By Carmel Rechnitzer
Horatio Lockwood had two problems – well, no, he certainly had more than two problems – but he had two big problems. Well, no, again… He had several big problems. His wound still haunted him, his gambling debts haunted him, and the jealous lovers of the City of Five Sails just plain old hunted him. But all of the problems, big or little, scattered out from a centralized pair. The core problems, he decided, were his eyes, too prone to fixation, and his mouth, too prone to running.
The problem with a woman like Leja Juska was that she incited both his greatest follies the moment she walked through the door. The way her assassin’s robes hugged her hips! The golden hair peeking out past the brim of her hood. The tantalizing saber that hung at her hip! Even from here, he immediately spotted it for the rarity that it was! Such workmanship could only belong to Arkadiusz Szczepański, an exquisite Sarmatian swordsmith who’d tragically perished of de-and-then-re-fenestration during the Summer of-
“Two thousand crowns, my dear Horatio!”
Horatio snapped back to his actual patron, Maxime de Lefayettte. Horatio was a world-class obsessive about weapons and antiques. As a consequence, Odette and the Musketeers hadn’t just hired him as a mercenary – they hired him to safeguard their gear and valuables at his pawn shop. They had no district in the City – no base to call home – but Maxime had the kind of money that made them great guests.The expectation, of course, was that he’d snap to attention whenever one of them came by. Be quick about following their orders. He was meant to be one of them now. Never a musketeer, but certainly a musket-cleaner and rapier-shiner. But his eyes had zipped away on their own, in the midst of haggling with Maxime about secrets.
It was Maxime’s fault, really. His otherwise plump, kissable lips were puckered in the sourest expression of condescension Horatio had ever laid eyes on. Many people looked down on Horatio, usually for good reason. He couldn’t blame them. He even enjoyed the thrill of overcoming their prejudice with the right eyebrow wiggle and suggestive comment. But after signing on with Odette, Horatio learned that Maxime looked down on everybody. That made the man turn gray and unpalatable. He couldn’t focus on such a drab client.
“Monsieur Lockwood? Does such a fabulous sum, from such a staunch ally, really not move you?”asked Maxime. Horatio refocused and lied:
“While I certainly stretched the limits of the law back before your patronage, I never dealt with the Cat’s Paw Gang directly. I can’t really help you catch El Gato.”
Horatio’s eyes scrambled away from him again, once more settling on Leja’s back. She was perusing the pistols. Horatio knew so many facts about pistols, and it was such a marvelous collection of pistols, and he knew just enough Sarmatian to make dirty jokes about pistols. Theus save him from the likes of Maxime! His mouth sprang to his rescue before Horatio’s better senses could take hold:
“And quite frankly, Maxie, I’ve got plenty of your coins. I’d need something much more interesting to trade for El Gato’s whereabouts. Good day, sir.”
Maxime focused on the wrong parts of what Horatio said. Or rather, the parts Horatio shouldn’t have said.
“But you are, my dear Horatio,” deduced Maxime, “saying El Gato’s location is for sale?”
“That’s not what I meant!” he objected.
“You do know where they are,” Maxime said. Coldly, calmly, letting Horatio know he couldn’t slurp that little fact back behind his teeth.
“Not precisely. Rumors. Nothing specific enough to be useful to you…”
If he’d wanted to sell Maxime this lie, he should have looked the aristocrat in the eyes as he spoke. But Horatio couldn’t help himself. His eyes were still glued to Leja’s back. Maxime followed his gaze, and gave an aristocratic little ah-ha full of wisdom and understanding.
“If you’re staring at the woman… I am friends with the Emperor of Montaigne. If you’re staring at her sword… I am friends with the Emperor of Montaigne,” he said. “I can procure you either a Musketeer’s blade, or a lady Musketeer’s time.”
“I’ve got two hands,” Horatio responded out of instinct. Or maybe out of wishfulness. It was a good offer. But he should not be implying he would actually take it. The musketeers seemed completely sold on the idea that El Gato had murdered Dufort, but Horatio wouldn’t – couldn’t – believe it. He’d never been a member of the Cat’s Paw Gang, but he’d pawned their stolen goods on more than one occasion. At worst, they were naughty children, and at best, they were the benefactors of the poor and hopeless. Murder was too… serious for their jolly ways.
“I’ll arrange for both a beauty and a blade,” Maxime said with a wink. He leaned across Horatio’s counter and swept all the invaluable baubles on it to the side. He laid down a parchment and produced a razor sharp quill. To Horatio’s horror, the man stabbed his own thumb to draw out blood for ink.
