Book II. Chapter 117 - Comrades

Chapter 117

Arkar’s suit had been reduced to tatters.

The left sleeve had been torn almost completely away, and was now attached to the shoulder by a single strip of cloth. It bared a massive forearm covered in old scars, an army tattoo, and fresh cuts glistening with blood. A few moments earlier, Ardan had noticed a long diagonal slash across Arkar’s chest, which had gone right through his undershirt. It was a shallow wound but bleeding freely, and the entire front of Arkar’s shirt had darkened and was now stuck to his skin.

On Arkar’s left side, just above his belt, Ardan saw two round bullet wounds, judging by the telltale powder burns on the cloth around them. Not much blood was coming from them, which meant that the bullets had lodged themselves inside his flesh and plugged the wounds. Unfortunately, Ardi had learned none of that in his lectures on Star Healing.

Arkar’s face, which had never been refined to begin with (he had broad cheekbones, a heavy jaw, and jutting fangs and lower tusks), had been split open in two places: above his right eyebrow and across one cheekbone. Blood from the cut on his forehead had run into his right eye, where it had dried into a brown crust.

His back had actually gotten the worst of it.

A knife, if you could even call it that, was jutting out from beneath his left shoulder blade. It had been buried there almost up to the hilt. The blade was broad and jagged, and looked more like a broken-off saw than a proper blade. Around the wound, the fabric of his shirt had swollen and gone black, and his blood no longer flowed so much as oozed, thick and sluggish. It seemed as though Arkar’s body had grown tired of bleeding and was only doing it out of habit now.

Arkar lay sprawled out on the floor, and the parquet beneath him had already begun to darken.

Ardi wasted no time on thinking things over. He dropped to one knee. Specifically, he dropped to his left knee because his right leg had troubled him since the business with the mutant and it now sent a familiar flash of pain through him. He hooked his arms beneath Arkar’s armpits. Two hundred and twenty centimeters. A quarter of a ton. Altogether, Arkar’s muscle, bone and flesh weighed about as much as a baby grand piano.

Ardan gritted his teeth and hauled.

His leg burned. The old wound there had never fully healed, and with every step, it sent pain shooting through him while a dull ache spread through his thigh. Arkar remained unconscious. His head rolled from side to side. His arms dragged across the floor, leaving bloody smears on the parquet.

Ardi dragged his heavy friend down the hall, using the heel of his good leg for leverage as he hauled the Overseer of the Orcish Jackets forward in half-meter jerks. Blood from the knife wound in Arkar’s back drenched Ardan’s hands. It was warm and slick. He took care not to jostle the blade.

Tess ran out of the kitchen. She was barefoot, with her hair tousled, and an apron hastily thrown over her house dress. She stopped for a second and took in the scene: a bloodied Arkar on the floor, Ardi dragging him toward the kitchen, a dark trail left behind on the parquet. Her face settled into an expression Ardi had seen once before.

“And why do we have bleeding meat on our doorstep again?” Tess asked. Her tone made the question rhetorical.

Her voice remained perfectly even. There was no hint of fright, much less hysteria. It was the same matter-of-fact tone she always used when the subject turned to blood and wounds.

The scene did feel horribly familiar…

For an instant, Ardi was back in “Bruce’s” kitchen a year ago, back when Arkar had escaped captivity at the hands of Indgar and the Star-born werewolf.

The last two meters to the kitchen were the hardest of all. The doorway was too narrow for Arkar’s frame, and as Ardan dragged him through, he caught the poor bastard’s shoulder on the jamb. Arkar let out a low groan but still didn’t wake up. Ardi hauled him to the middle of the kitchen, carefully rolled him onto his stomach, and lowered him to the floor. The cold from the newly-laid kitchen tile licked at Ardi’s heels. Maybe that was for the best.

Tess was already at work.

