The cutthroat flinched. Everyone in the place was staring intently at him now, and at this queer rope that stretched all the way from the back of the big man’s harness to the creaking ceiling joist directly above the door lintel. “Salt?” It took him a moment to regain his composure. “You want to buy information with salt?”
Anchor frowned. “It is good salt, from the RiotCoast.”
Caulker let his shoulders droop. He’d never heard of the RiotCoast, but the man spoke Low Coyle well enough to make him wonder if Deepgate missionaries had once been there. “My friend,” he said with affected resignation, “an exchange would be most welcome, I promise you, but I fear that salt would cast your homeland in…how shall I say, an ungenerous light. Salt is common here. Now if-”
“Pearls, then?” John Anchor suddenly beamed. “You would like pearls? I have many.” He withdrew a bulging leather purse from his pocket and held it up. “How many should I offer? One…or three? Six pearls? All right, ten.”
The cutthroat gave the purse a dismissive glance, while skillfully keeping the smile from his face. This was more like it. There had to be a pound of pearls in the newcomer’s fist, and yet he’d whipped them out in full view of the Hook’s patrons without a care. Big as the stranger was, he wasn’t even armed. Why were foreigners always so ignorant of the simplest rules of life? And why were they always so bloody affable?
“Pearls?” Caulker feigned confusion, and then lifted his chin. “Oh, yes, I see…those beads the fishwives sometimes wear? We find them in little shells out in the bay.” He pretended to think for a moment while he exchanged another glance with his colleague by the door. “Well, they’re quite pretty, I suppose, and our women like their trinkets. A few sacks would-”
John Anchor interrupted him. “This pouch,” he shouted out, turning to face the room, “to any man who tells me where to find my quarry, a scarred angel. I have no more patience now.” He flexed his shoulders, and the rope behind his harness thrummed like an enormous lute string, working more dried mud free from the gash above the door.
Forty men yelled at once.
“…north into the Deadsands…”
“…west to Scarpa Well, but she…”
“…no, no, it was the chemist, listen!”
“…an angel, four of them and a hundred swords…”
“…Spine, you want. Sure as I’m sitting here…”
“…heard, but listen, she was scarred, black wings, brought down…”
“Too many voices!” Anchor boomed. “Too much!” The room fell silent. “One of you will now speak, please. No more than one! I offer this pouch for the truth. You!” He shoved the leather bag towards a lean crabber in a frayed red shirt and patched breeches who was seated at the nearest table. “You know where the angel is?”
The man moistened his lips. “Aye, sir, she fled southeast, hunted by skyships. Poison arrows took her down near Cinderbark Wood. They hacked her up into little pieces ’fore she could recover from the drugs.” He extended a hand to receive his reward.
Anchor snatched the bag away. “Dead?”
“Killed,” the crabber confirmed, still holding his palm out. “It’s true, I swear to Ayen. The Spine assassins got her, not two leagues away from where they grabbed this other one”-he pointed to the winged corpse on the wall-“if the nomads told it true. There was an assassin captured with them, a deserter. The three were seen traveling together right after the temple fell.” There were many murmurs and nods of agreement from the Hook’s other clientele on this last point.
Anchor grunted. “An assassin?”
The crabber nodded.
“And where is she?”
“Why…she’s lodging here now, sir.” Grinning, the man leaned back and put both hands behind his head. “In this very house: top floor, last door on the right. The Spine took their needles to her, see? And numbed her mind. They came to claim the archon’s bones, but Foley’s been stalling them with his talk of all the refugees hiding around these parts. The assassins have been well busy of late, redeeming folks like they do. She’s up there now with her Spine friends, and you’d best hire yourself a bunch of swords if you’re thinking of speaking to her. Fifty men should do it. Happens I can get you just the fellows to do the job, for a small fee.”
“Here?” the giant asked. “She is in this place? Now?”
“Spine don’t like daylight, do they? They only come out at night, when there’s redemption needs doing.”
Caulker understood the crabber’s plan at once, and cursed him for it. Fifty men would make no difference. When the temple assassins lodging upstairs had finished hacking this big idiot and his newly hired help to a bloody mess, those pearls would be lost. No, the Spine weren’t likely to give up such a treasure. He had to intervene now, get Hammer Eric to thump the stranger as he left the Widow’s Hook to recruit his sellswords. He gave his accomplice another secret nod, and smiled inwardly as the other man’s hand slid down to his weapon. Salt sailors’ tales of fogs and hellish skyships had little value here in the Hook.
But John Anchor did not turn and walk outside. Instead, he pulled a thin reed from his other pocket and blew into it. This rude flute produced no sound, or rather, none that Caulker could hear, for after a few moments he realized that Anchor had played a note not meant for human ears. From outside came a faint sound: a scratching, chittering noise that Caulker recognized from his midnight forays to the banks of the Coyle. The customers heard it, too; they were rising uneasily from tables, shifting gazes between each other and the open door as the sound grew more distinct. Caulker backed away; he had an idea what was coming.
Crabs!
Hundreds of thousands of the tiny red crustaceans poured into the room, all scrambling along John Anchor’s rope and over one another. The hemp strands seemed to bubble and then drip with them as scores fell to the ground and then shot across the floor towards their master. Those crabs on the rope reached the big man first and surged over his shoulders and arms in a scarlet tide. Countless more scuttled across the floor, then swarmed up Anchor’s legs and over his chest. In a heartbeat the giant was covered from head to foot in a writhing, clicking red suit.
Panic broke out. Customers yelled and shoved one another aside, knocking over stools and tables to get away from the tethered stranger and his pets. Cups, tankards, and bowls fell to the floor and smashed.
Swarming with crustaceans, John Anchor marched towards the rear of the broth shop, where a steep staircase led up to the rented rooms on the upper floors. His rope swung after him across the room, gouging a horizontal slash through the exterior wall. Men scrambled aside to avoid the expanding line. For a moment Caulker gaped in shocked silence. Then he made a decision: a man in his position could not afford to abandon a bounty like this so easily. Somehow, the giant had summoned an army of crabs-but they were only
“Wait,” he cried. “Anchor, wait!” The other man did not pause, so Caulker followed him up the stairs. “These assassins are dangerous,” he said. “Listen to me. There are five or six of them up there, all Spine Adepts and armed. Stop and hear me before they kill you. The worst is Ichin Tell, their master. They say he’s butchered two thousand men, and I’ve seen him murder nine here in Sandport myself. He denounced them as sinners and he didn’t even bother to unsheathe his sword to take them down. Arm yourself at least.”
But the giant plowed on up the stairs, dragging yard after yard of taut rope further inside the Widow’s Hook. “Thank you for your concern,” he said. “But I must avoid bloodshed, even if attacked, or the souls of my enemies go to Iril’s Maze. This angers my master, Cospinol, who wishes the souls for himself. Steel is therefore no good.” Red crustaceans boiled over his skin. Clumps of them kept falling to the floor, then flooded after him and scurried back up his legs. And still Anchor climbed. His rope rose with him until it pushed up against the innermost ceiling joist. Now the whole roof gave a mighty groan. John Anchor didn’t slow, however. Once he reached the first landing, he turned to climb the second flight of stairs. Behind him, the rope skittered over the banister but caught on the corner post where the first-and second-floor staircases met. The big man ignored it and kept on up the stairs still ahead of him.
Caulker struggled to comprehend this situation. What the hell was tethered to the other end of that rope? A skyship? Impossible-no man could hope to keep his feet on the ground against such a force, much less drag something like that behind him. But then what
