Inspector Maren Voss of the Crown Detective Bureau had been looking at dead men for nine years, and she had developed a rule about them.
The dead didn’t lie.
Everyone around them did.
She crouched on the stone floor of the old east gallery of Marrow Pit Nine with a hand-lamp in her right hand and her left hand, the brass one, resting on her knee.
Its fingers clicked softly as they flexed.
In front of her lay a night-watchman named Tobin Marsh, twenty-two years old, with a hole in the side of his neck and an expression of profound surprise.
Beside him lay a mana-hound with a hole in its eye.
Behind her, at a careful distance, stood a cluster of men in good coats.
They were Concern men: a deputy manager, a clerk, a lawyer, two Debt Marshals.
They had been standing there for half an hour, and in that time they had told her four separate times that this was clearly an accident.
“A tragic accident,” the lawyer said, for the fifth time.
He was a silver-haired man with very clean fingernails.
“The hound turned on its handler.
It happens.
They’re unpredictable creatures.
The poor boy fought it off, and in the struggle he fell on his own—”
“Climbing spike,” said Maren.
“I’m sorry?”
“He was stabbed in the neck with a climbing spike.” She pointed with the lamp.
“See the wound?
Square, four-sided, tapered.
That’s a mountaineering iron.
The kind you strap to your palm.
Same wound in the hound’s eye.” She looked up at the lawyer.
“Did Mr.
Marsh carry climbing irons, sir?
On a night-watch?
In a flat gallery?”
The lawyer opened his mouth and then closed it.
Maren stood up.
Her knees cracked.
She was twenty-eight and felt fifty this morning.
She had a long, sharp, unlovely face, all angles, dark hair scraped back into a severe knot, and the permanently tired eyes of a woman who had been woken up at the fourth bell to look at a corpse.
She wore the Bureau’s dark blue overcoat, too big in the shoulders, and she smelled of clove cigarettes.
She walked to the grate.
It stood open over the black mouth of the spoil chute.
She held the lamp over it and looked down.
There were scratches on the rim, gouged into the rock.
Fresh.
A lot of them, close together.
And in the bone dust on the gallery floor, around the grate, there were footprints.
Bare footprints on one side.
A booted print on the other.
Both coming up.
“Inspector,” said the deputy manager, a little too quickly.
“I really must ask you not to—”
“What’s down there?”
“Spoil.
Waste rock.”
“How far down?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Maren looked at him.
Then she looked at the lawyer, who was looking at the deputy manager, and at the two Debt Marshals, who were looking anywhere except at the hole in the floor.
“I’d like to go down,” she said.
“Get me a rope.”
“That,” said the lawyer smoothly, “will not be possible.”
She was back at the Bureau by noon.
By one o’clock, she was standing in front of the Chief Inspector’s desk.
Chief Inspector Aldous Penhallow was a large, slow, comfortable man who kept a decanter of brandy in his bottom drawer and a framed portrait of his three plump daughters on the wall behind him.
He listened to everything she had to say without interrupting.
Then he steepled his fingers and looked at her over them with an expression of great sorrow.
“No,” he said.
“Sir—”
“The Fennick Mining Concern has filed its report.
Death by misadventure.
The hound turned.
Tragic.
The Concern will pay the family compensation.” He spread his hands.
“The case is closed, Maren.”
“There are footprints coming out of that chute.
Someone climbed out.
Someone who’d been thrown down there and wasn’t supposed to come back.”
“The case,” Penhallow said gently, “is closed.”
“There’s something down there they don’t want anyone to see.”
“Maren.” He sighed.
“Do you know who pays the Bureau’s coal bill?
Do you know who paid for the new carbines?
Do you know who sat next to the Commissioner at the Midwinter Gala?” He shook his head.
“Lady Isolde Fennick.
That’s who.
Go home.
Get some sleep.
Tomorrow I’ve got a nice simple warehouse fire for you in Brassmarket.”
Maren Voss went back to her desk.
She sat down.
