Chapter 144: Arc 5: Chapter 14: Broker of Secrets

Arc 5: Chapter 14: Broker of Secrets

I stepped from the innocuous hallway into a very different scene.

The first thing that struck me was the silence. As the door clicked closed at my back, the roaring din of music, conversation, and more salacious entertainment vanished completely. The quiet that replaced it had a near deafening quality, like the moment after a thunderbolt. My ears even rang in the same way.

The room itself was darkly lit, spacious, and comfortably furnished. Stands decorated with honest, old fashion candles stood at every corner, on the arms of a chandelier hung from the ceiling, and on the low table at the very center of the room.

Sitting at that table were three figures. One was a man on a narrow couch. He looked to be around fifty, almost skeletally gaunt, with a thin neck hidden in a collar and neckcloth. His long gray hair receded from a spotted scalp, and he had a pale-eyed glare that seemed almost ghoulish in the dim lighting, not helped by a thin, almost lipless mouth perpetually caught in sour disdain. He wore a brown vest over a gray shirt, of fine quality if modest design.

He had a beautiful woman in his lap, seated so a single long leg emerging from a green dress hung over the little couch’s arm. Her head was propped on the opposite arm, her black hair falling nearly down to the carpeted floor. Her eyes were closed in drowsy contentment while the man ran his fingers through her raven locks with slow, unfocused motions.

The third figure was a man in his thirties, handsome, and looked like a wealthy merchant. He wore layered clothes in an elaborate fashion, mostly black and white striped with splashes of brighter red. A chaperon hung over his face to shadow one eye. The other was so dark as to be nearly black, watching me with detached interest.

The Keeper of the Backroad Inn scowled at me, his raspy voice cutting through the silence. “You’re late.”

He spoke without stopping the rhythmic motion of his fingers through the woman’s hair. She murmured something and stirred without opening her eyes. I realized she was asleep.

Or high. Smoke emerged from an intricately fashioned bronze pot on the table. As I stepped closer and got a whiff, it exuded a heady scent.

I ignored his complaint, glancing at the second man. “You didn’t tell me there’d be someone else present for this.”

I guessed the drowsing woman to be one of his employees, here to show status as much as the lavish, darkly furnished room did. The man, on the other hand, looked like one of his guests.

“I was just about to leave,” the stranger said in a deep, cultured voice, standing smoothly. He adjusted his hat, stepped around the table, and inclined his head to me, then to the man on the couch.

“Your inn is a house of delights, as always Keeper.”

The Keeper tilted his head in return, and the man left with one last glance at me. He looked caught between curiosity and amusement. Maybe he just wasn’t used to seeing someone in chainmail armor and a blood red cloak walking into the inn. Then again, I’d hardly been the most eccentric figure among the crowd outside.

“Have a seat,” the Keeper said. It wasn’t quite an order, but the man had a brusque, no nonsense way about him. I sat, occupying the chair to the left, opposite where the other guest had been seated.

“Get you anything?” The Keeper asked, reclining back and letting his eyes fall down to his companion, who still hadn’t woken. “Wine? A body to warm your lap? They’re not all cold blooded like that graveborn you’re so sweet on.”

I kept my expression neutral, my posture relaxed. Was he trying to get a rise out of me? Or was the offer genuine?

“I’d take some wine,” I said. While I didn’t trust this man, I also didn’t want to spurn his hospitality and doubted he’d use poison. He was old, and that meant age old ideas on host and guest right.

Besides, my powers would burn off most of the alcohol and keep my head clear. If it protected me from elf wine, surely it would save me from whatever a devil poured?

With surprising elegance, the Keeper leaned forward without disturbing the resting woman and poured wine into a brass cup. The cups and jar of incense were all painted with colorful scenes of figures frolicking in parade, playing flutes, mating, or eating one another. Some did all of it at once. Many of them had the heads of wolves, goats, or hawks.

“I admit,” the Keeper said. “I’m surprised to see you.”

“Why’s that?” I asked in the same courteous tone he used as I sipped at the wine.

The Keeper leaned back again, watching me coolly. “You’ve risen high, I hear. High enough it must be easy to forget small men like me in our small dens.”

He smirked. I waited a beat before answering him.

