A Tailor's Son (Valadfar) (7 page)

“Let us get a few things straight shall we?
” The inspector continued
ignoring Harold’s lack of reply.
“William Boatswain might have let the guards
go soft, but he isn’t in power anymore. So how about you give me your name and you
get to leave here with only the bruises you came in with?”
Francis said, hinting at
his allegiance to Malcolm Benedict. The city had been torn in two ever
since William was superseded in government. Harold truly believed
that if the people of Neeskmouth did not so strongly fear another long
and drawn out war, like the one at the turn of the century, then the
tension between the religious and the common man would have lead to
bloodshed. Those loyal to the extremist Sacellum Malcolm and those
who, like Harold, wanted William back in power.

“Sorry. My name is Harry Spinks, son of James Spinks, tailor of East
Street.
” Harold replied having no idea why he automatically introduced
his father’s name. He guessed it was to show that he came from a good
family and was not the type to go setting fires.

“Not a Pole is you then, boy?”
Francis asked unexpectedly. Harold
waited for a second to see if it was some kind of inside joke, but his face
remained unchanged behind the walrus moustache.

“No, sir”
Harold answered. The question annoyed him. The
Poles had been the name given to the army of the Iron Giants when
they invaded the city. They only carried that name during times of war
and they now worked hard for what they had, though you could see in
Francis’ eyes that he did not think they deserved it. Harold’s annoyance
was ignored by the inspector as he continued to scribble into his
notebook as he spoke.

“You saw the fire at the Queens Tavern earlier tonight. In fact there are
reports that you were seen to be loading things into the tavern where the fire started,
would you like to give me your account of what happened, or shall I just get the cuffs
on you now?”
Francis spat out in a mouthful, seemingly without the need
to breathe. He obviously thought Harold had done it and was praying
Harold was of Iron Giant descendent as it would have been so much
easier for him to pass the blame onto him, without any questions from
his superiors if Harold was. The law was so corrupt that if you were of
any race but Brilankan – home of the monks and the current ruling
leader - decent laws, such as a fair trial, did not apply, and they could
have him in the cells by morning, such was the fear of the demons.
“Well, I know you’re not deaf and dumb so answer me, boy.”
Francis said with
spittle forming on his lip. Harold could see the anger growing inside the
inspector. He tried to remember the fire, but the details caused him to
shake again. The fear had left his mind for a while but it seems it had
not left his body, his fingers trembled and Harold could feel his mouth
dry even more, if that was possible.

“Where am I?”
Harold croaked, ignoring the question for now.
Harold had a few of his own he needed answering first and felt he
could get away with pushing the inspectors temper a little more.

“You’re in Saint Bartholomew, the Drow hospital just off Duck Street if
you have to know. Though, if you don’t give me an answer to my damn question now,
you’ll be out of here and off to a rat infested cell before you can call your bloody mother
to wipe your snotty nose lad.”
Francis said and the angrier he got the more
the almost musical tone of his southern voice came through.

