The Killing Jar

This tale is a standalone offering part of “Ash and Thorn”, a serialized web novel.

For the best reading experience, read this story on ravensweald.art, home of sepulchral-gothic western serial, Vengeance, My Heart.

Tales From the Fell Wynd #1

The Rookery occupied the upper floor of what had been a tannery before the smell drove the trade elsewhere and the Dusk drove the owner after it. The vats were gone but the smell remained — something low and animal in the boards, the kind of thing you stopped noticing after a week while never fully forgetting.

What it had going for it was that it was dry and safer than sleeping on the streets. Once you ignored the bill of ejectment posted far enough within the entryway to protect it from the elements, the place seemed cozy enough.

Be it known to all persons that the premises of Fell and Hide are the lawful property of Aldric Fell, and that any person or persons found to be occupying, squatting upon, or otherwise making unlawful use of said premises without the express written consent of the aforementioned owner shall be subject to immediate and forcible removal therefrom, by whatever means are deemed necessary and proper, without recourse or remedy at law.

All trespassers are hereby warned.

The rest of the bill — signature of the authority, date and seal — had met with some misadventure along the years. Whoever it belonged to seemed unhurried about enforcing the decree.

Three rooms. One entrance by the stairs, one by the roof. The windows faced the street on one side and the alley on the other, and one of the kids always seemed to be lounging in them. Sometimes two.

The flaxen-haired leader of the Rooks was at the far end of the main room when Dab arrived, sitting on an upturned crate with one knee drawn up, doing a bit of turning with a well-maintained vintage card deck of the Aldgate make. Not laying a spread. Just moving the cards, one to the other, the way some people whittle — something for the hands while the mind was elsewhere.

He did not look up when Dab arrived.

Their leader wore a brocade waistcoat that had once belonged to a better address, belied by the plain white, collarless shirt that showed fraying at the edges of the cuffs and neckline. He was in need of a haircut, with hair long enough to be tied back like a dandy with a forest green bow. His eyes, where the light caught them, were the same color as the ribbon.

Dab was the kind of man the Warrens produced in quantity: large enough to have gotten away with things his whole life, sharp enough to have built a small operation on the back of it, not sharp enough to know the difference between a situation he controlled and one that merely hadn’t corrected him yet. He had hired the Rooks six days ago to move a particular piece of information from one end of the Warrens to the other without it passing through any of the usual channels. They had done this in a fraction of the time he had required. How they had managed that feat was a mystery. It would have meant running the Hollows and everyone had agreed no one was that much a fool.

And he was here to settle the account at roughly half of what had been agreed upon.

He had brought two men. This was meant to communicate something.

Jac was leaning in the window frame nearest the door, one leg dangling over the sill into the alley below, the other drawn up against her chest. She was eating an apple with the focused attention of someone who had nowhere particular to be. She glanced at Dab’s men the way you glance at weather — registered, assessed, filed. Then she looked at the apple.

“Lad,” Dab said.

The Rook turned a card. His eyes never left his pale hands and the deck. “Dab.” A soft voice, but baritone and missing the uncertainty of tone. The kid had moved beyond the breaking of early adolescence and Dab was reminded to revise his age upward on the lad.

“Here with your coin.”

“Mmhmm.”

He crossed the room and dropped a folded cloth on the crate beside the young man with high cheeks — his right cheek still healing from a razor cut that just missed taking out the kid’s eye.

The sound as the bag fell was wrong. The leader of the Rooks looked at it for a moment without touching it. Then he turned his attention back to the cards.

“You’re short.”

Dab cleared his throat.

“Job had complications.”

“Your end.” He turned another card. “We had no complications.”

“The information was no longer useful by the time it arrived.”

“We agreed to three days. Your man saw it moved in two. Your error in judgment as to usefulness and timeliness is not our concern or problem. We fulfilled our end of the agreement.”

Dab answered this with a strained smile. It was the smile of a man who had been doing this long enough to find this part of the negotiations necessary, but tedious. “Look. You’re new. I’m trying to give you a first job that doesn’t end badly.”

“That’s mighty generous of you.” He set the deck down on his knee, looking into Dab’s eyes for the first time. “So tell me, how does a job end badly?”

“Kids like you don’t always know when it’s more healthy to let something go.”

Jac spoke up from the window sill without looking up from her apple. Dab had met the girl before she had fallen in the Rooks and had developed strong feelings about the therapeutic value of a good beating, specifically as it applied to her. She was a little too quick in his mind.

“He’s going to say the thing now.”

