I’d guess you’re already asking yourselves how anyone could remember so many words. Truth is I can’t, but then I had a little help that day.
It looked like a briefcase, only fatter, and it was heavy as all hell. Inside there was a battery of lead acid cells, what looked like a dinner plate set against one side, and a small contraption with two reels on it. You flipped a switch and it fed a wire from one reel to the other between a pair of copper coils. I don’t have much clue on how it worked, but I was told so long as I kept the side with the dinner plate facing whoever I was interested in, it would make a record of all that was said, even if they was as much as a hundred yards distant. The doohickey also had an earpiece connected to its side by a length of braided cable, but that was something’d attract people’s attention if you used it in public, so for the most part it stayed hid inside.
It was easy enough getting close in the square. There were a lot of people about, some milling, some standing, looking around as though they was waiting for a friend. I stood near to the statue and kept scanning the crowd while Derrick talked to his sons. It was when they headed for the museum things got interesting.
The inside was huge, and there was near nobody in there. I knew he’d spot me pretty darned quick if I stayed close, so I headed up the stairs. The upper gallery was roped off and in darkness, which suited me fine. I could show my badge if anyone asked, and for the rest of it, I could stay close enoughand use my fancy case.
It still amazes me that something like that case of wires works, but it did. With the correct side of the case aimed at them, their voices came through clear as if was standing beside them. When they started moving about the place, it got a little tricky moving to wear I kept them in sight, and keeping the case pointing their way, but it all worked out. When he got spooked toward the end, I was worried maybe he’d spotted me in the shadows, but he never looked up.
I didn’t follow them when they went further into the museum. I could tell Derrick was done with speaking, and what he’d said gave me pause for thinking. I knew when I’d took this job, I’d made a deal with the devil, but quite how bad a devil, I hadn’t figured. I didn’t have much of a choice though. If I hadn’t made the deal, I’d most likely have ended up swinging on the end of a rope a good many years back.
The Lawman
I was born and raised in a small village north of Hytheria. My folks were farmers, and as poor as the dirt they ploughed. Same could be said for pretty much all the towns and villages in our region. Anything we grew above what we needed went to the city, and for little enough return. Folks used to say our village was so hard up, we couldn’t afford a name – something my ma and pa and all our neighbours took some kind of twisted pride in.
I hated it.
We had a school teacher visit us for a few weeks each year, and he’d take over the church for the time he came. Mr Garrick his name was. He taught all us kids, from the youngest to the oldest, all in one class. Of course that meant when you first went along, you had no idea what he was on about, and by the time you attended for your last time, you’d heard it all so many times, you was sick to the back teeth of it all. He taught me my reading and writing though, and my drawing, and for that I’m grateful to the man.
The rest of the time, we was either helping our folks with the ploughing, or sowing, or reaping, or we was hanging about in small groups, dreaming of living large in Hytheria. Course it was just us boys hanging about. The girls always stayed home helping their mum’s, fearful of what might happen if they mingled with us. I didn’t much care for any of the girls in our village at any rate. All they dreamed of was settling down with a hard-working husband who’d till the land and feed them and their babies. Me, I had bigger dreams than that, and so did Marrick.
Marrick was a year older’n me, but we was the only lads near our age in the village. If there’d been any his age or a year or so more, he’d’ve left me in the dirt and hung with them. As it was, we became good friends over the years, so much so that he even hung around the village until I’d finished my last year’s schooling.
That was when we was considered of age, when we was expected to take up the responsibility of working the land alongside our folks, but Marrick and me, we had other plans. Day after I graduated – yeah, that was a laugh. Small ceremony in the church with all the villagers attending, and me given this piece of paper saying I’d attended school eleven years running. Day after I graduated, Merrick and me, we packed up our gear – what little we had – and we hiked out of that dead end piece of nowhere with the angry words of our father’s following us down the track.
I ain’t regretted leaving one day since.
