A hoarse scream came from outside. It was short, and muffled by the driving rain against the window. But close enough that it caught Therazine’s attention.
“Mr. Kettle will see you now,” the woman behind the desk said. She was thin and wore a dark checkered suit coat. Her straw-like hair was done up behind her head unevenly, falling across her sunken eyes in careless strands. She kept her face down and feigned focus on her calendars. But her eyes kept shifting up to the hulking Javadoan in front of her desk.
“Thank you,” Vexxer said with a nod.
Therazine frowned. Mr. Kettle. Maddy had set them up a meeting with the Deputy Administrator, or so she had believed. But a man like Patrick Kettle wouldn’t allow his secretary to refer to him by anything other than his coveted title. They were meeting with somebody else. She followed Vexxer through the door and into a dingy little room.
The office was well-furnished, and well-worn. A black steel desk dominated the center of the room, accompanied by two satelite chairs with their backs to the door. A single lamp with a blue shade illuminated the place. Three arched windows occupied the east wall of the room. The blinds were drawn on all but one, filtering out the hazy brown glow from the streetlights and casting striped shadows across the floor.
A man stood at the window whose blinds weren’t pulled. He was wide-shouldered, pudgy. Young but with features that would look at place on an aged man. His cheekbones and chin were well-defined, his mouth framed by a thin goatee. His hair looked wet—Therazine’s eye immediately picked out the small green jar of pomade resting on one of the bookshelves.
Smoke rose in a thin column from the cigar between the man’s fingers. He didn’t look up as Vexxer shut the door to the office. He stood there in silence and watched the thick rain fall on the glass. Then he took a long drag and turned to them.
“The Stiletto,” he said. He smiled. It was ugly despite his perfect teeth. He gestured and ash fell from the cigar’s tip. “Please. Sit.”
Therazine lowered herself into one of the iron frame chairs. Vexxer followed beside her. The man took another drag before moving around the desk to sit in the high-backed leather chair across from them.
Therazine’s eyes flitted around the room. Portraits of men with similar phenotypes hung on the wall behind the desk amidst plaques commemorating athletic achievement or civil service. The west wall was lined with filing cabinets and shelves of academic texts with dark covers—Finer Accounting, Atlas of Kalastra, Veinkov’s Tribunes, etc. The light from the undrawn window illuminated a statue of a busty woman holding an apple on a pedestal in the corner. A goddess of another culture, no doubt made of some alien stone.
Such obvious proved Therazine’s suspicions. This man was nobody. She let out a short laugh.
The man frowned. “Something funny?”
Therazine locked her eye on him. The man leaned forward on his elbows with his fingers steepled, almost mimicking perfectly one of the portraits behind him.
“Where’s your father?” she said.
“Excuse me? Who—”
“You’re not him. I asked for a meeting Patrick Kettle, not his son.”
The man leaned back. “You haven’t earned talking to the Deputy Administrator. He is too busy for someone like you. You get to talk to me.”
Therazine’s eyebrows went up. Someone like you? Didn’t he know who she was? Didn’t his family ask for her specifically?
“My name is Chestin Kettle,” the man said, his grin returning. He plucked the cigar from his mouth and knocked its ash onto the desk. “First son of Deputy Administrator Kettle and President of the Corbie Club. It was I who called you here, and I who you shall speak to. Now, tell me. Are you the Therazine? The Archblade?”
“I only speak with clients. Unless your father is here, our conversation is over.”
“Wasn’t my father that contacted you.”
“Wasn’t you that contacted me.”
Chestin smirked. “True. We have a mutual acquaintance. I am the man that Miss Madeline sent you to. This is my father’s business, but I am who you will be working with. Do you understand, blondie?”
Therazine breathed in deep through her nose. “You speak for your father. And execute his will?”
“I can’t share with you the specifics. The Kettle’s business is complicated, honey. Can’t risk you—”
“Just tell me yes.”
Chestin twirled the cigar once in his fingers, and then replaced it between his teeth. “On this matter, yes. Yes, I do.”
Therazine sighed. “Alright, then. Let’s talk business. You have a problem and you need it taken care of.”
“Ah! Shh, shh!” Chestin stood upright waving his hands. He continued to make shushing noises until he was sure that Therazine would no longer speak. He looked around the room, into the dark corners and back and forth to the windows. He swallowed, held his breath. A single clock ticked away on one of the shelves. Quietly he walked over to the windows and peered out of them. The rain beat hard on the glass, obscuring anything he could possibly see outside. He stood there for a moment, just staring at nothing and listening to the seconds tick by. Then he ran his finger along the black slime that had accumulated on the windowsill and lifted it to his face.
“Arna!” he shouted.
Within a heartbeat the secretary was in the doorway. She stood pencil straight, holding a ledger under one arm.
“Yes, Mr. Kettle?”
“The window’s leaking again, honey. Run out to Brabjur’s and pick up some sealant.”
“Brabjur’s?”
“Yes, Arna. Brabjur’s.”
“But, Mr. Kettle. That’s on the other side of the wharf. It’ll take me hours to get a cab there and back.”
Chestin nodded. “Brabjur’s is the only place that sells the strong stuff. It’s worth the journey.”
“Sir, shouldn’t I—”
“Sweetie,” Chestin said, his gaze going hard and his voice dropping. “Get going.”
Arna stood in the doorway for a moment longer. Then she nodded and closed the door to the office. Chestin watched the dark door silently. He waited until he heard the sound of the elevator down the hall chiming, and then he returned to his desk.
