False Gods (Sins of the Father 2)

Sadriel placed her hands on my shoulders, turning me in place and guiding me around. She pointed down the street. “If you were to follow this road all the way to its end, Mr. Albrecht, where would it take you?”

My eyes narrowed as I struggled to focus, and there it was, a red line as thin and delicate as thread, running all the way down the street. “Silk Road. It’ll take me to Silk Road.”

“Very good. And what lies beneath? Think hard.”

My blood ran cold. “The Black Market.”

Florian’s eyes were hard as he stared between the two of us. “Are you sure about this? Is this true?”

I blinked, my eyes searching the far horizon as they scanned through the mists of the Veil of Surveillance. “Laevateinn. She has it. It’s with Beatrice Rex.”

32

There’s no feeling in the world quite like the rush that comes when you kick a door open. My blood was surging on the walk all the way to Silk Road, down through the Black Market, all of the anger boiling inside of me culminating into a point on the heel of my foot.

I believe the exact noise I uttered when I caved in the front door of Beatrice Rex’s atelier was “Graagh!”

“Would you please calm the fuck down?” Florian scampered in after me, worrying and nagging the whole way to the Black Market. “Don’t do anything that’s going to get us arrested.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I growled. My right hand thrust at the air, catching the handle of a golden mace as it appeared out of the Vestments. “We’re just here to talk. Loudly. With a hammer.”

“That’s a mace,” he pointed out helpfully.

“Neither the time nor the place.” I looked around the darkness of the workshop, then cupped one hand to the side of my mouth. “Come out, Beatrice. We know your dirty little secret.”

Florian walked up next to me, finally catching up. So he had the wider stride, sure. But I had the tenacity of – well, of a honey badger, I guess. A really angry one, with a mace strapped to its little paws.

“I don’t like this.” Florian shook his head as he looked around the store, seeing the same thing that I did: very little at all. “It’s too dark. Shouldn’t she be open this time of day?

“She should be.”

I sniffed at the air, hoping to catch a whiff of something amiss, but there was nothing. Beatrice’s atelier smelled as it always did, faintly of sweet perfume, but now lightly laced with the scent of leather. The place was warm, too, about the same comfortable temperature it always was when we visited, which meant that there hadn’t been a break-in, no draft. Well, apart from all that fresh air coming in from the doorway I just smashed.

“Beatrice,” I barked again. I was starting to get a little worried, admittedly, but also a little apprehensive. This didn’t bode well. “Don’t make us come look for you. Just come out and talk to us. I promise, we’ll be real reasonable.”

Which could have meant anything, which worked to my advantage. I could, for example, break her counter into wooden splinters if she didn’t give us the answers we wanted.

Beatrice’s answer was the tinkling of beads from the curtain draped over the doorway to her backroom. In the gloom, Beatrice Rex looked the same, a little imperious, a little bit of a brat. But this time her eyes seemed so hollow. I thought the same thing about her voice.

“What do you want?” She sounded like someone who was in the middle of something. Something big, and secret, and potentially dangerous. “I’m very, very busy just now.”

“You’re not too busy to tell us the truth, are you?” I lifted the mace, pointing it at her. “Not too busy to explain why you’re hiding Laevateinn from us?”

Beatrice sighed, tilting her head so she could look around my shoulder. All that stood between her and the business end of my mace was her counter, but she looked completely unintimidated, even bored.

“Listen, Mason. I’m going to look past the fact that you now owe me for a ruined enchanted handbag and a broken doorway. I’ll even give them to you as freebies. But you don’t understand the forces at play here.”

“Tell us.” Florian stepped forward, placing his hands on the counter. Not something I would have done. “We’ll listen. There’s a reason you’re keeping the sword to yourself, but you’ll get your asking price in the end. We need the sword, too.”

Beatrice’s face screwed up into a mask of anger. “But I need it more.”

“Sorry, but I find that hard to believe.” I approached the counter, still brandishing the mace, ready to turn Beatrice’s shop into a pile of kindling. “Give us the sword, and we’ll be on our way.”

She lifted her chin, glaring at me in defiance. “Feel free to take it. It’s right here in the backroom.”

“If you insist.” I feigned taking another step towards the counter, fully aware that she was going to try something on me the moment I made my move. I wasn’t wrong.

Beatrice Rex slashed her hand through the air, like she was swatting a fly, or more appropriately, slapping my face from a distance. I only just caught the enormous tangle of white that shot out of the darkness, what looked like a massive tentacle, rooted deep within the shelves that lined the back of her shop.