Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Twins might have just played their last jest on old Rafall.
    He touched the blackened knife’s edge.
Fine enough to shave with . . . had I ever shaved
.
    A knock on the door. ‘Yes?’
    Lee, one of his enforcer lads, pushed up the trap and handed him a slip of torn rag. ‘An urchin lass, a dust-sweeper, was given this for you.’
    He broke the crude seal of plain candle-wax that closed the folds. On the scrap, in the neat hand of a hired scribe, was the single word
Tonight
. Accompanying the message was a clumsy charcoal drawing of a knife.
    So. I was right.
    Rafall threw the rag aside to burn later. He studied Lee’s puzzled lopsided face. ‘I want everyone out tonight. All the clubbers rolling drunks. All the pretty boys and lasses pulling customers. Everyone working.’
    ‘Festival of Burn’s still a long way off . . .’
    ‘Just do as I say!’
    The lad flinched, pulled at his wispy beard. ‘If y’ say so.’ He slammed the door.
    Good lads and lasses, all of ’em. Even the arm-breakers, clubbers, and enforcers. Even them. Beat anyone senseless, they would. But no knifing. No. That took another sort altogether. So the fellow wanted to talk. All right. They’d have them a chat. Got off on the wrong foot, was all. And if talk wasn’t what the lad had in mind, he wouldn’t have given fair warning, would he?
    He spent the evening going over his accounts – a depressing enough exercise for any small businessman. His above-board ‘import’ business was haemorrhaging money. All the income from his street waifs, their whoring, theft, and mugging, even taken together with his fencing, barely kept him afloat. Too much uncertainty around the raids of the Seti, the terror of the man-eater, and unofficial ‘taxes’ and bandits in general. Overland commerce had pretty much fallen into ruin since the end of the last Talian hegemony. Why, the tithes Cawn levelled for portage were outrageous. Nothing better than thieves, those Cawnese.
    What was a businessman to do?
    He sighed, pushed away the books and looked up in the dim candlelight to see the dark-haired lad himself sitting opposite. His heart lurched and he dropped his quill. ‘You’re early,’ he said in a gasp.
    ‘Of course.’ The thin youth made a show of peering about the office. ‘No guards?’
    ‘No. I took it you wanted to talk.’
    ‘Good for you. I do want to talk – among other things. Now . . .’ and he placed his slim long-fingered hands on the desk, ‘I asked you a question a few days ago . . .’
    Rafall swallowed hard. He edged one hand to his lap and there took hold of the grip and trigger of the crossbow he kept mounted under the desk. Talk was one thing – but a man’d be a fool not to have insurance. ‘I know everyone, lad. If you’re looking for work I can get the word out.’ The youth’s flat features turned down. So unremarkable, this one’s appearance, Rafall thought. Bland, even. Unmemorable. But then that was all for the better, wasn’t it? In this one’s line of work only a fool would try to stand out.
    ‘I thought you said there was no brotherhood in town. Something about your Protectress.’
    ‘No, no organization. But killin’, yes. Plenty of that. Accidents happen . . . you know how it is.’
    The youth nodded. ‘I understand.’ He studied him, his eyes watchful, with a predatory air. ‘Ask around. Bring me any offers. You know the inn down the street?’
    ‘The Riverside? Aye.’ Rafall didn’t add that its owner was up to his bushy eyebrows in debt to him.
    ‘I’ll take a room there.’
    ‘I’ll make the arrangements and deliver the word.’
    ‘Very good.’ The lad leaned forward then, hands still flat on the desk between them. ‘Now, about my possessions . . .’
    * * *
    In late summer the Favathalven family petitioned the Protectress to look into the death of their great matron, Denili Liejen Favathalven. ‘Auntie’, as she was known to her many customers, being a madam and one of the most