We’d spent enough time hunting and snaring growing up. What grew out of the ground at home wouldn’t have fed our family, so we needed to add to it, and there was all manner of small critters you could catch easy enough. First night away from home, we had a brace of conies roasting over a fire, and we was sitting about, cleaning their hides when this gang of marauders caught up with us.
They was older and stronger than us, and they outnumbered us three to one, so of course they gave us a licking, but we held our own pretty good; enough that they offered us a place in their gang. It was the only way we was going to taste our own rabbit, and maybe the only way we’d walk away with our own skins, so we agreed.
Everyone knew there was outlaws about the countryside. It was why most folks stayed close to their settlements. It was why my father had his old shotgun hanging above the fireplace at home. Most criminals knew better than to attack a settlement outright. They knew they’d most likely win, but there was always a chance one or two’d be killed or injured in the shooting, and who wants that kind of risk every day? Especially since there was enough folks travelling between settlements to make easy enough pickings.
We left the teachers alone. They was usually poorer than the families they taught. They’d often enough take their payment in room and board in one village before moving on to the next. Traders was another matter though. The bigger ones was well enough defended, but there weren’t many of them in our territory. Not enough to trade for to make it worthwhile bringing a lot of protection, so we made our living.
It wasn’t much better than what we’d had at home though, so me and Merrick was looking for something better. Then we came up against a merchant caravan toting steam rifles. They outranged us and took out half the gang before we could get away. Merrick and me parted ways with them others as survived that evening, and headed for the city.
Hytheria was different then. It was maybe just before the time Gatrean’s new technology reached the city. The place was protected, as it had been for many years, b a wall, but within the wall, the city was a mess. Sure, there was the wealthy quarter, protected by its own defencive wall, and it was this part of Hytheria that spawned all the stories of riches and luxury, but for every family who enjoyed that wealth, there had to be twenty living in squalor. The streets weren’t lit, even in much of the wealthy quarter, there were no sewers, so the place stank – man how it stank.
There was work to be had, if you didn’t mind shifting night soil, or any of a number of equally unpleasant tasks. That wasn’t for me and Merrick though. We’d long since learned that where there was riches, there was a way to take them, and Hytheria had more than its share of criminals. We proposed to join them.
We did good for some years. We kept our crimes small, so’s not to attract the attention of either the crime syndicate we knew ran much of the city, or the city’s wealthier inhabitants. We ate well, we drank our fill, and we generally lived in a manner close to that imagined in our younger dreams. It wasn’t enough for Merrick though, and fast friends as we were, I had little choice but to tag along with him.
He had a theft planned. The details don’t matter so much as the fact it didn’t work out. We was caught, roughed up something bad and slung in prison. Merrick was philosophical about it. You step over to the wrong side of the law, and you accept that sooner or later, you’re gonna get caught. You pay your dues, and you carry on. ‘If you can’t handle the heat, don’t stand so close to the fire,’ he’d say.
We passed the night in separate cells some distance apart, so we didn’t even have the comfort of one another’s company. The next day I woke to the sight of a gallows through my cell window, and Merrick’s lifeless corpse swinging from a rope, raven’s perched on his shoulders, pecking out his eyes.
“Your friend was both rude and stupid. I’m hoping you’ll be… different.”
The man who’s spoke didn’t belong in that cell. He was well dressed and possessed of stoutness that comes with middle age and good eating. He was sitting in a chair opposite my bunk, picking under his fingernails with the tip of pretty much the biggest knife I ever saw.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, unable to help the outburst.
He raised an eyebrow in my direction, and let out a long, disappointed sigh. He sat up straight in his chair and leaned in close so’s I could see the anger in his eyes.
“My name,” he said, “is Jarreth Malorie. I am the person you and your friend attempted to steal from last night.”
My blood ran cold and drained clear out of my face. Anyone who’d lived in Hytheria any amount of time knew of the Malorie’s. What I couldn’t quite believe was that Merrick had been stupid enough to try and steal from them.
