to leave you here. I’d miss our long chats if nothing else.”

Yulf said nothing, but he got to his feet and took one last look out of the cell window. He followed us as we left the cell.

“I’m Tilde,” she said. “You’re Rattlesnake, ain’t ya?”

“Huh?”

“Forget it. C’mon.”

I looked at Yulf. Poor guy was still standing in the cell doorway. I again thought about leaving him, but then a mimicked trait I’d acquired from Pa kicked in without me even trying to use it. Traits did that sometimes if you acquired them from folks who you had a connection with. This trait was loyalty, which had seeped from Pa and I had easily acquired.

“Coming or what?” I asked Yulf.

He nodded.

Tilde and Yulf headed off down the corridor. Before joining them, I kneeled beside Hargreaves’ body and I tried to take his keys, but they were fastened to a locked chain around his wrist. I grabbed his hand and jerked it upwards to snap the bones, then jerked them down. Then I shimmied the chain off his wrist. I pocketed the keys. I took his cudgel and held it in my right hand. I would have changed into his uniform, except we heard footsteps from somewhere beyond us.

“Hurry up,” said Tilde. I left Hargreaves’ corpse and followed her.

Tilde reeked worse than a booze-soaked tavern, and it showed in how she walked. A sort of swaying motion, not quite off balance but almost. Although she led us out of the guard tower, she lost her way several times and sometimes swayed so much that she almost fell over. At one point she almost tripped up and Yulf caught her with a big meaty arm.

She took us through the Crow’s Nest and to the platform and pully system that had brought me up here a week ago. There was already a dead guard on the platform. It was a guy who used to run his cudgel across the iron bars to make a horrible clanging sound late at night when we were trying to sleep, and then he’d laugh about it and say, “Sorry, princesses.”

“Apologies,” said Tilde, looking at the dead guard. “I shouldn’t litter.”

She kicked his corpse off the platform and it fell through the gap in the railings and fell from the Crow’s Nest and off the jail and plummeted into the city below. I’d hate to be the fella just going about my business when a dead guard plummeted from the sky and landed right next to me.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” she said.

Yulf got on the platform. It shuddered under his weight. I joined him and the platform swayed and I heard chains rankling. Tilde cranked the pulley into motion and the platform started taking Yulf and me down from the Crow’s Nest. Tilde took a vial containing some kind of liquid from her right breast pocket. She spread it on the crank handle and the handle kept turning on its own. It must have been some kind of artificeric potion. Tinkers used such things.

Tilde leaped down onto the platform as it was moving. The platform shivered and gears whined and I thought the supporting cables would snap but they held firm.

As the platform descended and the wind threw a freezing breeze at us, we could see the city spread out wide and far. Rows upon rows of rooftops made from clay slates painted with an orange alchemical solution to absorb heat in winter and reflect it in summer. There was Rutter’s Hill, a sloping granite landmass with a wagon road running up it and an array of armorers and fletchers and potion maker shops on either side. The view went further still. All the way to where the city boundaries failed and the touch of man fell away and nature once again claimed dominion over the world. Pastures of buffalo grass. Soil and sediment hills dotted with boulders of clay and coarse conglomerate. Woodlands thick like mazes and mountains free from the mark of man.

“There’s a view for you,” I told Yulf. “Almost makes it worthwhile getting sentenced to hang.”

Yulf did nothing but stare into the distance with a faraway look, as though his thoughts were floating free now that they’d been liberated from the Crow’s Nest. Tilde stood with her back to the view. She held the platform rails tightly. She looked only at the metal struts of the jail tower all slick with grease as the platform descended. When wind hit and the platform swayed violently she closed her eyes tight and mumbled to herself.

When the platform touched base with a soft clink and the cables stopped and the gears silenced, Tilde was the first out.

“After you,” I told Yulf.

I was the last to leave the platform. Tilde drew a knife from the third sheath on her belt. The blade was black and it gleamed a soft yellow with artificery. She used it to cut one of the pulley cables, slicing through the metal like it was butter. The platform lurched and then zipped back up to the Crow’s Nest.

“Soon as they discover the dead guy,” she said, “They’ll want to tell their pals down here. They might find that a bit difficult now.”

I looked up to the Crow’s Nest way above. The platform was still whirring up the pulley line, going much faster without me and Yulf and Tilde in it. When it hit the top it would smash into the struts of the Crow’s Nest and rain back down in a mess of timber, metal, and cables, I reckoned. Then the only way down would be the iron ladder that ran up the tower.

“Right, left, left, right,” said Tilde.

“Huh?”

“Follow me.”

She opened a rusted maintenance hatch and climbed into Pennywrote jail’s main holding building. In there she took us on a route through the jail’s maze of alabaster tunnels and through iron doors that should have been locked. Locks didn’t seem to present a problem to her. She was careful to open doors slowly. If they whined then she oiled the hinges before opening them fully. Four turns of right, left, left, right and then we were far away from the parts of the jail that were lit by lamplight and into the places where not even the janitors visited. Places where strings of spider’s webs stretched from wall to wall and where water dripped from unseen pipes.

Tilde took a glowing stone from a pocket on the left breast of her coat and held it dangling from a string. The stone lit the way in a haze of green. Way ahead, at the end of the hallway, was a great big circular hatch.

“Tunnel ahead leads to the sewer. You boys worried about getting wet?”

“Nope,” I said.

Yulf said nothing.

She led us to a hallway that narrowed so we had to duck our heads. Yulf, the poor fella, had to crawl. This stretched on for a few minutes and then came to a rust-covered hatch with a circular handle. The handle didn’t budge for Tilde or me. Yulf grabbed it and with great strain, he forced it to turn through the rust. The door opened and the stench of shit came at us.

“Don’t say I don’t take you boys to the nicest places,” said Tilde.

In the sewer, Tilde consulted a waxed map to guide us through the warren of shit stinking tunnels. After what felt like hours of walking, escape appeared in the form of an opened manhole. It was sitting above a fragile-looking wooden ladder. The bottom quarter of the ladder was submerged in a muddy brown wash.

Tilde climbed it with more grace than I expected from someone who smelled like she’d taken a whiskey bath. I waded into the water and followed her up the ladder and my trousers were soaked by the time I climbed out of the sewer.

When Yulf tried to climb the ladder he made it halfway up before his weight made the wooden rungs splinter and snap. He tumbled back into the sewer and landed with a big splash and then sank into the sewer mire.

“C’mon, big guy,” I said.

Tilde put her hand on my shoulder. “Oh, shit.”

From way beyond us, we heard the voices of guards shouting into the mire.

Chapter 11

The bottom half of the ladder was destroyed and pieces of it were floating in the sewer mire, leaving Yulf no way to climb up to freedom. Tilde and I were at the top of the ladder in the room that housed the manhole. It was a storeroom of some kind. For Yulf, the brown sewer wash only came up to his shins but his shirt and trousers were soaked from when he’d fallen. He looked at the ladder and scratched his head. Then came the sound of shouts echoing through the sewer tunnels.

“Looks like our friends figured out where we went,” I said.

Tilde shrugged. “You can’t break a guy out of the Crow’s Nest without someone noticing. How essential is it that we get the big fella up here?”

It would be an exaggeration to say that Yulf and I had become friends. We hadn’t even shared a single word. Yet, over the last few days, his presence had been a comforting one in my cell. Sentiments aside, there were practicalities to this. Yulf hadn’t hurt me, hadn’t even threatened to, and he’d chosen to follow us out of the jail. He was a block of pure muscle and definitely capable of hurting someone. That was going to be useful. As well as that, I still hadn’t acquired his physique.

Even putting benefits aside, I felt bad leaving the guy. I’d always been a sucker for charity cases, and the big, mute fella seemed like one to me. It just seemed wrong to leave him in the sewer for the guards to find him.

Yet I knew that the longer we stayed, the more chance there was of me getting caught and put in a noose. Thinking about that solved it for me. I wasn’t going to risk my neck for a stranger.

I activated a mimicked personality trait called the Callousness of Pertwee the Tax Inspector, which I had acquired three years ago.

A cold sheen lined the insides of my mind, holding back any emotions that might be described as warm. It was an uncomfortable attitude to me, a generally well-disposed guy. Like trying on shoes that didn’t fit.

“Sorry, Yulf. Guess this is goodbye,” I said.

Tilde looked at me with something approaching admiration. I turned away from the manhole. Then I stopped, as the callousness of Pertwee the tax inspector presented itself in a different form.

It made me see an opportunity.

I kneeled by the manhole, where Yulf was pacing around as the guards’ shouts grew louder.

“Yulf.”

He looked at me.

“Let’s say I help you up, big fella. You’re gonna owe me one, right?”

He nodded.

A favor in the bank is better than gold, my pa always said.

“Then let’s get to it.”

“On your head be it,” said Tilde.

I deactivated the callousness to save on the amount of mimicry I had ready to draw on. When it left my mind, it took the chill away with it. It left me with an uneasy feeling in my head like I’d let an unwelcome visitor walk around my house. That was one of the drawbacks of mimicking personality traits, and I rarely did it unless I had to. As soon as I got a chance, I’d have to meditate to center myself.

The shouts and yells of the guards sounded closer now. I reckoned I even heard dogs barking. One of the guards was splitting the others into search teams to split up into the sewers.

Damn it.

Reluctantly, I drew on my inner mimicry again. I didn’t like to do it in such an obvious way. Not in front of Tilde. But the situation called for a relaxation of my Pa’s rules.

I yelled down into the tunnel beyond us and I spoke using guard Hargreaves’ voice.

“They aren’t in the sewer!” I shouted.

Tilde looked at me like I was some strange creature. “Whose voice was that?”

“What?”

“That voice.”

“A guard named Hargreaves.”

“How the hell did you do that?”

“Just threw my voice. A party trick. I can do any accent you’d like.”

“Should have known,” said Tilde.

I didn’t have time to ask what she meant by that.

“Hargreaves? That you?” shouted a guard from way beyond the tunnel.

This time, I used the voice of the guard named Mulgrew. “They ain’t down here. Must have gone back into the tower!”

The guards were silent. The sound of their boots splashing through sewer water stopped. Tilde stared at me in amazement.

“They aren’t going to turn back around without searching but I reckon we’ve bought a few minutes. We need to make a winch,” I said.

For the first time, I looked around the room that the manhole had led us to. It was pitch black but my vision adjusted onto a storeroom filled with wooden barrels and pallets and lots of random odds and ends. A spade with dried mud on the blade. Tubs of rendered fat. Old galoshes splotched brown. Three old oil lamp casings with nothing inside. This must have belonged to a caretaker, I reckoned, though a caretaker for what, I didn’t know. A sewer didn’t need a caretaker as far as I knew.

“A winch?” asked Tilde. “Can’t we just leave him?”

“I told you. Me and Yulf here really bonded.”

“He hasn’t said a single word.”

“Look. We came from the Crow’s Nest. You know what kind of prisoners get sent there?”

“Dangerous ones.”

“Ones who’re ready for the noose. I’m not leaving him down there just so they can send him to the gallows.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong here. But he’s most likely a murderer,” said Tilde.

“And what do you call stabbing a fella in the throat and kicking a corpse into the sky?”

“Necessary. I’ve humored you so far but this man is a killer.”

“How do you know I’m not? Matter of fact, what the hell do you know about me at all?”

“We’re wasting time.”

“Exactly. So listen to me instead of complaining. Yulf here is going to be useful to us.”

“Fine. Get the big fella up here,” said Tilde.

I looked around the room for what I needed. I had always been a practical kind of guy, even from when I was a kid. Pa taught me all kinds of things. But he’d never taught me how to make a winch. I got that knowledge from a mimic book that I received in a mimic crystal seven years ago.

Mimic books were blank when you first got them. If you found a book you wanted them to mimic, then you had to lay the mimic book on top of it and wait an hour. When it was done, the book was copied but with a difference. If you read a mimic book five times and took copious notes, the information within it soaked into your brain and stayed there with complete recall.

When I first got the mimic book as a reward from the Watcher of Mimics, I hemmed and hawed for days deciding what to use it on. Finally, I selected a book called 1001 Practical Engineering Feats & How You Can Use Them. It was a toss-up between that and an encyclopedia or a complete history of the world, but I’d always favored practicality over knowledge where possible.

“Right. Let’s see what we’ve got to work with,” I said.

“What do we need?” asked Tilde.

“Lemme look around.”

“Well hurry up.”

Sitting by the buckets of rendered fat was a coil of fraying rope that I guessed was used for either pulling carriages out of ditches or removing old tree stumps, judging by its condition and the mud crusted around it. In the corner of the room underneath a shelf filled with fishing reels was a barrel. The kind you’d find in a tavern basement. Only this one was filled with coal.

I tossed one end of the rope down the manhole.

“Tie it around your waist,” I told Yulf.

I took the other end and I got a grip of it by wrapping it twice around my wrist. And then I raised my inner mimicry again. I brought the talent of a guy named Billy Wilder-Fitz to the fore of my brain. Billy was a strongman who performed for the circus that traveled up and down the east coast and only charged a copper for a seat in the tent eaves. Pa took me there plenty of times, and I kept going after he died. As well as acquiring dirty versions of the tightrope walker’s bravery trait and the strongman’s physique, I also got rudimentary versions of the lion tamer and the acrobat’s skills.

“Keep an eye on Yulf and get ready to help him,” I said.

“We’re gonna talk about this. All these orders you’re giving,” she said, before kneeling by the open manhole and looking down at Yulf, with her back to me.

I activated Billy the strongman’s physique and I felt his strength surge through me. I felt the knots of his muscle spool out through my arms and my legs and into the muscles of my back and my core.

I tried pulling Yulf up just using the strongman’s physique, but it wasn’t enough. So I looped the rope around the coal barrel. I set my feet against the barrel and I held the rope tense, and then I leaned back and I started pulling. Having the rope around the barrel wasn’t the same as having a winch, but it gave a little more leverage at least. Billy Wilder-Fitz’s muscles did the rest.

Inch by inch the rope turned around the barrel. My arms ached. We heard guards shouting from closer in the sewer and even heard their boots splashing in the fecal sewer silt. Soon my biceps and shoulders felt like they were on fire, and I was sure my face must have been dark red from the strain.

Tilde stood up and was about to turn around.

“What are you doing? Keep an eye on Yulf!” I said so forcefully that she complied.

I felt my grip on Billy’s talents start to wane, which meant my mimicry was running low. I forced myself to keep going and to pull harder until my veins felt like they were going to pop out of my temple.

The tension eased so quickly that I fell onto my ass. Yulf appeared at the manhole, having reached the unbroken top half of the ladder. I let my mimicry deactivate. Billy’s muscles left me, and in their place was a helping of pain and exhaustion that blended into a toxic cocktail in my muscles.

Tilde hooked her hands under my armpits and hauled me up. “Get up, Rattlesnake. We’ll rest when we’re clear.”

There it was, that name again. Now wasn’t the time to ask about it though.

“How the hell did you do that?” said Tilde.

“I’m stronger than I look. Yulf, do you mind dragging that barrel of coal and putting it over the manhole?”

“Thought you were stronger than you look?” said Tilde.

“I’m also exhausted from hauling his ass up here.”

Yulf picked up the barrel full of coal like it was a bag of feathers and he placed it over the manhole to cover it.

Without warning, fatigue hit me so deep that I fell without putting my hands out and I smacked the back of my head against the floor. The strongman skills I’d just used had turned to weakness. Yulf lifted me up. He slapped my back in a friendly way and grunted at me.

“You okay?” said Tilde.

I nodded, rubbing my head. The extreme and sudden exhaustion was the price of mimicry, as my pa called it. When I mimicked a physique so different from my own, my body felt the aftereffects when I returned to my normal form. It was like stretching out a rubber band and then letting go, only for it to ping back in your face.

We heard more shouting from the sewers, but it was muffled by the coal barrel. Between the barrel and the broken ladder, there was little chance of them following us up here, but none of us wanted to risk it.

Tilde was the first out of the room and Yulf and I followed. One room full of crap led to another and then another, and finally into a dark, cramped tunnel. The tunnel walls were made from crumbling limestone and were reinforced in places by beams of timber. I had to bend down and Yulf had to go on his knees.

Tilde took out her glowing stone and held it out in front of her. It illuminated just enough of the tunnel ahead for us to see a rat scampering away.

“What is this place?” I said.

“Tunnels like these run all through the city,” said Tilde. “The Lotas built them at the beginning of the empire. Back when the empire was rounding them up, the Lotas would use them to move around under the city. Later on, smugglers started using ‘em. Most of ‘em are blocked up now, but there’s a few that the scuds don’t know about.”

Scuds was a derogatory term for empire soldiers, but it had been expanded in the common lexicon to include anyone who drew a wage from the empire. Tilde was using it to mean the Pennywrote guards, I guessed.

Tilde’s glowing stone dimmed a little. “We better get a shift on. I only got one more of these, and we got a lot of tunnel to cover. You won’t like this place when it’s dark. You especially won’t like it if I miss a turn.”

The tunnel seemed to run for hours without end. It was hotter than an oven in there, and before I knew it the back of my shirt was soaked in sweat. I rolled up my sleeves but that wasn’t enough, so I opened the first four buttons on the front. Tilde took off her shirt and folded it up and held it in her right hand, so she was moving in just a thin undershirt that clung to her. Poor Yulf, crawling on his hands and knees, didn’t complain even as beads of sweat dripped off him.

After an eternity the air started to cool a little, and an hour later there was a breeze. Thirty minutes later and we see glorious hints of daylight up ahead. When we reached the source we came to a metal door with a small peephole in it. Tilde twisted a lever and turned the handle and kicked it open.

She led us outside through a small door and out into an alleyway. She stood to her full height and stretched her arms above her. Sweat soaked her undershirt and made it cling to her like a second skin.

When I got out of the tunnel my shirt was plastered against my skin, and my hair was dripping wet. I swept it back over my head. I breathed deep and took in the fresh surface air, cold and invigorating. Once the novelty wore off, I realized it wasn’t so fresh after all. It smelled heavily of fish. Overhead, a seagull gave a horrible cry and circled us, and then flew away.

It was twenty minutes until we heard Yulf thumping toward the tunnel exit. It sounded like a bull had gotten stuck in there, he was so loud. Tilde and I grabbed an arm each and helped him out. For a minute Yulf just stayed on his hands and knees. His muscles had seized up. Then he started to stretch out and finally, he got to his feet.

“Easy does it, big fella,” I said.

Yulf nodded to me in thanks.

Looking around, we seemed to be in some kind of disused industrial district. Pennywrote was full of places like this. Before the empire seized the city from the Lotas, it was the heart of a vast network of industrial infrastructure. The empire, being a heavy-handed fuckwit, sent most of the captured Lotas to the gallows, leaving the city with nobody to work in its various industries. Factories closed and warehouses were abandoned. These days, Pennywrote maintained its status as the capital city and grandest city in the empire by the tithes it took from new settlements and cities that joined the empire, as well as the towns in the world that were better managed and more prosperous.

“Come on,” said Tilde.

She led us on a tour of alleyways with weeds growing in between the cobblestones on the ground and rainwater dripping from gutters packed solid with mulch and silt. She took us left, right, right, left. We took another dozen turnings until I completely lost any sense of direction. Yulf didn’t seem to care.

“You fellas flagging? Not far now and then you can rest,” Tilde told us.

We traveled this way for thirty minutes until finally, Tilde stopped in front of a three-story shop made from grey limestone bricks. There were two windowpanes almost covering the whole face of the ground floor. The glass was smothered in a film of dirt and dust and someone had written ‘clean me’ using their finger. Someone else had replied saying, ‘clean your balls.’

There was a sign on the front of the building hanging just above the door that read Smith & Sons Upholstery. It had a symbol of a black needle and thread next to the name. Around the building were the warren of alleyways we’d fled through and yet more alleyways that led into different parts of the industrial maze. Nearby were other buildings equally disused.

Standing in front of the door, Tilde produced a tiny key smaller than her thumb and put it in the lock, and turned it. A giant eye with an ice blue iris appeared in the middle of the door. It blinked at us. A mouth with thick, red lips appeared ten inches below the eye.

“Password?” the door asked.

Yulf let out a cry and staggered back and collided with the wall behind him. I tried to put my hand on his shoulder but he was too tall. “It’s just an artificed door,” I told him. “It ain’t really alive.”

Yulf eyed the door like he wanted to tear it off its hinges.

“Let me in before I kick you down, you stupid bastard door,” said Tilde.

The door blinked and then opened.

“That’s it? That’s the password?” I said.

She shrugged. “As good as any.”

The door creaked fully open and the three of us went inside. Yulf had to duck his head at the doorframe. He sped up as he crossed the threshold, wanting to get away from the artificed door.

“Excuse the state of this place,” said Tilde. “We never have time to do much with it. The roof’s fixed, at least. And we unblocked the chimney so we can have a fire when it’s cold enough. There was a dead fox in there, blocking it up. You believe that? How’d a fox get stuck in a chimney?”

As she led us through cramped corridors, mana lamps in ornamental brass casings came to life on the walls one by one. They illuminated bare floorboards and walls with no decoration save for broken plaster. In odd patches, there were hints of old wallpaper that had resisted the damage time had wrought on the place but that was it. It could have passed for a building site.

“I imagine there are lots of things you wanna ask,” said Tilde.

“Oh. Only about a hundred.”

“Okay. Not long now.”

Yulf said nothing.

Eventually, we came to a room. The only things in it were chairs stacked a dozen high in two unsafe columns, and a wicker dark varnished cabinet filled with bottles. Without being asked Yulf took three chairs and set them down and he slumped into one, sighing the sigh of a man who had a lot of sighing to do. The wooden seat immediately broke beneath his great weight and his ass smashed into the floor. In a fit of anger, he threw what remained of the chair into the wall, where the wood smashed into bits. After that, he then took three more chairs and stacked them on top of each other and climbed onto the uppermost one. This time it supported his weight.

“Not the solution I would have gone for,” said Tilde, nodding to the furthest corner of the room where there was a steel seated chair, “But a solution nonetheless.”

Tilde took a half-filled bottle of sailor’s rum from the cabinet in the corner of the room and she walked to an unbroken chair and sat in it. She uncorked the bottle with her teeth and spat the cork across the room and took a big glug from the bottle. When she was done she wiped her lips.

“Sit your ass down,” she told me.

Despite my exhaustion, I stayed standing. “Time we talked. Don’t think I’m ungrateful or nothing. But in my experience folks don’t do anything from the goodness of their hearts.”

“Don’t they? There’s an orphanage on Chariot’s Way, run by half a dozen monks. You saying they got an ulterior motive?”

“Okay. Not many folks do something without expecting their palm greased, then. The question I have is what kind of grease are you asking from me?”

“Thirsty?” She offered the bottle to me and I went over and took it from her and glugged some down. The liquid was pure fire, and I had to suppress the cough building in my throat. “This stuff could clean the hulls of fishing boats,” I said and handed the bottle back to her.

“Believe it or not, that bottle right there is fifty gold a glass. I hope you’re worth it, Rattlesnake. After all the effort it took to get you out. Yulf?” she said, gesturing with the bottle. Yulf shook his head.

“Let’s settle this Rattlesnake crap first,” I said.

Tilde peered at me. “You know, you don’t look how I expected you to, Snake. I pictured someone, I don’t know, tougher.”

Well, this was embarrassing. She had just sprung me out of a guard tower and saved me from execution, before leading me through smuggler’s tunnels and into the slums of the city. She must have had a hell of a good reason for needing to do that. Evidently, it was because she thought I was somebody else. What was I going to say to her now? Sorry, you’ve got the wrong guy?

Before I could reply, Tilde carried on. “I’ve brought you here now, Snake. Not many folks get to see this place and walk out with their neck unslit. You’re getting me nervous, the way you’re acting. If you aren’t Rattlesnake then I’m gonna have some thinking to do. Real, dark thinking.”

Something dawned on me then. Something I’d overheard the guards talking about. There were two executions scheduled for today. Mine and another criminal’s. It must have been the hooded guy who was sharing Yulf’s cell before I pissed off Hargreaves and got myself moved into it.

That guy must have been Rattlesnake. No doubt about it. He was meant to be in that cell when Tilde arrived, but I had messed that up and taken his place. Now, Tilde was going to realize that I wasn’t this Rattlesnake fella and she was going to kill me for it.

Then again, one thing was clear. She thought I was Rattlesnake, even after seeing my face. That meant she didn’t know what he looked like.

It was pretty obvious what I had to do. I had to be Rattlesnake. It wasn’t so crazy to think I could do that. I had mimic blood in my veins, after all. But there was just one problem. I didn’t know who the hell Rattlesnake was. I didn’t know what he looked like, what he did, or how he acted. No mimic could work on a blank canvas. Not even Pa.

I didn’t have much information to go on either. I only knew two things. One. This Rattlesnake fella had committed a crime worthy of execution. Two. Something about him had made it worthwhile for a girl with Tilde’s talents to help him escape.

Stitching these tangles of thoughts together, I reckoned Rattlesnake must have been an important criminal.

So how would someone like him act? That was what I needed to decide. How would a fella like that carry himself? What would he say?

If I got it wrong, Tilde might kill me on the spot. She sure as shit didn’t have qualms about sticking a blade in a guard’s gut so why would she care about doing it to me?

I remembered the times when Pa would take me to plays and to actors’ workshops where I learned how to get into character. Pa always said mimics and actors were fruits growing on the same tree. I recalled his lessons and I leaned back in my chair in as arrogant and relaxed a pose as I could manage.

“Yeah. You can call me Rattle, then, since we’re on first-name terms. Anyway. How’d you know it was me in there? I don’t exactly shout my name for everyone to hear.”

“I just had it on good authority from someone who knows you well. Someone who was there when you were arrested. Wasn’t so hard to steal the arrest log in the local precinct and find out where you’d been taken.”

“Someone who knows me well? Bullshit. Nobody knows me that well,” I said, happily getting into character now the way Pa showed me.

“Nobody?”

“Nope.”

“Not even a lady over on Ragside West?” said Tilde. “One with a loose skirt and looser lips?”

“Fine. So you know me. Congratulations. You gonna tell me why you just ruined a perfectly good execution?” I asked.

Tilde studied me for a few seconds. She grinned. “They said you were a cocky bastard. I like it.”

“How about you tell me why I’m here?”

“Pretty simple. You’re one of the most famous rogues in Pennywrote if folks aren’t talking out of their asses. Our leader died and we need a new one. Without a leader, we’re lacking…how to put it. Direction. Yeah. When we heard that you were imprisoned in the up in the Nest, seemed too good an opportunity to miss.”

“I get it. You want me to head up whatever this outfit is.”

Tilde nodded. “That size of it.”

“As payment for saving me from the noose, I take it?”

“They never said how sharp your wit was.”

“What if I don’t want to?” I said.

“Then your stay of execution might end a little sooner than you expected.”

“Like that, is it?”

“As I said. You’ve seen a place folks don’t normally get to see. And we wasted a lot of gold getting you here. Like for like, as they say. Now, are you gonna shut up and start making us some gold?”

Chapter 12

The way I saw it, I had a few problems to solve. First, I couldn’t just take to the streets and leave these chumps behind. I was a guy who’d escaped execution, after all. Sure, I could mimic faces, but not for long enough to get so far from Pennywrote that I’d be safe from the guards. There were bound to be posters with my face on them plastered all over the city, and memory mages would be questioning the scuds in the Crow’s Nest to find out what happened and get a full recall of what I looked like. I was hot shit from now on.

Pennywrote sure as hell wasn’t a place I wanted to be right now, but there was no way of me getting out through the gates. Maybe if I used the smuggler tunnels it might be possible, but those things were dark and ran for miles and miles. Tilde said that large parts of them had been blocked up by the empire. I didn’t want to die in some rat-infested tomb. At least if I stayed here for a while, I could lie low and make arrangements.

My problems didn’t end there though. This Rattlesnake fella was apparently one of the most famous rogues in Pennywrote. I never heard of him, but then I didn’t run in those circles and I’d only stayed in Pennywrote a few times. After we lost the farm when they took Pa, I’d worked a variety of jobs to build up my skills. I worked in taverns, I apprenticed to a blacksmith for a while, I even took a job taking folks on tours around the Bowden Quarry Museum. But I wasn’t no rogue, that was for sure. Yet here I was in the company of a girl wearing leathers that were riddled with blades, and with the skill and surety to use them.

It was enough to make a guy start to worry, but I was a half-mimic. I knew, if I knew a damn thing, how to pretend to be something I wasn’t. I could almost hear Pa telling me I had to use the skills he spent so long teaching me. “Leave cheese sitting too long on the counter and the mice will get it,” he’d say.

It wasn’t that easy though. There was a second pain in my ass. This Rattlesnake fella. What if one of the thieves in Tilde’s outfit knew the guy? They’d rumble me quicker than a bear sniffing out a coward’s pants.

…Or would they?

What had Tilde said to me? You don’t look how I expected you to. Maybe this was something. Tilde didn’t have a damned clue what Rattlesnake looked like. Given that she’d been the one in charge of freeing him you’d think that she would have researched the guy.

This led me to another conclusion. Nobody had a joker’s clue what this Rattlesnake fella looked like. The guy was a famous rogue but maybe only his name was famous. People knew of Rattlesnake but they had no idea about his face. Made sense. A famous rogue, hell even a sensible one, might take precautions so folks couldn’t pick him out of a crowd.

And then a thought stopped me cold.

The real Rattlesnake was set to be executed, and hangings were always public. Folks loved watching a man swing and they’d gather in the market square to watch the poor sap get escorted to the guillotine. Merchants would wait on the outskirts of Deadman’s Plaza with pop-up food carts selling grilled sardines and honeycomb sticks.

Everyone would suddenly hush. The dead man would give his last words. Usually either something profound like “The gods will judge all ye who witness this” or maybe something cowardly like “Please, ma, please”.

The hooded executioner would invite the soon-to-be-deceased to put his head in a noose and then he’d give the fella the last shove he’d ever have.

There was a reason this bothered me. What if, when they read out the real Rattlesnake’s criminal charges, it somehow gave away his identity?

What if the town guards knew that this man was Rattlesnake and told the crowd that?

What if Rattlesnake himself used his dying breath to declare his identity to the world?

Word would get back to Tilde and she’d know I was an impostor and she’d kill me. Yup. I had a real bitch of a problem to solve and I needed to do it now. I didn’t like having things hanging over me. Never had.

“Tilde?”

She was over the corner of the room kneeling beside the varnished wooden cabinet. I heard the clinking of bottles and she stood and faced me and she brought a bottle to her lips. It was some kind of whiskey, but the label was half peeled off.

“What is it?” she said.

I made sure I looked as relaxed as possible. “A guy is being given the noose today. He was in the Nest same time as me. He was a real talker. A braggart. Fella was spitting bullshit every time his lips wobbled.”

Yulf met my eyes just then, but he didn’t say anything.

“So?” said Tilde.

“So the guy was always saying he was this person. That person. He was the governor of Fort Yellerton. He was a prince from some country far east. I even heard him say he was Rattlesnake, the son of a bitch. Imagine that. A guy in the same jail pretending to be me. If the son of a bitch had been in my cell I’d have cut his face off.”

I wondered just then if I’d maybe gone a little too far, and resolved to tone it down.

“Why would he say he’s you?” asked Tilde.

I shrugged. “Guy was saying anything he could to get the guards to give him the slip. I reckon he thought that the guards would let Rattlesnake go, expecting they’d be rewarded for it.”

“You’re saying this fella was pretending to be you?”

“Yup, and I say we let him. If the fella goes to the noose saying he’s Rattlesnake, then we don’t correct him.”

“Why the fuck would I correct him? Why would I even care about some other lunatic getting hanged? I don’t even know why you brought this up.”

“Just saying. Would be pretty useful if folks thought Rattlesnake was dying today.”

“Right. Well fine, I get it,” she said. “Maybe I can get a word through the whisper vines and make sure it spreads. I know a good gossipseller.”

“No. No gossipsellers.”

“Why?”

“I just hate them,” I said. “Gold grabbing bastards. Just get the word out the usual way.”

Yulf eyed me from atop his throne of three wooden chairs but he didn’t say anything. It was at that moment I knew I liked the guy. I winked at him. He winked back.

Tilde studied me for a while. “Okay. So we let folks think this other fella is you, and when he gets hanged, they’ll think the legendary Rattlesnake is dead. I’m starting to like it. Looks like we made the right choice.”

I slipped back into the character that I was building for Rattle. Or Snake. I still wasn’t completely decided on which nickname he’d prefer. “Don’t remember asking for a critique. While we’re on the subject who’s we? It’s about time I met the rest of this shoddy shower of shit outfit. If I’m gonna use my considerable skills to lead you all to riches and glory, I wanna know who I can count on.”

“Eager to get started,” she said. “I like it. This calls for a drink.”

I shook my head. "No. This calls for you to get the rest of this group of half-wits together so I can see how much of a pain in the ass this job is gonna be. Let’s start with this place.”

“What about it?”

“Look at it. I know you need somewhere to lie low where folks don’t know about. A place that doesn’t stick out, where you can escape the heat of a job. That doesn’t mean it’s gotta be a run-down hovel. Judging by this, you guys haven’t stolen anything worth shit this side of Empire’s Day. We need to change that."

“Stay here,” she said. She left by a door at the far end of the room. Yulf and I were alone. I took another look around the room. This had been an upholstery workshop of sorts, according to the sign outside. But the inside was stripped bare. There was nothing worth looking at, nothing worth using, nothing worth stealing. Maybe that was the point, so that if scuds ever took a look around, they’d think it was just another deserted shithole.

"What do you think about all of this?" I asked Yulf.

Yulf, in that sagely way of his, said nothing. This was a man who really knew the power of silence. I liked it. Pa and I used to share easy silences. The way I always saw it, the more you could share quiet with a person, the better you liked each other.

I still wasn’t sure about trusting Yulf, though. I got a vague feeling the guy wasn’t going to spill about what I was doing, but vague feelings weren’t enough. I needed to be sure.

“Course,” I said, “you know that I’m not this Rattlesnake fella, don’t you? You got me pegged.”

Yulf said nothing. Just stared. But there was something in that stare.

“Can I trust you not to say anything?” I said.

He didn’t utter a word, but the corners of his lips curled a little. He nodded.

I decided that I had better trust him for now. Until I found out otherwise, that was. After all, I’d earned the big man’s loyalty by helping him out of the sewer when Tilde was all set for just leaving him. That told me something about her, too. I shouldn’t trust her an inch. In fact, as soon as the heat died down and I got some coin and made a plan, I was out of here.

I walked over to the door and pressed my ear against it. I didn’t hear anything. I went and sat back down.

“You and I got dealt a gold flush today, Yulf. Best we make the most of it. No nooses for us. But we gotta stick close in this. Sing the same song. It might seem like I’m being a bit of an ass but I’m just trying to get the feel of this Rattlesnake fella. How he’d act and stuff. Okay? Okay then. I’ll take that as you’re on my side.”

With Yulf not in the mood to chat, I decided that the real Rattlesnake wouldn’t sit tight just because Tilde told him to. So I left the room and spent a while searching through the hideout's various storerooms and empty hallways and bare crannies and deserted nooks. The place had very little in it, though there were some rooms upstairs with padlocks on the doors, and the downstairs kitchen had an oven that was still warm and it had a sink with dirty plates and knives and forks piled in it.

I went outside and back into the alley and I had a look around. First, though, I wedged a piece of rotten timber under the hideout door. I didn’t want to close it in case I couldn’t get it open again. I had already memorized the stupid password Tilde used to get in, but there was no telling that it would respond to me. The artificery might only work for Tilde.

I headed through the maze of alleyways and away from the hideout, memorizing the turns I took. I came to a factory yard of wide-open asphalt with nothing much in it. A pack of three street terriers were chasing each other around, tails wagging, feigning aggression in the playful way pups do. They stared at me for a while but they didn’t come close. I reckoned it might be a good idea to befriend them. I crossed the asphalt yard and they skittered away and watched me warily from the corner of an old warehouse. I decided I’d try again the next time I had treats to give them.

Beyond the asphalt was a wooden dock with a few boats moored by rope tied around concrete stumps. Mostly old fishing boats that had been condemned and a couple of pleasure boats with stupid names on the side like Pearl of the Sea and Bessie’s Brassiere. I couldn’t see any folks around but I didn’t stay long enough to find out how often the docks were used.

I headed back into the alleyway and explored a little in a different direction. It was a network of side streets that formed a slum of disused buildings. All of them had dusty windows, some covered in ragged half-curtains salvaged from netting and other fabrics. When I glanced in the broken windows of some, I spotted some of the poorer residents of Pennywrote squatting in dens of filth. Families huddling around burn barrels spitting black smoke and venting it out of windows. Drunks lounging in dirty blankets and passing bottles back and forth. Quite a few of the places looked tidy, which made me think this wasn’t just a place where the seedier aspect of Pennywrote hid. I was quiet and I made sure none of them saw me.

I headed back to Smith & Sons Upholstery and, having evaluated the area, I reckoned that this was a good place for a rogue hideout. That was the way I saw it. The town guards rarely patrolled places like this because it was a waste of their time. Ninety percent of the rest of Pennywrote’s population had no reason to enter this rut of squalor either. As well as that, the folks who already lived here wouldn’t take a gnat’s notice of a bunch of rogues hanging around. If they did, then they could be paid off pretty easily.

I headed back into the hideout to find that Tilde still wasn’t back and Yulf was sitting on his throne of stacked chairs in the same quiet contemplation that he’d enjoyed back in the Crow’s Nest. He was a man comfortable in his own company and his own thoughts. Despite his size, he gave off a gentle aura and it was hard to reconcile him with the beast who’d supposedly slaughtered a tavern full of people. More and more I was thinking that Hargreaves was talking out of his ass when he told me that.

Yulf looked up from his thoughts when I entered. There was a slight glimmer of friendliness in his eyes.

“Just been exploring,” I told him. “Not much around here, fella, and we got our work cut out making this place livable. Right now the Crow’s Nest seems like it was a place of luxury. But I reckon we can do it.”

Yulf nodded at me.

With Tilde still missing, it gave me time to address what I saw as my biggest problem. Rattlesnake was a famous rogue. Tilde had gone to the effort of breaking him out of jail because she wanted to use his rogue skills, and I had none. That was something I needed to fix. Otherwise, the first time that they asked for a demonstration of Rattlesnake’s famous roguery, I’d make myself look like a clown.

I left Yulf and went back into the hideout’s gloomy hallways and to a room where earlier I’d spotted something that might help. It was an east-facing room with a few chairs, a broken work counter, and boxes upon boxes filled with sodden and weathered fabric. But there was another box tucked in the corner. It was a tin lockbox but the padlock was open.

Inside, I found a few things that I reckoned would help me.

Items received:

Lockpicks X 20

Pliers

Angled mirror

The point of the lockpicks was obvious. I couldn’t actually use them yet but I could learn. My preferred way would be to practice the skill so I didn’t have to waste mimicry to use it. At a pinch, though, maybe I could acquire a dirty version of the skill by watching Tilde or the other rogues at work. I’d tell them I wanted to evaluate their skills or something.

The pliers, I wasn’t so sure about. I knew they were a tool of many uses but I didn’t know how they applied to a rogue. As for the angled mirror, I could imagine something. I pictured using it after breaking into a house or a palace or something. I could angle the mirror to see if guards were patrolling in the next corridor, for instance.

I was happy with myself for coming up with that. It felt like I was really getting into character now.

I reckoned that I had some basics skills to learn if I was gonna do this. Lockpicking for one. Sneaking, too. Like the way Tilde had when she’d gotten into the jail and up into the Crow’s Nest. I’d have to practice these in secret. If Tilde or any of the other rogues saw how useless I was at this stuff then they’d rumble that I wasn’t Rattlesnake. I wouldn’t be surprised to feel cold steel on my throat if it came to that.

I heard a door would open way down the corridor. A voice called out “Snake? Where you at?”

I joined Tilde in the room with the drink cabinet where Yulf was still calmly sitting. Standing next to Tilde was a man. He was short and squat and had more jowls than a seal. He wore a belt across his waist. It resembled a girdle and seemed to perform the dual function of keeping his belly fat in check while holding all his rogue tools. Lockpicks and mirrors and pliers and other odds and ends that right now I didn’t know the purpose of. Course, I couldn’t say that I didn’t know. I was gonna have to educate myself.

He had a nervy look to him, standing there like a kid who’d been caught doing something wrong. If I had to guess his age I’d say it wasn’t that long ago that he first started growing hairs on his face. Then again, he had a bit of a haggard look around his eyes. Maybe he was one of those fellas who always looked young.

“Where ya been?” Tilde asked me.

“Taking a look around. Who’s this?”

Tilde slapped the man on the back. “Magpie. Call him Magpie or Mags but never Pie. Even though he eats enough of ‘em.”

Magpie nervously scratched his chin. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rattlesnake, sir. I’ve followed your work for years. The heist you pulled in Turner’s Reach was exquisite. It was what made me want to be a rogue. Can I ask you something about Turner’s Reach?”

“No. Don’t be talking specifics. You never know who’s listening,” I said.

“Sorry, Mr. Snake, sir.”

I studied him. I paced a circle around him with one arm folded across my chest and the other stroking my chin. I reckoned that was how Rattlesnake would act. “So you’re a rogue, are ya?”

“I am, sir.”

"Let me get this straight. Your job is to sneak into places. Climb through windows and creep along darkened hallways without being seen or heard. Or am mistaken?”

“They weren’t lying when they said you were an expert,” said Tilde.

“My point is that being a rogue requires stealth. Agility. A certain balance of mind and muscle. Magpie here looks like he’d get wedged in the frame of the first window he dragged his ass through.”

“Don’t be so mean to Magpie!”

I held my hand up. “Believe me. I don’t say this to be hurtful. If we were passing on the street, your appearance wouldn’t mean a thing to me. But I’m in charge of this shower of shit outfit now. When I get told that one of my thieves has the body of an emperor penguin it becomes my responsibility to take an interest in your physique.”

Magpie looked at the ground. It made me feel bad and I reckoned I’d gone too far. Maybe Rattlesnake wouldn’t care much about feeling bad, though. You could hardly become a legendary rogue if you had a conscience following you around. Unfortunately, my conscience was something I could only shift if I activated the Callousness of Pertwee the Tax Inspector. I wasn’t about to do that now.

Maybe it was just that a leader had to learn the equilibrium between the carrot and the stick. Pa always told me a mimic has to find a balance. “Don’t let your true self get lost in the one you’re mimicking, because if you go too deep you might not get it back.” That was what he always said.

“As it happens, Magpie,” I said, nicer this time, “I’m not in the best shape myself. My stamina has gone to shit from my time in the Nest. I gotta fix that. How about you and I exercise together a little every day?”

“I’d love to, Mr. Snake. I could even bake us some of my energy cupcakes. You know. To boost our energy before exercise.”

“Cupcakes? No. Cut that shit out. You gotta get lean. Tomorrow morning you and I can take a run through the slums. I want you outside this building as soon as the sun rises and I want you ready to sweat your ass off. On that note, there’s something else I need to ask. Since Tilde kindly broke me out of the Nest, I might find myself in a spot of bother if I was to be seen in the city. That means I need to take lodgings here. Are there any beds in this place?”

“I sleep on a pallet upstairs, Mr. Snake.”

“That won’t do. We’re rogues. We ain’t rats. In our line of work, you need to be operating with maximum efficiency and concentration. You won’t get that there sleeping every night on a wooden pallet. I want beds in here. Nice comfy ones.”

Tilde looked irked. “We don’t have enough petty cash for beds,” she said.

“Yet you’re glugging whiskey at five hundred coins a pop.”

“We stole that.”

“So do what rogues do. Don’t drink your loot. Sell it. How much cash do we have?”

Tilde produced a smooth, silver stone from a little flappy pocket on her leathers. She made a glove with her sleeve and wiped the stone. She passed it to me.

“I suppose this is yours now, Rattle.”

“What is it?”

“A leader stone.”

Item received: Leader Stone

A stone possessed by the leader of a group or guild, giving them access to the group’s vital information.

Dockside East Outfit

Members: 3

Cash reserves: 100GD

Headquarters: Smith and Sons Upholstery unit, dockside east.

Headquarters rating: 1/5

Assets: None

Other properties: None

Rogue group reputation: small fry

We had no members, no money, and nobody in the underworld knew we even existed. I supposed that last part might work in favor, in a way, but this wasn’t our reputation within Pennywrote. It was our reputation amongst criminals as a rogue outfit. If folks didn’t know us, then they wouldn’t respect us.

“This stone is artificed, ain’t it?” I said.

Tilde nodded.

The leader stone let me go deeper, moving away from the group’s information and seeing the skills and stats of its members.

Tilde May Messier

Age: 26

Salary: 0GD

Physique: 6

Pickpocketing: 5

Lockpicking: 4

Sneaking: 7

Forgery: 0

Disguise: 0

Acting: 1

Lying: 1

Trap disarming: 4

Bobby ‘Magpie’ Brooks

Age: 24

Salary: 0GD

Physique: 1

Pickpocketing: 1

Lockpicking: 1

Sneaking: 1

Forgery: 3

Disguise: 4

Acting: 0

Lying: 0

Trap disarming: 7

The stone vibrated in my hand.

‘Would you like to add member, Arch John Wild, to Dockside East outfit?’

I thought yes, and the leader stone prompted me again.

‘Pass stone to Arch John Wild for consent.’

I gripped the stone harder and gave my permission.

Member added to Group: Dockside East

Arch John Wild

Age: 26

Salary: 0GD

Physique: 4

Pickpocketing: 0

Lockpicking: 0

Sneaking: 0

Forgery: 0

Disguise: 8

Acting: 8

Lying: 8

Trap disarming: 0

Next, I told the stone to add Yulf to the outfit, and I passed it to him.

“Time we made this union official,” I said. “Yulf. Would you do me the honor of joining this here gang of lovable delinquents?”

Tilde coughed.

“Something to say?” I asked.

“We helped your friend here leave the Crow’s Nest. But I don’t need to mention that a very large and very muscled man is not conducive to either sneaking around or keeping a low profile.”

“What happens when we need to crush a skull or two?”

“I’m not exactly defenseless,” said Tilde. “Anyway. Word is you killed five men by yourself in the Portly Plumber tavern. Some kind of card game that went west.”

“Oh. That. Well, I don’t like to talk ill of the dead. Listen. I’m not happy with certain aspects of this outfit and one of them is our muscle. I’m not saying I expect Yulf here to be shimmying down chimneys, but he has talents that I want to utilize.”

“I agree,” said Magpie. “He may complement our existing skills well.”

Yulf nodded at Magpie, who beamed under the recognition. Tilde shrugged. “Okay then. Pleased to have ya, I s’pose, big fella.”

I tossed the stone to Yulf who didn’t attempt to catch it. It hit his chest and bounced off. He climbed down from his chair stack and picked it up.

“Just need you to consent to joining the group,” I said.

New member added to group: Dockside East.

Yulf

Age: 41

Salary: 0GD

Physique: 9

Pickpocketing: 0

Lockpicking: 0

Sneaking: 0

Forgery: 0

Disguise: 0

Acting: 0

Lying: 0

Trap disarming: 0

I studied everyone’s stats for a while, including my own. I, of course, had no rogue skills just yet. Tilde and Magpie had built up parts of their skill portfolios but there were parts where both of them were lacking.

“Looks like Tilde’s the one who can creep around places and Mags here is more technical,” I said.

Magpie smiled, but Tilde said, “Wait. Aren’t you the most technical? You’re supposed to be the best rogue around.”

“I was excluding me. Dockside East is the name of this outfit?”

Tilde nodded proudly. “Yup. Wally Fingers started it, gods rest his butter-filled heart and veins.”

“Okay then,” I said. “So this is it? The four of us? Nobody else?”

Tilde nodded. “Few chicken shits defected when Bjorn died and things got lean.” She spat on the floor. “Better off without ‘em. You find out the color of a person’s belly when things go bad. Mags here is the only one who stuck around.”

That told me a lot about both Tilde and Mag’s loyalties. It also made me wonder about Tilde. She said that when things had gotten lean, members of the outfit defected. Tilde hadn’t. Not only had she stuck around, but she’d broken into the Crow’s Nest and murdered a few scuds just to break me out. That told me that she was invested in the fortunes of this outfit. It meant a lot to her.

I sighed, getting back into character. “So it’s Mag’s, Tilde the drunk, and me and Yulf. Well. We’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do ain’t we? First thing is we need more bodies in here. More meat for the pan. No outfit ever got rich with four members in it. We ready to get working?”

Tilde looked at Magpie and she grinned and I could see both of them were happy now that they had someone to tell them what to do. Problem was that the person telling them didn’t have a damned clue himself.

But that was okay. I was a half-mimic. I could learn.

Chapter 13

I spent a day or two exploring the hideout and inventorying everything that was in there, which didn’t amount to much. The best haul was two boxes of lockpicks of various shapes and sizes, none of which I was skilled enough to use yet. I snagged a shiny-looking set of eleven picks that came in a leather pouch that I could fold up and fit in my pocket. The picks were different lengths and had different shaped hooks and heads on them.

In a second-floor bedroom, I found an old, rain-sodden costume box with wigs and beards in it. In the kitchen, the cupboards were filled with spices and long-life goods such as fava beans and dry red lentils. There was a larder outside in the yard, where a hatch hid a set of down-sloping stone stairs. In the larder were some carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, and a lockbox with half a dozen pork chops inside.

Everything else worth anything was locked away, either in the hideout safe, an old thing with a number dial that they’d stolen from a penny-stock bank, in their own bedrooms, or in Mag’s workshop which was in the attic above the top floor. Mags was defensive about his workshop and said he’d show me around it once he cleared it up, but his voice lacked conviction.

In my first couple of days in charge, neither Tilde nor Mags asked for a demonstration of my skills. I beat them to the punch and asked to see theirs.

Tilde wasn’t happy with this. “You have the leader stone,” she said. “You can see how good we are.”

“I ain’t relying on a stone to tell me what’s what,” I said. “You scared or something?”

“How about you show us, oh brilliant one?”

“I would, but my skill would make you feel so lousy you’d give up rogue life for good.”

This way, I was able to watch Tilde and Mags pick the locks on the padlocks on their bedroom doors. They did it in seconds, nowhere near enough time for me to acquire the skill through mimicry. I’d need to watch several hundred repetitions, and I doubted I could get Tilde to humor me for that long. Mags, maybe, but even he would find it weird.

It was much easier to acquire their voices. I had dirty acquisitions ready within half a day, but I persevered to get cleaner ones. No point rushing these things. I really, really hated the debuffs that came with dirty mimicry.

As well as that, I immediately set to acquiring their physiques, which I accomplished by studying them whenever it was natural to do so. I couldn’t use my sketchpad. That’d look odd, sitting there and drawing them all the time. Especially with Mags. He was uncomfortable enough with being looked at as it was.

