The Hero's Tomb (11 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The carriage clattered through the darkness. It was a rickety old thing, and Joseph felt as though every muscle in his body would be bruised black and blue by the morning. Not that it mattered. He was sure there would be worse to come, where he was going.

‘You’re taking me to him, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘To Jeb the Snitch.’

Hoake sat opposite, his face hidden by shadow, one hand gripping the seat against the bouncing of the carriage, the other a flagon that had to be nearly empty by now. Hardly paying Joseph any attention at all.

‘But why?’

The whitecoat took another swig, and a dribble of grog spattered his white breeches.

It didn’t make sense – Jeb had been after the wooden spoon ever since he’d first heard about it, but he’d never shown any interest in Joseph before. What did the goblin want with him?

Perhaps he should be glad.
This was what you wanted, wasn’t it? A chance to get the truth about your father
… Except the way he’d imagined it, it was him finding Jeb, not the other way around. And without the wooden spoon, he had no chance of getting the goblin to talk.

He had to get out. He had to be the one in control.

His eyes strayed to his cutlass, propped up beside Hoake, then to the wooden spoon, poking out of his captor’s pocket and jolting with the motion of the carriage. Maybe he could seize it, shove the door open and dive through.

And get smashed to pieces on the cobblestones.

Great idea.

But if he could somehow stop the carriage …

The whitecoat took another pull at his flagon. Joseph had seen men like Hoake before, back in the Legless Mermaid. Men who came to the tavern every day. Who couldn’t help themselves. Who always needed another drop.

Come
on, Joseph. You’ve got nothing to lose.

‘What are you drinking?’ he asked.

‘What?’

Joseph shrugged. ‘It’s just … my uncle’s a landlord, back in Fayt. He brews his own grog.’

The butcher narrowed his eyes, and took another swig.

‘Folk come from all over the town to taste it,’ said Joseph. ‘From all over the Ebony Ocean, in fact. He calls it … er … Lightly’s Golden Elixir.’ Actually he called it
Lightly’s Finest Bowelbuster,
but Joseph didn’t think that would have the same effect.

‘That right?’ said Hoake. He scowled and knocked back the flagon again. There couldn’t be more than a few dregs left by now.

‘I’ve never tried any myself,’ Joseph went on. ‘But they say it tastes amazing, like, er …’ What
did
grog taste like? ‘Like honey and hazelnuts and, um … like …’ He suddenly remembered the words of an old soak who had propped up the bar every day he’d worked there. ‘They say it tastes like the tears of a seraph.’

Hoake emptied his flagon, swore and tossed it through the barred window. ‘Curse you, mongrel,’ he growled. He reached up and thumped the roof of the carriage three times.

Joseph almost went flying as they lurched to a halt.

‘Wait here. I need a drink.’ The whitecoat picked up Joseph’s cutlass, took a key from his pocket and clambered out of the carriage, shutting and locking the door behind him. A strange scent filled the air. Strange, but familiar. Musty. Sickly. Somewhere between fresh vomit and rotten fish.

From up ahead came the voice of the driver. ‘We’re nearly there, for Corin’s sake.’

‘You shut your mouth.’

‘Not another flagon, Hoake. Ain’t you had enough?’

‘I said shut up. And wait here.’

Joseph heard another door open, releasing a burst of music and loud voices, then close. A tavern, he guessed.

No time to lose.

He tried the carriage door, but it wouldn’t budge. He pulled at the bars on the window, but they were surprisingly solid, and like Mr Lightly had always told him, he didn’t have much strength in his puny mongrel muscles. He reached through them. He could get at the lock with his fingers, but of course Hoake had taken the key with him.

He could feel his ears drooping with disappointment.
We’re nearly there,
the driver had said. Nearly at Jeb’s hideout, wherever that was. Last time Joseph had seen Jeb, the goblin had tried to shoot him dead.
He had a hunch the Snitch wouldn’t have become any more pleasant since then.

There was a creak from outside, as the tavern door opened.

Only one thing left to try.
Joseph edged to the opposite side of the carriage, giving himself as much of a run-up as he could.

The key scraped in the lock, the carriage door swung open and Hoake clambered back inside, and at the same instant Joseph launched himself forwards.

‘What are you—?’ said Hoake, dropping both the cutlass and a fresh flagon of grog, as Joseph slammed into him. The stench of firewater filled his nostrils. He struggled, trying to squirm past to the open door, but Hoake caught hold of him. He flailed, and his fingers closed around something in the whitecoat’s pocket.
The wooden spoon.
He tugged hard, and it came free.

Hoake flung him to the floor, and his forehead slammed against the bench. He blinked, his head throbbing with pain as the whitecoat crouched over him, eyes rimmed with red, jaw set with anger.

Maybe he wasn’t as drunk as I thought.