“You’ve heard of me then? Good. And you have the sense to be afraid. That’s at least something you have over your friend there.”
I held my peace. There wasn’t a great deal of point in apologising for trying to rob the guy; I doubt he’d have taken it as genuine.
He gave me a long appraising look and nodded, sharply, just once. “I believe you understand your choices then?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Good. And what do you choose.”
“I’d like to live, sir.”
He leaned back in his chair and set about picking his nails again. His expression had relaxed some, but that didn’t mean I could.
“We have a growing problem in this city, er, Mr Jerrick, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir. Lance Jerrick. What problem sir?” I was all attentive.
The amount of crime is on the increase, Mr Jerrick, and it concerns me. Most of the wealthier families are paying for some degree of protection, but with the way crime in the city is growing, it isn’t enough. The sort of conversations I’ve been overhearing from my peers in recent days indicates they wish to introduce a public agency to enforce policies of civil obedience; a sort of preemptive crime prevention as it were.
“Now whilst this may seem like a good idea on the surface, it does pose a threat to a number of, erm, projects in which I’m involved. These are projects it would grieve me to lose, so what I’ve been thinking recently, is that perhaps I should take a lead in this venture. What I am proposing to you, Mr Jerrick, is that, rather than constructing a second gallows for yourself, I should perhaps employ you instead, to set up this enforcement agency. What do you think? Is this something you might be interested in?”
“Sir,” I replied right smart quick. “I’d be interested in anything that’d keep my neck out of a noose right about now. But I don’t rightly comprehend why you’d want me for the job. I know a whole lot more about breaking the law than I do about enforcing it.”
“Which is precisely my reasoning for choosing you, Mr Jerrick. The best person to catch a thief is another thief, because he knows how thieves think. You’ve been in the city long enough to make a fair few contacts in the criminal fraternity. I’m sure you’ve met quite a few people who’d be willing to sell you information on up and coming nefarious endeavours, just as I’m sure you could come up with your own plans for how best to ensure their failure as well as the arrest of those planning them.”
“Just so long as I steer clear of any project that concerns you, sir.”
“Poor first impressions aside, Mr Jerrick, I find my confidence in your ability growing.” He stood up and tapped the hilt of his knife against the heavy door of the cell. “Why don’t I leave you to ponder how best you might achieve this end. We’ll talk again tomorrow, when I seriously hope for both our sakes that you won’t disappoint me.”
The cell door opened and closed, and I was left alone with my thoughts and a clear view of Merrick’s gently swinging remains.
I didn’t get no sleep that night, but it weren’t from worrying. My pa had a saying that if you wasn’t busy making a living, you was busy preparing to die. He used to yell it at me every time I went out to meet with Merrick, and I hated him for it. It made a whole lot of sense of sense to me then though, and I’d sat in my cell all day and night, pummelling my brain for anything I might say to impress Jarreth Malorie.
I’d expected him to reappear early in the morning like he had the day before, but he kept me waiting till well past nightfall. I had a mind to rethink my ideas more than once, but something Mr Garrick said to me once stuck with me. He told me one of the reasons I tested so bad was because I tended to change my answers, and most times my first guess was right. He said I should trust my first instincts unless I could see for sure that I had been wrong the first time. I’d stuck by his advice, and it had saved my skin on more than one occasion while me and Merrick had been raiding with the marauders. I decided to stick with Mr Garrick’s advice.
I set my own price pretty high. That was probably the one thing I was most nervous about, but I figured he needed me to do this job about as much as I needed it myself. I also figured he’d recognise that money bought loyalty, and the expense would be worth it. The rest of it was pretty straightforward. I had a list of folks I’d want as informants, another list of folks I wanted as muscle, and a third list of folks in the city I’d be looking to keep an eye on. I weren’t none too good at math, so I figured I’d let him work out how much it’d cost. I had no intention of giving him any of the names on my lists, except maybe one or two to show good faith, but the majority of why he was asking me was because I knew a lot about what went on in the criminal world. The rest of it was that I’d be working for him. This may have looked like I was switching sides, but I knew darn well I’d be supporting the strongest criminal presence the city.
