Chapter 11

I

I woke up the next morning to shouting men outside my window. There was no one else in the game room, Cat having left during the night. I was under a blanket, almost certainly her work before leaving. I was warm and comfy, refreshed after the night’s sleep, but eager to close my eyes and continue the pleasant dream I’d been party too. There was something else as well, a relatively new sensation, an indescribable elation I felt whenever people or things bent to my will; it’d been there when I’d killed the beggars, or when the ship had torn apart people right in front of my eyes, and most recently, when I’d subjugated Braka in less than a day with the help of my steel titan. The power...

Elated or no, I was loath to move, deciding to stay in bed and do my best to return to the sweet embrace of sleep. It was great idea theoretically, but after half an hour of tossing and turning, trying to hide my head under the cushions to lessen the noise, and finally yelling for the men to shut up, I accepted failure. Whoever the men were, they were simply too loud. I was seriously considering murder when Hanna appeared. Her head and shoulders came in first, her gaze darting around the room. She rushed forward once she was certain there were no surprise inside, grabbing one of the chairs and dragging it towards my temporary bed on the way. She was wearing a white, embroidered dress that reached her ankles. Form-fitting and long-sleeved, it covered her from neck to floor without concealing much of her figure. Her breathing as she spoke shifted her breasts under the material, revealing a hint of a nipple. “You were magnificent last night.”

I ignored her comment, relaxing my back muscles and falling onto the sofa again. “I want to go back to sleep. Can you make those people outside shut up?”

“They’re Vasha’s men; here to clean up the blood and remove the corpses from yesterday.”

I did the best approximation of a shrug that it is possible to do while lying down on velvety cushions. “They can come back when I’m awake. Am I not the boss now?”

She was about to speak when I interrupted her again. “And who in the abyss is Vasha?”

“He’s the redhead, the smartest one among the bunch last night. He knelt first.” She answered.

“Oh.”

“And the garden is going to get ruined if it’s not cleaned up quickly.”

“Blood is good for the soil.”

“No it’s not; Blood’s too salty.”

“Whatever, I want to sleep.” I was fairly certain that Hanna didn’t know anything about gardens, soil, or blood. But I couldn’t argue against her assertion. I was clueless too.

Instead of leaving, she persisted. “It’s noon and you’ve been asleep since yesterday evening. Get up.”

“I’ve had a stressful few days. Shut those people up and let me lie down, woman.”

“You know Sasha is still around, right?” Her words were spoken in a sweet voice this time, enticing and seductive.

That perked me up. Leaving that black-skinned whore in her room had been the hardest part of yesterday’s endeavour. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and with her previous owner now dead, she was mine for the taking. Just like any other thing owned by the former crime lord. Of course, I wasn’t the owner according to Karan law, which would proscribe either the confiscation of all Yayim’s property by the Prince, because Yayim had been a criminal; or, if the principal heir was rich enough, award it all to him. But no one cared about the law here; I’d taken something, and until someone came around who could take it from me by force, I owned it.

Finally, when Hanna didn’t leave after another ten minutes of my orders and her pestering, I capitulated. Hitting her again to make her leave was an option, but to do it properly I would’ve had to get off the sofa, at which point she would’ve won anyway. So I stood up, forced my eyelids open, and followed Hanna as showed me around the building. There was a dining room, a kitchen, and the game room I’d slept in on the first floor. The second floor had a gigantic bedroom, opening into a large balcony, and one room full of weird weaponry. Apparently, Yayim had been a voracious collector.

By the time Hanna showed me the bedroom, I was hungry enough to forget the existence of Sasha or any other woman. Fortunately, Cat knew my habits, and she’d readied my breakfast.

I was eating in the kitchen, savouring the scrambled chicken eggs, when Hannah revealed the real reason she’d been so insistent on me waking up. “Vasha’s men are going to clean up this place and repair any damage your monster did.”

She stopped and took a deep breath. It seemed like she was getting ready to talk about something she didn’t want to, “He sent me a message a few minutes ago. The Guard has entered Braka again. He didn’t send anything else, but I can read between the lines. The Guard, for now, know enough to stay away from this place. They’ve learned their lesson about interfering with Yayim’s crap. But I’m sure at least one, perhaps more than one, of the idiots who saw your face last night have connected you to the ten-thousand-daric bounty.”

It didn’t matter. I had a plan.

“You can send a message to this ... Vasha?”

Hanna nodded.

“Good. Can he read?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“Can you read?”

She nodded.

“Bring me pen and paper.”

She nodded, leaving the room in a hurry. Cat watched her leave with a frown on her face.

Hanna returned a few minutes later with pen and paper. I addressed a short letter to Vasha.

Go to Curia. Tell her you have the boy and that you know the boy’s worth. Tell her you’ll kill the boy if she doesn’t leave Braka. Tell her Yayim will murder me if she uses her magic on the floating city, or if she tries to search for another hour. Have no fear, she will not hurt you. If she asks, tell her you’ll give me up for gold, but for more than they’ve offered. She is to bring the gold to where Sack’s Way meets the shore tomorrow before noon, where you’ll meet her and give me up.