“Or maybe it’s because you sent Catrin to seduce me, and get leverage on my patrons?” I returned his smile.

The Keeper went very still. I gave him a level look, letting those words sink in, then continued.

“Let’s not bullshit one another, Keeper. You are not a small man. You’re playing the game of immortals, and I know those sorts of stakes. Neither are you just an ordinary proprietor. You agreed to this meeting because you have something that can help me, and I’m here because you have connections I can’t find anywhere else.”

The Keeper made an odd sucking sound through his teeth, turning the motion into a cold scoff. “So you knew what she was about, then. I wondered what was going on there. Not like my Cat to get stonewalled so bad.”

I kept a faint, knowing smile on my face despite feeling uneasy inside. This was dangerous ground, and a risk. Catrin had given me some tips about her master’s personality to help in these negotiations. By convincing him that I was onto his game, I presented myself as a challenge, as an equal. He was a scavenger, an opportunist, and would be far more cautious about me if he believed I could keep up with him.

On the other hand, I had to pretend like I was taking advantage of Catrin, which didn’t sit well with me. I understood its necessity, and knew it would do neither of us any good if the Keeper suspected we’d been conspiring, but even still…

I’m not much of an actor. The aureflame lashes out at me when I break promises or tell blatant lies, same as it does when someone else lies to me while meeting my gaze.

And more than that…

She’d told me to do this, but I inwardly cringed at what I was about to say. I needed no magical backlash to feel hideous about it.

“You should have sent a more clever whore,” I told him in my most dismissive, uninterested voice, leaning back and sipping at the wine. “Or even a prettier one. Did you think a tavern wench who spends half her time lusting for what’s in my veins would get all my secrets from me?”

The Keeper shrugged, seemingly unbothered. “You two had a rapport. Got one another out alive during that business in Caelfall.”

“I was always curious about that. Why send her into that snake pit?”

The Keeper made a dismissive gesture, as though swiping away my words before they could reach him. “A few reasons. For one, most of my employees are little more than appetites on legs. Catrin’s got wits, most of the time."

"Besides.” He smiled conspiratorially. “As you said, she’s not my prettiest. She’s expendable.”

The woman on his lap let out a quiet, throaty laugh. Not so asleep as she seemed.

I kept my face blank, with effort. “Well, don’t bother sending another one of your parasites.”

He nodded, relaxing back into his chair. He seemed more comfortable than before, as though my churlishness had put him at ease. “So. You want to know about the Culling.”

I nodded. “Anything you can tell me. I know your establishment gets traffic from mercenaries and assassins, and those who hire them.”

“Nothing was organized under my roof,” the Keeper said smoothly.

“Of course,” I agreed. “I’m not here to throw suspicion on you, Keeper.”

Not that I’m not suspicious, I added silently. He’d elevated his business and obviously brought in new clientele. Had he also expanded into sedition, or even terrorism?

This man was a crime lord. From Catrin, and my own observations, I knew not all his people were just bed warmers. He’d hired Karog for a brief time as muscle, after all.

“Well, people say things.” The Keeper sipped at his own cup of wine. “Sometimes, they say things they don’t mean to say. Sometimes they whisper things in the dark, or cry them aloud in the throes of passion. Sometimes they spit them in hatred. And this place…”

He gestured to the rich wooden walls. “It remembers, and whispers it all to me.”

The Keeper tilted his head in a lazy motion, then tipped his brass cup. Red wine, dark as blood, dripped down over the woman in his lap. It fell first on the pale skin between her breasts, then formed a meandering line of droplets like marks on an adventurer’s map up her chest, her neck, then her chin.

Her lips parted just as the dripping line reached them, letting the wine splash her tongue. She shuddered, the motion passing down her entire body like a cresting wave. The bare leg emerging from her dress rose before folding in, her toes brushing the green fabric.

I didn’t realize I was following that entire chain of motions until the Keeper chucked the empty cup onto the table, startling me with its clatter. It rolled a ways, almost tumbling off the opposite end. A single bead of liquid dripped down to the carpet as it came to a stop, putting a red stain there.

