Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Thirteen: Blood Money

"I'm not going to enter a debate over whether they can shit it, but I doubt they can," Arlen muttered, smirking despite himself.

Usk chuckled and began to hum. After a moment Arlen offered a quizzical look.

"Haven't heard that one before."

"Father used to sing it after three measures of moonshine," Usk said.

"What's it called?"

"Sweet Alika's Burning Ringpiece."

Arlen snorted, splashing beer onto the table. He gestured, and the girl reappeared with a cloth to mop it up. She squeaked as Arlen slapped the table and cowered under the resulting glare.

"Do it quicker," he muttered, noting the atmosphere in the room change.

The girl finished and left, slipping back through a hidden door in the wall. At the front of the hall, close to where Arlen and Usk sat, another secret door opened. The mutterings and whispers from the shadows ceased. One of the mercenaries looked around the hall at the men and women gathered there, and his eyes settled on Arlen. Arlen smiled nastily and made a salute to Nict, the death god. The mercenary went white and turned away.

"Kelians," Usk muttered.

The man who stepped through the second hidden door commanded silence from the room the moment he appeared. Marick Silversong was a rogue, a thief, a murderer and a braggart, and his followers expected nothing less from him. It was wiser not to question a man who knew every one of the fifteen Tortures of the Pit and how to perform them, and of whose victims no one had ever found enough to bury.

Judging by the spreading dark patch on one man's trousers and the uncontrollable shaking of another, the mercenaries had some inkling of this reputation.

For all that, Marick was also – outwardly, at least - a gentleman. He was well-groomed, neat, well-dressed, and the smile he offered the three men was deceptively pleasant. Only the knotted scar visible above the neck of his linen shirt, which Arlen knew had a twin that formed an X over Marick's heart, betrayed anything darker lying underneath the façade.

"Well, gentlemen," Marick said, moving to the high-backed chair on the dais and sitting down. "Where is he?"

He clasped his hands and waited. The men fidgeted and grunted at each other in undertones, before one stepped forward; the big one, with the bald head and the impressive black eye.

"We don't have 'im, sir," he said. He put his hands out to stem a bout of fury that wasn't coming. Marick sat perfectly still in the chair, eyeing each of them evenly with sharp, pale eyes. The big man seemed to take his silence as an encouraging sign. A collective wince went around the room, Arlen included.

"See, there was this demon catch..."

"Shut up."

The man fell quiet. Marick continued to stare at him.

"You did not succeed in getting the boy for me. Why you didn't is irrelevant; I wanted results and didn't get them. Which begs the question," he sat forward, "of why you are here, if not to deliver my results."

The mercenaries paused. Arlen sat forward. Usk chuckled darkly under his breath and muttered something derogatory in Tochk.

"I'll give you thirty seconds to decide whether you think it would be wise to take this matter further," Marick said, gaze unwavering.

The big man in the middle took a long, shaky breath. "Sir, please...."

"Thirty seconds."

Something glinted in Marick's hand, partially concealed against the arm of the chair. Arlen, eyes trained to spot hidden weaponry before it could be used against him, saw it straight away, but the mercenaries apparently had no such experience since the speaker ploughed on.