him askance, though they looked to their purses, but he wasn’t about cutting purses, not today, not now. He headed to the delta, toward racks and booze and a place where he might find who he was after.
* * *
Rillen closed his eyes to the squalor, his ears to the pleadings, the screams for mercy, for Kyr, for death to end everything. He didn’t smell the rancid sweat or the fear that permeated even the stones of the Yelen’s dungeons. Decades of inhabitants had left their mark, in blood and sweat and screams so that now the whole place was soaked in terror. But not for Rillen, a son of the council, unless all his plans went awry, in which case the dungeons would be a paradise before his father gave him his real punishment.
He stopped in front of a cell that lay dark with dread, shivered with whimpers. A vague shape huddled in the far corner. Rillen had the guard open the cell and he picked his way carefully across the fetid straw, kicked at a bold rat and crouched in front of the shape.
A month in the dungeons had changed Haban from a vast sleekness with ebon skin, bright eyes and a booming voice to this. A shrunken little man, his skin grayed, his eyes ghosts in his face, his voice a whisper. Yet still, still, he defied them. Still he wouldn’t say where the diamond had come from, though Rillen knew it was from Van Gast. Still he wouldn’t say where to find Van Gast, how to catch him, what he looked like. All that pain and fear and still no word had crossed his lips except protestations of innocence.
He was starting to piss Rillen off.
“Hello, Haban. Feeling well?”
The shape stirred feebly on the straw, eyes bright and feverish.
“I thought not. I have a little news for you, would you like to hear it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Someone is quite eager to have you returned. So eager, in fact, that they’ve agreed to help me catch Van Gast and not even take the reward, as long as I let you free instead. Isn’t that good news for you?”
The shape on the floor let out a gusty sound, like a creaking gate in need of oil. It startled Rillen enough that he went for his pistol, and it was only as he cocked it that he realized Haban was laughing, a pained, stretched thing on a wavering voice.
“You can’t catch him,” Haban wheezed finally. “That’s why all this has been useless. I don’t know where he is, or how to trap him, no matter how you ask or for how long. The gods themselves couldn’t catch Van Gast if he didn’t want to be caught. What chance do you have, compared to that?”
Rillen stood and aimed the pistol, tempted, so very tempted to use it. But no, not now, not yet. He needed Haban as bait for the niece, to make her do as he wanted. Once he had Van Gast though, Haban would be the first person he shot. A little something to look forward to. “You should pray to those gods then, that I manage it. Because if I don’t, then I’ve got little use for you anymore, or the person who wants you free so badly.”
Haban’s smile was a shadow of its former glory. “Then I am dead already, no?”
Rillen stalked out of the cell and slammed the door shut behind him. The creaking laugh followed him all the way up the steps, rattling round his head. He reached the open air and took a deep breath, savoring the freedom of it, the scorch of the sudden sun, the waft of a sea breeze. If he failed, it would be him in that cell, his father taunting him.
He would not fail.
Haban had a point though. Rumor spoke of Van Gast’s little-magics, said to be a nose for trouble. He knew when it was, where it was. He could smell it coming and make sure he wasn’t there to meet it.
What Rillen needed was a point of leverage, over and above Haban’s niece and whatever she could find. It was time to go and watch Van Gast’s ship, to find that leverage.
Chapter Four
Holden entered Mucking Lane with two of his crew at his back. The street was thick with people, with racks and drunks and whores. His stomach was wound up tight, like a spring. Before he’d always had the security of knowing