Finally, I decided it might be a good idea to acquire traits from them. I didn’t know much about them yet so I had no idea what kind of personalities they had, other than Tilde seemed cold and focused, and Mags was friendlier but had worse rogue instincts. He seemed happiest when he was locked in his workshop, judging by how I heard him whistling up there at night.

To acquire their personality traits, I had to find out more about them. So I asked them questions when it felt natural to do so.

Stuff like, “Say, where’d you grow up?” and “What’s your stance on what happens after we die?” the deeper you can delve into folks’ psyches, the more chance you got of acquiring traits.

In answering my questions, Tilde most often than not told me some variation of, “Shut up, you’re here to earn us gold, not write our biographies.”

Mags was happier to answer me, if a little nervous about why I was asking. From him I learned many things, one being that he believed that after we die, there’s nothing. Just an endless void.

It was a real cheery conversation.

I started to think about how the leader of a rogue outfit might act and how a fella like Rattlesnake in particular might conduct himself. Doing this was no different than an actor getting into character.

After dwelling on it some, I sent Tilde into Pennywrote to visit all eight of the districts holding cells where low lives holed up courtesy of the taxpayer. I didn’t relish welcoming a bunch of low lives into the hideout but the fact was we needed fresh meat in the group if we were going to make any gold.

“Find anyone who’s been arrested for theft, burglary, or pickpocketing. Horse thieves, too. Make a note of their names,” I said.

“Then what? Wait for them to get out on bail and then recruit ‘em?”

“Nope. Once we have the names of the folks arrested for being rogues, we know who to avoid recruiting. We don’t need people who’re stupid enough to get caught.”

I could tell she wanted to say something but was holding back. Evidently she didn’t hold back hard enough.

“Where exactly did I spring you from again? she asked.

“Good point. But that was different.”

“Different how?”

“Because I was set up.”

“Then let’s find the guy who crossed you and cut out his guts.”

“A nice offer,” I said, making something up on the spot, “but he’s gone north. Became a seal skinner I heard. Not worth our time chasing his ass up into the ice.”

“Never leave a grudge unsatisfied, I always say,” said Tilde. “I wish you hadn’t told me now. It’s like an itch, unfinished business. I feel like I gotta go gut something.”

“Forget him and focus on what I need you to do.”

“Yessir,” she said, her tone drenched in sarcasm.

After getting the names of the people caught stealing, that still left plenty of Pennywrote’s underbelly to choose from, and who knew? Some of them might be worth recruiting as rogues. But this was my problem.

“How does a fella identify who’s a rogue?” I asked Yulf when we were alone. “And how do I know a good one from a bad one? I can only see their talents levels if I let them join the outfit, and by then it’s too late.”

Yulf shrugged.

“By their definition,” I said, “If you can identify someone as a rogue then they ain’t very good at it. Yet if they are good at it, how the hell am I gonna identify them?”

Yulf made a squeezing motion with his hands.

“Naw. We can’t just go around squashing folks’ heads. That’d bring the wrong kind of attention.”

I thought about it and I thought about it and I reckoned I might have come up with something of a solution. Or at least something to work on. In the meantime, I decided to send Magpie out on an errand.

“Anything you need, Rattlesnake sir. What can I do?”

He was wearing blue overalls stained with oil all down the front, and he reeked of grease. On his feet, he had on thick, black work boots with steel caps. He wore a belt that was like Tilde’s, except it was full of screwdrivers and wrenches instead of daggers.

“I need you to procure as many padlocks as you can get please, Mags. Different kinds. Different locks of different sizes and different difficulty of mechanisms. That kind of thing. I want shed locks. Door locks. Safe box locks. Every kind you can think of.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be picking locks? Not locking things up?”

"Tell me something," I said. "If you were a swordsman would you learn the basics of swordplay and then sell your sword to a tinker and never practice them again? Or would you train every day, learning new techniques that might keep you breathing? Would you constantly push yourself to be the best or would you say you’re happy with being average?"

Magpie said nothing for a few seconds. The fact he had to think about this told me everything I needed to know about him. He had a set of lockpicks that he’d presumably learn how to use but he’d never revisited his training. He was probably too busy messing around in his attic workshop.

I had decided that I was going to make this the best rogue outfit in Pennywrote. I was going to be here for a while, after all, and I didn’t much like the idea of committing to something and doing it in half-measures. That was why, for most of the last ten years, I hadn’t committed to much at all. It was an easier solution. The only thing I’d ever committed to was finding out why Pa got arrested and then finding out the name of the gossipseller who had seen him mimicking in Freemantle. And then, of course, doing the thing that landed me in the Crow’s Nest.

Maybe it was time to commit to something here and now, that being turning this outfit into something great.

To do that, I needed people who were ready to work at being the best. I’d have to foster a culture of consistent improvement. That was where the padlocks came in and that was just the start of it.

"Bjorn never made us practice," said Magpie.

“The fella who used to lead this group?”

“Yep.”

“You mean the fella who currently resides in a shallow grave in a field twenty miles east of town? Fella who got caught skulking in the wrong yard by the wrong person?”

“Every rogue gets caught at some point, sir,” said Mags. “Bjorn was just unlucky who caught him. Worst he should have got was being taken to the empiresmen and charged with trespass.”

I was learning that roguery was a big problem in Pennywrote, and Bjorn paid the price for that. It was sort of his own fault. He didn’t plan well enough. The particular merchant, Kenny Flint, whose yard he was skulking in had had three tons of steel and an industrial ink press stolen recently. He was pretty mad about it.

So, when he caught Bjorn prowling around his yard he didn’t do what a lawful citizen should do. He decided not to inform the town guards. Instead, he set his guard dogs on Bjorn. They were young bull-tamer dogs with jaws strong enough to tear through leather, and prey drives that Kenny had painstakingly encouraged.

The story, as Tilde told it, was that Kenny found Bjorn huddled back against the fence and shielding himself from the dogs. He woke up his three sons, James, Brian, and Hugh. They took Bjorn into the forest half a mile away from the city where they cut his throat and then gutted him and then buried his remains in a shallow grave in a field of rye so it looked like wolves might have done it. The truth only came out when the eldest brother James started bragging in the Ruptured Kidney copper-a-gin bar. Even then, the word didn’t get back to the empiresmen because nobody believed him, and even if they did, the empiresmen didn’t give a fat fuck about a guy like Bjorn. The story, however, got back to Tilde.

After Tilde had told me the story of poor old Bjorn, she said, “That’s something you need to address.”

“’Scuse me?”

“The merchant. Kenny Flint. He can’t get away with murdering Bjorn.”

“What you expect me to do? Resurrect the fucker from the dead?”

Tilde swigged more whiskey from the bottle. She burped and then slurred, “Kill Kenny Flint, of course. Kill his sons and his dogs and his wife. Burn down his house, plunder his merchant yard for loot, and then set the rest ablaze. Take a piss on the ashes and call it a night.”

“You ever considered not drinking so much?”

She eyed me angrily. “It’s your responsibility as a leader to make sure this doesn’t go unanswered.”

“It’s my responsibility to make sure this outfit is fit for purpose. And what’s the purpose of a rogue group? To make money.”

“Don’t you give a shit about Bjorn and what happened to him?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Nope. I didn’t know Bjorn. The way I see it, this is a life you get into knowing the odds are against you and they could get worse any second. You think a fella signs up for the empiresmen then cries when they send him to war? Nope. He took the chance, and he lost out. The world ain’t fair. A person can work hard and bother nobody and just raise animals and work in the fields. Not harming anybody. And even then the world sees that and takes a big shit on it.”

Tilde looked like she was ready to hit me but Rattlesnake's reputation made her treat me with deference. “Every time I think about what happened to him, I feel like cutting someone’s tongue out. Bjorn could be an arse but he didn’t deserve that.”

“So why didn’t you avenge him? You’re the girl who can sneak into a place like the Crow’s Nest and break a fella out, after all. A merchant shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I was sick. Glandular fever. By the time I felt better Bjorn was dead and the other guys had left our outfit, and only Mags stuck around.”

She’d backed down and I needed to capitalize on this. To get a firm hold on my leadership before things inevitably went to shit. People say you shouldn’t kick someone when they’re down, but in my experience, that’s exactly the best time to kick them.

The way I saw it, if I established myself as a leader and brought them gold and success then maybe one day I could tell them who I really was. By then I'd have enough authority that it wouldn't matter. Then I could consider my debt to them settled and I could leave roguery behind.

Where I’d go after that, I wasn’t sure. There was a place me and Pa talked about visiting once. A beach way, way, way out east. Pa said it was a place so quiet you could hear the moon sighing at night. Maybe that was where I’d go.

There was work to do first. I grabbed the whiskey bottle off Tilde and threw it across the room where it smashed on the wall. Streaks of amber dribbled down the plaster.

“Let’s get this straight. I’m the leader here. I decide our priorities. Revenge isn’t one of them. A rogue doesn’t measure success by the amount of blood he spills but by the weight of his coin bag. The worst thing we can do is get ourselves embroiled in a tit-for-tat feud with Kenny Fucking Flint. I’m sorry for Bjorn. I don’t mean to trample on what you’re feeling. But we can’t get embroiled in this. It won’t end well.”

“Doesn’t need to be a feud. We slaughter his family and that’s the last of it.”

“Think about this,” I said. “Merchants are often part of the merchants’ Guild. What happens when they get wind of this? What if Kenny Flint already told the guild what he did to Bjorn. Maybe he bragged about it. Told them he did it for the guild, so folks would think twice about thieving. Stop me if I’m talking nonsense here.”

“He could have told his guild, I suppose.”

“Okay. So then, when the merchant dies and all his family and his fucking dogs have been slaughtered, who’re they gonna think did it? They sure as a golden shit won’t think it was a coincidence. You’d have the whole guild on the lookout for us. Killing rogues whenever they got caught. It’d be a bloodbath.”

“But.”

“Bloodbath,” boomed a voice.

I was as surprised as anyone to see that Yulf had spoken. He stared at Tilde and me for a second and then left the room. We heard his feet trampling up the stairs to where I had tasked him with removing all the crap from the upstairs rooms.

Tilde and I stood there in shock. Part of me wondered if I’d imagined it. “I honestly didn’t think he could talk,” I said.

Tilde said nothing.

I stepped forward. “Look. Sorry for throwing the bottle.” I offered my hand. She didn’t take it.

I tried again.

“Your last leader got himself killed,” I said. “You broke me out of the cell because you needed my expertise. So you listen to it or we’re done here. Understand?”

Tilde nodded.

I carried on. “No killing, Tilde. The number one rule of this group is we do not want attention. Killing doesn't do anything but bring it. Think of every drop of blood spilled as being a trail that leads to our doorstep.”

“I know you’re right,” said Tilde. “It’s just…thinking of what they did to Bjorn. It makes me want to cut out Kenny’s mother’s heart and feed it to him with a spoon. Is that so hard to understand?”

“I guess not. Hell, that’s only natural. But we gotta be careful, though. We’re rogues, right? So let’s behave like rogues.

Chapter 14

Our days always started with the smell of hashbrowns, sausages, bacon, and eggs coming from the kitchen, which was the northernmost room on the ground floor of the hideout.

It had a window that looked out onto the backyard, a concrete square of land with nothing in it but some old, rusted barrels. Mags was a good cook but he sometimes burned the sausages by getting distracted tinkering with some trap or mechanism he brought downstairs with him, and when that happened Yulf would run in and open the window and use his great big shovel hands to waft the smoke away. Yulf, for some reason, had a stronger than usual fear of fire and smoke.

When Mags learned that I liked my coffee stronger than a kick in the balls from an angry mule, he always had a pot brewing for me. It was nice to see him and Yulf first thing in the morning. I hadn’t had breakfast with anyone since the days when I lived with Pa. Apart from the occasional short-lived romances I had over the years, that was, but I was too much of a pain-in-the-ass for such trysts to develop past getting our clothes off.

Tilde was, without fail, the last to wake. Usually because she was hungover. She’d shamble into the kitchen, turn on the tap and put her mouth to it, then gulp water until she was coughing. Then she’d drink two coffees and go recline on a chair while Mags cooked her a bacon and mushroom sandwich. Of the four of us, Yulf was the only one who didn’t eat meat. I reckoned he was vegetarian. He didn’t tell us that, of course, but I could only surmise it from how he’d happily eat mushrooms on toast but not any of the other breakfast offerings. With our bellies full, it would be time for the day to begin.

On one particular day, with Tilde out learning the names of the failed rogues who I said would never set foot over our threshold, Magpie procuring padlocks to practice on, and Yulf clearing out all the useless stuff from the various rooms in the hideout, I was alone.

I decided to spend that time watching myself die.

First, though, I spent time in the hideout just walking around and listening to the sounds. I used my mimic’s ear to memorize every creak of every single step or floorboard in the shop. And boy did they creak. The place creaked like the bedframes in a brothel.

I wasn’t just doing this because I liked the sound of creaking wood.

I was well-practiced in memorizing this kind of stuff thanks to being a half-mimic, and soon I knew the sounds so well that I would have been able to tell exactly where someone was in the hideout just by the noise their steps made. Once I spent enough time around Tilde and Mags, I’d also get used to the individual sound of their boots too and I’d be able to put a name to the sounds.

Basically, I wanted to be able to know whenever someone was in the hideout, and I wanted to know where they were.

Late that morning, I left the slum area. The place was busier than I thought it would be but Tilde had explained that lots of families lived in the various disused ironmongers and wholesalers' warehouses. Some of the bigger warehouses had up to a dozen families living in them, often without even cheap plaster partitions to give them privacy. I reckoned going to the John wasn’t a nice experience.

Most of the folks who saw me eyed me warily. I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t wearing my jail shirt and trousers anymore, which was a blessing because they stank like a sewer. Mags had given me one of his spare shirts and a pair of cotton trousers, which he’d used a needle and thread to alter so they fit me. It didn’t take him long. Guy was a sewing whizz.

I reckoned that maybe the people around here were suspicious just because I was a new face. Tilde said they knew her and Mags lived here but their cover was that they were starting a business. The presence of a new guy shouldn’t have been so strange.

In the end, I settled on the guess that the folks who lived around here were the ones who the rest of society pissed on, and they just plain distrusted anyone they didn’t know. I didn’t blame them, and what’s more, it was okay with me. The fewer folks who spoke to me, the better. I just wanted to get this job done and then leave.

After exiting the maze of alleyways, I crossed through onto the asphalt yard where the three stray terrier dogs usually prowled. One of them growled at me when they saw me and the other two took wary steps back. I threw a handful of bacon rinds to the mutts and then I headed into the center of Pennywrote.

Today, I was mimicking the face of Justice Cornhyke, the old regular of the Star & Garter who used to sit near the snug. His was an unpleasant face by some standards, with a craggy nose that looked like it belonged on a bigger face and with eyes set too wide apart.

To me, a watcher of faces, it wasn’t so bad. It was wrong to say that about any folk’s face, I reckoned. Justice’s face was just different, that’s all. Not ugly.

More importantly, it wasn’t my own face. The last thing I needed was an empiresman spotting me wandering around Pennywrote. Only problem was that I wouldn’t be able to keep the mimicry up for long. I’d need to keep my visits to the city brief.

Nearing the center of the city, I took a turn down Miller Street and followed the canal embankment where barges were moored up until I came to Merchant’s Square. The square was home to all manner of delightful cafes and cheery bakeries chuffing out the aroma of seed bread. Nearby were colorful sweet shops with glazed treats sitting temptingly in the windows.

It was also where they hanged criminals.

It was a good idea if you thought about it, and I had. Boy, had I dwelled on it. In the Crow’s Nest, I’d thought about it quite a lot. Way I saw it, the taverns and cafes and bakeries dotted around the plaza meant that folks could buy a coffee and a doughnut while they were waiting for a fella to get the noose. And fellas got the noose often in Pennywrote. That was why any trader with a bean’s worth of sense catered for the masses who gathered in Merchant’s Square to get their fix of vicarious violence. Pennywrote had many theatres, but could they compete with the thrill of hearing a serial pickpocket’s neck snap?

The square was thronging with people today, all of them facing a wooden platform that towered ten feet above them. Although the wood was varnished, various parts of it were stained with blood. I didn’t think there was much blood involved in a hanging, so I guessed that maybe they used it for guillotining people’s heads off as well. I admired their frugality.

Standing on the platform was a giant guy almost as big as Yulf and wearing a red hood and shawl that covered him from head to foot. Printed on the front of the shawl was the empire’s insignia, a golden halo with golden fire underneath it. Beside him were gallows with a thick coil of rope hanging down and tied into a noose at the end.

I took my place in the crowd. The hanging I was about to see should have happened a few days earlier. Rattlesnake, the real fella who’d occupied the rat-infested cell with Yulf until I made the glorious mistake of pissing off guard Hargreaves, had been doomed to die on the same day as me.

The only problem was that the gallows had broken. They’d gotten rain-sodden and the planks of wood had weakened, and on the morning of Rattlesnake’s execution, the whole platform caved in and swallowed Snake, the executioner, and the gallows into its splintery maw. Rattlesnake tried to hop away but he was manacled, and the giant executioner grabbed his ankle and dragged him down, and then sat on top of him.

If I had been a cynical man, I’d have said that it was no coincidence that the stage broke on the day Pennywrote’s most legendary rogue was due to hang. Nobody knew it was Rattlesnake, of course, they just thought it was some poor sap sentenced to die. But I knew, and I reckoned it was pretty funny that it happened that very day.

The same thing wouldn’t be repeated. That incident had embarrassed the empire and they’d want to make sure that today’s hanging was beautifully organized.

A cheer rose around me, directed at some movement to the side of the stage. Two town guards escorted a manacled man from a carriage and to the stage and then up some steps.

I peered at him intently, thinking is this him? Is this the fella whose life I’m stealing? It stirred a bad feeling in my belly, but the way I saw it, he was a rogue. By all accounts, he’d done things that deserved hanging ten times over. Whereas me? Did I deserve to be up in the Crow’s Nest?

Well, maybe, if you went by the letter of the law. I was a murderer after all. But that fucking gossipseller deserved to die and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.

My conscience abated and I stared at Rattlesnake. I stared at him the way Pa had taught me so that I studied every inch of his face. His hair. The way he walked and the way carried himself. He was tall and wiry, yet toned. He wore long and curly hair too luxurious to belong to a guy wearing jail scrubs. He was a striking guy. Even in his jail shirt and trousers, there was something about him. A way of walking that I reckoned I needed to learn if I was gonna emulate him successfully for very long.

They sat Rattlesnake down on a wooden stool. His posture was proud and straight. His legs were bound loosely at the ankles and the guards were respectful when they gave him time to stand up again.

The hooded executioner crossed the stage and gave a solemn bow to the guards, who bowed back and retreated from the gallows.

“A man dies unbound,” said the executioner.

He used a ceremonial bone knife to cut the bonds on Rattlesnake’s wrists. He put his big hands-on Rattlesnake’s back and guided him to the actual gallows. The ropes were tied to a horizontal wooden strut. Thick and sturdy. There was a stool beneath it. A cheap wooden thing that could have been in a school classroom.

“Does the soon-to-die wish to speak?” said the executioner.

Rattlesnake looked at the crowd gathered in their throngs and all bunched together and jostling each other and eating sugar-glazed doughnuts and stripped dipped apples, smearing sugar and honey around their mouths as they ogled a man who was soon to get the noose. It was a disgusting spectacle, and I felt disgusting along with them, even if I wasn’t stuffing my face with sugar.

Rattlesnake stared at them through large baleful eyes like an owl. I stared at them to get their shape committed to mind.

He cleared his throat.

A hush grew over the crowd.

They waited to see what profundities the man would bestow on them.

I wondered if he’d have some kind of truth for us. That in his last words before he was executed by the state he would speak the words that everyone there would remember and take home with them, and then unpack from their mind’s box of memories from time to time.

Rattlesnake cleared his throat again and for the last time.

“Fuck you all!” he shouted.

The crowd roared. Some of them pointed their fingers and swore at him as if he owed them something. Maybe they expected him to beg for his life and they felt like he’d cheated them out of it.

The executioner put a hand on Rattlesnake’s neck and bent his head down and looped the rope around it. It got caught on his hair. He flatted Rattlesnake’s hair down and positioned the rope around his neck.

He kicked the stool away.

Rattlesnake’s neck didn’t snap, and for ten long minutes, he choked on the rope that bit into his throat, kicking his legs and his arms out for support. The rope turned around and Rattlesnake turned around with it as he struggled for freedom, his body betraying the sense of dignity he’d managed to keep for so long through this ordeal. A wet patch spread over his trousers and his face redden and then turned a horrible blue and the folks below the gallows watched and took bites out of their seed bread and they drank ale from tankards that they’d have to return to the taverns surrounding the square once the execution was over.

The executioner pronounced him dead. Custodians wearing the empire insignia cut Rattlesnake down and carried him away on a wooden stretcher with a sheet draped over him. I could see the shape of his curly hair under it. They spread sawdust on the gallows and let the liquids soak into them.

They upturned the stool and set it under a new rope they tied onto the support strut. The watchers, the mas and pas and bankers and bakers and city tourists watching from not far away, chattered amongst each other and grew impatient and grumbled that it took so long between hangings for one corpse to be carried away and a soon-to-be-dead man to be brought out.

I turned around and I left.

Chapter 15

I had a hell of a lot of work to do to improve the fortunes of the Dockside East rogue outfit, but I couldn’t do all that at once. I ran a mental checklist to see where we stood.

Money for equipment?

We had ninety gold stored in a rusted old vault in the basement of Smith & Sons Upholstery. I’d already given ten gold to Mags so he could buy a bunch of padlocks. We were gonna have to stock up on groceries and tools of our trade, like smokeless torches, trappicks, lockpicks, wax pads for copying keys, and sealing wax for spreading on door latches to see if a building was unoccupied.

Okay. So what about members?

Four of us, and that included a guy faking his ass through this whole thing and a giant, almost-mute convict fresh from death row.

Beds?

A hard-ass plank of wood padded out by three blankets. Not soft enough for my delicate sensibilities. Not even close.

If I was to rank these in priority, I’d say beds, money, more members. But that was just me. I knew that most folks, including Rattlesnake, would rank money as the most pressing need.

Being a rogue comes with more overheads than people think. This is how they see rogue life: you just put on dark clothes and go out and start snatching purses. You don’t even have to pay tax. That isn’t the case, though. Well, apart from the tax thing. To be a good rogue, you have to do it right.

With thriftiness in mind, I went to Pennywrote library, a lovely spired building that towered over everything on Smithson’s Pass and cast its knowledgeable shadow over the nearby stirrup shop and tailors’ shop and sandwich maker.

In the library, I couldn’t find what I needed amidst the thousands of shelves and tens of thousands of books. I approached a librarian, a stern-looking half-orc who was writing in a ledger titled ‘library fines.’

“’Scuse me, fella,” I said.

“Yes?”

“You got any books on locksmithing?”

The half-orc studied me like I’d just asked for the address and dress size of his sister. “Locksmithing?”

“The art of making and repairing locks,” I said. “You heard of it?”

“Of course I have heard of it.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Can you tell me why you would need such a book?”

“What are you, the library bridge troll? Why’d you care so much who wants what? It’s your job to find the books, ain’t it?”

The half-orc tapped his pale green fingers on the fine ledger. “Locksmithing, you say?”

I leaned on the desk with both hands. “Look. I’m a locksmith whose taking on an apprentice this autumn, and I need a starter book to give him so he can practice in his own time. Do you have anything like that in this fine establishment?”

The orc huffed. “Wait here.”

He went off to some nether region of the library, and he was gone for a while. The criminal part of me, the part that was a guy who’d been broken out of the Crow’s Nest and was wanted throughout Pennywrote, felt itchy just waiting there.

I had to remember that I was wearing Justice Cornhyke’s face today and I was wearing old workers overalls I’d found in the costume chest in the hideout. I didn’t look like Arch John Wilde. I looked like a middle-aged craftsman who didn’t like being in the library instead of my workshop. Besides, locksmithing was a perfectly legitimate craft. It wasn’t like I was asking for books on mugging for beginners.

The half-orc returned soon after. “I’m sorry. All our books on locksmithing are on loan. If you like, I can add your name to the list?”

“No, I’ll leave it. Thanks for checking.”

My search then took me all across Pennywrote, where I tried almost every bookshop in the city. Nobody had what I wanted. I started getting angry at how tough it was to find a decent instruction manual on breaking into people’s houses.

It was only in a little establishment tucked away under a rain dripping bridge on Hillington Crescent that I found what I needed.

The shop had no sign, no customers, and it had no light on inside. Only there were books upon books in the shop window, and I saw signs of movement from the depths within. Really, this was no way to run a business.

I had it in mind to knock on the door but before I could, the door opened. Standing there was a woman of thin build, with a snake of black hair coiled around her neck and cascading tightly down her back. Her fingers were smudged with ink and old dried glue.

“What?” she said.

“Is this a shop?”

“It ain’t a music hall. What do you need?”

“Can I come in and take a look?”

“No. What do you need?”

“I’m a locksmith and I got an apprentice starting with me soon,” I said. “And I need a book to get him started.”

“An apprentice locksmith?”

“Listen, what the hell is this? Do you sell books, or not?” I said.

She laughed. “Fine. I don’t give a shit. Gold’s gold. Wait there.”

She left me standing on the doorstep for thirty minutes. Some kids nearby were playing with marbles, betting on each round for one or two coppers. I used to be great at marbles. I almost thought about going over there and challenging them to a game and clearing them out. Like the bookseller said, gold’s gold. Finally, I decided a middle-aged man gambling with kids would draw the wrong kind of attention. Since my own face had a rather hefty bounty attached to it, I needed to keep Justice Cornhyke’s aged mug clear of trouble.

Finally, she returned with a thick book with a newly glued binding on the spine and a silhouette of a key on the cover. She handed it to me.

“Ten gold,” she said.

“For a book?”

“For a book and for me pretending to believe the bullshit you were spouting earlier.”

I didn’t like leaving any kind of trail around the city. I didn’t want it to be known that a man was walking around asking for books on locks, no matter how legitimate the craft was.

None of it would come back to me, sure. It’d come back to Justice Cornhyke, and if he was ever questioned then he’d have an alibi. If Justice wasn’t working at the slaughterhouse where he was the foreman then he was drinking in the Star & Garter. But again, a good rogue didn’t draw attention to themselves unless they had to.

I took ten gold pieces from my coin wallet. “Here you go, you miserable hag,” I said.

“Oh. What a charmer.”

Near Hillington Crescent there was a small picnic park that was deserted except for a few pigeons cooing from the branches of a birch tree. I took a seat on a bench with a plaque on it that read ‘Bill Porter. He loved it here but he hated the f*cking pigeons’ and I studied my new book.

“This ain’t a book on locksmithing at all.”

It was, in fact, a book on roguery. A brazen guide on being a no-good purse snatcher, with tips and tricks written right there on the aged pages.

She really did see through my bullshit.

For a mimic, getting caught lying is like an acrobat falling off their tightrope. It shakes us. Makes us doubt our abilities. I’d let myself get rusty, and I needed to work on that.

But first, the book.

It was written by a guy named Francois Sisulu and had eight sections titled Pickpocketing, Lockpicking, Sneaking, Forgery, Disguise, Acting, Lying, and Trap Disarming. Francois made no qualms about the fact that this was a handbook for breaking the law. In fact, his writing voice seemed to indicate that he reveled in it.

I spent a pleasant afternoon on Bill’s bench in the shade of a hibiscus bush and I started to read what skills I’d need to practice becoming a thief. Only when the sun shivered behind a cloud and a black ink stain blotted the Pennywrote sky did I walk back home through the smog and amidst the chaos of folks leaving their offices and closing their shops for the day, hurrying to their homes to cap a day’s honest work.

There was something almost quaint about it, thinking about these folks hurrying home. It made me think that Pennywrote wasn’t all bad. Like any city, it had its good and bad people. The most surprising thing was that the rogues weren’t the worst of them.

Back at the hideout Magpie, Tilde, and Yulf were waiting for me. We were in a room on the east side of the first floor where we liked to eat our meals.

There was an old upright piano in the corner, the type you might find in a tavern where they spread sawdust on the floor before the Friday night revelries. It had all sorts of things wrong with it and Mags was working on restoring it so it could hold a tune. The problem of who could play the piano would come later.

Magpie was sitting at the dining table with two piles of objects heaped on it. One pile was padlocks of all kinds. Brass locks for outer doors. Heavy-duty steel locks that felt weighty enough to knock a guy out. Long shackle locks. Regular shackle locks. Circular locks with rusty grips. Some of them looked like they hadn’t seen daylight in half a century.

The other pile was of keys for the padlocks all mixed together in one great big metallic mess. Mags took a key, inserted it into a red long shackle lock and when it didn’t work he tossed it aside and reached for another key.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Sorting the locks, sir.”

“Why?”

“So we know which key goes with which lock. I bought the locks as a job lot from a scrapyard down on Beanholt Row. But the scrappy said he didn’t have time to sort which keys and locks go with which. That’s why I got so many for so cheap.”

“How long have you spent trying to match keys and locks?”

“A few hours,” said Mags.

“I got a lot of work to do with you, haven’t I?” I said.

“Sir?”

I kneeled in front of him and picked up a rusted circular lock and held it up. “The point of the padlocks is to use lockpicks to open them. To practice our picking skills. We don’t need the keys. When you’re out on a job, do you have the keys for all the locks you need to break?”

“I suppose not, sir.”

“Tilde is going to teach you her method of picking locks. I want you to watch her and then practice. You okay with that, Tilde?”

Tilde nodded. “Sure thing. Time we learned from each other.”

“Good,” I said. “Because Mags is going to go to town tomorrow and buy a few traps. I’m thinking a pressure plate, a trap lock, and maybe some kind of tripwire trap. He’s going to show you how to dismantle them.”

“He’s going to show me? Him? Teaching me?”

“Think you’re perfect? We all gotta learn, Tilde. I’m gonna be practicing everything too.”

“You’ve been using picks since you were old enough to walk if the stories are right.”

“Uh yeah. In fact, I picked my first lock before I could walk. I was actually being breastfed at the time. What of it? Should a guy stop trying to get better just because he’s the greatest in the world at what he does?”

Tilde and Magpie exchanged a look.

“Okay then,” said Tilde. “I didn’t bust you from the Nest just to ignore you. But we need to improve our financial situation, Snake. I mean, have ya seen my drinks cabinet lately? Hardly anything in it.”

“Maybe if you slowed down your drinking the bottles would last longer.”

“Ain’t my drinking that needs to slow. The speed’s perfectly fine. We just gotta make the supply match the demand.”

“Right. Well, what you do with your cut is up to you. Did you get some names for me?” I asked.

Tilde gave me a big drunken smile. She produced a small leather-bound notebook from her inner pocket and tossed it to my feet. I picked it up and read the title. ‘Pennywrote Constabulary Arrest Record.’ I opened the pages and flicked through.

“This is even better than I expected. Goes back twelve months. Everyone who got arrested in that precinct is listed here. Listen to this. ’Shep Blaketon. Arrested for interfering with goat,” I said.

“What business could a goat have that needed Shep’s interference?” asked Mags.

“Aint that kind of interfering.”

Yulf gave a deep laugh.

Tilde said, “That there’s a complete list of every arrest made in the city for the last year, and there’s a helluva lot of names. We don’t live in a very nice city ya know. Lots of criminals around. I’d watch yourself.”

I flicked through the book, reading name upon name. “Makes me sick. The crime’s rate going up and up.”

Yulf laughed again.

“How did you get it?” I asked.

“I went into the station pretending to be a stupid girl who’d lost her bulldog in the park. They made me fill out a bunch of forms and when I said I was getting lightheaded the fella behind the desk went to get me some water. When he was gone I picked the door lock to get behind the counter and I swiped the book before he got back.”

“Seriously? I’m impressed you could do that in broad daylight.”

“Course I didn’t do that. A fella in the Swan’s Wings tavern who used to clean the holding cells. They canned him when he asked for two-weeks of holiday leave. So he swiped the book and he was fencing it for five gold. I’ll need reimbursing, by the way.”

“Can we trust it?”

“I reckon so. I checked a couple of the names in there. Verified they’d been arrested like it says.”

“Did you check on Shep Blaketon and his goat?”

“Not fucking likely.”

“Well. This is great work, Tilde.”

“What do you plan to do with it?” she said.

“We’re going to get the word out there that our outfit is looking for new members. When the undesirables come to audition we’ll use this list of arrests to filter them out. Anyone who’s been arrested for anything rogue-related is an instant no.”

“Everyone makes mistakes, Sir,” said Magpie.

“They do. Me included. But with an arrest comes a problem. The empiresmen love breeding rats. They offer short sentences if a fella will start singing rat songs. Anyone who’s spent time in the empire’s hospitality is potentially taking the empire’s gold.”

“Including you?” said Tilde.

“You came to me. Not the other way around. I was set to die, remember. Was kinda looking forward to it, actually. Needed a break.”

“I suppose this makes sense,” said Magpie. “But should we be recruiting right now sir? When money is so tight?”

“Hmm. Let’s think about it. Maybe if we can pull off a job ourselves, we won’t need to recruit just yet. The book might come in handy regardless. Yulf, buddy. How’d you get on with clearing all the crap from upstairs?

The giant man nodded.

“Great. Thanks. Okay, that’s enough for now. Great work everyone. I guess I better-”

Tilde interrupted me. “We have a party to go to,” she said.

“A party? We don’t have time for that. I don’t like parties.”

“What, you don’t like fun?”

“Nope. Hate it.”

“It’s Matthew’s party, Snakey. Not a fat fuck’s chance we’re gonna miss it. As the new leader of our little establishment, you’re coming. No arguments.”

I hated being told what to do, so I was all set on sitting my ass down. Then, Magpie said, “Would you mind coming, Mr. Rattlesnake? Some people really want to meet you.”

Chapter 16

“A party? No way. I’m not a party sorta guy,” I told them.

“What’re you gonna do? Sit here and drink alone?” said Tilde.

“I’ll have Yulf here to keep me company. Ain’t that right, Yulfy?”

Yulf considered it, then nodded.

I walked into the kitchen and took a bottle of rum from the cupboard above the oven and grabbed a glass. In the living room, I pulled out a chair, sat in it, and swung my feet up onto the table. I leaned back, sipping the rum.

“That’s…uh...my cooking rum, sir,” said Magpie.

I looked at the bottle, realizing now why it didn’t taste so great. “Yeah, I knew that.”

Tilde leaned on the table and stared at me. “We gotta go to this. The folks around here are a kind of protection for us. There’s a reason the empiresmen never visit this part of Pennywrote.”

“Because there’s fuck all to see here.”

“And because the last empiresman who patrolled here wound up in the infirmary. When they sent a unit of empiresmen here to find out what happened, every single person in the slums had been asleep at the time. Helluva coincidence, no?”

“Folks stick together around here, then.”

Tilde nodded. “Nobody knows exactly what we really do here. We ain’t stupid. If they knew we were rogues, one of them would turn rat. So they think we’re just living here and working in the city, like everyone else. But they protect us all the same by deterring empiresmen from ever coming here.”

“Why don’t the empiresmen just turn up with fifty assholes wielding cudgels and drive ‘em all out?” I said.

“Because the empire wants us here. Surely you get that. Do you think they’d prefer everyone in the slums to suddenly spread into Pennywrote? Not a fucking chance. This here is a balance. While this place is a slum, the empiresmen will leave it alone. It just so happens that it gives us extra protection at the same time. If the folk who live here see us as one of their own, they’ll stand up for us if anything ever happens. That’s why it’s a good idea to come to this party and keep up relations.”

“You’re forgetting something,” I said. “It ain’t exactly a good idea for me to show my face around here.”

“Nobody knows you’re Rattlesnake.”

“Maybe not. But there are posters with my face on it wetting ladies' knickers all over the city, and there’s a fella with a noose who’d love to talk with me.”

So far, I had limited my exposure in the slums by leaving the hideout early in the morning or late at night. If I went out during the day, I made sure that nobody was around. When I was far enough away not to be seen transforming, I adopted one of my mimicked faces. There would be no chance of doing that tonight though.

“Magpie?” said Tilde.

“Huh?”

“The putty.”

Magpie’s eyes parked in recognition. “Right!”

He ran upstairs, his boots clomping on the bare floorboards. In two minutes he was back, red-faced and holding a clear glass tub with grey paste inside.

“Artificed putty, sir,” he said. “Actors use it.”

As someone who had more than a passing interest in taking on the appearance of others, I was familiar with artificed putty. It was a grey paste that you smoothed over someone’s face, left for a while, and then put back in the tub. The next time you applied it to your own face, you would take on the appearance of the first person. Some people made a living allowing their face to be used as an artificed putty mold.

But there was a reason that actors used it yet few other people did. For one, artificed putty lasted for maybe two hours before beginning to dry and fall off. Needless to say, having your face crumble away ruined the illusion a little.

Furthermore, artificed putty could be detected using special artificed mana lamps which would make a person’s face appear a shade of purple if they were using putty. Anyone with money, sense, and who dealt in matters of importance had these lanterns in their homes or offices.

Here in the slums, however, there would be no such lamps. Maybe Tilde was right. It couldn’t hurt to keep up relations with the slum dwellers.

“One hour,” I said. “That’s all I’ll do. And I won’t dance.”

The party was five minutes’ walk from the hideout in what used to be a leather tanner’s shop tucked at the back of a disused furniture warehouse.

Tilde and Magpie had changed into their casual clothes. Since Yulf and I had left the Crow’s Nest without so much as a toothbrush between us, we weren’t exactly paragons of fashion. It made me feel not just underdressed, but like I was some wild man dragged here after four years spent living in a bog.

“I need to do something about this,” I told Yulf. “Only so many days a guy can wear the same sweaty shirt.”

Yulf sniffed his armpits and didn’t seem too concerned about it.

“I’ll lend you some clothes, Mr. Rattlesnake, sir,” said Magpie.

“That’s a generous offer. What’ve you got?”

Magpie didn’t much care about fashion. Most of his shirts and trousers were covered in oil or trap grease, and those that weren’t dirty were too big for me in width and too short in length. I had a look through the costume chest in the spare room on the second floor, but the only clothes in there were an old fireman’s uniform and a butcher’s apron.

Finally, we were all ready. Poor Yulf was going to have to stay in the hideout because no amount of artificed putty could make him look less of a colossus. He didn’t seem to mind though. He enjoyed his quiet time.

When we arrived at the old tanner’s shop that hosted the party, we found a string of miniature mana lamps tied in an arch around the entrance. From open windows came the clamor of folks mingling together and the lively screech of a violin played by averagely competent hands. Inside there must have been fifty folks if not more.

People were filling tankards with pale ale supplied from five barrels placed against the wall. On the side of one barrel was the ink stamp of the brewery company who were probably wondering where they’d mislaid five barrels.

Within minutes Tilde and Magpie were already mingling in the crowd. They liked people and they were liked back by the slum folks, from what I saw. In fact, everyone seemed to like each other. I don’t reckon I’d ever drunk in a cheerier atmosphere.

The birthday boy, Matthew, was the only one not dancing. He was sitting on a seat and barely moving. The poor little kid looked like hell. Pale-faced and sickly. Less than a limp away from the grave. Made me feel like crap just to see a kid like that. Even for how ill the poor lad was, he did his best to smile.

I managed to get hold of Tilde in between her drinking and dancing and drinking and more drinking. She was wearing a red dress that she probably stole that very day. “What’s wrong with the kid?” I asked her.

“Wasting disease or something. It’s got a name. I was drunk when Tracey told me it.”

“There’s a surprise. And there’s no cure?”

“Sure there is. But Matthew and his family are broke like everyone else who lives in the ass-end of Pennywrote. No way they could afford a healer to work on him.”

A tall guy I didn’t know grabbed Tilde’s hand and pulled her into the communal dancing circle as the violin player started a new song with a jaunty rhythm. I stared at Matthew and I felt an unbelievable welling of pity. The kind of pity I hadn’t felt in years. It’d been a while since I gave much of a shit about anyone, if I was honest. I started wondering how much it’d cost to get a healer out here.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed my wrist. It was a woman. Her curly, honey-colored hair covered her right eye and her face was pale as bone bathed in moonlight.

“Can you dance, Mr. Rattlesnake? Or isn’t that one of your talents?” she said.

I instinctively looked around, but nobody seemed to be paying attention to us.

“You know my name?” I said.

“I heard you were coming.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry. I have no interest in spreading the word. Nobody else needs to know. It can be our little secret. Don’t you like secrets?”

“Maybe I do. I don’t like sharing them though.”

“Then how about a dance?”

I was a bad dancer and I hated doing it. The double whammy of excuses not to dance. This woman was pretty but that didn’t matter much to me right now. Not after what she’d said. How the hell did she know who I was, even when I was wearing the artificed putty?

I decided I better play along and see what she knew and how she knew it. But the more I asked her about it, the coyer she became.

“Why all the questions?” she said.

She had this look in her eye like she didn’t quite trust me, and didn’t trust my intentions. I could see it. She wasn’t going to spill anything.

The best way to get information from someone is to seem like you don’t want it. So, I decided to get drunk. Really, really drunk.

Or at least to seem like I was.

What I needed was a mimicked ability that let me absorb alcohol. In my mimic vault, I had the physique of a man named Gorgo Rynell. He was an enormously fat guy who used to win eating competitions in Freemantle. His body would absorb lots of liquor, no doubt.

The only problem?

It’d look pretty fucking weird for me to suddenly swell in size.

Ah. Wait. Maybe I had something.

Something I acquired from a lady named Stacey Doopelope.

Stacey Doopelope was a regular at the Star & Garter in Yellow Bowdale, where I used to work. She was forty-six years old and a supervisor at the quarry. Her husband, a quarryman named Malk, had left her and she spent a lot of time in the tavern. She had her own stool at the bar that none of the regulars touched if they knew she was coming. Stacey could drink whiskey straight for eight hours and walk out of the tavern as if she’d never touched a drop. She also had a fancy for chili peppers. Really, really strong ones imported from Estlucia. She’d eat them raw and then lick her fingers.

This had obviously appealed to me. Any kind of interesting trait or skill tweaked that little mimic part of my brain. As such, I spent a long time watching Stacey drink whiskey and eat chili peppers.

It should have been a clean mimicry. After all, Stacey visited the tavern every single night and sat there right in front of me, slugging back whiskey. But one night she finished a full bottle of Spiced James, the strongest whiskey we stocked, then announced to the whole tavern, “I’m leavin’ this piece of shit town tomorrow. So long and fuck you all!”

I’d already watched her enough for a dirty mimicry, so lacking no other choice, I finalized it there and then and acquired a trait from her.

I hadn’t used it until today but now seemed as good a time as any.

Trait mimicry activated: Stacey Doopelope’s lead belly.

Effect:

++ Constitution

- Hatred of music

Being that it was a dirty mimicry, it came with a negative effect. Suddenly the sound of the band playing in the corner didn’t just displease me like music normally did. I actively hated it. It sounded like a cat scratching on a blackboard to me.

At the same time, my stomach felt stronger, and I had a hankering for peppers. I turned to the girl who knew I was Rattlesnake.

“Let’s get a drink, eh?”

One beer became two, three. Seven beers later I was still completely sober, yet the girl, whose name was Emma, had warmed to me considerably. It looked like it had worked. By drinking like it was going out of style, I had made her distrust me less.

“So c’mon,” I said. “Spill. How’d you know who I was?”

She shrugged. “I heard your friends talking about it a few days ago, about how Rattlesnake better get his ass in gear and start earning money. Didn’t take much to infer that Rattlesnake was staying with them. And you’re the only new guy around here, so yeah. That’s it.”

Mags and Tilde had been talking too loudly..

Damn them both.

“Can I trust you to keep this to yourself?” I said.

“What’s the other option? Kill me?”

What she didn’t know was that I was easily capable of that. I’d killed the gossipseller, for one thing. My conscience wasn’t an issue. Who needs a conscience when you can mimic? I would just activate the Callousness of Pertwee the Tax Inspector trait and my morals would be a thing of the past.

I wondered if she saw something in my eyes then, because she turned serious. “You can trust me. I won’t say anything.”

In my experience, someone telling you that you can trust them isn’t the guarantee they think it is. I had to get away from this party and think about what to do about her. I wasn’t going to kill her - I think - but I needed to consider my options.

I didn’t see the fist coming.

All I felt was a sudden burst of pain in my nose that made me stagger back, only just keeping my balance.

When my eyes focused again a guy was stomping toward me. He was my age but he was a hell of a lot stockier. His white shirt sleeves were rolled up and there was blood on the knuckles of his right hand.

“Looks like ya got some of my blood on your hand there,” I said. “I don’t like people taking my property. Better give me some of yours in return.”

“That’s my girl,” the guy said, pointing at Emma.

“Yours?” she said.

He ignored her. “You been dancing with her all night. I saw you. Drinking and laughing.”

“Yeah? And what’re you gonna do about it?” I said.

Emma shook her head. “For fuck’s sake,” she said, then walked away.

Before she could get far, the guy grabbed her shirt and pulled her so hard that she fell to the ground. She slapped him and then got up and walked away.

I knew I should just leave this alone. Let the guy simmer down before this turned stupid. But I’ve never been built like that. Everyone was watching us, including Tilde and Magpie, and I couldn’t let this guy catch me cold on the nose and just walk away.

I rolled my shirt sleeves up and stretched my neck muscles left and right, getting myself nice and limber.

Magpie joined me at my side. “This is Terry Green, sir. He was a bare-knuckle fighter in the Nehampton arenas before they shut them down. They say he killed a man.”

“So what’s he doing living in a place like this?”

“Well just that, sir. He killed a man. And it wasn’t in a licensed fight. He got drunk and beat a guy to death.”

“Folks are okay with a lunatic like this hanging around the place?”

“He lives with Mary Harlow’s family, sir. He’s tight with them, and he protects this place.”

“He ain’t gonna let this drop, is he?”

“No, sir. I think you should be the one to leave.”

There are two things about me.

One, I’ve never let something go. Take the gossipseller, for instance. I knew that killing him would land me in the Crow’s Nest, and I did it anyway. Because his loose lips got my Pa killed. There was this hot streak in my blood that Pa said came from my ma’s side of the family.

Second, I ain’t much of a bare-knuckle fighter. A guy like Terry would knock me out so cold I’d wake up thinking I was on another planet.

I was, however, a mimic.

I activated more mimicry.

Skill activated: Dirty fighting of Sanchez Moon

Effects:

+++ Dirty street fighting

“Okay then, Terry,” I said. “Looks like you just enrolled yourself in the school of good manners, and I’m the teacher.”

Terry rushed at me. He swung a punch that caught me on my cheek and made my eyes water. A half-second later he threw a left and sank a fist so deep into my belly it felt like it was gonna come out of the other side.

I fell to my right knee and felt gorge rise in my stomach, but Stacey Doopelope’s constitution held it back and stopped me from vomiting. I kneeled on the ground and got my breath back. I was surrounded by empty bottles of beer on the floor.

Terry paced around me, waiting for me to get to my feet. This was a patient guy. He wasn’t gonna come blundering at me again. He wanted me to come at him so he could counter me.

Before I could stand up, a sudden sickness tore through me.

Oh, shit.

I knew that feeling. It’s hard for any mimic to keep more than one mimic aspect going at once. And I was only half a mimic. No matter how much I practiced, it was always a big ask to have two separate mimicries activated at the same time. Added to that was the fact that I had been mimicking faces whenever I went into Pennywrote, and I hadn’t meditated enough lately to let myself recharge.

I needed to stop using one of the mimicry aspects.

But here was the problem. If I stopped using Stacey Doopelope’s constitution right here and now, all that alcohol in my belly would get me drunker than a sailor on shore leave. It would happen almost instantly.

Then again, if I didn’t use Sanchez Moon’s dirty fighting, this guy was gonna pound me to the ground in front of everyone.

Another wave of nausea hit me. I didn’t have long.

I guessed I better make it count.

“Come at me, you little bitch,” I said. “Or don’t you have the balls?”

Still kneeling, I watched Terry run at me. I reached for a bottle and grabbed hold of it. As Terry got within a foot of me I swung it at him and smashed it over his head.

He fell straight onto his ass. Glass was all over him. In his hair, on his shirt. Blood poured from a wicked cut just above his right temple.

I got to my feet. Before Terry could get up I gave him the hardest kick in the balls a man has ever gotten. It was such a blow that the people around us winced.

Terry, groaning, curled into a fetal ball. His face was red and he was taking sharp breaths. People were whispering to each other and some of them were looking at me strangely, like I was a wild animal.

Another bout of nausea hit me so strongly that I had to give up both of my mimicries at once.

The alcohol, held back by Stacey Doopelope’s constitution, assaulted my body and I was drunk within seconds. So drunk that the room was spinning and every step felt like I was running down a hill, blindfolded.

I fell onto my ass. A hand grabbed my shoulder.

“Let’s get you home, sir.”

Chapter 17

I was so drunk that I didn’t even know we were in the hideout until I smelled Yulf’s BO.

Seven beers shouldn’t have been enough to do that to me. I wasn’t a lightweight. It was something to do with using mimicry to forestall the alcohol’s effects and then abruptly ending that mimicry. This sort of stuff was why I needed a teacher, something I had been lacking since PA died.

“You sit down, sir, and I’ll make us a brew,” said Magpie.

“I’ll just sit here, Magpie,” I slurred, “And you can make us a brew.”

Magpie made me some coffee. He used a pipette to squeeze three drops of a potion known as wake-me-up or Sailor’s Savior into it. I drank three cups of the stuff until my head finally felt clearer. I was still tipsy and I had a helluva headache, but at least I could talk a modicum of sense.

“Sorry about that tonight,” I said. “Wasn’t exactly my best moment.”

“Are you kidding, sir? That was amazing.”

“Huh?”

“Terry is a bully. Always has been ever since he moved here. He deserved it.”

“In that case, I’m glad to be of service. Where’s Tilde?” I said.

“Staying out. If she gets back before sunup then it’s been a quiet night by her standards.”

“What’s the deal with her?” I asked.

“Deal?” said Magpie.

“You know. She walks around drunk all the time yet she got it together enough to spring me from a tower full of screws.”

“Ah. You mean her skills. Tilde was raised by monks in the far west. Trained from birth in the art of killing. When the temple was destroyed by raiders, Tilde and a few others got out of there with their lives.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well, what can I say, sir? She’s a clam. I’ve known her two years and I couldn’t fill a postage stamp with her biography.”

“You must know something.”

“I heard a rumor but she wouldn’t like me talking about it. That’s why I never asked her anymore.”

“What is it?” I said.

“The rumor?”

“Sure. Spill.”

“I don’t know…”

“C’mon, Mags. A secret shared is a secret halved. That’s what they say.”

Magpie didn’t seem convinced by this, but all the same, he said, “I heard that she was born here in Pennywrote but her ma and pa died when she was still little. That’s all I heard. Don’t ask her about it though, sir.”

“I won’t. In fact, we better stop gabbing about her. Tell me about you instead.”

