The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) Read online

  I laid it all out, starting with Hurry-Up Pete and ending with Mr. Penny.

  Captain Holder’s face was the color of fresh-cut beef by the time I was done.

  “I told you what would happen if you tried to be funny,” he said. The white scars on his knuckles stood out against his bruises when he tightened his fists. “You should have listened.”

  There came a knock at my door. One of the Captain’s six silent men opened it, popped outside, and had a brief whispered conversation with someone.

  The Captain waited, grinning the grin of the predator triumphant.

  “In a moment, my man is about to whisper in my ear,” he said. “He’ll be telling me what your friend from this morning told him. Last chance, Markhat. You want to talk about dogs named Cornbread, or you want to talk about the faces?”

  “I told you the truth, Captain. All of it.”

  The Watchman came inside and leaned by Captain Holder’s ear.

  It took him maybe ten seconds to tell it all, and ten seconds for a big vein in Holder’s sweaty forehead to start throbbing.

  I lifted my hands and spread them.

  “I went to the docks looking for a dog-fighting ring,” I said. “And a man in a wide-brimmed hat who speaks with an accent. That’s all I know. That’s all Mr. Penny the weedhead knows. I’m looking for a dog named Cornbread, because I was a dog handler during the War and my wife thinks I’m adorable. What’s this about faces, Captain? Because it’s the first time I’ve heard mention of—”

  The Captain stood. He glared at me and raised his hand and for one awful moment, I was sure he was pointing me out to his men so there’d be no mistaking who to beat and then arrest.

  “I don’t believe a damned word you say,” he said. His men, all of them, were a single syllable, the smallest motion, from mayhem. “If I find—when I find—you lied to me, I’ll put you down so deep they’ll lower your slop with a bucket and a winch. Stay out of my way, Markhat. Avalante be damned. Get in my way and I’ll end you.”

  He stormed out.

  His men turned to follow.

  “Nice of you to stop by,” I said. “Always happy to assist the Watch with their enquiries.”

  The last one out was kind enough to close my door.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. I paced until my nerves were settled, and then I pulled out my notepad and doodled until I heard Mama’s heavy footsteps sound outside.

  “Boy?” She stuck her head in my door. “You alive in there?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Made some new friends. How many are still out there watching?”

  “Four, maybe five,” she said. “Ain’t got a damned lick of sense between ’em, neither. Might as well be flyin’ kites and wearin’ skirts. This ain’t about no dog. Boy, what you got mixed up in?”

  I sketched a Watchman in a skirt, a kite string in his hand.

  “People keep asking me that. Wish I knew,” I said.

  I settled back, applied my keen intellect to the matter at hand, and was napping before Mama’s footsteps faded as she stomped her way home.

  Chapter Five

  Some sixth sense woke me just before the scrap of paper came sliding under my door.

  I found my gun and kept it in hand for the count of ten. But no one knocked. No one tried the latch. Traffic was heavy on Cambrit, both horsedrawn and pedestrian, so I didn’t hear my note-slider leave.

  I got up and peeked through my fancy glass anyway. Ogres rushed past, hauling their carts of night soil west toward the tanneries. People walked the streets, squinting in the sun. Mr. Bull pushed his ancient broom across his smooth-worn stoop and maintained an animated conversation with his tireless, silent shadow.

  I used the toe of my shoe to push the scrap of paper into the patch of light my door-glass let through. The note had been folded, which meant it might bear hex signs, and the last thing I needed for lunch was a generous portion of killing magic.

  I have learned a few things from Mama over the years. I filled a copper pan with moon-shone salt, and lit four white candles, one at each corner of the pan. I spat in the salt three times, and then I used my Army knife to put the note down centered in the salt. I threw three pinches of salt on the paper, turned around three times while holding my breath, and then I used my knife to unfold the note.

  I KNOE THE DOG FIGHT MAN, it read. METE TONITE ALLEY BY LONGSWAITE AND COOPERS. COME ALONE HOUR PAST CURFEW BRING CROWN I GIVE YOU NAME.

