He would do anything to find Elara, but even Juda knew he was throwing his life into the hands of the dead gods by venturing this far alone into Grimefell during these dark tides, when The Serpent Order had waged war against the people in Ban-Keren's name.
He was good, of that much he was aware, but desperation saturated the air here like the densest of sea fog, and the Batak oil slashed across his face made him the target of every cutthroat gangster who might happen to cross his path. Despite the King's promise to reinstate their water rations, if the people could find no witch to deliver to the black gates, it wouldn't be long before they decided they had nothing to lose in rising up against those that sought to drive them to their knees. If Juda wasn't careful, he'd be leading a trail of rats behind him in no time, all yearning to slice open his veins or toss him straight into the murky waterways of the Setalah.
Juda wasn't even surprised when he detected the soft tread of another shadowing his route through the winding alleys and stinking footways. He'd picked up his shadow close to Midgulch Bridge, and the tread was such that he was certain it must be Erron Rhomm, who frequented these parts like sea lichen clung to the cobblestones, and whose feet were nimble enough to traverse the narrowest of crossings with little effort. Besides, the rat spent too much time with his head in a cloud of riverweed smoke and Juda could smell the pungent fumes carried on the sea breeze, like a dead thing haunting his path.
Once clear of the bridge, the sound of his shadow shifted from behind to above and it was moving faster, the faint creaks and groans of the wooden balustrades of the high gantries betraying Erron's location and quickened pace.
Juda wasn't concerned. From what he could hear, the rat was alone, which meant he was probably attempting to track Juda's movements through the slums to ensure he was here for his own personal endeavours and not present in any official capacity as a member of The Order. This cat and mouse game was not unusual, only Erron always failed to understand just who was the hunter and who was the prey. Juda's destination was no different than normal, and he cared not for what Erron or any of the slum vermin thought of that, but he saw no harm in reminding the boy that he'd do better to keep his fucking nose out of Juda's business.
Slipping into the next alley where the overhang of the high dwellings on either side crushed all life from light, Juda knew Erron would have to follow him at ground level and so he melted into the shadows and waited for the boy to appear. The shadow child did just that, hovering at the entrance to the passage, clearly unsure whether to pursue. A glint in the pulsing gloom told Juda the boy had unsheathed his dagger, wary enough to know it was a fool who'd enter such a place unarmed and unprepared. He waited for the boy to take a few tentative steps into the alley before grabbing and disarming him with ease. Twisting his hands behind his back, he pressed Erron's cheek into the wall.
"I told you last time, Erron Rhomm," he hissed into the boy's ear, "that I will go wherever I please in Grimefell, but that did not mean I would allow you to trail after me like a lost hound seeking its owner."
The boy, who'd made barely a sound of protest up until then, grinned out from under his raised hood and began to chuckle. He was but a mere child, but the sound of his laughter instantly slipped under Juda's skin and made the hair prickle on the back of his neck. Little fucker.
By the time Juda realised the hair prickled on the back of his neck for another reason, the stiletto blade was already poised at a point just below his eye and the man pressed against his back had his hand wrapped around the pommel of Juda's scimitar.
"Hello gorgeous." His voice was light and lyrical in tone but edged with a cold indignant fury that Juda recognised. "Now, we don't much care for whatever you told Erron Rhomm, but how about you unhand my good friend Bazel there, before I'm forced to pop open this pretty little eyeball of yours with my blade?"
Elara's friend, Anton—favoured courtesan of Leon Kro-Balnar and desired by half the desperate husbands of the upper echelons—didn't drop the blade, even after Juda released the boy he now knew to be Bazel, the little rat thief who ran for Riggs Cree, and not Erron Rhomm. Strange that Anton's hands did not tremble as they had the tide Juda had sought their help in finding Elara. Instead, his hold was firm and steady. How must his world have shifted to afford him the brazen confidence he hadn't possessed before? Whatever it was, Juda didn't believe the blade was destined for his eyeball, or anywhere else for that matter. If these two wanted him dead, they'd have to be foolish not to strike immediately. It was never wise to allow a Highguard time to recalculate his means of attack.
The boy Bazel turned in a casual manner and leant his back up against the wall, a devilish smirk on his face. Carefully adjusting his cloak from where Juda had grabbed him, he looked up into his assailant's face and offered a wide grin.
"Greetings, drouzka," the boy said, breathing out whispers of riverweed. "You know, you look like you were heading towards Clova Dell's place. I find that quite disturbing considering just a short while ago, you were begging us to help you find Elara."