“What about me, sir?”

“Yup. Tell me about yourself. Where were you born?”

“Here.”

“In Pennywrote?”

“No, sir, here.”

“Ah. In the slums.”

Magpie laughed. “No. In this very room. You’re standing in the spot where I was delivered. Smith & Sons Upholstery was my father’s business. But he’s gone, like my ma and my brother. It’s just me now.”

“My parents are dead too,” I said.

“Really?”

I realized that maybe it was a mistake to give away a piece of biographical information about my true identity like that. It might be verifiable against Rattlesnake somehow. Then again, nobody seemed to know the slightest thing about the rogue so maybe it wouldn’t much matter. Besides, a part of me was getting tired of the pretense. It was lonely living in a skin of lies.

“My father died before he got a chance to teach me upholstery. I couldn’t carry on the business,” said Magpie.

“That’s too bad.”

“Eh. Maybe. I’ve been teaching it myself in my spare time. There’s a lot involved in upholstery you know. Way more complicated than picking pockets. Most people think it’s easy but it’s not.”

“But with less consequence when things go wrong,” I said. “I never heard of a fella ending up in the Crow’s Nest for upholstering a couch.”

“No, sir.”

“If this place used to belong to your family I suppose that means you’re our landlord?”

Magpie shook his head. “Dad had lots of debts when he died. Had to sell this place to settle the estate. I ended up with nothing. But when we needed a hideout and we knew we needed it in the slums, we decided to rent this place. The landlord is some guy who owns places all over Penny. He never even came to visit pa’s shop when he bought up. Just paid for it in an auction and put it straight up for rent.”

“You’re paying rent on a building that belonged to your family?”

He nodded.

I understood the economic practicality of it. If you built up debts they had to be paid. Even in death. But I felt very sorry for Magpie. “We’ll get this place back for you,” I said.

“Thank you, Mr. Rattlesnake. You know, when I heard you were coming, I was worried. With your reputation and all.”

“My reputation?”

“They say you’re a complete son of a bitch,” said Magpie, then covered his mouth. If his eyes weren’t a clue then this would have sealed it for me. He was a little bit drunk. Nothing like I had been earlier, but drunk all the same.

“Maybe I am a son of a bitch. What else do they say about me?”

“That you robbed the bank in True Springs by yourself. How’d you do that?”

“Uh, I seduced the manager. A pretty redhead with a thing for guys who can’t dance.”

“And they say you once killed a troop of roving orcs on your own.”

“Yup. That was me.”

“Mind me asking how, sir?”

“If I told you that,” I said, “You’d know a secret too powerful for most folks to bear. You’d be the second most dangerous man alive, Magpie. With me being the first.”

“Right. Okay then. Anyway, I was worried about you getting here. I thought you’d be mean and you wouldn’t think much of someone like me. But you aren’t all that mean. Well, you are. Sometimes. But not overly so.”

“Mags, lemme tell ya something. It’s been a while since I had someone I could call a friend. Maybe you’re one of ‘em.”

Magpie smiled so wide it looked like his lips were going to fall off his face. “I better get some rest, sir. We’re still going running in the morning aren’t we?”

“It already is the morning. But yeah. I’ll see you when it’s light.”

When Magpie went to bed I finished my coffee and then headed up to my room. There was no sign of Yulf but I saw light spilling out from underneath his door. All this time in the hideout, he’d never turned his lamp off at night.

In my room, I sat on my bed. The coffees had sobered me but now I was too wired to sleep. I had a bunch of mimic heralds to check, so I did that now.

Trait mimicry improved through use.

Rating improved from D- to D

Effects:

Active trait mimicry uses less energy

Reward: 1 x average trait crystal

Mimic energy consumption improved through use

Rating improved from F to E-

Effects:

Total mimic energy pool increase

Reward: 1x poor mimic energy crystal

I would just have to trust that my use of trait mimicry really had improved – I wouldn’t see the effects until the next time I needed to do it. Whereas my ratings increase in mimic energy was more immediate and it was something I could actually feel.

When I had come to bed I had been completely empty. Now, I felt a small reservoir of mimic energy inside me and available for use. This must have been the additional energy I had gained by increasing my energy pool.

The two mimic crystals soon formed in front of me. The trait crystal was rhombus-shaped and had sickly yellow spots inside it. The energy crystal was thin and brittle, hued grey around the outsides.

I broke both of them open.

Average trait crystal opened:

- Unflinching eye contact of Duke Thomas

- Fiery temper of Glenda Smalls

Poor mimic energy crystal opened:

- 2x [poor] energy replenishment gels

In my mimic vault, I soon located my new traits and studied them in more detail.

Unflinching eye contact of Duke Thomas

The ability of Duke Thomas, a renowned land baron, to use eye contact in power struggles.

++ Intimidation

+ Negotiation

+ Unlikeability

Fiery temper of Glenda Smalls

The temper of Glenda Smalls, executed for the murder of her 3rd husband

++ Ability to use anger to fight through pain

+++ Weakened ability to use reason or logic

When I was done in my mimic vault I made sure my bedroom door was locked and I drew the curtains over the window. I sat on the floor and fell into a deep meditation that lasted one hour, restoring just a little more of my energy pool. It was only when I woke up from a gentle doze that I abandoned my efforts and went to bed.

As I lay on the uncomfortable mattress I thought about how much I wanted a nice, comfy bed. I thought about all of the things I could do with just a little gold.

I decided that tomorrow was going to be a day of learning new things. I needed to learn how to become a rogue.

Chapter 18

I had secret business to attend to. The kinda thing that you can’t get caught doing by the folks who you’re trying to fool.

It should have been easy to have clandestine activities in the hideout. Smith and Sons Upholstery was a big place. No surprise, given that it used to act as a customer-facing shop, a workshop, and a storeroom. There were plenty of areas to go if I needed to be alone.

The problem was that all of them were empty and dirty and dreary. Call me a soft assed chump, but I like a little comfort. It’s an urge that comes from the fact that I haven’t slept in a bed that I’d call comfortable since I had to leave mine and Pa’s old house. That’s my weakness. Comfort. It ain’t booze or girls, though I’ll partake in both. It’s the utter satisfaction of a cozy bed or a warm room or a nice chair to sink into. It’s the sort of thing most rogues wouldn’t admit, but it doesn’t bother me to say it.

Not only that, but sound traveled in the hideout. I could hear what everyone else got up to, which meant they could hear me. I couldn’t have that if I wanted to keep my secrets.

My bedroom was out of bounds today because Mags had bought fumigation spray to take care of some roaches, and I reluctantly agreed to let him fumigate my room. Lacking my own space, I had to get creative.

I had Yulf help me carry all the padlocks up to the roof of the building. It wasn’t a high building. Only four levels. The box was huge and it was heavy, and my arms were aching by the time we got to the roof. Yulf seemed fine.

“Reckon I got the heavier side of the box,” I told him.

He inspected the box to see if it really had heavier and lighter sides.

“Tell me something, big fella. Were you always this huge? Even as a kid?” I asked.

Yulf nodded.

“You got troll blood in ya?”

He shook his head.

“So what, you just ate all your veggies or something?”

He nodded.

“Well. Thanks for the help.”

Yulf didn’t have anything to do today so he took position by the roof doors in case anyone came up. I didn’t ask him to do this but he seemed to enjoy being part of my deception. Like it was our little conspiracy or something.

I wasn’t quite decided on Yulf but I was heavily leaning toward trusting him. He hadn’t betrayed me yet and that’s always a big plus in my book. Besides, I’d spent a while studying the big man so I could acquire his physique one day in the future. I’d really watched him, the way Pa showed me. So far, I didn’t see anything that made me think I couldn’t trust him.

On the off chance that he did decide that he wanted to blackmail me or start blabbing – if it was even possible for Yulf to blab about anything – I had bought a bag of powered impshade from an alchemist in Pennywrote.

It was sold for killing grass imps, those pests that ruin folks’ vegetable gardens. Course, some people who buy it know other, more dangerous uses for it. I wasn’t going to do anything to Yulf unless I had to. I liked the guy after all. But it helped knowing I had the option.

Yulf took a brief break from guarding the door to look at the cityscape spread out before us. I joined him.

“Some view, ain’t it?”

He nodded.

“Looks ugly as shit,” I said.

He laughed.

The roof gave me a grand view of the slums and the dockland beyond where ships were moored up against the wooden pier. To my east in the distance beyond shingled rooftops was the hanging square now empty of its gallows.

There weren’t any more executions scheduled for a while. The empire liked to save them for times when there was civil unrest. Rumors of miners' strikes grumblings about taxes rising and that sort of thing. A good, old-fashioned hanging often shut people up.

Up on the roof, the air was fresh, and I enjoyed the sounds of seagulls squawking over by the docks and I even liked looking down on the slum alleyways and seeing all the people in the neighborhood milling about.

Some would be heading to their jobs in the inner-city where, as unblessed, they could only hope to find badly paid menial work. Even so, they had time to stop and chat to one another before leaving the eastside district and it was nice to see their neighborliness.

“Okay. Let’s get to work.”

Yulf eyed the padlocks curiously.

“These? Well, it’s easier to acquire a skill through mimicry,” I told him. Yulf had already seen me use mimicry a few times so I had no trouble talking about it with him. “But when I run out of energy, I can’t access my skills. What happens then? I’m shit out of luck. Sometimes it’s better to learn things the old-fashioned way.”

I focused on the padlocks Yulf and I had brought up to the roof. There was a range of different sizes and it was easy to guess what some of them may have once locked. Sheds, chests, shops. That kind of thing. Others I had no clue about. Some of the padlocks had two keyholes. A few had little numbers on the side that could be rotated and would only unlock with the correct code.

Before I got started I checked the requirements in Francois Sisulu’s rogue handbook. The chapter on lockpicking went into great detail about things like choosing the correct picks, making picks of your own, and identifying lock types.

Then it went into deeper detail about tumblers and cylinders and shims and shackles. The language was dry in places but in others, Francois peppered it with stories of his education in roguery. Finally, it told me what I’d need to do to earn level one of the lockpicking skill.

This book was a skill tome, so once I read the requirement, it was registered and represented in the same area of my mind I’d used to learn mimicry. The place where my mind registered my progress and stored the data in a way I could always check and recall.

Lockpicking: level 1

Requirements: Successfully pick five easy-rated locks

Current: 0/5

I focused on the smallest padlock in the pile. It was the size of my knuckle and looked like the kind of lock you’d find on a kid’s diary. With my rogue guidebook open to the lockpicking page and with my lockpicks ready I got to work.

Two hours passed and I still hadn’t coaxed it open. Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed Yulf watching me and I was sure he was smirking at me

“Oh? Think this is funny? Why do you come and try picking this thing?”

He shrugged. He walked over to me and took the padlock and crushed it between his thumb and index finger. He tossed the padlock to my feet and then marched away laughing to himself and took his place by the door.

“I guess that’s an effective method,” I said.

It made me think that maybe I should just try and mimic the skill. All it’d take would be to watch Tilde picking locks for between twelve to fifteen hours. I was sure I could come up with a pretext for that even if I had to spread it over several days. I could say I was evaluating her technique or something.

The only problem was that as a half-mimic I couldn’t use mimicked skills as well as Pa could, and I couldn’t use them long enough. What’s more, it sometimes took a while to get into the state of mind where mimicked skills were available to me.

If I needed to use a mimicked skill with no warning then I was in trouble. Even then, I couldn’t keep hold of the skill for long. I could use it for ten or maybe twenty minutes.

Worse, what if something happened and I couldn’t mimic anymore? Pa always told me that mimicked skills were a rotten crutch. They were harder to use on full moon nights. They were weaker on dryer days in places where there was no moisture and the air felt hot when you breathed it. Nobody knew why. Pa said he once had flu and he was bedridden for two weeks and that his mimicry didn’t respond to him for a full month afterward.

Even forgetting matters of mimic skill and of moon-filled nights and hot days, there was wider society to reckon with. Some places were mimic savvy. Anyone in high office would have certain questions, certain phrases maybe, that they’d use to prove they weren’t a mimic. That was why you couldn’t rely on purely physical mimicry. It was why true mimicry was only achieved when you got to know a person as well as you knew yourself.

No, damn it. I was just going to have to suck it up and keep practicing.

I got back to work. The sun rose high in the sky like it wanted a vantage point so it could mock my efforts. The distant docks became busier with fellas and ladies pulling anchors and emptying ship stores. A fishing boat must have come in because I could smell the mackerel and maybe haddock from up there. While I took a lunch break and ate a cheese sandwich I watched the slums down below and I felt a strange sense of belonging.

In the afternoon I got back to picking locks with a renewed sense of optimism. Two hours later, I did it. Things just clicked into place. Literally.

I was messing with the picks and rotating them delicately inside the lock just like Francois described when I heard a click and the padlock opened like a clam surrendering its pearls.

Lockpicking: level 1

Requirements: Successfully pick five easy-rated locks

Current: 1/5

“See that?” I said excitedly.

Yulf shrugged.

Nothing stokes a fella’s motivation like the sense he’s getting somewhere. The next padlock didn’t give up as easily as I expected because I still hadn’t quite got the knack for it. But I persevered and I pushed my frustration into the recesses of my mind. Eventually, I did it.

The third lock was even easier and the one after that was open within five seconds of me picking it up. After I picked a fifth small padlock, I got the message that I’d been hoping for.

* Skill learned: Lockpicking *

Level: 1

Basic locks will now unlock much quicker.

Requirements for level 2: Pick 10 easy and 5 medium locks

“I did it, Yulf,” I said. “Level one. Gotta start somewhere right?”

I spent the rest of the day practicing on the locks. I learned that earning the first level of lockpicking wasn’t just a numerical exercise. Now that I had the skill my dexterity was boosted.

The lockpicks didn’t feel like chopsticks in my hand anymore. They felt natural like I’d been messing with them all my life. When I was trying to lift the lock tumblers it was like I could see them in my mind and I could hear their minute clicks as I maneuvered them.

I picked ten small padlocks within the first hour and satisfied half the requirement for level two. Then I grabbed a medium-sized one that looked like it had once locked a storage unit or something like that.

This one was more complicated with more pin tumblers that were harder to mess with and springs that didn’t stay down so easily. But I kept at it even as the sun got bored of watching me and began to descend again, casting a ripple of orange through the slum sky.

By the time it was dark I had managed to earn level two in the lock picking skill. Level three meant I had to pick fifty easy locks and ten medium and two hard. I began to enjoy it.

There was something meditative about sitting there under the darkening sky and feeling the breeze coming from the dock and smelling the salty air and hearing the tide wash against the sodden wood struts. I let my mind go blank as I messed with the lock pins.

I probably would have kept on going all night if we hadn’t heard a knock on the roof door.

Yulf looked at me inquiringly. I nodded to him.

He opened the door and standing there was Magpie holding a small brass telescope with a folded wooden stand. He was dressed in a big, thick coat with a fur hood. It was a size too big for him.

“Oh. Mr. Snake. Didn’t realize you’d be up here. Supposed to be a meteor shower tonight and I didn’t wanna miss it.”

“You’re an astronomer, are you?” I said.

“I wouldn’t say that. My knowledge ain’t that good, Mr. Snake, sir.”

I pointed at a star. “What’s the name of that consolation?”

“Fool’s Rise.”

“And that one?”

“The anchor.”

“Seems like you know your stuff to me. Always wanted to learn more about it. Seems wrong that we got a whole sky of burning suns up there watching us and I don’t know anything about them. Anyway. I’ll leave you to it.”

Magpie opened his coat and reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a small flask with steam rising from it. “Unless you’d like to join me? I have tea and pies.”

I looked at the sky swirling with thousands of stars that hailed from the depths of the universe in places man would never know.

“What kind of pies?”

Chapter 19

The next day all of us woke to someone banging on our door. They hammered on it non-stop for the few minutes it took me to get dressed in my shirt and trousers and to pull on my boots and then head downstairs without lacing them properly.

“Okay. Okay. Shut the hell up!” I said.

I eyed the peephole and saw a tall and skinny man standing outside. He wore a black suit with red velvet pocket linings. It made him look like the kind of guy I’d see if I wanted to arrange a funeral. Yet although he probably wasn’t a funeral director, this guy knew more about death than most folks. I’d have bet my last copper on that.

This man was undead.

A long time undead, I reckoned. His eye sockets were sunken wellholes and his hair and his nails had grown for a while after his heart stopped thumping. He hadn’t seen fit to have them groomed. His hair was oiled and swept back. On his knobbed fingers were two rings. One was a wedding ring and the other was on his little finger and might have been a promise ring or maybe even an empiresmen service ring.

I unbolted the latch and unlocked three locks and then unbolted another latch and I opened the door.

“Who’re you?” he asked.

“The king of the fucking empire,” I said. “What do you want?”

“The empire is ruled by an emperor with support from a senate, actually,” said the undead man.

“Here’s a first. History lessons from a worm feeder. Do you normally bang on people’s doors first thing and have the damn nerve to ask who they are?

He brought out a pocket watch from inside his jacket. It was bronze and had a delicate bronze chain. “First. It’s the afternoon. One o’clock to be precise. Most hardworking folks are up by now. Secondly. This is my door. I don’t know who the hell you are and I don’t care. I didn’t die just so I could be brought back and have to face this kind of treatment in my own property. You tell the woman and the fat boy that their rent is three months overdue. I won’t let there be a fourth. Tell them that unless Scaliber gets his rent he’s evicting them via the eviction process sanctioned by the emperor’s department of landlord and tenant relations and signed by the emperor. They have three weeks.”

“You’re the landlord?”

“A genius in my midst!” said Scaliber the undead.

“You’d think a fella who died once already would learn some manners.”

“A derogatory thing to say. Not sure that I should have expected anything more from the types that woman likes to cavort with. Three weeks.”

I went inside and to the dining room where Tilde was drinking coffee at the table and Magpie was over sat the standing piano and tinkering with its hammer rail. Tilde looked the freshest of the four of us despite the fact that she had been out for most of the last night. I guess she was used to operating on little sleep.

Yulf was reading a book on Taon foreign policy in the Black Ages. The book was a huge tome but it looked tiny in his hands. I poured myself a coffee and sat down across from Tilde and told them all about our visitor.

“Grave-loving bastard. Who the hell does he think he is?” said Tilde.

Magpie stopped tinkering with his piano and leaned on the case. His right hand was stained with grease. “He’s the owner of this building and he wants his rent.”

“Rent for a place that belonged to your folks.”

“He bought it fair and square. I had to sell it to clear debts, and someone had to buy it.”

“Keep telling yourself that but I know that it pisses you off. Grave-loving bastard hangs around property auctions and snaps up places where poor folks can’t pay their mortgages or they’re trying to settle estate debts. He’s a vulture.”

Magpie said nothing. To me, that nothing said a lot.

“I can’t believe you guys haven’t paid rent for three months,” I said. “Think how this looks, having Scaliber come out here. We don’t need him poking around.”

Tilde shrugged. “Bjorn had his mind on other things. You know. Towards the end. Before the Kenny Flint bastard. I keep thinking that was how Bjorn got caught like he did. He just wasn’t on his game.”

“You must have been doing something since he was gone. You telling me you didn’t make any money at all? Not even a copper?”

“Some. Just been a while since we pulled off a job worth crowing about. You’ve gotta have priorities. When it comes to the choice of having food to eat or paying a grave lover his rent you do what you have to do.”

“Well, we need to pay him don’t we? How much is the rent?” I said.

“Eight hundred gold per month.”

“Eight hundred!”

“That’s pretty good for a building this size,” said Magpie.

“We got seventy in the group wallet. We can’t even pay for half of one of the three months that are due,” I said.

Tilde poured herself another coffee. “So let’s just leave. Pack up our shit such as it is and then flee into the night.”

I shook my head. “Scaliber is the legal owner of this place after Mags sold it to him. You guys have been staying here under the agreement that you pay him rent and you ain’t paid it. If we leave here he has a legal claim against us. It ain’t so wise for an outfit like ours to have folks claiming against us. If we skip on the claim he’s within his rights to put a bounty up on that corkboard near Forrester Square. Before you know it we’ve got the heat of an undead guy, court bailiffs, and half a dozen bountaneers looking all over Pennywrote for us. To me, that’s not quite the low profile we wanted.”

“But he’s a grave lover!”

“So? He isn’t exactly the only undead in Pennywrote is he? Does the fact he’s a pre-dead mean he ain’t entitled to remuneration? As long as the necromancy that brought him back was empire-sanctioned and all the forms were filled, then Scaliber’s a citizen of the empire just like us. More so probably. Because I reckon he pays his taxes.”

“Fine. So we can’t just skip out. Then we need to make money,” said Tilde.

“Exactly. Let’s stop fucking around with our thumbs in our asses. We need to plan a job. Tilde, Magpie, I want you to go out into the city.”

“Pickpocketing?” said Magpie.

“No. I want you to watch.”

“Watch what?”

“Listen to this. When stolen goods and contraband come to the city they often get here by boat. The boat captains probably pay off the dock controllers and inspectors so they aren’t rumbled straight away, but they’ll still need a place to store their contraband until they can sell it.”

Magpie looked nervous. “You want to steal from the smugglers?”

“Only the dishonest ones. The ones shipping in stolen goods and forgeries and contraband alchemy shit. The kind of folks who won’t blink at shipping girls and boys in and out of the docks and taking them places they oughtn’t to be. Those kinds of captains, Mags. That’s who’s pockets we’re gonna fleece.”

Chapter 20

Over the next two weeks, we adopted a routine. In the morning before the slums awoke, and especially before the dockworkers yawned their way to work, Mags and I went for a thirty-minute run.

The pier of dockside east ran for a quarter-mile of weathered red cedar and it was straight going, which made it great to run on.

It was also pretty good for planning a robbery.

“Pay attention to every ship,” I told Mags, who easily kept up with my pace these days. “We need to remember the names of the vessels and any crew skulking around.”

“No problem, sir. Anything else?”

“Just suspicious stuff. Anything that sticks out.”

From mid-morning till afternoon Tilde and Magpie went into Pennywrote to ferret out information as I asked. All we needed was to find one ship unloading stolen goods. Just one. Then we could find out where they were storing them and once we knew that…then we had our first job.

While they were out I worked on my lock picking skills, getting proficient at teasing out the secrets of medium padlocks and then hard ones. I struggled with ones rated very hard. These were usually the giant steel locks used to secure empire installations. Impossible to break and difficult to melt, with three separate locks and numerical code spinners.

By the end of two weeks, my lockpicking skill was at level five. I was nowhere near as good as Tilde, but still. The only problem was that successive levels became harder to achieve. I reckoned that earning level six was going to take a month of work.

In the evenings when dusk fell over the peaceful slums and the seagulls circled silhouetted in the sky and the air smelled of fish cooked coming from the homemade smoke ovens that the slum folks called ‘bickers’, the dockside east rogue outfit would have a meeting.

We’d gather in either the common room with the drinks cabinet or the dining room where we’d eat at the same table where Mags and his ma and pa and brother used to share their meals.

Magpie liked to cook, Tilde liked to supply the booze, and Yulf sat there being Yulf. He never said a thing but at the same time he said a lot in his silence and I reckoned all of us were growing to like him. He always had a book in his giant hand.

Living near the docks it was easy to get fish for cheap. We ate stuff like brown butter sole and pollock with dill cream and seared scallops and garlic. We bought potatoes and carrots and broccoli and other veggies from a carriage trader who turned his brown mares around the slums twice per week, calling out “Get yer veg, get yer grub.”

It wasn’t so unusual for us to get invited to a party in one of the squat houses in the slums. ‘Squat houses’ were what they called the myriad of warehouses and abandoned units that the city had forgotten about when the empire lost the war. Even if this loss was never admitted, not even when the warehouse magnates who produced cut-price yet shoddy pikes and swords and bucklers were tried for deceiving the empire’s coin master and they were marched to the gallows in merchants’ square.

Once they were assembly lines for the empiresmen brigades, but now these warehouses were moonlit family domiciles with plaster walls marking property lines. A few places, like Smith & Sons Upholstery, had landlords but most sensible property owners stayed away from dockside east. Only the undead, who couldn’t buy property in the heart of Pennywrote on account of the popular saying ‘don’t take coin that’s been in soil’, would risk investing here.

There was a party happening almost every other day in this place. The folks around here liked each other’s company because there was a conmanship. An us-against-Pennywrote attitude that sank so deep I reckoned that if empiresman came here looking for a criminal, then everybody in every disused warehouse would act blind, deaf, and mute.

I enjoyed living here because all my life I’d lived with just Pa and then on my own. The best part of it all was Emma. She was the girl who I danced with at Matthew’s birthday party and we had plenty of dances after that.

My motives for spending time with her – so I told myself – was to make sure she wasn’t lying about how she knew I was Rattlesnake. Really, though, I was becoming a sucker for a pretty face and nice company. I’d been close with a couple of women over the years, but I wasn’t a relationship kinda guy, and I sure as shit wouldn’t be while I was part of the rogue outfit.

The way I saw it, I’d make sure Emma didn’t know anything else that she shouldn’t. Once I was certain, I’d cut ties. If we could enjoy ourselves in the meantime, then great.

She lived with a family in the old anchor factory which had been made into two dozen little apartments by plaster partitions. Emma worked at a bakery near Pennywrote School for Girls. Her employer didn’t let her bring home unsold loaves but she did it anyway and shared them with the slum’s poorest folks.

No matter which party I went to she was there and by the time revelers were stumbling home drunk and musicians were packing up their lutes and violins I’d always find myself alone with her. We’d take walks down the moonlit docks and sometimes we even went into Pennywrote where the dragonflies and night bees danced in the lamplight.

Time started passing like light streaming from a shooting star and Scaliger’s deadline got close. Too close.

Most of the time I was working like crazy on my skills during the day, then prowling the docks and city outskirts at night, looking for a score. I was beginning to think we were gonna have to settle for a high-risk burglary.

Then, just a few days before we had to pay eight hundred gold or deal with the undead landlord, Tilde came back to the hideout with a smile on her face.

“I found it. Fucking found it. The perfect job.”

“Well we’re all ears,” I said.

Me and Yulf and Mags and Tilde sat in the common room and we waited for Tilde to mess around in her drinks cabinet and then settle into her seat with a green-tinted bottle of gin in her hand. She unscrewed the lid with her teeth hand spat it out and glugged back the gin.

“You gonna tell us or what?” said Mags.

“Noticed it five days ago,” Tilde said. “A ship called the Wanton. One of those sloop ships with one big mast. It’s moored up on dockside west. A dock worker fella I spoke to said it turned up one day and the dock boys tied it to the pier, but nobody’s been in or out of the ship. Not a soul. Nothing’s been unloaded. Nothing taken on board. How does a ship arrive in port and nobody gets on or off?”

“Maybe they’re carrying disease,” I said.

She shook her head. “I watched the dock inspectors go aboard.”

“I thought you said nobody went on board?” said Mags.

“I meant the crew, smartass. Anyway. The dock inspectors. They were on there for an hour and all that time I was watching the dock and there was no sign of the crew. The inspectors left and since then nobody has been on or off. If there was sickness aboard there’s a procedure. Governor signed it in after cholera broke out. Remember?”

Mags nodded.

“What’s the procedure?” I said.

“You get a disease boat come into dock,” she said, “Then you take it out to sea and sink it. Only way to be sure. They take that shit seriously since the outbreak of 38, and they ain’t done it to the Wanton.”

“Definitely strange then. But if all the cargo is still on board it’s a tough job. The dock’s too well-lit and guards always patrol down there. You know. So that a band of unscrupulous rogues doesn’t steal stuff.”

Magpie said, “Maybe we ought to spend the next few days pickpocketing. This job sounds too much for us and we aren’t going to find anything smaller in time to pay Mr. Scaliber.”

“Don’t call that grave lover ‘mister’,” said Tilde.

“He’s a citizen just like me and you.”

“He’s making gold off your dad’s business. Gods, Mags. I wish you’d just call him a stupid dead fucker or something. Just show that you’re mad.”

“Anger is like a hot coal that burns your skin the longer you hold it.”

“Yeah yeah. I can read books too.”

“Who said it was from a book?” said Mags.

“Well is it?”

“…yeah. But still.”

“Forget pickpocketing,” I said. “We ain’t gonna raise eight hundred nuggets stealing coppers and pocket watches. Most folks don’t carry that much cash on them. Pennywrote’s got a rogue problem in case you ain’t heard.”

“So what then, Snake?” said Tilde. “Don’t tell me that a famous rogue like you doesn’t have a scheme up his sleeve.”

I nodded. “The only way to make decent money pickpocketing is to make it a numbers game. Having dozens of rogues out there rifling through folks’ pockets all day every day. And the more people you have out there, the more chance of one of them getting cuffs. One person in cuffs puts the whole outfit at risk since the guards can be very persuasive when they wanna be. So. We need to focus on this one job. On the Wanton.”

“Stealing from a moored and occupied ship on the busiest dock in the city? Too big,” said Magpie.

“You wanna eat an elephant you gotta start with its feet,” I said.

“Disgusting saying.”

“Let’s just think about this. If they aren’t taking the cargo off the boat then there must be a reason. But forget that. What we gotta do is we gotta force them into taking off.”

“How do we do that?” asked Mags.

I thought about it. “You said that if there’s a confirmed contagious illness on board a ship then the city doesn’t take risks?”

Tilde nodded. “Nobody wants a repeat of last time.”

“Okay. So let’s say there was a confirmed case of sickness on the ship. The dock inspectors would order it to be taken out to sea and sunk.”

“Ah,” said Magpie. “And the cargo would sink with it and then we can dive underwater and retrieve it.”

I shook my head. “Not quite. I’m thinkin’ that if the folks who own the Wanton know it’s gonna be sunk, they’d be wise to take their cargo off it before that happens. All we need to do is make sure we’re watching when they unload it.”

“How do we get the dock inspectors to think there’s sickness aboard the ship?” asked Tilde.

I shrugged. “That’s easy. We find somebody who’s sick and we put ‘em on the boat.”

The next day, Tilde went into Pennywrote. In an alley near the Seaman’s Mission, she found a beggar afflicted with red pox which had remarkably similar symptoms to the plagues that Pennywrote officials were shit scared of, but weren’t as deadly.

For ten silvers, Tim Boyce the beggar was happy to swim around the ship and clamber up the netting on the port side.

Tilde had her doubts about Tim. “He’s older than shit and he looks like he hasn’t walked more than a mile this side of the decade.”

“I was a sailor,” said Tim. “An’ they said no fella could climb the rigging better than me.”

“Fine. You get the silvers when we see you do it,” I said.

“Ain’t fair. I want half now.”

“Life’s not fair, you old git. Nothing now. You get five silvers when you do it.”

Tim stripped out of his sodden and grimy coat and he folded it up gently and passed the stinking parcel to Mags. Mags handed it to Yulf. Yulf held it carefully, not caring about the smell.

Soon Tim was in his unders. His skin was paler than fish bone and he was skinny and whatever muscle he had in his days on the ocean was long gone, fragments of glimmers of ancient memories long past.

“Second thoughts. Let’s get you something to eat first,” I said. “You’re gonna need energy.”

“I ain’t eaten a hot meal in weeks.”

“Liar. The Seaman’s Mission serves up grub twice a day.”

“He shouldn’t swim so soon after eating, sir,” said Mags.

“Gods. Fine. So he can have some grub – a little, not too much – and we’ll wait an hour, and then he can swim. Okay? Any more objections?”

Nobody answered.

After buying him a bowl of beef goulash served in a bowl made out of bread, we waited for a decent amount of time so he digested it. Then we took him to a sea bank on the north side of town.

There wasn’t a dock in sight on the north side of Pennywrote, since the north side winds were considered unfavorable and an accident with two barges seventy-six years ago had given the place an unlucky reputation. No captain ever steered his boat in the north of Pennywort. As such they simply tore it down and encouraged sailors to use east and west docks.

“Good luck,” I told Tim.

“Don’t need luck,” he said and he stretched his skinny arms out and dove into the sea like a salmon looking to mate. Then he was away, a man-fish cutting through the liquid blue like he’d been born in it, turning himself in the water so he could follow the bank all the way around to the west dock where the Wanton was moored.

Twenty minutes later, we made it to the west side dock in time to see a half-naked old beggar swimming toward Wanton’s port side, where he started climbing up the rigging.

Magpie, dressed in his smartest shirt and trousers, approached the dock inspectors and put on his best performance as a concerned citizen who had been watching the ships.

“I’m a ship spotter,” he told the curious officials who were on their lunch break.

“The hell’s a ship spotter?” said the official.

“It’s a hobby. I was watching the Wanton over there and I saw a man on the deck. He had welts all over his body.”

The inspect glanced at his half-eaten beef sandwich and set it down on the desk with regret. “Sure about this?”

“Certain.”

“Aw fuck. Well. Better send word to the governor.”

That afternoon the dock inspector and a woman carrying a healer’s satchel approached the docked Wanton and hailed the sailor on watch, who was leaning against the deck.

They waited for a ramp to be lowered so they could climb aboard. They were in the Wanton for thirty minutes before leaving and walking down the ramp at a much more hurried pace than they had climbed it. I could only imagine the surprise of the Wanton’s captain when he learned of the strange, red-poxed man aboard.

It was Magpie who expressed concern about this. “Tim won’t get hurt will he?”

Tilde shook her head. “For one thing they’ll eventually realize he’s got red pox and not cholera. It looks like cholera but when they take the sailors off the ship and examine them, they’ll cotton on. When they realize it’s the pox they’ll get a healer to brew something up for him. The old fella is going to be five silvers richer and he’s gonna be cured.”

“I suppose they won’t sink the ship either.”

“Not when they realize it’s pox. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is the Wanton’s captain thinkin’ it might happen.”

That night Tilde and I took turns in watching the Wanton. It was in the early hours when even the seagulls were sleeping that we finally saw the ship’s crew begin unloading produce.

The dock inspectors had posted three guards to watch the ship. But by the time the crew began lowering buoyed and wax-sealed crates from Wanton’s stern the guards were already deep into a game of bridge. The rising piles of gambled coins seemed much more important than some old, silent ship.

Four of the sailors climbed down the rigging and into the dark water. They tied all the floating crates together by rope and floated them under the dock and out of sight.

Then, at the far side of the dock away from the nearest streetlamps, they began heaving the crates onto land. Two more sailors swam out carrying a box which they opened onshore and started emptying it. It was filled with wood and nuts and bolts. In practiced movements, they quickly assembled it into a cart that they could push and they loaded the crates onto it.

I trailed them through the warren of dockyard alleyways before finally stopping in front of the old metal Works factory.

As I followed them the mimic part of my mind that tracked my progress in everything skill-related notified me of something.

Sneak requirement satisfied

Requirements for level 1: Follow five people for twenty minutes without detection. Perform five times.

Current: 1/5

It was the sneak skill from the rogue book – it looked like I’d mastered a part of it. I didn’t have any kind of mimicked traits or skills for sneaking, so learning the skill was going to be useful.

I paused beside a cold burn barrel and kneeled down so it gave me cover. Ahead of me, the ship’s crew opened the metalworks factory doors and dragged the crate cart inside.

They heaved the massive doors shut behind them, and I heard a clanking sound as the bolts slid into place. Soon, a grimy window on the east wall of the factory revealed an orange glow coming from inside.

I spent the next few hours watching the warehouse. With my notebook in hand, I recorded everything that made sense to record.

How many people guarded the warehouse at any one time? How often they changed shifts. Shifts. How many of them stayed inside and how many patroled outsides?

My observations were good and bad.

“On the one hand,” I told Mags, Tilde, and Yulf later, “This ain’t a professional operation. They’ve posted their sailors on guard duty, and they change shifts whenever they feel like it. There ain’t a set time.”

“I suppose they didn’t expect to have a half-naked beggar swim onto their ship and force them to break quarantine protocols,” said Mags.

“Life’s a bitch, ain’t it.”

“How many were there?” said Tilde.

“Hard to say. At least four, with two guarding the doors at all times. Some of the ones from the warehouse came outside for a smoke. One fella went for a piss in the alleyway. These guys aren’t trained guards.”

“So we’re on?” said Mags.

“Yeah, buddy. We’re on.”

Chapter 21

The four of us spent the next day strategizing. Me and Tilde and Mags came up with various ways of getting into the warehouse and each was more sophisticated than the last. I realized it was getting ridiculous when Tilde was talking about grappling hooks.

Yulf gave us a nod or he shook his head when we asked for his opinion and we learned to value his feedback because the fella was usually right.

Soon, though, our plans were twisting and coiling together like snakes slithering around a pit and it was hard to see a good plan from bad. In the end, the decision was down to me and I made it.

“Let’s go back to basics. Here’s what I reckon we do.”

I laid out for them our plan, as I saw it, and then welcomed their questions.

There were many.

It was later that night under a tar-black sky that Tilde, Magpie, and I approached the abandoned metalworks where the sailors had taken their cargo. Yulf stayed close behind us but out of sight.

We paused two turns away from the metalworks so we could peer around the corner and see the front doors without getting seen ourselves. We weren’t much worried about witnesses because although this used to be an industrial hive most of the surrounding warehouses would never open their doors again, and it had been a full generation since anything was produced here.

We watched and waited for the right moment to get this started. More than once I caught Magpie staring at the constellations above.

I nudged him. “Focus.”

“Sorry, sir.”

At least he listened. It was much harder to try and control Tilde. Her eyes were part-glazed and her breath smelled like whiskey.

“Could you maybe just have not drunk just for one night?” I said.

She shook her head. “I work better when I’ve had a drop.”

“A drop. That’s what you call it. At least drink half as much as you would normally. C’mon. What happened to professionalism?”

“I sure as shit never got sent the Crow’s Nest,” she said.

“You know what? Actually, no. Forget it. I’ll deal with you later. We got a job to do. This is a rogue operation but it damn well better be a professional one.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

Out of instinct I almost said I was Arch John Wild but I caught myself at the last moment. “I’m Rattle motherfucking Snake, and you asked me to be the leader of this clown circus. So shut the fuck up or I’m out of here. Anytime you wanna call my debt for you busting me out settled, then be my guest.”

“Fine.”

“Fine what?”

“Fine, I’ll listen. I know I shouldn’t have drunk so much tonight, but it ain’t that easy for me.”

I reckoned that maybe I knew what she was alluding to. It didn’t take a professional healer to know she had a problem. “We’ll talk about this later. Everyone ready?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mags.

Tilde nodded.

“Okay, Tilde. You’re up. Remember – say it like we practiced.”

She began walking to the warehouse where two sailors were waiting in front of a padlocked door. One had his sleeves rolled up and on his left forearm was a tattoo of a half-naked mermaid. The other sailor was drinking coffee from a tin mug. Around his feet were a dozen cigarette butts he’d crushed under his boots.

While Magpie and I were dressed in black, Tilde was wearing a red velvet ballgown she’d bought from a thrift shop. It was cheap because it was well-worn and it was well-torn, but Mags had washed it and repaired it. Even so it didn’t look like it was fresh from Pennywrote dressmakers. But that didn’t matter. No guy was going to be looking at the condition of the dress. Not with the way Tilde was wearing it.

The guard who’d been drinking coffee tensed up as she approached.

“Private property.”

Tilde tried to affect a posh accent but the illusion was ruined by her tongue slurring over her words.

“I was hoping one of you handsome gentlemen could tell me how to get to...”

She paused.

It looked to me like she’d forgotten the lines we’d all agreed on. Regent Street, I said in my head, you want to get to Regent Street.

“Get to where?” asked the guard, crossing his arms.

“Oh fuck it,” said Tilde.

She kneeled down and pulled a dagger from a sheath on her ankle and in one movement cut an arc upwards and sliced the blade across the neck of the guy with the mermaid tattoo.

Blood sprayed on her face. She drew her blade arm back and pivoted so she was standing sideways with her front leg forward and slightly bent and her blade arm tensed and ready.

The man put his hand to his neck like he couldn’t believe it and it only took a second for his fingers to wear a coat of red. He made a gibbering gasping sound and Tilde stabbed the knife into his gut. She did it fast and she did its dozens of times and the knife made a phut phut phut sound as it sank in and out of gut flesh.

The sailor’s colleague was frozen and his face was a colorless blob of fear and it was only when Tilde, face covered in crimson rage, turned to him that he stepped back and tripped over a barrel and fell on his back and spilled his hot coffee over his hair and face.

“Oh, fuck. Fuck,” he gibbered.

He got to his feet and ran down the alleyway crying to himself and stumbling and then running some more. He ran as fast as he could until Yulf stepped out of the shadows with his right arm out, muscles tensed, and his palm outstretched.

The sailor collided into Yulf’s great paw. His nose burst and he fell in a heap on the ground, with coffee dribbling from his hair and blood seeping from his nose.

Tilde was wiping her blade on the dead sailor’s jacket when I crossed the alley and reached her. I was so angry that at first, my words stuck in my throat like they were choking me.

“What the fuck, you fucking numbskull? You just turned this from a robbery where they send one guard or maybe two into a fucking murder investigation. Now we’re gonna see the whole of Pennywrote’s fucking force sniffing around.”

“The bodies will be gone by then.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you? You were supposed to let ‘em away, not put ‘em in the ground!”

“Look, Snake,” said Tilde.

“No, I won’t fucking look, you lunatic,” I said, realizing that my voice was getting a little too loud, and we still had a warehouse to steal from.

“Like I said. The bodies will be gone before the guards hear a whisper.”

Tilde’s eyes were clear and blue. The clearest I’d seen them in a long time. In the mornings she was usually hungover and her eyes were bloodshot. In the evening her eyes were glazed. Tonight, even though she’d looked drunk just fifteen minutes earlier, her eyes were focused.

Mags eyed Tilde and he looked at the bodies, and his face was getting paler by the second.

“Let’s get the fuck on and deal with this later. Anyway, what are you talking about, bodies? Only one of ‘ems dead. The other guy’s out cold. What about when he wakes?”

“He won’t. I’ll make sure of it.”

“What’s got into you?”

“C’mon. We’re wasting time. We don’t know when they planned to change shifts watching the doors.”

“Find something to cover the blood,” I said.

Tilde dragged one of the barrels they’d been using as seats and laid it over the guard’s blood. Pools of wet red liquid rimmed around the bottom of the barrel. It wouldn’t fool anyone who looked closely, and that pissed me off. We shouldn’t need to be doing any fooling at all if we’d stuck to my plan.

When Tilde went around the side of the metalworks like we’d planned I caught hold of Mags’ sleeve as he passed me.

“The fuck was that?” I said.

“I know. Bjorn didn’t like her when she’s like this either.”

“She does this a lot?”

“Just leave it, sir. That’s best.”

“She’s done this before, and you just put up with it?”

“Didn’t she kill one of the guards when she broke you out?” Mags said.

“Sure. But-”

“But that was to get you out. So it was okay.”

The accusation in Mags’ voice couldn’t be plainer if he wrote me a note. And he was right. I hadn’t spared a single thought over Guard Hargreaves getting a dagger through the neck.

All this time I’d been working and living with a complete lunatic and I’d just accepted it.

I would decide what to do later. Right now, I had to focus.

“This way,” I told Mags.

The side door was a delivery entrance with weathered paint and an iron padlock hooked over a latch. A time-weathered sign over the lintel read ‘Employees Only’. Tilde shook the padlock. It was secured around a chain.

“Well then,” I said.

Tilde shook the lock again. “I wanna see the famous Rattlesnake in action.”

“I don’t perform on demand. Get it open. And we’re gonna talk later.”

“No. I wanna-”

I grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the wall. The suddenness took her by surprise.

“Get that open. Now.”

I let her go.

She took out her lockpicks and kneeled beside the heavy-duty padlock. While she worked on it I said, “Take it you’ve got a plan?”

“Plan?”

“For the bodies. They’re your mess. I was wondering what you intended to do with them.”

She shrugged.

“Yulf can drag ‘em to the docks and throw them in the sea. Floaters turn up all the time. Guards don’t hardly even investigate them these days there’s so many.”

“Yulf can drag them?”

“Yep.”

“Nope.”

“Sure he can,” she said. “He’s strong enough.”

“He shouldn’t have to. We talked this over. You were supposed to lead them away.”

“Well, I did. Kinda. Just led them to a different place.”

“You’re a godsdamned liability. What about when their bloated corpses wash up at some riverbank a few miles from the city? Don’t give me your bullshit about guards not investigating. Two sailors float to shore stabbed full of holes like a slab of cheese, and the guards won’t even take a look? What world do you live in?”

“A world where I’ve never been in a cell in the Crow’s Nest, except to break you out.”

“Gods, Tilde. You’re walking a dangerous path now, lemme tell you.”

Truth was, Tilde had the skills to kill me in a second. And she had the will to do it. I’d seen that twice now. But I couldn’t let her know. The last thing you do to a caged tiger is to show it fear. The truth was I didn’t fear her, really. I hadn’t been scared of anything since I learned what happened to Pa. That had sort of burned the capability of fear out of me. I was, however, sensible enough to be wary.

“What’d we do when a murder investigation gets launched and they trace it back to the ship? And then they start asking questions and one question in particular gets asked. They start asking why a half-naked beggar swam to the ship and climbed up. What if they give old Tim ten silvers and he starts his lips flapping like he’s singing the Lover’s Lullaby?”

“You got a healthy imagination Rattlesnake. What about this: we procure two barrels and stuff the bodies in there along with enough rocks to weigh them down and then we throw ‘em in the sea. Simple.”

“Are you going to open the padlock or what?” I said.

“Yeah if I get time to think. There. Done.”

“Yulf?” I said.

While I waited for the big man to join us I opened the door quietly and I crept into the warehouse. There was a twenty-foot-high steel shelf filled with big coils of anchor chain and a few rusted anchors that had been pulled off boats for repairing and then just left there.

Peeking through the shelves I didn’t see any sign of the other sailors. The place seemed to be empty. I reckoned the guards at the front were the only ones around right now, and the others must have gone somewhere. Maybe the rest were on the Wanton waiting for the dock inspector so they didn’t get rumbled that they’d moved their cargo off the ship.

I headed back out. “Tilde. Yulf. There are a couple of barrels inside here. We’ll use them and put your insane plan into action. Drag the bodies inside the warehouse for now and stuff them in the barrels later. I reckon we got a little time to work before we need to think about corpse removal.”

We headed into the warehouse. The place was a mausoleum of dust and broken anchor chains and there was a huge anchor that must have once been attached to a giant war vessel or something.

In the center of the warehouse floor was a mysterious chest. A black sheet was draped over it. The chest itself had twelve heavy-duty steel padlocks on it.

I paced around it.

“Looks like we got what we came for. Drag it back to the hideout. We’ll unlock it there and unload the stuff where there’s no chance someone stumbles along.”

Chapter 22

The chest must have taken at least six sailors to drag it from the Wanton ship and to the metalworks, but Yulf managed the carry it to the hideout by himself. When we got back, I was so pissed at Tilde I could have strangled her.

“Go deal with the dead sailors,” I told her. “I don’t even wanna look at ya. Yulf, do you mind going with her, buddy?”

Yulf nodded and the two of them exited the hideout. This left me and Mags alone with our bounty. Mags made us some coffee and I went to the bathroom and I washed my face and my armpits and I let the adrenaline leave me until I felt calmer. Then I headed back downstairs.

“Are we going to open it now?” Mags asked when I rejoined him.

“One second.”

As much as I was desperate to see the cargo, I needed a plan to deal with Tilde. Mags would have good input on the matter, but he was Tilde’s friend and he’d known her a lot longer than he’d known me. I decided I couldn’t trust him on this.

Trying to rationalize what the hell had happened, one thing was clear to me.

Tilde wasn’t stable. Not a bit. She didn’t need to kill those guys, but she did it anyway.

“Sir?” said Magpie.

“Yeah?”

“About Tilde.”

“C’mon, Mags. If you’re gonna tell me it’s just a fuckin’ quirk of her personality that she kills people…”

“Tilde found something out, sir. About the Wanton.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“She only let me know after you were in the warehouse.”

“Alright then,” I said. “Spill.”

“The Wanton isn’t the ship’s only name. Tilde found out that six months ago, it docked in Lanebridge Port with ‘Saltermass’ painted on the side. A year earlier, it sailed into Golden Claw as the ‘Possible’.”

“Alright, so what? It ain’t unusual for smuggler ships to have a false name. It’s the ship equivalent of our costume box upstairs.”

“Okay, sir. Yes. But the thing is, Tilde found out that the Golden Claw navy has a ‘sink on sight’ order put out on the Possible.”

“Sink on sight? That’s only for-”

“Slavers. Yes, sir. The Possible and its crew have been trafficking folks out of colonies in the east. Kids, usually. Sometimes teenage girls. And they’ve been bringing them over here for. Well. You know what for.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, sir. I thought the same.”

“You’re telling me there’s a whole ship full of kidnapped kids docked in Pennywrote?”

Mags shook his head. “No, sir. They aren’t smuggling people this time. But that didn’t matter to Tilde when she heard about its past.”

“I saw her, Mags. Killing those chumps wasn’t for the hell of it. It meant something to her.”

“Sir.”

“Look. I appreciate you telling me. But-”

“I’ve known Tilde for years, sir. If you’re on her side, you’re on her side. She’d kill for you. I’d trust her more than anyone.”

“I don’t even wanna think about that right now. Let’s just get this chest open.”

“Sir.”

Although I was much better at picking padlocks now, some of these ones looked sophisticated and I knew I’d struggle with them. I had to remember the Rattlesnake was supposed to be a master rogue. I didn’t want to try working on these padlocks in front of Mags and make myself look stupid.

“Know what? You can go to bed,” I told him. “I’ll work on the padlocks for a while and then we’ll crack this clam open properly in the morning.”

“Are you sure, sir? I don’t mind helping.”

“I’m certain, buddy. Hit the hay.”

“Okay then. Night. Sorry about Tilde.”

“She isn’t your problem to apologize for.”

I focused on the easier padlocks first and then the medium-rated ones. Over the next two hours, I opened six of them. Saving the biggest padlocks to last I got to work on one of them, when the hideout doors burst open.

I heard footsteps. Big booming ones joined by quieter irregular ones. Momentary panic turned into relief as I realized those steps could only be made by a big guy and a drunk woman.

Tilde was laughing when she walked into the room. “This guy’s a hoot!” she said, slapping Yulf’s shoulder.

“Find a lot to talk about while you were cleaning up your mess?” I asked.

“Why are you getting so worked up about it?”

I realized something then. Maybe from what she said or how she said it or how she was looking at me. I realized that though Tilde had asked me to be the leader of this group, she was losing respect for my authority. I could see it. I don’t know if she was rumbling me or if it was just how she was and maybe she’d been like this with Bjorn but I saw it.

I walked over to her.

Before she could react I pressed the end of a lockpick against her neck so the tip was poking right at her skin. I felt Yulf looming behind me but I knew he wouldn’t do anything.

