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CHAPTER FOUR

“There is that, I suppose.”

“Thought I’d find you here,” Raegan said, casting a shadow across Drago as he emerged from the Tradesman’s Association hall, his purse now comfortably heavier. He’d added the cost of his meal with Wethers to his list of expenses, which the Association’s treasurer had paid without complaint, and, struck by happy inspiration, gone on to charge them for a complete set of new clothes to replace the ones soused in blood and filth by Fallowfield’s messy demise. He’d still get the old ones cleaned, of course, and probably drink the difference, but you never knew—a pair of completely watertight boots would be a welcome novelty for a start.

So musing, he’d failed to notice the bulky watchman’s approach, which, for someone of Raegan’s stature, was a pretty neat trick—: and dangerous for someone in Drago’s profession, where a moment’s inattention could be his last. Particularly if someone really was targeting the bounty hunters of Fairhaven.

“You thought right,” Drago replied, hoping to sound as though the watch captain’s approach hadn’t startled him, and suspecting that he didn’t. But Raegan was in no mood for casual banter.

“We’ve found another one,” he said, without preamble.

“And your first thought was to check on me,” Drago said. “I’m touched.” Then another thought struck him. “Unless I’m a suspect. How many people do you think I can kill in less than a day?”

Raegan shook his head. “Don’t joke about it. I’ve been cleaning up after you for so long I might start to take you seriously.”

Drago glanced down the street, to where the effigy of a felon dangling from the gallows marked the welcoming location of The Dancing Footpad, and dismissed the fleeting thought of Hob’s ale. Business like this was best discussed in the open, on the move, away from prying ears. “Who was it this time?”

“Jerron the Heron.” Another cold-blooded killer, whose tall, thin build had contributed both to his nickname, and the sudden demise of several people incautious enough to have used it in his hearing.

“Let me guess,” Drago said, turning away from the Footpad and the Tradesman’s hall toward the nearest market place, where the babble of competing voices would mask their own from any potential eavesdroppers. As the mismatched pair came into view, a quiver of alarm swept through the petty criminals happily plying their trades among the shoppers and stallholders thronging the space between the booths, provoking a small exodus through the rest of the avenues and alleyways leading into the square. Drago found it uncannily reminiscent of walking into a cellar full of rats with a lit torch, and watching them scatter, which in turn provoked a smile of nostalgia for the innocent pursuits of his childhood. “You’ve ruled out suicide, I take it.”

“Pretty much,” Raegan agreed. “Unless he stabbed himself in the back, cut his own throat from behind with a different knife, and gave them both to a friend to take away.”

“Neat trick if you can do it,” Drago conceded. “Was he planning a trip out of town, by any chance?”

“How do you know that?” Raegan glanced sharply down at his diminutive companion. “He had a ticket on him for a riverboat, heading up the Geltwash yesterday on the evening tide. Skipper didn’t wait, obviously, so we can’t ask him why.”

Drago shrugged. “Lucky guess. Caris and Leofric were both buying supplies for a long trip, and the chances they were working together are about as good as mine of being the next archmage. So I’m thinking someone with a lot of money to spend wants someone up the river dead, badly enough to be hedging their bets. And the someone upriver is equally determined not to be dead, and getting their retaliation in first.”

“And you know about Caris and Leofric’s plans how, exactly?” Raegan asked, pausing to stare meaningfully at a braver or more foolhardy cutpurse who’d stayed behind when his fellows fled, silently daring him to ply his trade anywhere in the immediate vicinity: a challenge the felon wisely declined, finding the apples on a nearby stall suddenly of overwhelming interest.

“I asked around,” Drago said ingenuously, “like I said I would.” No point in admitting the information had more or less fallen into his lap. Not if he expected a future favor in return. “And Torvin had taken a big down payment too, on what sounded like an assassination, although of course he’d been drinking it instead of getting on with the job.”

“Sounds like Torvin,” Raegan agreed. “Any idea who either of these someones might be?”

“Not a clue,” Drago admitted, with a shrug. “But it might give you something to go on.”

“Then again, it might not,” Raegan said, scowling. That sort of money meant influence, and both of them knew it. Push too hard, and the guilds or the nobility might start pushing back. If it had anything to do with either, of course.

Drago considered that. Both groups were powerful, and certainly not above resorting to those sorts of methods if the stakes were high enough and they thought they could get away with it. On the other hand, Fairhaven gossip was as ubiquitous as the smell; any dispute serious enough to have provoked a guild or noble family into hiring assassins would have been the talk of every tavern in the city. “My guess would be someone from out of town, here on business. Taking the chance to put out a contract before they go home.”