The kettle on the stove still held water meant for something else entirely. She poured the hot water into an enamel basin, added cold water until it reached the right temperature, and then tested it with her elbow. From the cupboard above the icebox, she took down a tin box—this was the first-aid kit she had put together herself. There was a curved surgical needle in a vial of solution. A spool of cheap suture thread, not the best option, of course, but the only one they had. A bottle of medical-grade alcohol. Clean towels. Scissors.

Tess laid everything out on the table, then knelt beside Arkar and examined the knife.

“Pull it out,” she told Ardan curtly.

Ardi gave the blade a quick look. Up close, it was even more formidable. The serrations along its edge gleamed like the large, crooked fangs of some fish. Ardan knew perfectly well that when he pulled the blade free, each of these would tear through the half-orc’s muscles on its way out. But they had neither the time nor the tools to cut the blade out cleanly.

Nor were they likely to find tools like that anywhere outside a major hospital. Arkar’s body, after all, was almost completely different from a human’s.

Ardan moved both hands around the grip. His fingers tightened over the thick, rough leather, which was now slick with blood. Ardi shifted his hands for a firmer hold, braced one knee against Arkar’s back—beside the wound, to keep his body still—and pulled.

The blade would not budge. The barbs had bitten into the flesh like fishhooks greedy for their catch. Ardi pulled harder and Arkar jerked, making a guttural, animal sound. It wasn’t a scream, but more like a muffled, unconscious growl. Fresh, bright blood gushed from the wound. The knife lodged inside him had been acting as a cork until now. It had been the one thing keeping Arkar from “leaking everywhere.”

From the look of it, whatever fight Arkar had been in had started with the knife in his back; all his other wounds had come afterward.

Ardan pulled, bracing himself and twisting the blade as he tried to work the teeth free of the muscle. Blood sprayed over his hands and wrists and dripped from his elbows. The knife came out in jerking increments. A centimeter, then another, then another. Ardan felt the metal scrape against something hard and gritted his teeth.

One last heave, and the knife came free with a wet, squelching sound. Ardi lost his balance and staggered backward. In his hands lay a piece of metal a little longer than both his hands laid end to end. Some knife… It was more like a cleaver. A cleaver with a serrated blade coated in dark, thick blood and shreds of muscle.

A weapon like that would’ve punched straight through a sturdy, fully-grown human.

Ardan placed the blade on the floor and studied the wound carefully.

“Not good,” he drawled.

The edges were uneven and ragged, with a fringe of damaged muscle fibers around them. But the color of the flesh around the entry wound looked somehow… wrong. It was not the bright red of a fresh wound, but something darker, with a yellowish cast around the edges. Inflammation was clearly setting in. It would seem like Ardan had been a little off in his assessment. The fight really had begun with the knife, just not an hour or even an hour and a half earlier. Arkar had quite possibly been walking around with that blade in his back for almost a full day. Maybe even longer.

“Too much time has passed.” Ardi shook his head. “Star Healing won’t do any good here.”

“Move,” Tess said. She shouldered him aside gently, but in a way that left no room for argument.

Tess dipped a towel into the basin and began washing the wound. With quick, precise strokes, she worked the blood and dirt from the center toward the edges, then rinsed both away. Arkar flinched at every touch but still didn’t regain consciousness.

Tess wrung out the towel, and the water in the basin turned pink. Then she reached for the bottle of alcohol. Without hesitation, she pulled out the soft cork with her teeth and splashed a generous amount straight into the wound. Arkar thrashed in the throes of such agony that Ardi had to throw his weight across Arkar’s arms to pin him down.

Tess had already picked up the needle Ardi had once stolen from a hospital kit. She threaded it with the pale thread. Her fingers didn’t shake in the slightest. She started with the deepest layers of muscle. She brought the edges together, passed the needle through one side and then the other, drew the thread tight, and then tied the knot. Tess had spent next to no time at school, yet before Ardi even had a chance to blink, the first stitch was in Arkar’s flesh. Then a second, and a third. She made each stitch about a centimeter from the previous one, making sure the wound’s edges came together snugly but not too tightly. Otherwise, the already-inflamed tissue would begin to die.

There was no reason to risk everything for a slightly quicker recovery.

