I wished I had time to return to McDowell manor to properly stock myself on what promised to be an assault on the Red Hook stronghold. However, it sounded as if I had little time to find Chand. Unsheathing my rapier, I took a phial from my belt and poured its liquid down the scabbard. A contact poison, sheathing my blade coated it, guaranteeing its slightest scratch would mean death. After doing this, I undertook the rather more complicated process of loading my Kalthoff repeater from the cartridge box on my belt. Doing so reminded me of showing the process to Chand in Serpent & Wren and that brief moment of mutual interest.

Finding The Open Wicket was the easiest part of the night’s journey. A quick coin to a streetwalker and they pointed me in the inn’s direction. Regardless of what waited for me inside, the outside appeared as a thriving public house, its brick facade painted white and lit with torches. It was three stories, with bay windows lit with an orange glow, through which guests could be seen carousing. From a mounting pole hung a welcome sign displaying a small, open door within a large city gate. The green front door was open, drinking men spilling out onto the street. 

I walked past these and headed towards the back. The place was bustling, maids taking orders, tables of boisterous patrons vying for their attention while musicians played from a mezzanine. Through the beer hall, the inn opened into a gambling den, patrons tossing dice and playing cards while Cyprian ladies encouraged them to reckless betting. Between the smoke, drink, and excitement, no one paid me much mind.

I walked the inn’s interior perimeter until I saw one hallway, unlit under a stairwell. Quickly dodging down its dark length, I followed it until it came to a solid metal door, its hinges on the other side, no handle. A small horizontal slot was set within it at eye level.

Even this casual evaluation of the door told me I would not force my way in. Instead, I took one of the number of phials from another case on my belt and knocked on the door. As I suspected, the horizontal slot rasped open, revealing the eyes of a pale-faced stranger on the other side. His bloodshot eyes quickly shifted across my person. He then bluntly asked, “Who the hell are you, fancy boy?”

I smiled as best I could, the malformed expression on my face becoming a fateful question. “Red Hook?”

“What’re you? Simple? Away with you.” The man spit at me through the grate. A quick side step avoided the rude projectile. 

I returned the compliment by quickly putting my hand through the slot, crushing the phial between my gloved fingers and the metal on its other side. Exposed to oxygen, the phial spread its poison in the doorman’s face. Within a second he began to cough hoarsely. “What in God’s name – ?”

I didn’t let him finish, but explained, “You’ve been exposed to a lethal toxin. It is fast acting and you’ll be dead within minutes. Only I possess the antidote.” I paused to watch the man, wracked with coughs, to make sure he understood. “Try to raise the alarm and I leave. Try to fight me and I leave. Do anything but open this door now and I leave. You die. Do you understand?”

The doorman only took his eyes away from me when the wracking cough forced him. He came back up with tears in his eyes and drool on his lips. “You idiot, you’ll die if you come in here.”

“And you’ll die if I don’t.”

It only took a few more painful coughs for the coward to see my way. As I heard a series of locks being undone from the other side of the doors, I took the urchin’s dirk from my cloak. The door opened, revealing the doorman standing in a red coif, one hand on the portal, the other extended out. “Give me the remedy!”

I replied, “Certainly,” and stabbed him with the dirk where the shoulder meets the neck. He collapsed under the force of the attack, spouting blood as he went down, splashing crimson onto my glove. A shame, really. It was my favorite pair.

Leaving the dagger embedded in his neck, I drew my flintlock and rapier. Beyond the door was only small stone antechamber with a single hall carved from crude stone and lined with candles sitting atop human and animal skulls. With a foot, I closed the door behind me and then made my way into the macabre headquarters of the Red Hook mob.

Before I moved two steps, I heard the chirping of a mockingbird. I knew little of ornithology but knew the species wasn’t subterranean. I realized this was a subtle alarm, letting the Red Hooks know an intruder was present without having to reveal themselves. Perhaps this den of thieves was more than the gang of brutes I assumed them to be.

This hypothesis was immediately called into question by a huge man, broad shoulder, big-bellied and hairy, striving down the narrow hall. He carried a short, thick cudgel, perfect for the hall’s enclosed space. From behind his beard he bellowed, “I’ll crush your skull.”

