[SPEAKER_00]: The Red Hook of Dun Hell, a short-hand missile tail by Matthew C. McLean.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a killer, a poisoner by trade, and a thief by convenience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, it was not always this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: To be a good thief, one needs a partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not consider this until Inspector Rotella of the Black Coats showed up at the door of McDowell Hall, which sat in the smog choked heart of Dunhill.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since entering my uncle and his servants for their myriad of sins, against me and all of humanity, I had been expecting such an arrival.
[SPEAKER_00]: My uncle had been on a reclusive, a skin flint, and much worse,
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was not popular with his neighbors or this high-society to which his wealth would have granted a Max S. However, I knew it was a matter of time before his absence was noticed by the constabularity or God forbid when as a heretical priest of Leshi, I he fornicated with which is in warlocks We're still burned by the church and don't know so with the supreme ecclesiarch residing in the city I feared the black coats more With no servants remaining in the manner
[SPEAKER_00]: When the knock came, I answered the door myself, and looked in the dark eyes of a man who was taller than I, but just as sinewy, his hair nearly as light as mine was dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the lapel of his black coat was stitched a silver insignia, the all-seeing eye of the inspector's division.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had hoped that black coat might send someone lazy and incompetence, given the contempt my uncle was held in by his neighbors.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when this constable locked eyes on the mine, I felt a shiver that told me that I had no such luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: Goldmack Dahl, he asked in the tone of one who knows the answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I nonetheless put on a confused tone in my own voice when I answered in the informative.
[SPEAKER_00]: He continued, I'm Inspector Rotella.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please allow me to enter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Naturally, I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: I straightened my voluminous long sleeves long by frame, making that I was more concerned and covering my prolificacy than I was about the inspectors arrival.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had, in truth, been enjoying what remained of the wine cellar and larders inside buried my uncle and his laboratory beneath the manner.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had been a long, if lonely, celebration.
[SPEAKER_00]: My prodigal state didn't escape or tell her, and sharp eyes raking me as he entered, but he did not mention this only, you answered the door or settled with Master McDowell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are Lord Damon Servants?
[SPEAKER_00]: I wiped an eye to avoid the inspector's gaze.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not know.
[SPEAKER_00]: My uncle is not a trusting man with only two servants.
[SPEAKER_00]: He took both of them when he left to the continent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I close the door behind to keep any more of the coldness from Dunhill streets from blowing in.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the vestibule, inspector shook the edges of his coat to cast off what he had brought in with him before doffing his hat.
[SPEAKER_00]: stepping into the gas lights of the manor's main hall, the inspector gazed up the large central stairwell that led into the gloom of the upper floors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did this travel stake him?
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not know, my uncle does not trust me with such matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Master McDowell, I've made inquiries before my arrival.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you became your uncle's ward, he secured for you the best private tutors on everything from the Queen's English to Maths, chemistry biology and anatomy, as well as many facets of physical education.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would appear that after your parents' death, he'd take a new inn and was preparing you as his heir.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought about what my uncle had actually planned for me, that I was nothing but a vessel he would have used for his own incarnation through the black magic of his metamusacosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Truth, though, was that, in a way, the inspector was correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I answered him honestly, he told me as such.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inspector Rotello walked in a wide circle around the hall, keen eyes examining everything they fell upon, his words echoing throughout the many lacquered beasts that line the arch ceiling.
[SPEAKER_00]: For weeks now, the crown has begun to receive complaints.
[SPEAKER_00]: Credits have lettered at answered, ships in vitories left unpaid for, contracts for rations and wine and claimed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you failed in your duties to maintain the family of state while he was away?
[SPEAKER_00]: I hardened my gaze to meet the inspectors.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I said, my uncle does not trust me on such matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your uncle, who has been preparing you as his heir, neither trusted you with the upkeep they viewed the family business while it was way, nor told you his destination so he could handle such matters through correspondence.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the implied and accurate accusation of the inspector was constructing, I felt my hand flexed for the wish of my rapier.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no knowledge of his final destination.
[SPEAKER_00]: What little I gathered of his business, he wanted to keep it to himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure in your inquiries you learned that it was mostly dealing in the islands of Sule West.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps you've read Dr. Brody's report.
[SPEAKER_00]: The inspector cocked an eyebrow at me, but you said he'd depart it for the continent, not to uncivilize lands.
[SPEAKER_00]: that is what he told me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still upon me the inspector said before your parents died, they had little of the wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your father was a country doctor, your mother is nurse, both are now in amongst those they served as kind and generous.
[SPEAKER_00]: What money they earned seems to have been used mostly for your early education and keeping up their small homestead.