She lit a clove cigarette with a match struck on the thumb of her brass hand, and she smoked it all the way down to the end, staring at nothing.
Then she pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward her and began to write a list.
At the top of the list she wrote: Pit Nine.
Accident list for the past 24 hrs.
Underneath that she wrote: Dez Harlow.
Lucan Marr.
Then she looked at the second name for a long time, and underlined it twice.
Ten days later, Lucan Marr stood in a room above Brask & Daughter with the Exchequer’s golden light spread across the walls around him like a map of the world.
It was a small room.
Ottilie had rented it to him at a price that made him suspect she was cheating him again.
It had a sloping ceiling, a narrow bed, a washstand, a crooked window looking out over the rooftops of Tallowgate, and a door he had fitted with three locks bought from the Market.
Downstairs, he could hear the clocks ticking, and Ottilie’s voice, and Nell’s.
Nell had moved in four days ago.
It had been Ottilie’s idea.
She’d announced it without asking anyone, standing in the middle of the shop with her arms folded: the girl couldn’t go back to the Cradles now, not with Gorse out there and the whole mill quarter knowing what had happened on that landing, and Ottilie had a spare bed, and it would be nice, she said, for the sign to finally be true for once.
Nell had not wanted charity.
She had said so loudly, at length, and with some very creative language she must have learned from Dez.
Ottilie had listened to all of it, then put her to work behind the counter at three copper a day, and told her she’d be docked one for every word of cursing.
Nell owed her fourteen copper already.
Ottilie was keeping a tally on the wall.
Lucan listened to them arguing downstairs, and found, to his surprise, that he was smiling.
Then he turned back to the panel.
[ Clean Currency Balance: 612 Silver, 30 Copper ]
It had taken him ten days of hard thinking to build up that number.
After the restoratives, he had understood the danger.
A miracle in a bottle drew attention.
Pickett had already been asking questions in every pub in Tallowgate, and two of Saul Varney’s men had been seen standing on the corner of Needle Lane, watching the shop.
So he had stopped selling miracles.
Instead he sold boring things.
He bought them from the Market with raw coin: sacks of black tea from somewhere that wasn’t this world, better than anything sold in Grisholt; bolts of fine wool; casks of brandy; boxes of spice, pepper and cinnamon and cloves, the kind of thing that came in on the river barges from the southern colonies and sold for fortunes in the Spire.
Ottilie moved them, a little at a time, through fences and dock-hands and warehouse clerks who owed her favours.
It was “salvage,” she told them.
It was “a little something that fell off a barge.” In Tallowgate, things fell off barges every day.
Nobody looked twice at a bag of pepper.
The Thread Office watched coins, not cloves.
Six hundred and twelve silver.
Clean.
Six times what he had paid for Nell’s freedom.
It still wasn’t much.
Not compared to the numbers floating over the heads of the Spire men he had seen in the streets.
But it was enough to begin.
“Roster,” he said.
The panel changed colour.
It went from gold to a deep, rich bronze, and the light it threw on the walls was warmer and redder, like firelight.
The text rearranged itself into columns, and down the left side ran a list of names.
Hundreds of names.
Each one had a small square portrait beside it, a painted face, like the miniatures rich families hung in their halls.
[ ROSTER — Bound Servants ]
[ Each Bound Servant is a soul drawn from a fallen world, given new flesh in yours.
They serve the Account Holder for the full length of their new life.
Their loyalty is absolute.
Their personality, memory, skills and will are their own.
]
[ Bound Servants are MORTAL.
They can be wounded.
They can die.
Death is permanent.
No refunds are given.
]
[ Bound Servants arrive WITHOUT legal identity in the Account Holder’s world.
]
[ Slots available: 2 / 2 ]
[ Grades accessible at Rank 1: ]
▸ GRADE I — Common (labourers, clerks, servants, street fighters) — 20 to 90 Clean Silver
▸ GRADE II — Veteran (trained specialists, soldiers, professionals) — 200 to 700 Clean Silver
▸ GRADE III — Elite (LOCKED — Requires Rank 2)
▸ GRADE IV and above (LOCKED)
[ Upkeep: Each Bound Servant requires a monthly stipend paid through the Exchequer.