Instead of listening to the brutes words, though, I watched him walk down the hallway. I noted his feet touched on no less than three areas that depressed as he walked across them. I watched him do this until he was nearly close enough to engage in melee.

That’s when I shot him. I wasn’t about to spar with this behemoth, poison blade or no, and even with the power of the Kalthoff’s shot he still staggered a few more paces towards me. His footing fell off its well-chosen path as he collapsed, resulting in a dozen darts shooting from the walls and embedding in his corpse.

The brute’s thick body hit the floor and I used it as a launch point, pushing myself to a wall and off the next, my soft-soled boots gripping as I bounced between them, avoiding the floor entirely. As I came close to the T-section at the end, two smaller thugs moved to follow their ogre, startling back as I landed between them. I fired another ball into one and sliced the other’s cheek with the rapier. One fell instantly and the other gurgled out words I couldn’t hear over the pistol’s report as he died from the poison.

I quickly looked down each direction of the T-intersection. One was lit with the skull-topped candles that stretched into the distance, the other empty and dark as Dunhill’s catacombs, complete with shelves inset into the walls, filled with piles of bones.

I picked up a smallsword from one of the downed thugs and slid it down the lit hallway, skittering it so it bounced between one wall to the next. True to my suspicions, it tripped across an invisible seam, causing the flames of the candles to leap impossibly high and gout the hallway with fire. I decided not to go that way.

I moved as quickly as quiet would allow down the darkened path, the empty eye sockets of the city’s martyrs following me. With the distant glow of the candles beginning to fade, I heard the howls of animals, somehow both tortured and vicious. In the narrow passage I at least knew which direction any guard animals would come from and reached into the quickly diminishing supply of my phial box.

Two vicious creatures came bounding down the hall. Long and lean, with mouths that appeared to be nothing but teeth, they moved faster than any of the Red Hooks. I protected my face with my cloak as I hurled the phial of etheric vapor at them mere yards before they would have set upon me. Running through the cloud, both animals were worked up into such a lather that they breathed it in deep, slowed, and stumbled to a halt inches from me. 

Yes, I carry knockout gas. Out of the dozen or so vials I carry on me, I thought the mercy of one incapacitating agent might be useful.

As I waited for the vapor to dissipate, a man carrying chains with collars on the end came running down the hallway at me. Wailing in pain and vengeance, he swung the heavy leashes of his unconscious pets like a flail.

I stepped forward to bring myself inside that arc before it could connect and punched the handler with the basket-hilt of my rapier. He collapsed, sputtering blood and teeth, cursing me for murdering his “babies.” Crouching down before him, I tapped him with the hilt.

“They’ll live,” I assured him, “And so will you. If you tell me where the Red Hook keeps its prisoners.”

I kept a steely grip on my nerves as I heard the dogs snore and stir behind me. They’re movement showed the truth of my words to the Red Hook who pointed out the way when the Kalthoff’s muzzle came level with his nose. 

The warren of catacombs I moved down echoed with the readying of unseen Red Hooks assembling to deal with my sudden threat. Unsurprisingly, the dog handler’s directions were incomplete or lies, but I found a long hall with closed doors on either side, the Judas hatch in each giving me hope this is where the prisoners were kept.

I moved from one door to the next, pulling open each hatch, looking through the embedded bars and calling for Chand. A few rooms appeared empty, while others held hordes of debtors, others emaciated ghouls hunched into corners chewing on bones.

After passing through this parade of man’s inhumanity to man, I stared into a room to see Chand, stripped to the waist, his bare flesh lashed and his hands tied to chain that hung from the ceiling. The pale fat man, Peyton, stood next to him, still wearing his brown derby, otherwise stripped to an undershirt soaked through with this own sweat. He set down the scourge he had been using to reach for a red hot brand.

I’m no lockpick, so I shot the door, the shock of metal colliding with metal adding to the repeater’s report. The latch destroyed, I kicked the door in. I would have liked to enjoy Peyton’s stunned expression, but I took what satisfaction I could in running him through with my sword.

I sheathed my blade, freeing a hand to wrestle Chand from the ceiling. He was taller than me and, at first, as limp as a Chinaman’s noodle, both of which made it impossible to lift him from the iron hook by which he hung. However, after a small eternity of fruitless wrestling, Chand’s eyes fluttered and he looked down at me with dawning recognition. “Hullo there troublemaker.” The words were weak, but held an odd fondness.