Harold replied carefully.
“Well, I should hope you bloody would or there’d be little point putting the
kegs in there?”
The inspector interrupted and Harold supposed he had a
point. The kegs did always smell of alcohol but never as strong as that
night
. “Get to the bit where you set the fire.”
Frances said seemingly growing
bored of listening already. Harold didn’t answer straight away because
his attention was snapped elsewhere as, in the distance beyond the
ward; he could hear a Drow accent. It was faint but could just be heard
over the whistling wind. That was all he needed. Harold had the law
trying to slap him in irons and O'Brien’s gang on their way to gut him.
As much as Harold wanted the inspector gone, he knew he had to keep
him there. Inspector Fraser’s humour was less painful than what would
happen to him if O’Brien’s gang even suspected Harold had started the
fire.
“Ok, you really want to know what I saw. I’ll tell you then.”
Harold
said still barely able to believe it himself.
“The place stunk of spirits, More’n
normal. As I was about to lower myself down to check for a broken drum or
something then I saw someone inside the cellar light a match.”
Harold said trying
hard to fight through the fog inside his head and focus on the
memories of that night. It sounded mad to him even as Harold said it.
Someone had burnt themselves for no other reason than to torch the
tavern and then crawled out of the fire and ran away. Harold guessed it
could have been a mage that had somehow protected themselves from
the flames, but then why use the match when they could have cast a
spell from a safe distance away? It didn’t make any sense. Harold
doubted anyone else saw the man either as he had darted off in the
panic. Harold was the obvious suspect so he had to tell the whole story
in the hope that Francis would believe him. “
I was tossed into the street by
the blast. It was then I saw him crawl out from the wreckage. I recognised the person
from a newspaper article. The guy was supposed to have been killed about two weeks
ago, but it was definitely him.”
Harold said and instantly felt stupid. There
was no way it could be him. Harold didn’t know much about magic, but
even necromancers would have had trouble controlling the dead the
way Harold saw the burning man run, but it was definitely the man he
had read about. The more Harold thought about it the more he was
sure.
“So, let him get this cock and bull right. You want me to believe you did
not start the fire. It was started by a dead man? He came back to life somehow and
set fire to this pub. Then, and let him be totally sure of this, he crawled out from the
burning building in which twenty people died and ran off down the street?”
Francis
said and Harold noticed the inspector had stopped taking notes.
“Yes, that’s about it.”
Harold said lamely. He had seen it happen
and it seemed like madness even to him, so how could he expect
anyone else to believe him? Francis was waiting for more from him but
Harold had nothing to give. The awkward silence went on for what
seemed like eternity before the door to the ward opened, swinging on
its hinges, until it bounced off the wall with a thud that caused one of
the nurse’s hats to fall to the floor. In walked two dark skinned Drow,
both of them short and in almost matching brown overcoats that
reached down to their knees. They wore similar red shoes to Harold’s
own, though not as nicely cut. An odd thing to notice, but even in his
weakened state Harold noticed the single beading stitches which
showed their shoes were cheaply made, Harold guessed it was the tailor
in him. Even in the dark Harold noticed the pair’s features. They both
had curly dark hair that bounced as they walked and squashed noses no
doubt from countless drunken brawls. A glint in their eyes showed they
owned the room. The one on the right had a limp, and Harold noticed
his hands were shaking slightly, a sign of the scurvy no doubt caught
from one of their own pinch pricks. Something told him that as small
as these men were, they could handle themselves. Harold knew by their
faces they were O'Brien’s boys, in every sense of the word. They were
not just a couple of his gang but his two sons. Harold had seen them at
the Queens before. They eyed the guard inspector at the end of his bed
and his breath froze as Harold saw one of them reach into his chest
pocket.
“Please god not a crossbow.”
Harold remembered whispering to
himself. If they had even the slightest likeness to their father’s
personality then they were dealing with a couple of psychopaths. They
were twins that O'Brien had fathered with one of his girls back when he
first took over from his father. It was almost like a lineage for the
O’Brien’s as every one of them for as far back as the first ship docked
in the city had ended up having a child with the first girl he signed up to
work for the family. Harold was thankful to see that it was not a
weapon that came out from the recesses of the brown-shagged jacket.
Instead it was a wedge of pound notes tied together with string. It was
more money than his tailors would earn in a month. The one holding
the money chucked it at Inspector Fraser before speaking.
“
There is a mother-hen there, copper top, why don’t you go buy yourself a
drink or a brass tart and forget you seen us?”
O’Brien’s son said, his Drow
accent strong even though they had probably never even seen Lashkar
Gah, their homeland. Inspector Fraser scooped up the money, before
turning to Harold. He was on their payroll that was all Harold needed.
“I’ll be back to talk to you later boy
.” He said. “
Don’t hurt him too
badly, lads. I need to take him in alive
.” Francis said as he pushed his hat
back on his head and shooting Harold a smile.
“
Slimy bastard.
” Harold had wanted to say but he was far too
scared to. It was no wonder no one had any respect for city guards with
so many of them being on the payroll of the criminal families. The door
clicked closed as the inspector left without another word. It was just
the two O'Brien boys and Harold. As the two goons took a final glance
into the corridor to make sure they would not be interrupted, Harold
closed his eyes asking himself again why he had not been late earlier
that night.