“You put all of us in the shit tonight, you drunken fucking lout. I don’t care if you managed to clean up your mess. You don’t endanger a job like that ever again. You know me. You know who I am and you know what I’m capable of. If you ever do something so stupid again, you’ll be the one crammed into a barrel.”

Tilde looked at me for a long time. Then she blinked.

“I’m going to bed,” she said, before leaving the room.

“Yulf,” I said. “Would you mind keeping watch over our cargo for a while and I’ll take over in a few hours?”

He nodded and I went to bed. I didn’t even get undressed. That night I dreamed of blood gushing out of a leaking barrel and soaking me from head to boots in gloopy red.

When I woke in the early hours of the morning I took over guard duty from Yulf. Alone, I worked on the last two padlocks. They were so difficult that it took me the next three hours to crack them open.

* Lockpicking leveled up *

Level: 6

Requirements for level 7: 30 medium locks, 15 hard, 5 very hard.

When I hit level six in the lockpicking skill something happened with my eyes. They started getting funny. I was seeing colors when I looked at the padlocks and when I grabbed a lock and held it tight in my right hand and really concentrated on it, the metal coating seemed to disappear and it was like I was looking inside the lock. I could see the actuator and the pin chambers and the plug. When I inserted a pick into the lock I wasn’t working by feel and sound. I could see the pick inside the lock itself.

Discovering this got me so excited I worked on the chest non-stop until morning broke silently, only announcing itself by a soft light that came in muted pale rays through the dusty shop windows.

Tilde was the first of the others to get up. She looked different. Her hair was tied back and her face was clean, which wasn’t something to take for granted with her. Hygiene wasn’t at the top of her priority list usually. She was wearing clothes that looked vaguely fresh and there wasn’t a blade in sight on her person. I realized that she wasn’t swaying and I couldn’t smell alcohol on her.

I thought a little more about the slavers, and how Tilde had reacted with the warehouse guards who were part of the ship’s crew. I wondered how much I could trust Mags about her. Part of me thought he was being naïve. Then again, their friendship was clear as the piss of a well-hydrated man.

“Good morning, Rattlesnake,” she said.

“Morning.”

“About last night.”

“Yeah?”

Tilde scratched her neck. She said nothing for a while. Then she said, “I’ll make us some coffee.”

She brewed a pot of coffee and brought me a cup and placed it beside me on the floor, where I was kneeling beside the chest.

“I didn’t know if you took sugar,” she said.

“Thanks. So. The fellas you killed and stuffed into barrels.”

“The Wanton ain’t the only name that ships had,” said Tilde. “I looked into it. It was called the Possible once. And it used to sail east and bring folks back in chains.”

“Mags told me. But here’s the thing about believing every story you hear – it gets to the point folks can sell you any tale for a silver.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s nowhere for slave ships to trade anymore. The empire’s charter stopped that.”

“Don’t be naïve, Snake. That ship changes its name more than a whore changes her drawers. Every fella who’s served on it longer than five years gets a siren tattooed on their arm. Rite of passage. The guys guarding the warehouse had tattoos. Those fucks knew what was going on.”

“Ah. So they weren’t mermaid tats.”

“Nope. Sirens. Anyway. Any fella who works on that ship long enough to get a siren knew damn well what kind of cargo they carried in between bringing stolen goods into places like Pennywrote.”

“Even if that’s true, there’s a time and there’s a place for you to be acting on your moral impulses. During a well-planned job isn’t one of them. No warning. No indication what you were gonna do. It ain’t fair on Magpie and Yulf for you to be playing with their freedom and their safety like that. It can’t happen again.”

“It won’t,” she said. “It’s just.”

“Just what?”

“You gotta do what you’re good at.”

“Killing fellas?” I said. “That’s your talent in life?”

“Among other things. Bjorn didn’t mind if blood got spilled on the job. In fact, a job wasn’t worth doing for him unless someone got put in the dirt.”

“That isn’t what Mags said.”

“He didn’t know Bjorn like me.”

“I’m not Bjorn. For one thing, I’m not buried in a shallow grave, so I guess you gotta say I’m wiser than Bjorn in that regard. We gotta do things differently, Tilde. We gotta be professional.”

“I know. It’s just I don’t know what my place in the group anymore.”

Now I was beginning to understand. I reckoned that part of Tilde had wondered if she should lead the group after Bjorn died. Maybe part of her knew that securing Rattlesnake’s skills - if I had really been him - was too good an opportunity to miss. But another part of her wanted his seat. Now, maybe she was feeling pushed out.

“Look. Everyone has their talents and you got heaps to spare. Humor me with something. What skills are involved in killing someone?”

“Using a blade. Cutting people with the blade. Stabbing people with the blade.”

“Alright. What about before you kill someone?”

“What are you getting at?” She asked.

“Well, you sneaked through a tower filled with guards to break me out. Can you not see how that sneaking ability might be valuable to a group of burglars? Especially if you do it without leaving a body behind?”

“You want me to sneak around without killing people?”

“That be nice. Let’s try it. See how it goes.”

She didn’t speak for a minute. “Okay,” she finally said.

“Good. And if you ever endanger the four of us on a job again, I’ll kill you myself.”

Magpie and Yulf joined us soon after. Yulf’s crown was wetter than the rest of his hair because he used cooking oil to fight against his untamable cowlick. Mags headed straight for the coffee pot and sighed when he found it empty. “Why am I the one who has to brew it every morning?” he said.

Tilde said, “I made some. Greedy guts here drank it.”

“I’ve been up all night,” I said. “Sit tight. I’ll make some more.”

“Would ya look at that,” said Mags. “Mr. Rattlesnake is making coffee! Are you sure you know where the coffee is?”

“Smartass.”

When Mags had a cup of coffee in his hand the four of us stood around the mysterious chest. It was waist height, six feet wide, and made from walnut varnished dark brown in places but sea weathered in others.

“What do you reckon’s in there?” asked Magpie.

“Whatever it is, the crew didn’t wanna take it off the ship until they had no other choice,” I said.

“Whatever it is,” said Tilde, “We need to open it up and see what we’re dealing with so we know which fence to sell it to. And we need to do it now. The crew is probably combing the entire district looking for this.”

“Let me just take care of the final two padlocks.”

In a matter of seconds, I unlocked the heavy-duty padlocks.

Course, I knew they were already unlocked. I had unlocked them last night when everyone was asleep and then moved the shackles so they looked locked but weren’t. Magpie and Tilde seemed dutifully impressed with my quick work.

With the locks on the floor, all that remained was to open it. I grabbed the lid and threw it back to reveal what was inside the chest.

Everyone was silent.

I couldn’t say exactly what was running through my friends’ minds but if it was anything like mine, they were thinking holy fuck. What have we got ourselves into?

Inside the wooden chest were piles and piles of dynamite. Brown tubes strapped together in sixes by black duct tape. They were covered in congealed wax to stop the elements from getting into the chest and corroding them. I reckoned there was enough to blow the entire dockland and slum districts into the sky.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not by far.

“What’s that on the side of ‘em?” said Tilde.

“Symbol of the empire’s navy,” said Mags.

“This dynamite belongs to the empire?”

“Yup,” I said.

“Fuck.”

I nodded. “Yep. That about sums it up.”

Chapter 23

Weeks Ago

A man named John Lusius Blake was in the Crow’s Nest of Pennywrote jail. He was sitting crossed-legged on the sawdust floor and scraping his fingernails on the stone wall until they were the right length. Until they looked presentable. He couldn’t abide long nails and he didn’t see why that should change just because he was waiting to die.

The cell doors opened and a guard walked in and stood with his feet apart and arms folded. His cudgel hung from a leather clasp on his belt. On the other side of his belt was a rung of silver keys that gleamed like the finest loot.

“Up you get, Blake.”

The guard was Hargreaves. A man with no class, even for a scud. With him was another unfortunate resident of the Nest, cuffs around his wrists and ankles.

John glanced at Yulf, the gentle giant standing by the cell window.

“It’s getting crowded in here, Hargreaves. Don’t think we’ve got room for another.”

“What did I tell you about that mouth of yours?” said Hargreaves.

John didn’t see the cudgel coming. Hargreaves was too fast for that. He certainly felt the pain, though he quickly buried it deep inside him, squashing it down nice and compact so that he didn’t betray an inch of it.

Hargreaves and another guard led John to a new cell, while the other prisoner took residence with Yulf. They took John out of his cell and across the Nest, where they pushed him into a draughty corner cell on the furthest wing and then slammed the iron doors behind him.

Alone, John got back to a pastime that had occupied him of late – thinking about how to escape before they killed him.

John, who often went by the name Rattlesnake even though he didn’t advertise the fact, had thought about trying to bribe the guards. He’d quickly decided against it. With some officials, bribery made things worse. It offended some stupid sense of honor that they had. It was prudent not to make the offer until you knew what kind of person they were.

So he decided different tack. Living a life of roguery meant that ending up in this position in the Crow’s Nest was always a possibility. You take risks, you pay the price. John had never been the kind of guy to wallow in his misery.

As such, he’d prepared for incarceration and even execution, and part of his preparations meant that he was no stranger to the folks who walked the halls of the Crow’s Nest with their cudgels and their keys.

Three hours later, he heard footsteps. A guard appeared bearing a metal tray with a bowl of jail slop on it.

John peered at him. This guard was called Slater and though he lived a poor life, gold was not the way to his heart.

“Hullo, Slater. How are you tonight?” he said.

“Shouldn’t you be getting some sleep?”

“I guess so. Don’t want to be tired for my execution, do I?”

“My mother always said that the world seems tougher when you haven’t had forty winks. Maybe it applies to executions just the same. Might not feel as bad,” said Slater.

“Your mother was a wise woman. I hope you inherited the same wisdom.”

Slater arched an eyebrow at him. John Lusius Blake knew what silence meant, and it had many meanings. In some contexts, it was a bad thing.

This silence meant that he had a chance.

Taking a deep breath, he made his play.

“I could be a lot subtler about this, Guard Slater, but you pay for subtlety with time and I find myself running low on it at the moment. Here are the facts. I know who you are, and I know where you live. It’s the little bungalow on Chapel Street with a purple flowerpot under the window.”

Slater reached for his cudgel.

“Now just what the fuck-”

“Did I mention that I know the names of your wife and daughter?” said John.

“You better get to the point.”

John smiled, seeing on Guard Slater’s face the signs that he had won.

“Tomorrow some poor sap bearing my name is going to get executed instead of me. Alright?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Exactly that. Let’s recap. I know who your wife and daughter are. I know where you live. As you can imagine, a man like me never works alone. I'm not short of people on the outside who owe me a good turn.”

Slater’s face paled.

John continued. “Prisoners are hooded before you take them from the Cow’s Nest. So, tomorrow morning, a different prisoner will be sitting in this very cell, hooded and gagged. I don’t care who it is. Maybe pick one of the sex offenders on the North wing. With me so far?”

“I can’t possibly-”

“The limits of ‘possible’ seem to stretch when your wife and child depend on them. Now, while the unfortunate man is being executed in my place, you will sneak me out of the guard tower in an empty beer barrel. Do that and I won’t kill your family horribly. Understand?”

"Get fucked. You're dying tomorrow, lad. Even if you have someone on the outside, there's no way you can get a message to them."

John took a chance.

"Isn't there? Do you trust every employee who works in the Nest? Your cleaners, your chefs, the maintenance crew?"

Slater took on the expression and the posture of a man who'd suddenly had the weight of the world dumped on his poor shoulders. John felt sorry for him, though not sorry enough to call this off and accept his death.

Slater broke from his thoughts.

"Fine. A beer barrel, you say?"

Chapter 24

A chest packed with stolen empire dynamite is a problem no matter how you look at it. The fact that the crew of the Wanton stole it first wasn’t much of a silver cloud for us – the empire doesn’t go lenient on crooks just because they steal from other crooks.

We could have just dumped it all, of course, but we’d taken risks to steal it and we still needed to earn some cash from it. I wasn’t ready to give up on that yet.

“We need to look at who’s in the market for stolen empire dynamite,” I said. “It’s a very specific audience. I’m thinking underground militia. There’s a war going on in the Wathana Republic, ain’t there? The rebels might buy it from us.”

“Good luck making contact with them, sir,” said Mags.

“The thing about them beheading folks? C’mon. That can’t be true.”

“It’s what I heard.”

“Alright, so who else might buy it? Maybe unlicensed quarries? Mining operations that are operating without paying empire taxes?”

“Maybe we should think on it, sir. An idea might come to us.”

“You’re right. Where’s Tilde?”

“Out somewhere.”

“Alright, well that’s about it for now. Well done, Mags, by the way. You did great.”

“Thank you, sir!” he said, beaming.

I didn’t see Tilde all that day, and I was glad for it. Despite how reticent she’d seemed, she had still killed two fellas. I wasn’t overly sentimental about the deaths of two slavers. It was more Tilde’s unpredictability. It was way too dangerous in the kinds of games we were playing.

Later that evening Mags, Yulf, and I were eating smoked seabass that Mags had bought from the dock and smoked in our yard. I had sent him to the docks to scout the Wanton and see what was happening.

“No sign of the crew,” he said. “But that isn’t unusual given their behavior since they docked. It isn’t as if they can tell the guards that they’ve been robbed and someone stole all their empire dynamite, either.”

“Good,” I said. “And I checked the warehouse today. No guards there, either, but the bloodstains were gone. The Wanton crew must have cleaned up after us.”

“That settles it then, sir. They don’t want to draw the guards’ attention any more than we do.”

The hideout door opened and Tilde entered the dining room. She was wearing a normal-looking outfit of a red shirt and beige trousers. Her hair was tied back and she looked…well…clean. Her eyes weren’t puffy or bloodshot, and neither was she swaying side to side in her characteristic drunken manner.

She walked five paces and stood in front of the table. I set my fork down on my plate. Tilde cleared her throat.

“I, uh. I wanted to apologize to you all.”

“Tilde, you-” Mags began, but I held my finger up. He stopped talking.

Tilde continued, “I shouldn’t have done what I did. I let all of ya down. I put you all in danger and I was selfish and I shouldn’t have done it. But I’m gonna make it up to you. And I’m especially sorry to you, Yulf. You’re the one who helped me get rid of the, uh, the bodies. So I’m sorry.”

Yulf, who had an ear of corn in his hand, nodded to her. He pulled out the chair next to him.

Tilde smiled. “Thanks. But There’s something I gotta do.”

For the next three days and nights, Tilde was always doing stuff. On the first day, she went into Pennywrote and bought a bag of plaster mix, and she spent the whole day plastering the ceilings of various rooms in the hideouts where water was getting in when the wind and rain were bad.

On the second day, she used some of her gold to buy four beds. They were second-hand, but they were well built and they were a hell of a lot better than what we were sleeping on. She and the delivery guys swapped out our makeshift beds for these newer ones while Mags and I were in Pennywrote, listening to rumors and seeing if our heist had made any waves.

It hadn’t.

On the third day, Tilde was the first to get out of bed. She was up even before Mags and me. She spent all that day from sunup to sunset plastering the hideout walls where there were gaps, and then painting over all of them so they looked vaguely presentable.

She didn’t eat with us in the evening when it was Yulf’s turn to cook and he made a hearty beef stew with flour dumplings. Later on, I was alone in my room, practicing picking a padlock, when I heard a knock on my door.

I cleared the padlock and lockpick away and unlocked the door. Tilde was standing there, wearing an apron covered in plaster and paint. She had something in her hand.

“I won’t stay, Snake,” she said.

She thrust her hand out toward me. She was holding a wrapped package with a bow on it.

“Ain’t my birthday as far as I remember,” I said.

“Just open it.”

I opened the package to find a long, wooden box with ornamental carvings. It had a brass clasp. I opened the box and inside was a dagger.

The hilt was dark wood with a rim of etched copper on the bottom. The blade was shaped like a wave, with a tip so sharp it looked like it could cut the air. Half of the metal was tinted dark green, like pond algae.

“There’s a sheath that comes with it too. I got it specially made,” said Tilde. “And there’s this.” She gave me a leather sheath with a snake etched into it.

Finally, she handed me a scrap of paper. It read, ‘Certificate of artificery: This is to certify that this dagger has been artificed by Blake Pomlinson, a fellow of the Empirical College of Artificery. Said blade carries artificery bestowing it with a 2.5 in ten (25%) chance of inflicting a minor poison effect.’

I’d never owned an artificed blade before. These were pricey, and Tilde must have spent a considerable portion of whatever personal savings she possessed. Or, you know, she’d stolen it. Given that she was a rogue and all.

“This is really something,” I said.

“Not really. An’ I got Yulf the rest of the series of those books he’s always reading. I gave Mags a new set of tools. I know it doesn’t make up for what I did.”

I immediately clipped the sheath to my belt and put the dagger in it. “I appreciate this, Tilde. Thanks.”

She nodded. “I better hit the hay.”

The next day the four of us all gathered around the dining table for breakfast. Mags cooked eggs and bacon, while I brewed the coffee. Tilde ate with a bigger appetite than I’d ever seen from her. Her eyes were clear and focused, and her skin lacked the blotchiness that whiskey and beer had given her in the past.

“Alright, chumps,” I said. “We got two problems to solve. Let’s push the dynamite to one side for a second. The more pressing problem is paying Scaliber. If we can’t, then he’s within his rights to evict us. Needless to say, we don’t want that to happen when we have a hideout full of boomsticks.”

“You got a plan, sir?” said Mags.

“As it happens, maybe I do,” I said.

I paused for dramatic effect.

“Have you guys ever heard of a thing called…forgery?”

They said nothing for a moment, no doubt awed by my genius.

Then Magpie said, “Of course we’ve heard of forgery, sir. We’re a rogue outfit.”

I stuffed a full fried egg in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed, then stood up.

“Okay then. Well. We got a forgery to plan, and I got some ideas. Let’s get started.”

Chapter 25

It was an autumn night crisper than a fresh death certificate when we watched Elliot De Stanwright stumble out of a gentleman’s club named Juicy Lucy’s Titty Bar. He pulled up the collar of his expensive coat and walked into the bitter wind that was gusting down Forkwright Street.

As I watched the guy, I could see why he was our first chump. Elliott De Stanwright was part of Pennywrote’s upper-class, being the son of an upholstery magnate who got a chokehold on the city’s fabric needs and beat smaller businesses like Mag’s father’s into dust. He was also a womanizer of insatiable appetite.

“Word has it,” Tilde had said, “Fucker gets rough. Cut a girl up once, I heard. Paid her off.”

“You’ve done your homework on this guy?” I said.

“I visited some taverns. Spoke to a gossipseller.”

“A gossipseller?”

“What’s your problem with those guys?”

“Never mind,” I said.

“Anyway, I got a few targets. Lemme know what you think.”

Tilde gave me a notepad filled with everything she had learned about the three guys we could potentially defraud. Her handwriting was neat, her research was impossibly thorough. She’d really worked hard on this.

“We need someone rich and stupid,” I said.

“Plenty of those folks in Pennywrote.”

I studied the notepad and then passed it to Magpie. Mags was the one who suggested we focus on Elliot. Mostly because Elliot’s father put Mag’s father out of business. And it wasn’t just a result of honest competition, where one business beats the other. If it was, I’d have said that maybe there were other more deserving targets out there.

Turned out that the Phillipe De Stanwright had paid a fella named Mickey Quinn to sneak into the offices of Smith and Sons Upholstery and steal their client list. He smashed the place up to make it look like burglary and vandalism. Even took a shot in the wastebasket under Mag’s father’s desk.

As well as that, Phillipe paid an arsonist named Jamila Melon to set fire to a warehouse on the far side of Pennywrote where most of Smith & Sons’ finished stock was kept. Mag’s father was ruined before the sun rose on the streets and over the shingles of Pennywrote and its rooftops. Thus began Mag’s pa’s descent into the hells of drink, which led to his death.

“Wasn’t Elliot a kid when his father did all that stuff?” I said.

Mags was messing around with a gin trap he’d bought off a jackal hunter. It was spring-activated and had rectangular metal jaws. Rich folks employed game wardens who littered the traps around their estates to stop poachers. Mags was practicing dismantling it without activating the jaws.

“Sure,” he said. “But every coin Elliot spends comes from their family business. He’s never worked a day in his life.”

“We’re hardly in a position to be throwing stones about that.”

“His gold comes from his father’s business, which means part of it comes from when his father ruined mine. After what his father did, their whole family is fair game.”

“Works for me,” said Tilde.

Yulf nodded his assent.

“Okay,” I said. “The De Stanwright kid is the first turkey we’re gonna cook. Now we just gotta decide how.”

“He’s got a weakness,” said Mags.

That was how we found ourselves in the Western Quarter on a cold Autumn night. The Western was Pennywrote’s district of choice for anyone beginning a night of revelry. It was packed street to street with gin bars and gourmet restaurants where pureed vegetables and smoked dock bream sold for thirty silvers a plate. Bards from the city and from the towns and hamlets beyond it clamored for stage time in smoky bars where guys and girls in tight skirts and trousers fetched trays of whiskey cocktails to tables of the well-to-dos who saw them as nothing but pretty pieces of flesh.

Tilde spent the whole time glaring around her like she’d been led to her own personal hell, but she was evidently being professional tonight. She didn’t say or do anything about it. She didn’t even think about going for a drink. She stayed quiet and she stayed watchful.

At a quarter past ten, she nudged me. “There’s the fucker.”

Elliot De Stanwright walked out of Juicy Lucy’s and buttoned his overcoat up to his chin and wrapped a cashmere scarf around his neck. He was the kind of tall that probably didn’t let him pass through a crowded street without drawing one or two glances.

Even if he hadn’t been so tall, his manner of dress was designed to draw the eye. Under his coat, he wore a maroon cloak with gold stitching and under the cloak was a shirt with ivory buttons. On his right little finger was a signet ring and around his left wrist was a gold bracelet artificed to draw the glow of the streetlamps. Looked to me like a guy who wasn’t worried about being mugged because his father had lots of gold and that the grimy part of life simply wasn’t an issue for young Elliot.

This was a guy worth mimicking, I reckoned. If only I’d had more time. He’d have been a great addition to my vault.

Elliot turned up his collar against the wind and walked down Section Street, suddenly taking a left turn into an alleyway.

We approached the alleyway and then hung back. I looked at the grimy passageway beyond where rain dripped from slanted gutters and I counted in my head.

“What’re you doing?” said Tilde.

“Nothing.”

“Your lips were moving.”

“I was counting to thirty in my head.”

“C’mon.”

We took the turning into the alleyway, spotting Elliott at the far end where he exited the alleyway and turn right onto Fuller’s Cross.

“This way,” said Tilde. “I know a shortcut.”

We rejoined Elliott as he headed right on Fuller’s and then down Drizzle Road with his chin tucked into his scarf and walked past a row of men’s tailor shops, all of whom had opened their business next door to each other. Everyone in Pennywrote knew of the legendary Tailor’s Spat, as folks called it, but I’d never actually seen the shops themselves. Maybe one day I’d even have enough gold to shop there.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Ready,” she said.

Tilde split away from me and crossed the street and then hurried along it, before crossed back over again so that she was ahead of Elliott and was walking towards him.

Just five steps away from him, she collapsed to the floor.

Elliot flinched and looked around him. He rushed over to Tilde and kneeled in front of her and put his hand on her thigh.

“Miss? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Gimme a minute,” said Tilde.

“Try and sit up,” said Elliott, his stare lingering on her breasts.

Tilde sat up and Elliot put his overcoat around her shoulders.

“If you like,” he said, his gaze taking in her figure, “I could help you to Main Street and we could find a carriage.”

“Such a gentleman. I don’t know what came over me. One minute I was walking and the next the ground was swept from underneath me. My pulse was pounding and I felt weak. You don’t think…why, perhaps it was the sight of such a handsome man as yourself that did this to me!”

Don’t ham it up, I thought. You’re going too far. He’ll rumble you.

Elliott grinned like a hunter spotting a young antelope lonely and sipping from a stream. He held out his hand and took Tilde’s in his, helping her to her feet.

“As I said, madam. We can find a carriage just this way.”

Tilde raised her hand above her head as if she was stretching. Seeing the signal, I left the doorway and then walked past them. I didn’t even look at them. I was just a stranger walking down the same street.

But as my shoulder brushed Tilde’s she passed something into my hand.

I put it into my inner pocket.

Just as I was getting out of earshot I heard her tell Elliot, “You know what? I think I feel much better. I don’t need a carriage”

“But my dear, I thought that-”

“I think that maybe you should go back to Juicy Lucy’s, sir. You might find what you’re looking for there.”

He grabbed her arm. “Now you wait a second.”

Tilde shook herself free and then threw his overcoat back at him. “Thank you for being such a gentleman,” she said.

Back at the hideout Tilde back into her own comfortable clothes, which were a loose-fitting shirt and baggy green breeches. I filled Yulf and Mags in about what we’d done. Tonight had been a success even if it was only a small part of the plan. I thought about offering to celebrate with a few beers but that wouldn’t be fair on Tilde when she was trying to quit.

So instead of leaving the cooking to Magpie as we usually did, I had another idea. I headed back out into Pennywrote and went to Dobbin’s Fresh Foods and bought portobello mushrooms, a bunch of parsley, Taskino white wine, cheddar cheese, a bulb of garlic, vegetable stock, and risotto rice. I spent the next hour cooking a mushroom risotto for us. It didn’t turn out amazing, I reckoned, but it’d do the job.

“This is delicious,” said Tilde. “Didn’t know you had it in ya. I don’t know why, but lately, I’ve been so hungry.”

“Because you aren’t spending half your life either drunk or hungover anymore,” said Mags.

“Maybe you’re right. Everything seems so clear now. And with this new-found clarity, I realize that I forgot to do something.”

“What?”

“This.”

Tilde punched Mags’ right arm. Mag rubbed his arm but he was smiling. Yulf, pausing with a forkful of risotto near his lips, gave a belly laugh with a timbre so deep it seemed to make the table legs shake.

“Settle down guys,” I said. “You did well today, Tilde, but we still have lots to do.”

“What’s next?” said Magpie.

I took a hand-sized leather-bound book from my inner pocket. “This is the checkbook of Elliott De Stanwright. He’s gonna notice that it’s missing at some point in the next few days. At first, he’ll think he misplaced it somewhere in his house. Maybe he’ll think he left it in a bar or something. That gives us some time. There’s also the possibility that because he and his folks are so rich the missing checkbook wouldn’t have the significance to him that it would to anyone else. Fella might be so rich that he can’t be bothered to go to the bank and tell them it was stolen. If we’re lucky, then that buys us even more time.”

“Then you better get to it,” said Tilde, looking at me and smiling.

I nodded.

“It’s fine having his checkbook, said Magpie, “but don’t you need his signature? Without a sample of it, how are you going to forge it?”

“That’s the beauty of it.”

I took a newspaper from my inner pocket and opened it up at a particular page. It was an advert taken out by a business. It read: Phillipe De Stanwright is pleased to announce that his son, Elliott De Stanwright, has now been made partner in De Stanwright upholstery. We would like to thank all our loyal customers for making us the number one upholstery business in Pennywrote. Elliott looks forward to serving you and your upholstery needs for the decades to come.

“And if you look at the bottom of the advert,” I told them, “You’ll see that both Maurice and Elliott signed the advert. It’s a good idea. After all, everyone knows that if you put your signature to something then you must be an honest person.”

Chapter 26

Scaliber gave us a week of grace on the rent we owed, the gods bless his undead soul, but even that time was running out. Three days were left until he wanted to wrap his dead flesh around his money.

Accounting for the fact we’d need a full day to carefully cash and spend the forged checks when they were ready, this left me one day to learn how to forge documents and then to forge Elliott’s signature in a genuine enough way.

I was ready to work hard. That wasn’t the issue here. The problem with forgery was that a fella couldn’t just go to the library and say “Hey, you folks got any guides on forging stuff?”

An easy way around it would be to use the mimic gel that I got in the prison to copy something with his signature on it, however, that still left us with a problem – I couldn’t then translate the mimic gel signature to a bunch of checks.

Another way would be to watch Elliot writing his signature a bunch of times until I learned the skill from him, but how was he gonna do that when we’d stolen his checkbook?

That left two options – kidnap the chump and force him to write a bunch of checks – too messy. Or…learn a skill the old fashioned way.

Luckily, I had the rogue manual. At least it gave me some pointers. In my room, I sipped coffee and I read the section on forgery, which started with a history of the art and then listed some of the most renowned forgers and their masterworks of forgery, and finally gave some instructions on the practice itself.

When I was finished reading my mimic-mind showed me what I needed to earn the skill.

Forgery

The art of copying or imitating a document, signature, check, or work of art.

Level I requirements: Successfully forge five simple documents

So I needed to practice forgery to earn the skill. Who’d have thought?

The thing I had to settle on was how could I earn and level up the forgery skill in the quickest possible time? After pondering this for a while the answer came to me.

It was all in the wording of the description.

‘Successfully forge five simple documents.’

Elliott De Stanwright’s signature was a hard one to copy. Full of curls and curves like he was drawing a fancy wallpaper pattern. But I didn’t have to copy his signature in order to earn the forgery skill. I just had to forge a document. Any document.

With that in mind, I found Yulf where he was outside the shop and using mortar cement to repoint some of the brickwork where damp was seeping in. Yulf loved stuff like this and he was full of all kinds of skills that none of us had expected. It wasn’t like we had a reason not to expect them. We just didn’t.

That ignorance was on us. What, because he was big and because he didn’t speak much we should expect him to be stupid? I felt bad about underestimating him.

“Yulf. Yulf. Yulf!”

Finally, Yulf looked down from his scaffolding and looked at me, waiting for me to speak.

“Mind helping me?”

He held up the trowel that he was using to spread cement.

“I know. But this’ll only take a few minutes.”

Yulf nodded and climbed down the ladder. We headed to the third floor of the unit and along the hallway to a room I’d taken as my own. I didn’t have much in it. A bed where I’d stripped out the old frame and I’d cut eight oak planks from some timber I bought from a merchant and nailed them in along the frame and sanded them smooth and varnished them. Mags had sewed a square patterned duvet for me. I kept my rogue book tucked under the mattress. Opposite the bed was a secretary desk with half a dozen lockable drawers. Not that locks meant much in a place like this. Really, though, the fact that all of us could pick locks to varying degrees actually made this place more secure. It was the plainest rule we had. Don’t go snooping around each other’s stuff. Privacy counted for a lot in a house of rogues.

I gestured for Yulf to sit on the chair at my desk. Then I remembered what happened to the last single chair he sat on and I thought better of it. I gave him a pen and paper. “You can write, right?”

Yulf glared at me like he was wondering exactly how much force he’d need to use to squash my skull between his thumb and index finger.

“Sorry. Of course ya can. Okay then. I just need you to write your name in the simplest way. Big block capitals.”

Yulf did so and he screwed up the paper and threw it at my head. “Thanks,” I said.

Yulf headed back to finish repointing the brickwork before it rained again. When he was gone I shut my door and sat at my desk. I stared at the piece of paper where Yulf had written his name. It was technically a document. A simple one yes, but a document. Crucially, it was much easier to copy than Elliott’s signature.

So I thought, anyway.

I soon learned it was harder than I anticipated. Even Yulf’s simplistic writing was difficult to perfectly imitate because I had to do it exactly, down to every millimeter of every letter. It took me four hours to copy it a single time in a way that satisfied the requirements of the forgery skill. After two hours more I copied it perfectly again, and then I copied it another three times in the next hour.

Finally, I received the notification I was hoping for.

Forgery skill learned

Current level: Level 1

You can now copy simple documents with ease. You can also produce simple documents of your own which will fool low-level officials and people with low perception.

Just as with the lockpicking skill, earning the forgery ability gave me a boost in that talent. The next time I copied Yulf’s document, I saw faint black lines on the blank paper which I just had to trace over. Rubbing the paper assured me that the lines weren’t really there. They were guidelines made by my new forgery skill.

I copied the signature perfectly in seconds, and it was hard to believe it had taken me hours to do this before. Unfortunately, the requirements for level 2 in forgery were more difficult.

Forgery skill

Level 2 requirements: Perfectly imitate 5 ‘medium’ difficulty documents

Copying Yulf’s simplistic signature document wasn’t going to be enough. I needed something that was more of a challenge or I wouldn’t be able to level up. I went outside and around the unit to where Yulf was up on his scaffolding, trowel in hand. He was humming to himself.

The sky was darkening and a cloud was drifting from the east. Folks were starting to drift home into the slums after finishing their jobs in the inner city, where lucky ones found work sweeping floors or catching rats. Vermin was an unspoken problem in Pennywrote, which came about because of being surrounded by sea and docks on the north, west, and east sides, and having acres of farmland to the south.

Ratters, as they were called, were paid a copper per dead rat. They took the rat bodies to a secret warehouse near the west docks and twice per month empire carriages took the corpses way south to be burned. Most of Pennywrote’s savvy rich folk knew about the four-legged problem but they didn’t much talk about it. It was a symbol of the glory of the empire, having rats running around.

“Yulf,” I said.

He looked at me and shook his head.

“C’mon, fella. Help a guy out.”

Yulf pointed at the half-repointed wall and then at the sky.

“What about if I climb up there? It’ll take a minute. I promise.”

He said nothing.

I climbed up the ladder and onto the steel scaffolding. The support planks wobbled under my feet. Yulf had used four of them so there was no danger of them breaking under his weight.

I handed him a pen and paper. “I need you to write something a little more challenging for me to copy.”

Yulf took the pen and paper from me. He rested the paper against the wall and he held the pen and tapped it against his lip while he thought about it for a second. Then he began to write. When he was done he passed the paper back to me and I was amazed.

His handwriting was beautiful. I felt ashamed. I’d asked him to write the simple document because I thought of him as being a little on the simple side. But Yulf wasn’t stupid and his handwriting was exquisite, and I was the dumb one here.

“I feel like I should frame this,” I told him.

He looked proud.

“Where did you learn to write like that?”

As always, apart from that one word he’d uttered a while ago, Yulf said nothing. Nevertheless, despite the lack of conversation I had really begun to enjoy having Yulf around. I’d almost completely forgotten that the man had murdered a bunch of people in a tavern.

For me, it was like having a guard dog in the room with me. His presence was comforting, and he didn’t yammer on like Tilde, and I knew he’d tear any intruder’s arms off. I could also confide in Yulf about anything Rattlesnake-related and I knew he wouldn’t betray a single syllable.

As exquisite as his handwriting was, the document he produced was actually more complicated than Elliott’s signature. It meant I couldn’t use it to earn level two.

“Do you think you could try again but dumb it down a little for me?” I asked. “I need something just a little bit simpler that I can copy, but more complicated than just your name.”

Yulf wrote a paragraph in less complicated handwriting. He wrote about how he was trying to repoint the wall and that a storm was going to hit and that if I was the one who had to sleep in a room where damp was getting in then I wouldn’t be bothering him with such inane stuff. I laughed and thanked him.

I took the document back inside the unit and up to my room, where I sat at my desk and started copying it. The evening passed that way. I slept for maybe five hours and then woke up and sat back at the desk and worked all the following day.

By the evening I’d advanced my forgery skill as much as I could in the timeframe I had.

Forgery

Level: 4

You can copy moderately difficult documents. Brand new documents you create will fool above averagely intelligent people, no matter what is written on the documents themselves.

Stats

Arch John Wild

Age: 22

Salary: 0GD

Physique: 5 (+1)

Pickpocketing: 0

Lockpicking: 6 (+6)

Sneaking: 0

Forgery: 4 (+4)

Disguise: 8

Acting: 8

Lying: 8

Trap disarming: 0

Now I just needed to copy Elliott de Stanwright’s signature. I needed to do it not just once but at least a dozen times, and each one had to be perfect enough that we wouldn’t get arrested when we used them. Luckily, Tilde and Magpie were in Pennywrote trying to subtly get information on anyone who might possibly have an interest in buying stolen dynamite. That left me time to work.

I sat with the newspaper advertisement bearing Elliott’s signature in front of me. Next to it were Elliott’s stolen checkbook and an inkwell and a quill.

I stretched my arms and cracked my knuckles. I physically shook my head as if that would shake the sleep out of my mind. Even if this took all night I had to get it done, because tomorrow was the last full day we had before Scaliber came for his money.

I quickly leafed through the checkbook. There were lots of stubs but only fifteen blank checks.

I dipped the quill in the ink and turned it to evenly coat the tip. I smoothed down a blank check with my finger. Just as I was about to put ink to paper, I heard someone hammering at the downstairs door.

My first thought was that it was the town guards. Maybe the dead sailors had been found by a fishing trawler and somehow had been traced to us. Or maybe the crew of the Wanton knew we’d stolen the dynamite. It didn’t seem likely but sharing a house with a chest full of stolen explosives made a guy paranoid.

Heading out of my room, I met Yulf on the landing. I nodded at him. Knowing what the nod meant because we’d already discussed it, Yulf left the room and then thumped down the stairs and went to the front door. Meanwhile, I opened the bedroom window and climbed out and shimmied down the gutter. This left me in the alleyway behind the shop.

I crept down the alleyway and rounded the house until I could get a view of the alleyway and our hideout doorway until I could see who was at the door.

It was Emma, with her moonlight skin and hair falling in luscious curls that always got in her eyes. She wasn’t wearing the smile that she usually did, and her eyes were red and scared.

I went back into the house via the back door and walked through the shop until I reached the front door. I opened it, trying to appear as natural as possible.

“Hey. You okay?”

Crying seemed to add a sad aspect to her beauty, which was all the stronger for it. It was like the tears gave her a somber shine, a statue carved from marble and grief.

“Can I come in?”

Yulf looked at me and gestured for her to come in.

“Thanks, Yulf,” she said and patted his arm.

I nodded and I moved aside, though there wasn’t much room for her to squeeze past me. I went ahead of her and led her into the dining room at the far end of the first floor.

For a second, Emma paused at the closed door of the common room where we’d stored the dynamite in its chest. We’d draped decorator’s sheets over the chest but it wouldn’t hold up to an extensive search. Problem was that we had nowhere safe enough to hide a bunch of navy dynamite.

“We’ll go into the dining room.”

“Tilde usually greets company in here,” said Emma, sniffing and wiping her eyes.

“We had to treat the floorboards and walls,” I said. “Lice infestation. It’s still not safe to go in.”

We headed to the dining room where there was the table we shared our meals around and a battered couch and two chairs opposite it. Mags bragged that the couch and chairs had been dumped in one of the old dockyards and he’d rescued them and reupholstered them so they looked better than new.

Emma took a seat on the sofa.

“Do you want a drink?” I said. “Think we got some of Tilde’s old whiskey supply knocking around here someplace.”

Emma nodded. “Something stronger would be great.”

“How strong?”

“The more it burns my throat the better.”

I poured the both of us a splash of single barrel bourbon and gave Emma her glass. She drank it back in one and asked for another. I poured and she told me to keep pouring and I did until there must have been four fingers of the stuff in there. Then she thanked me and sat with her hands cupped around the glass.

“So what’s got you necking whiskey?”

“It’s my dad,” she said.

“What about him?”

“I just needed to get out of there. And I was walking and before I knew it I’d walked here.”

“You needed to get out of there. Before what?”

“It’s not like that. It’s just once a year it gets to the day Mum died, and he starts drinking and then. Well. It just gets scary sharing a house with him. I don’t think he’d hurt me. But it’s like it’s not him. It’s like someone else wearing his skin.”

“Has he ever done anything?”

“Not to me. He got arrested a couple of times. I remember me and Mum had to go to the station on Fallor Road once and pay ten coppers to get him out. His face was all swollen and his knuckles were even worse.”

“Got a temper huh.”

“And then some. But never on me and Mum. But when it’s the anniversary of…you know…of when she went, it’s like all bets are off. I just don’t want to risk it. He’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

“Do you want to stay here until the morning?” I said.

Her eyes met mine.

“Can I?”

“Sure. I’ll take the couch.”

“You don’t need to do that. I’m sure there’s room in your bed.”

Chapter 27

Later that night I woke up to find the moon hanging big and menacing outside my window. I’d never seen it so bright and full like that. It felt like it was heading right toward me, like the moon had taken offense to a rogue like me and decided to smash right into the Dockside East HQ and wipe me out. Or maybe I just had a persecution complex. I ain’t perfect.

I grabbed the curtains and drew them enough to block it out. The window was open an inch to let in the salt breeze from the docks, and the outer slums were silent as can be.

I propped myself up on my elbows and looked to my right. Emma’s side of the bed was empty and there was a faint outline on the mattress from where she’d been sleeping. Sitting up further, I heard a thumping sound coming from somewhere in the hideout.

“The hell?”

The noise was coming from downstairs. I grabbed the dagger that I kept beside my bed. The dagger was a dirk-like knife, with a thin handle and a sleek blade that thinned to a wickedly sharp tip. I hurriedly threw on my trousers and a shirt. When I tried putting my head through the sleeve I took it off and adjusted it and put it on again, and then I left the room.

Listening, I could still hear the noise. A rhythmic thud coming from below. Not footsteps. Definitely not. As a mimic, I had a good ear for sound. So what was it?

Opening my door as quietly as I could, I crept down the hallway. Then I sneaked down the old staircase, avoiding the parts of the stairs that I knew squealed like sleeping cats when you step on their tails. I was glad I’d taken the time to memorize their individual creaks.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs I got a notification.

Sneak requirement updated!

Level 1 requirements: Successfully sneak within 20 feet of another person or creature without detection. Complete five times.

Current: 2/5

I turned into the hallway. The banging was louder now, as though someone was trying to break into the shop. It wasn’t coming from the door. It sounded like it was coming from inside the shop. Like someone was hammering their hand against the walls or against a door.

I thought about the room filled with dynamite.

My chest froze.

Was Emma trying to get in there?

Gripping the knife tighter I turned in the hallway and then followed it along. Just one more turn and then I saw her.

Emma was in the hallway. She was near the door to the room with the dynamite but she wasn’t trying to break into it. Nope, it was weirder than that. Instead, she was banging her head on the wall over and over again. Blood trickled from a raw-looking gash on her forehead just above her right eyebrow. The blood had made a blooming stain on the plaster, and each smash of her head added to it.

I put my hand in front of her head just as she went to slam it into the wall again. Then I gently held her shoulders and shook her awake.

“Hey. Hey.”

She blinked at me. “Arch? What? Where am I?”

Did she just call me Arch?

“What did you just say?”

She moaned something unintelligible. Before I could say anything else she stumbled and I dashed forward to catch her. Holding her and looking into her dazed face, I realized she was going to have to properly come round before she could answer any questions.

I wiped her forehead with my sleeve. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

With my arm around her shoulder, I guided her into the dining room and then pulled a chair out from underneath the table and helped her onto it. She still seemed woozy, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise.

“Stay here a second.”

“Tell the Cap that I’m still on it.”

“Cap?”

“I’m tired,” she said, leaning forward across the table with her head in her hands.

I went up to the bathroom and dampened a towel and then rejoined Emma in the dining room, where I used it to wipe the smear of blood from the cut on her forehead. I cleaned the wound with disinfectant and used some artificed sealant glue to close it.

I grabbed her chin, tilting her head side to side. Her eyes looked a little clearer now. She pulled away from me.

“I’m not a dog!”

She was starting to sound a little more alert now.

“Sorry. You need to get to a healer. You might have a concussion.”

“I don’t.”

“That’s what people with concussions always say.”

“Just trust me. If I need a healer I’ll go to one. I promise.”

I nodded, standing up. Pausing at the kitchen doorway, I said, “Coffee?”

“No thanks. Too late for me.”

“Me too. But when I’m up, I’m up.”

“Sorry about that,” she said.

I brewed some coffee and then took it to the table and blew on it some until it was cold enough to sip. “How long have you been sleepwalking?”

“Dad says I started after Mum died. He once found me all the way at the docks and sitting on the dockside and staring into the water.”

“Must have been scary as shit for him. Sleepwalkers are weird when you’re the one watching them. No offense.”

“For me, it’s just like I wake up and I’m somewhere else. So I don’t know what it’s like to see someone like that.”

“Creepy as hell,” I said.

I thought about what it had been like finding her in the hallway. Eyes open but nothing behind them. Seeing me, but not. Like a ghost staring at me through a window with its mouth open and a hollowness at the back of its throat. I thought about how she was just hitting her head against the wall hard enough to leave a smear of red.

I reckoned it was time for answers now, so I dropped the bloody towel.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Wait there.”

I went upstairs and to the bathroom where I’d left my dagger resting on the sink while I cleaned her up. I grabbed it and went back to the dining room.

“You know,” she said, “I’m feeling a little better now. I think…Arch? What’re you doing?”

I held the dagger against Emma’s throat. Right against her skin, so the blade tip made an indent in her supple flesh.

I didn’t say anything. Nor did she. She didn’t seem all too worried about a knife against her throat, like she was ready for it. Or maybe she was desensitized to danger.

I watched her intently and I waited for her to say or do something but she didn’t, and that told me everything I needed to know. Her eyes didn’t widen in surprise. Her face didn’t the pale at the touch of the blade.

“You called me Arch,” I said.

“Huh?”

“When you were coming around. You called me Arch.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Cut the dumb shit. You know that it’s my name. The question is how.”

She touched her hand on mine and ran her fingertip down my arm. “Why don’t we just go back to bed?”

The hideout door opened and the door slammed against the wall. Drunken singing joined drunken footsteps and Tilde and Mags appeared in the doorway.

“Oh there was a sailor strong and true, and he saw the whore and said ‘what do you do?’” he sang.

Mags’ eyes were glassy and he was holding onto Tilde for support. She was standing straight and her face looked sober.

“Before you ask,” she said, “Three beers. That’s all it took to get him into this state.” Then she saw the dagger in my hand. “This some kind of role-play? Can’t you do it in your room so us innocents don’t have to see it?”

What was I supposed to tell her? That my real name was Arch, and that I’d been hiding it from Tilde and Mags, yet Emma somehow knew it? And that was why I had a knife in my hand? I wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, but I reckoned that wouldn’t go down well.

The alternative was to lean into the excuse that Tilde gave me. Tell her it was just some weird sex game we were playing. That we got our kicks pressing blades against each other’s skin. But that meant giving Emma a pass out of this.

I waited too long to give a reasonable explanation, and Tilde said, “Well? You going to explain this?”

Emma smiled. “Yeah. Are you going to tell your friends what we’re doing?”

Emma’s cute smile now felt to me like the sneer of a hyena loping off toward a kill. One that said if I talked about this in a way she didn’t like then she was ready to tell Tilde and Mags who I really was. How she knew that I had no gods damned idea. But I needed time to think about this. That was all I knew right now. Time to think this over so I could make a decision that made some kind of sense.

“I was just showing Emma some self-defense,” I said.

Tilde laughed. “You know how to show a girl a good time.”

Mags leaned against Tilde. “I think I’m gonna be sick. Just a bit. Or a lot.”

“Let’s get you to bed.”

Mags and Tilde stumbled down the hallway, with Tilde letting Mags lean into her for support. She carried him up the stairs, stepping on all of the creaking spots, while Mags continued his rendition of the Ballad of the Sailor and the Whore.

Emma crossed her legs. “We don’t need to waste a perfectly good night you know. We could always go upstairs.”

Without a word, I yanked her out of the chair and shoved her towards the door. Her momentum carried her into it. Rubbing her shoulder, she said, “Rough, aren’t you?”

I grabbed her and pressed the knife against her spine. “Get the hell out of here. Come on let’s go. We’re gonna take a walk.”

“C’mon, Arch. You can’t just enjoy yourself can you?”

Chapter 28

We left the hideout and I directed her through the slum alleyways where rats scampered around unseen and dusty windows filtered the glow of late-night oil lamps from within. Emma made a few attempts at talking but I just dug the knife in harder and told her to shut up. She told me she liked me talking tough. I didn’t know what to say to that, because if I told her to shut up again, she’d like it. So I said nothing.

We came to a part of the slums where all the adjoining abandoned buildings around us were empty. These were the especially inhabitable structures filled with asbestos and rat piss, and they were unsafe even for the most desperate of Pennywrote’s forgotten families.

I gave her a push so she was standing away from me. “Right then. Let’s bare our souls and feel better. First, who the fuck are you?”

“Take a guess,” she said.

“I ain’t playing games.”

“But games are fun. And life is so dreary, why not take what enjoyment that we can?.”

“Fine. Here’s a game for ya. One wrong answer and I slit your throat and leave you for the rats.”

“Simple rules,” said Emma. “I like it. But I’d like you to make a guess.”

Emma wasn’t who I thought she was, which meant she was playing a part. As a half-mimic I knew plenty about that. The way I saw it, there were only two reasons why she’d pretend to be someone she wasn’t.

One was that she was employed by the owner of the Wanton ship, and she was trying to recover the dynamite. But that didn’t make sense since I had met her at Matthew’s party way before that.

So there was only one explanation that had even a ring of truth to it.

“You’re working for the city guard,” I said.

She nodded. “And it only took you a month to find out. Still. You have more about you than Tilde and Magpie. I don’t reckon they have a clue. Do you?”

Everything seemed different about her now. Not her looks, but her as a person. She had become someone utterly different to me despite her features staying the same. It was a transformation as powerful as the time when I caught Petr, my Pa’s friend, pretending to be Pa.

Only, this was a transformation of words and deeds. There was no mimicry involved. Emma was with the city guard and she’d infiltrated the slums, pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

The nerve of some folks.

In any case, the truth wasn’t much of a comfort to me. Now came the question of what we did next. Was I going to have to kill this girl so I could make sure she didn’t betray me?

I was gonna have to work my way up to that. I wasn’t a killer. Well, if you discounted the guy I had killed. But that fucking gossipseller deserved it.

Time. That was what I needed. Time to form a hard shell around my conscience. Even mimicking the Callousness of Pertwee the Tax Inspector wasn’t going to be enough for me to kill a girl I slept with only hours ago and then walk away without bringing a cold, heavy weight back with me.

“So the guards sent you into the slums, did they?” I said.

Emma laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to laugh. It can’t be nice knowing you’ve been lied to. It isn’t my favorite part of the job, pretending to be someone I’m not. Do you know what that’s like?”

“Don’t have the faintest idea.”

“No. Of course you don’t, Rattlesnake. All I’m saying is that I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”

“I need you to tell me how you know who I am.”

“Which ‘you’ are you talking about?” she said.

A sudden screech took my attention away from her for a half-second. It was a just flock of gulls passing overhead, grey against the night sky. When I looked back at her, Emma had taken two steps closer to me.

If she was working with the city guard, then she had physical training. And if she was undercover, she wasn’t just part of the rank and file. Now that we weren’t so friendly, it’d be a mistake to lose concentration and let her get close to me.

I quickly accessed my mimic vault and activated one that I had stored there.

Physique mimicry activated: Palm Eye of Vladimir Yurisaygar

Effects:

++ Third eye vision

++++ stomach pains.

A new window of vision opened on the eye that grew on my left palm. Along with it, a rift of pain cut through my stomach, enough to weaken my blade hand. I gripped the dagger tighter and gritted my teeth until it eased.

