It was hard to believe the suns were already starting their zigzagging descent. The longer Shadrak lived, the quicker the days went by. It was all some capricious trick of the Demiurgos, he was sure of it; once you got past a certain age, it was a well-greased chute all the way to an eternity in the Abyss.
Funny thing was, he didn’t feel any older with each passing year. If anything he still felt in his prime, save for the accumulating injuries he’d picked up from pushing himself too hard. But even they healed quicker than they should have, except for his knees, which seemed all out of healing.
And yet the people around him were aging. Even Nils, who ran on ahead with long easy strides, as if he wanted to make a point at Shadrak’s expense; he’d been a boy when Shadrak had first come to New Londdyr, and now he was as close as he’d ever get to being a man.
At first Shadrak thought it was just because he kept in shape, but since learning he was a homunculus, he’d started to wonder if he was even capable of growing older anymore. He’d been a child once, that much he remembered, but as soon as he became a man it was like the forces of growth and decay no longer applied to him.
For the dozenth time, he checked over his shoulder. Of the Ghost, there was no sign, and while stallholders and their customers frowned and muttered as he and Nils rushed past, the city militia were conspicuous by their absence. Probably, they were off harassing Wayist priests and old ladies or taking an extended break in a brothel or whatever it was they got up to. Scuts, the lot of them. Ilesa could have been anywhere, a bird, a face in the crowd, an ant on the wall. There was shog-all point worrying about it. It was what it was, and he’d just have to trust his instincts if she tried anything else. Just in case, though, he went out of his way to squash any insects that happened across his path.
As they cut through alleys and crossed strip malls, making a beeline for the theater, Shadrak felt a rare twinge of nostalgia. This was his part of the city, the heart of his domain when he’d lorded it over the guilds. He’d told himself he didn’t miss it, the power and the control, but deep down a part of him did. It was what he was made for, and he’d been bloody good at it. But regret was a tool of the Father of Lies. While you were looking back and remembering, the present moment would sneak up and stab you from behind.
The theater had gone to wrack and ruin since Shadrak had last been there. Dame Consilia would have burst out of her corset at the sight of it. He’d seen her perform here: The Demiurgos’s Disciple. Shit play, even shittier performance. About the only part of her that could act was her tits, with her arse a pretty decent understudy.
Fissures cut jagged lines through the facade. The wooden sign was rotting at the edges, lettering so far faded only those who remembered could discern the name “The Dominion” that had once stood out in vibrant gold paint. The windows were boarded up, but no one had bothered to clear away the shards of glass from when they had been broken at one time or another. Thieves, probably, Shadrak thought, alive to the fact that him complaining about it was the pot calling the kettle black. More than likely it was Ilesa’s mob, when they took up residence in the abandoned building.
“What now?” Nils asked, puffed up and full of bluster, like a legionary at the back of a phalanx—the kind who pissed his pants and ran when the advance was sounded.
Shadrak ignored him and strode for the broad steps rising to the entrance. He expected a challenge and was almost disappointed when there wasn’t one. Probably, he should have found some other way in—an upper-story window, loose roof tiles, or any of the other options open to a seasoned burglar, but he was past that. He’d had enough of this job already. By now he should have been collecting his pay from the Stygian. Would have been, if it hadn’t been for Nils. And if not Nils, Ilesa.
“What you doing?” Nils said, scurrying up beside him. “We can’t just walk in.”
“No? Why’s that, then?”
“They’re thieves, rogues, assassins.”
“Exactly,” Shadrak said. “So they’ll know all the best places to break in, and probably have them covered.”
That wiped the smug look off Nils’s face. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Shadrak shoved through one of the double doors. It tilted as it swung inwards, hanging from one rusty hinge. With any luck, some of the rogues inside would recognize him. In this game, reputation was everything. And those that didn’t know him would be impressed by his balls. At least he hoped so. That was how things worked in his day, how they’d always worked. Guildsmen had a way of backing down from a show of power, then disposing of you with poison, a garrote, a knife in the back when you least expected it.
The vestibule was as he remembered it, save for the rat droppings and carpet of dust. The kiosk window was fractured with a spiderweb of cracks, but the counter still displayed programs with Dame Consilia’s sketched image on the cover.
