The Crimson Campaign by Brian McClellan
Adamat heard the creak of a door, then saw a light off in the corner of his vision. He turned his head – a painful movement – to watch as a lamp bobbed down a flight of stairs. He could hear two voices. The thief was not one of them.
“He hasn’t said much except call Toak a bloody dog,” a man said. The voice was nasal and high. “Didn’t have anything in his pocketbook but a fifty-krana note and a false mustache. No checkbook. No identification. He could be a copper.”
A voice answered him, too low for Adamat to hear.
“Well, yeah,” the first voice said. “Most coppers carry a city mark on ’em, even if they’re trying for a bust. Could be one of those undercover-spy types. The field marshal has been using them to root out Kez spies.”
Another murmured answer.
The first voice had an edge of panic when he resumed speaking. “We didn’t know,” he said. “Toak said to grab ’im, so we did. He followed the lady back to the house.”
The speaker arrived in front of Adamat with the lamp. He held it to Adamat’s face. Adamat couldn’t help but shy away from the flickering candlelight. He blinked against the brightness and tried to see the speaker’s face and that of the murmuring man. It could be Vetas. Vetas would recognize Adamat in a second, and then he’d be a dead man, or worse.
“My name is Tinny,” the first voice said. “Look up at the gov’na.” Tinny grabbed Adamat’s chin and turned it toward the light. Adamat hawked the phlegm from his throat into Tinny’s eye. He was rewarded with a sharp crack across the face that knocked his chair over.
Adamat lay on his back, his hands crushed underneath him, stars floating across his vision. He couldn’t help the moan of pain that escaped his lips. He wondered if his wrists were broken.
“Pick him up,” the murmuring voice said.
Tinny hung the lamp from the ceiling and righted Adamat’s chair. Adamat considered head-butting the man, but thought his head had taken enough damage lately.
“What do you want from me?” Adamat tried to growl the words, but they came out as a rasp from his dry throat.
“That depends,” the murmured voice continued. “Why were you following the woman in the red dress?”
Why…? So it wasn’t Vetas. Or Vetas hadn’t recognized him yet.
“Wasn’t following anyone,” Adamat said. He tried to maintain a northwestern drawl. “Just shopping and going for a walk.”
“Without any identification? And a false mustache? Put the light to his face.”
Tinny grabbed Adamat’s chin again and shoved the lantern up next to it.
The murmuring voice gave a soft chuckle. “Ah, you bloody fool.”
“Fool for what? Going for a walk?” Adamat said.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
The lantern pulled away from Adamat’s face, and he could see Tinny clearly in the light. Tinny’s eyes were wide, his complexion pale. “It was an honest mistake, gov’na. I swear.”
“Leave,” the voice murmured. “Wait. Tell the master we have Inspector Adamat.”
Tinny hung the lamp back on the ceiling and left the room. Adamat couldn’t help the cold fear that spidered up the back of his neck. He squinted in the poor light, trying to see the source of that murmured voice.
“Adamat,” the murmuring voice said suddenly in his ear.
Adamat started. He hadn’t heard the man move, and there wasn’t another person in this dank basement. “Who, now?” Adamat said. Hold the pose. Play dumb. Don’t let them break you.
A soft sigh in his ear. A sudden blade against his naked throat. He had the all-too-vivid recollection of a razor blade breezing past his throat not more than two months ago. He pulled back instinctively, a sharp breath escaping him. The knife did not follow. A sudden tug at his bound wrists and they were free.
He rubbed some feeling back into them and stared straight ahead. He didn’t dare assume that he’d been released. He might take a knife in the ribs or across the throat at any time. No doubt the man behind him was ready for sudden moves, and even if Adamat overpowered him, Adamat was still in a basement beneath someone’s headquarters.
Adamat still didn’t know where he was. The murmuring voice belonged to someone who recognized him, even in such ill light. He cycled through the names of hundreds of men, trying to match a face to the voice, but to no avail.