  I turned the paper over. It was half of one of the nuisance waybills the Regent outlawed right after he outlawed the newspapers. This one advertised a stage play from last summer.

  I cussed some. Odds are a weedhead or a street kid was paid to slip the note under my door. They probably didn’t know much, but they could have given me a place to start looking, and since I’d been napping I didn’t even have that.

  But I had enough to find my hat and check my revolver and head out my door. The address on the note could wait. I had Mr. Penny’s warehouse to visit.

  The sun was bright and cheery. I pulled my hat down against the glare and waved at Mr. Bull’s muttered greeting.

  Mama was right. I spotted four Watchmen before I had time to blink twice. Courtesy demanded I just stroll up to the closest one and give him my agenda for the day, but I recalled Captain Holder’s beet-red face and decided to put his shiny new Watch to the test.

  Three blocks. Three blocks, two cabs, an alley, and a hat store. That’s all it took to elude the Watch and emerge from the alley by Cape and Sons Shoe Repair unencumbered by the vigilant gaze of law and order.

  I walked another two blocks, just to be sporting. The Watch never showed. I watched a street mime get slapped in the face by a black-clad nanny wearing an enormous birdcage hat and then I hailed a cab and headed for the docks, whistling all the way.

  It was a still day. The docks reeked, and the press of sweaty, working bodies only added to the palpable aroma of the place. I wasn’t sure even Mama’s homemade lye soap would ever get the stink out of my new white shirt.

  I had to backtrack a couple of times, but I found Roy’s. From there, I followed Mr. Penny’s weed-addled directions—a block west, a block north, find the alley with the whitewashed bricks. I managed all that easily enough, still keeping an eye out for Captain Holder’s men. I wasn’t followed.

  I watched the mouth of that alley for half an hour, trying to decide if anyone was keeping track of nosey pedestrians and perhaps applying blunt instruments to inquisitive noggins. Seeing nothing but the usual, tireless scurry of alley rats, I sauntered into the gaping dark.

  The first right Penny predicted appeared halfway down the alley. It was a narrow path, constructed of rubble that curved away for ten yards before ending in a heap of broken bricks and rotting lumber.

  But there, to my left, was a weather-beaten door.

  I stood in the stinking shadows and listened. Aside from the pitter-patter of busy rat feet, I heard nothing but street noise.

  I put my ear to the door. Again, nothing.

  I pushed.

  It wasn’t locked. I pulled my revolver and flung the door wide open.

  No one asked me my name. No one demanded ten coppers. I saw a makeshift table just beyond the door and a pair of cast-off chairs beneath it. Trash covered the floor.

  Rats scurried, but nothing else.

  I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. There were no windows, but enough sun slanted down from gaps in the roof to light my way ahead.

  The room was long and narrow. A path led through the trash to another door set in the far wall. I made my way there, wary of any movement from the heaps of debris that surrounded me.

  The second door was new. It featured a massive, brass lock and a hefty, iron bar. The lock was disengaged. The bar wasn’t set in place.

  And the sturdy new door was ajar.

  I sidled up to it and took a quick peek, well aware that in doing so I made my handsome silhouette a perfect target for anyone hiding in th
e shadows beyond.

  I saw only darkness and a set of narrow wooden stairs leading steeply down.

  I wrinkled my nose. The air wafting up from below smelled of blood. Blood, and rotting garbage, and something else—something familiar.

  Dogs.

  Six months training as a handler. Five years in the tunnels, finding Troll dens down deep.

  Some things you never forget. Drink as you might, you never forget.

  An oil lantern hung on a nail by the door. It was three-quarters full, and the wick had been recently trimmed.

  I left it there.

  Another thing you never forget is that the only way to survive the dark is to become a part of it.

  Thirty-six steps down.

  That’s what it took.

  By the time I reached the bottom, my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. You’d be surprised how much even a stray sunbeam actually illuminates once you have the knack of looking for outlines rather than details. Sounds, too, tell secrets. Every scrape of my boot, every echoed noise, spoke to me in the faintest of whispers.