“So you know I’m a man of my word,” Maxime insisted.
“You sure are!” Horatio squawked. “While you draw up a receipt, please excuse me for a moment. I have another client to attend to.” Horatio leapt out of his chair the moment Maxime gave his assent. Theus help me! He’d heard of Porte magic, but didn’t know what it had to do with contracts or bills of sale. If Jean Urbain had come in and demanded the information, Horatio would have given it away reluctantly but freely. Did that make it sinful to charge Maxime a fortune for it? Did Theus care if Horatio committed another sin, at this point? So much for hiding behind Odette and the Musketeers’ expectation that he just… generally didn’t know much of anything.
Horatio forced himself to slow his stride. The pawn shop was packed with shelves, tight enough that a customer would have to shimmy side to side between them. He’d meticulously arranged the goods himself, and refused to accidentally tip one over in a panic. That would be a catastrophe too big to stomach, and he already had so many problems to solve. Instead of beelining to Leja, he took twists and turns to check on all his favorite shelves.
First were rare, heretical, or banned books – each language given their own shelf before being arranged alphabetically. Each book was wrapped in protective wax paper to keep the damp and light away. He’d translated each title to his native tongue, though he’d painstakingly adjusted his handwriting and font to suggest the original language.
Next came jewelry, arranged by which noble family they’d been bought (or stolen) from. Each case was sorted by year of origin, with antiques at the top right. He’d carefully sealed each case shut with Boticario’s glue, and only an Alquimia reagent kept up front at the desk could melt them open.
His pride and joy was the knife collection, which he’d insisted on sorting by weight and balance. The Musketeers were confused by it, initially. They didn’t understand why he’d have a Castllian stiletto side by side with a Fuso hairpin knife. But he’d shown them – what mattered most was how exquisite a weapon felt in the hand. By matrixing weight, blade length, and grip, Horatio ensured that if you found that almost-perfect knife, you could simply test its upstairs or downstairs neighbor to find the love of your life. Henri Michelete came around to the idea quickly. Jean Urbain called him a creep and scolded him about referring to knives as lovely.
Passing through these sections should have settled him enough to say the correct words to Leja. He planned it all out. She was an unattached mercenary with a predetermined scheming price. This would be easy. He would approach and offer her two hundred crowns to feign insult and chase Maxime out. While she created a diversion, Horatio would… do something or other. Flee? Hit Maxime on the back of the head, hard, hoping he’d forget the last two minutes of conversation?
Of course, those plans disappeared when she turned around. Her eyes were so deliciously blue. “ The sea and sky must seethe with envy at your irises,” he said.
She rolled her gorgeous eyes.”You flatter me, Horatio. But I’ve already got myself a gentleman,” she said.
“I’ve got two hands,” Horatio responded out of instinct. Well, definitely out of wistfulness. He said it too sincerely to sound like a joke, but he tried to charmingly wink his way through the awkwardness. She did not laugh.
“Is sticking your foot in your mouth one of your many predilections?” she asked.
“Not my own foot, no,” he admitted, confused but curious. “Nevermind. You were – that was an idiom, not a proposition. Crave pardon.”
There was a brief moment he wished he’d simply died in the street, and that worrywart Daniella Dietrich hadn’t saved him.
“I’ve actually got a strictly business proposition for you,” he said. Leja didn’t much like him, but she appreciated his goods, and everyone appreciated gold. She did not turn away and leave.
“That man up at the counter,” Horatio explained. “I’ll give gold or goods, double your rate, if you can find a way to get him out of my shop.”
Leja ducked around his shoulder to sneak a peek at her prospective target. Her face immediately went pale.
“I can’t help you,” she insisted, and immediately turned to flee. The trouble, of course, was that the shelves were packed too tight to make a quick exit. He grabbed her hand instinctively, not meaning to trap her, but too curious to let her run away without an explanation.
“Maxime’s not that scary,” Horatio said. There went his mouth, sprinting again. The shop wasn’t big enough to say a man’s name out loud and get away with it. Maxime turned and bent around a bookcase to catch a view of them. At the same moment. Leja turned around to pry his hands away. Both his customers locked eyes over his shoulders and froze.
The shop went eerily quiet, which was useful to Horatio. It gave him a moment to puzzle out the obvious. They knew each other!
“Is he your special gentleman?” he asked, convinced he’d discovered a scandalous truth.
“No!” They both shouted indignantly.
“Ahh, I see. Former special gentleman,” he said. What a neat little twist of fate.
“Arrest her!” Maxime demanded. “She spoiled my robbery!”