Reaching into the inner pocket of my coat, I took out a brown leather pouch tied by a string. Inside were lots of four different kinds of tablets, the kind that you could buy at any portioner’s shop in Pennywrote.

I popped an oblong, minty tablet into my mouth and chewed it, and my stomach pain began to ease.

With my stomach starting to feel better, I subtly turned my left hand palm out while keeping my fingers lightly curled over it. Through this partially-hidden third eye, I could see Emma even if something momentarily distracted my regular eyes.

“Well?” she said.

“Well, what?”

“Are you sure you aren’t the one who was hitting your head, Arch?”

I pointed the dagger at her. “Shut up and spill it.”

“You want to know how I know your name?”

“No. I wanna know the migrating pattern of the fuckin’ eastern swallow.”

“I’d imagine it-”

“Talk, Emma.”

She nodded. “Alright. Not so long ago, empiresmen in Natterwhich found Leroy Hugh, a gossipseller, dead in his bathtub. He’d been stabbed once through the throat. A quick death, no pleasure taken in it. An execution.”

A sudden dread hit me. With it came a flash of memory, recollections of a night when my every action was seeped in blood.

“Waiting downstairs was a man in his twenties. Covered in blood. His eyes glassy, the empiresmen who were there said. He didn’t know who he was or where he was. He’d gone into shock.”

I didn’t remember that. There was a hole in my memory just after I killed the gossipseller. It was as if I’d spent so long finding him and building up to the deed, that when I finally did it, my brain gave up and said, here you go, pal. Here’s all the anxiety and shock I’ve been holding back from you since your pa died.

I hadn’t planned to get caught, obviously. I’d made a detailed method of getting the hell out of there with nobody ever even knowing it was me. But that night I’d learned that there’s a difference between thinking you can do something and doing it, and in that chasm lies human nature, a beast that can wrap its jaws around those of us with even the coldest hearts.

I knew where Emma’s tale was heading, but I didn’t know the route it was taking to get there. I was curious as hell to learn how she’d found out about me.

“Okay. So there’s a dead guy in a bathtub. What’s it got to do with me?”

Gulls screeched again from above.

Emma flinched. I saw her through the eye on my palm, and I was ready. For the two steps she took toward me, so I took two back, dagger held steady. She seemed surprised at my quick reaction.

“Talk,” I said.

“The guy they caught in the gossipseller’s house was sentenced to die, only he was sprung from the Crow’s Nest. There are posters of him in every guard station in Pennywrote. Sure, you’ve cleaned yourself up and grown out your hair and your beard, but it’s in the eyes, Arch. You can’t do anything about your eyes.”

“A man can’t just change his face at will,” I said.

“No. I suppose he can’t.”

I couldn’t believe that none of us had pegged Emma as working for the city guards. It was bad enough that I hadn’t thought of it, but she’d been sniffing around the slums since way before I got here. Why hadn’t Tilde or Mags noticed that anything seemed a little off?

“Alright,” I said. “So you’ve found me. I suppose you think you can turn me in.”

“You? Or you and your thief friends?”

“This is a big bust for you, Huh?

She laughed.

“Something else funny?”

“It’s just that you think the city guards would give a ten fat fucks about a bunch of squatters and cutpurses.”

She stood with her hands on her hips. The cut on her head was mostly healed but the artificed wound sealant I’d used was from a tub in the bathroom, and I didn’t know how old it was. The tiniest corner of the cut had opened and a trickle of blood ran from it.

“Your Dad,” I said. “Does he really exist?”

She shook her head. “My father died when I was four years old.”

“What about any of the other stuff you told me?”

“Pure bullshit. Sorry.”

“You got a career on stage waiting for ya.”

She bowed. “I’d be nothing without my fans.”

I sighed. I felt a monster of a headache brewing and I still hadn’t decided what to do with her. “Why’re you here if it ain’t to shop us in?”

“Because of Rust Hook Harry, of course.”

Rust Hook Harry.

Anyone with ears had heard of Rust Hook Harry. Word was that half a dozen men had turned up dead and naked with their throats torn out by what one doctor described as a hook-like instrument. Once the newspapers got hold of that, it stuck. The rust part was conjecture, and the name Harry was pure alliteration.

Not everyone believed in Rust Hook Harry, though. Some folks blamed the city’s rising rogue population for the murders, citing them as tit-for-tat rogue outfit bickering that had gone way too far. Other folks blamed animals. Bears, jackals, mountain lions. Their explanations as to how a bear could roam Pennywrote without getting spotted weren’t much worth listening to.

The biggest group of folks were the ones who reckoned the victims, as well as Harry himself, never existed. That the whole story was just a pretext for increasing guard presence on the streets.

As for me, well, I’d killed a guy. So I reckoned I had at least some insight into how a person might decide to take a life. Sure, our motivations were different. I’d killed the gossipseller bastard and I didn’t intend to kill again unless fate forced me into it. But one thing united Rust Hook and I – whatever our motivations, the result was the same. We had a reason to take a life.

Yup, no doubt about it in my mind. The guy was real. He was real and he worked alone and didn’t give much mind to what folks said about him. He had urges to satisfy and he satisfied them in a way that got his dick hard and his hook – or his knife – wet and red. Only, to him, killing was like smoking old yellowdust. The more you did it, the more you had to smoke to get that same high.

“The guards think that Rust Hook Harry lives in the slums?” I said.

“Our profile says that he’s a down-on-his-luck guy. Probably he was recently laid off from his job. Likely because of the accident that led to him losing a hand.”

“You reckon he actually wears a hook? He doesn’t just use one to kill folks?”

“That’s what Doc Randall says.”

“What else?”

“Privileged,” she said.

“Thought you said he’s down on his luck?”

“I mean it’s privileged information.”

“We’re way fucking past that.”

“I suppose we are. Well, then. I don’t know much else, only that his victims often have commonalities. Men. Six feet tall. Balding on top. Grey hair on the sides. We think the victims might represent the boss who fired him. We haven’t released that to the public, because we need to withhold certain facts so that we can be sure we catch the right man. He’s killed girls, of course, but my theory is that they were spur of the moment flashes or desire.”

“That’s a lot of anger to be carrying around just for getting laid off from a job.”

“Losing his job is just the peak of the mountain,” she said. “There’s probably been a lot of build up before that.”

“That’s quite a specific profile ya know. All for a guy nobody ever saw. Who wrote that?”

“Me.”

“What makes you think that this guy lives in the slums? Do the people who live around here strike you as the violent type? They’re poor but they ain’t killers.”

“We need to pursue every lead we can, Arch.”

I immediately lost my interest in Harry and his rusty hook. “That’s the point. Right there. You know that I’m a killer, for fuck’s sake. Why haven’t you taken me in?”

She shrugged. “Because I like you, I guess.”

She gave me the smile that had reeled me in from the first time I saw her at the kid’s birthday party, but I was done being fooled.

“Cut the shit. Why haven’t you told your bosses that you know where I am? I reckon there’s a lot of credit for the person who brings me in. So why aren’t you cashing it?”

“How do you know I even care about my career?” she said.

“Because you’ve been living in the slums for the last six months on the slight chance you might find something on a guy with a hook. That’s dedication, but it still doesn’t explain why you haven’t stopped me in. Don’t give me any shit about liking me.”

“You don’t fill a well until you’re sure it’s run dry.”

“Meaning you want something.”

“Most probably,” she said. “You’ll know when I do.”

“Define something.”

“You and your friends have talents that I might need. Help me when I ask for it and I have no reason to tell the guards who you are and what you do. I know you aren’t a bad person, Arch, and some of the background I dug up on the gossipseller made me sick. I don’t know your reason for killing him, but I can think of a thousand reasons he deserved it. If I thought you were dangerous I’d take you in. But I don’t. Trust me.”

“I trust you as much as I’d trust a cobra climbing into my pants because it likes the warmth.”

“C’mon Arch. Wise up. As long as it stays more useful to have you on the streets than to have you in the cell it makes no sense for me to shop you.”

What she said made a certain amount of sense, but I wasn’t sold and I never would be. All we had riding on this was her word. She could go blabbing about us whenever she wanted, and until then there was no way I could work properly. It’d be like trying to swim with a shark circling around me.

I was going to have to find a way to deal with her. Either kill her or get leverage that meant she could never shop us in.

Until then, there was only one thing I could do.

“Gimme your papers,” I said.

“Papers?”

“Everyone who works for the guards has papers. C’mon. Let’s not mess around here. Gimme your papers. You know my real name, so I’m gonna know yours. And I’m gonna keep proof of what you are. The second I get a whiff of something I don’t like, we’re gonna gut you and send you floating down the dockside. If you somehow get away, every rogue in Pennywrote is gonna know your face and they’re gonna know that you’re a rat.”

“You make a persuasive argument,” she said.

I held up the dagger. “This one sounds even better if you want me to elaborate.”

“I don’t have my papers with me. Come on now, Arch.”

“Where are they?” I said.

“In a lockbox under my bed.”

“Then let’s go get ‘em.”

She shrugged. “Well. If we’re going to my bed, why don’t we make the most of the night?”

“Not interested. Got work to do. Let’s get the papers.”

Chapter 29

I didn’t sleep much for the rest of the night. I got too hot so I opened the window. Then I was too cold so I shut it again. The slums outside were too quiet and it meant I kept thinking about what had happened. Then they were too noisy, with drunks walking home and foxes and rats scuttering around.

All in all, it wasn’t a night to get some restful shut-eye.

When I did sleep, I had dreams of Emma, where we were in bed and her face melted and her real appearance stared at me free from its fleshy prison, her eyes burning a dark red like blood pumped from a rotten heart. I didn’t know what the dream meant.

I quit trying to sleep when pale daylight broke across a sky riddled with seagulls crowding the docks in the distance. There must have been a fishing boat moored up and unload that morning, and the gulls were circling for scraps.

I took a minute to look out of the window and let my thoughts wander, hoping I could form them into a point of action. When I felt somewhat composed, I turned away from the window.

After I washed and dressed and went downstairs I found that Tilde was already awake. She’d brewed coffee. Her face looked much less blotchy than it had when she used to drink all the time. Amazing what better sleep and a rest from the sauce can do for a person.

“Good morning, my lovely ray of sunshine!” she said.

“Good morning yourself. Must be a new record.”

“What is?”

“I reckon it’s the first time since I got here that you’ve been awake before me.”

She smiled at me. “Yeah, well, I just discovered that the day doesn’t actually start at lunchtime. Turns out there’s a whole five or six hours before then. And guess what? You can do whatever the hell you want with them. So I’m gonna have a nice coffee and enjoy not having a headache for once.”

“Hungry?” I said.

“Thanks, but I already ate.”

I poached some eggs, drank one cup of coffee, and then refilled my cup and drank another. With a satisfied stomach, I went to my room for a while, and later headed into Pennywrote for a few hours to take care of something.

When I returned to dockside east, I went straight to my room. At my desk, I got to work on forging Elliot de Stanwright’s signature. I found it difficult to get started, what with everything that had happened, but I pushed on. We didn’t have much time until the rich chump realized he’d misplaced his checkbook.

When I found my thoughts wandering, I realized that I was going to have to give myself a boost. I closed my eyes, checking the mimic energy inside me. Using it last night had drained it a little, but there was enough to spare a little right now.

Trait mimicry activated: Focus of Dr. Jenny Booth-Wright, Mathematics Professor

+++ Focus

++ Hatred of noise

Jenny Booth-Wright was a professor at the Royal College of Little Bowdale, ten miles east of Yellow Bowdale. It had been centuries since we had a royal family ruling over us, of course, but the college kept ‘royal’ in its name anyhow. There was a time, of course, when the empire started stripping the word ‘royal’, ‘monarch’, ‘king’, or ‘queen’ from everything. It was just after the Night of Ten Thousand Blades and the revolution.

Folks across the land were weary of fighting and all the change, however, and though they accepted the empire’s new rule, they pushed back on all these name changes for colleges and the like. The empire wasn’t as strong back then, so they backed down and then the issue never arose again.

I had spent a while acquiring the physical mimic of a kid who attended the college to study mathematics. I’d always wanted to go to college, only I never had the gold to pay for it and it had never been something that Pa and I discussed. We just sort of accepted that it’d never happen.

My idea was that I’d acquire a student’s looks and then attend the lectures that they were supposed to go to. For that to work, I had to choose someone who was lazy and barely ever went to college. I found the perfect guy – an eighteen-year-old called Chris Kirk who preferred to spend his college freedom in the taverns of Yellow Bowdale, resulting in him often being too hungover to attend his lectures.

So, after watching him for long enough to acquire his physique, I started attending the Royal College of Bowdale. I took a seat next to a girl who had three thick notebooks and a bunch of pens. I had a pad of my own. I’d never been to college before, but I wasn’t stupid. I had a vague idea I was supposed to write things down.

Sitting at the back of the lecture hall, I watched as Jenny Booth-Wright strolled into the center of the room and commenced her lecture.

My hope here was that by watching her lecture on mathematics for long enough, I could acquire a professor-level mathematics skill. Yep, I was naïve about the potential of my mimicry back then. Needless to say, it didn’t quite work out.

I must have gone to a dozen lectures, and I never got the feeling that came to me when I was close to acquiring a mimicry. At least, not for the skill of mathematics. I did, however, pick up a trait from Jenny. It was only natural that after watching her for so long, that would happen.

So, after a short semester at a college that I’d never enrolled in and never paid even a copper coin for, I left it with a slightly improve knowledge of mathematics, and a trait of focus that I’d acquired from the professor.

With the focus trait activated, I felt a kind of coldness settle in my mind. My thoughts seem to constrict as though they were a tunnel where the branching of new tunnels – procrastination – was forbidden.

But with it came a negative effect.

From downstairs, I heard the sound of a badly-tuned piano. It must have been Mags working on that damned piano he was fixing. The sound quickly became infuriating.

I opened my door and hollered, “Would you shut the hell up?”

Then I closed the door and listened, feeling agitated just like how Jenny Booth-Wright used to feel agitated whenever someone talked during her lectures.

My mind freshly focused, I got to work on the checkbook. Even at level four forgery it was tough going, and my waste bin started filing with rolled-up paper balls. It must have been midday by the time I finished.

I stacked the newly forged documents neatly in the inner drawer of my desk and locked it. A dozen cheques, all bearing an almost flawless copy of DeStanwright’s signature. Now came the tough part of cashing them without ending up in the Crow’s Nest.

With the checks ready, I took a little time to sit cross-legged on the floor and close my eyes. For an hour, maybe two, I meditated to replenish some of the mimic energy that I’d used. As soon as I reached the point where my thoughts were intruding, I stopped meditating. I had gained back a little mimicry energy, which was good because I was going to need it.

When I went downstairs again it was early evening, and I found Yulf and Mags sitting at the dining room table. Mags was rubbing his face in his hands. Yulf laughed at him. I crept up beside Mags and then said loudly, “How’re you feeling today?”

“Uh. Don’t, Mr. Snake.”

“Got bit by the dog, did ya?” I said.

“Dog?”

“It’s a saying. What was with the piano earlier?”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry, sir. For making the noise.”

“It’s okay. I was just in a…uh…weird mood. But I thought you’d have been too hungover to work on your project.”

“Tilde said the best cure for a hangover is to just get on with things.”

“Ah, well. My cure’s the hair of the dog that bit ya.”

“Which dog are we talking about?”

Tilde walked in with two bowls of linguine. She set one in front of Mags and she set an even bigger bowl in front of Yulf. “Bit by the dog means you got drunk. Hair of the dog means drinking a beer in the morning to take the edge off your hangover. Now, dig in boys. Hungry, Snake?”

“Famished.”

“Sit your ass down.”

Turned out that Tilde was an even better cook than Mags. I told her so and she said nope. It was just that linguine was her specialty dish. She lived at a foster house one time and it was also a lodging house for folks who couldn’t afford city rent, and there was a chef there who taught her how to cook linguine. But then he grabbed her ass and she stabbed a fork through his hand and then packed up all her shit and left.

I emptied my plate quicker than it had taken Tilde to bring it to me. “Thanks. This is just what I needed.”

“No problem,” she said. “Well, we got a big day comin’ up. Did you finish practicing Elliot’s signature?”

“Done and dusted and waiting to be cashed,” I said.

“I’m gonna go to bed,” said Mags. “You guys mind?”

I shook my head. “Get some rest. Need you fresh tomorrow.”

“Night, guys.”

“Night, fella.”

Yulf got up from the table and left the room and soon we heard the front door open and then shut again. Yulf liked to drink in a nearby tavern called the Salted Cod. It was supposed to be for dockworkers, and anyone else got glared at until they left. If they stuck around until the sailors and fishermen and dockworkers had enough to drink, things turned nastier than a year-old steak.

Yulf didn’t have that problem, however. Seemed they didn’t reckon it was a good idea to tell him to leave, given his size. The first time we found out that he went there, I had the unenviable task of telling Yulf that he couldn’t go, on account of him being a wanted man.

“Sorry, fella,” I told him. “I ain’t being mean here. But c’mon. You ain’t exactly the kind of guy who can go unnoticed.”

He seemed to understand, but he looked at me with big, watery eyes. Then he went upstairs for a while, returning carrying the prop box full of wigs and other disguises and tools, such as actor’s putty.

“This ain’t gonna work,” I had told him.

“Try.”

So, using the skills I’d learned when Pa took me to actor’s workshops, I helped Yulf create a disguise that maybe he could use to get around. Even then, I still wasn’t convinced and I decided that I was going to call quits on his visits to the Salted Cod.

Surprisingly, it was Tilde who spoke up for him. “No guard in his right mind would go near the Salted Cod,” she said. “And have you seen the dockworkers? Yulf looks small compared to some of ‘em. If he goes there in disguise and he leaves if there’s even a hint of a guard, I don’t see no harm in it.”

“Nope. It’s too risky.”

Yulf hung his head low, and the subject wasn’t broached again. Only, he started leaving the hideout to go for walks around the slums at night. Call me suspicious…but I was suspicious. One evening, I followed him, giving it ten minutes before setting off from the hideout so that he didn’t get wind of me.

I headed to the Salted Cod, where I went inside and looked around for Yulf. Tilde had been right – the place was crammed with huge dockworkers.

Men and women who looked like they could crush the air out of me. But there was no sign of Yulf.

I was about to leave when a dockworker grabbed me. I shook my arm out of his grip, only to realize I was looking at Yulf. The actor’s putty had changed the shape of his face, but I recognized his eyes. After all, it’s always the eyes. Even for some mimics, it’s the eyes that deceive and betray.

After that, after even I hadn’t recognized him in the pub filled with dockworker giants, I decided it wasn’t my business anymore.

With Yulf gone, Tilde glanced at the doorway. Sure that we were alone and that there was no sign of Magpie or Yulf, she said, “Are you going to explain what that was all about?”

“What?”

“Last night,” she said.

“You mean Emma?”

“What else? I didn’t buy that shit for a second. Showing her how to defend herself? Don’t take me for a clown. When we came in you had a knife in your hand and you look like you wanted to use it.”

“If I tell you something, you need to think about it carefully. Don’t get flustered about it.”

“Are you suggesting that I overreact?”

“Two fellas floating in barrels down the Penny river might say yes.”

“Good point. Go on. I’m listening,” she said.

I quickly straightened my thoughts out. “Emma works for the city guards,” I said.

Tilde set her fork down. “Okay then,” she said, biting her lip, “That is very interesting. Very. Interesting. You know this for a fact?”

“Yup. But I didn’t know who she was.”

“Of course you didn’t,” said Tilde, “Because you’d have to be a fucking lunatic to take her into a hideout full of stolen empire dynamite. But that worries me, Snake. How do you of all people get your eyes smoked by a girl like that?”

“Could have happened to any man.”

“Any man. Yup. Thinking with a different part of ya body.”

“We’ll start carving your statue once we know for sure you’re perfect,” I said.

Tilde said nothing for a moment. Then, “So she works for the city guards, huh? What we gonna do about it?”

“It’s already taken care of.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll explain.”

That morning, after eating my poached eggs and drinking my coffee, I had gone to my room and forged the papers that Emma gave me. Well, ‘gave’ was perhaps a generous word for something I made her hand over at knifepoint.

In any case, I made a decent forgery of them. Not perfect, but then, it didn’t have to be. I put the forged papers to one side and then created another forgery of them, this time changing a few of the details.

In Pennywrote, I headed to a shop on a grimy alleyway in Dockside North. The window was five years overdue a clean, and the shop sign was peeling away to reveal an old sign underneath that read ‘Haberdackle’s Fishing Supplies.’

I headed inside. A bored-looking teenage girl was sitting on a chair behind the counter.

“This the locker storage?”

“Yup.”

“How much for a locker?”

“Two coppers per week.”

“Here’s a silver.”

She gave me a key to a locker in their backroom, where I stored Emma’s real papers. Next, I headed to the Treads, which was the name for a district in Pennywrote where all the theatres were located. On a cobbled side street were rows upon rows of shops. I headed into one named Wigs N Stuff, where I bought a set of steel handcuffs.

I clipped these to my belt, before heading into the heart of Pennywrote, where my real business began.

“Alright,” said Tilde. “So you’ve got her name on a sheet of paper. What does that matter?”

“Anyone who works for the guards, doing the stuff Emma does, needs a way of proving who she is. Her papers describe her name, address, role in the guardship, as well as an identifying mark that proves who she is.”

“What’s the mark?”

“A little black dot tattooed just below her collarbone.”

“Alright. So let’s feed her to the sharks,” said Tilde. “Get her name out there. Tell every rogue in Swindbaston that we’ve uncovered a rat, and it needs throwing out in the trash.”

“That’d be a mistake.”

“How so?”

“Lemme tell you what else I did, first.”

“I’m getting stressed about this, Snake. Ever since I quit the bottle I’ve been finding myself getting worked up easier over the little things. And this ain’t no little thing. It’s a loose thread in my favorite sweater, and it’s gonna ruin the whole thing.”

“Not so fast. Just listen.”

After buying the cuffs, I clipped them to my belt and headed to a Pennywrote guard station on Ladbrooke Grove. I activated the mimicked face of a guy named Joe Jones, a no-mark inker in Yellow Bowdale. He had a kind of understated authority to his face which I judged to be good for the situation. Then, I went inside the guard station.

Inside, there was a reception desk with a guard sitting behind it, as well as a waiting room with three doors that led to interview rooms.

The guard looked at me quizzically.

After years of watching actors and years of mimicry, I knew that the key to getting people to think you belonged somewhere, was to act like you damn well did.

“Where’s the captain?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, sergeant, where is your captain?”

“And you are?”

I took my forged papers out of my pocket. I had folded them carefully and held them a certain way so that only an insignia in the corner showed. This, Emma had told me, was what marked her as working undercover.

The guard saw the insignia and gave a knowing nod. “He’s through there, sir. Down the corridor, second door on your left.”

The captain of this station was a man named Maddox Bruce. He was maybe a short stroll away from retirement, and the chaotic arrangement of the files, stationary, and mugs on his desk betrayed a man who didn’t much care anymore.

“We need to talk,” I told him.

“Alright,” said Tilde. “So what did you talk about?”

“A couple of things. First, I got him to fetch me any records that he had on Emma. Her address, next of kin. That kinda thing. Turns out she lives with her sister in a bungalow on Poltisa road.”

“Very fancy. I once robbed a house near there.”

“Supposedly she and her sister inherited it from their parents. They were healers. Naturally, I ain’t told Emma that I know where her sister lives. No point giving her a chance to move her somewhere safe. We’ll use that nugget if and when we need to.”

Tilde nodded. “Alright.”

“I ain’t done, though. While I was there, I gave Captain Bruce a drawing that I’d made. Told him that a fella recently got sprung from the Crow’s Nest, and that I had it on good authority that he’d visited an artificeric surgeon to alter his appearance. I advised him to take down every poster of him from everywhere they’d been stuck, and to replace them with this.”

I handed Tilde a rough copy of the drawing I’d given to Captain Bruce. She burst out laughing. “Shit, what a face! And he bought it?”

“Not at first. But when I explained that wanted criminals tend to try to make themselves unrecognizable, and I implied that a failure to account for this might rest on his shoulders, he straightened up.”

“And they’re really taking down the posters of you?”

“As we speak.”

Tilde drummed her fingers on the table. “So we’ve got something on the girl. Even so. It’d be safer to kill her.”

“I’ve thought this through over and over again. For once, I agree. But we need to do it carefully. Her superiors know that she’s been assigned to the dockside east slums, and she’s supposed to check in with them every so often. If she doesn’t, contingencies come into play. ”

“How’d you know that?”

“I told Captain Phillips that I wanted to know his procedures for handling undercover guards. Make sure he’s up to scratch.”

“Alright. So she has to check in. And if she doesn’t…”

“Guards will swarm over Dockside East like maggots on a corpse. If we’re gonna kill her, we’ve gotta do it perfectly so there’s no way it can come back to us.”

Chapter 30

The next morning I headed out into Pennywrote alone. A fleet of merchant carriages had arrived through the gates in the early hours, and the shop boys from every street and every plaza were collecting orders for their masters and carrying boxes and pulling two-wheeled carts through the streets.

Wearing a face that was decidedly not my own, I walked around for a little while and sought out a tailor shop. There were lots of them in the city but I needed one that was in our price range.

I found myself in a tailor shop owned by a guy named Carmichael. He wore a thick padded scarf around his neck with lots of dress pins stuck into it. On his counter was an ashtray and resting on it was a pipe with vanilla-scented tobacco smoke drifting from it.

Carmichael’s complexion boasted of his eastern blood and his eyes were stern and proud. He’d watched me enter his shop like a hawk sitting on its eggs and seeing a magpie fly too close. It was a strange attitude to have, and it made me wonder if the guy even wanted customers at all.

“What’dya want?” he growled.

“A lemon cake. The hell you think I want? I need a suit.”

“Suit?”

“This is a tailor shop ain’t it?”

He rubbed his face. “I’m sorry. A new shop opened down the street. Nobby’s Suits. Did you see it? Anyway, he’s been sending folks in here pretending to be customers. Trying to ferret information. Y’know. Find out my prices. That kinda thing.”

“How do you know they aren’t really customers?” I said.

“I just know.” Carmichael puffed on his pipe. “What kind of suit do you need? Fancy? Business? Business fancy? Or are you just planning on quitting dressing like a fella who’s down on his luck?”

I thought about what Elliott De Stanwright had been wearing on the night Tilde had stolen his checkbook. My practice in mimicry meant I was good at recalling information like that. Visual stuff. My vocabulary, however, wasn’t always the best.

“What’s the name for those fancy-lookin’ suits with stripes down ‘em?”

“Pinstripes? A pinstriped suit?”

“Yeah. Something chestnut brown, I reckon. But here’s the thing. I need it today.”

“Today? Do you think I have fifteen fingers and magical needles?”

I put ten gold coins on the counter and leaned in close. “Anything’s possible when a fella’s motivated enough.”

“S’pose it is. Gimme a few hours. If I work quickly enough I might just do it. But it will cost extra. And don’t be bothering me in the meantime, coming in and asking is it ready yet, is it ready yet. Come back at three and we’ll see what’s what.”

“Sounds great.”

Carmichael used a strip of tape to get my measurements and quizzed me some more about the suit and what I was looking for. He went into real detail, asking me about the stitching on the lapels and whether I wanted snap fasteners, bone buttons, or real horn buttons. I answered as best as I could and told him I trusted his expertise.

When I left him, my next stop was a barbershop on Brooke’s Avenue where I paid five silvers to have my beard trimmed and my hair cut to look smarter. This wasn’t my hair or beard, obviously. It belonged to Ted Bishop Wright, a quarryman in Yellow Bowdale who used to come into the tavern to play darts. Ted was a simple man but I’d always thought he came from noble stock, with his dignified nose and eyes that seemed to see through commonalities. I’d deemed his face worth keeping. Which was a very creepy way to say that I befriended him long enough to acquire his likeness.

With time to kill, I bought a coffee and a ham and cheese sandwich at a bakery called Teddy’s and then I headed to what Pennywrote locals called the Pigeon Plaza, where dumbass tourists paid ten silvers for a handful of seed so they could feed the birds.

I people-watched for a little. Watching people from afar always made me itchy to work on my mimicry, but I didn’t have time. When the afternoon wore on I asked a seed vendor the time and he wouldn’t tell me unless I bought seed from him. So I asked a fella who was sitting on a bench and making a charcoal sketch of the plaza. It was three o’clock.

“Thanks,” I told him, and I headed back to Carmichael’s.

“The man himself!” said Carmichael. “Suit’s ready. Let me just get it for you.”

He disappeared into his backroom for a while and then came out with a suit on a hanger. He turned it around and pointed out all the finer details like the gold stitching he’d used on the inside pocket.

“Had to use a suit I was halfway through finishing and tailor it to what you wanted. But I am a tailor after all. What do you think? Does it…suit…your needs?”

“You’re a master of your craft. But I’m taking 10 silvers from the price for that pun.”

Carmichael sighed. “The people of this city don’t appreciate a good dose of wit. I’m wasted here.”

“Can I get changed in the back?” I said.

“Go ahead.”

I left the tailor shop dressed in my new brown pinstripe suit and with my fresh haircut and trimmed beard. As I walked down Carnevale Road and passed the salons and bars and gin cafes I put some Elliot de Stanwright arrogance into my walk, finding it as easy as ever to slip into the character of a person so completely unlike my real self.

I put a strut into my step as I headed through the doors of the Pennywrote Royal Investments Collective Koinage bank. There was a row of birchwood desks that reached up to my chest and were stacked with gold and silver and copper coins for giving out change.

Half a dozen suited clerks manned them. Not a hair out of place between the six of them. The bank must have been built during Pennywrote’s renaissance because it had a vaulted ceiling, as well as four grand pillars with ornamental carvings of marble vines wrapped around them.

Furthest away from the doors, where the bank was warmest, were eight desks. Four of them had bank managers meeting with clients. Business folks mainly, as well as a woman shimmering with gold jewels and with ten shopping bags surrounding her like a nest of unnecessary tat.

I’d never been in a place like this. Pa used to use a bank in Freemantle to save a portion of our income when things were going okay. But that bank had hay on the floor and the owner knew everyone’s names by heart and could probably tell you to the coin how much money was in your safe box without looking.

I started feeling like my new suit and my fresh trim didn’t much matter. That maybe folks looked at me and saws through it, peeling back the layers of my many mimicked selves and seeing straight through to the son of a failed farmer. I imagined that I was going to be laughed all the way back out onto the street.

Using an old actor’s trick, I took a series of deep breaths and held them in, exhaled them, held them in, exhaled them. Only then could I think clearly.

I’ve researched this place, I told myself. It was one of eight banks that Elliot De Stanwright banked with, yet this one didn’t have any dealings with his father or his business.

Moreover, this place had so many customers that they wouldn’t know Elliot de Stanwright from the bishop of Pennywrote. What kind of bank could remember the faces of all its customers? I reminded myself of that. Although his family was rich, they weren’t rich enough to be particularly remembered in a place like this.

However, they would know his type. He was the son of a wealthy businessman and they would expect a certain attitude from him. Instead of getting in line at the bank of clerk desks, I walked straight through the customers as if I expected they’d just get out of my way.

A man with closely-shaven cheeks, a groomed goatee bearded, and a flawless three-piece cobalt blue suit was standing at a lectern with his hands clasped in front of him. On the lectern was a book with customer names and times scribbled on it.

The man picked up a quill and licked the tip and looked at me expectantly.

“Your name, sir?”

I approached him and took out Elliott’s checkbook and slammed it on top of the book. “I need to withdraw some gold.”

“If this is just a common withdrawal, sir, you may use one of our cashiers.”

“No. You’ll get the gold for me. I don’t have time for your pedantry.”

I opened the checkbook. I doubted Elliott had ever asked permission for anything in his life, so I didn’t ask now. I took the quill from the man’s fingers.

He opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind and recovered his composure by folding his hands in front of him.

I held the quill and I flipped through the checkbook and to the first blank check. I smoothed it out with my index finger. I paused for a moment, unable to put the quill to paper with the man watching me. I had to stop myself from glancing behind me to where bank security guards stood to attention by the doors.

Keep calm, I told myself.

I wrote 5000 GD in the’ amount’ section of the check. The man’s eyes widened but only for a moment. It was a decent amount, but not too much for a place like this. Tilde had been in favor of withdrawing 50000, but I told her that such an amount would trigger more rigorous checks.

I tore the stub from the book and handed it to him. For good measure, I clicked my fingers in his face like an absolute bastard, and told him to hurry up and get my gold.

The poor guy kept his composure, bowing to me. “Very well, sir.”

I knew what would happen next. The manager would have to access the bank’s customer files, where a sample of Elliott’s signature would be kept. He’d use this to compare the two and thus establish my identity. When the manager took the signature away I’d only know if I had successfully forged it when he came back with the cash. If he kept me waiting a while, then there was every chance that he was sending for the guards.

“Is everything alright, sir?” he asked me.

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“I asked if you wanted gold coins or bank bonds.”

Damn. I must have missed that. I recovered myself and thought about it. Coins were a pain in the ass, especially five thousand, but bank bonds left a chain of evidence. Besides, the bank would supply the coins in artificed bags that didn’t weigh as much as they should.

“I’ll take coins.”

“Very good, sir.”

While he was gone, I took a seat at one of the empty desks and I crossed one leg over the other and I took out a pocket watch I’d bought from a prop store and I checked it and I sighed.

A small man in an oak brown suit came over to me with a face full of smiles and asked if I’d like to discuss a loan. I said no and told him to leave me alone. Evidently used to such treatment from rich folks, he walked away. I felt crappy about it.

The man was gone a long time with my check. A teenager with blonde hair and wearing what looked like a potter’s uniform wheeled a trolley with a gold-tinted coffee urn on it.

“Tea or coffee, sir?” he asked.

I told him I’d like a coffee, and I had to restrain myself from saying please. Elliot De Stanwright wouldn’t say please.

He poured it into a China cup and gave it to me. His hands were shaking. I asked him if it was his first day and he said it was. Leaving character for just a moment I tipped him one gold coin. He snatched it like it was a diamond and stuck it in his pocket.

The man still hadn’t returned by the time my cup was empty. I glanced at the bank door, expecting the guards to march over to me at any moment.

But they didn’t.

Nothing happened.

People came into the bank and people left the bank. Some left it richer and others left with the rejection of a negative loan request following them out like a rain cloud. Some folks came in and joined the cashier’s queue while others sought out the desks of the various financial advisers dotted around the room.

The only thing that seemed suspicious to me was a man with black hair tied into a bun.

He dressed in a fancy-looking suit and held a felt top hat in his hand. He passed me and for less than a split second, he caught my eye. But that was all it was. A passing glance and then he was gone.

“Sorry for the wait, sir.”

The goateed man was back and in his right hand he held a leather pouch with an artificed stretch-lock tied around it. I reckoned I could have picked it in a second.

“If you would follow me?” he said.

“Follow you where?”

“Just over here, sir.”

He led me out of the bank’s main atrium and through the smaller arched doors and into a small office with a grand oak desk stacked tidily with ledgers and papers. In the corner of the room was a pungent jasmine plant in a porcelain pot.

He motioned for me to take a seat. “Would you like a coffee?” he asked.

“I’d like to get my money and get on with my day, if that’s alright with you.”

“Certainly.”

He put a small golden key in the stretch-lock and opened the pouch. Inside it was more coins than I could count. I had to fight hard to stay in character because I’d never seen so much cash in my life.

As the man counted each coin to me I started thinking that maybe I was being stupid. That this was chump change and Elliot was worth a lot more, and that I should have asked for more.

Then I reminded myself that we chose five thousand for a reason. It was enough to show that Elliott was a high-value customer and could skip the cashier queues. That was important because the less time I spent in the bank the better. At the same time, it wasn’t so much gold that it would trigger the bank’s more sophisticated identification checks.

“Four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine….five thousand,” said the manager sometime later. He wore the barely hidden look of a man very annoyed that he’d just counted out five thousand coins, yet knowing he couldn’t express that and hope to keep his job.

“Thanks,” I said and I picked up the pouch and stood up.

The manager grabbed my wrist.

I froze for a split second, before recovering myself.

“Excuse me? What the hell are you doing”

“Tell me, how is your father?”

Does this guy know Elliot De Stanwright? Why’s he asking about his father?

Maybe the whole counting exercise had been a convenient way for him to kill time while the guards arrived. Maybe they were surrounding the bank right now.

I found myself reaching for the dagger I’d hidden in my inner pocket. This guy’s neck would pop easy enough, and I already knew that there was a back, employee-only exit that left the bank onto the backstreet behind it.

But rather than murder him right there, which is what someone else I knew might have done, I forced myself to keep my nerve.

“My father is fine,” I said. “You know him. Always looking for new opportunities. You know how it is. He may need to visit here soon.”

The manager smiled. “Give him my best.”

I had to stop myself from sighing in relief. The guy knew the De Stanwright name but clearly didn’t know Elliot personally.

I nodded. “I’ll do that.”

He opened a cardboard box resting on the floor and put it on the desk and opened it. “For the pouch,” he said. “No sense walking around with all that gold, is there? I tell you, Mr. De Stanwright, I’m sure that Pennywrote is getting worse every day. So many rogues around.”

“Tell me about it.”

I headed out into the bank’s atrium where the grand doors opened onto the street, clutching in my hand more gold than I’d ever had in my life.

As I left, I caught the eye of a man expensive suit and with his hair tied in a bun. I felt his eyes on me as I exited the bank and headed into the street. Pausing at the doors I turned around to get a better look, but he was gone.

Chapter 31

Dockside East Outfit

Members: 4

Cash reserves: 5034GD

Headquarters: Smith and Sons Upholstery unit, Dockside East.

Headquarters rating: 1/5

Assets: Stolen empire dynamite x26

Other properties: None

Rogue group reputation: Small fry

That night we ate dinner together in the hideout dining room. Crammed around the tiny table that was so small my knees were touching Yulf’s, you’d never have thought that we were an outfit who’d pulled off a scam that saw us bring home five thousand gold.

“Here’s to a glorious swindle and many more to come,” I said. “Tomorrow we hit Hargreaves Paxton Investments on Thompson Street. Day after that we’ll visit Wright’s Savings and Bonds. Only, I think we ask for seven thousand, five hundred. I reckon we can risk getting a little more without pushing it too far.”

“Who are we lesser mortals to argue with the great Rattlesnake?” said Tilde. “Sorry I doubted ya.”

“You did?”

“I’d be stupid not to.”

To celebrate our success, Magpie had made us slum rat stew. That sounded a hell of a lot worse than it actually tasted. He didn’t use rats, of course. Folks used to in the old days, but not anymore. The stew, when cooked with carrots and leeks and red onion and chestnut mushrooms along with fresh rosemary and oregano and half a bottle of pale ale, took on a flavor that made me eat so much that I reckoned I wouldn’t fit into my new suit anymore.

“Tilde’s the linguine master,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong. But you, Mags. You’re something else. This stew should come with a warning.”

“A warning?”

“A good one. One that says you aren’t gonna be able to stop eating it.”

“Thanks, Mr. Snake.”

“Your mushroom risotto wasn’t too bad. I guess that just leaves Yulf,” said Tilde. “When are ya gonna cook for us, Yulfy?

Yulf grinned.

Mags served us second and third helpings and then he brought out a loaf of thick ryebread for us to mop our bowls up with. After that, he poured a glass of wine for himself and beers for me, Yulf, and Tilde. Tilde thanked him but said she’d make a coffee instead. Mags offered to make it, but she told him to sit his ass down.

“Alright,” I said. “I’m just about ready for dessert.”

“Already?”

“What? It’s been at least two minutes.”

We ate divided a chocolate cheesecake that Mags had bought in Pennywrote into four huge slices and we sipped our drinks.

Tilde started telling a story about how in her old foster home, she’d told her foster mother that she’d heard a rat scuttling in the attic, and she’d kill it for two coppers. Only when it came to it, she couldn’t kill it and she kept it as a pet, only for the chef that was staying with them to take it out of its cage one day and eat it.

“And I never had another pet after that,” she said.

This made Mags start talking about a dock dog he’d befriended when he was six, but his father wouldn’t let him bring it home. I found my mind spiraling away from the story and soon enough I’d lost the thread of the narrative completely.

“Rattlesnake!” said Tilde.

“Huh?”

“What’s with you tonight?”

“Sorry, did you say something?”

She nodded. “I said we want to make toast.” She raised her cup of coffee. I raised my beer.

“To Rattlesnake!” She said. Then she grinned at me. “Nothing to say?”

“I’m not one for making speeches.”

“There’s a time to start. C’mon. Just a few words.”

“Well. This is uh something.”

“Always with the modesty, huh? That was great today. That’s the biggest haul we’ve had in months. No, years. At least, in terms of the danger to gold ratio. I can’t believe how easy well-planned crime is.”

“You know what? You’re right. We did well today. We should celebrate. Let’s go out.”

“Out?” Said Magpie.

“Y’know. Do that thing folks do. Think they call it socializing.”

“This really you, Snake? Not a mimic sitting in your place?”

I laughed. “Let’s go to a whiskey bar where the wind doesn’t always sneak through the holes in the wall and there’s a fire and maybe a bard and his band playing.”

Tilde stood up. “Sounds good to me.”

“You reckon you’d be okay with it?”

“I gotta be around people drinking at some point. Can’t just avoid anywhere that serves beer for the rest of my life. If it gets too much, I’ll have you three there.”

Magpie bit his lip. “I don’t know. We have a big day tomorrow.”

“C’mon, Mags. You cooked this meal for us, and you hardly ate anything yourself. And now you don’t wanna go to the bar. Is this because of Snake here and what he said about your weight and stuff?”

“It isn’t just that.”

“I was harsh,” I said. “But at that moment in time, I needed to be. Ain’t like that now. If we don’t celebrate successes, then the work means nothing.”

“I might go for a run and then call it a night,” said Mags.

“C’mon. You went running this morning. What harm is one night gonna do?” said Tilde.

“Fine. You aren’t gonna quit until I say yes, are you?”

“I ain’t be known to quit. Let’s go.”

“Aren’t you gonna use some actor’s putty?” said Mags.

“No need,” said Tilde. “He got all the posters replaced, remember? The only folks who know his face are the guards in the Crow’s Nest, and we sure as shit aren’t going to the kind of places they’d frequent.”

“All the same, I’ll use a little putty. Change my nose, maybe. Can’ hurt to be careful.”

“Careful? Vain, more like.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve got a big nose. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

I touched my nose, for the first time in my life evaluating its size, and wonder what the dimensions were for a regular nose.

We walked through the slums and then we took a turn left onto Pulliton Street which ran parallel to the docks and gave a view of the wooden treads and the anchors and the ships. The Wanton was still moored there but it looked deserted. At least we couldn’t see the glow of lamps or anyone moving on board.

When we hit Casterdale Avenue thirteen carriages were waiting there. Their drivers were all congregated around a carriage parked in the middle and they were playing cards while their horses shifted restlessly.

“Let’s take a carriage,” said Tilde.

“I don’t reckon it’s wise to throw our gold around so close to the docks and slums. Folks know us around here. They might wonder where we’re getting our cash from.”

“Throwing gold around? Cash? It’s a carriage ride!” said Tilde.

“Still.”

“Fine. You’re the boss.”

The Cardamom Seed was a tavern that had been in business for fourteen years in the old Tenner’s Row district, where the only question regarded as acceptable was ‘buy you a drink?’ and any questions that didn’t match that might be answered with a fist or a blade. The guards didn’t come within ten miles of the place. Not even undercover. Folks around here could smell a guard better than a cat smells a rat.

Nobody paid a bunch of hoodlums like us much attention when we walked into the Seed.

“I’ll get us something to drink,” I said. “Tilde, you grab a table.”

As the night went on, we drank and chatted. We learned more about each other and told stories and made jokes. Soon, Magpie was four beers deep and I’d had just as many. Tilde stuck to juice cocktails and then coffee.

When Tilde bought our fifth round of drinks, I raised a toast.

“To Yulf!” I said. “Maybe next time we’ll go to the Salted Cod so he can join us.”

“I think that’s his place, Snake,” said Tilde.

“Listen. Don’t call me Snake. Not even quietly. Call me John.”

“John?”

“Yup. John. And get in the practice of callin’ me that back home, too. I want it to become instinct.”

“You got it, John.”

Mags leaned closed to me. “Where’d John come from?”

I thought about Pa.

I shrugged. “It’s a common name. Doesn’t bring much attention.”

On the evening went. Beers, bar snacks, jokes. The hours went by faster than any that I could remember.

It was Magpie who pulled the dagger that popped the balloon of a nice evening by talking about work.

“So,” he said. “After the business with the checks. What do you reckon’s next?”

“Serious, Mags? Why not stand outside with a sign that says you’re a rogue?”

“Nobody’s listening. Look around. Not a single person’s looking at us.”

“Everyone listens. Unless you see a fella with no ears, you assume everyone’s listening. And even then, you better get it into your head that he’s lipreading.”

“Well,” said Tilde. “We’re decorators, ain’t we? Mags wants to know if we got any painting jobs lined up after we finish the one we’re on. That’s all. So, what do ya reckon, John? Any thoughts on our next clients?”

“We still got a few problems to solve,” I said.

“Such as?”

“Such as all the paintbrushes sitting in the chest in our lounge. Let’s change the subject.”

The fact was that I didn’t know what our next job would be. We still had to deal with the undead landlord. Though we had the money to pay him for now, we were only delaying the problem. He was always going to keep coming back.

Then there was the dynamite and what we were going to do with it. If that wasn’t enough, I needed to come up with a way to kill an undercover empire detective without having the whole city’s guard force tearing up the dockland slums to find out who did it.

I found myself feeling a little overwhelmed at it all. I stood up from my seat.

“Had a few too many?” asked Tilde.

“Gonna step out back for a minute.”

The alleyway at the back of the tavern looked just like the alleyways that surrounded our hideout. Litter strewn and rat-infested and not cared for in the slightest. The scummy runways of a city that needed a good shaking to let all the detritus fall loose.

I stood in the cold night air to get a few seconds to myself and to let my thoughts settle so that I could then go back inside and enjoy the rest of the night with my friends. Our problems could wait till tomorrow, I guessed. Nobody can walk far if they’re always carrying their problems in a knapsack.

Maybe ten minutes later, I was feeling a little better and I turned around to head back inside the restaurant.

A hand grabbed my shoulder.

Standing there was a tall, toned guy with black hair that he’d tied into a bun. He was wearing a fancy suit that’d take a bank loan to pay for. He had a grin that I’d have called infectious under better circumstances, and his eyes were bright and blue.

I knew who he was straight away. Evidently, he knew me too.

“Get everything you needed at the bank?” he said.

I shoved him away and swung my fist at his face, hitting the bony ridge of his right eyebrow.

As he took a step back, I swept his legs from under him.

The back of his head cracked on the alleyway cobbles.

I stood over him with my foot on his neck and I drew my knife from my inner pocket.

“Now just what the fuck,” he groaned.

I leered over him. “You followed me here.”

“It’s a coincidence, is all. I saw you at the bank, and-”

I kicked his ribs. “I wasn’t wearing this fucking face at the bank, was I?”

Even at the peak of my rage, my more sensible side kicked in, and I looked around. Nobody else was in the alleyway, and nobody was watching from the tavern.

It was time to get some answers. I kneeled down and grabbed his collar and pulled him towards me.

He started groaning. He coughed and he clutched his chest as his face turned red and blue and his cheeks bulged. He started pointing to his heart. He beat frantically on his chest. He tried to say something but all that came out was a wordless wheeze.

“Are you having a heart attack?”

He beat his fist frantically on my hand. I released him from my grip.

“Pills,” he groaned.

“Where are they?”

“My pocket.”

I kneeled beside him and reached towards his trouser pocket.

His fist came flying at me, but I’d expected it. I moved back out of range and batted it harmlessly away. Pulling my dagger from the lining of my coat, stabbed him twice in the leg.

He clutched his leg, groaning.

“You think I’m stupid?” I said.

He put his hand on his leg where my blade had torn through his trousers to show red and bloody skin underneath. His blood leaked onto the cobbles. Certain he had no more tricks, I approached him again and stabbed the knife into his other leg

This time, I didn’t pull it free. He contorted in pain. Every time I touched the knife handle, even lightly, he cried out.

“Who are you?” I said.

“I’m Rattlesnake,” he said, speaking with a lisp.

That was just about the only thing he could have said that would have surprised me enough to catch me off guard. Seizing on the moment he punched my face, knocking me off balance. My ass slammed onto the alleyway.

The man got to his feet, grunting with pain. But he’d only managed a second of standing before he collapsed again. He held his leg even as blood dribbled over his fingers and coated them red.

“Enough of this shit,” he said. “I’m going to reach into my pocket. You can watch me all the while. I’ll be really slow, and you’ll see that not reaching for a blade.”

“What are you reaching for?”

“I have some healing powder on me. I just want to take the knife out and then use a powder and then we’ll talk, okay?”

“You ain’t touching that knife.”

“Fucking hell. You lunatic,” he said.

“Answer my questions and then you can get the powder.”

He settled back so that his elbows were on the floor. He didn’t seem to mind that a nearby gutter was spitting rain on him. “Kind of hard for a guy to answer questions with a knife sticking from his goddamn thigh.”

“That’s the only way this going to work.”

“Fine, you stubborn bastard. I’m Rattlesnake. The guy whose name you’ve been using.”

Chapter 32

A cloud in the tarry sky started spitting rain down on us, and it wasn’t long before it had plastered my hair to my forehead. I swept it back, and I stared at the guy writhing on the ground. This guy who’d told me that his name was Rattlesnake.

The way I saw it, there were two reasons a man would say that. One, he knew more than he ought to about me and he was messing around.

Two, he really was Rattlesnake. Only, the guy known in rogue circles as Rattlesnake was dead. I’d watched him swinging from a noose. Sure, there were such things as necromancers. You only had to meet our landlord to see that. But this guy didn’t look like he’d died recently.

“You’re Rattlesnake, huh?” I asked, not caring to hide my amusement.

“That’s what I fuckin’ said.”

“So that means you’ve spent some time up in the Nest.”

“More time than I planned,” he grunted.

“Okay. So. Tell me the name of one of the guards.”

“Hargreaves,” he said. “Mulhearn. Bennett. Framp-fucking-ton. Now, I’ll ask you nice as I can, please can I get some of the healing powder.”

I pulled the dagger from his leg, held the blade under the leaking gutter to wash off the blood, then gripped it in my right hand. Meanwhile, he took some healing powder from his pocket. It came in a small glass vial, a little pile of white dust. He uncorked the vial and gently tapped it along the wounds on his legs.

Watching this, I winced. Part of me couldn’t believe I’d stabbed him. I was getting so rash lately. Like I was becoming someone else entirely.

The man kept eyeing me. I could tell he was waiting for an opportunity.

