Guns of Alkenstar Read online

  Well, no. He’d never been all that good a shot.

  Make it six or so grenades. One to toss right in Kordroun’s face, and the second about three strides beyond, so that if the man survived the first blast and fled, he’d run right into the second. Yes.

  That would be good, right about now. Then Bors Gelgur could forget all about foolhardy investigations, and spend the contents of his heavy new purse on icewine.

  Except for the little matter of his no longer having a home, thanks to a bomb thrown by someone who was still out there and wanted him dead.

  The more distant shooter was at it again, another shot ringing off something metal and causing a sudden churning din in the nearby refuse as someone—Kordroun, presumably—decided the alley was no longer healthy to inhabit, and took himself elsewhere, fast.

  Not past Gelgur, though the din had ended. Which meant the man had climbed one of the alley walls or opened a door.

  Hmm. Climbing wasn’t something high shieldmarshals were known for, but opening doors closed to others, now…

  From a distance, starting right outside what had been Gelgur’s front—and only—door not all that long ago, came the unmistakable sounds of someone wading cautiously through the alley refuse, heading closer.

  Gelgur stayed where he was, not knowing what else to do. He was still lying sprawled, feigning death or insensibility, when the someone he’d been hearing stepped cautiously out of the thinning smoke with a drawn gun in hand—a marshal’s revolver, one of the smaller, newer ones—and came over to him.

  “Gelgur?”

  It was Kordroun—a wild-haired Kordroun, with blast-blackening all over his face and the soot and grit of a Gunworks street coating his armor and breeches. No pristine looks, no long-barreled commoner’s weapon in hand or belt, and his armor scarred from a good bounce or two on hard cobbles. A Kordroun who’d been caught in the edges of the blast that had almost caught Gelgur.

  He was wearing a worried frown as he bent down, reaching out…

  Were there two Kordrouns? Did the man have a double Gelgur had never known about, or was someone impersonating him?

  This was Ansel Kordroun, all right, right down to the faint reek of his sweat. If Gelgur hadn’t seen the face of the man shooting at him…

  Yet if Kordroun wanted him dead, why wasn’t he emptying his revolver into Gelgur’s face right now?

  Blasts and bombards, wouldn’t it have been easier to just do the shooting back in the room? No one would have cared, after all. Any investigating gunmarshal—if one even bothered—would never suspect a shieldmarshal.

  Besides, there’d been the distinct sound of his window breaking, just before the blast—and Kordroun had been with him, not outside the wall with the window, in the right place to hurl a bomb.

  Wouldn’t it have been easier for the high shieldmarshal to bring a bomb into Gelgur’s room, perhaps tucked into the purse, and then depart in a hurry? Or at least run and get himself well away, to let the bomb pulp one man rather than two?

  “I’m alive,” Gelgur said roughly. “Was that you, shooting at me?”

  Kordroun’s frown sharpened.

  “If Kordroun’s an assassin, then somebody went through a lot of effort to kill a decommissioned old drunk.”

  “No. I shot at whoever was trying to kill you. I don’t think I hit him, but he got a door open fast after my second shot—I don’t know how, seeing as it has no handle on our side, just a heavy plate. I don’t think he wanted to get caught between us.”

  He was still reaching down a hand to haul Gelgur up. Trying not to hesitate, Gelgur took it. “You know it was a he?”

  Kordroun frowned. “No, I didn’t see him well enough. I just…” He shrugged.

  Gelgur nodded. Marshals of Alkenstar had to assume a lot of things, and sooner or later, doing so became a habit. “What now? Got any icewine?”

  Kordroun’s frown became a scowl. “No,” he said shortly.

  Fresh shouts arose at the far end of the alley. The high shieldmarshal jerked his head in their direction. “Let’s be gone from here before marshals come crowding around. I’d rather we weren’t…”

  Gelgur gave him a smile as bitter as he felt. “Seen together?”

  “Let’s go,” Kordroun snapped, grabbing at Gelgur’s arm.

  Gelgur let himself be hastened away. Behind them rose the din of several men hurrying down the alley toward them.

  Kordroun started to really hurry, and it took all Bors’s breath just to keep up.