Ardan sat beside Arkar, holding him by the shoulders and watching Tess work in silence. She closed the wound in stages. First the deep muscles, then the surface muscles, then the tissue beneath the skin. Between layers, she stopped to wipe away the blood and add more alcohol. Tending the wounds of a Firstborn was a little different from tending human wounds. Sadly, Tess had gotten good at it after patching Ardi up several times.

She worked in silence, her gaze focused, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Her hands were bloody all the way up to her wrists by now. The final stage was the skin itself. Tess carefully drew the edges together, taking care not to pull the skin askew, tied the last knot, and snipped the thread with an ordinary pair of scissors. She rinsed everything with alcohol once more. Arkar twitched again, but the movement was weaker this time. Finally, she folded a clean towel several times into a thick pad, placed it over the wound, and pressed down.

“Hold this.” Ardan pressed the towel down with his hand, feeling someone else’s pulse beating against it through the cloth.

Tess stood, washed her hands in the basin, wiped them on her apron, and looked at Ardi.

“The bullets have to come out too.”

“I know.”

“But not right now. Let him catch his breath.”

Ardan nodded. They sat without saying a word on the blood-soaked kitchen floor, Ardi with one hand on Arkar’s back and Tess across from him, leaning against the icebox door. The kettle still stood on the stove. On the table, untouched plates held a dinner that had gone cold before anyone could eat it. A brownish trail stretched across the hall, leading from the front door to the kitchen.

Arkar groaned. The fingers of his right hand, huge and rough, scraped across the tile. His head turned a little. His left eye, the one not sealed with dried blood, cracked open. His clouded, unfocused gaze wandered across the kitchen until it found Ardi.

“M-Matabar…” Arkar rasped. His voice sounded as though he had been swallowing sand.

“Lie still,” Ardan said.

“Am I… in the kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“On the floor?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah… this is… real shit…”

Arkar blinked. Then his gaze found Tess.

“Mrs. Egobar…” He tried for something like a jaunty nod of greeting and immediately winced in pain. “Sorry for the… intrusion.”

“Arkar,” Tess answered calmly without moving. “Next time someone sticks a knife in your back, punches holes in you with that artillery cannon some people mistakenly call a revolver, or the Eternal Angels put you through the meat grinder, do me a favor and catch a cab to the hospital. And maybe don’t repaint my floors and walls while you’re at it, all right? One Ardi and his adventures is all I can handle. That brown mug of yours is welcome here only when it’s in one piece and not bleeding.”

Arkar tried to smirk. It didn’t work. His lips had been split, so the smirk looked more like a grimace.

“I’ll remember that,” he rasped, then passed out again.

Tess sighed, crossed to the stove, and flicked a switch. A pale blue Ley-flame flared above the burner, and she lowered a slender fish knife into it.

“Put this between his teeth.” She tossed Ardan a cloth napkin and a spoon. “And hold him. Tight. I don’t want him breaking my arms when he starts thrashing.”

Ardan wrapped the napkin around the spoon’s handle, set it between Arkar’s teeth, and got a firm grip on him.

“With the Light’s blessing.” Tess set the knife on the table long enough to tie her hair back with a kerchief, then picked up the blackened tool. “Let’s begin.”

“Mmmmmph!”

To Ardi, Arkar’s muffled bellowing seemed loud enough to carry clear across the Markov Canal as Tess cut the bullets out of him without anything to dull the pain.

* * *

“And why don’t you ever poison yourself… drink alcohol, I mean?” Arkar sighed and reached for the carafe of water.

He never managed to get a hold of it. Not because he lacked the strength or the reach. It was because a ringing slap caught him square on the right ear.

“Ow! Tess, are you trying to turn me into a corrupt official… make me deaf, I mean?” Arkar protested.

After cuffing Arkar on the ear, Tess went back to bandaging him.

“That ear is useless anyway.” She shrugged. “You couldn’t tell a drum from a saxophone.”

Arkar grumbled something and turned toward the window.

