Come on Martin.

  “Come on Martin. We can’t save them. A clean death, perhaps. They don’t respond. They’re dead, good as. Let’s just torch the place and let it go.”

  “I can’t leave them.”

  “The fuck yourself and burn with them.”

  Yes, burn with them. Come to me. Remember her face? The first you couldn’t save? I did that, Martin Fatherkiller. I broke her to my hand but any kennelmaster will tell you a bitch can bite you after years of service. Do you want to know what I did to her? How I broke her?

  “No.”

  “No? Martin, I know there’s something in your head, it’s here. I can see it. It’s crawling all over you. It’s, Mother and Father deliver me from this pla-”

  Martin struck his father in the mouth. The old man’s hands gripped him even as he beat him more. And with every stroke the laughing kept coming.

  Kill him. Kill them. Avenge me. Remember when I would touch you, tickle you? You were mine, all mine, my special boy. Your brothers were his, but they’re dead. The things he did to me, Martin. In the dark there. I would bleed for days, smiling under the bruises. I did it -

  No.

  I kept quiet for you. I love you.

  “I love you too, Mother.” Martin said, as his dead brothers rushed him, howling recriminations. As he hit them he began laughing, laughing at the foolishness of it, the cruelty of it all.

  Martin's arms tired as he continued the fight. Their attacks lessened, the dead falling. One of his foolish brothers, white-eyed and incapable of anything but a gurgling whimper, looked up in shock as the boot came down, and Martin giggled at the sound the contact made.

  _______

  Our retainers?

  The man stood in a dark room hearing the voices. They came to him like this, in dreams. Always the black room, always questions about the business.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  We have what we need. Our retainers?

  “They have been handled. The only one to know anything has been detained by the Guard. Your work seems to have done him in, he was laughing the whole way into the cart.”

  Excellent. We’ve gathered what we needed here, enough to last lifetimes. It is so inefficient to gather in the normal way, and the War has not made it easier.

  “It is a cruel thing, these things you asked. I didn’t care about the Black and Whites, they were a means to my ends, and let them burn. But Martin? Martin was a good man. He was like a -”

  He felt their hands come out of the darkness, locking around his throat. He knew it was a dream, that it was all more real than his waking hours. He felt his feet lifted off the ground, felt the hands grasp harder.

  We do not accept questioning from our proxies. You have been asked to gather what we need, to find that which we seek. You have done one, and another. Soon the Takrim will fulfill their part of our business, moving into the city to defend their interests. We will be there, as always. Then you will watch, and continue to bring us our gifts until our business is completed with your foolish kingdom.

  The hands released him, and he felt the air rush into his lungs. What would his wife see if they hadn’t stopped? A nightmare? Drowning? Nothing but a dead husband who ate too freely, and a ransom of gold and silver at her disposal? No, not Orchid. She would love him if he were a pauper.

  She married you for your talents. She knows nothing of your infidelities, your foolishness with sneaking out to do our work. You? You are a simple tile, a piece to be played when we need and discarded when we will. Unless you want it all known. Your crimes. Such petty earnings for such cruelties. They’ll burn your home and your family, root and stem. You will be forgotten like the people who came before your own. A foul odor on the pages of your people’s history.

  “Yes. Please, tell me how I may serve you.”

  He felt the pain again, and just like every time before wondered if his brain would storm and burn out. All of the details came fresh to his mind, as if he had been told them in a long discussion. He could feel his nose bleeding, and hoped to wake up enough to clean himself before Orchid could see.

  It is an abomination, but it knows of what we seek. It must be caught, captured however you may do it. Take it quickly, as our hands cannot reach it. And once you do?

  “Do you want him alive?”

  We want it burned. Build a pyre and burn it, but find where she is hiding from us By any means at your disposal.

  He returned to his body in a start, rushing to the wash basin to clean himself up. From his window he saw the warehouse burning, heard the cries to fire, the ringing of the bells of the Roost.

  “Darling, is there a fire? Are we safe?” her voice was heavy, full of the poppy tincture she drank to sleep, to go about every day in a haze. “Where are the children?”

  “Don’t worry, love of my life. The fire is far away, the children are safe in their beds.” he smiled at her, knowing she couldn’t see him. You can hear a smile, his father had told him, as well as see it. “I’ll go check on them.”

  He walked down the hall, the late night visitation digging into him. He hoped the horses were found. Gob brands, stolen from a round pen in the Warrens. The rest of things were easy enough to get without notice, as he was a man who could find things for a price. “I’ll donate it to orphans,” he muttered as he closed the distance. “Feed them for a month or two.”

  He stopped at the door, the fear rising. He had dared to speak up, asking them questions. He had seen their work, the things they could do. What if? He opened the door, checking in on his sleeping children.

  His daughters were in bed, sleeping calm as ever. Their rooms were better appointed than any room they would have had if he had stayed in the Barrow. Dolls made of fine materials, their heads blank smooth porcelain. Orchid didn’t believe in faces on their dolls, some rich man’s superstition about the spirits of the dead. A tiny writing desk for each, in a room that could sleep eight in comfort when he was just a simple rag and bone seller.

  They had been kind to him over the years. Kind and cruel. He always wondered if they had taken his son. Or his first mistress. They loved to be petty with life, trading any who were not them like coppers in a game of tiles. Someday he might fight against them, but he knew it would mean his death and the deaths of all he loved.

  Then he saw it. On the little one’s mirror. Orchid had named her Pansy, her bright little flower. A mirror like this would cost an honest man a month’s wage, but here it was just a forgotten thing.

  They had drawn their symbol there. A circle with eight points marked out, forming a symbol within. And inside they had left their message:

  Remember. We know all.

  A man named Vitner, once known as Starling, woke his girls. They laughed at their silly father, smiling as he used his shirt to clean little Pansy’s mirror.