Page 2 of A City of Smoke and Demons
She placed her hands on the dead man’s forehead and was pulled into a memory.
A shadowed street, rain-slicked stones, footsteps, sharp and steady. Then, a shape in the darkness … twisted and wrong and … clawed. Panic that filled the blood, the frenzied urge to flee. Looking over his shoulder as he ran, the clatter of hooves on cobblestones, the distressed whinny of a horse and then, blackness.
It rained two nights ago. Analise stared down at the dead man. He’d been terrified enough to fling himself onto a busystreet without looking. And the source of his fear—nostrils flared above a gaping maw, steam rising from slick black skin and eyes like burning coals. She swallowed, pushing away another memory. This wasn't the first time she’d seen that creature in the mind of the dead.
Magic tingling in her fingers, Analise fetched a bucket and cloth and started wiping down the body. When bodies came in, they were stiff, the limbs not relaxing for another thirty hours. Blood would drain from the skin and collect in the lower vessels, leaving it colourless. Fluid would leech from the body and decomposition would set in not long after, but most bodies would be burning or buried before then. The collectors preferred to handle the bodies while they were still pliable.
The man’s arms and torso were covered in purple bruises already fading to yellow around the edges, like decaying flowers. He was young, handsome in his death, yet there were lines around his eyes and bracketing his mouth that told her his life hadn’t been an easy one. It wasn’t surprising the man didn't have identification. In this part of the city, people died all the time with no one to miss them. There would be no mourning relatives coming for him, and no relatives meant no funeral. He would burn, his body slid into the great, magically powered incinerators along with the collected garbage for the week.
Analise struggled to roll the man onto his side so she could clean his back. There was a strange mark on his shoulder blade, almost hidden by bruises. Frowning, she set the cloth aside and turned to the nearest cold box. Carefully, she slid the body it contained out and pulled the white sheet free. A woman, middle-aged, perhaps, her throat slit and, when Analise turned her, a mark on her shoulder.
The flesh was raised, a puckered skull branded onto the skin.
She heard Morgan’s voice in her ear.
‘It doesn’t matter, Analise. Not our business. Clean him up, girl. Show him respect.’
She gently put the woman away, then finished washing the other body, checking for any other distinguishing marks or tattoos in case someone came looking long after he was ash on the breeze. Once his skin was gleaming, she wrapped him in a muslin sheet and wheeled the trolley to the cold boxes. Transferring a body from trolley to box wasn’t easy. Analise was short and not overly strong, but the man was slender and didn’t weigh much. She was able to shift him to where he'd stay until the collectors came.
Analise tidied up the room, wondering about the dead and their mysterious brands, and about what she’d seen in the darkness of the man’s mind. By the time she left the morgue, she was already thinking about the wine she’d left on the floor in her room. Without it, she was a child again, a slave to sleepless nights filled with fear of what would unfold behind the eyes of a newly awoken death witch who couldn’t control what she was.
Ezra examined his swollen knuckles. He could hardly believe he’d been reduced to punching people for a living. The sound of breaking bone was almost as satisfying as the sound of coins tumbling into a collection bucket.
The Devil’s Credges was one giant piss, shit and blood-soaked slum. The sun hid behind a layer of putrid air and smog clung to the tops of buildings. People lived in an eerie twilight with the potential to swallow the unwary and spit their corpses out in pieces. Four blocks away, wealthy men’s houses were lined up in a neat row, their brickwork gleaming in the sunlight, no coal soot covering their walls.
Ezra had spent considerable time in the Credges with the Gendarme—and later, with the Unseen. But back then, he’d been separated from the city’s most desperate. Now, he was one of them.
It was becoming easier to imagine that life had belonged to someone else. But every so often, someone would look at him a moment too long, and the eye contact was enough to stir the ghosts he thought he’d buried.
His weekly meetings with Jem were a strange dance, new steps in a friendship that had lasted nearly twenty years.
Jem didn’t understand how Ezra felt. No one could. He’d tried to talk about it, but in the end, the only solution was to bury himself somewhere the Gendarme wouldn’t find him—the alternative was a rope around his neck. Sometimes, in his nightmares, he saw his feet dangling, and he cursed whatever god or monster decided he could see death magic.
If the Gendarme were law and order, the Crown’s muscle, then the Unseen were its executioners. Every witch Ezra captured died for her talent. In the beginning, he was simply doing his job, enjoying the power of it, but then the dreams started, and he saw their faces every night. He never knew their names, and that made it worse. He didn’t even know who he owed apologies to.
When the guilt became too much, he tried to warn them, until he was the one running, and it was too late to avoid the label he may as well have stamped on his own forehead—traitor.
The Gendarme had never hung one of their own. Ezra took satisfaction in knowing, so far, he’d denied them that opportunity. He took pleasure in telling God to get fucked, as well.
Ezra was studying a painting on the wall when Maddog Pierce strode into the room. The man stopped dead, dark eyes narrowed, the lips beneath his moustache thinning.
‘What the fuck are you doing in my office?’ he demanded.
‘You said you wanted to see me?’ Ezra frowned. Was he about to have his throat cut? Tension flooded his body, the instinct to fight rearing like a beast. He moved away from the painting as the notorious gangster straightened his waistcoat and strolled towards the grand desk. Maddog chuckled at the look on Ezra’s face.
‘You’re a nervous creature, Tarrenfire,’ he said, easing into his comfortable-looking leather chair. ‘Sit the fuck down.’
Ezra did, watching Maddog as carefully as he dared. Maddog’s real name was Reamon, but Ezra had never heard anyone address him by it. The nickname suited him anyway. He was as mad as a mongrel dog, lean and tall, with a mood more mercurial than the weather.
Maddog ran his fingers over the polished surface of the desk. ‘Think those hands of yours will be ready by the fight?’
Ezra embraced the sting as he made a fist. ‘Should be.’
‘Good.’ Maddog reached into the desk drawer and withdrew a silver cigar case. He took a cigar out, tapped the end of it on the desk, lit up, and the room filled with the scent of burning. ‘Win this one, Tarrenfire.’
‘You told me to throw it the other day.’
‘You heard wrong.’