  I knew I was in a cavernous space, a place of high, irregular ceilings and distant, earthen walls. Water trickled, far away. Blind, pale crickets sang.

  I felt my heart race, then slow. How many times had I heard those very things during the War? How many times had Petey and I ventured down under the ground, seeking enemies five times our size—enemies at home in the dark?

  I felt a phantom nuzzle on the back of my right hand. Petey, my mutt of a War dog, reminding me to pull my head out of my ass and get to work.

  Petey was dead before the War ended. I’d cried when I buried him. Hadn’t cried before or since. Sometimes I feel his wet nose still.

  I don’t believe in ghosts. Nevertheless, there is one specter I would welcome.

  I walked. My boots scattered bold rats and well-chewed trash. My eyes fixed themselves on a heap in the middling distance.

  The smell of dog grew strong. With it, the smell of death.

  Along with ghosts, I don’t much believe in Angels, no matter how many priests proclaim their glories. But maybe, just maybe, some merciful Angel overlooked my lack of faith, because a single, dim ray of sun fell upon the mound and spared me the task of using my hands to confirm what I already knew.

  The mound was a heap of dogs.

  Twenty-five of them, perhaps more. All sizes. All breeds. All bloody and torn and dead.

  If an Angel sent the ray of sun, I knew when I heard the whimper, it was no Angel of mercy.

  One dog lived.

  I knelt. I dropped my revolver. I probed the broken, stiffening corpses, finding only cold upon cold upon cold. I found no corpse matching Cornbread. But at last I did find a warm, wet nose, buried down deep in the pile.

  I dug. My arms went slick with old blood and worse. But I dug until I found her and freed her, and then I sat on my ass in the filth and I held her in my lap.

  She’d bled so much and so long, she had little blood left. Her abdomen had been opened. Her entrails savaged. She wasn’t going to live and she knew it, and I knew it, and if any Angels were nearby, they held their tongues and hid their faces.

  She had a long coat that had once been combed and bathed. She still wore a fancy collar. She’d been someone’s pet, someone’s friend.

  And someone had dragged her down here and tied her to a pole and set half a dozen blood-mad, fighting dogs upon her, just to get them warmed up for the show.

  Her tail was a bloody stump that she still tried to wag. She licked my face until she died.

  I held her for a long time. I took off her collar and rolled it up and put it in my pocket.

  Later, I put her down and covered her with my coat.

  Then I sat in the dark and waited like I’d done so many times before.

  Voices, from the top of the stairs.

  A match scratched and flared. The lantern bobbed off its hook. The door swung open.

  Boots clambered down the stairs. A man laughed. Another cussed.

  I divided feet by two and came up with three.

  Three men, who quickly proved they didn’t know a damned thing about fighting in the dark. They held the single lantern close to their faces. They took the stairs before their eyes had time to adjust. They swapped a bottle as they walked.

  They never saw me coming.

  Two went down before the third finished swigging at the bottle. I hit him in the gut with the butt-end of the stout club I’d found amid the trash. When he doubled over, I hit him in the mouth.

  Down he went. I kicked him as he fell.

  None of the three managed to stand by the time I joined them at the bottom of the stairs.

  One did groan and make a half-assed attempt to rise to his elbows. I rewarded his determination with a sharp blow to the back of his head. He went down and lay still.

  The lantern rolled past, trailing small pools of burning oil. I snatched it up before it sparked a real fire.

  “You’re going to give me a name,” I said. A pair of faint groans answered. “You’re going to give me a name, or I’ll kill every damned one of you and enjoy doing it.”

  More groans. Someone spat teeth. I felt myself smile.

  “Someone paid you to watch this place,” I said. “Who?”

  Silence.

  The lantern illuminated the pile of dead dogs not thirty feet distant.

  I issued a dozen heartfelt kicks.

  “Stop it, stop it,” muttered one of my supine friends. “Chuckles. Chuckles pays us. We don’t know nothin’, mister. We just got paid to watch the door.”

