Chapter 10
Adamat had spent the night in darkness, tied to a chair. At some point he hadn’t been able to hold back any longer and had soiled himself. The air smelled of piss and mold and dirt. He was in a basement of a heavily trafficked building and could hear the creak and moan of floorboards as feet moved across them.
He’d yelled out loud when he first awoke in utter darkness. Someone had come to tell him to shut up. He had recognized the grizzled voice of the thief and called him a bloody dog.
The thief had left, laughing to himself.
Morning had come hours ago. Adamat could tell by the light coming in through the cracks of the floor above him. He could hear his own stomach grumbling for food. His throat was parched, his tongue swollen. His neck, legs, and back were all sore from sitting tied to the chair for fourteen hours or more.
The whale ointment he’d used to smooth his wrinkles and hide his age was beginning to burn. The stuff was supposed to be wiped off in less than twelve hours.
He felt himself begin to drift and shook his head to keep himself awake. Sleeping in this situation was deadly. He needed to be awake. To be alert. He had a head injury. It would take more light to tell if his eyes were focusing properly.
It was difficult to tell where he was. Voices above him were muffled, and no particular smells – aside from those of his own piss and the cold damp of a basement – stood out.
Adamat heard the creak of a door, then saw a light off in the corner of his vision. He turned his head – a painful movement – to watch as a lamp bobbed down a flight of stairs. He could hear two voices. The thief was not one of them.
“He hasn’t said much except call Toak a bloody dog,” a man said. The voice was nasal and high. “Didn’t have anything in his pocketbook but a fifty-krana note and a false mustache. No checkbook. No identification. He could be a copper.”
A voice answered him, too low for Adamat to hear.
“Well, yeah,” the first voice said. “Most coppers carry a city mark on ’em, even if they’re trying for a bust. Could be one of those undercover-spy types. The field marshal has been using them to root out Kez spies.”
Another murmured answer.
The first voice had an edge of panic when he resumed speaking. “We didn’t know,” he said. “Toak said to grab ’im, so we did. He followed the lady back to the house.”
The speaker arrived in front of Adamat with the lamp. He held it to Adamat’s face. Adamat couldn’t help but shy away from the flickering candlelight. He blinked against the brightness and tried to see the speaker’s face and that of the murmuring man. It could be Vetas. Vetas would recognize Adamat in a second, and then he’d be a dead man, or worse.
“My name is Tinny,” the first voice said. “Look up at the gov’na.” Tinny grabbed Adamat’s chin and turned it toward the light. Adamat hawked the phlegm from his throat into Tinny’s eye. He was rewarded with a sharp crack across the face that knocked his chair over.
Adamat lay on his back, his hands crushed underneath him, stars floating across his vision. He couldn’t help the moan of pain that escaped his lips. He wondered if his wrists were broken.
“Pick him up,” the murmuring voice said.
Tinny hung the lamp from the ceiling and righted Adamat’s chair. Adamat considered head-butting the man, but thought his head had taken enough damage lately.
“What do you want from me?” Adamat tried to growl the words, but they came out as a rasp from his dry throat.
“That depends,” the murmured voice continued. “Why were you following the woman in the red dress?”
Why…? So it wasn’t Vetas. Or Vetas hadn’t recognized him yet.
“Wasn’t following anyone,” Adamat said. He tried to maintain a northwestern drawl. “Just shopping and going for a walk.”
“Without any identification? And a false mustache? Put the light to his face.”
Tinny grabbed Adamat’s chin again and shoved the lantern up next to it.
The murmuring voice gave a soft chuckle. “Ah, you bloody fool.”
“Fool for what? Going for a walk?” Adamat said.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
The lantern pulled away from Adamat’s face, and he could see Tinny clearly in the light. Tinny’s eyes were wide, his complexion pale. “It was an honest mistake, gov’na. I swear.”
“Leave,” the voice murmured. “Wait. Tell the master we have Inspector Adamat.”
Tinny hung the lamp back on the ceiling and left the room. Adamat couldn’t help the cold fear that spidered up the back of his neck. He squinted in the poor light, trying to see the source of that murmured voice.
“Adamat,” the murmuring voice said suddenly in his ear.
Adamat started. He hadn’t heard the man move, and there wasn’t another person in this dank basement. “Who, now?” Adamat said. Hold the pose. Play dumb. Don’t let them break you.
A soft sigh in his ear. A sudden blade against his naked throat. He had the all-too-vivid recollection of a razor blade breezing past his throat not more than two months ago. He pulled back instinctively, a sharp breath escaping him. The knife did not follow. A sudden tug at his bound wrists and they were free.
He rubbed some feeling back into them and stared straight ahead. He didn’t dare assume that he’d been released. He might take a knife in the ribs or across the throat at any time. No doubt the man behind him was ready for sudden moves, and even if Adamat overpowered him, Adamat was still in a basement beneath someone’s headquarters.
Adamat still didn’t know where he was. The murmuring voice belonged to someone who recognized him, even in such ill light. He cycled through the names of hundreds of men, trying to match a face to the voice, but to no avail.
He felt, more than heard, the presence move back in front of him. He could make out a heavyset shadow in a sleeveless shirt. A bald head shone in the candlelight. Definitely not Lord Vetas.
Adamat tried to blink the blurriness from his eyes and took in a deep breath. It caught in his throat at the slight scent of sweetbell and the recollection of a similar scent in his own home the same night that the Black Street Barbers had attacked him.
“Eunuch.” The word came out of his throat with a strangled sigh of relief. He felt his body sag against the ropes still tying his ankles to the chair, only to stiffen again a moment later as the realization set in that the Proprietor’s eunuch might very well be working with Lord Vetas.
The eunuch turned toward Adamat. “There,” he said. “Pretense dropped. Now, what were you doing following the woman in the red dress?”
Adamat sniffed. The smell of his own piss was somehow less bearable now this his hands were untied.
“Working,” he said.
“On?”
“I report to Field Marshal Tamas, and him only. You should know that.”
The eunuch tapped the side of his jaw with one finger, considering Adamat through narrow, unfeeling eyes.
“We’re on the same side, aren’t we?” Adamat said. The question came out just a little too desperate for his liking.
“In a few minutes my master will have decided what to do with you. If he decides to let you live, I suggest that you keep this little run-in to yourself.”
“‘If’?”
The eunuch shrugged. “I would like to know if we are working at cross-purposes. There are rumors about you, Adamat. Finding you where we did could mean one of two things.”
Adamat waited for the eunuch to elaborate on what those two things were. He didn’t. “That I’m with you, or against you?” Adamat hazarded a guess.
“These things are rarely so simple as ‘with or against.’”
“I was following a hunch,” Adamat said. “Trying to find someone.”
“Lord Vetas?”
Adamat watched the eunuch for several long seconds. No tic. No hint. No giveaways. He was as unreadable as polished marble. Was the Proprietor working with Vetas, providing enforcement and tails, as Adamat feared?