"Not that it's any of your business, rat, but I was hoping to enlist Clova's help. I figured a few extra coin would loosen her lips."
"I bet you did, you sweet thing," Anton mused. "Although you'd have to pay a heck more than novice wages to earn an audience with Clova. She doesn't do business with just anybody."
"That is true." Juda nodded slow so not to agitate the situation. "But I'm a novice no longer and besides, she has history with my guardian, Special Commander Roth Vi-Garran, so I think she will agree to help me."
Bazel pretended to consider this by pursing his lips and tapping his fingers against them. "Strangely enough, we were just heading that way ourselves, weren't we, Anton? We'll accompany you."
Juda scowled at the boy's smug face. "Think I need an escort, rat?"
The boy stepped away from the wall and looked up into Juda's face, blinking. By the dead gods, this one had balls fiercer than half the actual rats living in the slums and some of them had been known to gnaw the fingers off men stupid enough to fall down drunk outside the taverns.
"Oh, I think you need us more than you realise," Bazel replied. "We've already put one gang off your tail. There hasn't been one Highguard step foot alone in Grimefell since the uprising. Cree and the other bosses issued a decree that any found wandering alone here would be dangled off Midgulch and slowly lowered into the Setalah as a warning to the King."
Now that did surprise Juda. "That's treason and you know it. The King will burn this place to the ground if anyone even attempts that. Fuck, if he even hears of it..."
The boy sniffed and reached into the pocket of his cloak, withdrawing a small, battered tin from which he took his pipe and flint. "Maybe. Maybe not." He shrugged and took a drag on the pipe, sucking on the end of it before blowing a perfect green smoke ring up into the air. "But what would the nobles do without their butchers, their dressmakers, their smithies, their bakers, their silk merchants...their brothels?" He looked pointedly at Juda then. "Ban-Keren can't ship people here from Dreynia like he does the water. Who would want to come to the cursed citadel of Druvaria? And the Carraterreans wouldn't spit on him if he were ablaze. The crown needs us. He needs Grimefell. So, treason or not, how long do you think you will last here when that nifty blade on your hip has spilt more Grimefell blood into the gutters than what runs from the pigs in the slaughterhouse?"
Anton tapped the point of the blade lightly against Juda's cheekbone. "The tide is changing, dearest Juda. The King's cruelty goes too far. Grimefell has just as much right to the Dreynian water as the nobles do, if not more. The uprising at the harbour will not be the last. So, my good friend Bazel here is right. Ban-Keren needs us and right now, so do you."
Juda stared at the boy as he spoke, and to his credit, the little rat didn't flinch from it. "Fair enough. If you wish to escort me, then so be it. But remember, I can fight with one eye." He turned to glance at the man standing at his shoulder. "But I doubt you could continue to pleasure Leon Kro-Balnar and all the other desperate, sad men of the upper echelons with no hands, Anton, of which you won't be in possession for much longer if you continue to hold that blade to my face."
Anton did swallow then, but a mischievous glint sparked in his eyes. "Well, I don't know about that. You'd do better to cut out my tongue or cut off my..."
Bazel interrupted him with a groan. "Oh, by the dead gods, enough of that, Anton. I haven't eaten yet and the riverweed is messing with my guts enough already. Anyway, the longer we remain here the more likely Cree is to find us."
Anton withdrew the blade and gave Bazel a withering stare. "You owe him, don't you?"
"Yup," snapped Bazel, glancing around as if he expected Riggs Cree to come slithering out of the cracks in the walls at any moment. "And these pockets are empty as fuck. Another thing to thank The Order for. Come on, let's go, drouzkas."
***
Clova Dell, it seemed, was expecting them.
Barely raising an eyebrow when she spied Juda standing on her doorstop with Bazel and Anton, she hurried them inside, casting her gaze around the street before closing and bolting the door behind them.
With one hand on her hip, she held the other out to Bazel, wriggling her fingers at the boy.
Sighing, Bazel withdrew a large velvet coin purse from inside his britches and placed it begrudgingly into her waiting palm. She shook it, almost weighing it up in her hand, before opening the drawstring and peering inside.
Juda stared hard at Bazel. "I thought you said your pockets were empty."
The boy shrugged but looked mightily pissed off as he stared with yearning at the coin as Clova began to count it out. "My pockets are empty. That doesn't belong to me, more's the pity."