  Along a street, down another alley, through a door, along a passage and through another door, into darkness. Then up a dank stair by feel, through another door, and along one of the many enclosed flying bridges that joined building to building above the settlement’s streets. Then down again and along several darkened hallways, in a building that echoed with emptiness and the faint scuttling of rats.

  “Where’re we—?” he panted, as Kordroun stopped so suddenly in front of a half-seen door that Gelgur blundered into him.

  The shieldmarshal turned and muttered into Gelgur’s ear, “Gunhunter.”

  The door opened into more darkness, but anyone familiar with the Gunworks could tell by the sound their boots made as they strode along the passage beyond that it was another enclosed bridge, taking them over another street into yet another building.

  One that stank of recent paint, hot oil, and forgework. They descended an enclosed stair, and at every step the crashes and clangs of nearby work grew louder. Sounds that were punctuated at regular intervals with deep, ponderous impacts that were more felt than heard. The stamping mill.

  They went through a door at the bottom of the stair, past two guards who snapped to attention as Kordroun stepped between them, and out into a dark alley roofed in squealing, oil-dripping, gigantic toothed cogs, where they were met by the full, familiar, nigh-deafening noise of steady forgehammer crashings, overlaid with irregular metallic clatterings as things were dropped or raked out in haste for sorting or cooling. Gelgur knew immediately where they were, just as anyone living near the Gunworks would: the “metals in” rooms.

  The cobbles underfoot were slick with oil from the cogs turning endlessly overhead. Sparing them not a glance, Kordroun led Gelgur to the left, out into a wider street whose roof was a maze of pipes and enclosed bridges thrusting out of the Works walls to run at various angles into the walls of buildings across the street. That was the seldom-seen, ever-changing rear of the main factory, where assembled weapons were oiled, fitted with grips, and “finished”—a building that sprouted new steampipes and drive-chains every month.

  They turned another corner, leaving some of the din behind, and on their right was an alleyway spilling out light and steam. The billowing curls held pleasant cooking odors and a whiff of scorched pans and burnt food.

  The Gunworks kitchens?

  As they went closer, a shot rang out from somewhere above and behind them, spinning Kordroun around and spilling him into a cursing heap at Gelgur’s feet.

  Gelgur flung himself down and clawed at the high shieldmarshal, trying to drag him against the wall, but Kordroun kicked free, his revolver out as he peered up into the darkness.

  When the second shot came, he fired back instantly—and nodded in grim satisfaction at the shrill, high scream that followed, a despairing wail that ended in a grisly crunching. The cogs started squealing more loudly, and blood pattered down to the cobbles.

  As the cogs returned to their usual clatterings, Kordroun staggered to his feet, shaking off Gelgur’s helping hands.

  “I’ll live,” he snapped. “Armor caught it. Come. Before another gunman tries his luck.”

  He stepped into the alley that held the light and curling steam of the kitchens, and Gelgur followed.

  The next shot out of the darkness found only empty cobbles.

  Chapter Three: Up From the Kitchens

  Guards were shouting now. Shouts that were getting rapidly nearer.

  Kordroun listened to them, then n
odded as if satisfied and strode on into the steam, passing along a line of propped-open windows it was billowing from.

  Gelgur tried to peer through the clouded panes into the busy, noisy rooms below. He caught distorted glimpses of gleaming pots over flames, hurrying smocked cooks, and a forest of pans and ladles and long-forks all hanging like so much laundry from overhead racks.

  The High Shieldmarshal stopped abruptly, and pointed.

  Gelgur stared, then went up to Kordroun’s back and looked right along that pointing arm, to make very certain.

  He was staring at a scullery-wench, a ruddy-faced young woman as tall and burly as a big lout of a man, with a hard face and big chin to match. By the swell of her ample bosom, she had to be female, but with that face and those large red hands…

  She was dumping steaming cookwater out of a pot of just-boiled redflesh tubers, looking both bored and displeased at having to do so.

  “Her?” Gelgur hissed.

  Kordroun nodded, then rapped a stern finger across Gelgur’s lips.

  Well, this was the last bent bullet and then some, and Gelgur started to say so—whereupon the high shieldmarshal caught his latest recruit by the throat, lifted Bors clear off his feet, and rushed him back out of the steam-choked alley into the street.

