Chapter 66

It was not a difficult climb, skill-wise, but that did not make it any less taxing.

Though the scaffold-tower hugging the western wall of Tratheke had been built with care and precision, it was still made of wood. While the materials made it easy for Tristan to pull himself up with hammer and bolt, bringing up his rope with him as he did, the whole edifice felt like a reed about to fall over. It did not help that the wind had the wooden panels rattling and that a combination of time and the elements had visibly taken a toll on the structure.

At least there was little chance of his being seen, hidden under cover of night as he was, or of getting lost on his way: the chamber at the top had lit lamps, lending it the look of the flame on a candle’s tip, but night had fallen and the remainder was dark.

Hector Anaidon – there was no mistaking the silhouette – had entered the hideout the better part of half an hour ago, so Tristan knew this would be a close-run thing. He had moved the moment the man showed his face, but there was no telling how long Anaidon would spend downstairs before entertaining his guests in the upstairs chamber.

The lift was still at the bottom of the structure, at least. With a little luck Tristan would have time to hide and plan his ambush.

About three quarters of the way up, limbs trembling and sweat trickling down his back, Tristan found himself gritting his teeth and swallowing a snarl as weight pressed down on his left. Sakkas, that hateful beast, had just landed on his shoulder. The bird was light for its size, its talons barely felt through the black coat, but still too damn heavy.

“Not now,” he hissed, taking a hand off the hold to slap away the magpie. “What do you think you’re-”

It flew off with a cackling call.

“Shit,” Fortuna whispered, straight into his ear. “Tristan, it was warning us: the lift is moving.”

Much as the thief would have liked to check, he was too far from the corner of the tower to do so. He’d have to take the goddess on faith. Looking up at the stretch of creaking wood awaiting him, Tristan grimaced. Hesitated.

“How quickly is it rising?” he asked.

Fortuna hummed, her presence receding until she popped her head out of the wall just a foot to the side of his right hand.

“Not that fast,” she said. “They’re pulling it up by hand I think. If you hurry you should beat them up there.”

“Fuck,” Tristan cursed.

The good news he’d least wanted to hear. Now he had to take on the risks climbing in a hurry or risk trying to enter the room while there was already someone in it. He weighed those on the balance for a too-long moment, then cursed again. Without rope, then. Hammer and peg alone would be quicker, as cutting corners with one’s life often was.

The fear of his sweat-slick palms slipping on the pegs only wet them further, but he gritted his teeth and focused. Tear, place, hammer down. Up. Tear, place, hammer down. Again and again he hitched himself up the side of the tower, moving as fast as he could. He began to turn around the edge when he got within ten feet of the opening, and below he could now see the wooden box slowly being pulled up. The roof was solid, no chance of anyone seeing through. He breathed out shallowly. No sign of anyone currently up there, and at least a few minutes before the lift arrived.

He could do this.

Now was the most dangerous part not because of the pressing time or the climb itself but because he would be in lamplight, and so finally vulnerable to being seen from below. Tristan could not let himself think on that, however, for distraction and slippery hands were death’s ingredients. Careful, steady. Do not hammer too little or too much. It was windy up here, now that he was no longer covered by the tower, and that slowed everything down.

He still reached past the edge of the floor, finding thick carpet there, and began hoisting himself up – only for a burst of wind to catch him in the side. Swallowing a scream, the thief slipped. Fingers clawed at the carpet, his boot slipped against the peg and he dropped. His elbow hit the edge of the floor on the way down, he dropped the hammer and scrabbled desperately for anything he could reach. He caught the peg his boot had slipped on, eyes white and heart thundering, fingers digging into the palm until he was bleeding.

Fear sludged through his veins like molten ice, but he swallowed his spit and bile. Concentrate. Forget everything but what needs to be done. Leave only the act. He emptied his mind and moved: hoisted himself back up the peg, then got his boot wedged in and reached up. Past the edge – what if there was wind again, what if. No. The thief breathed out. Nothing ahead, nothing behind. Move. He went over the edge, onto the carpet, and rolled on the room’s floor.

There he allowed himself a moment of bubbling terror, to realize how utterly close he had come to a pointless death, before burying it. He was not out of the grave yet.

