I said, I got no grudge, we’re even,’ the robber said then. ‘I ain’t threatening you no more.’
‘Ah, I see, you are withdrawing your threat because you can now see that there will be consequences most unfavourable to you. Well, you have the intelligence of a dog at least.’ Nicholas brought his disc up from the ground and returned it to the inside pocket of his robe. He then acted so fast that Ben found himself only catching up with what was happening after it had happened: the ringleader’s disc shot up out of his robes into the air, his wand was snatched from his hand and thrown against a wooden beam of a nearby house, with his disc following promptly with the precision of a juggling act in order to cut the wand in two. Ben wasn’t the only one who had trouble following what had happened, as all five would-be robbers were themselves staring at the disc embedded in the wooden beam with the cut halves of the wand on the ground below, their mouths hanging open.
Nicholas then threw the other wands onto the ground and with that he seemed to feel that the evening’s business had been concluded, for he turned and walked away at a leisurely pace down the alley. Ben hurried after him.
10:20 PM, Monday 2 May 1544 A.F.
The five robbers left Octave Alley sadder and poorer, but not wiser, men. ‘Jolly will have to hear about this,’ the ringleader, whose name was Merton “No Tin” Nolyn, said to them, and that was all that was said as they trudged towards the Burke Tavern.
The Burke Tavern was crowded as they entered and as noisy as it was crowded. Whores, pickpockets, beggars whose missing limbs had been miraculously restored, even gap-toothed children, swarmed around and over each other in a bedlam of noise. The whores would go through a door at the back and go upstairs in the company of one man or another, and then return to the tavern. The air was thick with tobacco smoke rising upwards to disperse through narrow open windows in the walls below the wooden beams criss-crossing high above the heads of the tavern-dwellers below. A one-eyed man was smoking a long pipe while he watched with his one eye a group of men and women playing cards. A well-dressed young man, who obviously had no idea where he was, being no doubt newly arrived in New Landern, was being played up to by a tableful of admiring men and women; he would be in for a rude awakening as to where he was before the sun rose on the next day, if indeed he ever awakened again at all. Men and women were hunched over tables to bring their heads closer together in order to have conversations that would not be overheard; lone figures here and there drank from their tankards while fingering their hidden weapons as if taking a break in between nocturnal and bloody engagements; money was pushed across table-tops as transactions were concluded. The Burke Tavern was the very inn of lustful larceny.
Ignoring all this activity, and ignoring with a surly face all those acquaintances who waved and shouted over to him, No Tin led his men to the side where he knocked on a door. A panel in the door slid back, a face appeared to inspect the arrival, and with a rattle of bolts the door was opened and No Tin and his men went through.
No Tin and his men walked along a corridor toward Jolly’s room, their feet dragging a little as they neared an occasion they dreaded. Jolly’s door stood open as always. No Tin stopped ten paces from the open door and pulled on a cord hanging down from the ceiling. A far-off tinkling sound was promptly followed by a bell ringing beside No Tin, signalling permission to enter. No Tin and his men moved forward and entered Jolly’s room.
Stepping into Jolly’s room was like stepping into a red cave. The walls were covered in plush red velvet; the curtains were made of more red velvet; the ceiling was painted red, with golden chandeliers hanging down; the floor was covered in a variety of red carpets, and the large painting on the wall behind Jolly’s desk showed a volcano belching red flames and dark clouds into the air.
Mr Frank “Jolly” Jollison looked up as they entered, smiling, and obviously in a good mood. No Tin knew that this good mood would not last given the news he brought. ‘So how’s pickings?’ Jolly asked them, rubbing the tips of his fingers against his thumb to remind them, even if unnecessarily, such was his good mood, that pickings meant money.
‘We was robbed,’ No Tin told him, angry and fearful at the same time.
Mr Taggart “Tagalong” Longman happened to be there that night, sitting at the side, and on hearing this, he threw back his head and laughed.
‘Think it’s funny, do you?’ No Tin snarled, giving him a look sharp enough to cut him open.
‘Funny?’ Tagalong queried. ‘My dear man, it is hilarious.’
‘Robbed?’ Jolly queried in his turn, his eyes narrowing and his face becoming an angry mask. ‘You trying to pull a fast one, No Tin? Is that what you’re about? Because let me tell you what I’ll do to you, you bag of pigeon excrement.’ Jolly then detailed a number of physical procedures that he was about to apply to No Tin that were no less unspeakably brutal than they were unimaginably painful.
No Tin knew this was not idle talk and so he hastened to explain. ‘We was robbed,’ he said again, and the nods and dispirited demeanour of his men backed up his claim.
‘Who robbed you?’ Jolly asked.
The same question had been on No Tin’s mind. ‘We dunno, boss,’ he said. ‘There was these two gents walking down Octave Alley, all peaceful like they were out for a stroll, and then one of them, he didn’t do nothing, but the other one, he just took us all down. You never saw nothing like it, nothing.’
The vigorous nods of No Tin’s men throughout were like a silent Greek chorus, but then Helmold “Mould” Nowles, the man with the scar, spoke out, ‘He just took us all down, then he just cut No Tin’s wand just like that!’ He clicked his fingers in the air for extra emphasis.
‘He was like nothing else, boss,’ Gregory “Grog” Caley added, determined that the unbelievable wandfighting ability of their would-be victim would fully justify their failure to bring home the expected ill-gotten gains of that evening. ‘It’s no-one could take him down, no-one, I’m telling you.’
It took some time for Jolly to get the full story from them, for his men were more at ease with the application of violence than with the ordered presentation of facts, but in time he came to be fully informed as to what had happened.
Jolly sat there for a while, thinking about this. The others in the room knew better than to say anything at a time like this, so they waited in silence.
Jolly had clawed his way up from the bottom of the gutter to be, if not out of the gutter, at least perched on its rim enjoying the good things of life. He was a rich and powerful man who ruled the underworld of New Landern. In his own way, he was as rich and powerful as the grandees of New Landern, who were its rulers, except that his wealth and power were not expressed in exactly the same way. Like the ruling class of New Landern he had plenty of strada in cash, and like them he also owned properties, and like them he had those who served him, and like them he had a position to maintain which was dependent on the integrity of his reputation. But there the similarities ended, for where they paraded around in the sunlight he lived in the shadows; where they were multiple, he was singular, for he did not allow the existence of rivals; where they prided themselves on being known to all, Jolly made no external show of his existence. Most of the ruling class of New Landern, living as they did in their fine houses, had never heard of him. Those who had heard of him were either involved with the processes of law and order or were themselves visitors to his underworld to partake of the pleasures of gambling and prostitution which he controlled.
Jolly knew what he was and where he was and he was satisfied with that. No-one crossed him and it was important that no-one should ever do so. Jolly knew that what had happened tonight to
