Daud spread his hands. “I’m not threatening you. I’m warning you. I’m not the only one running out of time here. I came for information. Information I need. Once I have it, I’ll be gone. And I suggest you go too. At least for a time, until things settle. I’m just trying to help you, so maybe you’ll consider helping me.”
Jack’s eyes flicked over Daud’s shoulder, and from behind him came the unmistakable sound of roughly two dozen gangsters with short tempers and a desire for violence standing quickly, followed almost as fast by a sequence of clicks that was almost musical.
Daud glanced over his shoulder. Everyone in the Suicide Hall was now standing and each had a pistol cocked and aimed right at him. The barman watched from the back, the only person in the place other than Daud and Jack not holding a weapon.
“You, my southern friend, are better off dead,” said Jack.
Daud turned back around. “If you don’t listen to me, you’re all dead. Trust me.”
Jack shook her head, picked up the bottle and settled back into the corner of the booth, cradling the rumagainst her chest. The glass clinked against whatever she had in her top pocket.
Daud had expected—or perhaps hoped—that his conversation with the notorious leader of the Sixways Gang would go better than this. The platinum ingots were a portable fortune, more than enough to pay for information. But of course, they could just kill him and take the money anyway. He had hoped his warning about their approaching trouble with the Duke would motivate Jack to be a little more cooperative, but she clearly thought the Sixways were untouchable.
She was too young. She wouldn’t remember the days of the Rat Plague, the Regency, the terror the gangs of Dunwall—the Whalers included—brought to the streets. The Battle of Mandragora Street was probably just a bedtime story for her, told by whoever held the title of Eat ’Em Up Jack before her.
He looked at Jack. “I need to find the artifact—the Twin-bladed Knife. The Sixways Gang run the biggest smuggling operation in the Empire, and I know for a fact that there is nothing heretical or arcane that moves into or out of the city that Eat ’Em Up Jack doesn’t personally know about. I’ve given you money. I’ve given you advice. That’s payment enough. I’m not asking for details, I just need a name or a place, and then I’ll leave you in peace. I don’t work for the Overseers. I have nothing to do with the coup. Whether you take my advice and get out, or whether you begin preparations for war, that’s not my concern, but I hope my warning to you has some value—value enough to strike a deal.”
Jack’s tongue ran circles around the inside of her cheek. Then she nodded to one of her lieutenants.
“Take him outside.” She looked at Daud. “Time to have some sport.”
7
THE SIXWAYS, WYRMWOOD DISTRICT, DUNWALL
18th Day, Month of Earth, 1852
“A mystical woman, Delilah she’s called,
Claimed rights to the throne, and the Duke she enthralled,
Some called it magic and some called it fate,
Did she do it for love, did she do it for hate?
Now I’m just a poor singer, recounting this tale,
If I sing it wrongly I’m dead as a whale,
The Duke rules us now, and we know him, we do,
So let’s raise a glass to our Duke and the coup!
A coup, a coup! What is it to you?
A feast or a famine, a nail or a screw?
A Duke from the south, a vile witches brew
A coup, a coup! What is it to you?”
—THE COUP
Fragment of a popular song, composer unknown
Daud was led out through the main doors of the Suicide Hall and down the steps. Out on the intersection, themembers of the Sixways Gang who had been stationed around the surrounding buildings had moved out into the road, assembling into one large mob. Daud saw pistols, knives, and blackjacks.
They were ready.
Daud rolled his neck. This wasn’t how he wanted it to go, but maybe he could survive this. It would be difficult. But not impossible.
At least that’s what he told himself. Once again, he found himself in a figurative corner, where the only escape route possible was the one granted to him by a supernatural being he wanted to kill.
The Outsider.
Daud closed his eyes, drawing on decades of experience to focus himself.
Behind him, the door of the Suicide Hall swung on its hinges and he heard the bar empty, the heavy footsteps of Jack’s personal bodyguard thumping down the stairs. Jack stood at the top of the stairs, hands on her hips as she surveyed her territory, stepping aside only briefly to let the barman past as he came out and thudded down the steps. He may have been older than Daud, but he was built like an ox.
No match for Daud, of course, not with the Mark of the Outsider at his beck and call. He was just grateful that nobody seemed to know who he was, otherwise Jack—if she had any sense—would have had him shot through the back of the head inside the bar.
Daud spread his hands as he addressed the gang’s leader. “I came for information. Tried to pay you, and even gave you my advice. Now I’m going to slaughter most of you and take what I want from whoever’s still breathing.”
Jack ignored him while the barman smiled. In the daylight, Daud saw that nearly half of his teeth were gold.
“Perhaps Jack gave you the wrong impression,” said the barman, his booming baritone echoing loudly around the buildings that crowded the Sixways. “And perhaps that impression was that your head was going to remain attached to your body.”
Behind him, at the top of the stairs, Jack laughed.
The barman took a step forward. He shook his hands out from his sides, flexing his fingers, the hard muscles rippling underneath his
