The Slum Orphanage - Chapter 29 (Patreon)

I didn’t hurry, deliberately holding back my usual brisk pace so I could enjoy the play of the setting sun across the rooftops and in the window glass. As dusk settled over the roofs of the seedier establishments, Pubset grew busier: the occasional married couple out for a stroll, labourers hurrying off to unwind with a pint or two, working girls just starting their shift, risking a dressing-down and a fine from the constables on duty. Prostitution in the city was strictly regulated, and such ladies were permitted to offer their services only in licensed premises, which did little to stop the desperate, or the truly destitute. With so many prostitutes about, incidents were common: a tipsy worker or an exhausted copper might take a gaggle of high-spirited girls for members of the oldest profession. Respectable women came to Pubset in the company of their men, for the sake of cheap restaurants and equally cheap cinemas. The wilder sort came for dancing, jazz, clubs, and real princes. I’d have said there were no real ones to be found in Pubset, but Thomas Montgomery had stopped by once. Ten years ago. The rest turned out to be puffed-up pretenders, quite capable of leaving a lady with more than just fond memories.

My thoughts drifted down that path, though reason quickly pointed out how flawed the idea was. I’d have to ask Simon for the address of a decent brothel. He might not have much use for it these days, but he’d certainly know the sort of places.

The sudden urge for amusement didn’t fade, and Pubset offered plenty: cards, dice, and dominoes; billiards, snooker, darts. If one wanted something more exotic, the Asians had their own entertainments — dice marked with hieroglyphs, or boxes with snakes and money. One could try, but it dawned on me that I wasn’t particularly good at any of the games I knew, and I had no desire to rely on luck. After wandering between pubs, each clamouring in its own fashion, I sighed and headed home.

The pint of beer faded from my head, along with my carelessness. I remembered caution and began, from time to time, to cast my gaze into the subtle planes. That was how I made it all the way to the Anvil. Almost at the very gates of the manor, I encountered a stranger: a well-dressed young gentleman with a cane. He shifted it from his right hand to his left, slipped the freed hand under his jacket, and slowly produced an enormous black revolver. I froze, but still managed to trigger stone flesh and raise a shield from my rings. My sight slipped into the subtle planes, revealing his mangy nature. The stranger’s subtle body was wrapped in a dense haze of mist, blood, and aether. Looking closer, I could even make out individual runes, but my gaze slid deeper still, to where a knot of filth, black as night itself, had replaced the werewolf’s spiritual heart.

It took me a moment to assess him: a concealed fighter with regeneration and projectile deflection. Uncontrolled ranged attacks would be largely ineffective unless fired at point-blank range, and I had no desire to close to melee. There was a full minefield beyond the fence; I only needed to get across. If the creature chose to pursue, it would run straight into the wards, and Harry would be along soon enough…

The pistol hovered at the werewolf’s midsection. He noted my reaction and didn’t raise it, merely gave an approving smile and said: “You can see it.”

I froze again. Their kind rarely felt inclined to chat, and yet…

We met each other’s eyes, and the werewolf’s lips moved.

“What?” I asked automatically. The situation was too unusual; it threw me off balance.

His lips moved again, as though he were enunciating clearly. I really ought to learn to read lips, I caught only the first two words: ‘you’ and ‘me’.

I frowned, and the werewolf, as if nothing were amiss, tucked the pistol back under his jacket.

“Good day, Lord Loxlin.”

He spun on his heel and bolted down the street at wind speed.

What the devil was that?!

Then it hit me, and with the understanding came fear. The werewolf was fleeing, carrying with him the knowledge that their illusions meant nothing to me, that I could see straight through them.

“Stop!” I shouted and dashed after him. My hand flew to my satchel and, without fail, pulled out a vial of enhancement. I tipped my head back for a split second and swallowed it on the run—and immediately lost sight of the mangy brute. Fortunately, the crossroads was close; I spotted the fleeing figure before it vanished around the next corner. The potion began to take effect, my legs growing light, and I surged forward, now matching the creature’s speed. Still, I wasn’t gaining on him, which meant I needed to do something.

“Police!” I bellowed at the top of my lungs. “In pursuit of a werewolf! Stop him!” I shouted, but the few passers-by, hearing werewolf, all at once pressed themselves against the nearest walls, while the creature reached the corner, thrust out his left hand to catch a lamppost, and, using it as a pivot, spun in a full circle and hurled his cane at me. Fire magic flared along the lacquered wood. I threw up a shield, trying to shove it as far away from myself as possible. The cane went off like a volley of first-rate fireballs. The shield was torn to shreds, and the blast jolted me hard, flinging me onto the pavement like a rag.

I got to my feet with difficulty, and not at once. My vision swam, my throat rasped, my ribs ached, and the world lurched dangerously, but it passed quickly enough. Not so the burning on the finger with the shield ring. The cane had detonated with such force that windows in the nearest houses were blown out, flowers scattered from sills and hanging boxes, curtains scorched. The reservoir in the ring had emptied in an instant and overheated; now the heat bit into my skin through the metal. I tore the thing off and, not for the first time, silently thanked Harry — his amulets do not explode.