Clova grinned and pinched the boy's cheek affectionately, finishing with a tap that had him trying to duck out of her reach, expelling a stream of curse words as he did so.
"You surprise me, Bazel," she said. "It's all there. Roth said you wouldn't filch me, but I thought I knew you better. Seems I underestimated you."
Juda's eyes widened. "Roth? What's Roth got to do with any of this? And how do you know of him?" he directed this to Bazel, whose face had taken on that smug look again that made Juda want to grab him by the ankles, dangle him out of a window and shake him until he puked.
"Let's just say we had a chance encounter," Bazel replied, throwing back his hood and brushing down his cloak, his face all fake innocence.
Anton grinned as he draped himself over the carved wooden rail of the staircase, his low-necked tunic falling open to reveal a wide expanse of smooth, toned chest. "Which basically means he was tricked into following him and instead of relieving the old man of his purse, Bazel was relieved of his pride and hoodwinked into working for the very man he sought to thieve from."
"And earnt us enough to pay for our water on the black market and don't you bloody forget it," the boy sniped, his smug grin now a sour grimace.
Clova had finished counting and after sliding all the coin back into the purse, she lifted her skirt, flashing a fine expanse of tattooed thigh and pinned the velvet bag to one of the silk cords she kept laced around the top of her leg, smiling at Juda as she did so.
"Roth Vi-Garran still knows how to turn my head, after all this time," she drawled, flicking him a wink. "He always did pay well, not that it ever felt like work. Like guardian, like ward, eh, noble Highguard?"
Her gaze raked over him as it often did, pearly teeth tugging on her full plush lip, but Juda didn't care for her lascivious looks, not this tide. The thought of her skilled hands toying with the ligature was usually enough to warm him up for an energetic moontide with Estella or Seren, sometimes both if the mood took him that way, but he'd not come here for that, despite what Bazel and Anton had first assumed was his business in this quarter. He'd come here hoping to seek Clova's help and yet it seemed, Roth had already done so. But for what purpose? What kind of web had Roth been weaving while Juda's mind and body had been a nest to the borer-worm?
"No one has yet answered my question," he said, glaring at each of them. He hated being lost in the dark. Roth and he had always shared everything. "What has Roth to do with any of this?"
Clova assessed him with cool eyes, her lusty amusement replaced quickly by that shrewd, wary countenance that always lingered behind the façade of desire. "Follow and your question will be answered."
She let her fingertips linger over his chest as she passed, one last taunt he supposed. With his hand close to his blade, Juda followed as she led him up the staircase, Bazel and Anton trailing behind. Her hips swishing and heeled boots clicking against the floorboards, Clova walked the length of the hallway, past Seren's room then turned to the next staircase, a rickety, winding passage with steep, uneven steps. Juda paused halfway up, causing Bazel to stop short and almost topple into Anton.
"Where are we going, Clova?" Juda demanded.
Huffing a sigh, Clova looked back at him, tugging her long red locks over one shoulder. "Roth paid for this chamber. It was Boda's." She pulled a face. "At least, it was for the short time she worked here. She didn't last long, that one. Too bitey, even for my customers, it seemed. Now, the chamber is...Roth's."
Ignoring his confused stare, she carried on up the staircase until she reached the next level which resided on a short landing where Juda had never visited before. At the end, where the ceiling sloped, there was a door, cut shorter and at an angle to allow for the cramped space. Even Clova had to duck slightly to fit through as she opened the door, addressing whoever was within—Roth? Was he here?
"I'll be arsed if I'm going to knock and announce my presence in my own establishment," she said, before glancing back and nodding to Juda. "Well, come along, lad. I don't much care for any of this, no matter what Roth's paying, so you hurry up your business here and begone before Cree gets wind of this, or worse, your own bastard kind turn up on my doorstep. They're not attuned to knocking any more than I am."
With that, she swept past him, leaving Juda to linger on the threshold and feeling the sharp prod of Bazel's finger digging into his spine. Bewildered but wary, he pushed the door open fully, his eyes widening as his gaze instantly fell upon just what it was that Roth Vi-Garran had been up to this time.
Kelena stood by the side of the small bed, relief flooding her face as she bent down to slip a swiftblade into her shin-high leather boots, but it was not her that Roth had sought to conceal here, but the other person who sat on a ledge by the head-height circular window.
Lost in the dark, Juda felt himself drift towards the light.
"Fair moontide, Elite Highguard Juda Vikaris," Elara said. "It appears fortune favoured you after all."