Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (15 page)

The master of the house has summoned all the pretty ladies and gents in the foyer before a great staircase. They are all powdered, their bruises concealed, and slick smiles hide the terror that so often consumes them. A special client has asked for his pick from their fold, and he passes each pleasure slave like a
shadow of death; he is grand enough to dim the air around himself; it is as if he eats light. She could believe such a fiction from the silver-capped teeth—filed to points—that he bears as he curls his mouth while making his selection
.

She remembers these teeth most of all, for they belong on a predator, and dares not look deeper in case he chooses her. Never in all her days has she been so relieved as the shadow moves by her without a silver snarl. Her meek stature has saved her, it seems. For the client has chosen the thickest ladies and the most strapping men. They are herded off, and their strained smiles shatter as they see the heapings of coin being given to the master of the house. For a price that steep, the client has paid for delights blacker than sex
.

“Poor sods,” whispers a tired old whore, almost drained of use. “If they’ve been picked by the Broker, we shan’t be seeing them again.”

Mouse glances up to note that the man she so feared isn’t large at all; he is a short limber being who moves like a swaying willow, though the shadow he casts is grand indeed, and that she does not forget
.

Perhaps I’ll see your face this time, and see if you still command such terror. I kept the name, but this Mouse has teeth of her own now
, she thought, and was a bit bolder in her step.

The Undercomb was a second city in its own right, with trapeze-like bridges and ratty apartments strung up in the towering halls and over wide arcades. In these larger spaces, the slavemongers staged their trade, with rowdy ale gardens clouded in the sweetness of witchroot to ease whatever conscience might peek out in this sinful realm. Mouse bypassed these busier intersections and stuck to filth-slimed corridors lit by sorcerous orbs of sickly yellow light. Or she slipped through the pen-halls, dodging the desperate hands that reached through the cages. Along her path, ruffians lurked in dark places. They eyed her and once or twice followed her, until a flash of her daggers and the stylized iron eye dangling by a chain against her tunic stopped them. The Watcher’s eye was familiar to anyone who beheld it, and to harm a Voice, however surreptitiously, would be seen, heard, and direly punished.

Without incident, then, she soon came to the Broker’s domain, which was darker than elsewhere in the Undercomb.
As black as sin
, she thought, walking up a metal ramp to enter a cavernous chamber that dripped and hummed like the inside of a giant’s sink. The few yellow lights that sputtered
here against the distant walls showed a curving architecture with bolted struts, so perhaps this had been a reservoir at one point. She was not even a foot off the ramp when several armed men, their faces swaddled like assassins of the Arhad, bled from the darkness at once.

She speedily shone her mark in their faces and said, “I bear a message for the Broker.”

One of the shadowmen nodded and led her ahead while his companions melted away into the gloom. Their stealth was impressive. Silently, she and her guide stole across the reservoir, neither of them making the slightest splash in the stagnant pools spotting the floor. She could smell the iron paint of blood somewhere about her, and she mused idly on how many bodies lay outside her circle of vision. As far as Mouse could tell, they were aiming for a massive, irregularly shaped mound; something like a heap of spiny garbage. As they reached the heap, she was taken aback by the grandeur and oddness of it. It was a mountain of cycle-wheels, gears, pipes, sheet metal, bits of stone, cloth, and wire. Pleasingly, she sensed no organic material or accompanying rot in the mix, though it stank of oil and other steely scents. She was contemplating the genius and madness in its creation, wondering why one of Menos’s most influential figures would live no better than a rodent, when she noticed that her guide had not stopped moving. She hurried ahead. In the garbage mound were numerous dim and ragged openings, as if chewed right through, and her guide went into one. She followed not far behind.