“Okay,” he said, picking up the cigar he had dropped. “Now. Where were we?”
“Trouble with trusting your staff?”
Chestin grunted. “Like I said. You don’t understand how business works, blondie. Just keep the talk to the topic at hand and don’t hurt yourself trying to think about me and my staff.”
Therazine blinked, breathed in again. She looked at Vexxer. He sat with his arms crossed, his face impassive. He was at her side like a gun ready to be drawn.
She returned her gaze to the fat man behind the desk. “You need to kill someone for you. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Chestin said. “An indelicate way to put it, but yes. She tell you who?”
“Anton Carlaca. Former lieutenant with the Constabulary. Commuinty organizer. Competition for your father’s seat.”
“Alright. Yes. Yes, okay. You do understand. Good.”
They stared at each other for a moment, the clock filling the time between.
“Is that something that… you can do?”
“Yes,” Therazine said.
“Good. Excellent. I have to say, it’s been some years since I’ve heard rumors of your handiwork on the streets. A long time. There are no more horror stories. It’s all aged into legend. You’re still as… efficient, as you used to be?”
Therazine frowned. This piece of shit was going to try and haggle with her.
“Let’s discuss my fee.”
“Hold on,” Chestin said. “I want to… gauge what I’d be paying for. Educate me, darling. How much of those old horror stories is truth, and how much is simply what mothers whisper to their kids to keep them straight?”
Therazine closed her eyes and tried to induce the Calm. Vexxer made a noise next to her. She opened her eyes to see his head swiveling as he took in the room.
“The decor’s different,” he said. “From when we here last, I mean.”
Chestin cocked his head. “What?”
“I liked what Trenton Kettle had done with the place better. Less clutter, more art.” He motioned behind Chestin. “The same portraits, of course, but less of a focus on them. Had them spread across the room.”
“What are you talking about?” Chestin took out his cigar and set it on the table. “You’ve never been in here before.”
“Been a while,” Vexxer said. “Eleven years, or so. He had the place looking nicer. Don’t you agree, Thera?”
Therazine looked around. “Yeah. I think he actually read some of those books, too. He was an intellectual, that man.”
“Uncle Trent never dealed with assassins,” Chestin said. “He was clean. Kept his fingers out of the dirtier side of the business, Aether spare his soul.”
“He was clean,” Therazine said. “Very kind man. Very cordial. He kept a yellow cat. It slept in that corner, under a fern.”
Chestin’s gaze followed where she was pointing—into the corner with the statue of the goddess with the apple. When he returned to her his eyes were wide and his mouth hung slightly open. Therazine lifted her right hand and flexed her fingers, feeling the leather stretch and groan.
“Are you familiar with the Zanzonech sump toad?” she said.
Chestin said nothing.
“It’s a small, ugly animal. Lives in the grave bogs of Nekrisfaira. It sweats a compound called veloximorticine. To everything but the sump toad it is instantly lethal. Just a milliliter is enough to induce immediate cardiac arrest in an adult man. And then it just disolves into the blood. Indistinguishable from a heart attack.”
Chestin blinked slowly. His lips parted a few times before speaking. “You…”
Therazine met his eyes. “Listen, Mr. Kettle. You are a waste of my time. My purpose is so far beyond you that even being in this room for any reason other than to kill you is an insult to me. You are nothing but a barely perceptable obstacle on my path. The moment I am done here I will forget your face forever. I have killed kings and heroes. The fact that I am willing to do your petty wetwork is such an astronomical privelage, and you don’t even recognize it. Your mere existence disgusts me.”
Chestin blabbered something unintelligible, and then vomited out his trump card.
“There’s… there’s a price on your head. I could just—”
“If I thought for a moment that you would turn me in you’d have been dead before I entered the room. Shut yourself up and listen to my price, then agree to it.”
Chestin sat still. He bit his lip, and then nodded.
“I do not want money from you. I don’t want land, or drugs, or anything else that you might deem important. I want an audience with the Magistrate of West Celedin. Alone, and secluded. Private. He cannot have any bodyguards or attaches with him. The meeting will be at a place of my choosing, at a time of my choosing.”
“What? Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. That is my fee.”
“You can’t—I can’t set the Magistrate up with an assassin.”
“I won’t kill him. If I was going to, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”
“The Magistrate won’t go for this.”
“He will if your father cashes in the favors that the Magistrate owes him.”
Chestin sat upright. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“If you agree to this, Anton Carlaca will be dead within 48 hours.”
Chestin rapped his knuckles on the desk. He breathed in and out of his nose, staring at Therazine. She waited.
“Let’s say I agree to this,” Chestin said. “You can guarantee that Carlaca’s death will be… newsworthy?”
“I do.”
“I mean like big headlines. With pictures they can’t show on the front page.”
“Whatever you need it to be.”
“And it can’t be traced back to the Corbie Club. My father can’t be tied up in this.”
“Mr. Kettle, if you insult me again I will see to it that Wallace MonDozer is not the only man who has a contract on me for butchering his son.”
Another scream outside, muffled by the rain. Chestin Kettle jumped. When he looked back at Therazine he was breathing heavily.
“We don’t have all day,” Vexxer said.
“Alright,” Chestin said. He nodded rapidly before sitting back down. “Okay. You have a deal, Stiletto.”
“Do not call me that.”
Chestin swallowed. “You have deal, then. Therazine.”
“Good,” Therazine stood up, and Chestin leaned back. “Contact Madeline Rhines when you hear of Carlaca’s passing. She’ll tell you where to send the Magistrate.”
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