The Return of Daud Read online

  One of the approaching guards pointed at him.

  “You there. Where are you going? The city is now under curfew.”

  Daud stopped and raised a hand in what he hoped was a friendly greeting, but that only made the guard frown. He and his companions were still fifty yards away but now they began to jog toward him.

  Darting forward, Daud turned sharply into a narrow alley. The buildings on either side were tall and the walls were flat but covered in a network of iron stairwells, their descending ladders locked at least ten feet from the street, safely out of reach.

  The sound of the approaching City Watch grew, their boots heavy on the cobbled street.

  Daud took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He didn’t want to use magic, but, once again, he found himself forced to. He needed to be fast. Time was of the essence—more now than ever, it seemed.

  He looked up, judged the distance, then reached out with his left hand. The Mark of the Outsider blazed like a brand on his skin, flaring once, twice, three times as Daud traveled up the stairwells, then up onto the roof. He paused and looked down over the edge as the City Watch patrol entered the alley and looked around like lost children, then he turned and continued on his way.

  4

  WYRMWOOD WAY, WYRMWOOD DISTRICT, DUNWALL

  18th Day, Month of Earth, 1852

  “For the more intrepid traveler seeking to discover the true nature of the city, and who is perhaps willing to experience a side of Dunwall not commonly encountered, a visit to Wyrmwood Way may be considered. The so-named street is itself merely the main thoroughfare of a small, though rather densely built, district hidden in the southwest of the city. Here the traveler may browse stores unlike any found elsewhere in the city, catering to more unusual tastes. However, the traveler is advised not to stray from the cobbles of Wyrmwood Way proper; it is also recommended that a personal bodyguard be hired to curtail the risk of any unpleasantness. For while Wyrmwood Way is in truth an excellent and most fascinating area to visit, the district at large has been for many years under the watch of a variety of underworld organizations prepared to tolerate visitors only so long as they are not tempted to stray where they are not welcome. Foolish is the outsider who wanders from Wyrmwood Way, and travelers are reminded that the City Watch will not respond to calls for assistance south of Darrellson Street. Discretion is advised.”

  —THE SECRET SIDE OF DUNWALL: WYRMWOOD WAY

  Extract from The Eclectic Traveler’s Guide to the Isles (fourth edition)

  Daud looked down at the street below from the safety of the sharply angled gable of a tavern on the corner of Darrellson Street. This part of the city, in contrast to the chaos farther north, was quiet, but not because of any curfew or threat from the City Watch and the other quasi-military forces now patrolling Dunwall. It was quiet because it was always quiet at this time, and today was no exception.

  Wyrmwood Way itself ran parallel to Darrellson Street, which itself acted as a kind of border, effectively separating Dunwall from the Wyrmwood district itself, an area that was definitely different, distinct from the rest of the city. The architecture seemed older, the streets that spidered out from the spine of Wyrmwood Way narrow and twisted, the buildings that lined them lopsided and leaning. The area looked old and the stones were worn, as though this small wedge of Dunwall was somehow a good few hundred years older than the rest of the city. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps Wyrmwood Way was the original old town, the seed from which Dunwall grew, expanding outwards to conquer the southern banks of the Wrenhaven before spreading even farther north, becoming over time the largest city in all the Isles and the capital of the Empire.

  Perhaps. Daud wasn’t sure, and he wasn’t interested. Wyrmwood Way and its environs were the one area of Dunwall with which he wasn’t intimately familiar. But he knew enough. Enough to know he had to be very, very careful as he went about his search. It would have been difficult enough without the frisson of fear that had gripped the city after the sudden coup at the Tower.

  But he had no choice. It was now, or never.