A woman less brave than Mouse would have found the narrow passages, the feeble lanterns, and the whistling resonances of the Broker’s nest unbearable, for it was as uncomfortable as treading the throat of a giant metal monster and just waiting to be eaten. On many an occasion, she pulled in her cloak to avoid catching herself on any of the sharply jutted walls—if one could call them that. Once, her shadowy guide stumbled over a metal tooth and cursed; it was good to see that he was a man and not some magikal, reanimated thing, as high-ranking Menosians tended to favor. After a long while, Mouse knew that they had traveled far beyond the confines of the heap that they had entered. Air and noise blasted from a few of the tunnels they passed, and she wondered if under all the spackle, these passage ways were not part of the aqueducts running through the city.
Ingenious
, she thought.
A maze within a maze. He’s using condemned or blocked pipelines to
go even where the Undercomb cannot. I bet he could reach right up through the shitter and grab a man’s balls. Not even the Watchers use these paths. Not even the Iron sages are safe from him
.

Eventually, space opened suddenly to a wide hollow, and Mouse was washed in the putridness of spoiled meat and urine. The dingy miners’ lights continued here, but they were higher up, and the room was therefore darker than the dimness she’d been traversing. With no assistance from the light, she could still spot the limber thin man in the mantle and cowl of blackness. She caught glimmers of his metal mouth as he whispered to himself or to a shape slumped against the wall. Tables, dully glittering with metal—be it coin or weaponry—and shelving stuffed much the same lined the darkness of the chamber. Apprehension clutched her as they approached the Broker, and more so when she saw the withered, chained figure before him: a man so emaciated that she wouldn’t have guessed him to be alive until she heard a hiss pass from him—the final noise that he was to make, for he slackened against his restraints after that. The Broker crossed his arms with dissatisfaction.

“As weak as they are dumb, this lot. That was the last. We shall need more,” fussed the Broker, his inflections feminine and lisping. “All these years and so few have succeeded. You did, Twenty-two. Wonderfully so, as I recall.”

“Thank you, Father,” said the shadow guide, bowing to a knee.

“Crunched every bone in your wri—”

The Broker noticed that they were not alone. He moved so quickly that Mouse wasn’t sure if she had blinked for too long. A leering face was abruptly in her vision: olive-toned, ringlet-framed, sleek-bearded, and pensive-browed, with cold brown eyes so dark they could be black. It would have been a handsome countenance if not for the mouth and its jarring assortment of needled and picketed teeth, all capped in silver. His lips appeared mangled as well, as if he had chewed on fishhooks, though his facial hair disguised most of the damage. Mouse was quick to react, too. She had one of her daggers out and pressing against his abdomen. Considering the fear that she had held for the Broker, the man wasn’t nearly as terrifying as she remembered. Or she was much more daring herself. He was a lunatic, certainly, but she had dealt with those many a time.

Regrettably, her action didn’t seem to deter the Broker. He studied her for a speck.

“Who…are you?” he asked.

“She bears a message from the Watchers,” answered Twenty-two.

As the Broker withdrew, he snapped at Mouse once, and she almost stabbed him. Having seen her twitch, he was grinning with amusement as he stood across from her.

“Such pluck,” he commended. “You would do well at The Binding, I’m sure.”

Mouse could deduce enough of what The Binding was from the corpse fallen in the shadows behind the madman.

“I am not here for games, only to deliver a message. Will you have it, or shall I be off?”

The Broker placed a hand on his kneeling aide’s shoulder. “A private matter, Twenty-two.”

“Yes, Father.”

Obediently, Twenty-two rose and slipped into the darkness. Mouse didn’t think that the Broker was really the man’s father. That being said, there was a respect to the cutthroat’s manner, a sincerity to his exiting bow that was uncommon in Menos, where men cared only for coin. Mouse guessed that this numberman, and perhaps the other digits of his brotherhood, were true devotees to their master; though whatever perverse rituals or punishments bred such fealty she didn’t care to know. When they were alone, the Broker waved at her to speak.

“I am told that this will make sense to you. We do not decode, only transmit the whispers of our clients,” she said.

The waving became agitated. “Yes! Yes! Go on! Go on!”

“A raven flies to the west to pick clean the whitest, oldest bones in Kor’Khul. Follow it,” recited Mouse.

“A raven,” muttered the Broker, pacing the chamber.