My hat fell off as I struggled to lift him from the hook, which may have been the only reason I heard him when he whispered, “Behind you.” I quickly turned to see an ax-wielding Red Hook enter the room. I lifted my flintlock, shot him dead, and returned to struggling with my rescue.

I instructed the waking Chand to lift his bindings from the hook, which he managed when I raised his weight. His unsuspended body fell across my shoulder, nearly collapsing both of us to the ground. I managed instead to sit him down against a nearby barrel that had numerous torture tools laid out on it.

As I freed Chand’s wrists he smiled at me in the way of the doomed. “You made a lot of noise. They’ll be here at any moment.”

“Then we’d best hurry.”

“I might have talked my way out of this if you hadn’t stumbled in here.” He smiled with a confidence that was mystifying to me.

“I think you’re overestimating your charms,” I told him as I undid his hands. He shrugged, conceding the point as I put his arm over my shoulder to lift him up.

As we hobbled past the corpse at the room’s exit Chand said, “I know that chap. He was alright.”

“Not anymore,” I growled as we exited, getting no more than a few yards down the hall before more Red Hooks brandishing weapons charged at us. I fired until the Kalthoff was empty, was then forced to drop Chand in order to defend us with my rapier, killing each man as their numbers set upon us.

While the funnel of the hall allowed the Red Hooks only to attack us a few at a time, I doubted my ability to make our escape with just my sword. With thugs laying dead from the wounds and poisons I inflicted on them, I turned to Chand, who had propped himself against the wall and was rubbing feeling back into his wrists and long fingers.

I pushed the repeater and cartridge box into his hands. “Do you remember this? How I showed you to load it?”

His expression was momentarily befuddled by the repeater’s configuration and the question, but then, thank the dark gods of Dunhill, he nodded. I turned with my blade back to defend our position. 

I could hear more men and yells echo through the maze as they searched for us. At intervals, I would see some run past until one saw my shadow standing over the newly made corpses of their confederates. My hope that the criminals here were a cowardly and superstitious lot was dashed as the head man yelled and led his contingent down the hall, wielding hatchets, cleavers, knives, and other preferred tools for murder.

Their martial skills were clearly honed on the unsuspecting citizens of Dunhill as I was able to deal with them in three quick thrusts and a lunge. Still, I was running out of breath when more bullies poured into the narrow hall. Grateful as I’ve ever been for anything, I heard Chand say, “It’s ready.”

I snatched the repeater from his proffering hands. The three Red Hooks charging down the hall stopped as I aimed the pistol at them. With a satisfaction I was grateful that my kindly, departed parents would never see on my face, I pulled the trigger. There was a click, a spark, then nothing.

It was the Red Hooks turn to laugh as they recognized the misfire. I cursed and tossed the flintlock back to Chand, with a quick order of, “Try again.”

Muscles burning, one murderer nearly broke my guard before I stabbed him in the heart. With the increased noise and trail of bodies littering the hall, more Red Hooks noticed our location, but gathered at the end of the dungeon’s hall rather than charge down and face the same fate as their accomplices.

I panted heavily, feeling sweat soak every inch of me as I stood at guard. Hearing what I assumed were Red Hooks preparing for another charge, I said, “Every one of your thief brothers has assured me that I would die down here.”

Fumbling with the repeater, Chand said, “Is that so?”

“Indeed. And if you don’t recall my reload instructions properly you’ll prove them right.”

To his credit, my barb did not pause Chand’s tinkering. He only replied an epoch later with, “Then you’d better try again.” He tossed the flintlock back to me.

He did this as a Red Hook appeared at the mouth of the hall, a bottle of whale oil in hand, a burning rag stuffed into its spout. While a lesser man might have prayed, I poured my concentration into aiming at the cleverly improvised bomb.

If there are gods, they smiled on Chand and I as I fired the repeater, bursting the burning vessel, spreading its flaming contents onto the grenadier and, by the sound of the screams, several nearby thugs. The hall filled with new light, the smell of burning flesh, and screams.

Using this confusion, I handed the Kalthoff back to Chand, telling him, “Shoot anything that isn’t us.”