“I don’t like it,” Nils said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Shadrak said. They tended to exaggerate a bit, these theater artists, puffing up certain features and diminishing others. Still, it was a recognizable likeness. He ripped the cover from the program and crammed it in his pocket. There was no shame in looking.
“Not the picture, you plonker. Fact that it’s so quiet.”
“Oh, that.” Shadrak turned toward the curtain covering the entrance to the auditorium. “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”
He held back the curtain and gestured for Nils to go first. The second the idiot was through, Shadrak dropped the curtain behind him. From the other side, Nils gasped, and then Shadrak heard the rattle of crossbows being raised.
The advantage of sitting through a piss-poor rendition of The Demiurgos’s Disciple was that Shadrak knew the layout of the theater. He’d watched the performance from a loge to the right of the stage, overhanging the ground-level seats, and accessed via a network of passageways that ran behind the auditorium.
Thin walls meant he could hear everything going on inside. The theater might have looked of decent construction, but in reality it was shoddily-built gilded crap, like so much else of New Londdyr’s pretentious culture. Rough voices, full of threat. The scrape of weapons being drawn. A whimpering whine that could only have come from Nils.
“Who was that with you?” a gruff man said. Shadrak knew the voice from somewhere. Ricard Shank, if he didn’t miss his guess. Shank the Scorcher. The sound of a match being struck only served to confirm it.
“What do you mean?” Nils said. Lame, but at least he was trying.
“We heard,” a woman said. Could have been Doma Hettish, formerly of the Toecutters. Jumped ship during the guild war and came over to the Night Hawks. Nicknamed “the Horse”, on account of her love of being ridden. “So don’t get clever.”
Fat chance of that.
Shadrak worked his way along a twisting corridor, through a door marked “Staff Only”, and up a flight of rickety steps to the fly floor. Passing between lines and blocks and counterweights, he found a spot high above the stage from where he could see what was going on in the auditorium.
Nils had been cornered at the top of the central aisle between the seats. Three thugs either side of him, brandishing knives, and one with a burning match shoved up close to Nils’s face. Shadrak had been right: Doma Hettish and Ricard Shank. Neither known for their patience.
He scanned both ways. There was a crossbowman in every box—two either side of the stage, and on the edge of the stage itself, a clutch of robey types, sorcerer-assassins, no doubt the original members of the Dybbuks. Seven, he counted, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more hidden in the wings, or behind the curtains hemming the auditorium that supposedly dampened sound.
Bekra. Bekra Cy, Ilesa had said: the sorcerer she’d left the Witch Queen’s ring with. Problem was, all the robes were men; all the other rogues, too, save for Doma. That rather shogged on Shadrak’s plan. He’d been looking forward to dropping down behind Bekra on a rope meant for scenery, cloak flowing behind him, thundershot in one hand. Nothing like a dramatic entrance to put the fear of shog in a victim. Only, with no obvious target, he’d end up looking a prat, porcupined with crossbow bolts. Nothing else for it, then. Wait, watch, and see what opportunities presented themselves.
Nils screamed. Slightly muffled by the curtains, but it still carried. One thing the designer got right. Shank the Scorcher must have singed one of the lad’s eyebrows—always a man to start gently. Looked like he was going for the other.
Nils flickered out of reality. Winked back into it again. Doma had hold of his wrist, ripped a vambrace from his forearm and slung it aside. Well, that was Nils shogged, then. Another scream. Another charred eyebrow. The match was half burned down, and Ricard seemed keen to make the most of it. This time, he made little circular motions with it as he brought the flame toward Nils’s eye.
Ah, shog it, Shadrak muttered, taking aim for a long shot. What would Kadee have said if he just stood there and watched. He squinted at the back of Ricard’s head and squeezed the trigger.
Missed.
But Doma went down, crimson spraying from beneath her hair. Ricard dropped his match and dove for cover. The other four scattered. In the loges, crossbowmen turned this way and that, seeking a target. One of the sorcerers on the stage craned his neck to look up, and Shadrak threw himself from the fly floor, cloak fluttering behind him as he dropped like a stone.