The Crimson Campaign

The eunuch shrugged. “I would like to know if we are working at cross-purposes. There are rumors about you, Adamat. Finding you where we did could mean one of two things.”

Adamat waited for the eunuch to elaborate on what those two things were. He didn’t. “That I’m with you, or against you?” Adamat hazarded a guess.

“These things are rarely so simple as ‘with or against.’”

“I was following a hunch,” Adamat said. “Trying to find someone.”

“Lord Vetas?”

Adamat watched the eunuch for several long seconds. No tic. No hint. No giveaways. He was as unreadable as polished marble. Was the Proprietor working with Vetas, providing enforcement and tails, as Adamat feared?

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Adamat looked at his hands. In the dim light he could see the dark welts where they’d been bound. His fingers all still worked. For that he should be grateful. He knew he wouldn’t feel the real pain and ache until he tried to walk. He looked back up at the eunuch.

Still unreadable. The truth could get him killed in this situation. There were a hundred lies he could tell. Adamat considered himself a good liar. But he could get himself killed with the wrong lie, even one told well, or if the eunuch even suspected a lie.

The truth it was.

“He took my family,” Adamat said. “Blackmailed me, and he still has my wife and oldest son. I want to get them back, and then kill him slowly.”

“A lot of violence planned, for a family man,” the eunuch said.

Adamat leaned forward. “‘Family,’” he said. “Remember that word. There is nothing that will make a man more desperate and more capable of violence than endangering his family.”

“Interesting.” The eunuch seemed unmoved.

A door opened. Light poured into the opposite side of the cellar, and footfalls thumped down the steps.

“The master says bring him up, gov’na,” Tinny said.

The eunuch scowled. “Now?”

“Yeah. Wants to see him.”

Adamat smoothed the front of his soiled jacket. He didn’t think he could be more nervous than he’d been when sitting in a basement, tied to a chair, at the mercy of who-knew-who, but he was.

“I’m to meet the Proprietor?”

“It appears so.” The eunuch extended a hand and helped Adamat to his feet. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There are three men who know his face in all the Nine. You won’t be one of them.”

Adamat wasn’t reassured. He looked down at his pants, at the cold, wet stain sticking his trousers to his legs. “How will…”

“Ah.” The eunuch gestured Tinny over. “Adamat is now a guest. Have a couple of the girls clean him up, and take him to the master in twenty minutes.”

Tinny shifted from one foot to the other. “He seemed awfully insistent.”

“Have you seen the master’s new rug?”

Tinny nodded uncertainly.

“Do you want it to smell like this cellar?”

“No, gov’na.”

“Clean him up, and then take him to the master.”

Adamat’s first order of business was to get a feel for his new location. He studied the decoration and architecture, but both were utterly useless to him. Polished wood floors creaked beneath his feet. The walls were plaster over wood, the candelabras of brass. It was a spacious affair, but demurely utilitarian.

Adamat was led into a bathing room with hot running water. His clothes were stripped from him without ceremony by a pair of handmaids, so quickly he couldn’t protest the impropriety of it all. When the eunuch had instructed he be bathed by a couple of girls, Adamat had expected whores. These were sturdy washing women.

His back and hair were scrubbed quickly, cold water splashed over him to rinse off the soap, and a fresh pair of trousers presented to him. When Adamat emerged from the bathing room, the same two women combed his hair and straightened his collar.

Tinny was waiting beside the door. In better light, Adamat could see he was a sickly man of medium height. He wore a cut-across, double-breasted coat with squared tails and a starched cravat. The coat, along with the cream pants and knee-high boots, were so incredibly ordinary that Adamat doubted he could pick Tinny out in a line of men on the street, despite Adamat’s having memorized his face.

It was Adamat’s Knack, after all. He never forgot a face, and he wouldn’t forget the Proprietor’s either. Just one glance was all he needed.

Tinny handed Adamat his pocketbook.

Adamat flipped it open. The fifty-krana note was still inside. Along with Adamat’s false mustache.

Adamat took a proffered coat from one of the women and stuffed the pocketbook inside. He did it all without looking away from Tinny. The man returned his gaze with a slight sneer and looked Adamat up and down.

“It’ll be good enough,” Tinny said. “At least you don’t smell of piss no more.” He gave Adamat a mean grin. “You’ve got a mark there on your face.”

From where Tinny had struck him. Charming.

“I see you cleaned the spit from yours.”

Tinny’s grin turned down at the corners, and he gripped Adamat’s coat. In a low voice he said, “Master gives the word and I’ll carve you up. It’ll take me three days to kill you. I know who you are. Copper. Don’t like your kind.”