He sat silent through my presentation, if you could call it that, nodding at times. In the end he sat in silence a spell longer, rubbing at his lower lip with his forefinger.
“You’ll do,” he said at last. “Except Ill expect you to do things a little differently. For one thing, I’m not going to pay you a salary. Instead, I’m going to give you access to an amount of money to complete the job in hand. Whether you pay yourself your generous allowance will be up to you. You’ll just have to decide if that leaves you with sufficient funds to do everything else that’s necessary. I suspect from what I’ve heard you say, that you don’t have much of a head for figures, so I’ll lend you one of my accountants. I’ll advise you to listen to him.
“Next, I don’t want you just to listen out for crimes that are being planned and then step in to stop them. I need you and whoever you employ to be a visible and respectable presence in the city. I want you to mount patrols, because when patrols are seen, people feel safer. I want you to investigate crimes that have been committed, because when you do that, people feel like they’re being cared for.
“I’ll give you three months. If after that time, the crime figures have gone down, the people are making fewer complaints, and most significantly, my associates decide they have no need of an enforcement service of their own, I’ll let you keep your job… and your life.”
He sure knew how to make a point, and I knew I’d be a fool to turn it down. It wasn’t as much as I’d hoped for, but it was better than I’d been expecting. I held out a hand to shake on the arrangement, and he looked at it like it was something just crawled out from under a rock. “Consider it shaken, Mr Jerrick. I will send my man along presently to have see you released and taken to your new base of operations.”
He was true to his word, but it was nearing midnight before my cell door opened next, and I had my first look at Seesal Cole. I can’t say I was much impressed. He was a small man, without much meat on his bones, and he walked with a permanent stoop and a nervous twitch, like he was constantly afraid someone was going to cuff him. He was well enough dressed, but if ever decent threads was more wasted on someone, I never saw it.
Truth be told, he didn’t much care for me either, and I guess I can’t blame him much. I’d been none too clean when they’d thrown me into this cell, and two days of confinement hadn’t done anything to improve things.
My new base of operations, as Malorie had described it, was little more than a disused warehouse down in the working quarter of the city. It wasn’t much more than an empty shell, dirty and rat infested as all the warehouses were there abouts, but it was big enough the we could make it work. I unslung my roll of bedding and settled for the night. Seesal was more particular and headed off in search of a hostelry. Whether he found one that late in the night, I don’t know and I don’t much care. He rejoined me the next morning about the time I got a fire going from some old pieces of wood I’d found scattered about. I’d just put a pot of coffee on to heating when he walked in.
Turned out he was the accountant Malorie’d assigned me. He told me how much money had been set aside to me, and I let out a long low whistle. Then he started asking questions about how many men I was planning to hire, and how much I’d thought I might pay them, how often and how much I thought I’d have to pay for information, what I wanted to spend on fixing up the warehouse, how much I planned to spend on uniforms and all the like. I started to respect Seesal Cole that morning. He was in his element around costs and figures, and he spent the rest of the day showing me all the things I couldn’t afford until my head was spinning and I was ready to hit something.
I guess this next bit ain’t so interesting. Suffice to say it took the best part of a week to set up everything. I ended up hiring about two thirds the number I’d first had in mind. Uniforms would have been expensive, so I bought everyone, myself included, a new set of clothes. Nothing fancy, just hard-wearing stuff that looked smart enough, and I found me a blacksmith with a variety of horse brasses including a five pointed star design I rather liked. I got him to stamp me out enough for each of my men and had them sewed onto the insides of the long canvas coats I’d settled on as the nearest thing we’d get to uniforms.