Grade I: 5 Silver.
Grade II: 25 Silver.
Raw currency accepted.
Unpaid upkeep causes gradual loss of strength and ability (loyalty is unaffected).
]
Lucan read it carefully.
Then he read it again.
Loyalty is absolute.
Death is permanent.
He had spent the last ten days thinking about this moment, lying on the narrow bed at night, staring at the sloping ceiling.
Two slots.
Only two.
The system had made sure he couldn’t fill his life with servants and stand behind them.
Every one he chose would have to matter.
And every one he chose would be a person.
Not a weapon.
Not a tool.
A person, with a will of their own, torn out of a dead world and put down in his, without a name or a home or a single piece of paper to prove they existed.
Bound to him for the rest of their life.
He found he didn’t like that very much.
He thought about it for a long time.
In the end, he decided that he would have to live with it, the way he had decided he would have to live with Tobin Marsh.
He needed help.
He couldn’t do what he was planning to do alone.
And he wasn’t going to get help any other way.
So what did he need first?
He needed someone who could fight.
That was obvious.
He was stronger since the rank-up, much stronger, but he had no training.
On the landing in the Cradles, he’d won because the two thugs had underestimated him and because his body had moved faster than they expected.
It wouldn’t happen that way twice.
Sooner or later someone was going to come for him, Varney or Gorse or the Concern, and they were going to come properly.
He needed someone who could kill.
He filtered the list.
Grade II.
Combat.
The names thinned, but there were still dozens of them.
He began to read.
▸ Brannoch of the Seventh Wall (Grade II — Soldier) — Shield-bearer of a world that fell to the sea.
Unbreakable in defence.
Slow.
Speaks rarely.
— 350 Silver
▸ Sister Ilse Varn (Grade II — Battle Cleric) — Warrior-nun of a world eaten by its own god.
Heals wounds.
Burns the faithless.
Prays constantly.
— 520 Silver
▸ Kesh (Grade II — Hunter) — Tracker and archer from a world of endless forest, now ash.
Cannot abide cities.
— 290 Silver
He read on.
There were soldiers and sell-swords and duellists and assassins, and every one had a story attached, a few lines summing up a whole dead world.
It was like reading the headstones in a very large graveyard.
He almost passed over the next one.
▸ Rook (Grade II — Duellist / Executioner)
Origin: Saltreach, a world of island kingdoms, drowned when its moon fell into the sea.
Former Royal Executioner of the Coral Throne.
Later a champion duellist, a pirate, a deserter, and a very bad husband (three times).
Skills: Master of blade and knife.
Expert in close combat, assassination and intimidation.
Ability — SHADOW-STITCH: May step through shadow to another shadow within twenty paces.
Three uses per hour.
Weaknesses: Shadow-stitch fails in strong direct light.
Vain.
Loud.
Eats constantly.
Cannot swim (ironically).
Personality: Cheerful.
Cost: 480 Silver
Cheerful.
An executioner whose personality, according to the system, was cheerful.
Lucan looked at the little portrait.
It showed a man in his thirties with a long, narrow, sun-browned face and a mane of black hair pulled back in a sailor’s braid.
He had a hooked nose and very white teeth, one of them gold, and he was grinning out of the frame as if he had just heard the best joke of his life.
Lucan thought about Dez.
“Him,” he said.
[ Confirm purchase: Rook (Grade II).
Cost: 480 Clean Silver.
]
[ Upkeep: 25 Silver / month.
]
[ Select arrival point.
]
He pointed at the floor in front of the bed.
“There.”
[ Confirmed.
]
Nothing happened for a moment.
Then the air in the middle of the room tore open.
It was like watching a sheet of paper being ripped down the middle, except the paper was the world, and behind it was dark, and the dark smelled of salt.
A cold wind came through the tear, wet and heavy, and with it a sound Lucan had never heard in his life, in either life.