“If you plan to keep tossing that orc carcass of yours around and tear your stitches, you can get out right now.” Tess didn’t mince words. “I’ll even open the window for you, so you don’t bleed all over everything again. Go ahead and jump straight into the canal for all I care.”

“Some hospitality… Ow! But I wasn’t even moving.” Arkar rubbed his other ear.

Stolen from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“That one’s for the sass.” Tess spoke through clenched teeth. Once again, she tore the bandage with her teeth, split it in half, and tied it into a neat little bow. “There. Done. Now you can move… and tear your stitches. Then the window. And the canal. After that, go wherever you like.”

Ardi could never quite work out what Tess felt for Arkar. She genuinely had no love for gangsters. And yet, she usually showed Arkar warmth and care, right up until reality reminded them both exactly what kind of life he led. Then Tess made no effort to hide what she thought of anyone who lived on the wrong side of the law.

Tess picked up a plain bar of laundry soap and turned on the water. The pipes gurgled and cold water poured from the faucet.

Arkar turned to Ardi and looked him up and down.

“I’m amazed that you’re still in one piece, Ard, seeing as you’re married to a fire in the shape of a woman.” Arkar shook his head and winced in pain.

“It’s because I love him.”

“It’s because I love her.”

For a couple of seconds, the only sound in the kitchen was the water murmuring from the faucet.

“I envy you kids…” Arkar sighed, a wistful ache in his voice. “Not everyone gets so lucky in life…”

Tess finished washing her hands, dried them on a towel, then jabbed it toward Ardan.

“If you go anywhere with this slab of perpetually-bleeding meat and come back in any worse shape than when you left the house, let me make one thing clear.” Tess planted her hands on her hips and turned her nose up a little. “For the next month, I won’t lift a finger in this kitchen. Every blessed day, you’ll cook whatever I happen to want!”

“Tess.”

“What?”

“I could cook for you for the rest of my life.”

For a moment, his wife looked as though she had choked on air. Then she spun on her heel and marched across the gleaming parquet and off to their bedroom. Its spotless surface reminded Ardan that no purchase had ever pleased him more than the inexpensive set of simple household seals whose schematics he kept in the kitchen.

It wasn’t like seals that simple were worth copying into a grimoire.

“I really do need to meet the beasts that raised him,” Tess muttered under her breath.

Once Arkar and Ardi were alone, Ardi poured two glasses of water and held one out to Arkar.

“Let’s hear it, orc,” Ardan said, taking a long gulp of water.

For a while, Arkar rocked his own glass gently, watching his reflection shift across its surface. It was almost as though he were searching inside it for a clue. Or perhaps he was trying to come to terms with something.

“You know what the most rotten thing about all of this is, Ard?” Arkar breathed out. Ardan waited for him to get to the point. “There were signs. Plenty of them. People were whistling at me… telling me, I mean. And I didn’t listen. Because I didn’t want to believe it…”

“Arseny?” Ardan guessed.

A few months earlier, Arkar had learned that the Overseer of the Hammers, a man named Arseny, someone he had served with on the Armondian border, had died in a manner that, in Arkar’s opinion, was decidedly strange.

Logically, Arkar, as the Overseer of the Orcish Jackets, should’ve been glad that a strong, skilled and cunning Overseer of a rival gang was dead. But that hadn’t been the case at all. Maybe Arkar’s heart was bigger than he was willing to admit, even to himself. Maybe it was the tattoo Arseny and Arkar both wore on one shoulder. Or perhaps it was something else. Whatever the reason, Arkar had begun his own investigation.

Ardan had offered to help even back then, but Arkar had turned him down. He’d said that the investigation would have to proceed slowly, since he didn’t want to attract any extra attention and had no intention of putting himself in the crosshairs of two gangs at once.

Ardi let his gaze travel over Arkar’s bandaged body. Some of the white dressings had already begun to turn red.

Obviously, he and Arkar had very different ideas about what it meant to “stay out of harm’s way.”

“Arseny.” Arkar nodded and took another sip of water. “Sleeping Spirits, Ard, couldn’t you at least keep something strong around for guests… whiskey or vodka, I mean?”