Remember what I can do, if disobedience tempts you.

Hamatsa

“Take this to Vasha yourself,” I told Hanna, “read it for him if he can’t read himself, and then make sure he does as I command. Take Levi if you think he’ll balk.”

She considered me inquisitively. “Can I read it now?”

“Yes.”

She did so, then nodded. “He won’t balk, not at this.”

“Good.”

II

With my plan in motion, I was left with nothing to do but wait. It was all out of my control. If Vasha was smart enough to fear me and obey my orders; if this apprentice, Curia, believed the lie she was told and acted as I expected her to act; if my power indeed worked on sorcerers just as it did on normal people...

Yet, waiting was excruciating. I paced the kitchen, then extended my route to include the rest of the first floor, and when that started to feel too small, I extended it to second floor of the building. Cat knew I was worried, fussing over me. She was always near as I paced, her watchful eyes never leaving me, until her concern started to suffocate me and I sent her away with a harsh word I regretted a minute later. I thought about finding her and apologizing, but decided to wait until Hanna returned with news. My actions may have been hurtful, but without doubt Cat being angry at me somewhere else was less annoying than her constant fretting.

The men outside finished their jobs by the time I’d sent Cat away. The sudden silence was a blessing. I hadn’t realized how the constant talking and shouting had been getting on my nerves. But less than ten minutes had passed before the loneliness started pressing in on me. I’d never liked being alone while caged, and I’d always been around people since escaping. Even when Cat and Hanna left me in that inn, there had been people around, in the other rooms and the walking the streets and...

Cat was nowhere to be found, so I decided to go check on the whore girl Sasha, who’d at least provide conversation if nothing else. As they used to say, “any port will do in a storm.”

Though who ‘they’ were, I didn’t know.

I took the time to check the job Vasha’s men had done on my way to Sasha’s room. No sign of blood remained in the garden, not even wet soil or mud. A fresh layer of dirt covered the entire garden, and new gravel gave the path between the plants a clean feel. Their performance was even more impressive in the tunnel leading outside. Where there had been a hand deep pool of congealing blood yesterday, today there were only brown stains and shattered stones in the walls to show. On the second floor, the barracks rooms were mostly empty, their previous occupants now dead and their belongings removed.

I hadn’t expected criminal thugs to be so efficient at housework.

Walking past the whores’ rooms was a different experience compared to before. The sounds of wanton moaning and slapping flesh were absent. Though every door was still closed, some were opened behind me as I walked past; the occupants never left the rooms, but their eyes were heavy on my back. There was a strange feel to the air, one I couldn’t exactly put my fingers to.

I didn’t remember which door belonged to Sasha, but I got it right on the first try. She opened it less than a second after my knock, looking terrified. At my sight, she started backpedalling with her hands in front of her, until she reached her bed and fell on her back, at which point she begged in a piteous voice, “Please, sir. Don’t kill me.”

Somebody had seen the result’s of yesterday slaughter and put two and two together. The strange feeling was thicker in her room, and recognizable from her behaviour. It was apprehension and terror mixed with helplessness. These women knew they had a new pimp, or master, or owner, or whatever else they’d used to called Yayim, but they didn’t know anything about him. For all they knew, I might as well have them all strangled.

“Relax, woman, I’m just bored, here for some conversation.” I tried to keep my voice low and relaxing. But as always, my tone was more sarcasm and bitterness than anything else. It came from almost two decades of solitary living.

She seemed fine with my response, sinking further into her bed and breathing her first deep breath since she’d seen me. It took her a few more moments to gather herself, but in a surprisingly short time, she was the very picture of grace, all signs of her terror concealed. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“You can answer my questions.” My response was both a question and an answer to her inquiry. She nodded.

“The five people who came to me last night ... who were they?”

She nodded, possibly to indicate she knew the answer. “The tall man with red hair, he’s Vasha the Red, sometimes called One-eye. He was Yayim’s right hand and the one you went to if you wanted somebody else dead.”

Vasha the Red was an assassin. I’d threatened a professional murderer in the midst of a sex induced fit of self-confidence and he’d bought it. Perhaps I could have a successful and rewarding life as a crime lord, or a street actor. Though perhaps his actions had more to do with the sea of blood he must’ve had to wade through to get to me and the comrade who dropped dead with no apparent cause. Yes, my acting was insignificant compared to the circumstances. Crime lord it was, then.

“The one you killed ran the whorehouses.”

“Ran the whorehouses?” I emphasized, my right hand making a flowing gesture, bringing her attention to the room we were in.

“This was more Yayim’s harem than a whorehouse, sir. Rivi was responsible for making sure the other places in Braka and the city paid their dues.” She clarified.