  Where Gelgur’s furious kickings led him to set the older man down and receive the drunkard’s fury, snarled right in his face. “A wench from the Gunworks kitchens?”

  Kordroun sighed. “We’ve lost a lot of gunhunters.”

  Gelgur sighed. “So now it’s my turn for the grave, is it?” He spat on the cobbles in disgust and turned away, shaking his head. “A kitchen lass…”

  “She’s more than that.”

  “Oh, to be sure! She’s an idiot babe you’re serving up to slaughter, with her eyes still afire with the excitement of being an intrepid gunhunter who knows secrets and is important and is saving all Alkenstar! I believe I’ve found one of the cruel murderers we’re looking for—and he’s standing right here beside me! Since when did high shieldmarshals recruit children? Lumbering lumps of lasses, to boot?”

  Kordroun clamped a hand down on Gelgur’s shoulder—the ill-healed one, of course—snatching all breath for words away in sudden agony.

  Dragging him by that iron grip, the shieldmarshal marched his hissing-in-pain recruit a little way down the street and around another corner.

  “Be still, unless you want to doom us all.” Kordroun set a brisk pace along a darkened sideway, not relaxing his grip in the slightest. “We’ll be meeting her soon, and you can hearten her with your cheerful judgments then. Until then, shut your maw!”

  “Let go, or you won’t have a partner for your hapless gun-lass,” Gelgur managed to rasp out. “Unless she likes corpses!”

  Kordroun freed Bors abruptly, halting in mid-stride to wait through Gelgur’s inevitable fall to his knees, followed by groaning and rolling about clutching his shoulder, trying to master his pain.

  “As I was saying,” the high shieldmarshal remarked in a casual, conversational manner over the hunched and moaning old man, “she’s more than just a scullery-wench. She’s the last Morkantul.”

  Gelgur looked up blearily. “The what? Blazing bombards, Roun, what other surprises are you keeping from me, you blast-assed yelp-dog? She wouldn’t happen to also be the secret bride of an Arclord of Nex, would she? Or a shapeshifted linnorm, dwelling here because she loves the reek of exploding gunpowder?”

  The Morkantuls had been a foremost family of the Duchy in the long-gone days when such houses had been numerous and feuding. A Morkantul had been high minister to three grand dukes, and to this day, all Alkenstar knew one Felnadar Morkantul had been the tireless sponsor of the Great Maw of Rovagug, seeing it forged and finished despite fierce opposition from ministers wanting less metal used in just one weapon. Though still notable, the family had slowly dwindled away over time—down to this one last wench, it seemed.

  “Never mind her bloodline for a moment,” Kordroun snapped. “She was all I could find who might not be… tainted.”

  “In on the smuggling,” Gelgur interpreted in a despairing whisper, and shook his head again. “A child, Roun.”

  Kordroun shrugged. “I… a different approach was necessary. We were using our best, our veterans—and they were failing. Our cleverest, one after another… falling in a string of traps and, ah, deft murders. All of which indicate that the slayer, or the hand directing them—presumably the head gun-smuggler—is someone highly-placed and powerful in the Duchy.”

  “So you went to your most raw recruit,” Gelgur growled, rolling his eyes. “I hope I’m going to be mightily impressed when I meet her.”

  Kordroun sighed and looked away.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Ralice Morkantul was even less attractive in person. Wasp-tongued and sullen, she obviously believed anyone who had even a single white or gray hair was a witless dotard. After a few sharp exchanges past Kordroun’s candle-lantern, she and Gelgur faced each other with glares of mutual disgust.

  “Some people make up for homeliness with a winning personality. Not Ralice.”

  They were in a dusty ready-room somewhere high in the Gunworks, on a floor of deserted bunkrooms used only in times of war, when extra staff were taken on and the veterans ordered to work and sleep on the premises, in shifts. Kordroun had used seven keys on as many doors to reach it, and relocked them all behind himself, his gunhunter, and his new, eldest-in-years recruit.

  Inwardly, that white-haired old man was despairing.

  Ralice knew she was an orphan, and though she seemed to be good at her job—trained as an herbalist, she was a food seasoner and concoctor of “remedies” in the Gunworks kitchens—she freely admitted she was utterly bored with it.

