Forty Five: Foiled Plans

"She didn't come." Ashe leaned back in her chair and fixed him with a stony look. "I don't know what you're expecting me to say. The girl never showed."

Arlen had braced himself for the possibility that Ashe wouldn't come back with anything he could use, but he hadn't anticipated that Grace Haverford would entirely fail to show up to the meeting he'd hoped to set up. Given her brother's willingness to throw everything over for her sake, he had thought she would at least investigate. If Ashe wasn't lying to him, however – and that was always a possibility with Ashe – she hadn't even sent someone to have a look in her place. There were a few reasons why she might not show up; he couldn't assume she'd immediately sensed something was off. She might not have been able to get out of the castle on time, or had simply not received the note. Akiva had assured him that he'd picked the best messenger he could find that wouldn't raise suspicion, but not raising suspicion sometimes compromised the likelihood of the message being delivered.

He sighed. The part that stung the most was that he still had to pay Ashe for the favour, but now he was only paying her to have sat in a tavern for a few hours. He pulled the remainder of the payment out of his pocket and chucked it across the table. She snatched it up and looked inside.

"Your oh-so-secret job worked out then?" she said. "You didn't have any of these last time you paid me." She pulled out the edge of the Auriel in the pouch.

"Put it away," Arlen growled, glancing round to see if anyone had noticed it. Ashe might be able to duck and weave her way out of any situation, but if any of the wrong sort got the idea that Arlen had more where that came from, he would find himself in a spot of difficulty. While he knew he could get out of it in a pinch, he'd rather not have to in the first place. He'd had enough of ambushes for the time being. His stump still ached from the last time.

He got up, draining off his glass, and left her with the money as he stumped out. So many people to see, so much to do. The one job he had fobbed off on someone else had categorically failed. But he still had time for that one; Jordan wasn't due back for weeks.

"Nothing," he said to Usk, as the brute materialised from an alley outside the tavern. "She didn't even show up."

"You think she caught on?"

"Or the message didn't get there. Or she couldn't get past Harkenn. Or someone else warned her." Arlen scowled. "Anything could have gone wrong."

"You could try again at the witch-man's this time."

"I'm not paying Ashe again. I'd rather lose my other leg." Nict forbid, he added hastily. It would just his luck for his own curse to be carried out on him.

"Try yourself." Usk shrugged at Arlen's incredulous look. "It's not a terrible idea. She visits the other witch-man every three-day and every sixthday. Just wait somewhere along her path home."

"Last resort," Arlen muttered. "I don't want her to know what I look like if I can help it."

"I could do it."

"We're trying to get Haverford on board, not scare his sister into an early grave."

Usk grunted. "You ain't a friendly-looking fucker yourself, Arl."

"At least I don't look like I can carry her off like a sack of potatoes."

Usk was silent for a moment. Then, "I'll give you that one."

"Anyway," Arlen's scowl darkened, "I'm currently preoccupied with whoever's got a hit out on me. Has Akiva got anything out of our guest?"

"A lot of piss, and a lot of blood," Usk replied. "Not much else."

"Is he still insisting his employer was anonymous?"

"Aye."

"Night take me." They turned onto the next street. The one they had left was down-at-heel but not dilapidated, however this road led to the Aven, across which lay the dead quarter, and the proximity showed in shuttered shops and seedy alleyways. It was considered ill luck by some to have a home or business with a view of the dead quarter. Arlen thought it completely stupid, personally. The Orthanians had a bridge across to the quarter and they didn't abandon their riverside buildings. Granted, they could afford their own guard patrols and the average citizen of the Farien district couldn't, but for Nict's sake, Farien didn't even have a bridge.

More was the pity for him.

He hadn't been back inside a carriage since the attack. It wasn't fear, just practicality. His attackers clearly knew he regularly used a carriage to get about, and so he would make efforts to be less predictable. That unfortunately entailed limiting how far from his home he could get without help, and trying to draw as little attention as he could with a very distinctive fake leg – which removed the Orthan bridge from his list of options. He would never be able to sneak past, and he would never pass unchallenged by the guard, and so he came to Farien to have his guts turned inside out by a river ferry instead.

