She made a face. ‘What? Out there? In the damned streets? Sounds like ten thousand wolves have been let loose out there, Kruppe!’
‘Sweet Sulty, Kruppe assures you no harm will come to you! Kruppe assures, yes, and will warmly comfort too upon your triumphant return!’
‘Oh now that’s incentive,’ and she turned round and headed for the front door. And the man was close enough to hear her add under her breath, ‘Incentive to throw myself into the jaws of the first wolf I see…’
But out she went.
The guard with the loving family and the aching chest was at the intersection just on this side of the wall one street away from the Phoenix Inn-and hurrying with genuine alarm towards the sounds of destruction to the south (the other raging fire in the Estate District was not his jurisdiction)-when he heard someone shouting at him and so turned, lifting high his lantern.
A young woman was waving frantically.
He hesitated, and then flinched at a howl so loud and so close he expected to see a demon standing at his shoulder. He jogged towards the woman.
‘For Hood’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘Get yourself inside!’
He saw her spin round and scamper for the entrance to the Phoenix Inn. As he drew closer a flash of motion from a facing alley mouth almost drew him round, but when he shot the bull’s eye in that direction, he saw no one. He hurried on, breathing hard as he climbed the steps and went inside.
A short time and a tumble of words later, he followed Councillor Coll and Kruppe into the alley, where they gathered round the corpse of yet another coun-cillor. Hanut Orr, apparently.
Wincing at the tightness that was closing like a vice round his ribcage, the guard slowly squatted to examine the wounds. Only two blows-which didn’t sound like his man-but then, the look of those wounds ‘I think he’s killed another one,’ he muttered. ‘Not long ago either.’ He looked up. ‘And you two saw nothing?’
Coll shook his head.
Kruppe-a man the guard had always regarded askance, with considerable sus-picion, in fact-hesitated.
‘What? Speak, you damned thief.’
‘Thief? Aaii, such an insult! Kruppe was but observing with most sharp eye the nature of said wounds upon forehead and back of neck.’
‘That’s how I know it’s the same man as has been killing dozens over the last few months. Some kind of foreign weapon-’
‘Foreign? Not at all, Kruppe suggests. Not at all.’
‘Really? Do go on.’
‘Kruppe suggests, most vigilant and honourable guard, that ’twas hands alone did this damage. Knuckles and no more, no less.’
‘No, that’s wrong. I’ve seen the marks a fist makes-’
‘But Kruppe did not say “fist”. Kruppe was being more precise. Knuckles, yes? As in knuckles unencumbered by fingers…’
The guard frowned, and then looked once more at that bizarre elongated dent in Hanut Orr’s forehead. He suddenly straightened. ‘Knuckles… but no fingers. But… I know that man!’
‘Indeed?’ Kruppe beamed. ‘Best make haste then, friend, and beware on this night of all nights, do beware.’
‘What? Beware what-what are you talking about?’
‘Why, the Toll, friend. Beware the Toll. Now go quickly-we shall take this poor body inside, until the morning when proper arrangements are, er, arranged. Such a multitude of sorrows this night! Go, friend, hunt down your nemesis! This is the very night for such a thing!’
Everything was pulsing in front of the guard’s eyes, and the pain had surged from his chest into his skull. He was finding it hard to even so much as think. But… yes, he knew that man. Gods, what was his name?
It would come to him, but for now he hurried down the alley, and out into yet another bizarrely empty street. The name would come to him, but he knew where the bastard lived, he knew that much and wasn’t that enough for now? It was.
Throbbing, pounding pulses rocked the brain in his skull. Flashes of orange light, flushes of dry heat against his face-gods, he wasn’t feeling right, not right at all. There was an old cutter down the street from where he lived-after tonight, he should pay her a visit. Lances of agony along his limbs, but he wasn’t going to stop, not even for a rest.
He had the killer. Finally. Nothing was going to get in his way.
And so onward he stumbled, lantern swinging wildly.
Gaz marched up to the door, pushed it open and halted, looking round. The stupid woman hadn’t even lit the hearth-where the fuck was she? He made his way across the single room, three strides in all, to the back door, which he kicked open.