Old Fen leaned on his rusted chair, shadows cast by the lamplight on the table clinging to his wrinkles. "How many bearers does she have?"
Across from him, Joss Renn lowered the interlocked fingers he had been pressing against his forehead. He glared at Fen's mottled beard for a second, then sighed. "Eight bearers."
Old Fen's shoulders slightly relaxed, only to tense twice more when Joss continued.
"Two infamous ones on the verge of becoming binders. And she's a binder herself. The remaining ten are the worst scum Veston has ever puked in decades. Deserters, abusive officers whose crimes would make rats faint. You get the idea."
Old Fen groaned. The chair did too when he shifted. "That brat? How is she a binder already? I thought only Brannick could bring us down... It'll be hard."
"But not impossible." Joss drummed on the table, his pensive frown deepening.
Fen's eyes lit up when he saw it. "The priest who believes no one noticed him? Is he your trump card?"
"Samuel?" Joss held Fen's gaze, then laughed. "Kythra's priests would rather ally with evil spawns than unlicensed truth binders. You know it. Everyone does. No, we're alone, unless..."
Fen leaned on his arm as Joss paused. "Unless?"
"A freak lives down the street—tall guy, more hair than visible skin. He killed twelve beggars on his own. Not something a normal man pulls off any other day, especially not without a single injury. He has a truth. And since I'm right, we'll have seven bearers if he joins us."
Fen let himself sink into his chair. His fingers wrapped around his forehead, the two missing ones more visible in the light. "The bastards we hired pace around our fifteen deaths. They'll flee if we leave, and I'm not sending one of our truth bearers to a man who killed twelve others effortlessly."
Joss cocked his head, his lips curling. "We? Since when does recruiting a man need two?"
"Hahaha." Fen's laugh was cold. His hand wrapped around his sword, his grey eyes sharp as if he had unsheathed the blade. "Trying to leave the building before it burns? We're in this together, Joss."
"And where would I go?" Joss spread his palms. "Garrick already holds my information network and your tunnels. Tell me where I'll hide if I dip on you."
Fen kept glaring, but his hand loosened around his sword.
"Look. We can hold on with our thirty-seven men and your truth. But we'll lose. That's a fact." Joss lowered his hand, slowly, like the blade hanging over both their necks. "Now, we can either fight knowing we'll die, or try to even the odds. Your choice."
Silence thickened between the two men.
Eventually, Old Fen knocked his blade against his hip with a grunt. "You'll join me in Kraghor's realm in less than a day if you flee. Go. Get that freak on our side before Silma attacks. Your men stay."
A pouch clinked on the table, the leather deflated around the few coins it held.
Joss picked it up and untied the laces.
Sighing, he emptied the pouch into his own. A gold crown and a half in total... He scowled at their glint, his eyes shifting on the scales minted on two tokens for a second too long. Then, he rose. "We walk on paths long woven by Morvana. I doubt our threads will break today. Wait for my good news."
"I didn't know you worshipped the goddess of fate."
"And I didn't know you were an information broker. Say, you really don't know where the rat-man went?"
"For the hundredth time, my men found his room empty."
"A shame." A smirk stretched across Joss' face as he left without turning. The building indeed burned, and he wouldn't join Fen's ashes.
The men who paced in the corridor paused when he passed. Though their legs trembled, their faces lit up. Yet, he didn't give them the speech they dreamed about, didn't even glance at the bandages wrapped around their burns or arrow wounds. The stench, though, followed him to the ground floor.
He gestured at the ten men in front of the iron pipes stretched against the doors. "Let me out. Barricade the doors behind me."
One of his four men approached, a good bearer who had managed a part of his network. He whispered in his cupped hand. "Do we accompany you?"
"No." Joss shook his head, answering loud enough for everyone to hear him. "I'll return in an hour. Open the doors. Now."
With relieved nods, the men lifted the pipes and pushed the junk blocking the doors aside. They rattled against the ground as the bearer pushed them open. "Good luck, leader."
Blood dripping down the cracked pavement melded with the stench of burned flesh and dust. Yet, he filled his lungs with the steam wafting from the doused fire of the walls. He pulled up the collar of his long, dark coat and walked toward Kael's shelter. "You'll need it more than me."
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Far from the gang war of the beggar streets, Samuel frowned at Joss Renn's wanted poster. Drawings of the slum's districts circled or crossed in red ink and notes, nailed to his board and connected with ropes, glared back at him, as if challenging him to replace the question mark drawn on the heretic's paper.
Joss Renn had been his best lead. It had been a delightful surprise to find a man of the goddess of fate among the infidels gangrening the slums. The first meeting was nothing but reassuring—someone who spoke the same language as him. It didn't take them long to negotiate mutually favorable terms. Joss Renn found the heretic, and he helped him return to Veston.
He passed a hand in his blonde hair, a frustrated sigh breaking the silence of his rented house in the central district.
But Garrick, that believer as muscle-brained as the goddess he worshipped, had to interfere. His men drowned the Ragged Crown's headquarters in blood two hours after their meeting.
Joss Ren survived... He left no tracks of his escape either. But the worst...
For a moment, he pulled the box containing The Hands of the Unburied from his pocket. Then, he shoved it back inside.
Since he returned from the temple, relic 89 became useless. Or rather, it worked too well to be useful. Even if he tried now, he knew the grey hands would lash toward the ground, toward the facility in the sewers—toward the monster in the glass, and all the heretics locked in cells.
Had the anchor-ghast broken the concealing formation before Garrick dealt with it?
Perhaps. And it hindered his divine mission.
He pressed his hands against his brown-orange eyes. When he removed them, a steely glint burned in their depths.
Since his return, the beggar district was the place he searched the least. War preparations made it more dangerous than ever, and he'd rather not blow his cover before Old Fen's heresy vanished from the slums.
After the war.
Still, he glared at Joss Renn's poster again. "Our deal still stands. Find me soon, and I swear by Kythra's grace that you'll taste her blessing again in the place that is rightfully yours."
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As Samuel's voice faded into silent contemplation, the sheet in the doorway of Kael's shelter fluttered. The ledger he flung hovered in its ethereal form beside him as he leapt to his feet.
Tonio moved before he did. His dark nails aimed at the doorway, his leg bent, and his whiskers twitching subtly.
Els clasped his shirt, her balled fists shivering against his back.
Yet, Kael didn't feel them. He forgot to breathe for a heartbeat. The relic! Tonio didn't wear it! No one could see his real looks!
He rushed toward Tonio. Before he could shove the round glasses against his face, the sheet flung up.
A man lumbered in. His boots scraped against the floor, slow and heavy, as if he had nowhere else to be. The lamplight slid across his coat, catching on dried blood and ash.
His short brown hair, the scar cutting down his right scalp to his light grey eyes. Could it be? The stubble on his face couldn't hide the man plastered on every wanted poster. The leader of the Ragged Crown: Joss Renn!
Kael's hair bristled under Joss' gaze. Not the tired gaze of someone losing a war. But the completely calm gaze of someone who knew he'd survive. And somehow, it felt worse. Why did he come here instead of bolstering the tannery's defenses, or fleeing?
"You?" Joss frowned at Kael first. "How—"
Tonio gave neither Kael nor Joss a second to answer. His coat whipped the air as he lunged. "Bad man!"
"Wait!" Kael screamed. Too late.
Joss' eyes widened at Tonio's furry face and whiskers, and he blurted out. "The rat-man!"
"Shit. Kill him!" Charging behind Tonio, Kael pulled the knife tucked behind his back.