The truth it was.
“He took my family,” Adamat said. “Blackmailed me, and he still has my wife and oldest son. I want to get them back, and then kill him slowly.”
“A lot of violence planned, for a family man,” the eunuch said.
Adamat leaned forward. “‘Family,’” he said. “Remember that word. There is nothing that will make a man more desperate and more capable of violence than endangering his family.”
“Interesting.” The eunuch seemed unmoved.
A door opened. Light poured into the opposite side of the cellar, and footfalls thumped down the steps.
“The master says bring him up, gov’na,” Tinny said.
The eunuch scowled. “Now?”
“Yeah. Wants to see him.”
Adamat smoothed the front of his soiled jacket. He didn’t think he could be more nervous than he’d been when sitting in a basement, tied to a chair, at the mercy of who-knew-who, but he was.
“I’m to meet the Proprietor?”
“It appears so.” The eunuch extended a hand and helped Adamat to his feet. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There are three men who know his face in all the Nine. You won’t be one of them.”
Adamat wasn’t reassured. He looked down at his pants, at the cold, wet stain sticking his trousers to his legs. “How will…”
“Ah.” The eunuch gestured Tinny over. “Adamat is now a guest. Have a couple of the girls clean him up, and take him to the master in twenty minutes.”
Tinny shifted from one foot to the other. “He seemed awfully insistent.”
“Have you seen the master’s new rug?”
Tinny nodded uncertainly.
“Do you want it to smell like this cellar?”
“No, gov’na.”
“Clean him up, and
then
take him to the master.”
Adamat’s first order of business was to get a feel for his new location. He studied the decoration and architecture, but both were utterly useless to him. Polished wood floors creaked beneath his feet. The walls were plaster over wood, the candelabras of brass. It was a spacious affair, but demurely utilitarian.
Adamat was led into a bathing room with hot running water. His clothes were stripped from him without ceremony by a pair of handmaids, so quickly he couldn’t protest the impropriety of it all. When the eunuch had instructed he be bathed by a couple of girls, Adamat had expected whores. These were sturdy washing women.
His back and hair were scrubbed quickly, cold water splashed over him to rinse off the soap, and a fresh pair of trousers presented to him. When Adamat emerged from the bathing room, the same two women combed his hair and straightened his collar.
Tinny was waiting beside the door. In better light, Adamat could see he was a sickly man of medium height. He wore a cut-across, double-breasted coat with squared tails and a starched cravat. The coat, along with the cream pants and knee-high boots, were so incredibly ordinary that Adamat doubted he could pick Tinny out in a line of men on the street, despite Adamat’s having memorized his face.
It was Adamat’s Knack, after all. He never forgot a face, and he wouldn’t forget the Proprietor’s either. Just one glance was all he needed.
Tinny handed Adamat his pocketbook.
Adamat flipped it open. The fifty-krana note was still inside. Along with Adamat’s false mustache.
Adamat took a proffered coat from one of the women and stuffed the pocketbook inside. He did it all without looking away from Tinny. The man returned his gaze with a slight sneer and looked Adamat up and down.
“It’ll be good enough,” Tinny said. “At least you don’t smell of piss no more.” He gave Adamat a mean grin. “You’ve got a mark there on your face.”
From where Tinny had struck him. Charming.
“I see you cleaned the spit from yours.”
Tinny’s grin turned down at the corners, and he gripped Adamat’s coat. In a low voice he said, “Master gives the word and I’ll carve you up. It’ll take me three days to kill you. I know who you are. Copper. Don’t like your kind.”
This close Adamat could smell the wine on Tinny’s breath. That hadn’t been there before. Was Tinny so terrified of the eunuch he’d gone to get a drink? Interesting. Of more interest was the way Tinny stood; a slight lean to his left, caused either by his left leg being shorter than the right or by favoring an injury to his right.
Adamat jerked his coat from Tinny’s grip.
“After you,” Tinny said.
“I insist.” Adamat waved his hand forward.
Tinny gave him a mocking bow and stepped into the hallway. Adamat watched his legs. A definite limp, favoring his right.
Adamat lashed out without warning, his boot connecting solidly with the side of Tinny’s right leg. Tinny folded sideways, his yell of surprise muffled by Adamat’s hand over his mouth. Adamat took most of his weight and lowered him to the floor, putting one hand firmly against his throat.