  I dropped to my haunches.

  “Chuckles,” I said. I waved the lantern near my talkative friend’s face.

  He was around fifty. Grizzled and scarred. Whatever teeth he’d had were scattered on the floor beneath him. I wasn’t sorry.

  “Now, where can I find this Chuckles, and how will I know him when I see him?”

  A knife blade glinted in the lamplight. I brought down my lumber. Wet, cracking sounds and a scream echoed in the dark.

  Again, I wasn’t sorry.

  “You were saying?”

  “Everybody knows Chuckles. Big, waxed moustache. Keeps a table. Down at the Bastion.” He cut his eyes to his fellows. “What the hell’s the matter with you? We just watch the door. I don’t think Mort is breathing.”

  “Worry less about Mort and more about yourself. This Chuckles. He run this place?”

  “Hell if I know mister, he just pays us to—”

  “Watch the door. I heard. Tell you what. I’m going to pay this Mr. Chuckles a visit. But before I do, you’re going to give him a message. How’s your memory, pal? Think you can repeat what I’m about to say, word for word?”

  He spat blood and glared hate.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. My message is this—the dog fights end. Or I end you. Simple enough. Got it?”

  He spat again. “You got a name?”

  I don’t remember much from the days when Mom dragged all us Markhats to Church, but a line of scripture came to mind.

  “I am Death. You shall not know my name until I speak it in thine ear. Dread my name, for it shall be thy undoing, amen.”

  “Crazy bastard.”

  I hit him again. He rolled over and howled, and I rose. I cast my club down beside him.

  The other two lay still. If they breathed, I couldn’t see their chests rise or fall.

  “I am Death,” I said. “Dread my name.”

  I blew out the lantern and threw it as far as I could.

  Then I climbed the thirty-six steps, whistling all the way.

  You can be covered in blood and still get a cab at midday down by the docks.

  The cabbie asked to see my money first, but at the first gleam of coin, he was all smiles and yessirs and nosirs. When he asked me where I was heading, I meant to give him the address to our neat little cottage on Middling Lane.

  Instead, I heard myself say, “Avalante.” The cabbi
e nodded and I climbed in, and half an hour later I was being dressed in a borrowed raincoat and seated in a cheerful anteroom by Jerle, Avalante’s unflappable doorman.

  Another half hour passed. Jerle brought a silver tray bearing a crystal pitcher filled with water and a single tall glass. I was working on my third glass when Jerle reappeared and led me down Avalante’s labyrinthine halls until we reached Evis’s office.

  Jerle nodded and left. I knocked at Evis’s door.

  “Come on in,” he said. I stepped inside.

  Evis’s office is always dark. His halfdead eyes don’t need more than the least flicker of candlelight to make his world bright as my noon. As I entered, he pushed a button on his desk, and soft lights flared at the far corners of the room, letting me see without risking a stumble.

  Evis didn’t rise, but he did open the cigar box on his desk and produce a pair of Lowland Sweets.

  I sank into the plush leather chair in front of his desk. For the first time, I noticed the heap of papers and scrolls atop it. As Evis clipped the ends of each cigar, I saw that his hair was mussed and his tie was askew.

  “Rough day in the crypts,” I noted, as he closed his dead white eyes and lit a match.

  “I’m not the one covered in blood.” He puffed and the end of his cigar flared. He handed me the other and tossed a box of Red Cat matches over the heap of papers on his desk. “Carl didn’t think you were wounded. I agree, because most of that blood isn’t human.” He wrinkled his nose. “This ought to be one hell of a story.”

  I lit my Lowland Sweet. “It started with a dog named Cornbread.”

  I laid it all out. Evis smoked and nodded and you couldn’t tell a damned thing he might be thinking behind those dirty, unblinking marbles he calls eyes.

  Beers were summoned and consumed. Another pair of cigars were lit.

  I ran out of breath. We smoked for a while in companionable silence.

  “Captain Holder was sure I knew something about the faces,” I said after a while. “That mean anything to you? Faces?”