Guns of Alkenstar (3 page)

Kordroun clamped a hand down on Gelgur’s shoulder—the ill-healed one, of course—snatching all breath for words away in sudden agony.

Dragging him by that iron grip, the shieldmarshal marched his hissing-in-pain recruit a little way down the street and around another corner.

“Be still, unless you want to doom us all.” Kordroun set a brisk pace along a darkened sideway, not relaxing his grip in the slightest. “We’ll be meeting her soon, and you can hearten her with your cheerful judgments then. Until then, shut your maw!”

“Let go, or you won’t have a partner for your hapless gun-lass,” Gelgur managed to rasp out. “Unless she likes corpses!”

Kordroun freed Bors abruptly, halting in mid-stride to wait through Gelgur’s inevitable fall to his knees, followed by groaning and rolling about clutching his shoulder, trying to master his pain.

“As I was saying,” the high shieldmarshal remarked in a casual, conversational manner over the hunched and moaning old man, “she’s more than just a scullery-wench. She’s the last Morkantul.”

Gelgur looked up blearily. “The what? Blazing bombards, Roun, what other surprises are you keeping from me, you blast-assed yelp-dog? She wouldn’t happen to also be the secret bride of an Arclord of Nex, would she? Or a shapeshifted linnorm, dwelling here because she loves the reek of exploding gunpowder?”

The Morkantuls had been a foremost family of the Duchy in the long-gone days when such houses had been numerous and feuding. A Morkantul had been high minister to three grand dukes, and to this day, all Alkenstar knew one Felnadar Morkantul had been the tireless sponsor of the Great Maw of Rovagug, seeing it forged and finished despite fierce opposition from ministers wanting less metal used in just one weapon. Though still notable, the family had slowly dwindled away over time—down to this one last wench, it seemed.

“Never mind her bloodline for a moment,” Kordroun snapped. “She was all I could find who might not be… tainted.”

“In on the smuggling,” Gelgur interpreted in a despairing whisper, and shook his head again. “A child, Roun.”

Kordroun shrugged. “I… a different approach was necessary. We were using our best, our veterans—and they were failing. Our cleverest, one after another… falling in a string of traps and, ah, deft murders. All of which indicate that the slayer, or the hand directing them—presumably the head gun-smuggler—is someone highly-placed and powerful in the Duchy.”

“So you went to your most raw recruit,” Gelgur growled, rolling his eyes. “I hope I’m going to be mightily impressed when I meet her.”

Kordroun sighed and looked away.

∗ ∗ ∗

Ralice Morkantul was even less attractive in person. Wasp-tongued and sullen, she obviously believed anyone who had even a single white or gray hair was a witless dotard. After a few sharp exchanges past Kordroun’s candle-lantern, she and Gelgur faced each other with glares of mutual disgust.

“Some people make up for homeliness with a winning personality. Not Ralice.”

They were in a dusty ready-room somewhere high in the Gunworks, on a floor of deserted bunkrooms used only in times of war, when extra staff were taken on and the veterans ordered to work and sleep on the premises, in shifts. Kordroun had used seven keys on as many doors to reach it, and relocked them all behind himself, his gunhunter, and his new, eldest-in-years recruit.

Inwardly, that white-haired old man was despairing.

Ralice knew she was an orphan, and though she seemed to be good at her job—trained as an herbalist, she was a food seasoner and concoctor of “remedies” in the Gunworks kitchens—she freely admitted she was utterly bored with it.

Boredom that, as Gelgur knew well from years of police work, was on the verge of plunging into malicious, vengeful hatred of authority and those more successful and wealthy.

Right now, she was afire with her new importance as a gunhunter, and aching for all Alkenstar to know it. Word of that getting out would be her death writ, of course, though she didn’t seem to want to admit that, even to herself.

And unless she was hiding some great skill from him, she was exactly what he’d feared she was: a silly youngskirts not beautiful enough for anyone to desire or molest, nor smart enough to accomplish much of anything.

Not to mention the last living Morkantul. Which meant she’d been named the city’s latest gunhunter because someone wanted her dead so they could seize her family wealth and properties—shrunken greatly from earlier days, but still substantial. All hers, every house and gun and coin of it. Entailed until she was of age, of course, but that would mean nothing to an older hand reaching out to seize them.

So had Kordroun picked her? Or the Ironmaster? Or someone higher?

