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, thefront 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 gazeof 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