“I know there were thirty three people killed that night,” the Keeper said. “A good number of them choked to death on their own vomit inside a mansion in the Fountain Ward. And all the targets…”

He swiped a bit of wine off the woman’s chin and pressed it to his mouth, suckling noisily. “All of the targets were big names set to swing their steel cocks about in his majesty’s big hoorah.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I narrowed my eyes. I only had eighteen deaths reported, and a number more wounded, not counting the attackers themselves. “Thirty three?”

“Right, right.” The Keeper tapped his nose. “Guess word of that hasn’t gotten in, yet. But we should discuss price.”

My jaw set. “The Emperor’s court is prepared to pay handsomely for any—”

“Fuck your royal coin,” the Keeper spat, baring his teeth. “Don’t insult me, Alder Knight. You know that isn’t the kind of currency I trade in.”

I smiled tightly. “Yet it seems like you have plenty of it.” I gestured to the lavishly furnished room.

Again, the Keeper made that sucking noise. “It has a tendency to accumulate when you’ve been around as long as I have.”

“Then what do you want?” I asked.

“The only thing that matters,” the old devil almost hissed. “Power, man. Leverage. Know what someone wants, and what they’re willing to give for it, and you have them body and soul.”

His crooked, calloused fingers ran up the woman’s leg.

“Stop that,” I snapped before I could stop myself. “I don’t need a show.”

“Too bad,” the Keeper said without heat, cupping her knee now. “This is my house. She is mine, by her own agreement. Isn’t that right, my sweet?”

She mumbled something I couldn’t hear. Her black hair was a mess, veiling most of her face. She was writhing in his lap now, and not in discomfort.

“Wondering if I’ve done this with Catrin?” The Keeper asked, chuckling without taking his eyes off the squirming woman.

“What do you want?” I demanded, growing more impatient and uncomfortable by the moment.

“They make such a show of power. The lords, the priests.” The Keeper ignored me, continuing to fondle the woman in increasingly suggestive ways. “Make it seem like it’s all swords and castles and bluster. But take my girls.”

His hand glided down her leg, moving lower. She murmured something, her own arms limp.

“Each and every one of them would be a bad story most places. The eyes in the dark, the sweet voice in the woods, the fair face in the water inviting you in to drown. That’s power, the likes of which men have been afraid of and enraptured by since before they could grunt words. Yet, they’re all slaves to their hungers, their needs.”

She moaned as his fingers brushed the space between her legs, then moved up her navel. My heart had started to beat faster, my anger a steadily building pressure. The Keeper never took his eyes off the woman’s face.

“Give them a way to fill that need, and suddenly they’re not the almighty monsters lurking at the edges of civilization.” He let out a throaty laugh. “They’re just a pack of simpering hounds waiting for me to feed them. Or maybe I should say cats? They can be willful, certainly, but they’ll still fetch rats and birds for me.”

“Stop,” I ordered him. “I’m not here to play your games.”

“That’s exactly why you’re here,” the Keeper disagreed without lifting his head. “I can point you in the right direction, and in return you pay my price. That price is that you become a piece in my games. Didn’t the dead slut tell you? Maybe she’s not as impressed by your lordly member as she’s made you think.”

“Don’t—”

I clamped my mouth shut at the last moment. The Keeper didn’t miss it, and his ghoulish grin widened.

“If I’d found her before Reynard did,” he told me conspiratorially, and now

he met my eyes. “That demon trollop who spun your head would have taken the same deal all my other girls took.”

At the slow dawning horror on my face, his thin lips split into a ghastly smile. “As I said. They’re all just appetites on legs.”

I don’t remember moving. One moment I was sitting, hand tight on the chair’s arm, and the next I was on my feet with my axe in hand, looming at my full height. I was breathing hard, heart thudding in my chest, blood drumming in my ears.

My thoughts and nerves became a splintered mirror. A silver nova of rage.

The chair clattered behind me as I loomed over the Keeper, weapon half lifted. I stopped as I felt something between me and him.

I blinked, not understanding at first. Then I realized. The black haired woman wasn’t in his lap anymore. She was standing directly in front of me, facing me. She wasn’t very tall, her nose level with my lower chest, and she was slim. Her dark hair covered most of her face, falling around her shoulders and down her back.

She lifted her head, and one eye peered up into mine. It was a pale yellow-green, like a sickly moon, with a deeply black pupil. A wolf’s eye.