Find a hiding place. Move. He rose, careful not to stain the carpet with his bloodied palm, and took a look around. The rebels had not built this room: it was a hole straight through the wall, large enough it had been made into a makeshift chamber. The back wall was wood, the floor beneath the carpeting brass. As if to force the illusion of hospitality, the furniture was rich and near every inch of wall covered by tapestries or colorful paint. Two tables, a set of sofas and assorted chairs, a large bed and an even larger wardrobe. There was no door, only thick curtains, and – the creaking, it was loud.

“Fortuna?” he rasped out.

“They are almost here,” the goddess whispered into his ear.

They? The guests were coming up at the same time, then. There was no time for anything elaborate. At a look he might fit under the sofas, but that was a risky play. Though it seemed almost a child’s notion, Tristan headed straight for the wardrobe. It was filled to burst with terrible taste, which at least provided decent cover. The thief slipped behind the clothes and crouched, pulling his legs to his chest, and settled in for the wait.

Best to wait until Hector’s guests were gone to grab the man for an intimate talk, he decided. He could keep an eye on the situation through the slight gap between the two front panels of the wardrobe. In a matter of moments the lift reached the summit, metal clanking against metal as it stopped moving. A latch was pulled and then they walked in.

Lord Hector Anaidon had not changed since Tristan last saw him: a tall, broad-shouldered sort with graying blond hair and a bulbous nose. He was fleshy, though not exactly fat, and his blue eyes were deep-set. The lordling had the soft hands of a man who had never needed to work or fight and the clothes to explain why. There was enough silk on him to dress two marginally smaller men. The pair that accompanied him, though, had Tristan’s breath catching in his throat.

A short, stout man with a jolly smile and swirling mustache. A tall, bony woman with narrow spectacles and pursed lips.

“Why, what a fascinating little nook,” Lord Locke enthusiastically said, looking around.

“Much trouble for a room no larger than a salon,” Lady Keys scorned.

“I am told it served as a watchtower of sorts before the lictors wrote off this district,” Lord Hector replied, striding across the room towards one of the tables.

There he reached for a carafe, sniffed the inside and let out an approving noise before pouring himself a cup of what looked like brandy. Despite inviting looks, he offered the pair no such courtesy.

“Somehow you talked Maria Anastos into thinking a conversation should take place between us,” Hector Anaidon said, guzzling down the cup before setting it down sharply on the table. “Well, have at it.”

Lord Locke thumbed his mustache, smiling still. Now that Tristan knew what he was, he could not help but think of a cat playing with his whiskers as he eyed a plump mouse.

“We’ve but a single question for you, Lord Hector,” he said. “And will be departing as soon as we have our answer.”

“Will you now?” the other noble grunted. “I think not. At the very least, you’ll be remaining our guests until the rising. We cannot let knowledge of this place spread.”

“That would not suit our purposes,” Lady Keys lightly said.

“I do not much care what suits you,” Hector Anaidon disdainfully replied. “I may, in fact, have Maria’s head for bringing you here. The Trade Assembly could use a reminder that they need us a great deal more than the other way around.”

Tristan winced. It was like watching a man slowly shove his hand down a wolf’s gullet. Reaching deeper and deeper, thinking the monster’s belly was a pack to take things from.

“Are you threatening us?” Lady Keys asked, sounding almost pleased.

“There is always a bit of roughness in a revolution,” Lord Hector said, rolling the r of the last word as if making sport of it.

“Abduction and threats of death,” Lord Locke happily said. “From a wicked cultist, no less! Is that not enough to arrest him, Warrant Officer Abrascal?”

Tristan went still as stone for a moment, thoughts flying. The blood. Even if they hadn’t heard him breathing, which they might well have, the blood would have given away the game. Keep them smiling, Hage had ordered him. No one’s game but theirs would be played tonight. The thief let his forehead drop on the wardrobe door and let out a long sigh. Well, so much for doing this cleanly.

Under the flabbergasted gaze of Hector Anaidon – and the smirks of the married pair – he emerged from the wardrobe with his blackjack in hand.

“Was that really necessary?” he asked the devils, pulling his uniform back in place.

“No,” Lord Locke cheerfully admitted. “But it has been very entertaining so far. Do continue!”