A great slow roar, rising and falling, rising and falling, so loud it shook the window glass.
The sea.
The sound of a whole sea, very far away, drowning a world.
Something fell out of the tear and hit the floorboards with a heavy, wet thump.
The tear closed.
The sound stopped.
The room was silent except for the dripping.
There was a man lying in a puddle on Lucan’s floor.
He was soaked to the skin and tangled in strands of black seaweed.
He was wearing what had once been a fine shirt of white silk, now torn and stained, tall boots full of water and a pair of leather breeches.
There was a long curved sword in a sheath at his hip and a row of throwing knives in a bandolier across his chest.
He was coughing violently, and every time he coughed, seawater came out of him.
He rolled onto his hands and knees and coughed some more.
Then he sat back on his heels, pushed the dripping hair out of his face, and looked up.
He looked around the little room.
He looked at the sloping ceiling, the crooked window, the narrow bed.
Then his eyes came to rest on Lucan, and they went very still.
Lucan felt something then.
He would have trouble, later, finding the words for it.
It was like a rope pulling taut between them, or a key turning in a lock.
It wasn’t magic, exactly.
It was a certainty, cold and heavy and absolute, settling into place behind the man’s eyes.
Lucan could see it happen.
He could see the man know.
Rook got slowly to his feet.
He was tall, taller than Lucan by half a head, and he moved like a cat, every motion loose and easy and dangerous.
He stood there for a moment, dripping on the floorboards.
Then he put his right fist over his heart and bowed from the waist, very low and very formal, so low that his wet braid swung forward over his shoulder and slapped against the floor.
“Master,” he said.
His voice was deep and rough and rolling, with an accent Lucan couldn’t place, as if every word had been bounced off a ship’s deck before it reached him.
“Don’t call me that,” Lucan said.
Rook straightened up.
One black eyebrow went up.
“No?”
“No.
Lucan’s fine.
Or nothing.”
“Lucan.” Rook rolled the name around in his mouth as if he were tasting it.
Then he smiled.
It was a huge, brilliant, wicked smile, all white teeth and one gold one.
“Lucan.
Good.
Good name.
Sounds like a man who pays his debts.” He looked around the room again.
“So.
Is this heaven?”
“No.”
“Hell, then.”
“Grisholt.”
“Never heard of it.” Rook squeezed seawater out of his braid onto the floor.
“Is there food in Grisholt?”
“Yes.”
“Good.
Because I’ll be honest with you, Lucan, I was drowning a moment ago.
Quite badly.
There was a great deal of water involved.
My whole kingdom was at the bottom of the sea.
My last wife was at the bottom of the sea, which was fine, she was a terrible woman, but still, it puts a man off his dinner.
And now I find I’m very, very hungry.” He patted his flat stomach.
“Is it far?
The food?”
Lucan just looked at him.
Of all the things he had prepared himself for, of all the scenarios he had imagined lying on that bed at night, he had not prepared himself for this.
“You just died,” he said.
“I did.”
“Your whole world just died.”
“It did.” Rook’s smile didn’t waver, but something moved behind it, very deep down, very fast, like a shark turning under dark water.
“And now I’m here.
And I’m yours.
I can feel it, you know.
Like a hook in the chest.” He tapped his breastbone.
“I don’t mind.
I’ve served kings.
You’ve got a better face than most of them.
And I’m alive, which is more than anyone else I’ve ever known can say.” He shrugged.
“So.
Food.
Then you can tell me who you’d like me to kill.”
The door burst open.
Nell stood in the doorway with a broom in her hands, held like a spear.
Behind her, Ottilie was coming up the stairs with a blunderbuss.
“We heard a crash—” Nell started.
Then she saw Rook.
Rook saw her.
He swept into another low, dripping bow.
“My lady,” he said gravely.
Nell’s mouth fell open.
Ottilie reached the top of the stairs, panting, and looked past her into the room.
She looked at the man in the soaked silk shirt with seaweed hanging from his shoulders.
She looked at the puddle on the floor.