“Don’t threaten to kill a man unless you know without a doubt you’ll have the opportunity,” Adamat whispered. “Now, I’ve spent the entire summer with the most powerful people in all the Nine breathing down my neck. Do you think I care about one limping henchman? Do you think I have the time for you?
“I’m going to go talk to your master. If it goes badly, he’ll kill me, I have no doubt. But I promise, if they put me alone in a room with you, that it doesn’t matter how securely they bind me – I’ll get loose and I’ll kill you.”
Adamat released Tinny’s neck and mouth.
Different kinds of men responded differently to those with power over them. Some got angry. Some took it silently. Some were so terrified they’d believe anything you said, no matter how outlandish.
From the look in Tinny’s eyes, Adamat believed him to be the last of these.
Adamat made his way into the grand hall. His whole body ached from the night spent tied to a chair, and he worked to suppress his own limp. He passed a dozen men and women. Dressed unremarkably, just like Tinny. Probably messengers and the like.
Adamat had been in the lairs of perhaps half a dozen crime bosses in his life. Every one had either been an opulent palace or a scum-ridden den of iniquity. The Proprietor’s headquarters was so ordinary that it almost shocked him. It might have been the offices of some powerful but money-conscious nobleman, for all he could tell.
In the grand hall there were enforcers. Big men, scowling at everyone, pistols in their belts. They flanked the front windows and door. Adamat saw a woman he recognized, a whorehouse madame from the east side of Adopest who’d once told Adamat where to find a killer. She was dressed in her very best, and she sat on a bench beside the front door. She looked like a girl waiting to see the headmaster.
Someone gripped Adamat’s arm. He surprised himself by not leaping out of his skin, and turned to look up into the face of one of the big enforcers.
Before the man could speak, Adamat said, “I’m looking for the eunuch. He just sent me for a bath and I seem to have lost my handler. I’m to see the Proprietor now.”
The enforcer opened his mouth, then closed it. He scowled. Obviously not what he’d been expecting.
“Adamat,” a voice came.
The eunuch drifted across the grand hall and nodded to the enforcer. In the light of the day, Adamat could see that he was wearing a tailored brown suit with long coattails and an emerald cravat. The big man stepped away, and Adamat let himself be led down a side corridor by the eunuch.
“Where is Tinny?” the eunuch asked.
“He tripped. Fell down some stairs. I told him I’d find you myself.”
“Ah.” The eunuch didn’t seem like he would dispute Adamat’s story. “Well, if you’d step inside, the master will see you now.”
They’d stopped in front of a door at the side of the corridor. Nondescript. Unadorned. Adamat looked up and down the hall.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“You were expecting something else?” the eunuch asked. “Something more grand, perhaps?”
Adamat examined the plain trappings of the hall, caught sight of a woman with a bundle of papers in her arms, wearing a long, plain dress and looking so ordinary it hurt his brain.
“No, I suppose not.”
The eunuch rapped on the door.
“Come,” came the brisk order.
Adamat stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
The room was very well lit, much to Adamat’s surprise. It was a significantly sized office with fine wood paneling, high-arched windows, and a fireplace framed by ornate brickwork. Two well-worn chairs sat next to the fireplace, not far from the door. At the opposite end of the room was a wide desk, partially blocked by a screen. Adamat took note that, aside from the fine rug on the floor, there were no decorations.
Beside the desk sat a severe-looking woman with a sharp jawline and pronounced crow’s-feet in the corners of her eyes. Her posture was immaculate, her dress smoothed over her legs. A half-knitted scarf sat in her lap.
“Inspector Adamat?” the woman asked.
Adamat nodded, looking curiously at the screen. He could hear pen scratches from behind it.
“My name is Amber,” the woman said. She pronounced the word like “amba.” “You must first know that if you see the master’s face, even by accident, you will die.”
Adamat found himself suddenly less curious as to what was behind the screen.
“Sit,” the woman said, gesturing to one of the chairs beside the fire.
Adamat sat.
Amber went on. “I speak for the master. I am his mouthpiece, and you may address yourself to me as if I were he, and I will address myself to you also as if I were he. Now, I’d like to apologize for the evening you spent in our cellar. Most unfortunate.”