The docks here weren't thriving, but it was easy enough to pay off one of the workers to keep his mouth shut about a couple of extra trips, especially if Arlen flashed a silver Cert or two at them. The money didn't guarantee the quality of the boat, unfortunately, so Arlen climbed into a dilapidated old punt with customary caution. His false leg, too inflexible to spread his weight, dipped the boat alarmingly in the water as he climbed in. The steersman sat in the prow and smoked a blackweed cigarette looking bored, clearly not thinking the Cert included assisting his passengers in. Not that he'd have kept his hands if he'd tried.

Arlen shunted himself to the back of the boat to let Usk in. It was a tight squeeze, but for once Arlen was willing to accommodate the brute's strange new paranoia on Arlen's behalf. Not that he needed it. In fact, it was rather stifling and would have to end when Arlen could get about alone. But if it came to a struggle on the river the odds were better when at least one of them could stand up.

They pushed out into the water. It was choppy with the last gusts of the storm winds, and there was no shelter from its bite once they left the docks. Usk's hands gripped both sides of the punt white-knuckled, his jaw set with the stoic determination of a man desperate not to vomit. Arlen might have found it amusing, but even his stomach was protesting.

"Gon' be a riot," the boatman said as he poled them across. He said it without inflection, as if commenting on an approaching rain shower. If the full-body rise and drop of the punt over the wavelets whipped up by the wind bothered him, there was no hint of it on his face.

"Who's planning a riot?" Arlen said sceptically. Things were bad in the city, aye, but there hadn't been a riot since the reigning Harkenn's father died.

"City," the boatman said. Arlen's fingers twitched towards the knife at his hip from habit, but he stilled it. He was getting fed up with men who wouldn't answer questions straight, but he needed this one to get across the river.

"The people?" he pressed, "Generally?"

"Aye." The man braced himself as they rose on a wave and dipped back down. Arlen clenched his teeth and pressed his legs against the sides of the boat. Usk leaned over and threw up into the water.

"You've stood knee-deep in a shit-pit," Arlen called over the wind. "And you can't handle a boat?"

Usk cursed him fluently in Tochk. He picked up enough of it to get the gist and smirked. At least he knew what the Varthian's biggest weak point was. He glanced back at the boatman. "Why are they rioting?"

"Why wouldn't they be?" For the first time, something other than total apathy glinted in the man's gaze. "Short on food, short on witch men. Demons are houndin' us worse than ever. The Aven's just put Bisa underwater and rumour has it that plague is almost on the doorstep." The man spat over the side. "If you don't agree with the sentiment you're either cracked, rich or both."

The rest of the journey passed in silence, broken only by the wind and Usk's retching. When they reached the far bank, Usk was out first on hands and knees, scrabbling up what was left of the pilings from docks that had long since been swallowed by the river. The dead quarter didn't end at the river so much as it dissolved; spars of raised mud and piles of rubble reached into the water all around, and the street above had long since begun to erode. It was on one of these outlying piles of rubble that Arlen found his own way off, giving up on Usk as a bad job when the retching continued from somewhere at street level. He flicked the boatman another Cert.

"Nict bless you, sir." The man nodded solemnly. At Arlen's look of surprise, the man looked him pointedly up and down. "No offense intended, but you do not strike me as a Kelian."

"You don't think I could pass for Orthanian, then?" Arlen sneered.

The boatman chuckled and pushed at the bank to get back out into the water. "Orthanians dress death in gold and call it salvation. Nicts pray with the blood still drying on their hands." He grinned. "Can almost smell it on you, sir."

"See, even he can tell you won't take a dark-damned bath," Usk grumbled, appearing over the bank. "Give me that stick and I'll haul you up."

"I took one recently," Arlen growled, trying to see if there was any way up the slope that wouldn't require Usk's help. Every likely route would stymie his leg or trap his walking stick in some way. With a sigh, he hefted the stick up for Usk to grab.

"That wasn't what most would call recent." Usk heaved. Arlen braced himself and hauled his way up, staggering upright at the top and snatching the stick back. "It wasn't even what most would describe as bare minimum."

"I'm getting a little bit fed up of you all passing loud, smart-arse judgement on my bathing habits," Arlen said. He struck off in the direction of home. "You're not my fucking mother."

Usk was wise enough to keep his mouth shut, sensing that Arlen was at his wits' end. Or perhaps it was to do with the pasty, greyish hue to the Varthian's face and his abject refusal to even look at the river.