A bead of sweat prickled at my temple. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Nothing supernatural about the sensation I felt then. It was simpler than that. Pure, ordinary, instinctive fear.

I didn’t know what she was, but I understood something very plain. She was dangerous, and if I moved wrong, for all my reflexes and strength, she could tear my throat out in an instant. She’d moved so fast, I hadn’t even seen it.

Not just an accessory to show off the Keeper’s wealth after all. She was a bodyguard.

“You’d draw steel on me in my hall?” The Keeper asked, his voice low and dangerous.

I looked past that unblinking, inhuman eye peering at me through black locks to meet his gaze. “You provoked me.” My voice shook a bit.

The Keeper laughed, unapologetic. “I did at that. It’s fine, Saska. Just a small lapse in self control, nothing more. Come back to me.”

Saska sniffed twice, the motion causing her scattered hair to shift away from a full, pretty mouth. She smiled at me, revealing ivory colored canines, then melted back into the couch. She curled close to the Keeper, still watching me without blinking once. He threw an arm around her shoulders.

Furious and shaken, I turned to the door.

“Where are you going?” The Keeper asked, sounding bored.

“We’re done,” I spat.

“But you’ve already paid my price!” The Keeper laughed. “Don’t you want your information?”

I stopped halfway to the door, turning to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I told you already,” the Keeper said. “Information is my trade.”

When I just stared at him in confusion, he held up three fingers. “I now know three things I wasn’t certain of before you walked through that door. One, I can’t trust my Cat anymore. She’s compromised, and has been lying to me about you. Maybe other things as well.”

He shrugged as though it were no large matter, while I felt a pit opening up in my stomach. How had he—

The wolf eyed woman, Saska, was still smiling at me. I remembered how she’d murmured in pleasure throughout the conversation.

No, not pleasure. She’d been whispering to him. Had she been the one to see through me? Not only that, but acting as a distraction, messing with my focus.

“Two,” the Keeper continued, folding one finger down. “The castle isn’t yet aware that the attacks weren’t all isolated to the city. The fact you were surprised by the number I gave you proved that. Either that, or they haven’t trusted you with all the details yet, which is also useful to me. And three…”

He leaned forward, extending just one finger now as a cruel smile formed on his gaunt face. “The last active Knight of the Alder Table really did let an Abgrüdai succubus compromise him.”

My heart thumped in my chest, hard enough it felt like it might burst. After everything, had Cat…

Think, you fool. He’s already manipulated you, don’t let him keep doing it.

I forced calm over myself, and used my head. Catrin had promised me she hadn’t revealed my secret to her master. She’d done it while I’d had her in a lie-burning hold. It wasn’t infallible, but it would have taken incredible will and concentration to keep a straight face under it.

And Catrin wasn’t the only one who could have told the Keeper about Fidei.

Relieved, the last of my panic faded away. I let out a small, breathy laugh, feeling foolishly giddy.

“What are you chuckling about?” The Keeper demanded, annoyed.

“So it’s true,” I said in a steadier voice. “You really did use to be a crowfriar.”

The Keeper sniffed, going back to playing with Saska’s hair. “I’m just an innkeeper.”

“And now they’re snooping around again,” I continued. “I saw you talking to Myrddin last month.”

He must have been the one to tell the Keeper about me, I thought. Or had it been Kross?

It wasn’t what I’d come here to find out.

The Keeper sneered. “Ask your questions, Headsman. Three for three. I’ll give you an answer for each secret I pulled from you.”

Three questions. I slid my axe back into its ring, sat, and glared at the man as I considered what I should ask. He’d thrown me off my guard, and I need to reassert control, make this count. Saska watched me with curious interest.

I asked my first question, the one I found most pressing. “Do you know who’s behind these attacks?”

The Keeper answered without hesitation. “No, but I’ve got some theories.”

I nodded, waiting. Now he’d gotten what he wanted, I didn’t think he’d toy with me any longer.

“All the targets were famous warriors with a known battle magic,” the Keeper elaborated. “In other words, threats.”

I’d already guessed that much. “Some members of the court are under the belief that this was someone’s plan to ensure victory in the tournament, for themselves or a fighter of their choice.”

“Do you believe that?” The Keeper asked with a sneer, letting me know what he thought of the idea.