She looked at Lucan.
Her glass eye had come loose in the excitement.
It rolled slowly around in its socket and came to rest pointing at the ceiling.
“Corpse,” she said, very calmly.
“Who is the pirate?
And why is he dripping on my floor?”
Lucan opened his mouth to explain, and found he had no idea where to start.
[ Bound Servant ROOK has arrived.
]
[ Status: Alive.
Healthy.
Hungry.
]
[ Legal Identity: NONE.
]
“He’s a friend,” Lucan said at last.
“He’s going to be staying with us.”
“Does he have papers?”
“No.”
“A name?”
“Rook.”
“A real name?”
Rook straightened up and gave her a brilliant golden smile.
“Madam, I have been called many things, by many people, in many tongues, and most of them weren’t very nice.
Rook will do.”
Ottilie looked at him for a long, long time.
Then she looked at Lucan.
Then she pushed her glass eye back into place with one finger and lowered the blunderbuss.
“He’s paying rent,” she said, and went back downstairs.
That night, Rook ate three whole loaves of bread, a pound of cheese, six sausages, a meat pie, a bowl of eel stew from the shop on the corner and four apples, and drank two bottles of Ottilie’s best red wine.
He told stories the whole time, loud and long and filthy, about kings he had beheaded and ships he had sunk and wives who had tried to poison him.
Nell laughed until she cried.
Even Ottilie snorted twice into her wine, though she pretended it was a cough.
Lucan listened and said very little.
He watched Rook’s eyes.
They were black and bright and constantly moving.
They checked the door every time anyone walked past in the lane outside.
They checked the window.
They checked the shadows in every corner of the room.
Every few minutes, without breaking off his story, Rook would shift slightly in his chair so that he had a clearer view of the stairs.
And twice, when he thought nobody was looking, Lucan saw him go quiet for a moment and stare into his wine.
The grin stayed on his face.
Everything else went somewhere very far away.
Somewhere wet and dark, at the bottom of a sea.
Later, when Nell and Ottilie had gone to bed, Rook sat with Lucan at the little table by the window.
The candle had burned down to a stub.
Outside, the smog glowed orange over the rooftops.
“Two men on the corner,” Rook said quietly.
The cheerful roar had gone out of his voice.
“Brown coats.
Bowler hats.
They’ve been there since sunset.
They change every three hours.”
“Saul Varney’s men.
He runs protection in Tallowgate.
He wants to know where Ottilie’s been getting her stock.”
“Do you want them dead?”
“Not yet.” Lucan looked out of the window at the two small shapes under the gas lamp at the end of the lane.
Above their heads, his new eyes could see the faint gold words.
Owes: 6 silver (Varney).
Is owed: 1 life.
“If they die, Varney sends more.
And the Detective Bureau starts asking why men keep dying on Needle Lane.”
Rook nodded slowly.
“So you’re the careful kind.”
“I have to be.”
“Hm.” Rook swirled the last of the wine in his cup.
“Then who do you want dead, Lucan?
Because a man doesn’t buy an executioner to guard his door.”
Lucan was silent for a while.
Then he told him about Varga.
He told him all of it: the pit, and the debt that only grew, and Dez, and the spoil chute, and the forty-three bodies in the cavern at the bottom of it.
He told him about the ledger, the red one Varga carried under his arm.
When he was finished, Rook sat very still for a long moment.
The candle guttered.
“I’d like that ledger,” Lucan said.
“The red book.”
“Yes.
I think it’s the key to everything.
I think there are things in it the Concern doesn’t know about.
Things Lady Fennick doesn’t know about.” Lucan turned his cup slowly on the table.
“In my old life, I learned one thing very well.
A man like Varga always keeps two sets of books.
One for the people above him.
One for himself.”
Rook looked at him for a long moment, with something new in his face.
Not quite respect.
Interest.
“Your old life,” he said.
“Another time.”
“Another time.” Rook smiled, slow and sharp and dangerous, and finished his wine.
“Well, then.
Where does this Varga keep his red book?”