  Wyrmwood Way was different—separate—from the rest of Dunwall for another reason that was unrelated to its architecture or history: its gangs—or, specifically, one gang. The most dangerous, most cutthroat, most violent gang in all of Dunwall’s history. They weren’t generally mentioned in the same breath as the other, more well-known groups that stalked Dunwall’s underbelly—the Hatters, the Dead Eels, the Bottle Street Gang, and, more recently, the Roaring Boys—because their activity was confined within the boundaries of the Wyrmwood district. Most of the citizens of Dunwall, although they would have heard of Wyrmwood Way—may even have ventured into the mouth of it, hunting for rare antiquities or unusual trinkets, blissfully unaware of the darker kinds of markets that operated in the area—had never even heard of the gang.

  They called themselves the Sixways Gang. They were led by a man called Eat ’Em Up Jack. Their base of operations was a tavern called the Suicide Hall.

  Daud had come to see them because there was one very particular type of business the Sixways controlled within their Wyrmwood empire: smuggling. Art treasures, stolen property, kidnapped people, heretical artifacts—or just plain old coin—if you needed to get it out of Dunwall without anyone knowing about it, you employed the services of the Sixways Gang.

  If anyone knew what had happened to the Twin-bladed Knife, it was going to be Eat ’Em Up Jack. And Daud was going to ask him in person.

  He only hoped he wouldn’t have to kill them all to get out alive.

  * * *

  Daud made it down to street level and headed directly for Wyrmwood Way. He was alone for a few dozen yards, and then he wasn’t. A few more paces, and he turned and saw that he was being followed openly, by two people—a man and a woman, both wearing immaculately tailored suits of the kind favored by bankers and accountants. But these were not business people. The man’s neck was thick and muscular, and he wore a heavy moustache with upturned waxed ends, while his companion’s long hair was wound into a tight bun on the top of her head, and her round-collared shirt did little to hide the tattoos on her neck. Their jackets had had the lapels roughly cut away, leaving a jagged, almost torn edge with white threads trailing against the dark fabric.

  It was clear these were lookouts for the Sixways, stationed at the start of Wyrmwood Way, not so much to guard the approaches but to see that whatever was going on in Dunwall did not interfere with operations here in their own territory. Word of the coup must have reached them.

  Soon the two lookouts were joined by another two men, and another couple, peeling casually out of doorways to follow the stranger walking so boldly into their domain.

  Daud took this as a good sign, because it meant that the Sixways were still in operation—and that there was a chance he could get the information he had come here for. And just in time, too, he thought, as he passed the burned-out skeleton of a building on his right. The Overseers periodically came into Wyrmwood Way and set fire to buildings in somewhat half-hearted attempts to halt the trade in heretical and arcane goods. That they never managed to do much damage was largely due to the fierce street fighting they had faced when, on one historic occasion, they had penetrated right to the heart of the Sixways territory and faced an army of gangsters who left dozens of Overseers dead and drove the rest out. Since the Battle of Mandragora Street—as the event had become known—the Overseers never had much interest in devoting the time and manpower that would be needed to truly flush the Sixways from the district.

  As Daud continued his journey, followed now by six lookouts, he wondered how long that impasse would last now. If there was a regime change at the Tower—if Duke Luca Abele of Serkonos had installed himself as ruler—then he doubted Wyrmwood Way would remain untouched for much longer.

  Which is why there was no time to waste. He had to get in, get the information, find out who had taken the Twin-bladed Knife and where.

  He marched onward, head up and hood pull
ed back enough so his face wasn’t hidden. Further down Wyrmwood Way, there were more lookouts of various ages and builds, a more or less even mix of men and women, all clad in their suits, jacket lapels shorn away, men with round hats and moustaches elegant and waxed, the women with their hair in topknots. They stood in doorways and against walls. They sat on steps and leaned against rails. And it wasn’t just at street level. Daud glanced up and saw more leaning out of open windows or looking down from behind closed ones.

  They all watched Daud as he walked down the street, his escort now twenty paces behind him. He ignored it all and kept walking in a straight line with his eyes fixed ahead, his expression firm. He hoped that his manner suggested he was here quite deliberately, not for a fight, but for business.