“No,” I admitted. “That’s too easy. And something about all this… it feels too manic.”

The Keeper leaned forward, his voice lowering in volume even as it spiked with intensity. Saska curled closer to him in an almost unconscious reaction. “It reminds you of the war, don’t it?”

I went still. I hadn’t wanted to give the thought voice, but…

“Yes.”

“Reminds of you of the Recusants,” the Keeper said with a cruel slash of a grin. “And what do you know, there are two of their royals here in the city right now.”

I shook my head. “Calerus and Hyperia Vyke are guests of the Ardent Round. I hardly think they’re in a position to organize a string of assassinations.”

The Keeper’s voice became deadly serious. “You don’t know the Condor, do you Headsman?”

The Condor of Talsyn, otherwise known as King Hasur Vyke, was the last great Recusant leader since the war, the only one the Accord had never managed to cow or defeat.

“He sent his children here for peace talks,” I argued, not wanting to believe it. If the Vykes were behind this, then…

That was a worst case scenario. I would exhaust all other possibilities first.

“Besides,” the Keeper added, shrugging. “The Vykes don’t have to lift a finger. My Cat told me they claimed a potent ally back in Caelfall.”

“Yith,” I breathed. “This feels far too clean for a demon. They’re wild dogs you loose on something you want dead, not poisoned arrows.”

Even as I said it, I knew I was wrong. Some demons could be cunning. Those were often the most dangerous. The scars on my face itched.

And Yith had been working this city for almost a year, fermenting paranoia and distrust. He’d been quiet since I’d wounded him in Lias’s sanctum. Had this been what the bloated fly had been up to?

I asked my second question. “You said there were attacks outside the city. Who?”

“A retinue of knights from Idhir,” the Keeper said smoothly. Saska had poured him another cup of wine, which she held up to his lips for him to sip. “Specifically, from Aureia’s Gate. They’d sent some of their best to make a show in Forger’s tourney.”

“Are any of them still alive?” I asked.

The Keeper lifted an eyebrow. “Is that your third question?”

I glared. “No. Answer it or don’t.”

The Keeper smiled. “One. I imagine they’ll be arriving soon.”

One more. I drummed my fingers on the chair’s arm, thinking.

“Go on,” the Keeper cajoled me. “You know what you want to ask, Headsman.”

He leaned forward, his eyelids narrowing. “Ask me about the artist. Ask me if I know who Anselm of Ruon is.”

He had me, and we both knew it. I’d been chasing that particular ghost almost as long as I’d been in the city, and I felt certain he was involved in all of this.

But I also sensed a trap. It felt too much like misdirection, like bait dangled in front of me on a line to lead me down a specific direction.

Or maybe I was just paranoid. Even still, in a flash of intuition, I asked a different question.

“Can you help me track down Yith?” I asked the Keeper.

The man’s grin was terrible to behold, like a wound in his skull. “Ah, you poor fool. He’s just the attack dog, as you said.”

“If I can find him,” I disagreed, “then I can defang this. If he’s connected to these attacks, as you suggested, then I need to take him out of play.”

After that, I would deal with the twins.

The Keeper sank back into his couch, looking deflated. Saska gave him a pitying look, rubbing at his chest as though to comfort him.

“Fine,” the man sighed. “I know someone who can help you track the Carmine Killer down. He’ll extract his own price, though.”

“Fine,” I said, impatient. “Who is he? Where can I find him?”

The Keeper lifted his chin, looking at me down his crooked nose. “My Cat will take you.”

He flicked his fingers, and almost as though he’d cast a spell the door opened. Catrin stepped through, her chiton swishing quietly as she took up position on one side of the table, folding her hands behind her back.

Had she been listening? Or did the Keeper have the ability to draw his people’s attention somehow?

“Yes, boss?” She asked in a neutral, almost bored voice. She pointedly avoided looking at me.

“His lordship needs to speak to one of the old patrons,” the Keeper said, his pale gray eyes fixed on me. “The Count.”

Was it my imagination, or did Catrin’s face go even paler than usual? “Uh… you’re sure, boss?”

The Keeper shrugged. I caught Catrin’s attention and nodded. She blew out a breath, adjusting a coil of chestnut hair.

“Well. Shit.”