The werewolf was, as expected, long gone, but people lay groaning by the walls, clearly in need of help. I went first to those who weren’t moving, checked their pulses, slapped a few faces, brought them round. I spent longer with one lady than the others: badly burned, and she’d struck her head against the brick. Blood streamed steadily from beneath her hat, but the skull was intact, a couple of drops of potion on the wound and the rest down her throat set things right. There were plenty of concussions, bruises, and cuts, but, thank God, no one was killed or even maimed. It seemed the cane had been meant to break pursuit, not to do real harm.

By the time I’d looked over the injured, two police cars arrived with sirens wailing, and a couple of coppers came running on foot. Right behind them, remarkably quickly, an ambulance carriage pulled up. By then I was already speaking with familiar constables, giving a detailed description of the werewolf who’d attacked me. Near the end of it, Harry turned up as well, to see what all the noise was about in his patch. I tried to make use of the coppers’ friendly attitude and Harry’s authority to slip away to the Anvil, but they insisted I wait for a detective. I’d hoped for Sunset, but his colleague Mallory arrived instead: a thin, bony, stoop-shouldered man in a jacket a size too large, with thick sandy side-whiskers that made his head look disproportionately wide. His ungainly appearance and manner often misled suspects, especially when he began hopping from one topic to another, peppering them with questions.

I hadn’t yet made sense of what had happened, hadn’t formed a view; my head still rang from the blast. I’d have been easy to crack, and I had no intention of saying that the werewolf hadn’t come to kill me. Because he hadn’t. He hadn’t even tried, and that was what frightened me. Someone had put together a neat little operation to test my abilities. Of course. The werewolf had concealed the pistol, the movement of his lips, even the sound, with magic, and I’d foolishly shown that I could see him, but not hear him. Well then. It seemed my death would be a quiet one.

“Detective,” I said, “no offence, but I won’t answer your questions until I’ve spoken with the Earl of Bremor.”

“An amusing statement,” Mallory snorted.

“No offence,” I repeated. “It’s a matter of clan security. You may lock me in a cell, do whatever you please. I’m sorry, I truly can’t.”

I might have liked Mallory to take pity, to see reason and let me go, but no. The copper did as he ought: put me in bracelets and sent me to a cell, where I was soon joined by Sunset. He’d been instructed to crack me.

“Can you promise that what I say won’t go beyond these… bars?” I asked him plainly.

“I can promise anything,” John replied just as plainly.

“Then all you need to know is this: the mangy brute managed to frighten me. Badly. You could say I’m sitting here waiting to be killed.”

John took that seriously and advised his superiors to hand me over to the Bremor people, but as the Lord Chief Constable was still nursing a grievance against de Camp, my stay in the cell dragged on until midnight. They tried to intimidate me with grotesque specimens, faces like a butcher’s, but they didn’t dare lay a hand on me or try anything more direct. So, shortly after midnight, I was handed over to a Bryce as black as thunder.

We spoke at the Anvil, it was closer than Bremor House. My uncle’s escort was left in the sitting room, and we, by long habit, sat in the kitchen. Harry shooed Cap out, I put the kettle on, and at last laid the whole situation before Bryce, fully revealing my abilities and their nature. My teacher kept a tactful silence throughout, not interfering.

“You did right not telling the coppers anything,” my uncle said. “They leak like sieves. Not even on purpose half the time, they just can’t keep their mouths shut. You’d have said a word, and by morning it would be in every paper.”

“What now?”

“We can hide you for a time, or send you home…”

“Better use me as bait,” I suggested.

The thought of hiding made my skin crawl. Dying didn’t appeal either, but having my nerves shredded by waiting was worse.

“Suppose I agree,” my uncle grumbled. “You’re working with children at the moment. Do you realise the danger you’d be putting them in?”

“Didn’t think of that,” I muttered. “Perhaps appoint someone else to run the project?”

“And where am I to find one, conjure him out of thin air?”

“And where are you going to find protection for me and the children?”

“Guards are easier,” Bryce countered.

“You just want to lock me inside the grounds!” I snapped.

“Yes! I do!” my uncle barked. “You can’t be left unsupervised for five minutes, because you’ll find trouble and start playing the hero! I’ve no idea how you’re still alive. You put on airs of being an adult, but in truth you’re a child — one mistake after another!”

“I don’t make mistakes that often!”

“But yours cost us dearly.” My uncle demonstratively raised his right hand, fingers spread, and began ticking them off. “You went to Farnell after Simon — didn’t tell us. You staged a vampire hunt in the slums — drew entirely unnecessary attention to yourself. Remind me, how many clubs have barred you now?”

“How do you even know about the clubs?” I asked, surprised.

“It’s my business. I know more about you than you do yourself. Shall I keep counting? I assure you, I’ll run out of fingers before I run out of examples.”

“You’ve forgotten the most important one, how Ferrish sealed the energy nodes for Feron and me.”

