There was no lock on the door; in fact, it hung slightly ajar. Jean donned his silver mask again, then slipped his hatchets into his right hand and pushed them up the sleeve of his robe. He’d want them ready for use, but not quite visible, just in case he bumped into anyone who might still be awed by his vestments.
The door creaked slightly, and then he was into the warehouse, pressed up against the wall beside the door, watching and listening. The darkness was thick, crisscrossed by the overlying mesh of his mask. There was a strange smell in the air, above the expected smell of dirt and rotting wood-something like burnt metal.
He held his position, motionless, straining for several long minutes to catch any sound. There was nothing but the far-off creak and sigh of ships at anchor, and the sound of the Hangman’s Wind blowing out to sea. He reached beneath his robe with his left hand and drew out an alchemical light-globe, much like the one he’d carried beneath the Echo Hole. He gave it a series of rapid shakes, and it flared into incandescence.
By the pale white light of the globe he saw that the warehouse was one large open space. A pile of wrecked and rotted partitions against the far wall might have been an office at one time. The floor was hard-packed dirt, and here and there in corners or against walls were piles of debris, some under tarps.
Jean carefully adjusted the position of the globe, keeping it pressed close against his body so that it threw out light only in a forward arc. That would help to keep his activity unseen; he didn’t intend to spend more than a few minutes poking around in this place.
As he slowly paced toward the northern end of the warehouse, he became aware of another unusual odor, one that raised his hackles. Something had been dumped in this place and left to rot. Meat, perhaps…but the odor was sickly-sweet. Jean was afraid he knew what it was even before he found the bodies.
There were four of them, thrown under a heavy tarp in the northeastern corner of the building-three men and one woman. They were fairly muscular, dressed in undertunics and breeches, with heavy boots and leather gloves. This puzzled Jean until he peered at their arms and saw their tattoos. It was traditional, in Camorr, for journeymen artisans to mark their hands or arms with some symbol of their trade. Breathing through his mouth to avoid the stench, Jean shifted the bodies around until he could be sure of those symbols.
Someone had murdered a pair of glasswrights and a pair of goldsmiths. Three of the corpses had obvious stab wounds, and the fourth, the woman…she had a pair of raised purple welts on one cheek of her waxy, bloodless face.
Jean sighed and let the tarp settle back down on top of the bodies. As he did, his eye caught the glimmer of reflected light from the floor. He knelt down and picked up a speck of glass, a sort of flattened drop. It looked as though it had hit the ground in a molten state and cooled there. A brief flick of the light-globe showed him dozens of these little glass specks in the dirt around the tarp.
“Aza Guilla,” Jean whispered, “I stole these robes, but don’t hold it against these people. If I’m the only death-prayer they get, please judge them lightly, for the sorrow of their passing and the indignity of their resting place. Crooked Warden, if you could back that up somehow, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
There was a creak as the doors on the northern wall of the building were pushed open. Jean started to leap backward, but thought better of it; his light was no doubt already seen, and it would be best to play the dignified priest of Aza Guilla. His hatchets remained up his right sleeve.
The last people he expected to walk through the north door of the warehouse were the Berangias sisters.
Cheryn and Raiza wore oilcloaks, but the hoods were thrown back and their shark’s-teeth bangles gleamed by the light of Jean’s globe. Each of the sisters held a light-globe as well. They shook them, and a powerful red glare rose up within the warehouse, as though each woman were cupping fire in the palms of her hands.
“Inquisitive priest,” said one of the sisters. “A good evening to you.”
“Not the sort of place,” said the other, “where your order usually prowls without invitation.”
“My order is concerned with death in every form, and in every place.” Jean gestured toward the tarp with his light-globe. “There has been a foul act committed here; I was saying a death prayer, which is what every soul is due before it passes into the long silence.”
“Oh, a foul act. Shall we leave him to his business, Cheryn?”
“No,” said Raiza, “for his business has been curiously concerned with ours these past few nights, hasn’t it?”
“You’re right, Sister. Once or twice a-prowling, that we might excuse. But this priest has been persistent.”
“Unusually persistent.” The Berangias sisters were coming toward him, slowly, smiling like cats advancing on a crippled mouse. “On our docks and now in our warehouse…”
“Do you dare suggest,” said Jean, his heart racing, “that you intend to interfere with an envoy of the Lady of the Long Silence? Of Aza Guilla, the Goddess of Death itself?”
“Interfering’s what we do professionally, I’m afraid,” said the sister on his right. “We left the place open just in case you might want to stick your head in.”
“Hoped you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“And we know a thing or two about the Lady Most Kind ourselves.”
“Although our service to her is a bit more direct than yours.”
With that, red light gleamed on naked steel; each sister had drawn out a curved, arm-length blade-thieves’ teeth, just as Maranzalla had shown him so many years earlier. The Berangias twins continued their steady approach.
“Well,” said Jean, “if we’re already past the pleasantries, ladies, allow me to quit this masquerade.” Jean tossed his light-globe on the ground, reached up, pulled back his black hood, and slipped off his mask.
“Tannen!” said the sister on his right. “Well, holy shit. So you didn’t go out through the Viscount’s Gate after all.” The Berangias sisters halted, staring at him. Then they began circling to his left, moving in graceful unison, giving themselves more space to take action.
“You have some cheek,” said the other, “impersonating a priest of Aza Guilla.”
“Beg pardon? You were going to kill a priest of Aza Guilla.”
“Yes, well, you seem to have saved us from that particular blasphemy, haven’t you?”
“This is convenient!” said the other sister. “I never dreamed it’d be this easy.”
“Oh, whatever it is,” said Jean, “I guarantee it won’t be easy.”
“Did you like our work, in your little glass cellar?” The sister on the left spoke now. “Your two friends, the Sanza twins. Twins done in by twins, same wounds to the throat, same pose on the floor. Seemed appropriate.”
“Appropriate?” Jean felt new anger building like pressure at the back of his skull. He ground his teeth together. “Mark my words, bitch. I’ve been wondering how I’d feel when this moment finally came, and I have to say, I think I’m going to feel pretty fucking good.”
The Berangias sisters shrugged off their cloaks with nearly identical motions. As the oilcoth fluttered to the floor, they threw down their light-globes and drew out their other blades. Two sisters; four knives. They stared intently at Jean in the mingled red-and-white light and crouched, as they had a hundred times before crowds of screaming thousands at the Shifting Revel. As they had a hundred times before pleading victims in Capa Barsavi’s court.
“Wicked sisters,” said Jean, as he let the hatchets fall out of his right robe sleeve and into his hand, “I’d like you to meet the Wicked Sisters.”
3
“BUT DON’T take it too amiss, Lukas,” said Doña Sofia as she set her hollowed-out orange back down on her shelf. “We have a few possible remedies.”