[SPEAKER_00]: He turned back
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thinking of my uncle's nightly pedophilic visits to my bedroom, I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't a pleasant one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It certainly appears to improve your station and your uncle's passing will do much the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wondered how long my uncle would have survived a slow death by paralysis in his subterranean laboratory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps someday, but I would rather return to my parents' home than remain in Lord McDowell's hall.
[SPEAKER_00]: The inspector turned to me with his grey eyes and asked, how old are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: 17.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your uncle will surely return before you cease to be his ward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faring any deviation from the truth would be detectable by the inspector I answered, he did not give me that impression when he left.
[SPEAKER_00]: Master McDowell, you could certainly see how strange I'm a sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a man such as standing and done held a simply vanish, what are you suggesting?
[SPEAKER_00]: Inspector Rotella returned to the vestibule to retrieve his hat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm suggesting that the blockcoats will be looking for your uncles or turn, and if he does not do so, I will return with many more questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tipped his hat slightly before donning it, good day to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was then that I began to spend more time away from the manor at a pub called Serpentin Ren.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no interest in answering any more of Inspector Rotellus in convenient questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I found myself inventing ways to avoid him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Serpent's cheap wine taxed my dwindling savings less, and the food was palatable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since I had entuned the manor's servants with my uncle, the tavern was one of my better options on the occasions when I wish not to cook for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was when I first noticed Chand.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a fine young man, with a smile always ready to sprout from under his equally nose.
[SPEAKER_00]: His dark, tussled hair could never quite be contained with whatever had he wore.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's top nearly brushing the tavern's low ceiling.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't take long for a keen observer though.
[SPEAKER_00]: To notice the preennial bruises that stained his out of skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes a cheek sometimes a hand, or that is close once of fine quality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uncloser inspection were afraid about the edges with rips and tears that have been repaired many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: His ancestry clearly crossed the empire's many far-flung boundaries, so he must not have come from the higher classes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still, seeing his gregarious and good nature, I was surprised he patronized in his establishment of such low-reputed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had begun inhabiting serpentine ran as its reputation as a den of a niquity made a despot to collect information about my earth's wild uncle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it was my refuge from the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: On its best days though, Serpent and Ren was a tavern built on the old stone of whatever it had been before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wind whistling through those bones, with only its shingles and boards dislow it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether accompanied by a new or exiting patron, the front door often blew open on its hinges, bringing in more of the constant cold us from the streets of Dunhill.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seeking to avoid notice, I kept to my moody corner, fancying in the shadows around me that I went unnoticed.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was preposterous, of course, as I had no magic or a lixard or a render me invisible, but I clung to my perceived anonymity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was from this shadow that I watched Chen, J.B. and Justin found myself increasingly fond of a man I never spoken with.
[SPEAKER_00]: On nights that I stayed longer, sinking into the most pool of the tavern of the wine, I noticed a pattern.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would often arrive early, make his friendly way through the crowd, then depart.
[SPEAKER_00]: only to arrive again the hours later, always happy or disconsolate, ordering food when he was the former and only a meager pint if the latter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was at the second appearance he would often have those fresh bruises.
[SPEAKER_00]: With my parents dead, my uncle enhumed, and me keeping out of the constable areas way, I lacked companionship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like many a young man, I thought this was something that I could live without, so I told myself it was my curiosity that got the better of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: As such one evening, after he made his way through the crowd of the tavern, I watched for him to make his first departure.
[SPEAKER_00]: As he exited the creaking front door, I stowed my cowloth pistol and rapier under my cloak and followed the tracks he left behind in the cold dust.
[SPEAKER_00]: Outside, even at the late hour, one could hear the grind of Dunhill's mills, with the tread of my soft boots undetectable under that dinn, chand made himself easy to follow by sticking to gas lamps, their orange glow illuminating the shadows of cobblestone streets.
[SPEAKER_00]: Near a serpent and rend, pedestrians were thin on the street, however chained headed to more populous area, thick with horses and carriages, merchants trying to sell the last of the wires, poppers lining the streets, and gentle couples ignoring them as they headed out for evening's entertainment.
[SPEAKER_00]: After a walk suitable for an evening's constitutional, we arrived in Fen's Bank, a district near the river that separated a gallogate from the better part of the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: There he stopped, leaned his tall frame against the limped post, and turned up his collar, hiding his hands in face and shadows as the night's crowd went by.
[SPEAKER_00]: Standing further down the street,
[SPEAKER_00]: I chewed on the long stem of my briar pipe as I watched him, wondering what he was at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, I noted that Chand ignored the pastor's buy, keeping an eye on a decrepit house across the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: While no one entered or exited the building's street door, the alley next to it would occasionally produce men, single or in pairs, or couples of men and women, who would quickly make their
[SPEAKER_00]: Channed would follow these individuals, closing the distance in the crowded street, then peel away.