I activated the Palm Eye of Vladimir Yurisaygar, and kept my new third eye trained on the man while I thought about it all. A slippery guy like this, I wasn’t taking any chances. Some rogues were great at misdirection, possessing great abilities to make your eyes go one way, while their hands went another.

With three eyes and a dagger trained on him, I felt like a had a little room to think. The thing that bothered me here was that he got the names of the guards right. That meant he’d been in the Crow’s Nest. Only a select few of Pennywrote’s lawbreakers wound up there.

“I watched you die,” I told him.

“News to me.”

“They hanged you in Merchant’s Square.”

“Oh? That’s news to me.”

I paced around, keeping my third eye on him. “There wasn’t a trick,” I said. “It happened. I watched Rattlesnake’s neck snap.”

“You saw a guy die. I’m disputing that, my friend. It’s the identification that I’m dubious about.”

“You got yourself switched,” I said. “You let another guy swing instead of you.”

“A little rich for a guy who cheated death to assume another guy is unable to do the same thing, is it not?”

“Huh?”

“I seem to remember there were two executions scheduled that day. Only one went ahead, and the fella who got hanged wasn’t sentenced for either hanging, as it turned out.”

“Some folks are just born unlucky,” I said.

Rattlesnake reached to his inner pocket.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m just getting my pipe.”

“You can have your smoke when we’re done.”

He shrugged. “I just got some lovely tobacco called Southern Promise. I was going to offer you some. Suit yourself.”

I had come out here to clear my thoughts, yet I felt worse than ever. The dynamite. The undead landlord. Emma. And now this guy. I had all these things going on at once, and at the same time I was a half-mimic who had to hide who I was, and I was also lying to the only people I counted as friends. And I was telling that lie every day.

All I knew right now was I needed this guy out of my sight. First, though, I needed a few answers.

“You got a fella to switch places with you. How?”

“Easy really. There’s a guard in the Crow’s Nest,” he said. “A really dumb fuck. Mean bastard.”

“Hargreaves,” I said.

“Hargreaves. He’s got a family. When a guy has a family, you can make a puppet of him. You just gotta find the strings.”

“So, you got them to hang a guy in your place and you bribed Hargreaves into helping you escape.”

“Threatened. Not bribed. Don’t insult me, for gods’ sakes,” said the man. “I wouldn’t waste even a single rusted copper on a screw son of a bitch.”

I felt myself loosening up just a little.

“I tried bribing him,” I said. “Didn’t work out so hot.”

“There’s your mistake. Two things motivate a guy. Fear or greed. When greed doesn’t work you switch to fear.”

“How’d you know to research Hargreaves’ family before you even got caught doing somethin’?”

He shrugged. “In my line of work, you make peace with the fact that you’re going to end up in a cell. Like the salmon that journeys for miles upstream only to end up in the maw of a great bear, some things are meant to be. It didn’t take a stretch of the imagination to think I might end up in the Crow’s nest one day. So, I did my research, that’s all. When a new Pennywrote guard puts on their uniform for the first time, I make it my business to know about them. Tell me something. They had you scheduled to die on the same night as me, didn’t they?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“They reckoned the world would be a better place if I was dead,” I said.

“Okay. But why?”

“Killed a man who killed my pa. That’s the size of it.”

“If you weren’t the man who stole my name and then stabbed me in the leg, then maybe I could like you,” said Rattlesnake.

“How is your leg, anyhow.”

“Healing powder is a gift from the gods. Or, from the potioneers. Depends on your religious bent.”

“So how are we leaving this,” I said. “ You know I’ve taken your name. Have I gotta kill you here in the gutter? I’m guessing you’ll want your name back.”

To my surprise, he laughed. “I don’t give a damn that you’re using my name. Have it. Enjoy it. In fact, my friend, this is more about what I can give you.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s not such a bad thing, I think, that you succeed in your endeavors, Mr. Rattlesnake,” said the Real Rattlesnake.

“Now you’re tying me up in riddles. Exactly what is it that you want out of this?” I said.

“I told you. It’s what I can give you.”

“An’ what’s that?

“My name.”

“Seems like I already have that. I pissed off Hargreaves and got moved into your cell and then I got sprung out. Nobody knows what you look like. The only folks who matter think I’m really you, because they’ve never seen you. So, what more do I need?”

“You get no argument from me, partner. You want to go around pretending to be me, great. That’s exactly what I want. I don’t want the responsibility anymore.”

“What responsibility?” I asked.

“Being Rattlesnake of course. Oh, I’m not gonna say I didn’t enjoy it when I was breaking into vaults and creeping around mansions and swiping whatever I wanted. I enjoyed walking into a tavern and hearing folks talking about Rattlesnake and how he was never gonna be caught. Only thing is that for some stupid fucking reason the poor folks in Pennywrote get a kick out of the existence of the great Rattlesnake. Hearing about a fella going around stealing whatever he likes from the rich bastards gives them hope. It meant I felt like I had to carry on doing it. But now you’re here, and the name’s yours, as far as I’m concerned. I got other things to do. Other appetites to sate.”

The door opened behind me a Tilde was standing there under the glow of the tavern lanterns. “Magpie wants to order a dessert. Told me to see if you’re hungry. What the hell are you doing out here for so long?”

I looked back to the alleyway, where Rattlesnake was gone. Not even his blood remained, because the rain had washed it away.

“Just about to come back in,” I said.

I joined the guys back at the table, but I was distracted for the rest of the night. I followed Tilde’s stories about her foster house as best I could, but I reckoned they all knew I was thinking about something else.

Part of me wondered if that had actually happened. If I had really seen the true, proper Rattlesnake and he’d given me the blessing to use his name. No, he’d practically urged me to use it because it was a responsibility that he didn’t want anymore.

I’d never thought of this as any kind of responsibility. I was just counting time. Playing my part, earning gold until I got a chance to cut ties with Tilde and Mags and go somewhere else, far away from Pennywrote where nobody knew my name or my face.

Before I knew it, it was time to leave. Tilde asked for the bill and a tavern boy brought it out.

“Fifty gold?” I said. “Wow. I never spent that much in my life.”

“Huh?” said Tilde. “After some of the jobs you pulled?”

“I mean on beer. Course I’ve spent more than fifty gold. It’s nothing to me. Just ten minutes of work picking pockets in Merchant’s Square. But no more stupid spending after this, okay? Until we get everything thing running as it should, we need to put every penny back into the outfit. Agreed?”

“We aren’t going to split what we got from our last, uh, decorating job?” asked Magpie.

It was a fair question. We’d all played a part in what happened today, we’d taken risks of sorts. The point of being in a rogue outfit was to make money, after all.

“Think of this as an investment,” I told him. “The more money we put into the outfit in the early stages, the more we earn when we get the bigger painting jobs.”

Just as we were leaving, I looked across the tavern, where I was shocked to see a familiar face.

It was Elliott de Stanwright, the womanizer extraordinaire himself. He was in the dining area of the tavern, accompanied by a pretty woman with red curls and a deep crimson dress.

I nudged Tilde. She looked at him. “The hell’s he is doing here?” she said. “Last place I expected him to come.”

“Guess he’s gotta be careful where he takes certain women.”

“Let’s get a shuffle on before he spots me.”

An awkwardly gangly tavern boy took a silver tray to Elliot’s table. He placed it down and lifted the lid to reveal a paper bill underneath. Elliott winked at the woman and reached into his inner pockets and started tapping them.

As the waiter and Elliot’s date watched, his face paled and finally turned to a mild panic as he couldn’t find his checkbook. The woman reached into her purse and took out three notes.

Tilde grabbed my arm and squeezed my bicep. “Come on. Let’s get home.”

Chapter 33

Three thuds on the door of Smith & Sons Upholstery shop broke the early morning silence of dockside east slums.

It was early morning. So early that not even the breakfast birds had woken up and flown to their favorite shingled roofs where they’d sing their wake-up songs.

The four of us inside the unit were ready for it. We’d dressed and had bacon and mushroom sandwiches for breakfast and we’d drunk coffee. After that, we waited for an undead man to visit us.

Three more thuds came from the door.

I nodded to Yulf, who opened the door and then stepped aside. Standing on the step warily eyeing the giant man was Mr. Scaliber dressed in the beige suit he’d died in, and bringing with him a stench of rot that he tried to cover up with sandalwood and five spice aftershave. There were places in Pennywrote that sold scents for the undead population, which was a minority. Concentrated fragrances brewed to cover the reek of death that came with even the best necromancer’s summonings. Scaliber hadn’t bought a scent strong enough to cover his own brand of grave cologne.

Tilde and I met him at the door.

“Good morning, Mr. Scaliber. You’re looking well. What can I do for you today?” she said.

A single groan escaped Mr. Scaliber’s mouth. He gritted his teeth as if this was an involuntary undead trait that he’d tried to train himself out of.

“Gold. Four months’ rent.”

“Don’t you want to come inside for a coffee?”

“Let’s not waste each other’s time. I have five places to visit today and yours is the least of them. Eight hundred gold. Or do I have to hire someone who’ll escort you from this shithole? I will, you know. Just try me and see. I don’t know why I rent to scum. I don’t. Oh, perhaps I do, actually. It’s because anyone with real money won’t deal with a gentleman of my persuasion, times being as backward as they are. Leaves me to earn my living dealing with the pondlife.”

I gave him a leather bag that bulged with coins. I shoved it against his chest.

“There’s four months that are owed and next month's on top of that. Call it the 'fuck off and leave us alone' advance.”

Scaliber unraveled the string that tied the bag closed and he stuck his hand inside and pulled out a gold coin. He bit it. It didn’t break. He held it up to the sun and looked at it intently. Then he tossed the coin back into the bag.

“A lot of coins here,” he said.

“You charge a lot of rent.”

“What’s going on in there?” He tried to peer behind me and Yulf, who was standing behind us and completely blocking the hallway. “If you’re selling contraband then I ought to know.”

“None of your business.”

“So. You have your gold. We won’t be hearing you banging on our door for a while, will we?” said Tilde.

Scaliber turned the coin bag over and emptied its contents onto the doorstep. Hundreds of coins clattered and rolled and scattered. Some of them traveled all the way down from the doorstep and rolled down the alley like gutter rain that had turned golden.

Tilde made a fist with her right hand and went to punch him, but Yulf caught her and enveloped her whole fist in his giant hand.

“The hell was that? She said, eyes blazing.

Scaliber smiled, slightly yellow teeth showing under the curling of his undead lips.

I grabbed her by the waist. “Stay cool. He wants you to react.”

Scaliber produced a slip of paper from his pocket. He handed it to me.

“Here. Since you’re evidently the more reasonable one.”

As a forger, I noticed that his handwriting was impeccable. It didn’t have the style and beauty of Yulf’s calligraphy, but its neatness was without question. That, however, was no consolation for the content.

“What is it?” Tilde.

“Scaliber. How about we go inside and talk,” I said.

Tilde shook free of me. “No. I want to know what’s on that paper that the walking corpse gave you.”

“Really, Miss Tilde. Do we have to resort to racial unpleasantries?”

“Shut the fuck up, grave lover.”

Scaliber looked at me. “One month,” he said. He adjusted his coat, and he left our stoop, his well-polished shoes click-clacking down the alleyway. Though he was soon gone from view, his undead scent lingered on.

Only when he was gone did I give the paper to Tilde. She read it, then screwed up and threw it on the floor. Mags picked it up and read it and then handed it to Yulf.

“So, he’s evicting us. Even after we paid our rent,” Mags said.

I nodded. “Strange, ain’t it? After Tilde charmed him so well.”

“You’re blaming me? So I called him a grave lover. Big balls to that. Scaliber loves money. He doesn’t care what I say about him. If he’s kicking us out, it’s because he’s found a buyer for the shop. No other reason. You heard him. He’s sick of dealing with folks around here. Wants to elevate his station from worm food to street scum.”

I looked at Mags. “You okay? Guess it can’t feel great, this being your folks’ old place.”

Mags sat down. “I guess I knew this could happen. I just didn’t think it really would.”

“Leave it with me. We’ll think of something.”

At midday, I visited the Pennywrote property records office. It was a department on the sixth floor of the Pennywrote city hall which stood under the studious watch of the oldest tree in the city, a giant oak that the locals of that district called Big Ted.

Two separate protests were going on outside the hall. One was a family of five who were campaigning for necromancy licensing laws to be eased so that folks with less than a ninety-nine percent chance of resurrection still got the opportunity to come back from death. They’d lost a daughter to tuberculosis, and even two years past the point where a person could be brought back, they still hadn’t given up hope. They held their signs with dignity and they asked me to sign a petition and I almost did. I couldn’t write Rattlesnake, so I nearly wrote Arch John Wild, but I stopped myself and apologized to them.

The other protest was by eight students and two professors of the Woodthorpe Green College of Necromancy who wanted necromancer licenses tightened so that only the select few got brought from the grave. Their main point was that necromancy cost so much in tax gold that only the best citizens should be returned to walk the land.

Right now, one of the professors explained to me, the state resurrected anyone who wasn’t executed, didn’t have a criminal record, and whose chances of a resurrection were ninety-nine-point-nine percent. That meant maybe a few hundred resurrections per year but even that was too many, he argued. Knowing what I knew about Scaliber, I kinda agreed with them.

I strolled into the hall and found the main stairs, plush marble ones with cast-iron railings. They spiraled all the way up through the building and I followed them to the sixth floor. Nobody paid me much mind because I was wearing my brown pinstripe suit. Guys wearing suits don’t get asked questions in places like this.

The clerk was a rotund man wearing a shirt with an oversized collar and a waistcoat at least two sizes too small for him. On his desk was a flask with the top screwed off and a smell of herbal tea coming from it.

I studied the fella. Lots of people who work desk jobs are great folks. But there’s sometimes a certain breed who reckon that they’re the guardians of the office and that it’s their job to only let those they deem the righteous walk past them. I thought maybe this guy was one of them. A real gatekeeper. Pa had taught me how to deal with people like that.

I didn’t, however, like to judge folks on first glances. So I gave him a chance.

“Good morning,” I said.

He ignored me for a good minute. Finally, he looked up at me lazily but didn’t say a word.

I leaned on his desk, so I was standing over him. “Building purchase records. Where are they?

He looked at me for a moment.

I didn’t give him chance to exercise his tiny bit of authority. “You deaf? The records.”

“Over there,” he said. “Third door on the left. Mind the bucket over there. Ceiling’s leaking again.

“Thanks,” I said.

The property department kept their records in a converted office all the way at the end of the sixth floor. Third door on the left, as the clerk had said.

Wall to wall it was covered in shelves that must have had four hundred records each. They were mostly alphabetized and some of them were even ordered chronologically after that. That didn’t account for the folks who browsed the records and then couldn’t be bothered putting them back in order though. In the center of the room was a single pine table with two chairs around it and a clay ashtray in the middle. The room smelled of old pipe smoke.

I took off my jacket and got to work. What I wanted was to get an idea of how much the disused buildings in the slums sold for. If we were going to bargain with Scaliber, then I wanted to be prepared.

What I found in there surprised me. And it wasn’t just the price.

“Thanks,” I told the clerk two hours later as I left the office.

Before going back to tell the others what I had discovered, I went to Carmichael’s tailor shop. The tailor was wearing his padded scarf with the pins in it, and he stared at me through these inscrutable eyes of his.

“The gentleman returns! And he is wearing such a lovely suit. I wonder who made such a garment hmm? You must tell me. It’s exquisite craftsmanship.”

I laughed. “I’d tell you his name, but I don’t recommend the guy. Got sausages for fingers. Can’t sew for shit.”

“Perhaps you should not speak too badly of him, hmm. He might box your ears for such insolence.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

Carmichael grinned. “What can I do for you today?”

“I need some trousers and shirts and jackets. Dresses too.”

“Dresses?”

“Don’t worry. I know her size. You sell them, right?”

“If it can be worn then I sell it. Let’s talk trousers. Are you looking for casual? Fancy? Fancy casual? Plaid? Cargo?”

Thirty minutes and two hundred gold coins later I left Carmichael’s shop with a whole bunch of outfits of different colors and styles. Jackets and shirts and trousers that could be mixed and matched and ought to give us more flexibility if we needed to get into character for future scams. I even had Carmichael make a few new shirts and a new coat for Yulf, which was where more than half of the two hundred gold went.

It was a considerable expense but it was worth it. Especially with some of the jobs that the Dockside East outfit was going to attempt.

Chapter 34

Back at the hideout, I walked into an empty building. It wasn’t so unusual for Tilde or Mags or Yulf to be out doing something. Yulf liked to visit some of the squatters in their slums and use his handyman skills to work odd jobs for them free of charge. There was an old boot factory where they were using big pieces of carboard to partition it into apartments. Yulf bought some plaster and mixed it and created a more stable and private set of walls for them. He fixed gutters and sealed windows against the wind, and he replaced sodden floorboards. Nowadays, everyone knew the sound of Yulf’s great boots clomping toward them and there wasn’t a man, woman, or child who didn’t enjoy seeing him approach.

Tilde spent a lot of time in Pennywrote central, skulking around the various plazas and snipping purses and unlatching pocket watches and even sliding rings off fingers. It was part practice and part enjoyment for her. She didn’t even much care about the money, and she’d often bring purses to the hideout and throw them in the lounge onto a big pile of illegal goods, unopened.

Mags, most days, was a regular at the various scrapyards of Pennywrote where he’d tour the mountains of rusted iron and discarded copper and brass. He was mainly looking for old hunters’ traps that were barely functional and thus were sold to scrappers for a few silvers per piece. He’d bring them home and scrape the rust off them and get the traps working good as new, then he’d practice dismantling them in various ways. Two-handed. One-handed. Blindfolded. Even with a strip of cloth around his eyes, he could almost take apart a spring-activated fox trap. Almost. He still needed someone to stand and watch when he was doing it blindfolded, since he was fond of his hands and fingers and wanted to keep them.

All this time, I had been carrying on my watch of all three of them and trying to absorb their skills into my mimic vault. It wasn’t just a case of watching their movements but also of understanding why they did certain things. Building knowledge of the skills as well as watching their muscle memory.

From Yulf I was absorbing handiwork, though Pa had taught me lots already. From Tilde I wanted her stealth and the dexterity with which she took a wallet without the target feeling a thing. From Mags, I wanted his mechanical knowledge. The ability to make and unmake traps of all kinds. And I wasn’t all that far away. Especially with Mags, because he didn’t mind me watching him work.

Even so, though everyone in the outfit always had things to do, it was rare that everyone would be out at the same time and the hideout would be completely empty.

I walked through it and checked every room but there was nobody. No sign of Mags out back in the yard, surrounded by scraps of metal of all shapes and sizes. No hint of Tilde or Yulf.

“Hello?” I said.

There was no answer. I walked into the kitchen and found it deserted. Same with the common room, where I locked the door shut behind me and then checked that the dynamite was still inside the locked chest.

I heard footsteps out in the hallway. I was glad I’d locked the door behind me. Ever since we brought the dynamite into the hideout it was something I had insisted we all do.

“This door stays locked at all times. It’s the most important rule we have,” I insisted.

But there was another precaution I insisted on, too. Whenever Yulf, Tilde, Magpie, or I entered the hideout, we made a specific pattern of knocks on the front door.

This told me that my visitor, whoever was in the hallway, wasn’t part of the outfit. IF they were, they’d have knocked on the door before entering.

I waited by the door, blade in my hand. When the footsteps began to go upstairs, I slowly turned the key in the lock. It made no sound. That was something else I had insisted on. Every lock and every door hinge in this building was to be oiled fortnightly. We never knew when we might slip up and get raided, and we needed to be able to sneak through the hideout without the whining of a hinge giving us away.

“What about the floorboards, Mr. Snake?” Magpie had asked me.

“What about them?”

“They creak all the time. Yulf could replace them.”

“We’re gonna keep the creaking floorboards.”

“But why, sir?”

I couldn’t tell him that I used it as a way of knowing where everyone was in the hideout at all times. How would I explain my incessant need to know these things, except by saying that I was paranoid? And that I was paranoid because I wasn’t who I said I was?

It meant that I knew strangers were in the house with me now, and I knew exactly where there were. Upstairs hallway, I reckoned. Heading towards my room.

With the door unlocked I went into the hallway and avoided the noisy floorboards. I crept upstairs and I held my breath as I rounded the corner onto the hallway.

Hands grabbed my collar and slammed me into the wall.

I reacted on instinct punching them in the gut.

Emma doubled over, wheezing like a horse.

“The hell are you doing here?”

When she recovered herself, she spoke in a strained voice. “We need to work on your manners.”

The urge to slug her in the face was tremendous. But I held back. I remembered the papers of hers that I had locked away. The sister I knew about, a little sliver of information I was keeping in reserve. Finally, I knew what I eventually was going to do to get rid of her.

“What you want?” I said.

She gave me a slip of paper. I unfolded it. Written in messy handwriting were ten names and addresses.

“I told you that I’d have things I need you to do from time to time. Things that help me keep quiet about what’s going on here.”

I studied the names. I didn’t recognize any of them. A few of the streets seemed familiar. “You better not be asking me to kill these people.”

She laughed. “Course not! If I wanted someone dead, I’d send an assassin. Not a cutpurse.”

“So what is it?”

“I’ve been studying Rust Hook Harry’s murder patterns. There’s a rhythm to his work. When you see it, you see it. And I see it. If I’m right, something’s going to happen in the next few days.”

“And where do these guys come into it?”

“Simple. They’re the only ten people in the city who lost their right hands. Soldiers mostly. A couple of folks from the north where they still cut the hands off thieves. You’d love it there. Course, this list doesn’t account for people who lose their hands and don’t tell anyone.”

“Who would keep a thing like that quiet?”

“Underworld punishments.”

“Okay,” I said. “So these folks. Do they wear hooks?”

“If only it was that simple. Did you grow up in a place where rainbows piss gold? No. These guys and girls don’t wear hooks.”

“Girls?”

“I’m not ruling out that this might be Rust Hook Harriet.”

“So, these fellas and lasses don’t wear hooks,” I said.

“They generally don’t. But that doesn’t mean they never wear them. All I need is to have them followed over the next few days.”

“Isn’t that the job of the city guards?”

She leaned close to me. I felt her hot breath on my neck and felt her breasts press against my chest. “There are people I trust and people I don’t.”

“You mean whichever poor sap is supposed to manage you doesn’t trust you enough to give you guards to boss around.”

“A little of one, and a bit of the other. The result’s the same,” she said. “I need you to follow up on the list.”

Again I felt rage boiling up, but I told myself that I just had to be patient. When you’re coaxing a wolf into a trap, you don’t start yelling at it. I needed to act nice just for now. Just so I could do this properly, with no come back on Dockside East or the people of the slums.

“How’d you expect me to watch ten people?” I said.

Emma shrugged. “That’s your problem.”

“Excuse me?”

She bit her lip. “I know you have a certain resourcefulness. I can follow one of the people. You need to help me with the other nine.”

Follow nine people. How was I supposed to do that? Yulf would help me, and I could trust him not to talk. But that still left seven people to watch.

“This is the last time I do anything for you,” I said.

“It’s the last time when I say it’s the last,” she said.

Yeah. Just keep acting like that. It only makes it easier.

I heard a pattern of knocks on the hideout door, and then it opened. Three sets of footsteps walked into the building.

“They’re back,” I said. “Don’t say a word.”

“They’ll just think we were in your room. You know. Doing what people do. And if that’s our excuse, why don’t we just make the most of it?”

“Get the hell out of here,” I said.

Chapter 35

It was early evening and the slum-dwelling folks who worked in the cafes and tinkers’ shops and taverns in Pennywrote were coming home to dockside east.

They usually met at the north gates of Piccadale Park and walked back as a group, chatting together and laughing and telling stories and just feeling happy to be going home and being amongst their own people. By the time they arrived in the slums of dockside east, it sounded like a barbarian horde was coming to town.

While the song of the returning workers drifted through our hideout window, I was sitting in the dining room with Tilde, Yulf, and Magpie. Tilde had bought sardines from a pop-up fish market at the east docks. Such markets usually appeared when fishermen had catches that they couldn’t sell to a fishmonger, either because they just plain caught too much or maybe there was a logistics problem and the fish would just go bad otherwise.

“Hungry?” I asked her.

“Eh. So so.”

“You’re shoveling them in your mouth like they’re gonna disappear.”

“Wouldn’t rule that out with Mags around. Want some?”

“I never tried sardines before,” I said.

“You never tried sardines! Where’d you grow up? In a hole in the ground? Here. Try one. Get the big one just there. What do you think?”

“Salty,” I said.

“Just wait. You’ll be stopping by the docks all the time soon. Yulf, how about you?”

Yulf, who detested seafood, shook his head and made a face that promised murder if the sardines were offered his way again.

Mags had been to his favorite bakery where he purchased a selection of seeded bread and dips. He cut the bread into generous hunks and shared chili dip and garlic infused oil and truffle oil into bowls so everyone could reach them. Yulf was much happier with this.

While they were eating, I showed them the clothes I bought from Carmichael’s. The dock workers’ uniforms, dress shirts, smart trousers, office wear. “We’ll clear out a room upstairs just for props and start building up a proper collection. We ought to be able to use these on jobs. You know. Get into character. We could get more wigs and glasses and things like that. Even got something for Yulf.”

I handed Yulf two shirts that looked like they’d been made from five shirts stitched together. He took them and unfolded the first shirt and started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” asked Tilde.

“Is for troll?” said Yulf.

Tilde, Mags, and I made sure we didn’t look surprised at hearing him speak. We’d already agreed that whenever Yulf spoke we’d treat it like it was normal. Maybe then he’d do it more often.

“You’ve got me,” I said. “You’re a hard guy to buy for.”

We finished the rest of our lunch, and when the last sardine was eaten and Yulf took the plates into the kitchen and cleaned them, I started talking seriously.

I took out a folded-up piece of paper I’d taken from the records office. I unfolded it and smoothed it out and passed it to Tilde.

“Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have taken that,” I said. “It’s supposed to be a reference-only office.”

“John, I am shocked.”

I smiled. I was glad she’d not only remembered but started using my new pseudonym. It was nice hearing my pa’s name. Much better than Rattle or Snake.

Tilde held the document a few inches away from her face. A childhood spent getting tossed from one foster home to another hadn’t left her with the best reading comprehension, Mags told me, and she was sensitive about it so I never brought it up.

“What’s it say?” asked Mags.

“You read it if you’re so impatient,” she said and tossed the sheet to Magpie, who took it and put on his glasses even though he was short-sighted, so didn’t need the glasses for things up close.

“This is an application for planning permission,” said Mags. “Ah. I get it now. Scaliber is trying to sell the place. He reckons if it comes with pre-approved permission for development then he’ll get more takers.”

“Not quite. See, that’s not the only application made. He’s got approval to demolish most of dockside east. He’s selling the land, not the building that’s on it.”

“Knock down my dad’s store?”

“He doesn’t think of it as your dad’s store, buddy. Do you guys know how many buildings Scaliber owns around here?”

“Fucking asshole,” said Mags.

Tilde and I stared at each other, surprised by this rare outburst into cussing from the usually well-mannered Mags. I could relate a little, I reckoned. After Pa got taken and I had to run, a landlord named Silas took book possession of our old cottage. I’d never known that PA was renting it with the intention to buy when we saved enough gold, which obviously never happened. So yeah. I felt pissed on Mags’ behalf.

“Let’s see. The grave lover has his rotten fingers in tons of rotten pies. I know he’s always visiting the old ironworks. So that. Maybe another couple,” said Tilde.

“Try more like thirty. Guy owns nearly all of dockside east, and he’s selling every inch of it. He’s gonna tear down what’s here so he can sell it to someone who wants to build something from afresh. This place will become some fancy apartment building complex or something like that. Y’know, like the kinds that are spreading everywhere in Pennywrote.”

“Ain’t there some kind of squatting laws that entitle folks to stay?” said Tilde.

“We’re real good talking about the law, aren’t we?” I said. “Sure there are squatter’s rights. But Scaliber will just hire a bunch of goons to scare folks away.”

“And there’s nothing we can do?”

“Doubt it.”

“Won’t the city help?”

I shook my head. “Sure, maybe it’s convenient right now for the city officials that all the poorer families live in this area. Keeps them out of the way. You don’t take care of the rats in your basement ‘til you’re trying to sell your house.”

“Calling us rats?”

“You know what I mean. But just because they don’t bother us, doesn’t mean they like us being here. Up to now, have they ever done anything to help folks around here?”

Tilde slammed her fist down on the table. “Damn it to fuck. I need a drink.”

“Go for a run. Sweat it off,” said Magpie. “It always helps. Trust me. I ran ten miles this morning.”

“Well, hurray for you.” then a moment later, she added, “Sorry, Mags.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Magpie was proud of his achievements, and I didn’t blame him one bit. These days he was looking leaner than a hare and whenever I found time to join him for a morning run, the fella left me way behind.

Tilde was pacing around. She kept looking at the door like she wanted to bolt out and go to the lounge and start raiding her drinks cabinet. Only, she’d emptied it a few days earlier when she was feeling weak and didn’t want the temptation.

“Okay. Let’s think about what we’re gonna do about this. We got, what, thirty or forty families living around here? They’ll be screwed harder than a dockside gigolo. I mean this place ain’t ideal but at least there’s a sense of community. Safety even. Soon as folks have to go into Pennywrote and try to find places there or even live on the streets…damn it to all fuck!”

Tilde’s tirade gave me an idea. The seeds of one anyway. I needed to think about it.

“Let’s let this stew a little in our heads. My best ideas always come when I’m not tryin’ to scare ‘em out. But that’s not the worst of it,” I said.

“Well aren’t you the ray of sunshine today.”

“I know, I know. But listen. We gotta do something about the dynamite in case all this goes ahead. Because once Scaliber gets an eviction notice and hires some heavies to clear this place out, we won’t have time. Lemme think about it. For now, I want you guys to think about our next job. The money we got from the forgery won’t last forever.”

“What about you?” said Mags.

“I’ll be away for a while. I’ve got a few errands that need runnin’.”

Chapter 36

It was what Tilde said about the dangers of having to live on the streets in Pennywrote’s inner-city districts that got me thinking. Not about the dockside problem, but about Emma and the task she’d given me to check out the ten Rust Hook Harry suspects on her list.

I asked myself why I even thought about doing it in the first place. I hated the woman. In my head, my mental picture of her had completely changed, and it’d changed for good. No coming back from that.

Sure, there was a part of me that saw the irony in the fact that I was annoyed with her pretending to be someone she wasn’t. But this was different. Mainly because it affected me. Sounds like a selfish thing to think, but that was the way I felt. Then again, I guess it wasn’t just about me. The lingering presence of a member of the guards in the slums put me, Tilde, Mags, and Yulf on the line. I didn't like the idea of the people I'd come to see as friends being at risk. That meant Emma wasn’t a person to me anymore, but a problem.

However, she was also a problem with advanced guard training and, presumably, resources of the Pennywrote guardship to call on. So, for now at least, I needed to keep her happy. Keep her thinking that she had me tamed.

So, she had a list of ten Rust Hook Harry suspects, and I only had a pair of eyes. Well, three eyes, if you took the Palm Eye of Vladimir Yurisaygar into account. Even so, I couldn’t watch them all myself. I needed help. I needed cheap help.

I reckoned there was a place to get it.

The next morning, I headed into Pennywrote, walking the Crooks’ Pass thoroughfare and heading deeper into the city’s belly until the sheen of the glass on the surrounding buildings got duller and duller. Finally, I reached some of the run-down knock-shops and scrappers and penny tinker stores, most of whom had gone out of business years ago with their only echo being the fading paint signs above their doorways.

There, I cut onto Jameson Street and went north, following a thread of filth into one of the city’s many seedy alleyways. The kind of backstreet where the noises of the city instantly cut out like someone had slit its throat. A little run of cobbled street overlooked by the backdoors of a few poorly run businesses. A dark place even in the full glare of daylight.

This alleyway was behind a row of cafes that were on a street imaginatively nicknamed, ‘Deli Street’. The customer-facing side of Deli Street always smelled of spiced meats turning on grills, and lemon and coriander pittas warming in ovens. Here in the alleyway behind, I smelled dampness and trash.

But I wasn’t here for the hell of it. I needed to find a certain group of people. The Scamps were runaways from some of the tougher foster homes spread throughout Pennywrote. The kind of places run by folks taking the empire’s gold to make sure poor kids weren’t seen or heard, and thus could be forgotten about. It said a lot about such homes that the Scamps preferred to take their chances on the streets.

According to Tilde, they should have been here, but there wasn’t any sign of them. I walked around, peering into the nooks and corners of the alleyway, behind garbage bins and the back walls of the various cafes and delis.

No sign of any scamps at all. I was about to try another of their haunts.

A stone hit my leg. Another whacked into my chest.

I saw the third stone just in time and I caught it in my hand and threw it back at the owner, hearing a boy yell in pain.

“I’m not one of the guards, you stupid little bastards,” I said. “C’mon. Everyone out where I can see you.”

“That’s what a guard would say,” said a voice.

“Would a guard call you a stupid little shit?”

“Yep.”

“Gods. Look, just come out. I don’t have time or the inclination to fuck around with you.”

Silence.

I wondered what I’d have to do to get them to come out.

“I know Tilde,” I said.

A gang of raggedly dressed children emerged from doorways and shadows and other hidden places. One, two, three, four. All of them wearing shirts too big for them or trousers dirty and torn that they must have stolen from shops or pilfered from trash cans.

Soon, a dozen of the street mites were gathered around me. Boys and girls aged from eight to maybe fourteen. They were dirty and thin and they wore hard expressions that were too old for kids to have. Ones that said they hated the city and all the folks in it.

For years now, Tilde had been using her cut of the Dockside East outfit’s profits for two things – booze, and food for the Scamps. Now that she’d given up the booze, she told me, she had more to give to these little runts. Sometimes, they did odd jobs for her in return. Creating diversions so she could swipe coin purses and that kind of thing.

“Ain’t there a home we can find for ‘em?” I’d asked her.

Tilde shook her head. “They’re a family now, and no place is going to take upwards of a dozen urchins all at once. They’d be split up, some of ‘em sent to good places, some bad. And believe me. I know about the bad.”

They gathered around me uncertainly now, the smaller ones hiding behind the coats of the larger kids. I did my best to seem unthreatening, but it clearly wasn’t working. I’m not exactly a threatening guy, so that said a lot about their experiences in the city.

“What you want, mister?” asked the oldest of them, a rakish kid with a conniving look in his eyes.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“George.”

“Are you the leader of this group, George?”

“Well I’m the oldest,” said George, as if that was all the explanation that was needed.

“Okay then. Got a job for you little brats.”

“Yeah. We heard that before. You better get out of here before we call the guards. We seen your kind around, mister!”

“I told you. I know Tilde.”

“No you don’t!”

I took out a coin purse from my pocket. I tossed it from one palm to the other so they could hear the sound of the silvers jangling.

“Let’s cut the crap, okay? This is so simple that even you brats should be able to get it. Listen up. I need nine of you to do a job for me. All you’ll have to do is go to the addresses I give you and hang around and stay out of sight. If anyone leaves these houses at night, I need you to follow them and remember where they go.”

I took from my pocket some sheets of paper and pencils, but George said, “None of us can read or write, you idiot.”

“Then you’ll just have to use your tiny little brains to remember, won’t you? Unless you little tykes don’t need the coins?”

“Why’re you so mean?” said a little girl with ginger hair and with a small, ivory-handled pen sticking out of her trouser pocket.

“Because the world’s mean, and I’m a mean guy. Besides. You’re the ones who started throwing stones.”

“We thought you was a guard.”

“Well. I ain’t.”

George said, “You’re only gonna need nine of us? What about the other three? It ain’t fair that they get nothing.”

He stared at me through eyes that had seen plenty of things both good and bad. Distrust was probably as good a protection as a blade for these little shits. I hadn’t ever been in their position because I grew up with Pa, and I was older than them when Pa got taken and I had to look after myself. Even so, I reckoned if I was in George’s position, I’d be acting the same way.

“Fine. Nine of you do the work, but you’ll all get paid,” I said.

“And you’ll buy us all barbecue wraps from the deli on Vossack Road as a bonus. Not part of what you’re paying.”

“I’ll buy you something from the deli,” I agreed.

George spat. Seeing this, a couple of the younger boys spat too. The ginger-haired girl spat the most of all.

“Okay then,” said George, “Who do you want us to watch?”

“Just people, as far as you’re concerned. Names only complicate things. Only a part of what I pay you is for watching them. The other part is to not ask me any questions.”

“Will this get us into trouble?” said George.

“Does that bother you?”

“Not me as such, mister. But the others need me.”

“Well, if you’re careful, you’ll be okay. I ain’t asking you to do anything illegal.”

“You sure?”

“Ain’t illegal to look at a person.”

George spat on his hand and held it out. “We’ll do it. Well? Aren’t you gonna shake?”

“We can take it as shook. You know what? Thinking about it, I might have work for three more of you in any case.”

“Yeah?”

I gave them the description of Scaliber and Emma, and I told them where they’d normally be. “Remember. I only want you to watch them. Stay out of sight. Got it?”

The kids all laughed at me.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nobody ever sees us anyway,” George said.

Chapter 37

Meeting the Scamps left me with a hollow feeling that I knew from experience would take nothing but time to fill. There wasn’t no easing it. Part of me felt like I was adding more crap onto the dung pile of the system by giving them coins. Like I was helping take away the state’s responsibility.

I guessed that I’d given them employment at least. And if that solved one of my problems at the same time, then everyone was happy.

Yup, everyone was happy.

I guessed that when it came down to it, my options were to feel guilty about it or just get on with things, so I chose the latter.

After heading back to the hideout, I changed into blue overalls and a dirty brown shirt, an outfit that resembled what most dockworkers wore. I was hoping to get some information about the Wanton, and for that, I needed to look like a guy who’d spent time on the docks. Or, at least, a guy whose job gave him callouses on his hands.

I studied myself in the mirror. A critical eye told me I wasn’t cutting it. Not by half.

The problem was that my clothes looked too new, so I took the shirt off again and crumpled it up. Then, I threw it on the ground and I stomped on it some. After I put it back on and rolled up the sleeves, I went to the fourth floor of the shop where Mags kept his workshop. He didn’t answer, so I went inside and rummaged around amongst the half-assembled bear traps and spring traps.

By now I knew the names of all the traps. I could identify all the little parts. I was close to acquiring a trap skill from Mags that I could feel it. I was gonna have to dedicate some time to that later. All it would take was one or maybe two more sessions of watching him work.

I looked around until I found a can of grease. It was half-full. I squirted it on the overalls and smeared it all around.

Freshly – or purposefully not freshly - appareled, I headed back into the city, this time to the South Street Market Plaza. I couldn’t believe how packed it was. Especially since there was a drizzle of rain coming down and the sky held about as much promise as a three-legged dog in a steeplechase.

The stalls lining the outside of the plaza had artificed fabric draped above them to deflect the rain, and they sold all kinds of stuff both needed and pointless. Ten-use repair kits and knives with artificed blades that claimed to never dull. Spice potion mixes that were supposed to drive away rats. One trader, a big fella wearing a purple scarf, stirred liquid in a giant cauldron. From it came the smell of wine and cloves and cinnamon. “Mulled wine! Two silvers a cup!”

The most interesting stall was one set up between a candlemaker and a woman selling second-hand books. It was a stall with no artificed cover. Just a little desk and a guy sitting at it dressed in leathers and with a sword resting in a sheath on his belt. Guy had a burn on his neck that seemed to extend down and was covered by his chest armor.

He was a recruiter for a mining operation in Aesegoth’s Tower who’d struck a vein of copper in the tower and wanted more folks to go and yank it out of the ground. The operation, Restless Breezy & Cousin, was supposedly the quickest growing mining outfit in Aesegoth.

The guy caught me looking. “Hey. You. Interested in earning gold?”

“Maybe.”

“Looking for adventure?”

“Who isn’t?”

“I like it. I like it. So. How about do you feel about going to Aesegoth’s tower?”

“Not a chance,” I said.

I headed into a tavern named The Rusty Anchor that had a sign outside with a giant, brown anchor painted on it. Inside, it was filled with dockworkers enjoying a beer or three after their shift. They mostly crowded together and sat around long twenty-four-seat tables that they made by dragging four six-seaters together. The landlord didn’t seem too happy that they’d done that, but I guessed he must like earning coin. The only division was that dockside east workers didn’t drink with dockside west. They were peaceful enough to share the same tavern, but they wouldn’t sit together.

As well as the dockers, other folks had made the Rusty Anchor their tavern of choice. One fella in the corner near the hearth was dressed in black armor and he had his sword propped up next to him against his chair. Sitting on his table was a little crow. He had a beer for himself and a smaller saucer of beer for the bird.

The landlord was a bald guy with thick, meaty hands. He had a towel slung over his shoulder. “Yep?” he said to me.

“I’ll have a pint of Rocky Tides.”

“Right you are.”

I took a seat at one of the only few vacant tables. There were knife marks on it from where someone had been playing Fast Fingers. To my left and to my right were groups of dockworkers in various stages of inebriation.

My plan here didn’t extend much beyond listening to them jabber. I knew the chances weren’t great, but I hoped I might overhear something about stolen dynamite. I reckoned if the crew of the Wanton was offering a reward for finding it, I could contrive a way of getting the dynamite back to them for a fee, without letting them know I was the one who stole it.

So, I sat and I drank my beer and I listened. The problem was that the dockworkers seemed to quieten a little now that I was sitting between the two tables.

I didn’t know why. I was dressed just like them. I was just a fella sitting in the tavern having a beer. There shouldn’t have been anything suspicious about it.

But then I realized.

Maybe it was obvious that I was trying to listen to them. Or if not obvious, then perhaps their instincts were picking up on it, at least. I needed to act more naturally.

I drained my glass and went to the bar and ordered another two Rocky Tides and then took my place back at my table. This time I didn’t look at the dockworkers at all. I just gazed into my drink like I was looking for answers.

In my head, I brought up my list of mimicry mannerisms. I’d never acquired any dockworker mannerisms, but Pa had once taken me to watch a bunch of fellas laboring at a sleet quarry and I reckoned their mannerisms might be close enough. I just needed to seem like a hard-working, normal guy, and not the lying rogue that I really was.

I activated the quarry worker mannerism and felt my posture change without me doing anything.

After a while, I noticed that one of the dockworkers was looking at me. A small fella with brown hair greased back and a tattoo of a blue anchor on his right hand.

“Which ship you with, mate?” he asked me.

I decided to use a piece of advice Pa once gave me when teaching me mimicry. The best lies always carry grains of truth. Lie about what you know. Only, shape what you know to suit the lie.

“I ain’t a docker.”

“Roofer?” he asked.

“Work on Siggins’ Quarry out west. Brought a haul of slate here. Thought I’d get myself a drink while the lads unload it all.”

This seemed to satisfy him, and the dockworkers didn’t pay me much mind after that. They got back to their conversations and jokes and songs, and I was free to just listen.

After a while, I spoke to the pony-tailed guy again.

“Hey. Ask you something?”

“Questions are free,” he answered.

“My supe’s been working us like dogs and paying us even less. Any work going on the waves?”

He studied me, and I hoped my mimicked mannerisms held true. Seemed like they did.

“Looking for a ship are ya? We might need crew on the Torn Sail. How’re your sea legs?”

“Ain’t tested ‘em much,” I said. “Reckon they’ll hold up.”

“Go to dockside east. Look for the boat with yellow trimmed sails. Ask for Leonard Garter.”

“Thanks. Get you a drink?” I said.

“Ain’t gonna say no. Come sit your ass with us over here.”

After that, neither table of dockworkers was guarded in the things they said. I heard about which them had caught the venereal diseases from various women and men who earned coin outside dockside taverns. I learned exactly how each of them was planning on spending their pay when they finished their contracts. This gave me a few ideas for parting them with their gold in a way that suited the wallets of the Dockside East outfit.

But I didn’t learn anything about the Wanton and its missing dynamite.

Feeling a little lightheaded after drinking four beers, I left the Rusty Anchor and headed back onto the plaza. The lamplighters had lit the square up with orange glows.

The crowd was different now. The merchants were packing up their stalls and the shoppers had headed home. Now, the people walking through the plaza were well-dressed guys with ladies hooked on their arms, no doubt heading to restaurants or plays or some of the more high-class taverns in Pennywrote.

I was hungry and was looking forward to eating one of Magpie’s stews, but that was going to have to wait. As it turned out, I had an appointment to keep.

I crossed the plaza and walked through the crowd, only to hear a man fall in step behind me. My mimic’s ear fed the rhymic step to me and I knew deep down in my gut that those steps were being taken in time with mine.

I had been waiting for this. I was only surprised it had taken this long. I kneeled down and feigned tying my boots. As I did, I gave a subtle glance back.

Yup. It was the guy from the Rusty Anchor who wore black leather armor. His crow was now perched on his shoulder.

Following a route through the knots of people in the plaza, I turned right onto Bishop’s Row and then ducked into the alleyway that I knew would be there. Pretty much as soon as I became Rattlesnake, I’d started making a mental note of places like this. You never know when you need a dark alley.

I quickly reached into the artificed inner pocket of my coat and grabbed a pouch. The one I grabbed was full of vials with powder in them for the various ailments that some of my mimicries gave me. That was the wrong pouch.

I took out the other one. This one also had vials inside it, only these vials were filled with crushed glass. I popped the cork of one of them and sprinkled glass over the alleyway.

Crouched in a shadowy nook, I waited to hear footsteps. When they didn’t come, I wondered if maybe I’d gotten it wrong. I was about to stand up when I heard it.

The crunch of boots on glass. Faint, like they were usually good at hiding them, but it was there all the same.

I held my breath, waiting for them to draw level.

I pounced out of the alleyway and grabbed hold of the man and shoved him against the wall. His crow squawked in my ear and it fluttered above me, swooping down to peck my skull. I swept my hand in the air, not hitting it but scaring it away.

“Evening, Rattlesnake,” I said.

The man in front of me was wearing a wig, make-up, and most likely actor’s putty, too. But as ever, it was the eyes. Always the eyes.

“Knew it was me, huh?” he said.

“I had an idea.”

“Not many folks can pick me out of a crowd of assholes when I’m dressed up. Something about you. Something I can’t quite place. Now, just what is it?”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Why’re you following me?”

“I was in the Anchor first, unless you’re forgetting. Can’t a man enjoy a nice beer with his crow?”

“After the Anchor, smart ass. You followed me onto the plaza.”

“So arrogant. Everything revolves around you, doesn’t it?”

The guy was infuriating. Everything he said, he said it with a grin. It was impossible to know when he was being serious.

Still, I wasn’t completely annoyed to have bumped into him.

“I’ve been meaning to have a word with you,” I said.

“Buy me a beer and you can have full sentences.”

I thought about it. I needed to talk to Rattlesnake, and a beer in a tavern was better than some grimy alleyway.

“Alright.”

“I know a good place.”

“You lead the way.”

He nodded. “I was watching you in there, you know. You weren’t bad, but you weren’t perfect either. You almost looked natural. Sitting there with your beers and listening like you were a guardsmen rat. You know what gave you away?”

“So what gave me away?”

He pinched my sleeve. “You’re wearing the right clothes. You look like a working sap. But there’s a difference between your threads and theirs. Know what it is?”

I shrugged.

“You’ve tried to hide it, but your get-up is too new. The stains are too deliberate. If those guys weren’t already half-drunk, they’d have realized that something wasn’t quite right. Maybe they wouldn’t know exactly what, but something would have been pecking at ‘em. And then who knows what would have happened? They might have thought you were with the guards. It wouldn’t have ended well for you.”

“Guess you would have done it better?” I said.

“I know for a damn fact I would. Come with me,” he said.

Chapter 38

I followed him away from the plaza and along Tallbeck Drive, then through Tumbler’s Row, where craftsmen with their forearms covered in dried clay sold statues and vases to tourists.

Passing a fruit vendor engaged in selling a crate of watermelon to a young boy, Rattlesnake deftly lifted a rose-red apple from the grocer’s wares and walked on without paying. He offered me a bite, but I shook my head. Ten minutes later, we headed into the south-eastern part of the city where he led me into a tavern called the Subtle Hand.

The mood in this tavern was more measured and somber than in the Rusty Anchor. Gone were the raucous parties of drunken dockworkers, replaced by hooded men and women talking in murmurs and taking careful sips of their wines and beers.

Over in the corner beside a crackling log fire, a beautiful elf girl strummed a lute and sang a song I couldn’t understand, taking advantage of the pause between lyrics to huff at the stray hairs that came loose from behind her ear. Nearby, a group of black-clad folks was playing Two Tails Twist.

Rattlesnake gestured at them with his thumb. “You’ll never see a card game like the kind you’ll see the Subtle Hand. In here, it’s frowned upon not to cheat. The trick is to be the best at not getting caught.”

“This is a rogue bar,” I said.

He nodded.

“Alright. This ain’t my scene,” I said, heading for the door.

He caught my sleeve. “Why so jumpy?”

“C’mon. This isn’t the brightest idea a fella ever had, a tavern for rogues. All the city guard would have to do is send some of their people here for a few nights and they’d know every single rogue in the city. I’m not drinking in a place that gets me put onto a list.”

“Only Good Folks can enter,” said Rattlesnake, using a nickname for rogues. Strangely enough, only rogues used this particular one. “You didn’t see them, but the Anchor has spotters keeping a close eye. First time you come here, you gotta be with someone who’s trusted. The alleyway that led us here is artificed so folks passing by don’t see anything but an empty, rat-infested lane. There’s artificery on the door, you see. Anyone who isn’t a rogue can’t get in.”

“Something like that wouldn’t stay secret for long. A rogue would squeal and the guards would learn that there’s a tavern where only rogues can enter. They’d post a few fellas to stand watch on the street and keep a note of anyone who comes in.”

“True, if it weren’t for the fact that we got spotters on every corner within a mile. If we get a sniff of a guard, then Tusker the landlord pulls the lever.”

“The lever?”

“Just a turn of phrase. Tusker’s got some heavy artificery on this place. He doesn’t like to use it unless he has to, accounting for the cost, but he can make this place practically disappear.”

The place gave me an uneasy feeling in my gut, but maybe that was my regular aversion to new things kicking in. Despite all appearances, I’m a guy who likes the comfort of familiarity.

I still wasn’t sold on how safe it was, but there was no doubting one thing - the place really was full of rogues. They all seemed comfortable here, too.

And then there was Rattlesnake, supposedly the best rogue of them all. He wouldn't be here if it wasn't safe, would he? Sure, he had been caught and sentenced to die, so maybe he wasn’t perfect. But that could happen to the best of us.

The other possibility, I guessed, was that he was setting me up for something. But it seemed like an elaborate plot, convincing a tavern full of rogues to set the scene just to entrap a guy like me.

All things considered, I discounted the idea that Rattlesnake was trying to pull something. The fact was that I was here now, and I needed something from Rattlesnake. I’d get the information and then leave, and I wouldn’t be back. The risk to me was minimal.