Even through several layers of bandaging his stump was protesting abominably at the amount of walking Arlen had done that day. He mentally cleared his schedule for the next. If he pushed it, he was at risk of not being able to get around if he really needed to, and Nict knew how unpredictable things were becoming. He missed the flexibility of being able to get anywhere, escape anything, on a whim. His lost leg required constant forward planning that he found both suffocating and exhausting. It didn't suit his area of work at all. He knew he was being stupid, hanging so much hope on a new leg that didn't even exist yet, but what would there be for him if it fell through? The promise of watching everything he'd worked for slowly sliding through his fingers until someone finally got fed up and killed him. By the night, they were already trying.

He narrowed his eyes when he saw Jesper loitering in the street near Arlen's rooms. At Usk and Arlen's approach the assassin straightened and hurried over. Jesper was far too laid back for his own good, so Arlen's heart sank when he saw the pinch of stress at the corner of the man's mouth.

"What's happened?" he asked sharply. "Has the prisoner escaped? Did Marick call for me? Has Silas done something abominably stupid?"

"No, no, and very possibly." Jesper ticked them off on his fingers, then said in a rush, "There's a guy sitting in your place up there demanding to see you, and Silas has his little eat-shit face on so we know he has something to do with it."

"What guy?" Arlen demanded, picking up the pace as best he could. Curse the dark-damned leg.

"Never seen him before," Jesper said. Something in his voice made Arlen slow. "He says he's your brother, Arl."

"That Orthanian shitstain. I'll fucking strangle him," Arlen growled, after a moment of stunned silence.

"So it's true?" Jesper demanded, keeping pace easily as Arlen redoubled his efforts. Usk strode along behind them. Arlen refused to look at him. "You have a brother, and we didn't know?"

"No, I don't," Arlen snapped. "Not in any measurable way. I was adopted by his father and then disowned by him. No blood relation at all."

"But we didn't know."

"Why would you need to know?" Arlen reached the crates and forced himself to slow down before he lost his footing and broke his neck. "We're not related, and he has nothing to do with the Devils."

"You don't trust us, then."

Arlen paused halfway up the crates and looked down at Jesper's scowl. Beyond him, Usk looked ill again, though it wasn't motion sickness this time. Curse the brute, he'd told Arlen this was coming.

"In the kindest way possible, Jes, you'd swindle the last stone Flint off a beggar without batting an eye. He's got no place anywhere near the Devils. I'm convinced he still tells himself I'm just a pickpocket." Arlen shook his head. "It's not a trust thing. It's a 'keeping a liability as far away as humanly possible' thing."

"Speaking of liabilities," Darin's sour voice carried from the open window, and the man stuck his head out to glower down at them, "you stuck or something?"

Arlen hauled himself the rest of the way up, deliberately pushing past Darin to get inside. Once on level ground, he turned and pointed his walking stick at Darin's chest. "You make a smart comment about my leg again and you can join those assassins in the fucking river."

Darin flinched with distaste, but didn't look as perturbed as Arlen would have liked.

"Fine," he said. "Your place is a sty, by the way."

"Don't mince your words, will you?" Arlen sat down with a groan at the table and unstrapped his leg. Shooting, prickling sensations burned across his skin as it came loose, followed swiftly by sweet relief. He glared at Darin. "So. What the fuck are you doing here?"

"You killed three men outside my house, Arlen."

Massaging the last of the prickling from his stump, Arlen scowled. "And?"

"What do you mean, and?" Darin snapped. "Who were they? Why were they trying to kill you?And are they coming back?"

"The dead ones aren't." Arlen could really have done without this today. He had enough stress and disappointment on his plate already. "And if I knew the answers to the other questions, I probably still wouldn't tell you."

"Could they come after me?"

"If they do, it's your own dark-damned fault for getting involved. If you'd not been following me around, they'd never have seen you."

"He was going to jump you from the roof!"

"How did you get here, anyway?" Arlen snapped, changing the subject. Darin had probably at least saved him the loss of an ear, if not his life, but if he admitted that then the man would gain the upper hand in this argument. "Who told you where I lived?"

"Some pale kid," Darin muttered, visibly forcing down his temper. His grey eyes glared balefully from dark circles. "Looked about sixteen. Sounded like he was in love with you."

"Probably is," Usk rumbled. Darin darted him a distinctly nervous sidelong glance. The Varthian casually leaned against the wall near the window, picking at his nails. Arlen had sent Usk as a go-between when he hadn't been able to send Jordan, and neither Usk nor Darin seemed to particularly enjoy the agreement.

"I fail to see how giving away where I live is evidence of being in love with me," Arlen said.