He felt, more than heard, the presence move back in front of him. He could make out a heavyset shadow in a sleeveless shirt. A bald head shone in the candlelight. Definitely not Lord Vetas.
Adamat tried to blink the blurriness from his eyes and took in a deep breath. It caught in his throat at the slight scent of sweetbell and the recollection of a similar scent in his own home the same night that the Black Street Barbers had attacked him.
“Eunuch.” The word came out of his throat with a strangled sigh of relief. He felt his body sag against the ropes still tying his ankles to the chair, only to stiffen again a moment later as the realization set in that the Proprietor’s eunuch might very well be working with Lord Vetas.
The eunuch turned toward Adamat. “There,” he said. “Pretense dropped. Now, what were you doing following the woman in the red dress?”
Adamat sniffed. The smell of his own piss was somehow less bearable now this his hands were untied.
“Working,” he said.
“On?”
“I report to Field Marshal Tamas, and him only. You should know that.”
The eunuch tapped the side of his jaw with one finger, considering Adamat through narrow, unfeeling eyes.
“We’re on the same side, aren’t we?” Adamat said. The question came out just a little too desperate for his liking.
“In a few minutes my master will have decided what to do with you. If he decides to let you live, I suggest that you keep this little run-in to yourself.”
“‘If’?”
The eunuch shrugged. “I would like to know if we are working at cross-purposes. There are rumors about you, Adamat. Finding you where we did could mean one of two things.”
Adamat waited for the eunuch to elaborate on what those two things were. He didn’t. “That I’m with you, or against you?” Adamat hazarded a guess.
“These things are rarely so simple as ‘with or against.’”
“I was following a hunch,” Adamat said. “Trying to find someone.”
“Lord Vetas?”
Adamat watched the eunuch for several long seconds. No tic. No hint. No giveaways. He was as unreadable as polished marble. Was the Proprietor working with Vetas, providing enforcement and tails, as Adamat feared?
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Adamat looked at his hands. In the dim light he could see the dark welts where they’d been bound. His fingers all still worked. For that he should be grateful. He knew he wouldn’t feel the real pain and ache until he tried to walk. He looked back up at the eunuch.
Still unreadable. The truth could get him killed in this situation. There were a hundred lies he could tell. Adamat considered himself a good liar. But he could get himself killed with the wrong lie, even one told well, or if the eunuch even suspected a lie.
The truth it was.
“He took my family,” Adamat said. “Blackmailed me, and he still has my wife and oldest son. I want to get them back, and then kill him slowly.”
“A lot of violence planned, for a family man,” the eunuch said.
Adamat leaned forward. “‘Family,’” he said. “Remember that word. There is nothing that will make a man more desperate and more capable of violence than endangering his family.”
“Interesting.” The eunuch seemed unmoved.
A door opened. Light poured into the opposite side of the cellar, and footfalls thumped down the steps.
“The master says bring him up, gov’na,” Tinny said.
The eunuch scowled. “Now?”
“Yeah. Wants to see him.”
Adamat smoothed the front of his soiled jacket. He didn’t think
“I’m to meet the Proprietor?”
“It appears so.” The eunuch extended a hand and helped Adamat to his feet. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There are three men who know his face in all the Nine. You won’t be one of them.”
Adamat wasn’t reassured. He looked down at his pants, at the cold, wet stain sticking his trousers to his legs. “How will…”
“Ah.” The eunuch gestured Tinny over. “Adamat is now a guest. Have a couple of the girls clean him up, and take him to the master in twenty minutes.”
Tinny shifted from one foot to the other. “He seemed awfully insistent.”
“Have you seen the master’s new rug?”
Tinny nodded uncertainly.
“Do you want it to smell like this cellar?”
“No, gov’na.”
“Clean him up, and then take him to the master.”