Hoake held out his hand. ‘Give me the spoon, you little wretch.’

Joseph’s fingers tightened on the wood. Maybe it was the knock to his head, but he was sick of being a
victim. Sick of being passed from crook to crook, like some sack of dragon scales to be traded at whim. Sick of this city, and the people in it.

What would Thalin do?

What would Newton do?

What would my father do?

Joseph locked eyes with the whitecoat. He gripped harder and harder, until his knuckles went white.
It’s a question of mental focus.

‘What in all the bleeding Ebony Ocean are you doing?’

What
was
he doing? He’d already tried and failed back in the alleyway, with the Grey Brothers. And even if it worked …
You really have no idea what it could do to you, if you were to misuse it.

He gritted his teeth. He just had to think the right thoughts.

Wait –
the right thoughts.

Not
his
thoughts. Not the thoughts of Joseph the mongrel. The thoughts of Hoake. Hoake the butcher. Those were the right thoughts.

What was Hoake seeing? What was Hoake thinking?

‘I said, hand it over, before I beat the living daylights out of you.’

Joseph climbed out of himself, worming his way
inside Hoake’s mind.
I’m a human. I’m a whitecoat.

A tingling grew in his head, building, spreading down through his chest and into his arms.

It’s happening. It’s really happening.

‘Last chance, mongrel.’

His whole body began to quiver, buzzing with power, and he closed his fingers around the spoon until he and the wand were one.

I’m tall. I’m strong. I’m angry.

The butcher’s face twisted into a snarl and he lunged forward, grabbed hold of the wooden spoon. At the same instant, the power surged out through Joseph’s hand and into the wand. The warmth turned ice cold, and Joseph wasn’t Joseph any more, he was …

… Hoake.

Richard Hoake, his head awhirl and his guts roiling from six flagons of grog.

Who had joined the butchers at the age of sixteen.

Who was branded with the Golden Sun two years later, a mark of honour for slaying a troll the size of a bear.

Who liked his wine, then loved it, then couldn’t do without it.

Who’d once swapped his boots for half a cup of firewater.

Who needed money for it so badly he’d do anything, anything to scrape together half a ducat for another bottle, just one more and then he’d stop, maybe, but more likely not, who—

The whitecoat tumbled backwards, letting go of the wooden spoon, his eyes mad and staring like those of a bolted horse. He panted, his knees pressed up against his chest.

Joseph flinched.
What in Thalin’s name
… ? It had worked. For a few moments at least, it had actually worked. His head ached and he felt woozy, as though he’d just woken up from a long sleep.

The driver’s voice carried from the front of the carriage. ‘What’s going on down there?’

The words were like a jab in the ribs. Joseph stuffed the wooden spoon into his pocket. He saw the carriage door still ajar and hurled himself through, snatching up his cutlass as he went, sending the door banging open and hitting the cobblestones hard.

Up on his feet, rounding the back of the carriage and flying down a side street.

The strange, musty smell was stronger here. He skidded through a black puddle and reached instinctively to check that the wooden spoon and his father’s silver watch were still safe in his pockets.

Wait
. A black puddle
…

He looked again. It was sludgy as wet mud and glistened like a beetle’s shell. He bent down and sniffed. Yes – that smell – that musty, sickly, familiar smell. He knew what it was.
Of course
. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

We’re nearly there, for Corin’s sake.

‘Mongrel? I’m coming for you, mongrel!’

Joseph turned and ran through the streets, his heart leaping. He had done it. He had actually controlled Hoake’s mind with the wooden spoon, and he’d got out of it alive.

No more being pushed around. No more being told what to do.

It was time to put his plan into action.

Chapter Nineteen

‘That’s him,’ said the cat.

Tabitha leaned forward, watching the whitecoat stumble out onto the street. It was almost dawn, but the tavern was still lit up and bustling with activity. A second figure, big and burly, appeared in the doorframe.

‘And don’t come back till you’re sober, understand?’ The door slammed shut.

The whitecoat paused for a moment, swaying, and threw an obscene gesture back at the tavern.

Tabitha shifted position, uncomfortably aware of the big man with the horse’s eyes who gripped her collar, forestalling any attempt to escape. They were
crouched in an alleyway, sticking to the shadows where they couldn’t be seen. Tabitha was exhausted and her whole body felt bruised and tender. They’d been walking all night, ever since the elf in the stocks had given her up. First to get away from the Demon’s Watch. Then hunting. Hunting for this whitecoat.

Trying not to think about what the cat had said.

I’ve already dealt with the mongrel boy.

At first she’d demanded that they let her go.

‘I’m afraid not,’ the pale woman with the bald head had replied. Something about her gave Tabitha the creeps. No –
everything
about her. ‘If your friends come looking for us, we’ll need a hostage.’