Mouse waited for the madman to excuse her; however, he seemed to be in no rush to do so. Possibly, he had even forgotten that she stood three paces away.

“Do excuse me, but our business is concluded, and I have other tasks that require my consideration,” Mouse said most courteously. “If you can tell me which way to go, I can find the exit.”

The Broker’s attention whipped to her, his dark eyes manic. “Oh, I doubt that. But maybe…oh, maybe you could. So crafty…I can see it in you. Are you certain you wouldn’t like to try yourself at The Binding? I think you could be a fine Thirty-three. Wait, we lost Thirty-two, so you would have to be him. He didn’t like to listen to his Father, so we had to cut his ears off and let him wander about dumb as a boxed mule. What dreadful bleating the deaf make. I do wish he would shut up.” The Broker harked as if hearing a cry that Mouse could not and then shook his head. “I doubt he’s found the way out, and neither will you.”

A trickle of fear ran down her spine as she realized how alone she was, down here in the darkest pit of Menos with this silver-fanged lunatic.

“I am certain I shall stay no longer. Just as I am sure that my masters”—she despised trotting out the word, but it was necessary to stress in this instance—“would be concerned if my business was delayed. Quite concerned.”

“Eight! Eight!” shouted the Broker, and his cry echoed into the passage ways beyond. While they waited, the Broker made the unsettling silence even worse by pacing around her like a hunting cat. He concentrated intently upon Mouse. She fondled her weapons in plain sight and waited for Eight to make himself known. Finally, her new guide arrived. He looked exactly the same as Twenty-two did, though a bit broader and shorter than his “brother.”

Disgusting little family you’ve made for yourself, Broker. May the Watchers never send me here again
, she silently bid. Eight seemed to understand the reason for his summons and started moving from the chamber, expecting his charge to follow, which Mouse eagerly did.

“Wait!” hissed the Broker.

He did that curious trick where he was suddenly before Mouse again; it wasn’t magik, but it wasn’t natural, either. He leaned in close, squinting and clacking his teeth. She prepared to stab him if necessary.

“I never forget a face. Delicious—every one,” said the Broker. “Such warm hazel eyes. A little sadder…a little weaker…a little more scared. Yes.
That was you, all right. I passed you over for The Binding, but I should have taken you instead. We’ve never had a sister; not for long. The boys tend to break them quickly. But you…you would be a fine daughter. How did you do it? How did you buy freedom when all that lay before you was death? You have conquered your own Binding once already. Clever, clever.”

Great fuking kings! He knows me!
Mouse had not endured the harrowing and generally short life of a pleasure maiden without knowing how to conceal her surprise. Through wit, will, and self-preservation, she had survived. She had a stunning mind for observation, too, and did not fail to notice even the smallest particulars, as it was often such details that kept one alive. Like the dimpling of scar tissue around the Broker’s clavicle that she spotted as the madman stretched his neck out to inspect her—sniffing her, too, it seemed. She slid her dagger up his chest. He smiled until she tapped the chain of scars with the weapon’s tip.

“Some memories fade with time,” she whispered. “Such as the details of a face, so perhaps you are confused about what you have seen. Other things, like the scars we bear of shackles that once held us, never fade and are never forgotten.” The Broker’s smile warped into a grimace and he distanced himself from Mouse as she continued. “Sometimes we defy our destinies for lesser ends and rise to something greater. It is best not to look back.”

Not waiting for a response, she turned and shoved Eight into motion again.

An ominous farewell chased after her.

“I shall see you again.”

Not likely
, she thought, scowling, and chose not to resheathe her daggers until she was free of the Broker’s filthy pit. Seeing the markings around his neck, the brand of a long-worn chain, did not excuse the man for his madness or brutality, though at least it helped her to understand it.
So, you too were a slave before you became a master? Good for you, I suppose. Though there’s not much left of you to fill the smallest glass after. I may be dark, but I am not broken
. Or so she tried to convince herself. Down here, in the unholiest of places, she wasn’t always sure.