Seventy Seven: The Poisoner

"I am not sure about this." Each word came out firmly except for the last, which wobbled and hung in the air between them in the ensuing silence. Arlen's mouth ticked up at one corner as he glanced sidelong at his apprentice.

"Good job it isn't your decision, then, eh?"

Even so, Arlen hesitated before he led on. The building outside of which they stood didn't look sturdy enough to live in even by dead quarter standards, but this was the address Callan had given him and he had no reason to think it was wrong. The Poisoner did favour hiding holes that no one would expect to enter, let alone make camp in. It suited the line of work.

"It looks like the front's going to fall off!" Jordan protested in a harsh whisper, but when Arlen kept stubbornly on towards the front door, he followed.

"Never known him to live in one place more than a month," Arlen replied without looking back. "So as long as it's held well enough for that, he won't care. Do you have everything I told you to pack?"

"Aye," came the sullen response, and Arlen glanced down as Jordan patted his coat and revealed a glint of metal. They both wore as many weapons as their belts would hold. He knew it had made Jordan more nervous, not less, but as far as Arlen was concerned, the more weapons they had the safer they were. He had the failed assassin fresh on his mind when he had given the instruction, but it was also a storage issue. Darin's single room had absolutely nowhere he could hide weapons, and the idiot wouldn't let him take up a floorboard to make a space. He wasn't about to leave them unconcealed in Darin's care; the landlord had a habit of dropping in, and he didn't trust Darin not to throw them out while he was gone.

Sharing a room with his ex-brother had been pretty similar to how he had always pictured the Pit. When he had shown up on Darin's doorstep, he had fully expected to be turned away. To his surprise, Darin had conceded to the request, but not without a whole list of damnably inconvenient restrictions; his group of Devils had to meet elsewhere, he wasn't allowed to smoke inside, and he'd had to agree to wash every night and bathe every week. The sheer audacity had stirred him up to a boiling rage, but the look on Usk's face when he had stormed out and declared he was going home had stopped him in his tracks.

"You can't," the Varthian had said, wincing as if in anticipation of the blow around the head Arlen wanted to deal him. "We found someone else lurking around outside your window. Some fucker dressed the same way, same sort of weapons. Jes ran across him on his way to yours."

And so Arlen had had to swallow his pride and turn right back around, and Darin had looked far, far too smug about it.

He pulled himself back to the present. He could stew about it later, when his apprentice wasn't standing all his hair on end with that dark-damned nervous magic-leaking habit he had.

"Why do you smell like soap?" Jordan muttered, and stepped back when Arlen rounded on him.

"Just shut the fuck up and follow me. No more dumb questions." He scowled, certain he heard an echo of Jesper's laughter on a neighbouring roof. "Come on."

The entryway to the questionable dwelling stank of damp and rot. The floorboards felt alarmingly soft under the questing end of his walking stick.

"Mind your step," he muttered to Jordan. "This feels like you could put a foot through it."

"The floor is literally squishy and this place is suitable to live in?" Jordan replied incredulously, but shut up again at Arlen's warning glare.

There was no illumination inside. The stairs ended halfway up in a toothy maw of splinters and blackness. In the dim evening light still coming through the front door Arlen could make out a hallway stretching ahead of them, though not where it ended. Jordan lit a small green fire in one palm, lighting the mouldy walls with an eerie shade of emerald and giving the small leggy creatures hiding in the corners grotesque shadows. The floor looked even worse than it felt; black and crumbly, and so damp that bits which had broken away were turning black. Even for Arlen, who had spent over a decade in the dead quarter and was far from fussy about the integrity of the buildings in it, this particular specimen seemed a brave choice.

"You trying to burn us down?" Arlen hissed, but he was grateful for the light as he crept forward, looking down before he placed his fake foot anywhere. He couldn't feel the weaknesses with it and he was not getting stuck in a fucking floorboard this evening.

"It won't. It's too damp," Jordan muttered, but didn't sound as confident as Arlen might have liked.

"Well, stay away from the walls," he said. "I ain't fucking dealing with burns and Firebulls tonight, kid."

"Understood." The green light dimmed as Jordan shuffled into the middle of the hallway.

The hall abruptly opened out into a large room, without any door to announce the transition. By the light of a single candle, concealed from the hallway by the near wall, a man sat at a table and watched them enter. The table and the chests ranged behind him were in far better shape than the house itself. Arlen looked around and found the Poisoner's bodyguard acting as a large, hairy shadow in another corner of the room. He was a spectacular size for a non-Varthian.