Ardan said nothing.

Arkar sighed and moved on.

“I told you Arseny’s death seemed strange.” Arkar leaned back in the chair with a small groan. “His brown ears… his kidneys, I mean, had been troubling him for thirty years… and then he died of a hemorrhage at the Black Lotus. Sure, Arseny wasn’t exactly a typical pious northerner, but he kept to the commandments as faithfully as his conscience demanded, and it never gnawed at him too hard.”

Ardi saw no need to point out that he remembered his previous conversation with Arkar about this topic perfectly well.

“I didn’t breathe a word to anyone about what I was thinking, Ard.” Arkar was gradually sinking into his memories, and the deeper he fell, the less gangster slang found its way into his speech. “I went to the sleep… the funeral, I mean. I couldn’t tell you why. I just went to look.”

“Did you see anyone?” Ardan asked.

“Aside from his grief-stricken family, the Hammers, their Head, and ordinary people from the northern community?” Arkar shrugged. “No, Ardi. Among the several hundred mourners who came to see Arseny off, I didn’t spot anyone who looked suspicious. Now listen. I pulled a few strings down among the shrimps… the guards, I mean. Their corpse-cutters keep paper records, see. And me, thanks to my father, I know my letters. For a few dozen crinklies… exes, I mean, I pried a copy of the patholomagician’s report out of them.”

Arkar presumably meant a forensic pathologist.

“I took the papers to people who knew what they were looking at, because I don’t understand a demon’s worth of any of it myself.” Arkar winced every now and then, one hand pressed to his wounded side. “But they found nothing suspicious.”

“Then-”

“Except!” Arkar snapped, cutting Ardan off and raising his index finger. Then he hissed like a wounded dog. “Shit… This is going to ache until morning.”

Ardan felt a pang as he looked at the bandages wrapped around Arkar’s battered body. Not so long ago, most of his own wounds, scrapes and bruises would have healed by morning. But now… Ardi carefully shifted his leg. The cast was off, but the ache was just as bad.

“So, here’s the thing, Ard.” Arkar took a swallow of water to moisten his throat. “One clever fellow noticed the report was too neat. Almost perfect. There wasn’t a single blot, or slip of the pen, not even one tiny extra squiggle. It was as though somebody had…”

“Made a clean copy and checked it over a few times,” Ardi murmured.

Arkar nodded.

“So I thought, if the papers were a dead end, then… Well, gravediggers have families to feed and clothe too.” Arkar winked and yawned. “While there was still time, I dug up Arseny’s body. He was not pleasant to look at by then and smelled especially foul, but he was still in good enough shape for a white coat… a doctor, I mean, to work on him. The man examined him for a while and found the injection site. Right here.” Arkar pointed to the base of his neck. “And there was… what’s the word… one of those words in your language. The magic one. Nerco something…”

“Tissue necrosis,” Ardi supplied.

Arkar slapped his hand against the table and immediately winced again.

“Y-yeah.” He cleared his throat. “That’s exactly what he said. Some of the tissue around the injection site had died before Arseny did, so there’s reason to suspect poison. And a poison that causes hemorrhaging and shuts down the kidneys is a very pacific kind of thing.”

Ardan kept his face carefully blank.

“Not many people in this city can get their hands on something like that. Take out the guards, the Cloaks, the Narikhman, and the military, and the list gets pretty short.” Arkar rolled the glass between his fingers; in his huge hand, it looked barely larger than a shot glass. “But the search dragged on. It isn’t easy, Ard, knocking a few teeth loose… asking people questions, I mean, when you have to stay quiet and out of sight.”

Ardi made a face that all but screamed: “You don’t say, orc?” Arkar ignored him.

“By the start of winter, I had it all figured out. The whole… what do you investigators call it… chain. Right. I worked out the whole chain.” Arkar set the glass aside and looked Ardi in the eye. “A woman had come to Arseny in his capacity as Overseer. A northerner. She complained that a persistent admirer kept following her after her shifts at the Black Lotus.”