Tristan sighed again, straightening as Lord Hector suddenly realized he was alone in a room a hundred feet above the ground with no guards to protect him and three potential enemies. The heavyset noble scrambled to his feet, reaching for the bejeweled knife at his hip and drawing it.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“Oh, best not to bring Hell into this,” Lady Keys gently said. “It will do no wonders for your life expectancy, Hector.”

Tristan rolled his shoulder.

“You’re under arrest,” he told the cultist. “By order of the Watch.”

“You’re all dead,” Hector snarled back, and ran for the door.

Tristan did not even bother to move, eyes on the devils, and he still almost missed it. Plump, jolly Lord Locke was across the room in a heartbeat – having torn the carpet pushing off – and holding up the wiggling Hector Anaidon on the wall by the throat. Hector had at least a foot and a half on the smaller lord, and heavier shoulders, yet there was nothing comical about the sight.

It was Locke’s eyes, Tristan thought. They were flat and lifeless as a doll’s.

Hector rasped out a word, something sounding like a plea, and there was a ripple of… something in the air. Like a pistol fired, but without the noise or smoke. Lord Locke’s mustache billowed slightly before the devil bared teeth and teeth and something altogether more malign.

“Your god has no power over me, Hector,” Locke said. “None one is coming to save you, that least of all.”

The cultist let out a noise of such despair Tristan almost sympathized. Lady Keys leaned over the low table, helping herself to the carafe of brandy and pouring a clean finger in a silver goblet. Swirling it, she took a sniff and let out a noise of approval. Tristan could not be sure whether or not he was imagining the echo of clicking mandibles under it.

“Would you be particularly opposed to our sharing this interrogation with the Watch, Warrant Officer?” Lady Keys asked. “While the black had been doing some admirable grave-digging in these parts, we’ve some curiosities of our own to sate.”

The thief straightened. Show no weakness, play along with the games and always try to beat the expectations. My kind has a weakness for novelty, especially the oldest among of us, Hage had taught him.

“By all means,” he said, bowing low. “We could take turns asking questions.”

Lady Keys seemed unimpressed, he gauged. Apt to tear off the veil of pretense this was anything but their show to roll on. So he tacked on-

“- deciding on whose it is by flipping a coin, perhaps,” Tristan added.

Both devils stilled, then turned their heads towards him with unnatural sharpness – not at angles impossible, but neither were they moving like someone who genuinely had to worry about the state of their spine. Lady Keys absently reminded her husband that ‘you’re killing him, dear’, to which the other devil embarrassedly laughed before loosening his grasp and letting a choking, red-faced Hector Anaidon desperately suck in a breath.

“How interesting,” the devil said, peering at him through her borrowed eyes and spectacles. “You wouldn’t be intending on cheating would you, Tristan?”

“I have never once cheated at anything in my life,” Tristan replied without batting an eye.

How could he? There were no rules to life, and thus no one could cheat. Lord Locke let out a delighted chortle, picking up a panicking Hector by the throat again and shaking him like a misbehaving kitten. There was a small sound of tinkling, which had the devil reaching in the cultists’ pocket and deftly picking out a silver arbol. He tossed it Tristan’s way, the thief snatching it out of the air and showing both sides to Lady Keys.

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“Ladies pick first,” he charmingly smiled. “Would you prefer oaks or griffin?”

“Oaks,” Lady Keys said, tapping a finger against her chin.

She sent her husband a burning look.

“Intertwined trees? Such a romantic thought.”

Lord Locke blew back a kiss, Hector Anaidon sparing a moment in the process of being choked out to look in utter disbelief at the pair. Tristan flipped the coin, and without hesitation pulled on his luck. He laid out his palm without even looking, the perfect arc of the spinning silver ending with a dull slap against the skin. A glance.

“Alas, griffin,” Tristan falsely sympathized. “Better luck next time.”

He released the luck, bracing himself, but a mere coin flip should only – shifting his footing happened to pull at a fold in the ripped carpet, which in turn tugged at the table. The bottle of brandy tipped his way, and though he was quick enough to catch it there was still a small spill on his boots. Oh, that was on the lower end of his expectations. Fortuna must be in a fine mood.

While he struggled with wiping his boot on the carpet, Lord Locke had lowered Hector. He gestured in extravagant invitation for Tristan to ask his question, somehow working in both a flourish and a bow.

“What is your role within the cult?” he asked.

The overweight noble shot him a disdainful look.