The first job I gave them was to work alongside me, putting up stud walls in the warehouse and changing it into a place we could call home. We had a dormitory out back with camp beds enough for third of us to sleep at a time, and a desk up front so’s people could come to us with their needs. That left a big space right at the back, which I left for the time being. I had plans for it, but none I was prepared to put my first three months’ funds to.
I knew we needed a big score to put us on the map, so while we was fixing up the office, I put our feelers for anything sizable anyone might be planning. I don’t know if it was all the building an hiring I’d been doing, or the fact I was in a Malorie owned warehouse, but all of a sudden people seemed pretty eager to help, and I found myself hearing of all kinds of jobs being planned. I passed up a on a couple of halfway decent ones, then a couple of days after we finished fixing up the warehouse, news reached me of the job I’d been waiting for.
Barton Bailey had taken it into his head to plan a raid in the warehouse district. It seemed a recent convoy from the south had brought a great many luxury items into the city, and about half the families in the wealthy quarter had a considerable investment in it. Bailey had it in mind that with a little borrowed muscle, he’d be able to break into the warehouse, make of with the best of what was there, and fire the rest; a plan he figured would earn him enough gold to rise out of the filth of the workers’ quarter, while at the same time maybe dragging some of the high and mighties down to our level.
I sent Seesal with a message for Mr Malorie, and received a swift reply to say I was free to act as I liked. I didn’t want to add to our numbers at short notice for fear of offering Bailey some indication as to our own intentions, but I did change the watches around so that all my force were available the night of the raid.
The targeted warehouse wasn’t too far from our own quarters, which made moving into position a lot easier than it might have been. In fact the whole ambush went pretty much according to plan. I’ve heard it said that the first casualty of war is the plan of battle, but ours pulled through pretty good. We attacked hard as soon as they came on the scene,after a very short fight, I had Bailey in chains, as well as most of his lieutenants, and the contents of the warehouse was all pretty much untouched.
It achieved all I’d hoped. The families invested in the contents of the warehouse were overflowing with gratitude, and made their own contributions to to our funds, which meant I could employ more men. Malorie was delighted, because almost overnight his richer acquaintances stopped talking about setting up their own law enforcement service. It seemed I’d succeeded in just three weeks in doing what the old man had given me three months to achieved.
“You’ll have to come up with a name for you and your men,” Malorie had said. “It won’t do to have such an outstanding force for good in the city go nameless.”
It was a heady feeling, being appreciated, and one I’d never given much thought to before. All my life, I’d lived for myself and never thought nothing of it. Now, of a sudden, here I was helping people and earning their good favour because of it. It was a powerful drug, and not one I was inclined to give up anytime soon.
Turned out it was as fickle as it was wonderful though. With our first action so successful, I allow us to sit by, so I started patrols the next day, leading the first of them myself. Jarreth had told me he wanted my men not only to win over the richer folks, but also give the poorer ones a sense that they was being looked out for to, so we went into the working quarter, and thats when things really struck home.
None of the folk we met were much impressed by our action of the previous night. I guess I should have expected that some, given none of them would benefit from any of the goods we rescued, but it still came as something of a shock. As did the discoveries I made as I led a small group through the squalid streets where the working folks lived.
They reminded me of my folks back home. Hard working individuals who put all their-selves into honest toil, and earned little enough for it. These were folks I’d stole from not so long ago. I’d thought nothing of it then, but now as I saw for myself how near impossible it became to survive, when having so little in the first place, they had even that taken from them.
I can’t tell you all the misery I encountered that day, but it burned deep into my soul. I saw a child of no more than five years lying dead because her mother had been robbed of the money she had to pay the doctor. I saw a man so broken in spirit, he’d hanged his-self. The man he’d worked for had his business stole from, so he’d economised by sacking a few of his workers. Without his job, the man had no way to support his family, and it had been too much. I saw beggars, young and old, sprawled dead on the streets from cold and starvation. The list goes on, and that was just in the first day.