“Alright, you go get the beers. I’ll find a table.” I said.

While Rattlesnake grumbled off towards the bar, I took a table near the elf girl. Her music was beautiful, and the gentle twang of her loot complemented her soft voice perfectly. I closed my eyes and listened to it, and it brought to my mind sunlight and meadows and beautiful valleys strewn with flowers. It made me think of good times when we still had the farm. Wholesome reminisces like that.

“Play the one about the vicar and the whore.”

Rattlesnake had returned with the beers. He took a gold coin from his pocket and flicked it in the air behind him, where it spun twenty times and then landed perfectly in the bard’s upturned hat along with the other coins she’d been given.

Sitting down, he said to me, “Don’t go falling for Helen over there. She plays a pretty tune but she’s the worst huckster in here. We got a rule. Don’t pull any roguery on a fellow rogue. Seems that doesn’t apply to her. If you ask me, Tusker ought to ban her.”

He pushed the beer towards me. After having drank four of them in the Rusty Anchor I wished I’d asked for some coffee. But I took it and tasted it. It was great.

“Thanks,” I said. “Let me ask you something. Do the people in here know who you are?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? Names don’t get used in here, fella. Not real ones, anyway. They just think I’m some bottom-of-the-boot purse snatcher. Anyway. What was it you needed?”

“I wanted to ask you something.”

He shrugged. “A man never spend a single copper asking me a question.”

“But the answer?”

“We’ll see,” he said.

I smiled. It reminded me of my Pa’s attitude toward asking questions – ask all you want, but that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed an answer.

“Alright,” I said. “It’s like this. I need a list from you.”

“What kind of list?”

“Of the reputable folks that you used to fence things to. Legit ones who'll take the goods and supply coin, no questions asked. Folks you trust so much you’d leave your kidneys in their safekeeping.”

“And why would I give that to you?” he said. “Last time we met, you stuck a blade in me, let’s not forget. I’m a forgiving man but I have limits.”

I didn’t doubt that he was a forgiving person. After all, he certainly didn’t seem to care much that I’d stabbed him. Then again, that was more than enough to tell me that Rattlesnake was loopy. What kind of guy kept healing powder in his pocket in the event he might get stabbed?

The kind of guy that provoked frequent stabbings – that was who.

But I’d already been thinking about Rattlesnake. Trying to put myself in his shoes. Hell, that’s all I’d done lately, fill his shoes. As a mimic, it wasn’t so hard for me to have empathy like that, and I reckoned I knew the answer to his question.

“You'll help me because you don’t wanna be Rattlesnake anymore. You told me so.”

“Alright. And I’m not him anymore, am I?" He lowered his voice and leaned closer to me. "You are. And folks know it.”

I looked around.

“Don’t get het up,” he said. “They don’t know your face in particular. They just know Rattlesnake is on the streets again.”

I nodded. “Exactly. So it’s in your interests to make sure that I never get caught.”

“How’d you figure that?”

“Because if I do, your nice quiet life might just get yanked away from you.”

Rattlesnake laughed. “Like I would give a shit if they put you in the Nest.”

“You would, because you can’t just leave this place, can you? I’ve asked around about you. Heard snippets here, rumors there. There’s one thing that most folks agree on – it’s never been about the money for Mr. Rattlesnake.”

“Then what is it about for me, genius?” said Rattlesnake. “You think my pecker gets hard when I’m breaking the law?”

“Nope. I think you see things the way I do. Sure, you’re tired of this kinda life. You want to leave it and get as far away from this city as you can. But it makes you sick to your fucking stomach to see rich folks prancing around, throwing gold here and there like it has no meaning. It’s always burned a hole in your gut and it always will. Yeah, it burns deep. You see them throwing gold around like they’ve never even considered the possibility it could run out. You see it and you want to shove their coins right down their throats. Or maybe you wanna hurt them in a way they actually care about. You want someone to keep parting them from their coin when you’re gone. You just don’t want to be the one to do it anymore. The problem with you is that you got close enough to the noose, and you’ve lost the stomach for this work.”

Rattlesnake regarded me with a half-amused smile, but his eyes seemed to become deeper and in them I saw a man with nothing, in the darkest corners of his true heart, to smile about. In those eyes, I saw the flickers of red that fly off hot metal with a blacksmith strikes it as hard as he can.

“Fine. Maybe you and I have a little more in common besides our name,” he said. He seemed to relax a little. “I keep telling myself I can rest easy knowing people are still getting fucked over, and that I don’t need to do the fucking anymore. I can spend my days in the sun doing a whole different kind of fucking.”

“That’s a wholesome dream you got there.”

He shrugged. “All the same, you’re right. I’m finding it hard to leave. I reckon it’s maybe because I don’t trust who I’m leaving this to.”

“So help me. Give me the list.”

Rattlesnake seemed to make his decision instantly.

“Alright. Forget the list for a moment. Let’s say that I know you were in the Rusty Anchor for a reason. That reason being you got a room full of stolen goods that once belonged to the empire.”

A cold flicker crossed my chest. The dynamite.

“I don't know what you're-”

He held up his hand. “I’m not a guard and I sure as shit ain’t a judge. Don’t bother protesting. The stuff that you’ve got is hot in more ways than one. You need to sell it, but you know you can’t just go advertising the fact that you have it because it would most likely end with your neck in a noose.”

There were so many unknowns about this guy. But one thing I reckoned I knew for certain was that if Rattlesnake wanted to tell the guards about the dynamite, he’d have done it already. Except, of course, if he was planning to extort me. So far he hadn't asked for anything. I was the one who'd wanted to talk to him, not the other way around.

The thing that worried me most was how he knew about it. He’d either seen us stealing it or he somehow knew that it was inside our hideout. I didn’t know which possibility was worse.

The trouble was, there wasn’t much I could do other than straight-up ask him. Rattlesnake was holding the best cards right now, and he was a better rogue than me. There was no point denying that. When you're following a foggy path, you go slow and you go carefully. If you start running, you're liable to break your neck.

Let's see how much he knows, I thought.

“A cynic might wonder how you know certain things,” I said.

“Cynicism rots the soul,” replied Rattlesnake. “Let’s focus on wiping your ass. Not asking how I know that you shat your pants.”

He wasn’t going to tell me, then. So my choices were to walk away or to see where this was going. The trouble was that the dynamite in our hideout really was becoming something of an issue. I was stuck with what to do about it.

I had to play along for now. Get him to show his cards and then think about what to do next when I had better information.

“Alright. Do you know someone who's got coin that they wanna spend on a certain something?” I said.

“Maybe I do.”

“You gonna spill?”

“I wouldn’t be much of a teacher if I just told you that, would I?” he said.

Chapter 39

Rattlesnake took a deep drink of his beer and then licked the foam off his mustache. I sipped mine, deciding to clear my head as much as possible. He looked at me with those weasel-like eyes of his.

“I’m not gonna give you the answers on a plate. Use your brain for a second. Think about this. You wanna sell the goods, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Right then. So. Who would need a shedload of sticks?”

The question of who might need to buy an industrial amount of dynamite is tough when you actually think about it. It’s not a product that your normal merchant has any use for.

“The empire,” I finally said. “It used to be theirs after all, and they’d probably like it returned. I can’t exactly sell their stuff back to ‘em though.”

He gave me a strange look then but said, “So who else?”

“Guess there are the smugglers on the Wanton who originally stole it. But if I was to try and sell it back to them, they wouldn’t be very happy. Even if I just gave it back, it’s more likely they’d see me as nothing but a loose end.”

“And they say sailors are good at tying knots. So you’ve ruled out the people you can’t try and sell it to. Who else needs sticks?” he said.

“You’ve clearly got someone in mind,” I said. “Why not just tell me?”

“Nope. Figure this out.”

It hit me. “Dockside east. Scaliber’s gonna need something to demolish the slum.”

“Slum? What slum? I don’t give a flying dog’s fuck about a slum. What I’m asking you is who would have a use for an industrial amount of sticks?”

“They use it in quarries,” I said.

“Now you’re thinking like a rogue. What type of quarries?”

“I guess not every quarry would be willing to buy stolen stuff, much less…uh… sticks…stolen from the empire once and then stolen again. It’d need to be a shady operation. Something unlicensed. The empire takes taxes from mining and manufacturing. What we need is someone who’s trying to keep their operations secret so they don’t put coin into the treasury.”

Rattlesnake smiled, clearly enjoying himself. “You got it! Someone who doesn’t want to pay taxes on their products, so they don’t declare their operation.”

“Where do we find these people?” I said.

“Simple. We go to the Quarryman’s Tavern.”

“Does this city have a tavern for every damn job?”

He laughed. “I’m only joking. There ain’t no Quarryman’s Tavern. Listen. Follow your chain of thought. If someone was mining stone and not declaring it, they’d need to find a buyer who is similarly willing to complete the purchase on the sly.”

“How so? They can sell their stone to anyone.”

Rattlesnake shook his head. “No, they can’t. A legitimate buyer of large quantities of stone will need an invoice so they can use the purchase as a tax-exempt expense. If they’re audited, that invoice will lead to the quarry where they bought the stone from. Trust me on this. Tax inspectors would walk into a bear’s cave if they thought it was trying to skimp the empire.”

“Trust you? Since when did you ever pay taxes?” I said.

“All the same. If you’re running an elicit quarry operation, then you don’t want to be issuing invoices, do you?”

“Okay. But how the hell can someone hide a quarry, anyway?” I said.

“Artificery, mostly. Some careful forestry work. The big outfits even hire illusionists. You could take a carriage right by some quarries and see nothing but a peaceful forest. No workers, no sound of pickaxes, no explosions.”

“Must be pricey.”

“Which often means it’s worth it, or they wouldn’t bother. Tell me something. Who would want to buy stone off the books?”

I thought about it. “Someone might want to buy stone in secret if they were building something they didn’t want others to see.”

Rattlesnake grinned at me. “We’re getting there. What kind of buildings might need to be built in secret?”

I shrugged. “Forts, maybe. The empire would be stupid to keep everything on show. They must have places we don’t know about. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?” I said. “Empire installations.”

Rattlesnake gave a smug smile. “And hence the circle is complete. The empire has its own secret quarries that they keep off the books. Then they have builders who are also working off the books. Neither of them knows about the other.”

I blinked, incredulous. “You’re saying I should sell the empire’s stolen sticks back to the empire?”

“To a very specific department, yes.”

With a shudder, a memory came to me then of a story told to me by a guy named Thorpe. The story of John Wild, shopped to the empire by a gossipseller bastard and taken to a place up north.

I wouldn’t help the empire build places like that. I made that decision right there and then. If they wanted dynamite then they could give me coin for it, sure. But I was going to make sure not a single fucking stick worked as it should. I just needed to figure out how to fool them.

Rattlesnake carried on. “It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the empire sends its weasels to places like the Subtle Hand. You know, a tavern where a fella can buy every type of contraband he can think of. The empire’s got rogues of its own. You’d be a fool to think otherwise. They need to break the law just as much as we do. Maybe more so. They just have to be craftier about it.”

“And those folks are allowed in here?” I said.

“Yup. Cause they’re rogues, like I said. They just take the empire’s gold and they pay the rest of us rogues good prices for our gear. Plus, they know that if they pulled anything, they’d be slaughtered like a dead ox and then strung up in Merchant’s Square by their guts.”

After my initial surprise, I guessed it shouldn’t seem so strange that the empire needed to commit crimes like the rest of us. I wondered if Tilde knew about this. She must know, I reckoned. Either way I’d ask her, missing out the part about Rattlesnake, of course.

“Is there an empire representative in here tonight?” I asked.

“Look around.”

While Rattlesnake drained his beer and leaned over to the elf bard and whispered something in her ear that provoked a giggle, I scanned the tavern.

To say the clientele of the Subtle Hand was shifty would be to greatly under exaggerate the word shifty. This place had so many folks wearing so many hoods that it must have kept Pennywrote’s tailors in business for a decade.

Unlike the boisterous crowd in the Rusty Anchor, the Subtle Knife patrons seemed incapable of talking in anything louder than a murmur. There was rogue after rogue after rogue. Looking around, one person did stand out, though. Her hair was red like rust on a shovel and her skin was pale as whalebone.

When I turned back around, Rattlesnake and the Bard were disappearing into the far end of the tavern where there was a set of stairs.

I wasn’t gonna sit on my ass and wait for him to get back. I headed over to the red-haired lady.

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

“I do, actually,” she said.

“What if I get you a drink?”

“If you’re looking for a fuck then go to the docks and pay for it.”

I looked her up and down. “I’d rather fuck a corpse.”

She laughed. “Sit your ass down then.”

As it happened, I actually was looking to screw something. Only, it wasn’t the woman sitting at the table. I had it in mind that there might be a way to screw the empire and use the empire’s own dynamite to do it.

I took a seat opposite her. I wasn’t going to say much of anything to her yet. Certainly nothing that could betray me or make her suspicious.

“Do you have business with the empire?” she said, lowering her voice

“Let’s say guy wanted to make a deal. First, he’d need assurances that he can do that without finding himself in the Crow’s Nest.”

“That’s easy,” she said, a half-smile playing on her thin lips. “Do you really think I’d be able to set foot in here without getting my throat cut if my transactions ended in incarceration?”

She had a good point. If the empire was sending undercover operatives in here to bust people, the game would be up quickly. The fact that the woman’s presence seemed tolerated meant people at least knew her face. That she was sitting here with her throat intact gave credit to the fact that she hadn’t betrayed anyone. I was still far from sold, and my plan rested on me making a display of that.

“Maybe you’re making a list of the regulars in here. Getting them tailed. Biding your time, waiting for someone to approach you with a deal that’s too good to miss out on busting.”

She thought about it. “Didn’t your friend tell you about me?”

“I don’t trust him either.”

“Distrust is one thing. But if you won’t even talk to me, I don’t see how we can do business.”

“Let’s just say I’m thinking of a single way of being able to trust the empire’s branch of organized godsdamned thievery.”

“I have been coming to the Subtle Hand for years,” she said. “You can ask Tusker. Ask your friend. Ask every person in here. If there was a hint of anything funny, I’d have been stabbed a hundred times over and dumped in the sea. Do me a favor. Go and ask Tusker about Honest Dan. Go ahead. Just ask him.”

I headed over to the bar, where the tavern keeper Tusker was slicing up limes. “Another drink?” he said.

“You ever heard of Honest Dan?”

His knife hand froze above the lime. “What do you wanna know about a fella like that for?”

“Curiosity,” I said.

“Number one cause of cat deaths in Pennywrote.”

“Honest Dan?”

“Nope. Curiosity.”

I took a silver coin and placed it on the counter. “Humor me.”

Tusker turned around to the shelves behind him, where his spirits bottles were lined up. He grabbed a jar and put it on the bar top. It was filled with vinegar, and there was a pickle floating in it.

“Here’s Honest Dan,” he said.

I realized that it wasn’t a pickle, but a finger. An index finger to be precise.

“Nice decorations you got here, Tusker.”

“Fella was one of them ‘pire rogues.”

“So it’s true about them? They have their own people to fence stuff?”

Tusker nodded. “True enough. They call ‘em the Empire’s Hands.”

“What happened to Honest Dan?”

“He forgot his place. Cut a deal with a fella named Kiero in this very pub. Some kind of rare potions, or something. Anyway, Honest Dan reckoned that he’d scored big, and decided it was time he played his hand. He reported Kiero to his superiors, told them about the trade he’d brokered.”

“Shopped him in?” I said.

Tusker nodded. “Yup.”

“And what happened?”

“To Kiero? Nothing. To Dan? Well. There are some skilled butchers in Pennywrote. I don’t know how many pieces they cut Honest Dan into, but I got one piece for myself. I know that they never found them all.”

“Right. So he got some rogue justice, huh?”

Tusker shook his head, a half-grin playing on his lips. “No. You’re seeing it wrong. It was the empire who did it, I heard. Honest Dan had a job, and he decided to change the terms. The empire can’t do business in here if their own representatives aren’t trusted.”

“The fucking empire had him cut up?”

Tusker nodded. “Like a whore when Rust Hook Harry’s around.”

“And that girl over there?”

“She’s clever enough to want to stay in one piece and not get cut into fifty.”

“Thanks,” I said.

It’d be a lie to say I felt completely reassured. Trusting comes hard for me, while paranoia is like my favorite chair. My mind tried conjuring this convoluted scenario where the empire created an artificed tavern, staffed it with moles, then paid a guy to pretend to be Rattlesnake and coax me here.

But I knew that my paranoid mind wasn’t talking with any kind of logic. If the empire knew I was Rattlesnake, then they knew where I’d been staying all this time, and they could have raided the hideout whenever they liked. They didn’t need to employ such complicated means. Hence, this wasn’t a setup.

At least, not on their side. I, however, had a few ideas now that I knew about the existence of the Empire’s Hand.

I re-joined the woman at her table, sliding onto the seat.

“What’s the empire looking for right now?” I said.

“Lots of things.”

I said nothing. Just waited.

She leaned forward and began stroking my knuckles. Then, she started to whisper something in my ear.

Just then, Rattlesnake and the elf Bard lady emerged from the back of the Tavern. She was hitching down her dress and Rattlesnake looked red-faced. He stood by our old table and glanced around, finally seeing me. He beckoned me over.

“One sec,” I told the woman.

When I joined Rattlesnake he said, “Good. So you found the Empire’s Hand, then.”

“She’s legit?”

“I’d worry about your judgment if you were talking to her without deciding that for yourself. Hold on a second.”

Rattlesnake stood up and pulled a small glass bottle from his pocket and threw it on the floor.

There was a snap, and smoke rose up and completely covered the area around us. By the time it cleared enough for me to see through it, Rattlesnake was gone.

The hell?

I had no idea why he’d just left like that. Maybe he had his reasons, maybe he was just a weird guy. Either way, he was gone now, and that was that.

Aside from some grumblings, none of the other patrons seemed bothered. I supposed that, given this was a rogue tavern, such exits were common.

From behind the bar, Tusker said, “Damn it! What did I say about those bloody smoke vials? I banned ‘em, didn’t I?”

Sighing, I walked back to the table where the Empire’s Hand was sitting. I reckoned I’d made enough of a show of deciding whether to trust her. If I’d played it right, she wasn’t going to doubt me for a second.

“Let’s talk,” I said.

Chapter 40

Swampy grey clouds bled a torrent of rain that gurgled into the sewer drains and filled them to the brim, bringing up washes of the filth that Pennywrote’s citizens liked to pretend wasn’t there. Like the sewers weren’t full of their piss and shit, because they didn’t produce such things. No, not folks like them. This was Pennywrote and they were its favored people, and they were perfect.

I was standing in an alleyway behind Bishop’s Way, home to a few tinker shops and pawn merchants that had gone out of business years ago. The alleyway was strewn with scrap metals, discarded nuts and bolts, broken hammers, and old signs that lay bent and rusted.

This was one of the many places in Pennywrote that I had scouted out earlier, part of a shortlist I created for quiet meeting spots. It was dark and lonesome, and nobody would have a reason to be out here. At least, not a good one.

Standing in various spots way outside the alleyway were the Scamps, peering into the darkness for any sign of an approach, ready to warn me if more than one person turned up. There had been no such warnings so far. With the venue safe and suitable, I just needed to work out how I was going to convince the Empire’s Hand that she wanted to buy stolen dynamite from me. The deal needed to look genuine. That was the key to it.

Accessing my mimic vault, I decided it was worth the effort and energy drain to mimic two things at once.

Costume mimicry activated: Priest’s Cassock

Black clerical clothing worn by the clergy.

Effects: ++ Inspire trust

Physique mimicry activated: Face of Paul ‘Skinner’ Black

Effects: ++ inspire fear

Fear and trust are an irresistible cocktail for most folks. You just can’t help but listen to someone who inspires both feelings in you. A parent with stern discipline but who you know is always looking out for you. A teacher whose intentions are noble and whose knowledge is freely given in the form of mentorship, but who is quick with the cane when you step out of line.

The cassock felt uncomfortable, pinching my armpits. Not to mention how ridiculous it probably looked on me, especially when I was wearing the unpleasant features of Paul Skinner Black. The rain came down harder, as though the sky was unhappy with my mimicry and wanted to wash it away. It wasn’t long before the cassock was weighted by rain, and Skinner Black’s long hair was plastered against my skull.

There was a sheet of rippled tin discarded in the alley, sitting next to a wall. I picked it up and put it on the lip of the wall, balanced it so that it formed a ledge, and then took shelter under it. Pellets of cloud water thudded on the tin like a racing heartbeat.

Soon, a figure emerged at the end of the alleyway. The Empire’s Hand approached. She wore an ink-blue pea coat with the buttons fasted to her chin. A thin layer of artificery made the rain bounce off her coat and trousers, though her hair was soaking wet. She didn’t seem to mind that her artificery didn’t reach her head.

Stopping a safe ten feet away, she looked me up and down. In her work, she was probably used to making split-second judgments about people. Her safety relied on it. After all, she wasn’t just a rogue, which was dangerous enough. She was a rogue who was employed by the empire. That made her situation twice as risky.

I didn’t bother trying to put her at ease. My mimicry should have been enough, and trying too hard would have the opposite effect. People have an inner sense for when someone is trying to manipulate them, and they pick up on little cues such as an insincere tone, and a smile that doesn’t reach the eyes.

“I didn’t know I’d be meeting a priest,” she said.

“The Gods move mysteriously.”

“And they use others to deliver their messages, apparently.”

“A man of my vocation can’t be seen in a place like the Subtle Hand.”

“So the man I met in there who told me to come here...he’s tied to your purse?”

I nodded. Studying the Hand’s face, I saw no trace of fear in it. Not a scrap of trust, either. It made me wonder if my mimicry didn’t have any effect on her or if she was just good at hiding it. Probably a little of both. All I saw were her cunning eyes. A stare that she used to scrutinize everyone she met. Distrust was planted deep in her, its roots long and thick. I would have a hell of a job putting her at ease so I could cross her later.

“They say priests want for nothing. The Church of the Many pays their way, doesn’t it?” she said. “I never heard of a priest having meetings like this.”

“Even a man of the gods can develop a taste for the finer things.”

“Why don’t we start with your name, then?”

“No names.”

“You expect me to do business without knowing a thing about you? With nobody to vouch for you?”

“Do you find that people often give you their names in your line of work?”

She sighed. “Introductions are usually made. Trust is built with small deals. The poison is taken in small doses so our stomachs become used to it. Your employee told me you have dynamite for sale. Do you really think I would broker such a deal without there being even a paragraph of history between us?”

“There are plenty of interested parties. Most of them won’t be so precious about learning biographies.”

With her right hand in her pocket, she leaned against the wall and she scrutinized me with those depthless eyes of hers. Finally, she shook her head.

“Gods bless you, Father. I hope your deities bring you good fortune with your stolen dynamite,” she said, and turned away from me and began walking back down the alleyway the way she had come.

I reckoned she was bluffing, so I waited it out.

When she reached her end of the alleyway, I doubted myself.

“Hey.”

She stopped.

I approached her, reaching into my left trouser pocket.

She spun around, a blade glinting from her right hand, the hilt half-tucked into her sleeve. “I would advise you to leave by another route, Father. I’ll go this way, you go the other.

I held up a stick of dynamite.

She hadn’t been expecting that. Maybe she thought I had a blade of my own. Or that I was going to accost her with religious symbols. But she wasn’t expecting dynamite.

It wasn’t real, of course. It was dynamite I had created using the mimic gel I had gotten from a mimic crystal in the Crow’s Nest and then diluted using ethanol, the way my Pa showed me. It looked real but if she tried to light it, it’d fizzle out. I fully intended to take the empire’s coin for the stolen dynamite, but they wouldn’t be getting even a single genuine stick from me for their trouble.

I passed the mimicked dynamite to her. Like its real counterparts, it was colored a diluted brown, and had black sticky tape on the ends, with a thin piece of fuze sticking out on one side. She turned it over in her hand.

“We have a crate full of these,” I said.

“The gods certainly provide, don’t they?”

“Our price is three hundred per stick.”

She scoffed. “We could have made more of it ourselves for that price.”

“You aren’t just paying for the dynamite. You’re paying for the fact it can be traced back to the empire if someone was so inclined. When lit by the wrong hands, it could make the empire look bad.”

She held the stick of dynamite in her palm as if expecting answers to come from it.

I quickly took it back from her and put it in my pocket.

“What’s a priest doing getting wrapped up in this?”

“No more questions,” I said.

“If you were employing a painter to decorate your home, wouldn’t you like to know a little about his past work?”

“A good attempt. I wonder how many times that has worked for you?”

“I’m not in the business of turning in those who I deal with. You’ve heard of Honest Dan, yeah? I don’t fancy having my ring finger pickled and sitting on a shelf in the Subtle Hand.”

“Neither did Dan, until the deal was big enough.”

“You’re distrustful, for a priest,” she said.

“We make a good pair, then. I need an answer.”

“You know,” she said, “When I first began to deal with your kind, I was intimidated. Or maybe that’s not the right word. When you’re picking up a snake by the tail, you have to be wary, is what I’m saying. Once you’ve picked it up it’s hard to put it down again without getting bitten. But there’s a knack to it. Once you learn that, the rest is confidence.”

“That’s not an answer,” I said.

“I’ll get word to you. Tell me where your church is, Father, and I’ll send word.”

“You’ll be at the Subtle Hand, that’s something we both know. Let’s make that our church. I’ll send someone when I’m ready.”

She flicked the collar of her pea coat and walked away from the darkness of the alley and toward the streets of Pennywrote, where mana lamps glowed.

As I watched the rain bounce off her I had a heavy feeling in my stomach. She was going to be harder to con than I thought, and this was going to take a lot of planning.

Chapter 41

The Scamps had scattered by the time the Hand and I finished swapping whispers. When her footsteps were replaced by the grumblings of the sky, I let my mimicries fade. Discomfort came and then passed, and soon my face was mine again. The relief I felt was no better or worse than sitting down at the end of a day and taking off a pair of tight boots.

I crossed Pennywrote like a moth, going from streetlamp to streetlamp and following their glows all the way to the Scamps’ usual haunt behind Deli Street. Most of the restaurants had closed for the evening but the owner of a café named Kella’s Firepit fought on, brewing coffee and serving chargrilled kebabs as the night grew into old age. The smell teased me about how I hadn’t eaten in maybe five or six hours. Ignoring it took effort, and I only knew I was successful when I slipped into yet another alleyway where the cobbles were slick with grime and the silence was a recent one, not thick enough to be natural.

I’d learned from the last time. I stood still and let the Scamps see me.

“It’s me. No stones this time.”

No rocks came my way. Not even a pebble.

The street kids emerged from behind walls and trashcans, forming the predatory circle of piranhas in a murky river. George, the oldest and tallest, wore a new coat with a fur-lined hood. It was a hand-me-down of a hand-me-down that he’d probably found on a rail in the forgotten corner of a haberdashery. At least it looked warm. He’d also made sure the younger kids had bought gloves and scarfs from the silvers I paid them. After my initial wariness of paying them fifty percent upfront, I was pleasantly surprised to see how they’d spent it. I was going to have to hand them all a bonus when this was over.

“Why were you meeting the Hand, mister?” said George.

These kids were too nosy by far. Then again, I hadn’t been trying to keep my meeting secret from them. Loads of rogues met with the Hand, and the Scamps had no love for an empire that was happy to let them fester on the streets. They hadn’t seen me use my mimicry though. I only did that in the alleyway where I was hidden from their watchful eyes.

“Never mind that. Did you follow those folks for me?” I said.

George nodded. “We ain’t shirkers.”

“Never said you were. C’mon, then. Cough it up.”

George folded his arms and looked at his fellow scamps with a commanding stare, causing the rest of the kids to fold their arms too. The sight of almost a dozen Scamps staring at me so sternly was off-putting.

“What’s all this?” I said.

“You ain’t paid us enough for this kind of job.”

“You reckon so?”

George gritted his teeth, folding his arms tighter and puffing out his chest. “We do reckon so.”

“We reckon so, mister!” added another boy.

“Somebody ought to teach you brats about a verbal contract,” I said. “We made a deal and you agreed to it.”

“That was ‘cuz we were desperate.”

“A person’s state of desperation doesn’t change a contract.”

“You think you’re so clever, mister, don’t ya? Well, we got the information, and you need it. So unless you’re doubling what you said, we ain’t giving it up,” said George.

I ran my hands through my hair, feeling the grease slicked in between my locks. These days, bathing was a luxury I didn’t have the time credit to purchase. I’d had to make do with a quick wash in the hideout. Worse than that, I was working on the last dregs of my energy and my stomach was calling out for one of the deli kebabs. If I could have spoken directly to the deities right then, I’d have calmly explained that right now, I wanted to be anywhere but in a stinking alleyway with a bunch of street rats trying to squeeze more gold out of me.

“How about this,” I said. “You little snails give me the information I bought from you fair and square, and I don’t tell the empiresmen where you meet after a day of picking pockets.”

The Scamps deferred judgment to George, who chewed his lip as he considered it. I reckoned he was going to back down.

“Nu uh. You wouldn’t go to the empiresmen,” he said.

“Not directly. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have ways.”

“If you tell on us,” said George, “we’ll tell on you.”

“For what?”

“For…”

“For getting’ us to follow people for ya!” said the red-haired girl. “We’ll tell ‘em that you’re getting kids to stalk folks.”

“And we’ll tell ‘em that you got your pecker out,” said another boy.

“You little shits.”

George held out his hand. “Two golds each. That’s all we want extra.”

By this point, I was set on not giving the little bastards anything. I had been planning to give them a bonus, but being extorted put me in an uncharitable mood.

I leaned closer to them and tried to look as menacing as possible. This was a situation where the face of Paul ‘Skinner’ Black would have been useful if I could have mimicked in front of them.

“How about this for a deal, then. I’m assuming you brats have heard of Rust Hook Harry?” I said.

“Course we have.”

“Okay then. Well, I know him. He’s my friend.”

“He ain’t!” said the girl.

“He is. I happen to know that he’s getting hungry again. He wants fresh meat. So either you give me the information like we agreed, or I tell him where to find you all.”

Some of the Scamps looked visibly petrified now. As tough as they were, they couldn’t help being susceptible to a good, old urban legend. Legends like that speak to a primal part of folks, a kind of gullible inner instinct that the kids hadn’t got old enough to lose yet.

Not that Harry himself was fake. He was most likely real but the part about him eating his victims was pure myth. Besides, according to the newspapers he seemed to prefer his kills to be much more adult-sized. The Scamps didn’t know this, however.

“Alright,” said George. “We’ll tell you.”

Part of me felt bad for playing on the inherent fears of a bunch of street kids. But they were the ones that had tried to renege on the deal.

“Come on, then,” I said. “Tell me what you learned.”

The kids started talking all at once in an indecipherable babble.

I held up my hand. “Hold on a second. George. You go first.”

The older boy, looking serious, nodded. “Alright. So, I went to the Tollbrook South and I…”

With a notebook in my hand, I scribbled down everything the kids told me. I only knew George’s name so far, so I had to ask their names so I could write down what they learned underneath. There was George, the eldest of them and their leader, big brother, maybe even father-figure all rolled into one. Magrita, the little girl with red hair who liked to spit. Then there was Joe, Lilly, Pickle, Bill, William, Billy – the Three Bills as they called themselves – Claire, Jenny, and Samroy.

Nine of them had been following the folks that Emma had asked me to investigate. Those were nine people in Pennywrote who had lost their right hands and might have been Rust Hook Harry. I hadn’t told the Scamps that these folks were ‘Harry’ suspects, however. I’d only told them to keep a safe distance and watch what they did at night.

“Alright,” I said, scribbling down everything they told me. “Pickle. You’re next.”

Pickle was a medium height boy with curly hair and pale skin. He wore a sweater with a Pennywrote School for Boys badge on it, which was a thousand-gold-per-term grammar school situated outside the city. Call me a pessimist, but I reckoned the jumper was stolen.

“It’s like this,” began Pickle. “I went to Bowler’s Green like you said, and I…”

One after another, they emptied their little heads and told me about the folks they’d followed. The details that they supplied were mundane. People had stayed at home all night. Others had gone to taverns or restaurants. One man had played host to a bridge club, and everyone left just after midnight. Normal, everyday stuff. No sign of any perverted serial killers.

It made me wonder about the whole thing. Emma had been convinced that Rust Hook was going to strike soon and that her profiling would help her catch him. Whether he had struck or not I didn’t know, because I hadn’t heard any news today. But the list of suspects she had given me hadn’t revealed much.

Still, at least I’d done my part. “Alright. Thanks, guys. Magrita, you got anything for me?”

She nodded. “You asked me to follow the zombie!”

“We don’t call ‘em that,” said George.

“I call ‘em whatever the shit I like!”

“George is right. Think they prefer being called undead,” I said.

“Whateva mister. I followed him for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Well. Listen to this,” she said, pleased to be getting attention. “I followed ‘im to his house. Posh fella ain’t he? Anyways, he went all the way to some horrible place near where they take ships.”

“Dockside East?” I said.

“Yep. He went all around those horrible old buildings giving food and stuff to folks.”

“You’re kidding me.”

She shook her head, deeply offended. “I ain’t. He had lots of baskets and he was knocking on doors and giving ‘em out for free. I almost nabbed one.”

“The undead guy was delivering care packages?” I said.

“What’s a care package?”

“Never mind. Good work. You know, you little shits might wanna head to Dockside East. There’s a lot of space over there, and there’s folk who’ll help you.”

“Fuck off mister,” said George. “We live wherever we want.”

I laughed, more out of surprise than anything. “Alright then. Don’t say I didn’t try.”

“Nobody asked you to.”

“What about our gold?” said Pickle.

“Gimme a minute.”

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking,” I said. “You might wanna try it sometime.”

“You’re so mean!” said Bill, Billy or William. I couldn’t remember which of the Three Bills was which.

Magrita spat. “Sometimes grown-up folks gotta be mean.”

“But he’s really, really mean.”

“Yeah, but he’s a little bit stupid, too. See, mean grown-ups get mean because they…”

Tuning them out, I thought about what they’d told me. I couldn’t believe it about Scaliber and his care packages. Cutthroat businessman? My ass. The guy actually cared for people in the slums. I guess it meant that Tilde had just rubbed him up the wrong way. Their tension wasn’t because he was a bad person but because Tilde could be really annoying when she tried.

There had to be a way to use this against him, but I couldn’t think of one right now. I couldn’t think much of anything except lamb kebabs and my warm bed.

I shook away the tiredness and focused on the Scamps. The last place to drop your guard is an alleyway full of tiny pickpockets. With most of the reports delivered, that left one boy who I’d sent to follow Emma.

“Anything to report on the lady?” I asked him.

“The pretty one?”

“Some might say she’s attractive. I say she’s an asshole. C’mon kid. Spit it out, I ain’t standing around here all day because I like the view.”

The boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

I turned a page my notebook and readied my pencil.

“She…uhm…asked me to give you this, sir.”

The boy held out a sheet of paper. Sighing, I took it and opened it up. Emma had written a note.

‘If you’re going to have someone followed, make sure they haven’t spent their working life undercover. And choose someone better than a child.’

I rubbed my temples. This woman would be the death of me. Unless I was the death of her first, of course. Yet another problem to add to the later pile, to be dealt with once I felt more like a human and less like a poorly-reanimated version of Scaliber.

I took eleven silver coins from my wallet. “A bonus for you all,” I said, making sure that everyone got one, even the one kid who I didn’t have any work for.

“You promised us stuff from the deli!” reminded Magrita.

“I don’t have time for that. Sorry, kids. Maybe next time.”

I was about to leave when Samroy, the only kid I hadn’t given a job to, spoke for the first time. “Don’t you want to know about the Hand?”

That stopped me. “What about her?”

“Maybe I know something you don’t know.”

“Maybe I throttle you until you tell me,” I said.

Magrita spat. “You ain’t gonna throttle none of us. I see through you, mister. The mean face you’re always wearing, it’s a mask.”

I froze. For a moment, I wondered if I was mimicking and had forgotten about it. But no, I was my normal self. “What makes you say that?”

“You act tough, but you ain’t.”

I sighed. “C’mon, Samroy. Just tell me what you know. There’s another silver in it for you.”

He shook his head. “Nope. We want deli food.”

I weighed up how tired I was versus how much I needed to get an advantage over the Hand, and I divided it by the likelihood that the Scamps were full of shit.

Finally, I said, “The deli it is. Come on, then.”

None of the Scamps moved.

“What’s wrong?”

“We can’t go with you, mister. We’re barred.”

“Why?” I said.

“Stealin’.”

“You tykes better give that up. It ain’t much of a life, trust me. Alright, then. Gimme your orders and I’ll go to the deli for you all.”

I flipped to a new page in my notebook and was ready to take their orders when a cacophony of eleven voices shouted at me all at once. I told them to go one at a time, and it took George backing me up for them to finally shut their mouths. Soon, I had their orders.

I left the alleyway and stepped onto Deli Street, where I headed for the lights of Kella’s Firepit. The closer I got the stronger the scent became, a tempting gust of chargrilled lamb, chopped coriander, and onions sizzling in oil.

The deli had four tables. Three of them were empty except for the detritus of devoured meals, with the fourth serving as a place for a drunk guy to rest his head on. The owner, a burly man wearing a blue and white apron and holding a knife, nodded toward him.

“Ignore him, please, and wait a second. I will take order.”

“No rush.”

“Thanks. You are lamplighter?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.”

“Do I have the look of a lamplighter?” I asked.

“No. Mainly lamplighters come at this hour. I am only deli in city who stays open for them.”

“That’s a nice thing to do.”

“No. Just good business sense.” He put down his knife, quickly washed his hands, and then came to the counter and took my order. After I asked for a third kebab, he raised his right eyebrow at me. After the eleventh, he put his pencil down.

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“This food is for little shits who hang around alleyway. You can’t kid me. I tell empiresmen, they do nothing. I chase kids away, they come back with eggs and smash them against my window. They make my life a misery. All I want is to run business.”

“The kebabs ain’t for the kids. They’re for me.”

“Eleven kebabs?”

“I’m a man with an appetite.”

“Appetite for lies. Belly is full with untruths. Get out of here.”

“You don’t want the gold?” I said.

“I will not cook food for little shits.”

I was about to leave and write off Samroy’s information about the Hand as a lost cause, when something occurred to me.

“What if I could get rid of the kids?” I said.

The deli man looked left and right. The drunk guy resting his head on the table hadn’t moved. He was breathing, but he hadn’t stirred. The man leaned closer over the counter.

He spoke in a hush. “You kill them?”

I laughed. “Hells, no.”

He breathed out in relief. “Good. I do not want that. Just to get them away.”

“So how’s about this. Take my coin. Cook me some of those delicious-smelling kebabs, and I’ll get the kids out of the alleyway. Not tonight. It might take some time. But if you’re patient, I’ll sort this out for you.”

He thought about it while absentmindedly drumming his meaty fingers on the counter, disturbing the grease stains.

“Okay. I cook,” he said.

Twenty-six minutes later I headed back into the alleyway behind Deli Street. Kella, the firepit owner, had given me a wooden pallet that his last tomato shipment was carried in, and inside it, he’d piled the paper-wrapped kebab parcels. He’d used a pencil to write on the paper what each kebab was. Seeing me, the kids swarmed like starving hogs who were more than happy to devour a man whole. I reckoned I better get the kebabs shared out quickly if I wanted to leave here alive.

“Pickle this one’s for you,” I said, passing him a parcel. “Magrita, here’s yours. Bill…”

It wasn’t long before the kids were all munching away. I tried asking Samroy what he knew, but the stubborn little bastard refused to divulge until his stomach was satisfied. When he’d made the kebab disappear, burped, and then settled against a wall with his legs splayed out and belly extended, he started talking.

“It’s like this,” he said. “About the Hand lady...”

“What about her?”

“I know where she lives. I watched her go there. I can tell you the street.”

Chapter 42

The Hand lived in a house on Pinwhet Fold, a cedar building in the suburbs of Pennywrote. It was a stone’s throw away from the Pennywrote School for Girls, enclosed in a neighborhood of tidy lawns with not a single outhouse in sight. Indoor plumbing wasn’t so unusual in a city like this, but it was certainly rare for four or five streets’ worth of houses to all have it.

Wearing Ralf Gunnarsson beard and a fur trappers’ coat that I’d taken from the hideout prop store, I made a circuit around Pinwhet Fold and the adjoining Fosbeck Hill, slowing almost imperceptibly when I went past the Hand’s home. Nobody was in by the looks of things. The Hand hadn’t come straight back here, at any rate. I guess that she’d be at the Subtle Hand right now.

In her front garden was an unusual plant. A kind of thorn bush, but with blue brambles and with dark purple petals flowering from some of the thorns. I took a few of the petals, and then I left the neighborhood and headed to inner-Pennywrote.

The city was aglow with streetlamps burning orange, and Market Plaza was busy. A juggler was wowing crowds by juggling knives, drawing a circle of people around him with coins in their hands and a look in their eyes that said a part of them, deep down, wanted him to slip. From across the plaza came the smell of dough frying in oil, almost temping me to seek out the vendor. Needing to get home, I stayed resolute.

Halfway across the plaza, a peculiar sensation took hold in me. A cold snap in my gut, painful and sudden.

There’s a mimic nearby.

The words repeated in my brain, spoken by another part of my mind. The ancestral part given to me by my Pa’s line of blood. I got the feeling of my hair standing up, but not on the outside. An inner form of that sinister feeling.

Turning around, I tried to see who might be mimicking near me. There were too many people here. Families enjoying the nightlife of the plaza. Couples walking hand in hand, dressed for dinner and drinks. I searched all their faces, looking for something. I didn’t know what. Just a betrayal of some kind that one of these people wasn’t what they seemed.

I got nothing. Bumping into a woman who was walking with an older gentlemen, I was knocked out of my trance.

“Watch where you’re going!” she told me.

“Sorry. I didn’t expect to see a gargoyle show here tonight. Your costume is great,” I said.

She gripped her partner’s arm. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

He looked at me. He was at least twenty years older than her, and his wizened eyes searched mine.

“No,” he told her, and marched her away. They quickly crossed the plaza and were soon gone.

The feeling inside me was stronger than ever. Somebody nearby was mimicking. No doubt about it. One of the plaza frequenters was wearing skin that didn’t belong to them.

I took a seat on a bench on the outskirts of the plaza and I watched the crowd, taking in face after face.

That was when I saw him. A tall man wearing a pinstripe suit, his hair oiled back over his scalp. He was across the plaza, milling near an ale vendor’s stall, the vendor’s lamps glowing on his bone-white face. From opposite sides of the plaza our eyes locked, and in that instant, I knew what he was. Worse, I knew he’d seen me for what I was, too. His own instincts had told him. Perhaps his instincts were stronger than mine, because I was only half a mimic.

I knew I couldn’t let him leave without finding out who he was, but when I stood up, he was already gone. I searched the plaza, bullying my way through drunken crowds but there was no sign of the man in the pinstripe suit. Nor could I see which direction he’d gone – two dozen streets led away from Market Plaza, and he could have taken any of them.

I rubbed my face, feeling my tired skin. My stomach was tighter than a walnut, long past urging me to eat. This only added to the grim feeling inside me, one that told me this was dangerous. A fellow mimic was operating in Pennywrote and worse, they knew that I was a mimic, too.

I thought about what to do all the way home. I didn’t have many options to track them down. There were potions that could be used to find a mimic, but you needed a sample of their blood. It was also said that some rare mages had spells that could dispel a mimic, but that obviously wasn’t an option. Not only did I lack the skills of a mage, but I could hardly buy such a service and then be present when it was cast. I couldn’t even tell Tilde or Mags about this, since they’d ask how I knew so much about mimics.

My only option, as I saw it, was to be careful about using mimicry, and to stay alert whenever I ventured into Pennywrote. That was it. Besides, just because a mimic was operating in Pennywrote, it didn’t mean it was a problem for me. Sure, Pa had always told me to be wary of other mimics in case they worked for the empire, but that didn’t mean this one was.

Dockside East was quiet and dark at that time of night, leaving nobody awake to mark my arrival. When I entered the hideout I was relieved to be home, back to a place where I could have something to eat and then burrow into the comfort of my bed. Heading to the kitchen, I found Tilde, Yulf, and Magpie sitting around the dining room table.

Magpie was drinking ginger beer from a brown bottle, while Tilde and Yulf had cups of tea in front of them. Yulf liked to leave the tea bag in to absorb flavor, whereas Tilde was a one-stir-and-then-done kind of person.

None of them looked up when I entered. Instead, they peered intently at the playing cards laid out on the table.

“Evening,” I said.

Tilde made a dismissive waving motion with her hand. The atmosphere was tense, all three of them looking ready to snap.

“Your move, Mags,” said Tilde.

“I know.”

“So do it then.”

Magpie laid down the seven of clubs.

Yulf leaned forward, poised for action.

Tilde slammed down a card of her own, declaring, “Snap!”

Yulf let out a laugh, then tossed his cards down. Suddenly, Magpie swept the cards off the table, sending them raining down onto the floor. A blackjack landed at my feet. I picked it up and tossed it back to him, sending it scissoring horizontally across the room where it hit his forehead.

“Somebody’s a poor loser,” I said.

Tilde smiled. “That’s Mags for you. Could never take a whipping.”

Magpie rolled his eyes. “It was hardly a whipping.”

Tilde looked at me. “Where’ve you been and why are you grinning like a cat who just found a trashcan full of fishbones?”

I’d had a whole speech rehearsed in my head. I had practised it all the way home. But now that I was in the moment, I was too excited to say it all. Instead, I just told them about my chat with Yaura Swanner, the empire’s Hand.

When I was done, Tilde didn’t seem surprised. I’d been hoping for a different kind of reaction. Nothing special. Just a little showing of awe at my resourcefulness in securing a deal for the dynamite, as well as my plan for double-dipping so that we could keep the goods and take gold from the empire at the same time.

But neither Tilde nor Mags showed even a hint of surprise. Not even a smidgen of awe crossed their faces. Yulf, of course, said nothing.

“You guys have dealt with the Hand before?” I said.

Tilde nodded. “Bjorn set up a few deals with a Hand in Westfell, and they went smoothly.”

“There’s more than one?”

“The empire has its Hands everywhere. It uses them to jerk off its big empire cock.”

“Lovely. And you aren’t worried about any of this?” I said.

“Nope. I heard what happened to the last Hand in Pennywrote. Trustworthy Sam, or something. We got nothing to fear.”

“Honest Dan,” I said.

“Right. He was the empire’s Hand, and he decided to make a name for himself by shopping someone in. I heard that street dogs were still filling their bellies on his remains for a full week afterward.”

Mags rubbed his temples. “Let me get this straight. We stole dynamite from the empire and now we’re selling it back to them?”

“Not quite. We’re pretending to. We aren’t actually gonna give them the sticks.”

“Sticks?” said Tilde.

“Dynamite. Folks call ‘em sticks.”

“No, they don’t. Don’t know where you picked up that lingo.”

“It’s common parlance, Tilde. I thought you were a rogue. Don’t tell me you don’t even know what they call dynamite out there on the streets.”

“Whatever. I’m more concerned about the sanity of someone who intends to cross the empire like this.”

“You spend your life stealing from folks,” I said. “You broke me out of the Crow’s Nest and killed a guard.”

“That was something, sure. But this is a big deal. A lot of gold is at stake. How do you think the empire’s gonna react when not only do they know we took their gold, but there’s also a crate of dynamite on the streets?”

“I couldn’t give four fat fucks how they react. They ain’t gonna know who did it.”

“I don’t know about this, sir,” said Mags.

“Listen. You guys don’t know what the empire uses their dynamite for.”

“Secret quarries and stuff like that,” said Mags.

“Alright, fine. You do know that. But the stone they get from those quarries… do you know what kinds of installations they build with it?”

Tilde shrugged. Mags said, “Prisons?”

I thought again of the story that Thorpe Hardy had told me years ago. I pictured the place in the icy north where my Pa had been held until he died. My resolution burned hotter.

“Places that I ain’t gonna contribute to building,” I said. “So we’ll take their gold, and we’ll keep the sticks. We won’t get caught. That’s that, alright?”

Mags looked at Tilde, who said nothing. Yulf held the six of diamonds between his index finger and thumb, rotating it using his other hand as he sank deeper into thought.

I went to brew myself a coffee, talking over my shoulder from the kitchen.

“That’s the size of it, anyhow. We’re selling the eggs back to the chicken. With a lucrative markup. Only, when the chicken gets their eggs, they’re gonna find out that they’re not eggs after all. Just hollow shells. And the real eggs will be back here with us, in our nest, where we’ll find another hen to-”

“Alright, alright. Enough with the chickens,” said Tilde.

“What if the Hand is planning on betraying you?” said Mags.

“We already know what happened to good, old Honest Dan. If that isn’t enough of a threat, then there are other things we can control. That’s the beauty of this. We didn’t agree a meeting place yet. I said I’d get a message to her with a meeting place that we choose, and she’ll only get a fifteen-minute window to collect the dynamite.”

“Well,” said Tilde, “I guess these calls for a celebration. What do you say we go out for food again? Somewhere nice?”

“Great. But first, I have an idea, and I need you all to vote on it.”

“An idea for what?”

“It’s about Scaliber.”

“If you have a plan to deal with the grave lover, I’m all ears.”

I had something to eat and then I slept through to the morning. Mid-morning, in fact, which was late for me. I’d always been an up-before-the-birds kind of guy. My bedroom window was open, and from alleyways outside came the sound of someone hammering something. I waited for it to stop, and when it didn’t, I decided that I better get up and start my day.

After washing, dressing, and drinking two cups of coffee, I headed to Mags’ workshop on the third floor of the hideout. His door was shut, so I knocked on it.

There was no answer. From within came the sound of Mags singing badly and the whine of something mechanical. I knocked again.

“Mags!”

The singing stopped. With three clicks, the locks on his door opened, and Mags was standing in the doorway. Behind him, I could see his workbench with various tools and pieces of scrap on it.

Mags wiped his hands on his overalls, and then he pushed his goggles away from his eyes so they rested on his head.

“Sir?”

“I thought I’d spend a little time in the workshop again, if that’s alright.”

“Sure.”

By now, Mags was used to me joining him in his workshop. I normally brought coffees, and I’d sit in the corner of the room and watch him work, asking questions here and there. I told him that I had an interest in tinkering and wanted to learn from him. Of course, he didn’t know that my method of learning involved mimicry, and that I was picking up his skill much faster than he would ever suspect.

Mags headed back to his bench, where he grabbed a screwdriver and quickly lost himself in what he was doing.

“What’s that you’re working on?” I said.

“Spring trap.”

“You’re fixing it up?”

“I made this one from scratch,” he said. “Only, I can’t get the weight right.”

“Okay. Well, don’t mind me.”

One hour passed. Then two. In my time in dockside east, I must have racked up maybe fifty hours watching Mags work. After the first ten hours, I had felt my mimic instincts flaring, telling me I’d already logged enough hours to earn a dirty mimic of Mags’ trap making skill. Twenty-five hours after that, I had enough for a mediocre mimic acquisition.