“I know,” her leader said.

“Half now,” Dab said, ignoring Jac. But he cataloged it for when he caught her out alone some evening. “Half when you bring me something worth paying full on.”

Jac crunched the apple and used it to point in the direction of the three men. Chewed. “There it is,” her mouth still full of apple.

Dab’s posture shifted — the adjustment of a man who had prepared for a different kind of conversation and was recalibrating. He looked at Jac. Jac was regarding a soft spot on the apple’s skin with mild professional concern.

“That’s not what we agreed,” the young man said.

“Agreements change.”

Jac made swallowing the rest of the apple in her mouth into a loud, dramatic event.

“Just so you know, luv,” she said. “Davy’s the one to watch. Renn’s… well, he’s mostly still trying to figure out which is the business end of a knife. Not the brightest one in Dab’s mangy little circus.”

One of them, apparently the one named Renn, spoke up, “Now, just you wait a damned—”

“Shut up,” Dab said. “I explicitly pay you to not think or talk.”

“Jac’s tongue is sharp enough, she mostly doesn’t need a knife.” He picked up the cloth full of coin. He unfolded it, counted what was there, refolded it. Set it back on the crate. “I’m going to tell you something, Dab, and I want you to hear it proper.”

Dab waited, arms crossing over his chest. This was clearly going to be a speech like those he had heard before.

“You came here with two men because you thought it would make the conversation easier. That’s a reasonable instinct when you’re dealing with someone who needs the money badly enough to take what you give them.” He tilted his head slightly. “We did need the money. Past tense.”

Dab had expected a different speech.

“What the ever-loving Dusk is that supposed to mean?”

The young man running the Rooks did not answer immediately. He waited for Dab to come around.

The coming around part was slower than it ought to have taken, but Dab finally noticed the hand rested on a knee.

There was something in the man’s palm that had been there for some time. Dab only noticed it was there by way of the dim light catching steel.

The razor was flicked open, held palm up — not presented as a threat so much as a fact. The handle was whalebone worked in scrimshaw. It was not gripped so much as being cradled gingerly in his thin fingers.

Dab did not need to take much time to decide what it meant.

“That would be decidedly unhealthy, Davy.” Jac said, her voice pleasant, not looking up from her apple. “But they say that apples are good for keeping the doctor away.”

She held up the one she had bitten into. “You can have mine, if you like. I only ate a small bit. Much healthier.” She flashed the thug her winning smile. “Also, Renn. He’ll be about four seconds behind ol’ Davy-boy.”

Both men went still.

“I’ve been watching how the Warrens work,” the Rook said in soft baritone. “I’ve seen how people get paid. Or don’t. How those who set the terms keep getting to set them and those that accept the shite terms given keep on accepting shite terms.”

He picked up the cloth with his left hand and held it out to Dab. “I’m of the mind that we aren’t much for the accepting of shite terms. That’d be apt to teach you the wrong thing about us Rooks.”

Through the open window came a far off sound of industry — factory sounds, some place far away from the Fringe. Dab noticed more than a few of the children loitering in the windows now had blades visible in their hands. One boy had an old service revolver from the Wars. It might even fire. Dab was in no mood to see if it would.

Across from him, that young fella with the razor had the look in his green eyes that said he had already decided how this might end. Davy and Renn had finally gotten around to taking stock and, clearly, their confidence was not what it was when they first crossed the threshold.

Dab held up a hand instead of taking the cloth-wrapped coins, dug into his pocket while pretending to not look around at all the sharp objects in the room and pulled out a similar cloth from his coat. He opened, counted a few coins and pocket them. He placed the rest of the coins on the wood crate without looking into those green eyes.

The Rook looked at the coins. Looked at him.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Dab. I’m glad we could overcome our complications together in a mutually beneficial way.”

“You’d better be worth it,” he grumbled.

The young man said nothing. Just looked at him with those green eyes until Dab looked away first.

Dab grunted and gestured for the men to leave the Rookery.

“It’s still up in the air if you are,” he called out after them.

Jac dropped from the window frame into the room, landed without sound. She jogged over to the stairwell and held out what remained of the apple in Dab’s direction and shouted down the stairs, “Are you saying that you aren’t interested in my ruby-red apple, Davy? Davy?”

She tossed the apple to the Rook, who took a bite out of it. “He left without his apple,” she said pouting.

“He’ll be back,” he replied, taking another bite.

“I know.” Jac was already moving toward the roof exit, rolling her shoulders out. “We should probably get better apples. Something’s been nibbling at that one.”