  The road was quite long and fairly straight, the quarter mile thoroughfare terminating at a large intersection, right in the heart of the district, where five other streets converged—two major arteries, Wyrmwood Way and Mandragora Street, and three smaller roadways—the area forming a fairly large, open circular space surrounded by tall buildings. The center of the intersection was clear, but around the edges were more gangsters—perhaps fifty, all dressed in the uniform of the Sixways Gang. Daud stopped, unable to hide the hesitation in his step. The gang was on alert, no question about it. Because unlike his escort of six, and the others who had watched him, the gangsters here made no attempt to conceal their weaponry. Each had two pistols stuffed into their belts, and from each right hand dangled a leather blackjack, the way their bulbous ends swung in the air telling Daud they were filled with lead.

  Nobody spoke or moved. Behind him, Daud’s escort stopped, keeping their distance.

  This was the Sixways itself—the heart of Wyrmwood—from which the gang that ruled the district took their name. There were two big buildings dead ahead, on the other side of the intersection. One was a blackened shell of an old building, the doors and windows gone, brick sooty and crumbling, a collapsed roof, and gaping holes for windows that were like the empty eye sockets of a dried-out skull. The structure was not unlike the ruin of the slaughterhouse that had led Daud here in the first place, the burned-out shell here left as a memorial of the Battle of Mandragora Street.

  It was the ruin’s intact neighbor that Daud had come to visit. The building was dark brick and five floors high, the front three windows wide but no more. The windows were closed and shuttered, save for one on the fourth floor; Daud could see two people moving behind the glass, watching the street. More Sixways lookouts.

  The building was a tavern, that much was obvious from the ocean of green curved tile that formed the entire façade of the first floor. The main door was accessed by a short flight of steps set between two wide verandas, the windows of which were large and shaded by awnings striped in faded green and white. If the tavern had had a name before, Daud certainly didn’t remember it—there was a sign, or what was left of one; most of it had been torn off to leave just three large gilt letters—BAR—with elaborate curlicues over the doorway.

  Daud knew the building by another name, as did everyone else in Wyrmwood, along with those in Dunwall who made it their business to know, whether they were officers of the City Watch, senior members of the Abbey of the Everyman, or those who had a certain kind of business that required the services of the Sixways Gang.

  This was the gang headquarters, and home of their boss, Eat ’Em Up Jack, the Suicide Hall, so called because if you went inside without an invitation or a business proposition, you wouldn’t come out alive.

  Daud rolled his neck and patted the right breast of his jerkin. The pouch was still there, nestled against his chest. He didn’t want to use what was inside, but it was just for something like this that he had brought it along.

  Armed with his contingency, Daud gritted his teeth and walked into the bar.

  5

  THE SUICIDE HALL, WYRMWOOD DISTRICT, DUNWALL

  18th Day, Month of Earth, 1852

  “You know how the Sixways Gang has operated all this time, for all these years? Well, I’ll tell you. Fear. It’s as simple as that. And their leader, Eat ’Em Up Jack, is the master of fear—he is the ringmaster of terror, and all of Wyrmwood Way is his circus. He understands that to instill fear—to truly make people believe it—requires more than just talk.

  Fear needs spectacle.

  Someone steals from him: he cuts off their hands. Someone speaks against him: he cuts out their tongue. Someone challenges his authority: he cuts off their head, sticks it on a pole, and dangles it out of the top window of the Suicide Hall for all to see.

  And that’s just within his own family.

  Fear is a powerful tool indeed.”

  —WYRMWOOD WAY AND THE SIXWAYS GANG

  Excerpt from a journalist’s report on organized criminal activity

  The inside of the Suicide Hall was clean and tidy, the very picture of a respectable hostelry and no different to any of the upmarket inns that dotted the more inviting districts of the city. The public room was large, full of low beams and dark wood that were complemented by the green-and-white-striped upholstery of the booths that lined the walls. Despite the daylight outside, it was dark and cozy inside, the lighting turned low and the big windows looking out onto the veranda were frosted for privacy. Directly ahead of Daud, on the other side of the room, was the bar itself, the well-stocked shelves surrounding a large mirror. Daud looked at his own reflection, and the reflections of the twenty heads of the gangsters who were sitting around the room, all eyes on him.