“That wasn’t your mistake, father mishandled it. You should have been allowed to sort it out yourselves, but it should never have been allowed to escalate that far. Because of the old man, the clan lost two talented gifted, but because of you, it may lose the only wizard whose abilities are already remarkable, and in time…” He turned. “Sir Harry, will anything come of this layabout?”

Harry took a sip of tea and nodded.

“I believe that by thirty he will have mastered all three fast-cast spells. An exceedingly rare achievement for a wizard, I might add. I cannot predict his further development. For all the breadth of spells available to us, some come readily, others better still, and some not at all. In many ways, a wizard’s path is as much a matter of chance as a warlock’s. Still, I would venture he’ll make a solid craftsman, and in a fight, the lad has already beaten opponents far stronger than himself.”

“You see!” my uncle pressed. “For the sake of the clan and the family, Duncan, don’t rush things. We’ve no shortage of fighters, but craftsmen who can provide them with quality amulets and weapons are far fewer.”

“I won’t stand aside while the clan is under threat!”

“Then stand with the others, don’t throw yourself into the thick of it. There are many ways to be of use. You’ve five gifted under your care; in time there’ll be another dozen, that’s a small army already.”

“They’ll be accepted into the clan?” I asked, surprised.

“We’ll see how you raise them,” my uncle replied evasively. “If they possess the right moral qualities, fresh blood won’t go amiss.”

We recruited lone talents readily enough, but character always mattered more than ability. What use were scoundrels and traitors to a clan? We could raise a few of those ourselves. More often than not, the matrons, at the head’s instruction, would find a match within the clan for a recruit, binding them by marriage to ensure loyalty. Women were preferred, of course, but there were men as well, who often took their wife’s surname. If I recall correctly, only the Loggs had been taken in as an entire family, but that was a long and rather epic story, going back to the clan’s earliest days. They came with land, or rather, with water: Thunderloch, where the water-aspected place of power lies.

The work my uncle was offering me was serious, too serious, perhaps. The old aristocratic houses, where inheritance always went to the eldest son, preferred to hoard gold and magical trinkets; clans, on the other hand, had always been rich in people.

“By the way,” my uncle said with a smile, deciding to needle me, “I must express my displeasure on another matter. Why did you upset that girl? She took a bullet in Avoc because of you.”

“Er…” I felt a flicker of embarrassment, then irritation. “Oi! What the devil’s that supposed to mean?”

“Mind yourself! Is that how you speak to your elders?”

“And what are you doing poking into my private life?”

“As head of the clan and patriarch of the family.”

“Neither gives you the right to decide who I see.”

“A pity. The girl has very good stock.”

“Uncle!”

“And a respectable family…”

“I don’t go looking for trouble, and you stay out of my affairs.”

“Agreed,” Bryce said at once.

“Oh, you did that on purpose!” I snapped.

“I told you, I know you better than you know yourself,” my uncle laughed.

“That was low.”

“I’m allowed,” he waved it off. “Besides, I was acting in the clan’s interests. So, are you coming with me now, or shall I give you until morning to come to terms with it?”

“Until morning,” I muttered. “If I’m moving, I’ll need to take my books, tools, and training supplies.”

“Excellent. Call me in the morning, I’ll send a convoy for you.”

“No need,” I said with a dismissive wave. “Harry’s finished with the Cooper, it’ll take more than a machine gun to trouble it now. It could stand up to a cannon shot.”

“You’ll call,” my uncle insisted.

And I would have, truly. As I said, I had no wish to die, and given the level of preparation my enemies had shown, they might well have managed it despite all the magic Harry had packed into my motor after patching the hole a cleaver had left in the door. But my morning sparring session with Knuckles was cut short by the telephone, and a minute later Nathan told me it was for me.

“Hello, Duncan,” said an unfamiliar voice.

“Who is this?”

“Brute. You know the name?”

“I’ve heard of you.”

“I’d like to meet.”

“Come by,” I allowed. “The Anvil, or Bremor House.”

“Very amusing,” the voice chuckled down the line. “We’ll meet at Mo’s in half an hour. And one more thing, if anyone leaves the Anvil besides you, the girl dies. Here, listen…”

There was a rustle on the line, then the same voice, more distant, as if turned away from the receiver: “Speak!”

Silence. The crack of a slap.

“Speak!”

Two more blows, a man’s curse, and a girl’s cry.

“Stubborn little goat,” the voice returned, close again. “Doesn’t want to talk. But you can be sure, it’s her.”

“Who?”

“Your beloved. Ellie Sheridan.”

“We’ve parted ways.”

“You haven’t even seen her since that rather heated kiss in Bremor House, so don’t try to feed me nonsense. Half an hour. I’m waiting.”

The line went dead. A steady tone followed.

I pressed the hook down, released it, and began dialling Donald’s number. Each digit answered with a faint crackle in the receiver, but after the fourth, the sound cut out entirely. A bad feeling crept in. I finished dialling anyway. Silence.

I jabbed the hook again. Nothing.

Someone had cut the line.