K Jeter - Infernal Devices

My heels caught on something soft; I only saved myself from falling by catching the edge of the table beside me. I looked behind me, and – with heart racing beyond excitement to fear – saw another form, as silent and motionless as that of Fexton.

I knelt down, legs trembling, and found the man's upraised shoulder. The figure turned over on to its back, and I found myself staring into the burnished, scar-etched features of the Brown Leather Man. His chest was also slashed and wet, but the fluid mingling on the floor with Fexton's darkening blood was itself clear; the briny smell, sharp in my memory, came to my nostrils as I looked at my own glistening hand.

The expiring candle blew out in a sudden rush of wind from the doorway. I scrambled upright as the light from a small hand lantern fell upon me. Dimly beyond its glare, I could make out the silhouettes of a pair of men.

"What's this, then?" spoke one of them. "Who's this 'un?"

"Mother o' Gawd. I told you we should've brought all the gear the first time." His companion leaned forward with the lantern. "Best give him a plumper 'n' bring 'm along."

I gathered my scattered wits, having gained the impression that these men had no good will towards me, and were possibly the authors of the carnage that filled the room. "See here-"

My argument went no further than that; the men were on either side; the larger of them stood a good head above me. Or so I thought: it suddenly seemed as if he were looking down at me from an even greater distance. "Give 'im another one," boomed a voice from miles away.

There was no need; the first blow finally breached my senses, as if it had been a cannonball shattering a castle wall that remains seemingly intact a moment before it crumbles into bits. My cheek lay against the wet floor, betwixt the Brown Leather Man's corpse and my assailant's boots. For a moment, before I lost all awareness, I fancied that I was flying, as one of the men lifted me on to his shoulder.

The robed sages of Arabia Felix have written: "There are two things without limit – the stupidity of Man and the mercy of God." (I have had time for religious studies since my retreat from the world's affairs.) I have not yet had proof of the latter, but the former was borne out by the fulfilment of my own lamentable desires.

I had wished for Excitement, and an end to Boredom; these had been given me, and in abundant measure. But as I regained consciousness, my disordered thoughts reassembling inside my throbbing skull, I would have cried out for the return of every drab and predictable second of my previous existence, so foolishly despised and irrevocably lost. I would have cried thus, but for the rag wadded in my mouth, stoppering all speech.

The precise nature of my confinement gradually became clear to me. The back of my head – seemingly intact, though I would have otherwise supposed that the blow to it had left fragments on the floor of Fexton's room jostled against the planks of a small cart, sparking a fresh throb of pain with each cobblestone under the creaking wheels. My hands were trussed behind me; against each shoulder another body was pressed tight – the cold forms of Fexton and the Brown Leather Man, I guessed them to be. A rough cover of sacking had been thrown across the faces of the living and the dead, to shield us from the inquiring eyes of any who might look out their windows upon us as we made our progress through the night-clad city. A few times I heard the abducting ruffians murmur to each other from their perch behind the reins.

A softer murmur of lapping water, and a change in the air filtering through the stiff cloth over my face, signalled our approach to the riverside. The cart came to a halt, shifting slightly when the two men clambered down. From the hollow strike of their boots I surmised that we were on a wharf somewhere in the city's docklands.

I was fully conscious by this point, my thoughts scurrying to find some exit from my predicament. Whatever curiosity I had once had concerning the affairs of either of the deceased who shared the cart-bed with me, was now extinguished entire. Though I had, through my amateur investigations, discovered less than nothing, with a net result of more mystification than that which I had commenced, I was now perfectly willing to accept continuing ignorance of these matters' explanations as my lot. Surely these men had no malice against me specifically; I was but an inconvenient witness to their unsavoury transactions. I desperately attempted to indicate my willingness to blank my mind of what I had seen, allowing them to go about their business with no fear of scrutiny from myself or any of the constabulary I might have otherwise alerted, but my assuring words were stifled by the wadded rag.

"Here, you," said one of them, prodding me through the sacking. "Stop gargling about like that."

I did not heed this admonishment, instead redoubling my thrashing efforts at communication. The ensuing noises earned me a clout on the head that left me dazed and silent, but still cognizant of events around me.

"Where is he, then?" muttered one of the men.

"Hang on – here he comes." A third set of footsteps sounded faint against the far end of the wharf's timbers, growing louder as they strode closer.

A servile anxiety had sounded in my captors' twin voices. This gave rise to the hope that the awaited figure now approaching was their master, or in some other relationship of authority over them. Doubtless, if I could present my case to him, he would correct his underlings' mistake and have me set free, not wishing to compound whatever iniquities had been involved in the deaths of Fexton and the Brown Leather Man. The vow of a gentleman to keep a discreet silence would surely be bond enough to warrant my safe passage out of their keeping.

The new footsteps stopped at the side of the cart. All three men drew a small distance away, their hushed tones mingling in a hurried conference. I strained at the cords around my wrists, anxious to be free again and away from the grisly freight on either side of me.

The murmuring voices lapsed into silence; I could hear the trio returning to the cart; the obscuring sackcloth was snatched away from my face. Past the glare of a lantern held above by one of the ruffians, I could barely discern the aspect of the gang's captain. Taller and more slender than his squat and heavy-muscled minions, cloaked and top-hatted as if freshly arrived from opera or ballroom; all but his eyes were hidden behind a silk scarf that he raised with a gloved hand to prevent any possible recognition.

I returned the man's inspecting gaze, my muffled voice striving to impart to him that I had information of an urgent nature to communicate, when he drew back from the lantern's circle of light. "Yes." I heard his voice in the darkness, the one word sufficient to indicate the speaker's high degree of cultivation. "Take him out with the others," he instructed the two ruffians.

A moment passed before I realised that I was to share whatever disposition had been decided upon for the two cadavers nestled with me in the cart. I shouted, producing only a gagging cough through the rag in my mouth, and banged my heels against the wood, but to no avail: the gentleman who had so offhandedly sealed my fate could be heard striding away down the wharf. I was roughly seized and slung between the two others' hands as though I were a hundredweight of potatoes, then just as roughly deposited in the damp bottom of a small boat bobbing alongside the dock pilings. My breath was knocked from my lungs by the inert forms of the two corpses landing one after another on top of me.

The boat tilted as the two men clambered down into it. Over the top of Fexton's skull, the strands of his lank, greasy hair plastered tendril-like against my own face, I could see the edge of the wharf sliding away to reveal the stars overhead, as the self-appointed Charon used an oar to push away from the pilings.