"You've brought me a Whisperer?" The Poisoner sat forward in his chair, also polished and gleaming compared to everything else, his even smile glimmering in the light from his candle. Jordan was still and silent, clearly taken aback by the man's appearance, and Arlen couldn't blame him; the Poisoner was neater and cleaner than any other inhabitant of the dead quarter, so much so that Arlen had an itching suspicion that this business was a shadow facet of some much more socially acceptable enterprise. The man certainly spoke like the moneyed few, and his clothes, while plain, were of a quality and cut that only Marick ever wore among the guild.

"This is my apprentice, Calder."

Jordan made an almost imperceptible noise in his throat at the name, but unless he wanted to go giving out his Unspoken name or worse, his otherworld name, to Nictaven's most dangerous men, it had been a necessity to pick an alias. Not that Arlen had expected it to bother him so much.

"I've not heard of a Calder." The Poisoner smiled, and his dark hair gleamed in Jordan's light as he stepped out from behind the desk. "A pleasure. Now, I have appointments running all through the night, but as a favour to Callan I've put you first, so let's make this speedy, shall we? Do you have the samples?"

"Aye." Arlen reached down into the compartment he'd made in the cup of his prosthetic. It hadn't been a comfortable experience carrying them in there, and had required Raziel's help in loosening a couple of the bolts to allow space, but they'd made it in one piece with no one the wiser. He collected all half-dozen of them and placed them into the bodyguard's waiting hand. The Poisoner accepted the samples from him and took them back behind his desk.

"I think three of them are nothing," Arlen said. "Two likely nothing, and one promising. But you've got more recent and extensive experience of these things than me."

"Recent, yes," the Poisoner mused, uncorking one vial and sniffing it. "Extensive...perhaps. The stories I've heard of your past exploits are very compelling."

Arlen grunted. The man hadn't so much as glanced at his prosthetic, but the fact that they were in the past was a sore point.

Silence reined for a while, except for the light clink of glass and the sliding of drawers as the Poisoner investigated each vial's contents. The bodyguard lurked just out of the candlelight, and the way Jordan held himself suggested that the boy knew he was an object of scrutiny. Suddenly it occurred to Arlen that Jordan might be able to see much better in here than he could. Outside of the spheres of the two light sources he was near-blind and couldn't say where the big man's gaze was resting.

He knew a disconcerting moment of vulnerability. His apprentice could see better in the dark than he could, would always be able to move faster, and that was before the whole blazing magic issue was accounted for. He was not only being trained for crime, but trained for demon-fighting, a lethal combination that had always excited Arlen with its possibilities. Not once had he considered its dangers to him. What could he really do, if Marick's threats were enough to turn Jordan back on his word? If they were pitted against each other one day, could Arlen win?

No use thinking about it now. He didn't know enough to get stupid over it, to let it cloud his better judgement. Jordan hated Marick. He could have been kidding himself, but he believed he was a little more popular. That could make a world of difference if he kept working at it.

"You're right," the Poisoner said, breaking into his thoughts. "This one seems suspicious." He held up a vial of innocuous transparent liquid, tinged yellow in the light. "Where was this one from? It smells dreadfully strong."

"A perfume bottle," Jordan spoke up for the first time. He sounded stunned. "I took three samples from perfume bottles."

"It's not one of Jes's from the floorboard cavity?" Arlen asked.

"None of their samples smelled of anything much."

"Well, if you did find this one, you may have found your answer." The Poisoner smiled very thinly, though his eyes remained cold behind his small glasses. "As none of the other samples went cloudy in contact with blood."

Jordan swallowed audibly. "Blood?"

"If you want to learn the secrets of my trade, my friend, you'd have to be my apprentice." A light chuckle. "Yes, I believe you have your sample here. If I'm not much mistaken," and at this he got up and started rummaging in one of the chests, "this is its match. Potent stuff. A few drops in a wine bottle and you've killed every guest."

"So it's administered in food and drink? What if no one's found anything in food and drink?"

The Poisoner turned back, now clutching another bottle in his other hand, this one bearing a label. "It can be. If you want slower results, it also makes a very dangerous spritz. Carried in a perfume bottle, it would not look unusual for someone to carry it, if they had laid the ground well. A lot of my female clients like this one for that very reason."

"But surely that would make whoever was in the room with them sick as well."

"Whoever was in the room would also know the antidote. It's disarmed very easily, but only if you detect it."

Jordan visibly shuddered. "I touched those vials. Am I going to get sick?"

The Poisoner gave him a measuring look. "If you haven't by now, it's unlikely. Fumes and mists need repeated exposure to work. A one-off would make you vomit – perhaps even soil yourself – but you would recover provided you didn't do it again. And washed your clothes after touching it. You did do that, didn't you?"

"Yeah." Jordan's voice dropped lower. "I did actually vomit afterwards. I assumed it was something else."