Paul Augustus’s dreams were plagued by the secrets he held.
He lay in bed with the fireplace out regardless of the cold. The darkness
that hung like a smothering blanket over the room comforted him and
helped to block everything out. Even over the cold’s waking grasp the
urge to block out the waking world won over and he sought out
absolute black. The rain stopped for a short time as the clouds moved
on and with the sky clear the temperature was falling fast. There would
be snow by morning, not that Paul could see any of this from his
windowless room. He tossed and turned below the sheepskin blanket.
He knew his knee would lock and that he would suffer the agony that
came with arthritis if he didn’t keep warm, but the shadows were the
only thing that kept the dreams at bay, so it was worth the pain. He had
to hurry up and finish his tests. The experiments he had been carrying
out on prostitutes had been going well, that was until that bloody Drow
swine O’Brien had got involved. Paul fell asleep thinking on the
Drow’s involvement. Exhaustion finally won but his mind continued
on its trail of thought back through the last few weeks. His eyes shut
and the back of his eyelids made the perfect screen to show his dreams.

It had all seemed so simple when Paul had set out. The
catacombs under Saint Anne’s chapel had been empty for so long, the
church was using it for storage. The rumours of them being haunted
had been spread by Paul himself and meant the altar boys would never
go down into the gloom. Capturing a pigeon from the street and letting
it loose down there had been pure genius on his part, with the fluttering
and crashing around it made sure the rumours had some substance.
Once he was sure that no one would go down there it became the
perfect place for him to work. The damp and cold of the underground
tombs kept his failed experiments fresh and stopped them smelling too
much of rot. The conditions, if not a little icy, were otherwise perfect
for the leeches he had brought back from the east. Once the makeshift
laboratory was set up the priest became, by his own admittance, a mad
scientist.

At the start he had tried using the leeches on animals that he
had gathered from the streets. If anyone had noticed Paul as he walked
into the church at night with a stray animal he would just tell them that
it was the creator’s work. He relished in the foolishness of the average
degenerate on the street. Because they feared the demons coming so
much they could have caught him flogging a child and if he said it was
the creator’s work, they would probably have joined in. He had tried
attaching the leeches at the neck of the animal as he seen the mystics in
the Dark Gulf do, but they drained the animals of blood too quickly.
The process had killed them off before the parasite could cross into the
animal. Paul was unsure of just what happened to make the changes
take place, but whatever it was, it did not have time to take effect on
such small creatures. After a number of failed experiments Paul found
that one corner of the catacombs had turned into a pet cemetery. If
anyone had braved coming down there then it would lead to too many
questions. He found getting rid of the dead dogs easy. All he had to do
was sneak them out into the gutter outside when there was a heavy rain.
The citizens of Neeskmouth were so used to seeing rotting animals in
the gutters after a strong downpour that no one would question a few
more. If anything, it brought more prosperity to the area with an
increase of rodents for the rat catchers to claim.

