Page 6 of The Silver Spider
“They bite! Sunuvabitch, they’re biting me!”
Serephone sighed. “Stop screeching. Just have a few questions. Better accommodations?”
“What do you want, goddamn what do you want?”
“I want to know who financed Ruthus Adjrius.”
“Fuck, don’t know that. I’m just hired muscle. Never was taken into the moneyman’s presence. Not fancy enough, you know?”
“Hmm.” Fancy enough could imply all sorts of things. “Adjrius had to have briefed you, assured you somehow that he was good for your payment.”
“All I know is the client was from the Hills, and a district you need a pass to step a foot in. Ruthus put on his best suit when the client called.”
Serephone considered. “Where would a client such as that look for a man like Ruthus?”
A beat of silence, and then the man rattled off a concise list of clubs. The kind where men of all classes could mingle, discuss sports or business, have a drink. The kind of place, where it was understood one could buy all kinds of physical labor—specifically of a premium and not-quite-legal kind.
“Hey,” the man said. “Joseph is in here. Ask him to show you his tattoo.”
“Why?”
“He isn’t just hired help. Don’t know where he came from—but the money man might have sent him to keep an eye on us. Has a tattoo on the back of his hand. Some of the city barons do that with their retainers.”
Hatcher and Serephone exchanged a look. “Protection or warning?” she asked.
“Both,” the Constable replied, then walked along each cell. “Which one of you is Joseph? I have a deal for you.”
Sere let Hatcher set terms once the prisoner spoke up, identifying himself. “I’m not giving you no information,” Joseph said. “I’d be dead if I betrayed my employer.”
“All we want is to see the tattoo,” the Constable said. “He’d never know we didn’t see it during the course of arresting you—and you’ll still get the upgrade for cooperating.”
A beat of silence. “Fine.”
Hatcher leaned forward to peer through the slit, studying something for several minutes before moving away and beckoning to Serephone. She moved towards the iron door, ignoring her natural distaste of the sickly smelling metal, and considered the slit. A tattoo on dark skin should have been hard to see, but the outlines were done in a shimmering, silver ink, almost like paint. She committed the lines of the glyph to memory, spine tingling as her eyes traced over the pattern. Skin prickling with tiny bumps, hair on the back of her neck raising. Whoever had laid that glyph was a sorcerer—her own magic responded, recoiling away.
Serephone stepped back, nodding at Hatcher, and kept her knowledge to herself. So, she wasn’t looking for just a rich man, but a rich man with access to magic—or, who knew magic himself.
They spoke to each prisoner, gathering snippets of mostly contradictory information. Opinions, impressions, a few offering information on places, where snatched girls might be sold. She filed all the place names away in the back of her mind, a plan forming, as she and Hatcher moved back down the hallway and discussed the latest information.
“Do you believe them?” he asked.
“They have every reason to lie.”
“But, you believe them.”
“Yes.”
Of course, she’d been hoping for a name—an address would have been nice. Maybe even an engraved card of introduction. But she had enough to at least begin her hunt.
“Let’s get out of here before we’re both missed.”
They climbed up the ladder, tracking the ebb and flow of traffic in the kitchen for a lull, and then emerged from the trap door.
“The lock,” he said.
Sere shrugged. “Can only break things. Can’t fix.” She wasn’t a healer like her mother or a green thumb like Cinvarra. Her magic, so far, was only good for animating metal things and hurting people. Which was fitting, considering the sins of her father and all that.
They walked quickly down the main hall, slowing as they came closer to the ballroom.