“Unless that’s the business they came here on in the first place.” Raegan shrugged, his attention momentarily diverted by the aroma from a hot sausage stall, and paused to dig a couple of coins out of his purse. “You hungry?”

“I’m a gnome,” Drago said, playing up to the partially deserved reputation of his species. To tell the truth, he wasn’t feeling particularly peckish at the moment, but would be later, and he might as well put later off for as long as possible. Free food was free food, after all. “What do you think?”

“I think I owe you for the information,” Raegan said, “and I haven’t had my dinner yet.” He exchanged the coins for a couple of snacks, and swapped pleasantries with the stall holder for a moment or two, mentally filing every piece of local gossip for future digestion. Then he resumed walking, at his former leisurely pace, which allowed Drago to keep up by striding out briskly without having to break into a trot.

“If it’s someone from outside the city, they won’t be that easy to find,” Drago said, resuming their interrupted conversation.

“You’re telling me.” Raegan led the way out of the market square and down to the riverside. “Outsiders are always a pain in the arse.” The tide was high, lapping against the pilings of the wharves lining the embankment, and the air was as fresh as it ever got in Fairhaven. At low tide a thin strip of stinking mud would be adding its own distinctive aroma to the general background smell, and Drago gave thanks for small mercies.

Finding a vacant berth between two moored vessels, Raegan seated himself on one of the mooring bollards to eat his impromptu lunch, which brought his face down more or less to the level of Drago’s. The gnome remained standing, chewing the gristly meat inside its slightly stale bun, and nodded in agreement.

“So you’re going to need a way in,” he said. If whoever had been hiring the bounty hunters really was from out of town, and had the sense to be discreet about their activities, the City Watch’s network of informers, or the smaller informal ones maintained by people like him, would be unlikely to hear about it.

Raegan nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “If you’ve got any ideas, I’d be happy to hear them,” he said, without visible enthusiasm or expectation.

Drago nodded again, and swallowed the last of his sausage. “I just might,” he said. “But it’s going to cost you.”


“You sure about that?” Wethers asked, sounding as surprised as he ever did. Drago nodded, looking around the chairman’s private office, which felt a little cramped even at the best of times: almost half the floor area was occupied by an ornately carved wooden desk, perpetually unsullied by paperwork, across which Wethers liked to lean impressively toward petitioners, or someone who’d inconvenienced a member of the Association in some way and been “invited in for a little chat about it.” Though no one would deny he could read and write well enough if he had to, both processes were conducted in a methodical, painstaking manner accompanied by the drawn-out vocalization of the words in a muttered undertone. Fortunately Wethers had been easily persuaded that a man in his position should delegate any paperwork beyond the occasional scrawled signature to the underlings paid to deal with that sort of thing, which left him free to concentrate on the looming at which he undoubtedly excelled. Currently the room felt positively crowded, as, in addition to Drago, Wethers and the desk, it was also occupied by Captain Raegan, who, under most circumstances, could happily have filled most of it alone.

“Yes.” Drago peered over the desk, the polished surface of which was almost level with his nose.

“But it’s not true.” Wethers’ eyebrows converged in a puzzled frown, which Drago knew of old. He wavered in his seat as though contemplating looming for a bit, before returning to the vertical, no doubt concluding that there wasn’t much point with someone as short as Drago in front of him. “And who’s going to believe it anyway? They all know you around here.”

“That’s not the point,” Raegan put in. “The people we want to hear it aren’t local.”

The chairman’s eyebrows began to resemble a pair of mating caterpillars. “Them Temple District pillocks? Even they’re not that thick.”

“Not even from Fairhaven, we think,” Raegan explained patiently, and Wethers’ face cleared with dawning comprehension.

“Oh, you mean forriners. Yeah, they’ll fall for anything.”

“We hope,” Drago said. This was going more easily than he’d anticipated. Wethers wasn’t normally disposed to do favors unless there was something in it for him, or at least the Tradesman’s Association.

“So what’s in it for us?” Wethers asked, right on cue.

“For one thing,” Drago said, in his most reasonable tone, “it’ll make anyone with the idea of picking up where Fallowfield left off think twice about it.”

“That it would.” Wethers nodded approvingly. “Like it. And?”

“There’d be the commission,” Raegan added. Wethers began to look puzzled again.

“What commission?”

“Drago’s not going to stick his neck out for nothing, is he? But how’s it going to look if I have to tell the city council the watch is hiring a bounty hunter to chase down a lead my lads can’t?”

“See your point, yeah,” Wethers said, nodding judiciously.