“Doesn’t the Black Lotus protect the women who work there?” Ardan asked, surprised.

“That’s the whole point, Ard.” Arkar nodded. “Even the Crimson Lady, may the demons devour her guts, tried to look after her butterflies. But this is the Black Lotus. The Empire’s premier ‘meeting place.’ Anyone and everyone goes there to unwind, Ard.”

Once again, Ardan said nothing.

He had once asked Milar why the Black Lotus had still not been shut down. Prostitution wasn’t legal in the Empire, but the criminal code didn’t punish people for selling their bodies, either. The law left the decision in the hands of the people involved. Captain Pnev had merely told Ardan to use his head and had reminded him that the best truth serum was a beautiful woman and a soft bed.

The Cloaks were likely gathering a great deal of information about the Empire’s most powerful people from within the walls of the Metropolis’ most expensive brothel.

“But it seems like the muscle… the Black Lotus guards, I mean, never managed to catch anyone, and by then, Etilli was half out of her mind with worry.” Arkar started to reach for the carafe, realized just in time that it was a bad idea, and looked to Ardan for help. “Arseny wasn’t a fool, Ard. Something must have seemed wrong to him. And that’s what did him in. He tried to get to the bottom of it. Not who this phantom following poor Etilli might be. But who…”

Arkar paused deliberately.

“…hired her to get close to Arseny. Or who intimidated her into it. That seems more likely. She would’ve hardly risked her life for a few extra exes. The women who work at the Black Lotus make very good money.”

Ardi often saw these women around Baliero when he and Tess visited the various jazz clubs and cafés. How was Ardan so sure that those groups of women who were always cheerful, always a little tipsy, and often not dressed in particularly revealing clothes, worked at the Black Lotus? First, his hearing sometimes picked up pieces of their conversations. Second, there was the look in their eyes.

At times, they wore the same empty, faraway expression Ardi had seen in Milar, Arkar, Edward, Alexander, Reish Orman, and even his own father. They looked not at a person, but through them. Unlike the soldiers, the women of the Black Lotus didn’t seem marked by pain or fear, but by a distant, detached despair. Not the despair of someone doomed to a swift and certain death, but of someone who knew there was no “happily ever after” waiting for them.

Perhaps that was why they always acted like every day was one long, unbroken party. That way, they wouldn’t have to think about tomorrow. That way, they wouldn’t have to face everything they worked so hard to push away…

“A true investigator...” Arkar drew the word out with a touch of respect. “So, at some point, after he’d worked something out, he walked straight into the Black Lotus, and that’s where he got the injection. You know the rest.”

For a while, Ardi sat in silence, fitting together the pieces of Arkar’s rather jumbled story.

“Someone bribed the guards’ pathologists?” He asked.

“Most likely.” Arkar nodded. “I tried to find whoever had filed the report, but he’d already quit and taken off for the Azure Coast. That’s beyond my reach.”

“So, this is what it comes down to.” Ardi drummed his fingers on the table. “Someone deliberately singled out a northern woman at the Black Lotus. Then they frightened her half to death, knowing she would eventually go to Arseny. Then they lured Arseny into the Lotus and made his death look natural.”

Arkar shook his head.

“I didn’t follow a couple of those words, Matabar, but that’s roughly how it all happened.”

Ardan nodded and looked Arkar over again. He wasn’t what anyone would call… fresh.

“Then where’d all of this come from?”

“All of what?” Arkar asked.

Ardi nodded his head toward the bandages and the few basins drying on the rack now that the blood had been washed out of them.

“Now we come to the interesting part, Ard.” Arkar was no longer hissing so much as growling. “Once I’d unwound the whole thing, or unraveled it, whatever the right word is in your sleuth-talk… Anyway! I decided to ask around on Sleepless Street and find out which mage might have taken a job like that.”

“What made you so sure it was magic?”

“Because that’s what the friend said.”

“Whose friend? Yours?”

“All my lady friends worked at the Crimson Lady’s bar until you wrecked it.”