With those instructions, I picked him up with one arm, my poisoned blade in the other. I hauled both of us, Chand holding the flintlock high to keep its powder from the heat as we made our way through the crooked flames.

On the other side, confusion reigned. Several Red Hooks fled while others attempted to extinguish their burning comrades. The few that tried to stand against us were greeted with shots from Chand, breaking their ranks and making them easy prey for my blade. This set the thieves’ warren to buzzing like an angry wasps’ nest, the halls continuing to fill with smoke. 

With confusion and speed on our side, I moved us as quickly as I could, giving Chand the opportunity to whisper in my ear, “Head to the roof.” Utterly dumbfounded by this, I had no reply, which Chand clearly saw as he provided more basic “Left,” or “Right,” instructions.

Whatever the Red Hooks were doing, the staircase we came to was unguarded. I began to climb it, pulling Chand up as he pushed with weakened feet. After a number of flights, the rough stone of the halls was replace with wooden boards, through which the bawdy sounds of The Open Wicket could be heard. 

The stairs opened into the rafters of the tavern, revealing a garret with its joists partially uncovered, providing a space to view down into the gambling hall. Used by Red Hook cheats to spy on playing card hands, I’m sure, we could hear the merry sounds from below. These were transformed at the rough hands of the Red Hooks who pushed their way into the crowd, searching for Chand and I as they secured ground floor exits.

Seeing our escape routes being cut off, I asked, “What are we doing up here Chand?”

“Don’t be thick,” he replied, nodding to a dormer window that would, at least, take us outside. “I have a plan. Take us to the roof.”

Feeling that this would only trap us in a more precarious position, I ignored those instincts to trust my companion. I sheathed my rapier, then took out another phial from its box and hurled it down into the gambling hall. It was nothing more than a smoke bomb, but with the Red Hooks manhandling patrons and the miasmas’ sudden appearance, the panic from the catacombs spread into the rooms below. To add to this, I backhanded a hooded lamp onto the floor, starting a promising fire in the garret.

I kicked open the dormer window and hauled Chand out. As the fire in the rafters spread, I spotted why Chand had brought us here. Some enterprising thief had laid planks from the roof of The Open Wicket to the neighboring buildings. We balanced carefully across one, where on the other side I kicked it down into the alley below. From the new rooftop, there was another such plank, then another, leading across Dunhill’s gray-dust skyline.

When we had scrambled across enough of these, I lay Chand against a chimney to see if I could spy how we might descend to the streets. I was doing this when I heard him say in quiet whisper, “Why did you do this?”

I peered off the building’s edge, considering that we would most likely have to break into another building to make our way down. “Because they were going to kill you.”

“So?”

I pivoted away from the roof’s edge to stare at Chand. “So? Your Red Hook friends sent a couple of killers to Serpent & Wren for me. After that, I spoke with some of your fellow urchins. They made it clear you were going to die and die horribly.”

Chand shook his head. “How do you think they knew where to find you?”

I shrugged. “Because you told them, I would guess. Blame the entire incident with that child-beating ginhound on me so they wouldn’t punish you.” I looked at the bruises and cuts that decorated his flesh. “Sorry that didn’t work out.”

“You knew? I gave you up and you came to rescue me?”

I turned back to the street, for some reason unable to meet Chand’s gaze. “I didn’t know. I assumed you told them the truth. I can hardly blame you for that. Your only sin was having a meal with me after my robbery.” I reached up and realized I had lost my hat somewhere along the way. Suddenly quite tired, I sat next to Chand, our back’s against the chimney. 

Chand stared at me in confusion, exasperation in his voice. “I don’t understand. Why rescue me? Why even forgive me?” 

Watching Dunhill’s leaden sky begin to lighten, I considered putting my head on his shoulder. However, this seemed too intimate a gesture in his weakened state and I worried I might be taking advantage of him.

Instead I said, “Because I like you.” I smiled as I realized the red and oranges coloring Dunhill’s clouds weren’t from daybreak, but from The Open Wicket‘s spreading fire. Blackcoats scrambled in the streets towards the blaze. 

I held up an arm, indicating the arson’s glow. “And I think we might do great things together.”

To read the previous chapter, go here.

See the author’s published work here.

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