The scratching of the pen had stopped. Adamat noticed that Amber was no longer looked at him, but behind the screen. Perhaps reading some kind of hand language from the master?
“It was wholly unpleasant, I assure you.”
“To the matter at hand,” the Proprietor said through Amber. “There is a man by the name of Lord Vetas that has been causing my organization no small amount of problems.”
“I don’t know the name,” Adamat lied, wondering why he bothered. He’d already told the eunuch about Vetas and his family.
“Come now. He’s kept it very quiet, but the name has been passed around the very top levels of Tamas’s military cabinet. Along with yours. I’d find it a very large coincidence that my men stumbled across you following one of Lord Vetas’s spies.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Adamat said.
“Such as Taniel Two-Shot,” the Proprietor said, “a celebrated war hero, putting a bullet between the eyes of a god on top of South Pike Mountain? Or Field Marshal Tamas, one of the most reasonable men in Adro, declaring a chef the god of Adro?”
Adamat drummed his fingers on his pantleg and watched Amber as she watched behind the screen. It was disconcerting to carry on a conversation this way, but he seemed to have no alternative. “You don’t believe that tripe, do you?”
“I didn’t say I believed it,” said the Proprietor through his interpreter. “I tend to only believe hard facts, but if I only
acted
on hard facts, I wouldn’t be here. Half of my trade is whispers and rumors. Information.”
“Information is power,” Adamat agreed. “You’ve certainly made your living well enough.”
“It’s not just power, it’s money. But I’ll give you this for free: Field Marshal Tamas is dead.”
Adamat clasped his hands together to hide the sudden shaking of his fingers. Was this true? Could the field marshal be dead? If that was the case, Adamat was suddenly without a sponsor. His campaign against Lord Vetas already had little enough backing for a man that dangerous, but sixteen soldiers and an open checkbook was nothing to scoff at. Adamat wasn’t sure he was prepared to take on Vetas alone.
“How do you know?” Adamat said when he trusted himself to speak. His voice wavered.
“I received this missive from General Hilanska of the Second Brigade just this morning.” A hand reached out from behind the screen and gave a note to Amber. She in turn gave it to Adamat. “I assume his other councillors – Lady Winceslav, Prime Lektor, Ondraus the Reeve, and Ricard Tumblar – all received the same note.”
Adamat slipped the silk ribbon off the note and unrolled it. The letters were Adran, but the single paragraph gibberish.
“A cipher?” Adamat said.
“Indeed. It says —”
Adamat cut him off. “That Kresimir has returned and Field Marshal Tamas was cut off behind enemy lines with only two brigades. He’s presumed dead.”
Silence from the Proprietor. Amber stared behind the screen for several moments. Her eyes opened a little wider before she delivered the Proprietor’s response. “That was… impressive.”
Adamat gave the missive back to Amber. “A perfect memory makes ciphers very easy to decode. I spent two summers as a boy memorizing the keys to over four hundred different ciphers, both common and uncommon. That one is extremely rare, but I don’t forget. Kresimir. I thought Taniel Two-Shot put a bullet through his eye?”
“Gods. Rumors. I’ve built this empire in Adro’s underworld by making very good guesses, and my guess here is that General Hilanska wouldn’t say such a thing unless he believes it fully.”
Adamat leaned back. He stared at the screen, feeling less intimidated for some reason. What was behind that screen? What kind of a person? The hand Adamat had seen reach out was old, obviously male, with manicured nails. The Proprietor didn’t spend his whole life behind a screen. Somewhere else he had an assumed identity. One that allowed him to move about in public.
“Only a handful of people in Adopest know this information,” Adamat said. “Why tell me?”
The Proprietor seemed to hesitate. “Because it puts you to the wind. Tamas was your employer.”
“And you want to employ me?” Adamat felt his hackles rise. In all his life he never thought he’d have a job offer from the Proprietor himself.
“Ricard Tumblar will ask you to help with his campaign for the new ministry. He’ll offer to pay well. I can pay better. Other than that, what role could you possibly fill? A place back on the police force? I don’t think you want to be walking the streets in uniform over the next few years.”
“What would you hire me to do?”