“So Jak slips you the money instead,” Drago explained, “the Tradesman’s Association pays me for another iffy-sounding job, which we make sure the right people hear about, and you get ten percent.”

“Fifteen,” Wethers replied automatically, and Drago and Raegan exchanged glances of mutual relief—they’d been expecting him to hold out for twenty.

“Fifteen, then,” Raegan said.

“And all we’d have to do is put it about we’d paid Drago to top that little troll shagger instead of running him out of town?”

“That’s the idea,” Drago said. “But don’t make it obvious. Just drop a few hints and let people work it out for themselves.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem for a professional negotiator of your calibre,” Raegan said, as aware as Drago was of the chairman’s susceptibility to flattery.

“Nah.” Wethers grinned. “Piece of proverbial. I’ll just get a bit ratted at the Guild Masters’ Conclave tomorrow night, and pretend to let something slip in front of the right people. Prebbin from Cordwainers’ll do. Tell him anything in confidence and it’ll be halfway up the Geltwash by nightfall.”

Drago and Raegan exchanged glances.

“That sounds about right,” Raegan said. “Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.”

“Anything to oblige the watch,” Wethers said, as if both of them didn’t know he spent half his working life obstructing or misdirecting routine enquiries into the failure of items from the docks to find their way to their intended destination. Drago strongly suspected that the desk itself had been en route to the study of a mage or philosopher at the university before being unexpectedly diverted to its present abode.

“Your civic-mindedness does you credit,” Raegan said, with carefully studied neutrality. “I’ll send Waggoner round with the money after dark.” The best possible choice, Drago silently agreed: the sergeant wouldn’t be at all happy about the situation, which was another plus so far as he was concerned, but he could be relied on to follow orders and keep his mouth shut about them afterwards—not something which could be said about many of his colleagues. Not to mention that bringing him in on the deception would avoid any awkward complications, like taking it upon himself to re-open the case of Fallowfield’s death in the light of the “new evidence” Drago and Raegan were concocting.

Wethers grinned. “Any idea yet what it’s supposed to be for?”

“Still working on that,” Raegan told him. “We’ll let you know.”


“I don’t like it,” Waggoner said, just as Drago had predicted, with a venomous glance at the gnome. “You can’t trust either of them.”

“When Drago says he’ll do a job, he’ll do it,” Raegan countered. “Or die trying.”

“There is that, I suppose,” Waggoner said, looking a little more cheerful at the prospect. The three of them were lurking in an alleyway not far from the watch house, narrow enough to be deeply shadowed even at mid-afternoon, and the onshore breeze was developing an edge. “And if somebody has to be bait . . .” He looked down at Drago with narrowed eyes.

“I never said it was a good plan,” Drago said, “just the only one we’ve got.”

“At last we agree on something,” Waggoner said, taking the purse Raegan handed him, and tucking it away inside his jerkin. “Any idea yet what this is supposed to be for?”

Raegan nodded. “Tosker Barrower. Ring any bells?”

“Thieving little scrote,” Waggoner said. “Haven’t felt his collar for a while, though. What about him?”

“Stabbed last night in the back room of The Laughing Gnome,” Raegan said, “in an argument over a card game. Captain Nellis’s lads cleaned up the mess.” Drago nodded. Nellis ran the watch house in the Tanneries, a district considered a bit dodgy even by Fairhaven standards, and wasn’t above bending the rules a bit where she saw the need. More to the point, she had a soft spot for Raegan, and was happy enough to bend them in his direction if asked nicely, preferably over a meal somewhere upmarket enough to offer a reasonable chance of escaping food poisoning.

“Which helps us how?” Waggoner asked.

“Nell’s got everyone from the game tucked away in the cells, pending further enquiries, which she assures me could take several days. So no one else knows about Tosker’s unfortunate demise.”

“With you so far,” Waggoner said. “You want me to ask Clement to get Drago here to do something about him, right?”

“Right,” Raegan said. “Put it about that Tosker’s been nicking too much from his members, and that’s going to stop. Make sure everyone knows he’s hired Drago to sort it.”

“And in a couple of days we’ll dump the scrote’s body on the mudflats,” Drago finished. “Someone’ll find it, and with any luck the people we’re looking for will jump to the conclusion I topped him. And with Clement’s version of how Fallowfield died in circulation, they might just decide to approach me with a job offer. Especially as they seem to be running out of potential candidates.”

“Right,” Waggoner said, with more than a trace of skepticism. “Sticking your hand up for a job that’s got everyone else showing an interest in it killed. What could possibly go wrong?”

He strolled away, without waiting for a reply.


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