T
he anchor was a head taller than Sal, a massive hunk of orange iron, the surface pocked by years of weathering. It stood upon three curved hooks, a ring the size of a man’s head atop the stock. It was rumored to be a remnant of the First Empire, but Sal had heard other rumors that the design was not nearly so old as that. Still, the thing was old and big, so big Sal had trouble imagining how it had come to rest this far inland.
The Rusted Anchor alehouse was named for the great anchor just outside its doors. Located near the toe of the Shoe district, the Rusted Anchor wasn’t well known to anyone with any sense of dignity. The Rusted Anchor was a hole, filled with dice loaders and card sharps. The beer was flat, the shiplap walls moldy and peeling, and the rushes so old they crackled underfoot. Within the Rusted Anchor, the smell of the salt sea was replaced with that of stale smoke and sweating men.
As Sal passed a man making sick by the door, a young working girl locked eyes with him but didn’t pursue when Sal shook his head. He stepped into the taproom and looked to the back. Valla sat at her usual table, sipping a mug and watching him with her sharp eyes.
The Rusted Anchor was an independent joint, much like the
Hog Snout. It wasn’t owned by anyone connected, but just like everyone else, connected or not, the Rusted Anchor paid dues to the Commission. Valla made the collections, paying up the ladder to Don Moretti for the privilege. She was a good earner, and likely would have been dubbed a made man years ago, had she not lacked one crucial part of the anatomy.
Sal nodded and took a seat across from Valla.
“Shouldn’t you be out scouting for Luca?” Valla asked. “Or have you only been claiming to work?”
Sal smiled. “Scouting encompasses a broad field. I like to look at all the angles before I commit to any specific strategies.”
“What are you drinking?” she asked.
“Not today,” Sal said. “This is purely business. I want a clear head.”
“Business?” Valla said, arching an eyebrow and moving a hand slowly across the tabletop. She wet her lips and looked deep into his eyes. “This the sort of business you had in mind?”
Sal’s pulse quickened.
“Is that what you think about when you see me?” Valla said, her voice almost a purr. “Hmm? You see me like some whore?”
“Whoa, Valla, I—”
“You want me to suck your cock, Salvatori? Is that why you’re here?”
“No, come on, Val, don’t be that way.”
“And what way should I be? I see the way you look at me. Same way they all look at me. Difference is you aren’t man enough to come out and say it.”
“Slow down,” Sal said. “I told you, I’m here about business.”
“How many times you think I’ve heard that one?” Valla said, sneering.
“Anton,” Sal said. “I’m here about Anton, then.”
“Not going to suck him off neither. Especially not now.”
“Funny,” Sal said. “Did something happen? You seem a tad touchy today.”
Valla pursed her lips. Then slowly a snarl formed. “Fucking
Dirge, that goddamn whoreson. I swear I’ll cut off his cock the next time that pimp opens his mouth.”
Sal understood. “The big pimp, over by the door?”
“If he weren’t paying up the ladder, I’d have done it already. He won’t always be in favor, though. Just you wait. I’ll be made soon enough. Word came down from Alonzo Amato saying he would sponsor me.”
“Truly? Valla, that’s some good news.”
“Ask me. It’s a long time coming. If I had a cock swinging between my legs, I’d have been a made man years ago.”
“Still, Alonzo Amato as sponsor, that’s nothing to scoff at.”
“Yeah, well, saying ain’t doing. Word’s come down, but word is all I have thus far.”
Sal shrugged. “Well, listen, you hear word of anything else that’s come down from the Commission of late?”
“Such as?”
“Such as word on Anton. Who approved the hit, and who might have carried it out.”
Valla’s eyes began to well, her bottom lip trembling slightly. Anton and Valla had been in the same crew for years, nearly as long as Sal had worked under Anton. Back before Anton and Fabian even. Valla shook her head. “The big man and I have been looking into it. Seems to me whoever did Anton did it outside Commission sanction. Still, it could be someone is just playing their cards close to the chest.”
Sal shook his head. “That worries me.”
“Look,” Valla said. “In this business, people die all the time. Everyone knows that coming in. Anton as well as anyone.”
“And you’re willing to accept that?”
Valla shrugged in a most feline way.
Sal shook his head. “Well, I don’t.”
“And?” Valla asked, arching an eyebrow.
“I want you to tell me about the High Keep job,” Sal said.
“What about it? You were there, weren’t you?”
“I was there, and I know what I saw, I know what I heard and
what I think. What I don’t know is what you think about it all, but I would like to learn.”
“The job was botched. Whole thing went south the moment those steel caps sprung their ambush.”
Sal nodded. “Strange, that.”
“Strange what?”
“That ambush.”
Valla sat up straighter, her eyes narrowing. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it was strange. How did they know we were coming? Also, if they did know we were coming, why spring the ambush before we were all within the Keep? Wait a few minutes, and they’d have had us all cornered like rats.”
Valla shrugged. “I’d not considered that, but you’re right, half of us were still outside the walls.”
Something occurred to Sal that he’d not thought to ask. “Val, who was still outside when the steel caps sprang?”
“Hard to say. We were all split up at that point, but from what I can recall—I was roof-side. Dellan, Vincenzo, and the big man were within. You,” Valla said nodding to Sal, “were in the courtyard, and Anton was on the bailey wall. Which leaves—”
“Bartley,” Sal said.