“Why should I-”

There was a snapping sound and Lord Locke’s hand over the mouth of the cultists muffled a scream. A scream caused by the devil having, casually, snapped Hector Anaidon’s left thumb at an angle that had bone peeking out of the bleeding flesh. Tristan breathed in, kept his heartbeat steady and his smile fixed. He had known, in his mind, that for all the smiling and joking they were brutal monsters.

Tristan had hurt men before, for answers or coin or to survive. But it had still been a choice to him, a decision. Locke’s hand had moved like the violence was an afterthought. How many fingers did you need to snap before it could be done so casually, so effortlessly? Hundreds, the thief thought. Thousands.

“Torture is why, obviously,” Tristan made himself reply in the tone of someone amused. “Answer the question, Hector.”

“I’m a priest,” the man hurried to reply the moment Locke allowed him to. “A priest of the Odyssean, initiated into the rites. I renounced the Ram just like they asked and they brought me into the mysteries. Please, I’m bleeding, you need to-”

His mouth was covered again and Lady Keys, setting down her goblet after having drained it of brandy, turned a look on him. He offered up the coin for her.

“Oaks,” the devil decided.

Griffin again, and all it cost him was a thread in his collar coming loose. Only a problem if he pulled at it.

“Who is the head of your cult?” Tristan asked.

“The Ecclesiast,” Hector Anaidon replied, sweating and shivering. “I don’t know his real name, only that he founded the cult.”

The man kept glancing down at his snapped thumb, looking sick.

“That can’t be all you know,” Tristan said. “Does Lord Locke have to… put your thumb on the scale again, so to speak?”

The devil beamed back at him, chortling and looking as if that threat had made his day. The cultist paled, looking about to throw up.

“I, um,” he stammered. “He’s a noble, and wealthy. I could tell from his tastes. Real coin, not just passing.”

Tristan hummed, shaking his head at Lord Locke’s quizzical look. He offered up the coin to Lady Keys again, and this time there was a particular intensity to her gaze.

“Oaks,” the devil said.

He used the luck to secure her pick, this time, at the low price of the edge of the coin slapping at the edge of the phalange in a vaguely painful way.

“Ah, at last fortune smiles on us,” Lady Keys grinned, revealing just a hint of teeth beyond her teeth. “Dearest, if you would?”

“Hector, my friend,” Lord Locke said, putting the man down and cleaning his shoulders as if they were old acquaintances instead of his torturer. “What do you know about the harpoon?”

Tristan breathed in sharply. As in the great bronze artifact that Maryam had found in the heart of the prison layer, plunged into the wasteland of salt keeping the Hated One contained? More interesting yet was that Hector Anaidon flinched, betraying he knew exactly what the devil was asking about.

“I know that Lord Cordyles has an entire collection of-”

Lord Locke gently reached inside the cultist’s mouth, prying it open and seizing one of the front teeth between two fingers.

“You don’t need your teeth to answer our questions,” the devil noted. “Human teeth, my friend, are most shoddily built. They are so very easy to pull out.”

No they aren’t, Tristan thought. It was actually quite difficult unless you had pincers. Lord Locke removed his shell’s fingers out of the terrified cultists’ mouth, allowing him enough room to speak.

“I don’t know where it went,” Hector sniveled. “They only used my brother’s warehouse for a night, that was all they needed me for!”

“They?” Lady Keys idly asked. “Elaborate, my good man. Who told you to hide the artifact?”

“The Ecclesiast,” Hector said. “It was all him, all his plan.”

“And where did he get it?” Lord Locke pressed, for once entirely humorless.

“I don’t know,” Hector said. “He never said. From some temple, probably, like the sickle.”

Both devils scoffed.

“Did he ever mention a helper?” Lord Locke asked. “A benefactor?”

They’re not here for the infernal forge, Tristan realized. Hage was right. They were hunting someone, someone they thought might have provided this cult of the Odyssean with the weapon that breached the Hated One’s prison.

“Nothing, he doesn’t trust anyone,” Hector wept. “Not even the priests.”

Lady Keys sighed.

“A waste of time,” she told her husband. “Only this Ecclesiast has our answers.”

Lord Locke twirled his mustache thoughtfully.

“That complicates matters somewhat,” he said, not sounding entirely displeased.