Gelgur was almost certain it had been Kordroun’s decision to look up Bors Gelgur to guard this youngling’s back; he and Roun had never liked each other much. Well, he’d damned well show up this fool of a high shieldmarshal—Kordroun as High Shieldmarshal? That alone shouted to all Golarion how far Alkenstar had fallen!—by keeping Ralice Morkantul alive.

“If it comes to be that you must follow the smugglers’ trail out into the Wastes,” Kordroun was muttering, his scowling brows bent low over the lantern’s glow, “your tale will be that Bors Gelgur, retired shieldmarshal, is owed an old debt by the Morkantuls, and has accepted as payment a medicine to cure a mysterious ailment he’s in the grip of—a medicine you, Ralice, know how to make, but only with herbs you must procure fresh, that can’t be had anywhere in the Duchy. So you’ve been granted leave from your kitchen duties by senior Gunworks cooks to go out into the world and do this—in return for procuring herb-seeds on your journey that can be grown here in Alkenstar, and making trading contacts the Duchy can use to ensure ready new supplies of particular herbs and foodstuffs.”

Gelgur rolled his eyes. “You think anyone will believe all that?”

“They will if you both set about doing it,” Kordroun said sharply.

Through the last word of that rebuke, Ralice promptly spat at Gelgur, “Were you really a shieldmarshal? Did you bribe someone to get the post?”

Gelgur ignored her. “Suppose our gunhunter furnishes us with her report,” he suggested to Kordroun in a flat, neutral voice. “Of what she’s accomplished so far, of course.”

“I’ve given my report to the high shieldmarshal,” the youngskirts snapped across the table, her glare flaring hotter. “And thus far, you’ll no doubt be pleased to know, I’ve learned very little. However, my investigations led to my being chased and shot at, more than once, and I managed to trace some of my pursuers back to one man: Aldegund Toablarr, Purser to the Parliament. High Shieldmarshal Kordroun and I have been discussing how to proceed, given his… high office.”

Bors nodded, recalling his own handful of meetings with Toablarr. A coldly vicious man who enjoyed using his importance like a weapon, and didn’t care to conceal either his own arrogance or his willingness to lash out at others. Capable he might be, but no real loss to Alkenstar if he went down.

Meaning there were plenty of other clever but malicious coldhearts where he’d come from.

Yet could Toablarr really be smuggling more than a few pieces picked up in the open markets, or stolen or privately purchased by a loyal servant or two?

After all, the offices of Ironmaster, the Lord Armorer, and High Chamberlain had all been established in opposition to each other, as watchdogs each upon the other. All three positions had been carefully filled with individuals who cordially hated each other, replaced with successors even more carefully chosen for their hatreds, to make very sure there was no collusion that would mean coins went missing, or worse abuses of power. Murder, for instance.

Yet murders there now were.

So had the unthinkable happened? Were some or all of these high officials working together?

Bors regarded Kordroun. He thought he knew his old rival well enough to read him, most of the time. Right now, for instance. Young Ralice wasn’t troubling to hide anything—or didn’t know how. Their faces told him clearly they’d thought the same question he’d just asked himself. And not yet found an answer.

Well enough. Time for him to start earning his pay.

“Toablarr’s never been much liked in Parliament, nor by any who work with him,” he offered slowly, musing aloud, “but he’s always been untouchable, thanks to his three cronies.”

Kordroun nodded. “They worked together very… shrewdly. But only Eldel’s left now. Toablarr’s advantage over his two worst rivals is gone.”

“What?”

“You’ve been… away from high Duchy gossip just a little too long, Bors. Steelshrike and Hammerlees are dead. Murdered.”

Gelgur couldn’t keep his jaw from dropping.

Orester Steelshrike had been the current Ironmaster’s lover. No wonder she’d given Kordroun permission to haul an old drunkard back into harness.

“Yes.” Kordroun was smiling grimly at the astonishment Bors knew he wasn’t managing to keep off his face. “You probably didn’t know Hammerlees was one of us, either. A gunhunter, our little spyhole into the heart of the dirtiest Duchy politics.”

Big, bluff Jarack Hammerlees—secretly a gunhunter? Gelgur was glad he was sitting down, and had a solid table to cling to. Godspittle and dragonspew, what else?

From across the table, Ralice Morkantul was regarding him with malicious amusement.

A key rattled in the lock of their room’s lone door.