The Poisoner only raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He settled at the desk and held up the second little vial. "How much will you give me for the name and the antidote?"

Arlen stepped forward. Negotiating was his job, and he doubted the boy would like the way the Poisoner bartered. "One mark."

"Three. The antidote needs very rare ingredients."

"Two. You won't give me enough to be worth three, rare or not."

The Poisoner grinned. "Four, and you can have the recipe as well."

"Three with the recipe."

A considering pause. The vial glittered lightly in the Poisoner's hand as he rolled it between thumb and forefinger. "Three and a theft."

"With the recipe."

"Deal."

Arlen had a feeling he had given the Poisoner more than the dark-damned stuff was really worth, but the need for expedience meant he couldn't haggle as thoroughly as he wanted, and if he pushed too hard he wouldn't get anything. Again the bodyguard acted as the go-between, handing over the vial as the Poisoner scrawled down the ingredients on a small slip of parchment. He tossed sand across the wet ink to dry it, and as he tapped it off he said, "The antidote must be administered in food every day until the symptoms are clear, and the victim must not be exposed again in that time. Memorise this note and burn it. I will find out if you've been careless."

"Understood."

"Pleasure doing business, Mr Blackheart. Good evening to you, Calder."

Jordan made a strange noise in his throat and nodded an acknowledgement, only waiting until the paper was in Arlen's hands before hurrying back into the hall. Arlen cursed as the boy took his light with him, traversing the narrow space much more slowly to feel out each step before he took it. When he emerged, Jordan was pacing up and down the street outside, and Jesper watched him with a bemused expression from where he lounged against a nearby wall.

"Did you just bargain lives for that?" Jordan demanded, coming to a halt when Arlen stepped out and took a deep breath of fresh air not laden with mould. "Is that what you meant by marks?"

"Aye." Arlen was already tired; his heart sank at the prospect of dealing with the boy's self-righteous whining all the way back to Darin's. "And you won't be doing it, either, so you got a plum deal out of that one." When Jordan didn't stop glaring at him from the depths of his hood, Arlen sighed. "Kid, he deals in poisons. What did you expect to owe him, a letter of sincere thanks? Nict knows neither of us has the money to pay what he would want in coin, so it was this or getting nothing at all."

"But...why would he...?"

"Want marks instead? Competition, usually. Thieves. That saves him enough money that he can afford to give us that option. Be grateful he needed that service tonight. He doesn't ask unless he already has targets, and if he hadn't had targets we would have had to find that money somewhere."

"How many?" Jes sauntered over with his hands rammed in his pockets.

"Three and a theft."

"Seen worse from him." Jesper shrugged, though he winced a little.

Arlen turned his gaze back to Jordan. "Who would administer it?"

"Nika, probably. He's the physician."

"I want to see it change hands. I won't risk anything happening to it if I'm paying that steeply."

"But..."

"Kid, I've got you the contact, I've got you the help, I've got you the dark-damned antidote, and my group is paying for it even though none of us like Harkenn - that's putting it mildly. The least you can do is comply with my requests. I can't even begin to tell you how much you would owe me if you'd hired me to do this for you, and all you have to do is fall in line."

That shut the boy up, though he could tell Jordan still wasn't happy with it. Well, he didn't have to be. He just had to comply. The amount of work this was costing him stung, even weighed against the boy's promises of loyalty – promises Arlen didn't even trust. Not for the first time he wondered if he were being taken for a bloody fool, and concluded it was likely – but what choice did he have? He couldn't rely on Marick anymore. Haverford was the only chance he had.

"Though you could go on the jobs if you wanted," he added as an afterthought, and walked off before Haverford had a chance to reply. Before he reached the street corner Usk arrived with a wagon and he swung up without a word.

Jordan was silent all the way back to Darin's – from there he would walk home and find Arlen some way of ensuring a safe handover for the goods. Until then the vial would stay concealed in his prosthetic. If the boy wanted it sorted sooner, he had better quit sulking and get on with it.

At first Arlen didn't register the figure standing outside Darin's front door, until Jordan sat up straight with a gasp of shock.

"You're having a fucking laugh," Arlen growled. "Is that your tutor, boy?"

In a strange voice, Jordan said, "No. It's Nika."

Arlen glanced at him sharply. "He knows about this? Does he know about your apprenticeship to me?"

"Yes." The word came out with barely any sound.

"Nict's balls, boy, am I ever going to drill any fucking discretion into you? Usk, stop the cart."

"Do you want me to come?" Jesper asked, and Usk leaned round in the seat for an answer.