“You committed robbery?” Horatio asked, turning towards the stuffy noble in shock. Leja didn’t have time for polite discussion. She snatched a knife off the adjacent shelf – a vicious specimen from the Crescent Empire festooned with false jewels, but excellently balanced – and held it to Horatio’s throat. She was an experienced hostage taker. Her open hand searched out his dominant wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. Horatio didn’t exactly work to stop her, and immediately regretted that decision. Leja wasn’t fooling around, and the knife had dug deep enough into his throat to draw a bead of blood.
“Quiet break-ins are called burglary, darling,” Leja corrected Maxime. “One step forward, and your horny fool is done for.”
“Where did you take the Crystal Eye, you commonborn salope?” Maxime asked.
“You took the Crystal Eye? Kaspar’s Crystal Eye? The Eye that started all of this?” Horatio’s questions tumbled out as fast as he could form them.
“Right out of my hands,” Maxime said, with enough venom in his voice to burn a hole in Theus’ very own ear.
Leja was slowly backing them towards the exit, struggling to backpedal amidst the tightly packed goods. As a casual fan of being alive, Horatio did not look forward to Maxime catching them or to Leja tripping over a loose knickknack. Thankfully, he had two hands. He couldn’t do much with the hand she’d twisted behind his back… but he managed to shimmy his left hand onto her waist. He pressed softly against her hip – and what a lovely hip! – imitating the way a dancer might guide a mademoiselle through the steps of a minuet.
The knife dug deeper into his throat, enough to make the blood pool against the blade, and she hissed a curse in his ears. He couldn’t whisper an explanation to her. If his Adam’s apple bobbed too much, that would be the end of him. He gave another guiding press, praying silently that she would register he was being smart, not salacious. Maxime advanced on them slowly but silently. Why didn’t his patron utter a word? Why was he smiling? Was Maxime enjoying this standoff?!
Leja’s heel caught the outstretched leg of a chair, and she nearly slew him. In a panic, he shimmied his hips. Theus help him. How does one guide a dance with a knife at their throat and facing the wrong way? He bobbed and wiggled to the standard beat, and she finally understood him. Thank Theus. Carefully, they began dancing around the obstacles and back towards the entry door.
“My dear thief,” Maxime spoke, his voice an octave lower than Horatio was used to. Theus help the two of them, but the older gentleman sounded… lusty. Blood lusty. “Uncork his throat here and now. I don’t give a damn. Just tell me where that Crystal Eye ran off to.”
“Is he bluffing?” Leja whispered in his ear. Her voice was also an octave lower than usual, and as serious as the grave. Shamefully, it still sent shivers of delight down his spine. Horatio, my boy, you have got to talk to a priest. Maybe several.
Maxime declined the opportunity to grab a blade off the shelf. Instead, he rubbed the still bleeding wound on his thumb. To their horror, the blood pooled in mid air. Without breaking his slow, predatory gait, Maxime produced a laguiole – a Montaigne folding pocket knife – from thin air.
“Kill that fool,” Maxime said. “The musketeers and I will still catch you, El Gato.”
“Excuse me?” Leja asked, nearly stunned by the accusation.
“My plan was perfect! I would have snatched the Crystal Eye from Kaspar’s own home, and gotten away without a trace!” Maxime shouted. “But someone else had arrived before me. A masked cat burglar of incredible skill. Who else could you be?”
“One of seven thousand thieves who inhabit this City?” Leja answered, though she sounded rather flattered. Now that they were moving in tandem and clearly on the same team, her knife dropped an inch away from his throat. She did not let him go, however, clearly hoping that Maxime was only a pretend bloodthirsty lunatic. They were so close to the door.
“Now, I know you’re no killer,” Maxime said. “You didn’t really kill Dufort. But that won’t stop Henri from putting a bullet in your skull. Surrender now – tell me where you hid the Crystal Eye – and I’ll secret you away. Porte you somewhere safe from the Musketeer’s wrath.”
Horatio Lockwood had two problems – well, no, he certainly had more than two problems – but he had two big problems. One, his throat was slowly and steadily bleeding. The second was his mouth, prone to running.
“Maxie, my dear?” he asked, now that Leja’s knife no longer kept him from daring to breathe, “did you just say that… That El Gato isn’t responsible for the death of Dufort? Does Urbain know?”
Horatio had asked a lot of stupid and daring questions in his life, and that proved to be the stupidest and most daring of them all. Maxime gave a deep sigh, clearly upset that he’d stooped to Horatio’s level and thoughtlessly let a secret out.