“Then, by the Sleeping Spirits, what friend are you talking about?”

“Etilli’s friend!”

“And who exactly is Etilli?”

“Damn it, Ard! Are you listening to me or not? The Black Lotus worker who lured Arseny there!”

Ardan let out a breath and rubbed his temples. He obviously couldn’t expect Arkar to tell a story as clearly and methodically as Milar. But by the Sleeping Spirits, this was getting absurd.

“Ah. Right.” Arkar cleared his throat. “I found out her name was Etilli. A typical northern name. I went to see her at the Lotus and shelled out a heap of exes.”

“You? At the Lotus?”

“They let our kind in too, Ard. Crinklies… exes, I mean, from the Kar’tak smell just as sweet to them.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Ardan was nearly pleading by now. “You spent months investigating the death of a rival gang’s Overseer, and then walked into the Lotus by yourself, out in the open? Someone could’ve started following you at any point!”

“That’s easy for you to say now that you can see the consequences!” Arkar snapped, baring his tusks, and pointed at the bloody bandages. “But thanks to you, I went without female company for a very long time! And I’m too old to go back to taking matters into my own hands! And all those perverted women with a taste for orc meat nearly send me into a fit of trench panic! Every other one is out of her mind! My old man taught me this when I was young: never sleep with a crazy woman, and never go to market hungry!”

Ardan covered his face with one hand. Arkar was a half-blood, and like most half-bloods, an unlucky coin toss had decided his tastes: he preferred human women. But a certain physiological quirk that came with his enormous build meant he could not pass the time with just any woman. More to the point, even setting aside the fangs, the tusks, and everything else, not every woman was willing to keep Arkar company in bed.

“So I decided to mix business with pleasure.” Arkar grunted. “Etilli was busy, so they introduced me to her friend. At first, she wasn’t quite sure what to do, of course, but in time-”

“Arkar, I don’t need any details!” Ardan exclaimed.

“Wasn’t planning to give you any.” Arkar shrugged. “I’m no Bazhen…” Then he cleared his throat.

“You know I can hear a person’s heartbeat just as well as you can,” Ardi groaned. “And I know when I’m being lied to.”

“Then don’t listen.” Arkar replied casually. “So. Etilli’s friend said-”

“And what’s her name, orc?” Ardan cut in.

“How am I supposed to know, Ard? Prostitutes don’t share their real names. It’s sort of a tradition among them.”

Ardan looked out the window. Sleet was falling beyond the glass, and the roads were slowly turning into one long, muddy ditch. And for some reason, Ardi thought that the scene outside looked a lot like the conversation he was having with Arkar. It was the same shapeless muck where it would be impossible to tell what exactly it was made of.

“And now that I’m allowed to finish, Matabar, Etilli’s friend said that she’d seen a cloaked man with a staff visit Etilli several times.”

“Mages visit the Black Lotus too.”

“But she saw him at Etilli’s home as well.” Arkar went on, and Ardi… Ardi was not expecting much of anything by then. He would probably just have to drift along with the current of this jumbled story and try to fish a few facts out of it. “They pretty much all live in Baliero. So. After my sixth visit, I managed-”

“Your sixth visit?”

“I needed to build some trust first.” Arkar lied again, cool as you please. “So. I managed to find out where Etilli lived. I went to her place, and…”

Arkar clenched his fist and set his jaw so hard that fresh blood seeped through his bandages in wide, crimson blotches.

“I should’ve gotten suspicious as soon as I ran into Kargurkaar, but who knew what he might be doing in Baliero, right? Maybe he was looking for company among the crazy women. Maybe he was just relaxing…” Arkar bowed his head and pressed down on the table so hard that its wooden legs let out a plaintive groan. “He talked me in circles. Gave me a light. A fat one… a cigar, I mean. My favorite. A ‘Dancing Islander.’ They only roll those on one Forian island. At first, I was surprised, but didn’t catch on. Then someone stuck a little knife in my back.”

Ardan looked at the “little knife.” It was a blade that could have chopped through a small log.