  Boredom that, as Gelgur knew well from years of police work, was on the verge of plunging into malicious, vengeful hatred of authority and those more successful and wealthy.

  Right now, she was afire with her new importance as a gunhunter, and aching for all Alkenstar to know it. Word of that getting out would be her death writ, of course, though she didn’t seem to want to admit that, even to herself.

  And unless she was hiding some great skill from him, she was exactly what he’d feared she was: a silly youngskirts not beautiful enough for anyone to desire or molest, nor smart enough to accomplish much of anything.

  Not to mention the last living Morkantul. Which meant she’d been named the city’s latest gunhunter because someone wanted her dead so they could seize her family wealth and properties—shrunken greatly from earlier days, but still substantial. All hers, every house and gun and coin of it. Entailed until she was of age, of course, but that would mean nothing to an older hand reaching out to seize them.

  So had Kordroun picked her? Or the Ironmaster? Or someone higher?

  Gelgur was almost certain it had been Kordroun’s decision to look up Bors Gelgur to guard this youngling’s back; he and Roun had never liked each other much. Well, he’d damned well show up this fool of a high shieldmarshal—Kordroun as High Shieldmarshal? That alone shouted to all Golarion how far Alkenstar had fallen!—by keeping Ralice Morkantul alive.

  “If it comes to be that you must follow the smugglers’ trail out into the Wastes,” Kordroun was muttering, his scowling brows bent low over the lantern’s glow, “your tale will be that Bors Gelgur, retired shieldmarshal, is owed an old debt by the Morkantuls, and has accepted as payment a medicine to cure a mysterious ailment he’s in the grip of—a medicine you, Ralice, know how to make, but only with herbs you must procure fresh, that can’t be had anywhere in the Duchy. So you’ve been granted leave from your kitchen duties by senior Gunworks cooks to go out into the world and do this—in return for procuring herb-seeds on your journey that can be grown here in Alkenstar, and making trading contacts the Duchy can use to ensure ready new supplies of particular herbs and foodstuffs.”

  Gelgur rolled his eyes. “You think anyone will believe all that?”

&n
bsp; “They will if you both set about doing it,” Kordroun said sharply.

  Through the last word of that rebuke, Ralice promptly spat at Gelgur, “Were you really a shieldmarshal? Did you bribe someone to get the post?”

  Gelgur ignored her. “Suppose our gunhunter furnishes us with her report,” he suggested to Kordroun in a flat, neutral voice. “Of what she’s accomplished so far, of course.”

  “I’ve given my report to the high shieldmarshal,” the youngskirts snapped across the table, her glare flaring hotter. “And thus far, you’ll no doubt be pleased to know, I’ve learned very little. However, my investigations led to my being chased and shot at, more than once, and I managed to trace some of my pursuers back to one man: Aldegund Toablarr, Purser to the Parliament. High Shieldmarshal Kordroun and I have been discussing how to proceed, given his… high office.”

  Bors nodded, recalling his own handful of meetings with Toablarr. A coldly vicious man who enjoyed using his importance like a weapon, and didn’t care to conceal either his own arrogance or his willingness to lash out at others. Capable he might be, but no real loss to Alkenstar if he went down.

  Meaning there were plenty of other clever but malicious coldhearts where he’d come from.

  Yet could Toablarr really be smuggling more than a few pieces picked up in the open markets, or stolen or privately purchased by a loyal servant or two?

  After all, the offices of Ironmaster, the Lord Armorer, and High Chamberlain had all been established in opposition to each other, as watchdogs each upon the other. All three positions had been carefully filled with individuals who cordially hated each other, replaced with successors even more carefully chosen for their hatreds, to make very sure there was no collusion that would mean coins went missing, or worse abuses of power. Murder, for instance.

  Yet murders there now were.

  So had the unthinkable happened? Were some or all of these high officials working together?

  Bors regarded Kordroun. He thought he knew his old rival well enough to read him, most of the time. Right now, for instance. Young Ralice wasn’t troubling to hide anything—or didn’t know how. Their faces told him clearly they’d thought the same question he’d just asked himself. And not yet found an answer.