‘All them — ing murders, for a start,’ said Mr Tulip, nodding.
‘Which, since we are criminals, could be called typical behaviour. Whereas,’ Pin went on, ‘you’re a respectable citizen. Doesn’t look good, respectable citizens getting involved in this sort of thing. People talk.’
‘To save … misunderstandings,’ said Mr Slant, ‘I will do you a draft of—’
‘Jewels,’ said Mr Pin.
‘We like jewels,’ said Mr Tulip.
‘You have made copies of that … thing?’ said Slant.
‘I’m not saying anything,’ said Mr Pin, who hadn’t and didn’t even know how. But he took the view that Mr Slant was in no position to be other than cautious, and it looked as though Mr Slant thought so too.
‘I wonder if I can trust you?’ said Mr Slant, as if to himself.
‘Well, you see, it’s like this,’ said Mr Pin, as patiently as he could. His head was feeling worse. ‘If news got around that we’d shopped a client, that wouldn’t be good. People would say, you can’t trust a person of that kind of ilk. They do not know how to behave. But if the people we deal with heard we’d scragged a client because the client had not played fair, then they would say to themselves, these are businessmen. They are businesslike. They do business …’
He stopped and looked at the shadows in the corner of the room.
‘And?’ said Mr Slant.
‘And … and … the hell with this,’ said Mr Pin, blinking and shaking his head. ‘Give us the jewels, Slant, or Mr Tulip’ll do the asking, understand? We’re getting out of here, with your damn dwarfs and vampires and trolls and dead men walking. This city gives me the creeps! So give me the diamonds! Right now!’
‘Very well,’ said Mr Slant. ‘And the imp?’
‘It goes with us. We get caught, it gets caught. We die mysteriously, then … some people find out about things. When we are safely away … you’re in no position to argue, Slant.’ Mr Pin shuddered. ‘I am not having a good day!’
Mr Slant pulled open a desk drawer and tossed three small velvet bags on to the leather top. Mr Pin mopped his brow with a handkerchief.
‘Take a look at ’em, Mr Tulip.’
There was a pause while both men watched Mr Tulip pour the gems into one enormous palm. He scrutinized several through an eyeglass. He sniffed at them. He gingerly licked one or two.
Then he picked four out of the heap and tossed them back to the lawyer.
‘You think I’m some kind of a — ing idiot?’ he said.
‘Don’t even think of arguing,’ said Mr Pin.
‘Perhaps the jewellers made a mistake,’ said Mr Slant.
‘Yeah?’ said Mr Pin. His hand darted into his jacket again, but this time came out holding a weapon.
Mr Slant looked into the muzzle of a spring-gonne. It was technically and legally a crossbow, in that human strength compressed the spring, but it had been reduced by patient technology to a point where it was more or less a pipe with a handle and a trigger. Anyone caught with one by the Assassins’ Guild, it was rumoured, would find its ability to be hidden on the human body tested to extremes; any city watch that found one used against them would see to it that the offender’s feet did not touch the ground but instead swung gently as the breeze pushed them around.
There must have been a switch in this desk, too. A door flew open and two men burst in, one armed with two long knives, one with a crossbow.
It was quite horrible, what Mr Tulip did to them.
It was, in its way, a kind of skill. When an armed man runs into a room in the knowledge that there is trouble he needs a fraction of a second to assess, to decide, to calculate, to think. Mr Tulip didn’t need a fraction of a second. He didn’t think. His hands moved by themselves.
It required, even for the calculating eyes of Mr Slant, a mental action replay. And even in the slow-mo of horror, it was hard to see Mr Tulip grab the nearest chair and swing it. At the end of the blur two men lay unconscious, one with an arm twisted in a disconcerting way, and a knife was shuddering in the ceiling.
Mr Pin hadn’t turned round. He kept the gonne pointed at the zombie. But he produced from a pocket a small cigarette lighter in the shape of a dragon, and then Mr Slant … Mr Slant, who crackled when he walked and smelled of dust … Mr Slant saw, wrapped around the evil little bolt that just projected from the tube, a wad of cloth.
Without taking his eyes off the lawyer Mr Pin applied the flame. The cloth flared. And Mr Slant was very dry indeed.
‘This is a bad thing I’m about to do,’ Pin said, as if hypnotized. ‘But I’ve done so many bad things, this one’ll hardly count. It’s like … a killing is a big thing, but another killing, that’s kind of half the size. You know? So it’s, like, when you’ve done twenty killings, they barely notice, on average. But … it’s a nice day today, the birds is singing, there’s stuff like … kittens and stuff, and the sun is shining off the snow, bringin’ the promise of spring to come, with flowers, and fresh grass, and more kittens and hot summer days an’ the gentle kiss of the rain and wonderful clean things which you won’t ever see if you don’t give us what’s in that drawer ’cos you’ll burn like a torch you double-dealing twisty dried-up cheating son of a bitch!’
Mr Slant scrabbled in the drawer and threw down another velvet bag. Glancing nervously at his partner, who’d never even mentioned kittens before except in the same sentence as ‘water barrel’, Mr Tulip took it and examined the contents.
‘Rubies,’ he said. ‘—ing good ones.’
‘Now go away from here,’ rasped Mr Slant. ‘Right away. Never come back. I’ve never heard of you. I’ve never seen you.’
He stared at the spluttering flame.
Mr Slant had faced many bad things in the last few hundred years, but right now nothing seemed more menacing than Mr Pin. Or more erratically deranged, either. The man was swaying, and his gaze kept flickering into the shadowy corners of the room.
Mr Tulip shook his partner’s shoulder. ‘Let’s — ing scrag him and go?’ he suggested.
Pin blinked. ‘Right,’ he said, appearing to return to his own head. ‘Right.’ He glanced at the zombie. ‘I think I shall let you live today,’ he said, blowing out the flame. ‘Tomorrow … who knows?’
It wasn’t a bad threat, but somehow his heart wasn’t in it.
Then the New Firm had gone.
Mr Slant sat down and stared at the closed door. It was clear to him, and a dead man has experience in these matters, that his two armed clerks, veterans of many a legal battle, were beyond help. Mr Tulip was an expert.
He took a sheet of writing paper from a drawer, wrote a few words in block letters, sealed it in an envelope and sent for another clerk.
‘Have arrangements made,’ he said, when the man stared at his fallen colleagues, ‘and then take this to de Worde.’
‘Which one, sir?’
For a moment Mr Slant had forgotten that point.
‘Lord de Worde,’ he said. ‘Definitely not the other one.’
William de Worde turned a page in his notebook and continued to scribble. The crew were watching him as if he was a public entertainment.
‘That’s a grand gift you have there, sur,’ said Arnold Sideways. ‘It does the heart good to see the pencil waggling like that. I wish I had the knowing of it, but I’ve never been mechanical.’
‘Would you care for a cup of tea?’ said the Duck Man.
‘You drink tea down here?’
‘Of course. Why not? What kind of people do you think we are?’ The Duck Man held up a blackened teapot and a rusty mug with an inviting smile.