“Can’t have you ruining a perfect frame-up,” Maxime said. “Thanks for the help so far, you lecherous moron.” Without a hint of guilt, he bucked his shoulder against the nearest shelf, and pushed with all his weight.
Last week, being stabbed in the guts had been the most painful experience of Horatio’s life. It was immediately dwarfed by the pain of watching his meticulously arranged pawnshop fall to pieces. The shelves were too close to each other to fall flat on the floor – instead, they clunked one another into a steep and disastrous angle that spilled every valuable he’d ever collected onto the floor. Glass shattered. Metal clanged to the floor and bent out of shape. Ivory game pieces cracked and sprawled across the floor. Exotic bone and fragile wood snapped.Horatio had been overcome with love and lust strong enough to break his heart, but this was new. He’d never despaired so deeply – never felt his heart grow so tight and hot and still.
In a desperate attempt to save something – save anything! – he caught the edges of the shelf in front of him and planted his feet. Leja, who owed him no fealty, immediately disengaged and fled the scene. She’d panicked, hadn’t been careful with her knife as she bolted, and left a stinging slash across his collarbone and shoulder. Theus pity him, she hadn’t even whispered a mournful or wistful goodbye.
He held on for dear life, but the weight of each shelving unit leaning on each other was astronomical. He needed to let go, to duck out and away, before he bled out. Before his strength crumbled, and he wound up smashed flat between his wares.He tried to stretch his grip, wrap a hand around the edge of the millwork, leverage himself a way out and-
Maxime’s knife slammed through the back of his palm and deep into the wood. Horatio screamed, more in shock and fear than anything else. The knife was so sharp, and the blow so decisive, that the pain didn’t settle until a moment later. When the pain reached him, though? It immediately eclipsed the emotional devastation of watching his shop fall the pieces.
His muscles burned. The blood dripping down his chest burned. His hand burned. Everything was agony and he couldn’t stop screaming until Maxime’s hand clamped over his mouth.
“Shut up. Breathe slow. Let the pain focus your mind,” Maxime commanded. “You have about a minute before your flesh gives out. It’s going to take me thirty seconds to fetch a Musketeer to help. You have one shot to answer my question.”
To emphasize his point, Maxime wiggled the knife stuck through his palm.
“I know that woman was El Gato, but I need a real name. You know her – giver her up!”
Horatio had a lot of pressing problems. For one, Leja wasn’t El Gato. For two, Leja Juska was a Sarmatian name, so even giving her up would do no good. Maxime expected a Castillian name, and wouldn’t save Horatio’s life even if he conjured one up. He was also quickly losing blood from multiple wounds, and about to be crushed to death. He did have one exact advantage, though…
“You have three seconds to get that knife out of my hand!!” he hissed.
“Why?” Maxime asked, amused.
“One.”
Maxime laughed at him. It made the next move so much sweeter.
“Two.”
Maxime ignored him.
“Three and final,” he insisted.
“What possible leverage have you got, you imbecile?” Maxime asked again.
“Zero leverage. But I have two hands, you stupid son of a bitch!”
It had taken all his strength to let his left hand free of the shelf, and to brace the heavy shelving unit against his bleeding shoulder. But as he counted, his free hand had wandered the length of the shelf and gripped one of his favorite oddities. One he’d always kept loaded, because he made mistakes often enough to turn paranoid.. How had Henri Michelette described this thing? It’s the ugliest contraption I’ve ever seen, but it clears out the room!
Horatio Lockwood, seconds from passing out and seconds from being crushed to his death, made one last valiant act. He pulled out the duckfoot pistol and brought it to bear. Before Maxime had a chance to apologize or dodge amidst the mess… Horatio pulled the trigger and five bullets blazed through the heart, sternum, stomach, guts and groin of his highest paying patron.
The flash of powder blinded him. He buckled. The weight of the shelving forced him down in an instant, and he heard his ribs break as he was squeezed. He didn’t have the air to scream again, but someone else was. Was it Maxime? No. No chance that vile man would live? Who was screaming? Please, could they stop screaming? Horatio knew that oncoming death was the bigger of his two most pressing problems, but the screaming really hurt his ears.
“Jean! Henri! Somebody!” It was little Urraca de Murrietta. Theus save her, she shouldn’t be the one to find him.
Fearlessly, the young coquette crawled under the spilled millwork. With foolish determination, she began to push against the heavy wood.
“Not for me,” he begged. “Please don’t risk yourself for me.”
His vision was going dark. The world and all its treasures were fading away. The last thing he heard was her fierce reply:
“And all for one!”