"That was because I told him I had information on who attacked you," Darin said. "And that you'd asked me to get in touch if I found anything out."

"But you haven't, and I didn't."

"Well, no." Darin offered a deadpan stare. "I would've thought you'd be familiar with the concept of lying by now, Arlen."

"There's a resemblance, blood or not," Jesper put in, somewhat sourly. Arlen ignored it, but his fingers twitched with his annoyance. He didn't need Jesper sulking with him, either, and he suspected Raziel and Akiva wouldn't feel much warmer about the revelation. Nict confound him as to the reason why. Darin's mere existence shouldn't have affected them unduly, and if it was one of the things Arlen had kept quiet, what was it to them? If anything, he was doing them a favour. If Marick ever found out about Darin and what Arlen had been doing with his earnings as a result, then the others' ignorance would save them. Not possible if Silas was busy marching his secrets into the dead quarter for anyone to see.

"I'm not sure which of us should find that more insulting," Arlen drawled.

"Definitely me," Darin said, lip curling. "How do I know I'm not going to have someone try and murder me in my sleep? I haven't had the best time settling in as it is, and you might have been onto something about that stinking pit across the hall."

"What do you want from me?" Arlen snapped. "I don't know who it was. I don't know if I'm going to be murdered in my sleep, let alone you." He thought for a moment, and then smirked. "Unless you want to see if you can get anything out of our captive. We've had a bastard of a time so far."

"Your what?"

"Oh, you remember," Arlen gestured. With an inward grimace, he hauled his leg back on. He could put up with the chafing to see this. "The one who didn't cop it. He's downstairs."

"I'd rather not."

"Do you want answers or not? You're leaving empty-handed for definite if you don't."

Darin opened his mouth to snap back, and then closed it again. Arlen took it for assent. He thumped to the window and hauled out of it again, Usk going ahead just in case and Darin following behind. Arlen wondered if it was worth moving, if Darin knew where he lived now. Not only to avoid the bother, but the risk of Marick finding out who he was grew exponentially just by his presence in the quarter. It was possible that Arlen's would-be assassins would go after Darin; if Marick found out about him then pursuit was guaranteed, and Arlen would be taken out with him unless he came up with an excuse that Darin almost certainly wouldn't go along with.

If he was smart, Silas would not turn up again at Arlen's home in a hurry unless he wanted his neck wrung.

Arlen's captive resided in the darkest corner of the basement floor. The first floor had caved in long ago, and half of it still lay in piles on the next level down. The stairs, however, had survived the collapse, and led down into a gap created underneath the broken floor where it was still partially attached to the wall above. It was against the remaining wall that Arlen had had Usk chain the only attacker who hadn't died of his wounds or got away altogether. Darin retched behind him at the overpowering smell of piss.

Just because the man had survived his wounds didn't mean he was doing well. In the light of the candle Jesper brought down with him, his face was drawn and pale. Though all his wounds were bandaged at the end of each questioning the blood loss was clearly taking a toll over time. It was probably a good point to be rid of the liability, once Darin had reassured himself that Arlen knew as little as he did.

The captive's eyes moved sluggishly across each face, fixing on Darin's unfamiliar one for a second longer.

"This is barbaric," Darin whispered.

"No less than sending six men to ambush an amputee in a dark alley," Usk returned.

"But this is drawn out. This...this is..." Darin came to a halt. "Kiel's teeth, Arlen."

"If you'd not bartered your way into this quarter you would be blissfully ignorant of all this," Arlen said pointedly. This might give him the out he wanted without the bother of moving.

To his surprise, Darin only looked angrier and took the conversation in a completely unanticipated direction. "You're subjecting that kid to this? You can't touch anything without corrupting it, can you? That's a good kid, that Haverford. You should be fucking ashamed."

"Oh, piss on your judgement, factory boy," Arlen snarled. His apprentice really was none of Darin's business. "He signed that contract, not me. If I hadn't convinced my employer to give him to me for training, he'd be having a much harder time with much less freedom. He'd be serving the Devils either way, and now he's doing it by choice there's much less chance he'd be killed for outlasting his usefulness."

"Don't pretend you're doing it out of the kindness of your heart."

"I'm not. I'm doing it because I believe he has potential, and it would be a damned shame to see it wasted. But it might also save his life, if we're talking morals." He pulled a knife from his belt and twisted it over his fingers. "So. Either you're trying to make this guy talk, or I am."