As I watched Mags tinkering with the spring trap, I sank into a meditative state of absorptive mimicry, seeing Mags not as a person, but as an implement performing a series of complex actions that became predictable to me the longer I stared. His technique and his knowledge transferred from him like it was pollen and I was the bee. I felt it form in my brain, sticking to the strong mimic synapses that allowed even the scantest of information to take hold.

Finally, I felt a stirring in my inner mimicry, starting in my mimic vault.

It was ready.

After all these hours of watching, I had finally studied Mags’ trapmaking skill for long enough to earn a clean mimicry of it.

Earning a clean mimicry was always a satisfying moment, like soaking my aching feet in a warm bath. I accepted the skill, feeling it take its place in my mimic vault alongside everything else I had learned.

Skill aspect gained: The trapmaking of Bobby ‘Magpie’ Brooks

++++ Trap Making

++ Tinkering

+ Analytic mind

Chapter 43

The next day, I met Scaliber in a posh tearoom on West Ave called Scones and Crumpets. It was a quiet café that suffered from being situated in the shadow of a giant birch tree that the owners couldn’t secure permission to remove. Due to the shade, some folks felt the café was too gloomy in winter and too cool in summer, and the café lost lots of potential trade.

Today, there was a huge guy wearing barbarian leathers who was taking his elderly mother for afternoon tea for her birthday, and a fella wearing a decorator’s apron who was sipping coffee while reading a book. None of them paid me any attention when I entered.

I was wearing my pinstripe suit, and I had been to the barbers for a fresh haircut and a shave. As much as the idea of making myself look presentable to meet with an undead landlord was ridiculous, Scaliber was a businessman. If he was to be receptive to this, then he’d expect things to be done a certain way.

As this was to be a negotiation, I knew he would try playing games with me. Sure enough, he did so by arriving twenty minutes later than the time we had agreed. When he shambled into the tearoom, I gestured to the chair opposite me.

“Morning, Mr. Scaliber. Help yourself to some tea and a scone.”

He looked down at the food, grimacing. I didn’t know everything about resurrected folks, but I knew one thing – they rarely ate. Once or twice a year was sufficient, and even then it had to be something bloody, like rare steak.

“You ordered for me?” he said in his raspy voice.

I feigned ignorance of my subtle attempt to make him uncomfortable. “Thought it’d save time. Let’s get down to it.”

“Just you and me?”

“As much as Tilde loves seeing you, I thought it was better that just the two of us met.”

Scaliber settled into his seat, pushing the scone away from him and then doing the same with his cup of tea.

“Do you mind if I help myself?” I said, gesturing to the plate. “If you aren’t going to eat it…”

“If you must.”

I spread a dollop of butter and a blob of jam on the scone, and then I stuffed the whole thing into my mouth in one bite. As I chewed it, Scaliber looked at me like I was a Scamp who’d just scuttled in off the street.

“What is it you want?” he said.

I swallowed the scone, chasing it down my throat with a swig of lukewarm tea. “The shop. We want to buy it from you.”

“That dump? What in all hells would you want with the place?”

I leaned closer to him, forcing myself to ignore his earthy smell. “Glad you brought up the hells. They say there’s seven of ‘em. Did you see any the first time you…uh…departed from this place?”

He looked unsettled. “If you just brought me here to insult me…”

“Okay, okay. Settle down. Listen. I know that you’ve been offered five thousand for the shop. That means you want to sell it. What I came here to say, is that we’ll grease your palms a little more than that.”

Scaliber gave me a sly look. “The offer I received was nine thousand.”

“Was it really?”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t be lying to me now, would you, Mr. Scaliber?”

“I don’t know what you’re insin-”

“I know they say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but you’re a bare-assed gods-damned liar.”

I took a sheet of paper from my pocket, unfolded it, and turned it around so it faced him.

Scaliber stopped talking.

I slid the paper across the table.

“Go ahead. Take a look.”

When he read the paper, his shoulders slumped just a little. “You’ve been to the city record office. Well done, very clever. Tell me, professor, which university do you teach at?”

“No need to be like that,” I said. “The problem with doing things legit is there’s a record. Let’s cut the crap, shall we? We’ll give you eight thousand by the end of the week if you sign the deeds over to us.”

“Fine. So you’ll offer more for the shop. So what? Did it occur to you that I may accept the lower offer just to spite you and your friends?” he said.

Just then, a waiter walked past us. He scratched his neck, opening a small scab that hadn’t healed properly. When Scaliber saw this, a trail of drool left his mouth.

He took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his lips. In the interests of keeping this negotiation civil, I pretended not to notice.

“I don’t doubt your spite, Mr. Scaliber, but you wouldn’t accept a lower offer. You’re a businessman first, bastard second. I’m offering you eight thousand gold for a rundown property that would actually be improved by a good demolition.”

“Why do you want it?”

“I told you. That doesn’t matter.”

Scaliber leaned forward. I caught the faint scent of rot from him again, though he’d tried to disguise this by wearing new cologne.

“Either tell me why you’re so desperate to own that hovel or we don’t have anything else to discuss.”

“The shop has sentimental value.”

“To the cockroaches under its floorboards, perhaps.”

I felt myself getting annoyed. “Do you want the gold or don’t you?”

He took a bottle from his suit pocket and unscrewed the cap and pointed it at his neck. When he pressed it, a strong and spicy scent sprayed out.

“You’re holding something back from me,” he said.

“Look. Offers are being made on every property in the slum. I know that you own a fair portfolio in the docks already, and I reckon you’re heading the consortium that’s buying them up.”

“Now, listen-”

“Lemme finish. If they’re all sold, I have reason to believe the slums are marked for demolition. Everybody living there will be displaced.”

He shrugged. “Why would I care? Vermin always finds a way to survive.”

“You don’t believe those folks are vermin,” I said. “Unless you make a habit of delivering care baskets to rats.”

He glared at me, his pure-white eyes narrowing. “You’ve been following me?”

“I know that you aren’t as heartless as you make out. Or maybe you are heartless – I don’t know how resurrection works. Do they take your organs?”

“Ignorance. Pure ignorance.”

“Alright. I apologize for that remark. But let’s not lie to each other, Mr. Scaliber. I know that you care more about those folks than you pretend.”

He said nothing for a moment. The waiter with the neck scab crossed the café, and Scaliber made a point to stare at the table, then the floor. Anywhere but at the waiter.

Finally, he said, “You’re only half right, you know. I own fifteen properties in the warehouse district. I have received offers on them all. What I didn’t know until recently was that the other landlords in Dockside East have also received offers. Now, I have spent the last twenty years collecting rent on my properties. Twenty years of doing monthly rounds through the slums and seeing the people who live there, and talking to them. I could be charging much more in rent, you know. Even taking into account the shoddy area. Property in Pennywrote is always sought after. But I don’t.”

“We’re finally being honest with each other.”

Scaliber nodded. “Despite what the woman might tell you, I am not a monster. I am undead, but that doesn’t make me a bad person.”

“Then you wouldn’t want to see the place demolished?” I said.

“Of course not. If my knowledge of property law isn’t rusty, it would take the sale of every property in order for the demolition of the whole dockside to be approved, correct?

I nodded.

“Then the answer is simple. I will keep the buildings I own, and things will go on as they were. The other owners can sell their buildings, but it won’t matter.”

“What about the application for planning permission to build on the shop site? Why did you file it?”

He shrugged. “The cost was minimal, and the permission stands for ten years. If I was to fall on hard times, it would be nice to have a saleable asset as a backup. One thing about dying is that it makes you appreciate your second life. I find that I have become more risk-averse as I get older.”

“Do you?” I said.

“Do I what?”

“Get older? Like I said, I don’t know much about resurrection. Maybe it’s time I learned.”

He gave me a patient smile. “Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to educate yourself about it, Mr…”

“Call me John.”

“John. Well. As I said. I have no plans to sell unless I absolutely have to.”

The slums were safe for now, so this was a win, of sorts. Even so, it wasn’t what I’d come here for.

“My offer of seven thousand for the shop still stands,” I said.

“It was eight thousand a few minutes ago.”

“So it was. Is eight thousand going to swing this?”

“Then your sentimentality hokum is true then, is it?” said Scaliber. “The shop means something to you?”

I nodded.

Scaliber reached out with his hand. “Then we have a deal.”

I was surprised to hear him agree, but I wasn’t going to give him time to back out of it. For the first time in my life, I shook hands with an undead guy.

Chapter 44

Property acquired: Smith & Son Upholstery

Business status: Abandoned

Property status: Shabby

Later that day, I headed to the city outskirts to deal with the Hand. George, the eldest of the Scamps, was a ‘known face’ at the Subtle Hand tavern, since many rogues paid him coppers to collect or deliver goods that needed fencing. He delivered a message to Yaura Swanner, the empire’s Hand. The note simply said, ‘Four Acres Park. 15 minutes.’

At Four Acres park, I crouched beside a rosebush and watched the clearing just ahead of me. The name ‘Four Acres’ made the place sound a hell of a lot nicer than it was. It was overgrown with weeds, primarily being used as a dumping ground by scrappers who wanted to get rid of the broken and rusted metals that they couldn’t sell. As such, only Pennywrote’s low lives ever went there. I guessed that said a lot about me.

From a safe distance, I waited for Yaura. When she finally arrived, she was alone. My vantage point covered the whole park, and I couldn’t see any sign of guards with her. I carefully and quietly left my position, exited the park via the south gate, and then made a circuit of its outskirts. There was no sign of any guardsmen at all. In other words, Yaura was legit. She had really come here to make a deal.

Heading back to the bush, I watched her stroll through the park while growing visibly annoyed, until she finally saw the note that I’d pinned to a moss-covered bench.

This note announced another meeting point – a vacant scrapyard behind Smithson Street. After reading the note, she screwed it up and put it in her pocket. The look on her face told me that she could have happily sunk a dagger into my guts right there and then. Grinning, I left my hiding place and quietly exited the park.

I met her at the scrapyard. I was wearing my mimicked priest disguise, and tucked into my inner pocket was my dirk dagger. Across from me, strolling into the yard, was Yaura.

Seeing me, she said, “I don’t like being fucked around.”

“As a man of the Gods, I don’t do much fucking.”

“You aren’t a priest, you lying sack of shit. As long as you’ve got the sticks, I don’t much care.”

“Twenty thousand,” I said.

She took a leather pouch from her inside pocket. It looked tiny.

“Coins?”

She nodded. “Bag’s artificed.”

I made a give it here gesture with my right hand. She didn’t move.

“I believe you have something for me?” she said.

I jerked my head. Nearby, covered by a dirty old sheet, was the chest that Yulf and I had carried here in the early hours of the morning. Yaura glanced at it.

This was the tensest part of it all. If there was any point where she might try something, it was now, when I’d shown her where the dynamite was.

She had a strange expression on her face. Like she was considering it, too.

But instead, she handed me the bag. I took it. As an artificed bag, it weighed way less than it should for something containing twenty thousand gold coins.

I unwound the string tying it together. I moved my head away in case she’d put any nasty surprises inside, and then opened it.

Nothing happened.

I tipped the bag down enough for a single coin to fall out. Picking it up, I squinted at the coin. I kneeled and tapped it on the ground. It was genuine.

She scoffed. “Such pantomime.”

“There’s no honor like honor among thieves.”

“Piss on honor. A deal’s a deal. No need for honor if you act sensible. Come on, then. Hurry it up.”

I put my hand inside the bag and moved my fingers, feeling the weight of more gold coins than I’d ever possessed in my life. The metal felt warm against my skin, and the bag’s depths seemed endless.

Something occurred to me then. I’d messed with the dynamite. Using the skill I’d mimicked from Mags, I’d given it the appearance of it all working despite most of it being fake sticks that I’d whipped up in the hideout. What if she’d done the same with the coins?

I tipped more of the coins onto the ground. A thousand or so, which seemed like a decent sample size.

“Really?” she said.

I nodded. “Really.”

“Thought you were a man of faith?” she said sarcastically.

“Even the gods deceive,” I said.

I tested them randomly. Not a single gold coin failed my inspection, so I put them all back in the bag. Looking around, there was still no sign of anyone else at the scrapyard.

“I suppose we’re done,” I said. “Enjoy the dynamite. Don’t blow it all up at once.”

“A pleasure doing business with you,” she said.

“Pleasure’s all yours.”

“Oh, please. Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy meeting me again. In fact, I rather think that some of you roguish types steal things that the empire wants, just so you can see my beautiful face.”

Having had my fill of undercover women working for the empire, I couldn’t even bring myself to flirt. I just walked away from her.

She called out from behind me, “One second.”

When I turned around, I found myself looking at a crossbow that Yaura was holding in her hands. A bolt was loaded, and she was pointing it at me.

“I’m afraid that I’m something of a sinner, Father,” she said.

I sighed and shook my head. “There’s always time to repent.”

“Cut the religious shit and throw the coin bag over here. What are you waiting for? Come on, before I turn my aim somewhere further south of your heart. I’m assuming they don’t castrate men of the cloth?”

“What’s all this about?”

“You stay at a card table, winning pot after pot,” she said, “and there comes a moment where you’ve gotta cash in or risk losing it all on the next deal.”

“You’re talking like someone who’s forgotten what happened to Honest Dan.”

She scoffed. “All folks are gonna find here is a dead pretend priest with a bolt in his dick. Meanwhile, I’ll have the gold the empire gave me for this trade, and I’ll sell the sticks. With that amount of money, no amount of Honest Dan stories are gonna make me worry.”

“Ah. Very sensible. So you want not just the rogue population of Pennywrote hunting you down, but the empire, as well?”

“The empire’s an inefficient beast when it comes down to it. Take it from me.”

“Seems like a big risk,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I’ve had it with this shit. There are no old folks’ home filled with retired Hands.”

“You’ll be hunted of the rest of your short life,” I said.

“You really think I don’t know how to disappear? Shut up and give me the bag. Nice and slow. Throw it to me.”

I reached into my pocket.

Yaura tensed the crossbow stock against her chest. “Watch it.”

“I have to get the bag outta my pocket,” I said.

“Okay. Nice and slow.”

I put my hand into my pocket and then pulled it out again, only I wasn’t holding a bag.

Opening my hand, I let a dozen purple petals fall softly to the ground.

“What the fuck?” said Yaura.

“Recognize them?”

Her finger tightened on the crossbow trigger.

“It’s a rare plant,” I said. “It can’t grow in Pennywrote. It ain’t hot enough here. So I figure that whoever’s growing it must buy artificed soil. That’s some real dedication to horticulture. It’s impressive.”

“You little fucking rat.”

“Maybe I am, but rats don’t live alone,” I said. “A group of rats is called a mischief, you know.”

Yaura chewed her lip. She lowered the crossbow a little, then raised it again. “Say I put a bolt through your throat.”

“Means one dead rat. It also means the other rats will pay a visit to the house where this plant grows. We can get you anywhere, Yaura. No matter how far you run, no matter how many folks get a bolt in the neck. You can run to the edge of the empire, and we’ll find you.”

Yaura lowered the crossbow.

Chapter 45

Dockside East Outfit

Members: 4

Cash reserves: 19,000 GD (+15,300)

Headquarters: Smith and Sons Upholstery unit, dockside east.

Headquarters rating: 1/5

Assets: None

Other properties: None

Rogue group reputation: Small fry

After securing the purchase of the upholstery shop, paying off my child informants, and then delivering a shipment of dynamite to an undercover empire employee and betraying her, it didn’t really give me much time for anything else. If I was to describe my mental and physical state in one statement, it would be ‘as tired as a sex maniac sailor who just spent his shore leave in a whorehouse’.

One thing I did do before going home, was to visit a shop called ‘Jenkins Sign Makers and Calligraphy’. I had gone to the shop early that morning before meeting Scaliber, and I placed an order. Mr. Jenkins had asked me to come back later, and here I was.

A bell tinkled as I entered. Soon, the door behind the counter opened. An old man with a crooked back and long grey hair sprouting from his ears walked out.  His fingers were thin, his palms heavily calloused. In the breast pocket of his working apron he had an array of screwdrivers.

“Ah, Mr... Halibut?” he said.

That was the name I’d given him. That morning, I’d walked past the docks on the way into Pennywrote, and there was a guy selling halibut. I’m not always an imaginative guy.

“Just here to pick up my order,” I said.

“The work I had to do to get this done! A rush order indeed. If I didn’t need the money...”

“I really appreciate it.”

“Well. Here you go.”

I looked at the finished product, marveling at Mr. Jenkins’ workmanship. “This is great! Exactly what I wanted.”

“A bit of warning, please, the next time you need such an urgent job. One of my apprentices got a girl up the spout and the bugger had to marry her. His new father-in-law has given him a job in the company business, leaving me one apprentice short.”

This gave me an idea. “This apprentice of yours. What sort of things would they be expected to learn?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“Pretend it isn’t. It might seem hard, but act like I’m an idiot.”

Mr. Jenkins reeled off all the things his apprentice would be expected to do and learn, one of which was calligraphy.

“Do you have someone in mind?” he asked.

“Maybe. I’ll send ‘em your way if I do. Thanks again for getting this done.”

“A pleasure.”

I paid Mr. Jenkins and then, finally, I made the journey out of the city and back toward the slum, the ramshackle collection of broken-down buildings that dwelled beneath the silhouettes of the giant ships moored in the nearby docks. As I got there, I saw candles flickering from streetlamps and I heard loot music and singing drifting from various windows. In a strange way, I felt like I was coming home.

I didn’t tell Tilde and Mags and Yulf about my meeting with Scaliber. Not that night, anyway. Instead, I explained about the dynamite and how at least that was one problem taken care of. We had the empire’s money, and we still had a whole chest of dynamite to sell. We were going to have to do it far away from Pennywrote, since Yaura would tell her empire superiors that she’d been betrayed. I guessed she would miss out the part where she was going to double-cross both me and the empire.

When we finished talking, I drank two fingers of whiskey and I ate a bowl of beef and onion stew and a hunk of wheat bread that Mags had saved for me. Feeling satisfied, I went up to my room and sat by the windowsill looking out on the slums for ten minutes or so, and then I lay on my bed. I fell asleep fully clothed.

The next day, I was up before anyone else. Call me childish, but I was full of excitement. After washing and dressing, I borrowed a ladder from Mr. Shane who lived in an old shoe shop a few buildings down from ours. He told me I better bring it back before the weekend because he wanted to get up onto his roof and repoint his chimney. I offered to ask Yulf if he’d do it, but Mr. Shane said that doing chores kept him feeling young. He was seventy years old yet looked only fifty, so I wasn’t going to argue with him.

I scavenged a hammer and nails from the old upholstery workshop in the back of the shop. Standing on a ladder under the orange glow of the rising sun, I spent the next hour hammering nail after nail. When I was done, I opened the hideout door and shouted into the hallway.

“Magpie? Tilde? Yulf? Get your asses out here!”

Tilde was first out. Yulf followed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What’s this all about?” asked Tilde.

“You’ll see in a minute. Where’s Mags?”

Tilde shrugged.

“Yulf?” I said. “How about you? Have you seen Magpie?”

The big man shook his head.

I felt a little deflated because everything I had done this morning, the whole surprise, was mainly for Mags’ benefit. Without him here, it was a little underwhelming.

Just then, we heard panting and footsteps. A figure ran toward us from the end of the street. Magpie, red-faced and coated in sweat, stopped in front of us and bent over while catching his breath. Sweat dripped from his forehead and onto his running pumps.

Straightening up, he said, “What’re you guys doing out here?”

I put my arm around his shoulder and turned him around so that he was facing the shop.

Mags’ eyes lit like lamp oil to a flame. A smile spread across his reddened face. I’d never seen somebody so happy as he stared at the sign I had hammered onto the shop front.

He read the sign aloud.

“Smith & Friends Upholstery,” he read.

“Hope you don’t mind me taking a liberty with the name. I can get Mr. Jenkins to make one that says ‘and sons’ if you prefer. I just reckoned you might like this.”

Tilde grinned and Yulf marveled at the sign and slapped Magpie on the back. “Ain’t that something?” she said.

“Won’t Scaliber just take it down?” said Magpie.

“That’d be weird. Considerin’ I bought the place from him yesterday,” I said.

“You…what?”

“I figured that if we open this place as a real upholstery shop, it’d be a good front for everything else. You know. A legitimate explanation for all the money we make.”

“I can’t believe you did this for me, sir,” said Magpie. “Thank you.”

“We all helped earn the money to pay for this. Besides. Like I said. This will serve as a good front for us. Everything’s falling into place, way I see it. That just leaves on thing I need to deal with.”

“Emma?” said Tilde.

I nodded. “It’s time we did something about her. It would have been useful to have her around. You know, if she didn’t know that we knew she was working for the empire. We could have fed false information to her. But that’s a washout. As soon as she catches Rust Hook Harry or realizes that it’ll never happen, she’ll use what she knows about us to further her career.”

“When you say 'do' something about her...” said Mags.

“Do something. Permanently,” said Tilde.

Magpie looked scared about this.

Yulf folded his arms and shook his head. “No kill,” he said.

“Yulf,” said Tilde, “I don’t understand why you don’t-”

“No kill girl.”

I wasn’t about to cross a guy who could rip my head from my shoulders, but I was surprised at his pacifism. Then again, the longer I’d spent with Yulf, the more I realized that he couldn’t have done what he was accused of. His size belied a gentle, quiet heart beneath.

If we weren’t going to kill Emma, then we needed to do something else. But the girl was so dogged about her obsession with Rust Hook Harry. She was so convinced that the answer lay in the slum.

An idea began to take root in my mind.

“Emma will go wherever the case takes her. If we want to get rid of her then we just gotta make sure the Rust Hook Harry case takes her away from here,” I said.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m gonna talk to her. Tonight.”

Chapter 46

Emma walked through the maze of slums. Shadows clung to every wall that she passed, and the vein-like labyrinth of back streets and alleyways was only lit by a pale sliver of moonlight. Thoughts tumbled around in her head. Thoughts about Rust Hook Harry. About her older sister, Harry’s first victim. About Mel, her younger sister in Pennywrote who she hadn’t seen for three months and six days and thirteen hours.

She took a right turn, heading into yet another dark backstreet. Although this would never be a cheery place, one thing you could say was that the back streets here were nothing like the ones in the city. The slum residents, though none of them owned the properties, looked after them as if they were their own. There was no litter. Plants and flowers were potted in any available space. Emma like it here.

When she reached the middle of the alleyway, she heard a ghostly voice singing.

She stopped dead.

Her pulse beat a frantic rhythm. She listened carefully. The singing voice belonged to a little girl.

“Who’s that prowling down the alley? Rust hook Harry! Rust Hook Harry!”

Emma had heard the song before. All the children around here sang it. Probably even the rich kids in the Pennywrote grammar schools sang it too. Nothing unites children across distant social strata like a monster.

She looked around her until she found the little girl who was singing it. She was in the old ironworks building on the second floor, sitting beside an open window. Flora Ray was her name. She waved at Emma.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Emma said.

The girl giggled and closed the window, leaving Emma alone again. On she went, into a patrol that she took every night, doing her best to keep safe the poor folks who lived in Dockside East. If they knew who she was, she’d become a monster to them, too. The empiresmen had probably ruined some of their lives in a way that Rust Hook Harry never could. Still, she did her best.

One day I’m gonna patrol these alleyways and I’ll hear a hook scraping on stone. And that’s when I’ll end the bastard.

As bold as the thought sounded in her mind, the idea of actually seeing Rust Hook Harry made her want to flee into the nearest available doorway and bang on it until she was let inside, into the light.

Soon, the network of alleyways terminated and she found herself at the far end of a plaza that faced the dock water. This was a lonely stretch of dockland where no boats were moored and no dockworkers ever set foot. The pier was rotten and unsafe, and the metal bolts holding it together were rusted. The water was green with algae, and flies buzzed above its surface.

A sudden noise drew her onwards, and Emma proceeded cautiously. She was shocked to discover a man and a woman lying in the middle of the concrete plaza. The woman was on the ground, and the man was on top of her. It was too dark to make them out properly, but it was obvious what they were doing.

Slum life being what it was, folks didn’t get much chance to be alone. Especially not if it was an illicit relationship. Emma guessed that to some folks, a deserted and lonely pier was as romantic a spot as any.

Last thing I need is to get a reputation as a creepy watcher.

She was about to leave them alone when she realized something that made ever bead of blood in every vein in her body seize up with a suffocating cold.

The girl wasn’t moving. The longer she watched, the surer she was. This girl wasn’t moving at all.

The man on top of her stood up.

He raised his arm, and that was when Emma saw it.

Moonlight glinted on a piece of curved metal that she’d seen many times before in her dreams. Slowly, he turned around until he was staring at her.

* * *

The air of dockside east was chilly, and the moon hung high and pale as if it was staring down on me. There was a cutting kind of quiet in the air. The kind of silence comes from a noise that has been chopped down before its time, a wail stopped in a strangled throat. Normally, you might hear the echoes of some distant party in some distant squat. Someone playing the lute. Wine bottles chinking. Not tonight.

I threaded through the maze of alleyways, past the ironworks and the old shoemaker's store and the old bottle cork warehouse that Yulf was helping to convert into apartments. I carried on going until I reached the rope workshop with the faded sign that read ‘Henley Rope Supplies’.

Emma had a ground level room here on the east side, with a window that caught the sea breeze when the wind was right. I knocked on the glass. She didn’t answer, and there was no light on inside.

In an adjacent warehouse, a second floor window opened and a young girl leaned out. “Are you looking for the lady?”

“Yup. You seen her?”

“She went out.”

“Which way?”

“Not telling.”

“No? Then I guess I know where to send Rust Hook Harry tonight.”

“You wouldn’t!” she said.

“Try me.”

The girl pointed toward the north of dockside east. “She’s over there.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Now go to bed.”

“You won’t tell Rust Hook Harry about me?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

If Emma had headed north, that meant she was patrolling the slums and the docks. She did that sometimes. Part of her whole duty as an empire operative, even if nobody around here knew about it. Another part to her patrols was her certainty that Rust Hook Harry was readying himself for another night of blood lust soon, and a conviction that she was the one who would put an end to it.

I decided to take a walk and see if I could find her. Leaving the heart of dockside east, I threaded my way north, navigating the alleys until I reached a stone yard with the dark waters of the sea beyond.

That was when I saw her.

Emma was lying on the stone, spreadeagled. A mere ten feet away was another dark shape on the ground, also not moving. I ran over to Emma and kneeled beside her. Her neck was sliced open so it looked like two flaps of skin. I’d never seen so much blood in my life.

Oh, fuck.

I didn’t realize how much it could pool, nor how thick it would look and how bad it would smell. It covered her face in every crease and every wrinkle. It was in the inside of her ears, in her hair, splattered all down what was left of her throat and on her shirt. The fabric had soaked it in, so her shirt was heavy with the stuff.

Pushing back the urge to vomit, I checked her pulse but there was nothing. Her blood already felt cold on my fingertips.

The other woman was tall and thick-boned, and she had blonde hair that was drenched in coagulated blood and had been pulled out in tufts so roughly that her scalp had bled. Her shirt had been torn open and her skirt was missing. Her face was crisscrossed with so many cuts that I couldn’t even make out who she was.

I stood up, shaking. I ran my hand over my face and through my hair, not caring that I was smearing Emma’s blood over myself. I was thinking lots of things. Things like, how the fuck could this happen?

From behind me came the sound of boots stepping on the stone.

I turned around. Nobody was there.

Then, a great weight collided with my right shoulder. I didn’t have time to set myself, so the sudden impact jarred me. I tried to keep my balance, but I fell anyway and landed on my left shoulder, smacking my head on the stone ground.

Something sharp stabbed through the right side of my waist and dug deep and then was wrenched out again. A fiery pain spread through my torso, making my insides cramp and flinch.

I rolled over and then heard a metallic crack beside my ear as a knife hit the stone where I had just been. I drew my bollock dagger from a sheath on my left calf and I tried to scoot to my feet, but I was unbalanced, and I fell back. I tried again and stood up, my side burning with pain.

I held the bollock dagger tight. Then I realized that I was holding it too tight to be effective, so I forced myself to relax and face my opponent. Despite everything, I fought my hardest to appear confident.

“You got a way of saying hello, don’t ya,” I said.

He was a tall man wearing a trapper’s coat that swallowed him under its bulk. It stank of leather and blood. The hood was a crescent of fur that ran all around his neck like a noose and was stained almost black by all the dried blood encrusted on it. In his right hand, he held a hook, like the kind fishermen used to spear tuna and other, bigger fish. Only this hook was made specially. I could tell. It was made not for fish but for people. The metal looked rusted but actually, it was coated in blood.

“So you ain't an amputee after all,” I said, trying to get him to talk.

He didn’t say a word. I couldn’t see his face properly, and I reckoned it was because it was so dark. The murky water near the pier sloshed almost silently as we took the measure of each other. I knew I was losing blood at my waist. I could feel it soaking into my shirt.

“Guess it’s up to me to make introductions,” I said, trying to sound a lot stronger than I felt. “I’m gonna take it that you’re Rust Hook Harry. I’m the guy who’s gonna rip your throat out.”

He took three great strides toward me. Every step closer seemed to make him look bigger and meaner. Now that he was near me, the moonlight robbed his face of shadows and I could see him properly.

I saw nothing. There was no face there. Just a black stretch of skin with no eyes, no nose, no mouth.

I knew what he was. I’d seen this kind of thing many times.

“You’re a mimic,” I said.

His face was that of a mimic in transition, switching from one face to another. I’d seen it lots of times when I looking in the mirror as I mimicked people. Most mimics didn’t stay in the transition phase, because it was too uncomfortable. Somehow, Rust Hook had found a way to keep his face utterly blank.

A thought hit me then. Was Rust Hook Harry the mimic that I sensed in Pennywrote the other day?

I couldn’t tell right now, and the answer to that question wasn’t going to be much use to me if I ended up like Emma.

I accessed my mimic vault, where I activated a skill.

Mimicked skill activated: Blade use

The experience and talent to fight effectively with blades. Acquired from Tilde Green.

The dagger instantly felt more comfortable in my hand, like I’d held it many times before now and it was just a part of me. As normal as holding a fork when eating dinner.

But Tilde’s skill didn’t just help with the dagger. I looked at Rust Hook and found that I was predicting the ways he might come at me and how I’d counter it. I was seeing his weaknesses, like the way he was standing made it seem like he favored his right side. He must have been right-handed.

I accessed my mimic vault again.

Mimicked trait activated: Left-handed

The favoring of your left hand. Trait acquired from Cannoli Samberg.

I switched the dagger to my left hand. Rust Hook watched the movement with interest as he and I paced circles around each other.

With a flick of his shoulders, Rust Hook shed his trapper’s coat and left it in a heap on the ground. He was wearing a tailored shirt soaked in so much blood it stuck to his abdomen muscles. He was well-muscled but not big, and he kept his featureless face on me. Our pacing took him near Emma’s corpse, and he trampled over her without even looking down.

A small, soft wave broke against the pier. That was the only sound as I ran at Rust Hook.

He pivoted right, but Tilde’s skill had let me expect it and I countered him sure and quick.

I got behind him and stabbed the dagger into the base of his spine and gritted my teeth as I pushed it in deep, through muscles and gristle until it was buried to the hilt.

Rust Hook fell and smashed into the ground face first.

I got my breath back, not yet allowing myself to believe he was dead.

Sure enough, he stirred. Then, his body began to grow. His arms and legs lengthened, and his muscles swelled until he was double his size. His clothes split at the seams, the stitching breaking free. His trousers burst and so did his underwear, and soon the guy was naked, his muscles gleaming in the moonlight. The knife I’d buried in his spine popped straight out and clanged on the ground.

He slowly got to his feet and turned to face me.

I found myself staring into a face that I recognized.

“Yulf?”

He said nothing.

“You ain't Yulf. You’re a fucking mimic and you acquired his build, is all.”

“This is what you want for your last words?” he said.

The voice that came out of Yulf’s mouth wasn’t the one I was used to hearing from the rare times Yulf spoke. It was a lighter voice.

I knew that this couldn’t possibly be the real Yulf. I’d spent hours upon hours with Yulf, and I’d never detected even a whiff of mimicry.

“Who are you? Might as well tell me, since only one of us is leaving here,” I said.

He didn’t answer, instead stomping over to me wearing that great bulk of mimicked Yulf. I drew the dirk dagger from the sheath inside my coat, but I might as well have been holding a spoon. I might have been able to use Tilde’s skills to beat him for speed, but the guy was like a bear. A few wounds weren’t going to stop him.

I accessed my mimic vault and almost activated my physique mimic of Billy Wilder-Fitz, the circus strong man. I hadn’t used this since back in the Crow’s Nest sewer, when I’d helped Yulf escape rather than leave him behind, like Tilde wanted to. Now, I was going to have to use this physique to stop a guy who was mimicking Yulf from tearing me apart.

Something occurred to me, and I paused without activating it.

Whoever this guy was, he was a hell of a mimic. I had tried to acquire Yulf’s physique and I hadn’t managed it, not even after spending hours and hours with him. Yet, this guy had somehow managed to mimic him.

Staring at the man mimicking Yulf, I knew that even Billy-Wilder-Fitz wouldn’t have been able to stand up to him.  Even with a bigger body, bigger muscles and bones, I couldn’t withstand Yulf’s attacks.  He was just too strong. I was never going to match strength by using slightly less strength. What’s more, activating Tilde’s and Billy-Wilder-Fitz’s skills at the same time would drain my mimic energy too quickly.

I deactivated my blade skill to conserve my energy. Quickly turning away from Yulf, I left the open yard. Emerging into the slum alleys, I took a left then a right and another left, and then sprinted through a long stretch of an alley that was too tight for Yulf to squeeze through. Another right and then a left brought me out a hundred yards south of the hideout.

I glanced around me. No sign of the mimicked Yulf.

I opened the hideout door. By now, the wound in my side was throbbing and my shirt felt wet.

The cowardly part of me wanted to run away from Dockside East, but I knew that I couldn’t. This mimic had taken Yulf’s form, which meant that he’d spent long enough near Yulf to acquire the mimicry. That meant he most likely knew who we were and where we lived. The next time he came back, he would be using a completely different mimicked physique. He’d be a different person, and I’d be forever looking over my shoulder. I had to finish him now.

“Hello?” I said, grunting.

The shop was empty. Tilde and Mags must still have been in the city. I didn’t know where the real Yulf was. I went up the first and second flights of stairs until I reached Mags’ workshop on the third floor.

It was locked. Today of all goddamn days he’d locked it.

The lock was a closed shackle with an added combination lock on the side. I took a pick from my inner right pocket and worked the pins until I heard a click. The shackle didn’t move yet. I started working on the combination. I tried Mags’ birthday. Didn’t work. I tried mine, even though there was no way Mags would have known it. Same result. I couldn’t remember Tilde’s birthday.

“Fuck this.”

I activated Billy Wilder-Fitz’s strength and barged the door with my shoulder. It groaned on the second try, splintered inward with a crunch on the third, and then completely gave way on the fourth.

I wasn’t ready for it, and my momentum carried me too quickly into the workshop. I collided into a varnished tainted workbench and gripped it to steady myself. A set of nails fell off the counter and scattered over the floor.

With my pulse thudding, I looked around. I breathed in the smell of grease and paint stripper and the vinegar that Mags used to scrape rust off things.

I deactivated Billy’s strength and activated the skill I’d learned from Mags.

Mimic skill activated: Trap Making

The ability to create or dissemble traps of all kinds ranging from the simple to the complex.

I searched Mags’ shelves and workbenches for anything I could use. I grabbed a wooden pallet and heaped a bunch of traps into it and then I left the workshop. The box was heavy, and I’d piled it so high I had to peer over the top as I walked down the stairs to make sure I didn’t trip over.

Back out in the alleyway, there was still no sign of Mimic Yulf. I worked quickly, using the skill I’d mimicked from Mags to place the traps along the alleyway. I still had a long spring trap to set when I heard Yulf approaching from the far end of the alley.

“Big fella. Over here,” I said.

When he saw me, a sinister smile spread from his lips.

Mimic Yulf took nine steps before slamming his foot on the pan of a coyote trap. The jaws slammed shut over his ankle and he gave a sharp grunt of pain. Barely a second later, he was walking toward me again. He hadn’t even removed the trap from his foot. Instead he just carried on, dragging it along the stone.

In my hand, I held the blade that Tilde had given me to apologize for killing the sailors and almost botching a job. It was a sharp blade, well crafted, but I didn’t fancy its chances against Yulf. Even so, if the traps didn’t finish him, then I’d have no choice but to use it.

Mimic Yulf lumbered into another trap, and this time the jaws closed around his other ankle. On he walked, the traps screeching on the ground as he dragged his feet. Veins pulsed in his temples and his breath left his mouth like steam as he grunted and labored toward me.

He got to within ten yards of me.

I tried using Billy Wilder-Fitz’s strength, but my mimicry was empty. He made one final charge at me. Despite my brain screaming that I should run I held my nerve, and when he was ten feet away, I gathered the last of my energy and jumped up and grabbed hold of the new sign fixed above the shop door. I roared with pain as I pulled myself up and then brought up my knees, so that I was inches clear of Yulf as he charged past.

I dropped down. Gripping my dagger, I ran at Yulf and jumped onto his back. I hooked one arm around his neck. With my other hand, I slit a bloody smile across his neck with the dagger and then plunged it deep into his throat for good measure.

The big man gurgled, spitting out blood as he spun around to try to shake me loose. I let go of him and fell on my ass.

Mimic Yulf stumbled into a wall, retching blood. He clawed at the stone as he slowly slid to the ground.

I took a deep breath, my heart hammering, the wound on my waist burning.

And then he got back up, blood pouring from the wound on his neck. With just three strides he reached out and clasped his meaty hands around my neck, squeezing the air from me.

I batted wildly against his back. I punched his neck, hoping the pain of the wound would force him to release his grip.

Instead, he just gripped me harder, squeezing and grunting, his blood and spit coating my face with every exertion. I began to panic as my lungs emptied. Right now, it was a matter of who would go first. Would Mimic Yulf bleed out before I was completely out of air?

My gut, my instincts, my desperation, told me no. It told me to make peace with what was happening.

As my vision became fuzzy, I saw in my mind’s eye my Pa. He was as real as the last time I’d seen him. I saw my Pa standing outside our old cottage, his face red from a day of working in the field. The sun was big and golden behind him, the light threatening to swallow everything. Pa opened his mouth. Although no words came out, I knew that he was telling me to come and join him.

In my mind, I took a step towards him.

And then something hit my head.

I was back in the alleyway again. Only, it wasn’t just Mimic Yulf and me. On the roof of the building adjacent the hideout were a dozen raggedly-dressed children, each of them holding rocks and various pieces of scrap metal. I remembered that I’d told the Scamps they should come here. That it’d be a safe place for them.

“Hey, fuckface!” said George.

Mimic Yulf turned his head, only for a giant rock to smash into his forehead.

“Have some of this, you stupid bastard cocknose!” shouted Magrita.

A volley rained down on Mimic Yulf. Rocks, jagged pieces of metal. New wounds opened on his face, on his arms. Just as my vision began to darken completely, Mimic Yulf released his grip.

I fell onto my ass, gasping for breath. My throat felt tight, like he’d actually squeezed it shut permanently. I had to get onto my hands and knees and really suck in air just to get some.

From ahead of me came a great crash, and I stood up to see that Mimic Yulf was lying on his back, dying.

From the rooftops, a voice spoke. It was George.

“That’ll be ten silvers, mister.”

As the mimic was dying, his mimicry faded and his body shrank back to its normal size. Yulf’s features left him, however his face stayed as a blank canvas, just as before.

With his mimicry stripped away, he was nothing. I might have been half a mimic, but this guy was half a man. Lying in the gutter was a short, thin guy. A sack of skin and bones. He was naked, his body a purpling mess of bruises and blood. A pond of it was forming around him from his neck that wouldn’t stop gushing.

Looking up at the Scamps, I said, “You kids better get inside.”

“We seen worse than that!”

Knowing they were so willful that it was useless to argue with them, I focused on the mimic. I stayed a safe distance from him and then crouched down.

“Who are you?” I said.

He turned his faceless head toward me for a second, but he said nothing.

“Do you know me? Do you know my Pa?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. This made me even more frustrated. I couldn’t stop thinking that it was no coincidence a mimic had appeared near Dockside East. I wanted to know who he was, why he was killing people, and if he was here because of me. Maybe I was being arrogant, but I believed that.

He let out a long, trailing breath that ended in a rattle, and then he was gone. His chest was still, nor did his fingers twitch when I poked his palm with the tip my dagger.

I’d never get answers now. I’d never know who he was, or why he was here, and whether it really was my presence that drew him here.

I’d never know if he worked alone, or if he was perhaps part of a group of murderous mimics that had taken residence in Pennywrote.

I’d never know a single damn thing.

Chapter 47

I dragged Emma’s body away from the stone yard near the disused pier. It took me half an hour, and I was sweating by the time I got her back to the hideout. In the living room, I spread an old bedsheet on the floorboards and put Emma on it, then I left her there while I went to get the body of the other lady who had died. I didn’t know what to do with her, since her face was so cut up. I reckoned she must live in the slums, but I didn’t want to go knocking door to door to ask folks if their wife or daughter or sister had gone missing that night. So, I took her back to the hideout, too.

After that, I went to the east docks where the ships were moored. Some of them glowed orange from the lamps of their night crew. Others were dark and lonely. The Wanton was gone. There weren’t any dockworkers around at that time of night, and the lamp of the night watchman was all the way at the other end of the dock, almost out of sight.

I scouted a few ships and finally found a bunch of empty oak barrels set on the dock. They were in front of a boat named the Archibald. I tried lifting a barrel, but it was way too heavy and my mimicry hadn’t even begun to recover yet. It’d be weeks before I replenished everything I’d used tonight. Deciding I had to take a risk, I took off my coat and wrapped it around the barrel and tied it, and then I tipped the barrel onto its side. I rolled it off the docks as quietly as I could. The coat dampened the noise some.

My forehead was soaking wet when I reached the slums. My side hurt like hell, and my shoulder was aching from barging open Mags’ door. Nearly home, I abandoned being quiet and just started shoving the barrel forward with my boot and letting it roll two or three yards at a time on its own momentum.

When I got to the hideout and put my foot on the barrel to make it stop, the shop door was wide open.

I stopped walking. I stayed quiet and watched.

I sure as shit hadn’t left the door like that. Two thoughts slithered through my mind.

Has the mimic come back to life? Or are there more of them around?

I checked my coat, but I was out of daggers.

Just as I approached the door, Yulf appeared in the doorway. Almost seven feet tall, a block of muscle and tendons with fists that could pulverize metal and a grip that would easily crush a man’s skull.

Every hair on my body stood on edge. I backed away a step, hearing the floorboards creak beneath me.

Yulf stared at me curiously. “You are okay?” he said.

It was the first question he’d ever directly asked me. Hearing the deep timber of his voice flooded me with relief. The mimic hadn’t used Yulf’s voice; he’d used his own.

From behind Yulf came another voice.

“You’re back, then,” said Tilde.

Before I could answer, I felt a dull thud on my head. I blacked out.

When I woke up, they’d tied me to a chair in the lounge. They’d wrapped coils of rope tight around my chest, arms, and legs. On my left arm, it was so tight that the rope was eating into my skin.

“Sorry, sir,” said Mags.

I grunted something. Maybe it was a question. I was so groggy, even I didn’t know what I’d meant to say.

On the floor, near me, was Emma. Her body had stiffened, and it made her curled fingers hard to look at. Like it made it all real, that Rust Hook had killed her and that was that. Not far away was the other girl. Tilde, Yulf, and Mags had also dragged the mimic’s body into the lounge. He seemed to look in my direction with that featureless face of his, though his chest wasn’t moving.

“Yulf’s outside cleaning up all the blood,” said Tilde. “So, he ain’t your best pal right now.”

I found my voice, even though I sounded raspy and it hurt my throat to talk. “Listen.”

“No, you listen,” she said. “We come home to find three corpses. One of ‘em is Emma. The other’s June Roberts. The third. Well. It doesn’t even look human, for fuck’s sake. Doesn’t take a genius to start building a little story of what’s happening.”

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“Then you know to shut up. You told us you were gonna kill Emma. You didn’t say anything about anyone else.”

“You’re one to talk,” I said.

“That was then and this is now. Everyone knows there’s a fella with a hook on the loose, and it’s only been getting worse since you got here. Who exactly are you, Rattlesnake? Huh? A born liar who we sprung from the Crow’s Nest. Who else are you?”

“You know why I was in there.”

“Why they sentenced you to death? Sure, I know that. You killed a man. Doesn’t exactly help your case.”

“Not just a man,” I said. “I killed the man who got my Pa hanged. There’s a difference.”

“Your Pa?”

I knew that I had told her too much. Who even knew if Rattlesnake had a pa? If I wasn’t careful, I’d give the game away. Hells, part of me wanted to come clean right now and tell Tilde who I was, but I didn’t.

Instead, I just nodded. “My Pa.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn’t make your argument any better. Killing’ is killin’.”

“Hard to hear you from underneath all that hypocrisy,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The fucking guards in the Crow’s Nest, Tilde. And those poor saps working from the Wanton.”

She shrugged. “Get involved with a crew that traffics people, you’re buying a ticket that’s gonna be cashed at some point.”

“Fucking hell, okay. Whatever. Just listen to me for a minute and then make up your mind.”

She thought about it. She sat on a chair facing me and placed her dagger on her lap. “Okay then. Hold on a second.”

She told Mags and Yulf to join us, and I told them everything that had happened, from me happening on Emma and the girl and Rust Hook Harry, to killing the bastard and then realizing that he was a mimic.

“A mimic?”

I nodded. “A mimic.”

“I thought the empire wiped ‘em all out.”

My cheeks started to burn red. “Evidently not.”

“Wait here,” she said.

I nodded at the ropes holding me in place. “My pleasure.”

Tilde, Mags, and Yulf left the room. When they came back a few minutes later, they asked me all sorts of questions. I answered with as much patience as I could. It was still dark when we finished talking, and I knew there wouldn’t be long until the sun started climbing.

“So are we done here?” I said. “Because we’ve got a few things to take care of.”

Tilde cut the ropes from me. When I stood up my legs felt stiff, and a wave of exhaustion washed over me. But we still had a few things left to do.

We put the mimic’s body in the barrel that I’d hefted over from the docks. We stuffed him inside it and filled it with rocks. Yulf took a break from cleaning blood from outside the shop, and he took the barrel to the deserted pier, where he threw it into the water and watched it sink.

While he was gone, Tilde, Mags and I carried on cleaning the blood both in and around the hideout. When we were halfway through, Tilde told me that I looked like shit and said I should go to bed. I said that I couldn’t do that knowing I’d be leaving the work to them.

The next day, Tilde and Mags went to visit June Roberts’ mother and stepfather. They told them what Rust Hook had done, and offered to let them come to the shop to see their daughter’s body. Her mother said no, so her stepfather, Gregg, took up the duty. He asked that we keep her body there while they arranged the funeral.

That night, Yulf and I waited until the early hours of the morning, and we scavenged an old cart from a warehouse three buildings down from the hideout. It was busted, so I used the skill I’d learned from Mags to get the wheels turning. Yulf seemed impressed, even if he didn’t verbalize it. We put Emma’s body on the cart, covering her with tarpaulin and then putting boxes on top of her. It didn’t feel great to cover her like that, but we had no choice.

We carted her through the night-time streets of Pennywrote, taking a route of quiet alleyways and thoroughfares until we reached Nuttlefield Station, one of Pennywrote’s many empiresmen offices. We left Emma’s body outside, along with Harry’s hook and a letter explaining that she’d caught him and that she had died while stopping him.

“What if they recommend her for resurrection?” Tilde asked me later.

I shrugged. “We’ll have to keep our ears open. Deal with that if it happens. Odds are, she’s not a candidate. Not many folks are.”

News of the undercover detective who stopped Rust Hook Harry spread through the city. Just three days later, Emma was given a hero’s funeral that was attended by so many folks that the streets around the church swarmed with those wishing her a safe journey into the afterlife.

We didn’t attend the funeral, of course. Part of me wanted to pay my respects, but I knew it would be attended by almost all the empiresmen in Pennywrote. Something in my gut told me that it might not be the best place for a bunch of rogues to go.

For the next two months, something changed in the slums of Dockside East. For one thing, Scaliber wasn’t seen doing the rounds and collecting his rent. When he was a week late, folks just assumed he was busy. When a week became two and then four, people started wondering what it took for the undead to die again, and whether that was even possible. Mags informed them that it was very possible and that it happened easily. People like Scaliber weren’t suspectable to aging or disease, but his body was still just flesh and it could be destroyed.

But Scaliber hadn’t died for the second time. Instead, he’d been busy having meetings with various landlords in Pennywrote. Ones such as Fletcher and Fielder Properties, Hugh Gaskill who owned the dockside east iron monger’s factory, and Jessica Fontway who owned half a dozen of the smaller abandoned buildings. Scaliber used his undead charms as best he could. When charms didn’t work, he threw coins at the problem.

In this way, Mr. Ezequiel Scaliber became the owner of every abandoned shop, factory, and warehouse in Dockside East except for the upholstery shop. He signed legal tenancy documents with the folks who used to illegally squat there, securing for them a place to live. For those who’d been proper tenants, he lowered their rents.

Not stopping there, he hired Yulf to supervise a crew of craftsmen who set about making safe and then improving the conditions of every single building. Finally, he paid half of the costs to get a master healer from Rockdale college out to see if they could help little Matthew, the sick kid who had the party where I had met Emma. I had a word with the other guys, and we agreed that the Dockside East rogue outfit would contribute the other half of the gold toward Matthew’s treatment.

For the next three weeks, each of us said we were researching the next job to pull. Really, though, I think we needed a break. We needed a normal life for once. So, we fell into a routine.

We’d buy fish from the docks and vegetables from the community grocery store that Halbert Suffolk had opened in Dockside East, and we’d each take turns cooking. Because the weather was warming up, we’d head to the roof terrace and eat our evening meal under a golden sky. My wounds healed, and I felt better now that there were no more maniacs with rusted hooks. I could just enjoy the company of my friends up there on that roof.

Sometimes I’d look across the city, across the rooftops spread far and wide, and I’d see the Pennywrote jail tower rising up above them all, with the cold cell’ of the Crow’s Nest at the peak.

Beyond it - miles and miles beyond - was a little cottage nestled in a little field. A cottage that had been happy once. One that I would never go back to, yet it gave me some comfort to imagine that a family had bought it, and that they were working the land and that they were happy.

Even better than my memories was the realization that years after leaving the cottage, I had finally found another home.

“I was thinking something,” said Tilde, breaking my spell of reminiscence.

“Oh yeah?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“What was it?”

“I was thinking it’s time we planned another job.”

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