"No. You are." He prodded Jordan out of the wagon ahead of him with his walking stick. If he hadn't been right behind him, Arlen thought the boy might have fallen over. His knees knocked so hard it was a miracle that he didn't, and he staggered off the wagon like a man several drinks too deep. "At least it gives you one less job to fuck up. But we're having words about this later, kid. Serious words."

He was quite proud of himself for how well he kept his fury concealed. A Devil who didn't know when to shut up was no use to anyone. If Marick ever found out, if Arlen couldn't knock it into him, he would be face-down in the river before long, Unspoken or not, and perhaps Arlen with him. Oh yes, they would have words.

The Unspoken shifted at their approach; Arlen guessed from his stance that the hand he couldn't see clutched a knife handle somewhere in the depths of that cloak. Arlen had one already loaded up his sleeve, and behind him Jesper and Usk would keep sharp watch. He still kept a wary distance. This man had been trained by Yddris, and Arlen was not that big a fool.

"What are you doing here?" Jordan's voice wavered on the cusp of cracking. Arlen curled his lip. That wouldn't do, either.

"I was told that someone had collected you straight from the castle, and I was concerned. There's been a breakout of plague patients."

"I heard," Jordan said. "But...I can't catch it. I can't, right?"

"That's not the point. No one else is out. There would have been no witnesses if something had happened to you, and Yddris has no idea that you're not where he left you," Nika replied harshly. Arlen cocked his head slightly; Nika seemed as upset as Jordan. The two men genuinely cared for one another. Was this what had had Jordan so reticent in recent days – a falling out over Arlen? He couldn't help but find that amusing, but all his mirth vanished in an instant as a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye betrayed Darin's presence in the doorway of the house-share. No mysteries, then, as to how Nika had known where to wait.

Not for the first time Arlen entertained the notion that Darin might really have it out for him.

"And of course, you didn't wait here for a chance to get another good look at me," Arlen drawled, suppressing his irritation.

"You have some nerve." Nika's voice was bitterly cold. "Why Harkenn hasn't had you arrested yet, I'll never understand."

"He hasn't been able to catch me," Arlen replied. "Very simple, Whisperer. And you'd do well to think on why that might be." He grinned nastily. "I hear you're wiping his lordship's arse these days. How's that working out for you? Does he really shit gold?"

"Nika, don't," Jordan said, as the Unspoken took a step forward. "He's helping. We might have an antidote."

That pulled the Whisperer up short. "What? Where? From who?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Arlen hawked into the gutter, making sure Darin saw it. "And it was fucking expensive, so I'm going to give it to you and you're going to fuck off and pretend this never happened. Do we have a deal?"

"I told you he'd be like this," Darin said. "You won't win that one."

"And you can wind it in," Arlen snarled. Darin's expression remained infuriatingly unperturbed.

"Jordan comes with me when I, ah, fuck off," Nika replied, "then we would have a deal."

"I don't think you're in a position to make demands of me."

"Do you need me for anything else tonight, Arlen?" Jordan's voice was surprisingly strong as he inserted himself between them. Something about this Whisperer gave Arlen the creeps, more than just the usual crackling around the witch men. He was happy to take the excuse to look away, but Jordan's beseeching stare wasn't much of an improvement. And here he'd been thinking the kid was finally growing a backbone.

He forced himself to look at what was really getting to him; though Jordan had made no overt signs of it, the boy would side with Nika over him if it came to it. It was obvious. Despite everything he had done for the boy, tonight and on other nights. The amount of money he could have made if anyone else had asked it of him...

"No," he said shortly. "It's a deal."

Despite the agreement, no one seemed inclined to make the first move. After a stalemate that lasted several seconds and felt more like minutes, Jordan stepped forward with his hand out. "I'll hand it over if you want."

"Just get out of my way, kid." Arlen shouldered past him. He handed the vial into the physician's waiting hands, trying to make as little contact with the man himself as possible. "I have the recipe for it," he tapped the side of his head, "in here. Nowhere else. Think about that first if it occurs to you to act on what you saw tonight."

He turned and stalked towards the open door of Darin's building, determined to give him a good shove on the way past, but Jordan eeled his way in front of him again. It took a lot of self-control not to whack him in the shins with his stick.

"No one's going to say anything," Jordan said. "I promise."

Arlen sneered and made to stalk past again, only to find the witch kid in the way again.

"I just..." he paused. They met eyes. "Thanks. For all this."

He finally moved, and Arlen turned to watch him hurry away.

"I know you don't like anything that doesn't go exactly the way you want it," Darin's voice said behind him, "but he'll keep his word to you. I can tell already. He'll be way more loyal than you'll ever fucking deserve."

"Oh, shut up," Arlen snarled without turning around.

The corner of his mouth twitched upwards.

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Regards,

Elinor (S E Harrison)