‘You should have come to us first. We could have helped. We’re the fucking Inquisition, if you hadn’t noticed.’
‘They said they would kill them in an instant,’ Feror blubbered, ‘if I so much as breathed a word about it to the Inquisition. They just wanted background information. I didn’t see it as a big issue, just a little information.’
‘Have you seen People’s Observer? This forged rag that has now spread about the city like a plague?’
Feror nodded, and he closed his eyes with more tears streaming down his face.
‘There’s your big fucking issue. The effectiveness of the Knights depends upon the population’s favour now. I’ve no idea how they’ll react, but I’m guessing it won’t be kind — especially to Lan. They’ll probably want to lynch her.’
‘I know,’ Feror sobbed. ‘I know.’
Fulcrom stared at him for a while longer, and kicked at Feror’s legs to release some aggression. ‘What do you know of the anarchists’ organization? I want addresses. I want names. Otherwise I’ll hand you over to the Emperor’s special forces and let them deal with you.’
The distraught cultist revealed only a handful of facts. He didn’t know any leaders, had never even seen Shalev. The anarchists — such as they were — operated in splinter cells, virtually independent of each other, united only in their hatred of the rest of the city.
Feror had seen his family one member at a time in the top floor of a backstreet tavern, and only for a few minutes at the most, enough to ensure his loyalty to them. He’d pleaded for their return but they refused until they’d bled him dry of information.
‘Are they still with the anarchists?’ Fulcrom demanded.
Feror nodded.
Fulcrom’s rage ebbed, and mental clarity returned to him. Could he have acted any differently than the old cultist who was protecting his family? What if they’d taken Lan? Fulcrom hauled him to his feet and stood toe-to-toe with the man.
‘We’ll get them back for you.’
‘How?’ Feror’s eyes brimmed with hope.
‘We’ll use the Knights while we still can.’ Wherever the hell they are. ‘Presumably you had a contact, someone to go to when you found something useful?’
‘A landlord at the tavern. I’d go to him and he’d send word. We’d meet in his upper room.’
Tane and Vuldon returned to their quarters, finding Fulcrom and
Feror sat across a table from each other, in a contemplative silence.
‘Which fucker told?’ Vuldon demanded.
Cautiously, Fulcrom explained what Feror had done while the old man stared at the table, not daring to meet their eyes while his guilt was aired. Neither of the Knights made a move to threaten the man, which either showed how much they’d grown into their role, or revealed how stunned they were.
‘Now what?’ Vuldon asked.
‘We go to get his family back for him,’ Fulcrom replied.
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
‘Vuldon, we get his family back. You of all people know how important his children are to him.’ He wished he didn’t have to mention that fact, but it seemed to hit Vuldon where required.
‘Where’s Lan?’ Tane enquired, padding around to Fulcrom’s side.
‘Still with Ulryk.’
‘I suspect it’s easier for the old girl to keep away for now.’
‘You don’t hate her?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘You didn’t know her history.’
‘Oh, we knew everything, old boy,’ Tane replied with a wink, much to Fulcrom’s surprise. ‘These cultists yap like hounds to please us Knights. Who knows, the amount of information I took from those show-offs, I might have made a decent Inquisition aide after all.’
‘And it never bothered you?’
Tane shrugged.
Fulcrom glanced to Vuldon, waiting for his response. ‘I know what it’s like to be judged,’ Vuldon grunted. ‘She proved herself. Only thing that matters is a job well done.’
‘Whether or not the people of the city think that’s what matters is something else entirely,’ Fulcrom said.
‘No good crying over spilt milk,’ Vuldon declared. ‘Action’s better than us sitting here wondering what they think of us.’
‘What,’ Tane said, ‘we’re just going to ignore any of this happened?’
‘I’d say so.’
‘But we’re nothing more than the Emperor’s tools for propaganda and now that opportunity has gone.’
‘No,’ Vuldon snarled. ‘Well, yes, that’s true, but what else d’you expect from politicians? We’ve also done fuck-loads for this city, saved dozens of lives and halted just as many crimes, and I’m not giving up because of this. I’ll only stop when I’m dragged away — you can bury me in this outfit.’ Vuldon pulled at his shirt before turning to Fulcrom, who felt a spark of pride. ‘So,’ Vuldon continued, ‘do we get this joker’s family back or sit here like idiots?’ Vuldon tilted his chin to indicate the cultist, who was silent but wide-eyed.
‘We get his family,’ Fulcrom replied.
*
They headed into the caves undercover, an hour after Feror had gone ahead with his request to deliver information. He had given them an address across the road and been told to wait. It was a run-down shell of a room that overlooked the street alongside the Dryad Tavern, a three-floor joint deep in the new territory of Underground North. It was night, and the glass that lined the roof of the enormous cavern cast no light in the darkness. The street was empty and something didn’t quite sit right with Fulcrom: there was an absence of activity. With a couple of hundred thousand people within this cavern, he expected to see some of them.
According to the cultist, Feror was always taken to the top floor of the Dryad Tavern by hooded Cavesiders, where he would then reveal any information about the Knights: their movements, their general status — and, of course, their pasts.
‘How do you feel,’ Fulcrom asked the two Knights, ‘about the anarchists hijacking the People’s Observer?’
Tane wore a pained and tired expression. ‘It wasn’t fully correct, not that the people would really care. I don’t have any dealings with my father’s business. I frittered away all the money deliberately, because of where it came from, and I… Oh what’s the point?’
Vuldon mumbled, ‘I suppose in this case, the People’s Observer is generally closer to the true facts than the shit the Emperor’s been hawking around.’
‘Are you fit to put this aside and carry on?’ Fulcrom asked.
‘If you think the public will be fine with us,’ Tane said. ‘Let’s face it, most of what we were about was image and now look at it.’
‘Then maybe we can replace that with some substance,’ Fulcrom replied.
After that brief exchange, they focused on the window opposite, waiting for evidence of life on the top floor. Finally lanterns were lit and figures stirred on the inside, three or four of them.
‘Time to go,’ Fulcrom declared. ‘Tane, search the side rooms. It’s unlikely they’ll show him his family at first, but they’ll be nearby.’
Back into the streets. Tane followed the route up over fences and along the rear of the adjacent building, searching for a high entry point, while Fulcrom and Vuldon took the more difficult and obvious route of heading through the tavern.
The spit and sawdust joint was quiet inside, maybe five customers staring into their drinks at the bar in a fug of weed smoke, while the man behind it — a thuggish-looking brute dressed more like a bounty hunter, with close-cropped hair and earrings — tried to stop them from reaching a doorway leading upstairs.
‘Out of bounds, lads,’ he warned, jumping over the bar with a surprising athleticism.
He made a move to grab Fulcrom, but Vuldon intercepted him, grabbing the man’s fist in his own and punching his jaw, snapping his head back to one side. The man didn’t make a sound as Vuldon, with a pugnacious rage, jumped up and kicked him in the chest with so much force that the man flew backwards and smashed into the bar. Only a couple of the drinkers peered up from their pints to observe the racket.
Fulcrom and Vuldon headed up the stairs with stealth until they were on the top floor. Around the rim of one door, at the end of the corridor, Fulcrom could see light leaking from the room and, as they approached silently, voices beyond became prominent. One of the speakers was Feror.