Adamat’s first order of business was to get a feel for his new location. He studied the decoration and architecture, but both were utterly useless to him. Polished wood floors creaked beneath his feet. The walls were plaster over wood, the candelabras of brass. It was a spacious affair, but demurely utilitarian.
Adamat was led into a bathing room with hot running water. His clothes were stripped from him without ceremony by a pair of handmaids, so quickly he couldn’t protest the impropriety of it all. When the eunuch had instructed he be bathed by a couple of girls, Adamat had expected whores. These were sturdy washing women.
His back and hair were scrubbed quickly, cold water splashed over him to rinse off the soap, and a fresh pair of trousers presented to him. When Adamat emerged from the bathing room, the same two women combed his hair and straightened his collar.
Tinny was waiting beside the door. In better light, Adamat could see he was a sickly man of medium height. He wore a cut-across, double-breasted coat with squared tails and a starched cravat. The coat, along with the cream pants and knee-high boots, were so incredibly ordinary that Adamat doubted he could pick Tinny out in a line of men on the street, despite Adamat’s having memorized his face.
It was Adamat’s Knack, after all. He never forgot a face, and he wouldn’t forget the Proprietor’s either. Just one glance was all he needed.
Tinny handed Adamat his pocketbook.
Adamat flipped it open. The fifty-krana note was still inside. Along with Adamat’s false mustache.
Adamat took a proffered coat from one of the women and stuffed the pocketbook inside. He did it all without looking away from Tinny. The man returned his gaze with a slight sneer and looked Adamat up and down.
“It’ll be good enough,” Tinny said. “At least you don’t smell of piss no more.” He gave Adamat a mean grin. “You’ve got a mark there on your face.”
From where Tinny had struck him. Charming.
“I see you cleaned the spit from yours.”
Tinny’s grin turned down at the corners, and he gripped Adamat’s coat. In a low voice he said, “Master gives the word and I’ll carve you up. It’ll take me three days to kill you. I know who you are. Copper. Don’t like your kind.”
This close Adamat could smell the wine on Tinny’s breath. That hadn’t been there before. Was Tinny so terrified of the eunuch he’d gone to get a drink? Interesting. Of more interest was the way Tinny stood; a slight lean to his left, caused either by his left leg being shorter than the right or by favoring an injury to his right.
Adamat jerked his coat from Tinny’s grip.
“After you,” Tinny said.
“I insist.” Adamat waved his hand forward.
Tinny gave him a mocking bow and stepped into the hallway. Adamat watched his legs. A definite limp, favoring his right.
Adamat lashed out without warning, his boot connecting solidly with the side of Tinny’s right leg. Tinny folded sideways, his yell of surprise muffled by Adamat’s hand over his mouth. Adamat took most of his weight and lowered him to the floor, putting one hand firmly against his throat.
“Don’t threaten to kill a man unless you know without a doubt you’ll have the opportunity,” Adamat whispered. “Now, I’ve spent the entire summer with the most powerful people in all the Nine breathing down my neck. Do you think I care about one limping henchman? Do you think I have the time for you?
“I’m going to go talk to your master. If it goes badly, he’ll kill me, I have no doubt. But I promise, if they put me alone in a room with you, that it doesn’t matter how securely they bind me – I’ll get loose and I’ll kill you.”
Adamat released Tinny’s neck and mouth.
Different kinds of men responded differently to those with power over them. Some got angry. Some took it silently. Some were so terrified they’d believe anything you said, no matter how outlandish.
From the look in Tinny’s eyes, Adamat believed him to be the last of these.
Adamat made his way into the grand hall. His whole body ached from the night spent tied to a chair, and he worked to suppress his own limp. He passed a dozen men and women. Dressed unremarkably, just like Tinny. Probably messengers and the like.
Adamat had been in the lairs of perhaps half a dozen crime bosses in his life. Every one had either been an opulent palace or a scum-ridden den of iniquity. The Proprietor’s headquarters was so ordinary that it almost shocked him. It might have been the offices of some powerful but money-conscious nobleman, for all he could tell.
