"Looks like a stage," he said, at last. "Why are they building a stage? Are they going to treat us to a performance of Dog's Treason, or maybe a sequence of sonnet recitals based around the life of that great lover, Cassiandra? I know! I've got it! They're going to perform The Saga of Kell's Legend just for your bloody benefit!"
"It's a gallows, idiot. That's why the centre has extra vertical struts. There's going to be a hole through which somebody drops."
"Somebody?"
"I take a lot of killing," said Kell, voice low, eyes narrowed. "Look, there's Jagor Mad. He really is a big, dumb fool. I thought he would have learnt his lesson last time I brought him in. Evidently not."
"What did he do?"
"Aah," Kell shook his head, then lowered his face to stare at the rocky floor of the cave. He kicked his boot against one of the pitted iron bars. "Jagor came from a city called Gilrak, to the west of Vor. All those who wanted to live in Vor, but couldn't afford to live in the capital, well they lived in Gilrak, and what a sorry heap of shit it was. Like a scum overflow. A sewer outlet. Now, the thing about Gilrak was that it was a new city, with the old one, Old Gilrak, lying a half-league southwest. But what few people knew was that the two were connected by old tunnels. So Jagor and a few of his friends came up with a wonderful money-making scheme. They'd kidnap children, take them through the tunnels – so that when a search went out there was no chance of finding the bastards – take them through the tunnels to the deserted city of Old Gilrak, fast horses, down to the coast where bad men from across the sea were waiting on Crake's Beach with boats."
"So he took children and sold them?"
"Yes. Sold them to bad men, for a lot of gold, men who would use them for, shall we say, unspeakable acts. Things a child should never have to go through." Kell's eyes were gleaming.
"Not a happy end for a child?" ventured Saark.
"No. King Leanoric had three genius spies, who eventually uncovered what was going on. Then they passed the information over to me, and the King charged me with stopping the trade. He gave me limitless funds, and the pick of his men. Well. I work fast, and alone, but Jagor had forty men working his trade so I picked out five of Leanoric's best killers. Not swordsmen, mind, not soldiers, but killers. Men I'd seen in battle, men with real stomach for the job."
"And the job was?"
"Extermination," said Kell, glancing up at Saark. "I've seen the way the justice courts worked in Vor." He spat. "I've watched good men hang, and I watched bad men walk free. I wasn't about to let this little fish escape the pond."
"So what happened?"
"First, we found one of Jagor's scouts. We tortured him, broke his fingers and toes, cut off his balls, held him screaming in a cellar before cutting his throat. The vermin. Well, he told us where the next targets were; where the next children were. And Jagor's kidnappers were getting greedy; they were going to take ten children that night, all under the age of ten. One of my killers took the place of Jagor's scout, and we waited, let them sneak in and take the girl from her little town house in the poor part of the city, then we followed those fuckers back to their camp in the woods, and the place they'd dug down and smashed through into the old tunnel network leading to Old Gilrak."
"What happened next?"
Kell shrugged. "We came on them in the night. Fucking slaughtered them, six of us there were with rage in our eyes and blood on our swords and axes. We massacred them, men and women alike, no mercy. Five escaped into the tunnels, including Jagor Mad. I'd gone in for the kill, we fought and I hit him so hard I put a dent in his skull, broke three bones in my hand but it was worth it. But then somebody jumped on my back, I rammed back my head, ended up with half his teeth stuck in my scalp, but it gave Jagor time to flee. Down through the tunnels."
"You don't make friends easy, do you Kell?"
"Shut up. Well, my men took the kids back to Gilrak and I went down the tunnels after these rats. I followed them all night, caught up with two who were injured, killed them easy enough, then another two tried to spring a trap on me in the dark. Well, Kell doesn't die easy, and I gave them a few things to think about – delivered courtesy of the butterfly blades of Ilanna. Then I chased Jagor Mad all damn night, but the bastard got away. He might look like a big brute, but he ran faster than any frightened schoolgirl, I can tell you."
"How did he end up here?"
"Some of Leanoric's soldiers caught him a week later, north in Fawkrin, heading there with all his ill-gotten gains. I reckon he was going to set himself up as a bandit in Vorgeth Forest, live like a woodland lord. Anyway, because the soldiers had him, he was delivered to the Chief Lord Justice in Vor. Meant he got a trial. Hah! I had to stand there, and them bastards with their fancy words and stupid wigs, they tried to make it sound like I was some bloodthirsty killer, or something…"
"And of course, they'd be right."
"And I pointed out I wasn't the one selling children to dirty bastards from across the sea, and that's when we went into the woods, it was six of us and forty of them. Still."
Kell rubbed his chin. "They had to put him in prison. Too many families weeping and wailing in the courts. Would have looked bad on the Chief Lord Justice. Not even he could have stomached a mass public retribution for his bad comedy court system." Kell chuckled. "I'll never forget, all those judges giving me their dirty looks from under powdered wigs. Gods! Enough to make a man puke, it was."
"So… Jagor Mad came here?"
"Yeah. Scowling at me all the way through the courtroom, mouth uttering threats. He was the lucky one; the others got a taste of my axe. And they fucking deserved it."
Saark looked out from behind bars. He tested them, tugging gently, as he had a hundred times that day. "And now they'll give you your own trial, to satisfy Jagor Mad's sense of revenge."
"Looks that way."
"What about the others? Dandall and Grey Tail? You put them both here?"
"Aye, lad."
"And what did they do?"
"Dandall killed people. Lots of people. Used to wait down on Port of Gollothrim docks for drunks, men, women, didn't matter to him. He used to use a long stiletto dagger, get them down a back alley and push it through their necks. I reckon he thought he was doing somebody a favour, although it was probably himself. He was lucky there were seargents with me when I brought him in. He'd just done a drunk prostitute, killed her then cut out her eyes. If I'd been on my own, well, he would have got Ilanna in the back of the head."
Saark considered this. "Is there anybody you don't try to kill?"
"Yeah. People who mind their own business."
"So Jagor Mad kidnapped children for the sex trade, Dandall was an out and out murderer, what lovely crime did Grey Tail commit? Don't tell me, he was arrested for stealing sugar?"
"No. He used to eat people. Before he was a Blacklipper. Must have picked up that dirty stinking vachine habit – no offence – when he came to this wonderful shit-hole. Grey Tail lived in Vor, our illustrious capital city, quite a rich man by all accounts. Worked as a physician, tending the wounded arses of those too rich to get off them. It took the authorities years to realise that occasionally his rich clients would vanish. He had a big house on a very well-to-do street in Merchant's Quarter. Four storeys it was, very nice stone, big cellar below street level. Used to take the odd client, one who wouldn't be missed too much, take them down there, strap 'em to a chair and then, well then he'd begin."
"There he is now," said Saark, and they stared out at the small, wiry man with the round face. He was directing a group of carpenters, who were hammering planks in place as a makeshift floor. If you looked past the evidence of him being a Blacklipper, he was a modest-looking man who could have quite easily, in the eye of the imagination, been a respectable surgeon. "What exactly did he do to his patients?"