Kordroun and Gelgur sprang up and raced for the corners of the room, the shieldmarshal snatching out his revolver as Gelgur palmed one of his icewine flasks, ready to hurl.

The gunhunter was a little slower, but she had a revolver out, too, by the time the door started to open.

To the clacking accompaniment of a gun being cocked outside.

“Don’t shoot!” a fear-filled, breathless voice squeaked from the far side of the door—which stopped moving when it was ajar about the width of Gelgur’s hand. “I’m alone, and come in peace!”

Kordroun waved frantically for Ralice to crouch down. She obeyed, but still made a large, hard-to-miss bulk behind the table.

“Drop your gun—drop all your guns—and come in!” the high shieldmarshal snapped.

“Kordroun?” the voice asked, sounding almost tearful with relief.

“Drop the gun,” Kordroun barked, “Now! Or I’ll start firing!”

They heard the click of a hammerlock being applied, then the sharp, heavy thud of a gun landing on floorboards.

The door opened a little more, and the gun—one of the smallest, newest sorts of revolvers, blued and gleaming—was kicked a little way inside their room.

Then the door slowly swung wide, propelled by the boot of a lone man who stood with his hands raised. Empty hands.

They all knew that face, though none of them had ever before seen it so pale and sweating, the eyes so large with terror.

It was Aldegund Toablarr, Purser to the Parliament of Alkenstar.

“Help me!” the purser blurted, almost leaping into the room and whirling to slam and lock the door behind him. “Kordroun, someone’s trying to kill me! I need you to hide me, and—”

His panicked rush of words died away as he saw the high shieldmarshal’s gun trained on him, and the stern, set face above it.

Ralice had her gun trained, too, but Kordroun cut through her rising hiss of anger with a coldly snapped question.

“How did you find us here, Toablarr?”

Toablarr looked genuinely startled. “Uh—ah—the doors you came through, to reach this place; unlocking any of them rings a chime in the Gunworks duty guardroom… wires, I think—”

“And you were in the guardroom why?”

“Th-the duty marshal took me there, to help me track you down. He—”

Whatever else the purser had been going to say was lost forever in the loud, wet explosion that blew him apart.

∗ ∗ ∗

Everyone’s ears rang, watery eyes making the wildly swinging lantern’s light blaze up like so many swimming golden moons.

The blast had spattered the upper half of the purser all over the room.

Left with nothing atop them, Toablarr’s legs spasmed, took two wild steps, and toppled. Their thudding landing sent a grisly wave of blood across the floor.

Ralice greeted it with helpless, racking vomiting as she backed away, slipping in gore. She passed the shattered-pumpkin ruin of Toablarr’s head without noticing it.

Gelgur saw that much through a mist of blood half-blinding him. Wiping it away with an impatient hand, he ran to the still-open door, past walls dripping wetly all around him.

Kordroun was right behind, slipping and cursing.

“He was alone, I’m thinking,” the high shieldmarshal growled.

Gelgur nodded in grim agreement, Toablarr’s blood dripping off his chin. The passage beyond was dark and deserted—and in the distance, from the floor below, he heard the distant thunder of booted feet hurrying nearer. Duty marshals, responding to the explosion.

“That was no self-killing,” he growled.

It was Kordroun’s turn to nod. “He was carrying a bomb—but didn’t know it. I’d swear to that.”

“We need to find out who he was last with!” Ralice said excitedly. “His wife will know, or his servants…”

Her voice trailed off under the weight of two withering looks.

“The purser has never wed, and may spend his evenings in many places,” Kordroun informed her coldly. “You did investigate him, did you not?”

“If I were meeting a man I wanted to trick into taking a bomb from me,” Gelgur added, while the young gunhunter was still flushing crimson and working her open mouth in a silent struggle to find a reply, “I’d not be thick-skulled enough to go to his house and try to do it in front of all his servants, as witnesses. I’d invite him to my choice of meeting-places, where I could control matters. Now I’ll grant that if you were trying the same thing, I’m not so sure you’d have simple wisdom enough to—”

“Enough,” Ralice snapped furiously, finding words at last. “Consider me schooled, long-jawed veterans, and answer me this: What now?”

She started to pace, wagging one finger as she thought aloud. “We’re getting close, or there’d be none of these shootings and killings. Toablarr was working with someone, and didn’t want me—us—to find out more.”