In the grand hall there were enforcers. Big men, scowling at everyone, pistols in their belts. They flanked the front windows and door. Adamat saw a woman he recognized, a whorehouse madame from the east side of Adopest who’d once told Adamat where to find a killer. She was dressed in her very best, and she sat on a bench beside the front door. She looked like a girl waiting to see the headmaster.
Someone gripped Adamat’s arm. He surprised himself by not leaping out of his skin, and turned to look up into the face of one of the big enforcers.
Before the man could speak, Adamat said, “I’m looking for the eunuch. He just sent me for a bath and I seem to have lost my handler. I’m to see the Proprietor now.”
The enforcer opened his mouth, then closed it. He scowled. Obviously not what he’d been expecting.
“Adamat,” a voice came.
The eunuch drifted across the grand hall and nodded to the enforcer. In the light of the day, Adamat could see that he was wearing a tailored brown suit with long coattails and an emerald cravat. The big man stepped away, and Adamat let himself be led down a side corridor by the eunuch.
“Where is Tinny?” the eunuch asked.
“He tripped. Fell down some stairs. I told him I’d find you myself.”
“Ah.” The eunuch didn’t seem like he would dispute Adamat’s story. “Well, if you’d step inside, the master will see you now.”
They’d stopped in front of a door at the side of the corridor. Nondescript. Unadorned. Adamat looked up and down the hall.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“You were expecting something else?” the eunuch asked. “Something more grand, perhaps?”
Adamat examined the plain trappings of the hall, caught sight of a woman with a bundle of papers in her arms, wearing a long, plain dress and looking so ordinary it hurt his brain.
“No, I suppose not.”
The eunuch rapped on the door.
“Come,” came the brisk order.
Adamat stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
The room was very well lit, much to Adamat’s surprise. It was a significantly sized office with fine wood paneling, high-arched windows, and a fireplace framed by ornate brickwork. Two well-worn chairs sat next to the fireplace, not far from the door. At the opposite end of the room was a wide desk, partially blocked by a screen. Adamat took note that, aside from the fine rug on the floor, there were no decorations.
“Inspector Adamat?” the woman asked.
Adamat nodded, looking curiously at the screen. He could hear pen scratches from behind it.
“My name is Amber,” the woman said. She pronounced the word like “amba.” “You must first know that if you see the master’s face, even by accident, you will die.”
Adamat found himself suddenly less curious as to what was behind the screen.
“Sit,” the woman said, gesturing to one of the chairs beside the fire.
Adamat sat.
Amber went on. “I speak for the master. I am his mouthpiece, and you may address yourself to me as if I were he, and I will address myself to you also as if I were he. Now, I’d like to apologize for the evening you spent in our cellar. Most unfortunate.”
The scratching of the pen had stopped. Adamat noticed that Amber was no longer looked at him, but behind the screen. Perhaps reading some kind of hand language from the master?
“It was wholly unpleasant, I assure you.”
“To the matter at hand,” the Proprietor said through Amber. “There is a man by the name of Lord Vetas that has been causing my organization no small amount of problems.”
“I don’t know the name,” Adamat lied, wondering why he bothered. He’d already told the eunuch about Vetas and his family.
“Come now. He’s kept it very quiet, but the name has been passed around the very top levels of Tamas’s military cabinet. Along with yours. I’d find it a very large coincidence that my men stumbled across you following one of Lord Vetas’s spies.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Adamat said.
“Such as Taniel Two-Shot,” the Proprietor said, “a celebrated war hero, putting a bullet between the eyes of a god on top of South Pike Mountain? Or Field Marshal Tamas, one of the most reasonable men in Adro, declaring a chef the god of Adro?”
Adamat drummed his fingers on his pantleg and watched Amber as she watched behind the screen. It was disconcerting to carry on a conversation this way, but he seemed to have no alternative. “You don’t believe that tripe, do you?”