‘So you’re not going to kill me? Then what are we doing?’

The cat had grabbed her jaw, squeezing tight and making her flinch. ‘You are a nosy little girl, aren’t you? Don’t be so sure we’ll let you live. Perhaps we’ll throw you to the sharks. Or perhaps we’ll lock you in a lobster pot and ship you off across the ocean. Does that sound familiar?’

She’d kept quiet after that.

Until now.

‘Who is he?’ she whispered.

The hand on her collar tightened, and another came round to clamp over her mouth. It was hot
and sweaty and stank of horses. She wrinkled her nose, uselessly.

The cat turned to the others, his face half lit by the glow from the tavern. ‘With me.’ He stepped out into the street. The others followed, Tabitha dangling like a marionette from the big man’s grip, stumbling, her feet only just touching the ground.

The drunk man might have been a whitecoat, but in truth his jacket was mostly brown and yellow now, stained with spilt grog and worse. He was large, soft and podgy with sandy-coloured hair – but even through the haze of grog, something about him suggested a fighter. And it wasn’t just the hefty curved sword that swung from his belt.

As the shapeshifters padded towards him, the man turned, red-rimmed eyes struggling to focus, and Tabitha drew in a sharp breath at the sight of a horrible scar on his forehead.

‘Whatareyer … Whassgoin … ?’ he said, the words slurring into each other.

‘You know what we want, my friend,’ said the pale woman.

‘Aye,’ said the big man holding Tabitha. ‘Where is he?’

The whitecoat lurched away. But the pale woman was beside him in an instant, and delivered a gentle
push to the side of his head with one long white finger, as though tipping over a row of triominoes. The man overbalanced, sank to his knees and sprawled on the cobblestones, panting heavily. A slick of vomit bubbled down his chin. Tabitha’s own stomach heaved, and she squirmed in the big man’s grip.

There was some strange smell in the air, she realized, something beyond the stench of grog and sick. Something that she recognized.

The cat knelt and took the whitecoat’s collar in both hands, bringing his face close. ‘You disgust me, Hoake. What are you? You wear the League’s brand on your head. You work for a filthy crook. And you drink yourself half to death every night.’

‘Idonwanna … I duneven …’ mumbled Hoake.

The cat motioned to the pale woman. She nodded, and suddenly was no longer there. Only her clothes remained, and they fell to the ground with a rustle. Something crawled out of the empty collar, midnight black, many-limbed.
A spider
. It scuttled across the cobblestones onto the butcher’s jacket and began to move steadily closer to his face. Hoake’s eyes grew even wider, and he began to cry.

Tabitha felt an unexpected surge of pity.

‘Tell us,’ said the cat. ‘Tell us now, or you’ll have taken your last swig of firewater.’

At the mention of firewater the whitecoat groaned, rolled over and threw up noisily onto the cobbles, sending the spider scuttling away before he slumped face first into his own sick.

‘Wake up,’ snapped the cat. He stood and shoved the man’s limp body with his shoe, but Hoake was utterly still.

‘We’ll get nothing from him till he comes round,’ said the man with the horse’s eyes. ‘If he
does
come round.’

‘That’s not good enough,’ said the cat irritably. ‘It could take hours. The Snitch could have left Azurmouth by then.’

‘Wait, what?’ said Tabitha. She twisted hard, finally freeing herself. ‘Did you say
the
Snitch
? As in Jeb the Snitch? This whitecoat works for him?’

They all looked at her. The cat. The man with the horse’s eyes. Even the spider paused, motionless.

‘Indeed,’ said cat. ‘We handed your little friend over to him.’

Joseph. So he’s still alive
…

Tabitha sniffed the air again. That smell. So familiar. And at the mention of Jeb the Snitch, she realized what it was. She’d been right. She’d been right all along.

‘Look at his boots,’ she said. ‘Look, there.’

Thick black gunk clung to the underside of the whitecoat’s boots, like treacle. She knelt, and no one made any attempt to stop her. She sniffed once again. Yes – musty, sickly, somewhere between fresh vomit and rotten fish.

Griffin bile.

‘You know what that is?’ she asked.

The man with the horse’s eyes shook his head. The cat watched her warily. The spider crept closer, stepping carefully around Hoake’s unconscious body.

‘Don’t you know what Jeb does, when he’s not lying and cheating and stabbing folk in the back?’

Silence again.

‘I know,’ said Tabitha. ‘I can help you find him.’

‘How?’ said the cat.

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Tabitha. ‘On one condition.’

‘We’re not letting you go,’ said the big man. ‘So don’t even ask.’

Tabitha licked her lips. Jeb the Snitch.
We handed your little friend over to him.

‘I don’t want you to let me go,’ she said. ‘I want you to take me with you.’