The first tests on humans had proved a little more difficult
though, as the corpses were harder to get rid of when experiments went
wrong. Things improved when Paul found a loose slab on one of the
sarcophagi. A couple of urchins from the street helped him open and
clean it in return for a free forgiveness. This made the perfect place to
drop the bodies as they would slide into the miles of hidden labyrinth
below the city. This allowed Paul to progress at speed in his research.
The frustration of what Paul had missed had almost driven him mad. It
had taken five girls’ lives before he found the secrets in his notes that
the herbs which hung around the neck of the town’s people, weakened
the transition of the Rakta Ishvara, the blood god. These herbs
poisoned the leech and killed them off before they could drain their
victim fully. Not, however, before the toxin had entered the body and
the change had started. Paul knew it was a toxin of some kind as only
minutes after the leech fell from the neck of his subject, the veins in the
area blackened and eventually the blackness seemed to spread to the
eyes, at which point the subject generally died. It was on the night he
had become impatient and taken two girls at once that things started to
go wrong. He became greedy. The anticipation of mastering his
technique forced him to make the mistake. Both girls had come
willingly with his pound notes pressed tightly in their blouse, their
young skin exposed down to the neck and the corsets working their
magic, Basque styled they flowed down over the girls pale bosom.
Their dresses looked to be made of cotton and had a decorative frill at
the edge. The two girls were from somewhere in Lashkar Gar and
chirped back and forth to each other in a language Paul did not
understand. Their hair was messy and hung down in greased mats to
their shoulders but they showed no sign of disease and that was enough
for the experiments. Paul Augustus was no longer a celibate priest, he
had forgone that teaching of Sacellum during his time in the Green
Stone Isles and when he entered the catacombs he was already hard
with excitement. As he led them down into the darkness, his hands
caressed the poor girls. He tried to reach into their clothes with his
lecherously old and wrinkled hands groped them as they walked. The
two girls, although used to this sort of sordid ordeal, were made
uncomfortable by the urgency of his need. They seemed to relax
slightly in the dull light, after all it was cleaner than some of the places
they had been forced to work a man, and at least they could relax in the
knowledge a priest was unlikely to hit them. Paul was sure they noticed
this was not in character for a priest, but for what he paid them, they
did not seem to care. Paul had planned to just restrain the girls and
attach the leeches, but seeing them in the dim candlelight had made his
mind wander from his work. His God had stopped listening so long
ago, who would notice or judge him if he were to sin? Therefore he did.
He bedded both in the dank setting, deep under the streets where the
girls were used to working. They both swarmed over the priest hoping
to earn his favour for future visits for the wealth he offered. They
touched him frantically, doing their best to please him. The pleasure
was great but his mind never left the real reason they were there. As he
grew close to climax, the faces of all the girls he had killed flashed
across his mind but they did not halt his violent thrusts and hard
grasps, his nails and teeth drawing blood. His orgasm came quickly, but
not quick enough for the girls he soiled. Once it had passed, Paul rolled
off the top of the young girl that had become his favourite. She was still
panting below him as she wiped blood from the teeth marks on her
bosom. His own breath was short but he had to move fast before they
grew too eager to leave. The second girl, who had not come off quite as
badly, was already getting dressed. Paul knew he would have to get her
first. He reached for the tongs on the side table and pulled open the
water filled jar. He reached down inside it and pulled out the large black
mass that shook itself out of a coil. The size of the leech still amazed
him, its full length around a foot long. The dressed prostitute turned to
look at Paul and went to scream as she saw him come at her with tongs
outstretched. It was too late as Paul grabbed her around the mouth. He
may have been old but he was not yet completely feeble. He pushed the
leech against her neck and it attached itself instantly. Her struggling
stopped quickly as the pain paralysed her. The priest went back to the
table and delved into the jar again clutching another leech in his tongs.
As he turned, he noticed that the girl on the floor had moved quicker
than he had expected. She had run for the door in tears leaving her
friend behind. Being nude, as shameful as it was, was not the be all and
end all for the prostitute. After a life of servicing men, she had grown
used to her bareness. Paul took a step towards the door with his anger
rising in him but it was cold down there and he could not give chase.
His arthritis-ridden knee ached and he knew it would lock if he tried.
As he looked down he could see the assault on the first woman had left
her lying, eyes closed, on the floor. The leech’s toxin was already
sedating its prey. Paul reached for the table once more and let a
scattering of dry leaves fall onto the girl’s body. It would stop her dying,
he hoped. He looked back at the now open doorway into the main
church. Paul thought about following the girl but decided that it did not
matter that one girl had escaped, his experiments were too important
and the guard would not believe her anyway. It did mean he would
have to work quickly to remove the bodies however. Such an
inconvenience to his work but that was the benefit of doing his
experiments from the chapel as it allowed for plenty of graves to use.