Stealth was out. Brute force too.
That left me with only one option, and all the weight of all the hardware strapped to my belt or secreted in my pockets wasn’t nearly as reassuring as I hoped it would be.
On the seat beside me sat a doctor’s black leather instrument bag and the black stovepipe hat favored by the local sawbones. I opened up the doctor’s bag and found it filled with vials of dark liquids, tiny sealed bowls of various powders, and of course, the sharp, glittering implements of the healing trade.
I tried on the hat. It fit, but was too tall for the confines of the carriage, so back on the seat it went.
I grabbed a couple of vials at random and studied the tiny labels affixed to each.
I put them both in my coat pocket and snapped the case shut.
Randal’s random route kept us moving for nearly two hours. I counted out distant peals of bells, and when I could delay the inevitable no longer I knocked twice on the roof. Randal turned us toward the Timbers, and whatever festivities the Angel of Fate had contrived.
The carriage rolled away.
The street was dark and empty. Above, stars probably shone and twinkled, but the buildings rose up like canyons and only a fool would have raised his eyes heavenward when so many perils lurked below.
I straightened my physician’s hat and marched across the street, my skin prickling at the sensation of being watched from the dark. Knowing the watching eyes were attached to hands holding crossbows made the prickling feelings worse.
The empty street offered no cover. If a bolt or an arrow were loosed, I’d not know it until I felt it sink in my chest.
Five steps, six steps, eight steps, ten.
They’d think I was crazy, stomping up to their front door like that.
Twelve paces. Fourteen. Almost to the curb.
I was counting on someone in charge being either cautious or curious.
I made it across the street.
I made it to the weathered door.
I knocked.
“I am Doctor Hammonds,” I shouted. “The Colonel sent me. It was all explained in the letter.”
Silence. Not the scrape of a careless boot, not the ghost of an errant whisper.
I remembered every dealing with every doctor I’d ever had the displeasure to meet.
“I will not stand here all night,” I shouted. “You know my business. I have no interest in yours. Admit me, or I leave. Now.”
The door inched back, just enough to reveal an eye-and a bit below that, the razor-sharp head of a crossbow bolt.
“Can you treat your own fatal wounds, Doctor?”
I snorted.
“If I’m not seen, upright and alive by the Colonel, there will be no exchange,” I said. “You did read the letter? I am here to check his son’s physical condition. If Carris Lethway has been permanently disabled…”
“We have received no letter.”
I sighed.
“I have a copy in my coat pocket. I warned the Colonel against using addicts as messengers. May I produce it without being maimed?”
“You may.”
I reached carefully into my pocket. The letter was there, signed by Lethway, or at least by a scribble that looked much the same.
I poked it through the door.
“Don’t move.”
“I have no intention of leaving,” I said, though the door closed in my face.
I waited.
The letter was a good one. I think I captured the Colonel’s brusque air of old-world superiority quite well. It told the kidnappers a Doctor Hammond was being sent ahead to ascertain Carris’s condition, and that if the good Doctor wasn’t seen idling in the street in front of the Timbers when the Colonel’s carriage arrived there would be no exchange at all.
Weedheads make poor couriers. I imagined the kidnappers lost a missive or two themselves when their messengers fell into sewers or climbed to the nearest rooftop, thinking they could fly.
It was plausible enough to be believed.
And unlikely enough to get me killed.
The door opened again, this time, all the way.
“You do anything but poke at the kid, and we’ll gut you where you stand. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly.”
“Take his sword.”
I let them wrench Toadsticker from his scabbard. They didn’t look any further.
They didn’t need to.
When the street door closed, a grim-looking worthy decked out in pre-war chain mail lifted a rag off a magelamp. The room was suddenly bright as dusk and full of armed, hard-faced men.
I’d figured a dozen. I counted nineteen. And I heard voices coming from somewhere in the shadows beyond the room.
Angels, I’d walked into a villain’s nest.
“He don’t look like no doctor to me,” offered a stranger.
“I have served the Colonel for four years now,” I snapped. “And owned my own practice for ten before that.”
“Well, you’re gonna be retiring tonight,” muttered another. Laughter sounded from all nearby.
I half-turned to face the man who’d let me in, guessing he was, if not in charge, at least more than halfway up the ladder. If he was at the top, his name was Japeth Stricken. But somehow, I doubted Stricken would be the one opening any streetside doors in the dark.
“Where is Carris Lethway?”
“Check his bag, then take him down. Kill him if he blinks funny.”
My bag was snatched away. The contents were dumped onto a table, rifled through and finally dumped back in the back, except for a pair of the larger scalpels.
Victor’s deadly gift was among the implements they handled. It received no more scrutiny than did the vials of mugwort or the rolls of bandages.
The bag was thrown at my chest. I caught it and glared.
Ungentle hands pushed me from behind. The ring of men parted, but did not look away. I was led out of the circle of light, shoved down a dirty hallway that smelled of piss and pushed through a door that was solid and new.
Hands shoved. I went flying ass-over-chin down a short flight of stairs. I lost my bag and my hat went flying and when I finally stopped rolling I lay face down on a cold stone floor with something warm and wet oozing slowly across my chest.
The cellar was lit by a table filled with candles. Two men stood by it, smirking. One wore the robes of a wand-waver. The other was dressed in an outlandish leather suit.
Tied to chair on the other side of the table was a slumped man with a bag over his head.
I picked myself up, felt at the wetness on my chest. My hand came away smelling of garlic, and I remembered the vials I had stowed in my pocket.
“I could have been killed,” I said. I found my hat, which was a bit flattened, and pushed it back into shape before affixing it once again to my head.
“Don’t worry,” said the man in the garish leather. “You will be soon enough.”
I picked up my bag and stood. “Is that Carris Lethway?”