“Then it all kicked off. Shooting. Gunfire. I caught a few bumblebees and jumped into a storm drain, and from there, I washed up in a garbage dump.” His gaze dropped to his inflamed wound. A human who went through all of that in such a mangled state would already be waiting to meet the Eternal Angels. “So yes, Ardi, this really does resemble that time with Indgar…”

“Arkar.”

“What?”

“You do understand where all of this is heading, don’t you?” Ardan asked carefully, as though he were speaking to an animal that was getting ready to attack. “First, there was that whole business with the bombing and the ambush set for the car carrying Ordargar, the Head of your gang. Then Indgar, the man who so conveniently won everyone’s respect and raced up through the ranks, turned up right beside you. Then came your agreement with Arseny, the thing that made it possible to stop the gang war. And now Arseny is dead, and your own people tried to kill you.”

Arkar said nothing. He only clenched his fist.

“When I came back from the front, Ard…” His voice was low and heavy, the words coming one by one. “If it hadn’t been for Darg… Ordargar, I’d be lying in some dump somewhere. Full of holes. Cold. Hungry. And without asking me a single question or wanting anything at all in return, he gave me a job. Tending bar. At ‘Bruce’s.’ Bottles, glasses, plates, tables. And I worked. I did honest work, and I did it well enough. I talked to people whenever the mood struck us. Some days, I could sit out on the steps for hours, just smoking and watching the canal. Listening to the waves. The quiet hiss as they crashed against the granite…” Arkar unclenched his fist and studied his palm as though he were seeing far more tangled lines than were actually there. “And that work, Ard.” Arkar jabbed a finger fiercely at his temple. “Little by little, it stitched up the holes the front had left in my head. Nobody brought me into the gang, Ard. It just… happened on its own.”

Arkar shrugged and turned toward the window. His gaze settled on the faded sign of “Bruce’s.” The sign was almost invisible in the darkness, its lights gone out.

“Then one year went by, then another, then five years, then ten… and here I am, the Overseer of the Orcish Jackets. Yes, there were disagreements. Yes, I had to get my racket going… my scheme, I mean, funneling dough to the Conclave, but…” Arkar set his hand back down on the table. “Apart from the Fanged Division, the Orcish Jackets are the closest thing I have to a family, Ard. And Darg… he didn’t replace my father. No. Not at all. He was more like an older brother. Always knowing what to do. Always able to hold the line. Unbending. Cruel sometimes. Too cruel, even. But fair. Ready to admit his mistakes and learn from them. So how… how could an orc like Ordargar sell out to those bastards, Ard? What do you call them…”

“The Puppeteers,” Ardan answered, remembering that after the events in the temple of the Old Gods, Arkar had signed some unusual papers.

“The Puppeteers.” Arkar nodded. “I could believe one coincidence. I could believe two. But first, he tried to drag the gang into the Conclave’s affairs. Then Indgar appeared. Then Arseny. And now…”

For a moment, Arkar looked toward the blood-streaked knife and the bullets lying in one of the basins.

“Someone could be trying to frame him, Arkar,” Ardan suggested. “You don’t have direct evidence. Only the circumstantial kind. And even the fact that your own people came after you does not settle it. They could’ve been deceived. They could’ve been put under a spell. They could’ve simply been bought off.”

“They might have.” Arkar nodded. “Or maybe not. And you’re right, I don’t have any direct proof. There’s nowhere else to get it but from Ordargar himself.”

“What are you planning to do?” Ardan asked.

Arkar stared out the window in silence for a while.

“Drive out to the suburbs. To Darg’s place. Ask him point blank. Look him in the eyes and hear his heart.”

Several minutes passed before Ardi could ask the next question.

“And what happens if you find out that Ordargar sold out to them?”

Arkar turned slowly toward Ardan. He bared his fangs again, and his lower jaw slid forward, tusks and all.

“Then I’ll do what has to be done in a Larr’rrak, Ard.” Arkar’s tone was firm, without a trace of doubt. “I’ll tear out his heart.”