[SPEAKER_00]: After gathering a suspicion of what he was doing, I closed the distance and confirmed a channed was thieving, skillfully, so no one took notice of his quick fingers.
[SPEAKER_00]: He must have learned pickpocketing from someone else the Dun Hell's Requider would have taken some of his fingers, if not his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This also brought me close to his victims where I noticed that at least some of the women leaving house weren't women at all, but only dressed as such.
[SPEAKER_00]: I surmised from this that the alley they were serapticiously leaving by must be connected to a molly house.
[SPEAKER_00]: I nodded on understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of them in departing would admit to being robbed near such a place.
[SPEAKER_00]: After several hours, Chand did not return to the post where he had been keeping a stealthy vigil, but headed back towards Gallo Gate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shook the smog from my coat and wide brim hat and followed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't long before we were back in the low part of Dunhill.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I watched his chin disappeared into an alley.
[SPEAKER_00]: By this time, the streets were as empty as they ever became in Dunhill, so I approached the alley entrance carefully, taking off my hat so I could peek around the brick corner and down the alley.
[SPEAKER_00]: There a man whose paleness was highlighted by the dirt smeared across the skin, stood in a green evening coat and brown derby.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was surrounded by exhausted urchants who immediately formed a line to hand over their spoils to whoever this rake was.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I watched he took the evenings loot from one with a smile, tossling the urchants hair before returning some of the coin to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next, though, received an increasingly angry stare as the pale man counted out the coins, then a cuff so hard the tiny dipper fell to the couple's stones.
[SPEAKER_00]: At an emmonishment sent him on his way with his failure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Watching this, I felt my hand strayed in my pistol, but was stayed by my own calllessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: seeing Chan stand among the merchants.
[SPEAKER_00]: I realized that like myself, he wasn't much out of adolescence.
[SPEAKER_00]: His easy confidence in smiling ways, it's serpent and ran, had made me mistaken for a more mature gentleman.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here he was, cute with a group of children.
[SPEAKER_00]: With his greater heights must have come greater expectations from the task master, though he handed over quite a larger sum than his compatriots, the bail man produced a writing crop and cracked chand over the head with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever had been restraining me at the side of the children's reprimand slipped away as the man continued to beat Chen with his retone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I moved down the alley with quick strides scattering the remaining urchins.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was upon the task master before he realized it.
[SPEAKER_00]: grabbing his wrist as he tried to bring down the switch again.
[SPEAKER_00]: This close, I could smell the gin on his breath and see the warts in his coal stained face.
[SPEAKER_00]: His height was greater than mine, but the years of physical education my uncle and sister pawn had built quick and strong muscles around my narrow frame.
[SPEAKER_00]: so I was able to hold his risk as anger overcame his surprise.
[SPEAKER_00]: He cursed me in an accent, so guttural and thick I could not decipher it, but I could crack from the butt of my pistol brought him down to my height where I was able to kick him into the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: While I could hear a chant stir behind me, I made a quick search of the taskmaster to come up with a collection of coins.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was quite pleased at this, as it was no small amount and much like the Molly House patrons, I suspected the taskmaster wouldn't go to the black coats for the complaint of being beaten and robbed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Taking stock of this, I heard Chand Russell behind me, and a slightly retroflex accentiest.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Saving you from a further beating or replied, hiding the coin person to my cloak before turning to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And robbing Peyton of the Knights take, Chand responded, eyeing me, damn, he had quick eyes even with his head knocked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I rationalized, something from my trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chand rose, brushing himself off and suching his now crushed hat.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'll remember seeing my face last when he wakes up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And pointed my flint lock at Peyton's head, but kept my eyes on Chand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want me to kill him?
[SPEAKER_00]: No!
[SPEAKER_00]: Chand, I'd me more carefully than.
[SPEAKER_00]: You aren't that brunette from Serpent and Ren that's always skulking in the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was, I admit, not the gratitude I had been expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cole, my name is Cole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ken didn't expect me with narrow dyes, then demonstrated more bravery than I expected by taking my elbow and addressing this both out of the alley.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get out of here.
[SPEAKER_00]: After a few strides toward the shoulder, and put that away, meaning my pistol.
[SPEAKER_00]: With my weapons under my cloak, we made our way along the streets of Dunhill back towards Serpent and Run.
[SPEAKER_00]: I answered Chan's silence on the way with my own, uncertain that my rash action had been the right one.
[SPEAKER_00]: But feeling better with him at my side.