I guess I had some idea such things was going on around us, but when you’re so caught up in your own self, you don’t realise that those everyday tragedies happen to real folks. That’s what confronted me that day. Something I’d been trying to avoid since the day I walked away from my folks back home. All this suffering had happened to genuine people. Kids like I had been starved to death because, despite all their best efforts, their folks hadn’t been able to work hard enough to keep them alive.
It didn’t affect the rich, except in the smallest sense. They made a loss on some venture, and they responded by closing down work places, sacking hard working folks who couldn’t afford to lose their jobs. Maybe they didn’t make such good profits that month, but none of them went hungry, or even lost out on the smallest luxury they’d grown used to.
By the time I made it back to our quarters, I was sick to the stomach and boiling mad like I’ve never experienced. Those same folk whose praise I’d so willingly embraced the previous day, I could barely bring myself to think of as human, and Jarreth Malorie was the worst of them. I found I didn’t care for the arrangement we’d made. He could kill me at the end of three months if he liked, but if I was going to create a force of law in the city, it would serve no man, but a cause.
I gave instructions for the patrols to continue, for the men to take time listening to what was going on in the criminal world, to preempt crimes when they could, to investigate and seek justice when they couldn’t. I withdrew and spent long days walking the streets alone, meeting the folks I knew my previous actions had harmed, learning to as full an extent as I could, the harm I had caused.
I asked them what they thought would be a suitable punishment for the man who’d brought such hurt in their lives. A good number wanted vengeance – death and dismemberment. Most were beyond caring – so lost in their misery that they couldn’t so much as think on the person who’d brought them to it. The worst, though, were those few who harboured no hate and chose to forgive.
It’s the worst kind of evil to harm a pure soul. I ain’t never been a religious man, and knowing I’d brought such heartache and despair into such undeserving lives, I figured I’d never get to be one. My folks had drug me along to church in my early years, but I’d escaped whenever I could. Church ain’t no place for someone who thinks only on his own wellbeing, and I’d known I didn’t belong. I didn’t much understand what the preacher had spoke to us week after week. There were words he used I spent long years trying to understand, and long years later trying to forget, but there was one word called to me cross the years.
Shriven.
Confessed, penitent, absolved.
Malorie wanted a name for my enforcers, I had one for him. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever reach absolution, but penitence we could manage, at least some of us.
I’d seen it in the eyes of some of my men the other day, how they’d been affected by what they saw. There were those who’d see it is nothing much more than a job, but I knew I wasn’t alone, that there would always be some who’d see working for me as a way to make up, at least in part, for what they’d done.
Three months on and we were seen as champions for the people. We’d gone a long way towards reducing crime in the poorer quarters of the city, and we’d brought a good many minor criminals to justice. Malorie’s private jails were full to bursting. Somehow I’d managed everything he’d asked of me. Though I’d done little enough for the richer folk since that first operation, they still maintained that we were all the city needed to enforce its laws.
Malorie didn’t much like the way things turned out. He could see in my eyes that I wasn’t going to be his puppet, but with the popularity the Shriven had achieved in just three months, he knew there wasn’t much he could do about it. Nor was there much I could do about him. I was stuck with my unholy contract, and the Malorie family were dug in like a tick, too deep to cut them out without causing more harm.
Years past. Jarreth eventually succumbed to a stroke that paralysed the whole left side of his body and left him unable to speak. He ended his days sitting in a chair in drooling silence. I like to think it was some kind of punishment put on him, but it didn’t last as long as I’d have thought appropriate to his crimes.
His older son, Eadling, took his place, and he was no better. The arrangement I had with the father continued with the son, and he was bright enough to realise he’d do himself no good having me removed publicly. As for doing it quietly, I’ve grown used to the occasional assassination attempt – it helps keep me on my toes.