  His view was blotted out as one of the Sixways strolled over and stepped directly in front of him. The woman lifted her pistol, placing the barrel directly against Daud’s forehead and pushed, hard.

  “That’s far enough.”

  Welcome to the Suicide Hall, thought Daud. He glanced over the woman’s shoulder, scanning the words carved into the brown wood panel over the bar, the jagged white scar of the letters the only thing—gangsters aside—that seemed out of place.

  BETTER OFF DEAD

  Daud smiled, and lifted his empty hands. “I’m just here for a drink.”

  The gangster didn’t move a muscle. Daud felt the gun barrel drilling a circle into the flesh of his forehead.

  “That so?” asked the woman.

  Daud’s eyes darted around the room, meeting the gaze of the watching gangsters, some sitting in the booths, some leaning against the dark-wood pillars, all armed with pistol and blackjack. There were no tables or chairs or stools at the bar—less makeshift ammunition in case of a fight, perhaps—and despite the myriad liquors on display behind the bar, nobody was drinking.

  Daud’s focus returned to the mirror, his view obscured by the woman holding the gun to his head. He very carefully leaned to his right.

  “And a talk,” he said, to the mirror. It was a two-way, of course. Facing the door, the perfect way to see who was coming and going. Someone was watching the scene now, he knew. Maybe even Eat ’Em Up Jack himself.

  Nobody spoke. That was fine. Daud could wait.

  He had no choice, anyway.

  After a few moments there was a creak, then a heavy door slammed shut, and a man appeared from around the curve of the bar. He had a moustache like the rest of the men, but he was a good deal older and he wore no hat, his thinning gray hair immaculately combed and glistening with tonic. He wore no jacket either, and the sleeves of his collarless shirt were held halfway up his forearms by silver armbands that sat above his elbows. Around his waist was a green-and-white-striped apron, and over one shoulder was a towel in the same pattern.

  The man may have been older than the rest of the gangsters assembled in the Suicide Hall, but he was completely in his element. His neck was thick, his broad shoulders stretching the fabric of his shirt. When he planted his arms on the bar, locking his elbows, Daud could see his muscles flexing.

  “Well?”

  Daud paused. Was this Eat ’Em Up Jack himself? Was this how he played it, pretending to be the barman in ord
er to scope out potential clients, or victims?

  Daud didn’t speak, but he did raise an eyebrow.

  The barman stared at him. “You said you wanted a drink.”

  Daud glanced at the woman with the gun, then he took a half-step back and casually brushed the barrel aside with one hand. The gangster let the weapon fall and looked over her shoulder at the barman. The barman nodded and the gangster stepped back.

  Daud ran a hand over his beard and moved toward the bar, aware of his every move, aware of all the eyes watching him. When he reached the bar he was careful to place both hands on top of it, in plain view.

  “Well, you know what they say in Morley,” said Daud.

  The barman said nothing. He fixed Daud with a steely look. Daud could see the green edge of a tattoo just at the edge of the man’s collar.

  “No,” said the barman. “What do they say in Morley?”

  “That the sun is always high enough somewhere in the Isles for a drink.”

  Daud held the barman’s stare for five long seconds that felt like an eon in the dim stillness of the Suicide Hall. Then the barman turned to the shelves behind him. With his gaze firmly on Daud’s reflection in the mirror, he pulled a thin, dark bottle from the back of the second shelf—Serkonan spiced rum—then he turned and produced a square cut-glass tumbler from under the bar. He placed both in front of Daud, then he returned to his previous pose.

  Daud glanced at the bottle. The label was faded and old, but the liquor was good. He glanced at the glass, then back up at the barman’s impassive face.

  “Wrong glass,” said Daud.

  The barman said nothing.

  “Serkonan rum is traditionally served in a tall glass with a wide bowl,” said Daud, “to let the aroma develop.”