There was a moment of silence while they both seemed to digest the information.
Sal shook his head. “No.”
Valla lifted both eyebrows and tilted her head, her eyes wide and her lips pursed.
Sal shook his head again. “You don’t know him like I do.”
“And you’d stake your life on that claim?”
“I would,” Sal said without hesitation.
Valla shrugged. “If you say so. You know the Yahdrish better than I. Still, the fact stands, there was a rat in the crew. Someone talked to the City Watch.”
“Any word on the rat?”
“Nothing as of yet. The big man says he’s still working on an in with the steel caps. Regardless, someone told them we would be
there. I have to wonder how much they knew. Did they know what we were after?”
“And just what was that, exactly?”
Valla looked at him skeptically, as though sensing a trap.
Sal shrugged, and nearly reached for the locket hanging about his neck. Just what did Valla know of the locket? “I mean that with all sincerity,” Sal said. “I know what we were after, sort of, but I couldn’t tell you why, nor to what end.”
Valla took a swig from her mug and wiped at her mouth with a sleeve, glaring at Sal all the while.
Sal didn’t like that look. It was the sort of look that told him he didn’t have long to live unless he changed the subject. But this was what Sal had come to find out. He needed to know what Valla knew. He needed to know what had gone wrong that night, and why.
“I mean it, Valla. We pulled a job on the High Keep. Lady’s sake, the bloody High Keep, and for what? A ring and a letter?”
Valla’s look softened, and she put two fingers to her lips. She seemed to be thinking, a good sign. It was when she acted before thinking that she was truly dangerous. “He didn’t tell you, did he?” Valla finally said.
“Who? Tell me what?”
“Anton,” she said.
Sal’s heart skipped a beat. Did she know? Had she known about the locket all along? Suddenly he saw everything in a whole new light. He’d thought he was the only one, but of course he wasn’t. Someone else knew. Someone else was looking for it. Had Anton told Valla about the locket?
Sal clenched the edge of the table. It was all he could do to keep from bolting. “What did Anton not tell me?”
The way Valla looked at him was so catlike Sal half expected her to meow when she opened her mouth. “The ring and the letter,” Valla said, before taking a long, slow drink from her mug. She was intentionally dragging out the moment. It was just like Valla to delay, if only to watch him squirm. “They both belong to the same man.
”
The ring and the letter, but no mention of the locket. Sal relaxed somewhat.
“They belong to the duke, yeah?” Sal said. He had assumed they must have belonged to the duke, but the hint of a smirk Valla showed made him think otherwise. “They didn’t belong to the duke?”
Valla flashed a coy smile.
“All right, out with it.”
“Andrej,” she said. “The ring and the letter, they belonged to Andrej.”
“Prince Andrej?” Sal asked.
“Do you know of another Andrej living in the High Keep?”
“But Andrej,” Sal said. “That makes no sense. Why Andrej?”
“Why not? The letter and the ring belonged to Andrej, and we set out to snatch the pair.”
“But why Andrej? I mean, why steal the letter and the ring? What good are they? Valla, what was in that letter?”
Valla shrugged easily. “Fuck if I know.”
“It just doesn’t make sense. I don’t see what good it would do to—unless,” Sal said as realization struck, “Luca means to blackmail the prince.”
“Ah, now there’s an interesting fucking angle, blackmail.”
“So Luca does mean to blackmail the prince?” Sal asked. “But why Andrej? He’s the duke’s youngest son. Why not the duke himself?”
Valla arched an eyebrow, and Sal took a moment to think it through.
“Two reasons, I suppose,” Sal said. “The duke would be a hard man to threaten, but his son, his youngest, weakest son, he might crack. The second: blackmail requires leverage of some sort, and it seems Luca found leverage on Andrej.”
Valla shook her head, smiling. “Why ask the questions if you only mean to answer them?”
Sal returned the smile. “Right, then, here’s the new sticking point. What does Luca mean to blackmail the prince for?
”
“Another good fucking question,” Valla said. “But you’re not asking right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Luca, he was only running the crew, he wasn’t backing the job. He was just the point man.”
“So, the backer,” Sal said. “Who was that?”
“How should I know? Luca runs the crew, not me.”
“And the High Keep job. It was all about blackmailing a prince?”
Valla shrugged. “Seems to me that’s the case.”
Sal shook his head skeptically. “And Anton—Lady’s sake, Pavalo for that matter—why were they done?”
“Word hasn’t come down so far as I’ve heard. But it’s like I said, seems to me they were done outside Commission sanction. Why not ask that uncle of yours? If anyone knows something, it would be Stefano.”
Sal sighed. “You don’t think Anton was, you know, the rat?”
“Anton?” Valla said. “Antonio Russo, a rat? I don’t see it. No, not Antonio.”
“And what of Luca?”
“What of him?” Valla asked.
“Tying up loose ends,” Sal said.
Valla fixed him with a level stare. “He wouldn’t be the first crew-point to do that on suspicion. I’d not put it past him, either. Not after Fabian.”
Sal nodded and stood.
“The fuck are you going?”
“I need to see a man about some wool. In the meantime, stay safe, Val. There’s something in the works that we don’t know about.”
Valla scoffed and took a swig from her mug.