Something just for website visitors

Devoted readers may remember Moc Mien, AKA Theiner, Amra's oldest friend(?) and gang leader in Bellarius. Well, he's getting his own story, and it will be available right here on the website, chapter by chapter. Updates will be irregular, but I'm hoping they will be weekly.

Without further ado, here's Chapter one!

Chapter One: THE MARSH FOLK

The marsh folk. The fucking marsh folk. Theiner wanted to be sitting in a marsh hut surrounded by the bastards about as much as he wanted to pull his own fingernails out using only his teeth. But for the prize was after, he’d do either.

Hells, he’d do both.

Every gods-damned last one of the mudfeet was related to all the others. They fought amongst themselves like rats in a bag, but would drop their internal squabbles in an instant to face an outside threat. You didn’t fight a marsh boy, and you didn’t fuck a marsh girl. Not if you wanted to keep your ball sack attached.

Luckily, they had little interest in city folk or city ways, by and large, beyond business. They bought and sold, like anyone else. Marsh eels were a delicacy, and wheat was hard to come by in the marsh, after all. All manner of trade moved through the marsh, in both directions. The most profitable of it was the kind where somebody didn’t feel like paying customs, or hearing the word ‘contraband’. The marsh folk were the middle-men between coastal smugglers and city customers, and had been for time out of mind. Anything that was best off not showing up at the docks was almost certainly poled into the city on a flatboat in the dead of night.

And so he was sitting in a fucking mud hut on stilts, at the crack of dawn, drinking something that had missed being sieved before it got corked and working on making a deal with the Marsh Lord that would change everything.

If he pulled it off.

Geraint Hiw was a fat hairy fuck with eyes set too close together and fewer teeth than he should reasonably possess. He was sitting across from Theiner in a nest of moldy carpets and furs that he’d burrowed himself into, tick-like. Between them was a hole in the plank floor big enough to be thrown into, and a few inches down from there was the marsh.

Behind Theiner were a half-dozen of the marsh boys. He hadn’t been offered any of their names, and wouldn’t have remembered any if he had. They all looked and smelled alike, and none of it was pleasant to the senses. They weren’t there to add anything but menace to the negotiation. What they lacked in teeth and, occasionally, fingers, they more than made up for in knives and clubs and the hooked, pointy-tipped frog giggers.

Asenith Hiw, on the other hand, was there to offer a distraction.

She was Geraint’s only child, and for all intents and purposes she was a fucking princess. It was hard to imagine she had come from marsh-folk stock. Oh, she had the black hair and the pale skin, but she was tall and graceful and luscious, and clean. More importantly, there was a knowingness behind her eyes, an awareness of self and surroundings. The fact that one eye was emerald green and the other citrine brown made her more alluring, to his mind, and more off-putting all at once.

She sat to her father’s left and a little behind, just out of the marsh lord’s sight. She dressed prim enough for a marsh girl, if exposing a scandalous amount of leg and bosom. Scandalous if he had been a properly raised city boy.

He hadn’t been.

She knew her role. To distract, just enough. To unbalance, if possible. To disconcert, if appropriate. She was good at it. She’d positioned herself in what little light filtered in from the smoke-hole in the roof. It illuminated her and her too-thin, too-loose, too low-cut blouse well enough, especially when she leaned forward to scratch what seemed to be a persistent itch on her shapely ankle.

Geraint and Theiner had been drinking for nearly an hour. It was silent drinking. The only thing Geraint had said to him so far was “Fucking drink, you city cunt.”

Theiner had taken the proffered jug and matched the small man, swallow for swallow. The only thing he had said, and that only after the first jug, was “tastes like eel piss.”

They were on their third jug now.

Finally, Hiw gave a loud belch and sat up straighter in his nest.

“I like you, Moc Mien. You don’t talk too fucking much. Most of you city cunts can’t shut the fuck up for the life of yous.”

“There’s time for talking, and time for drinking. And times for other things.”

“Well it’s talking time now. First things first. Do you want to fuck my daughter?”

Theiner gave a half-smile. “She’s fine, Geraint Hiw. Finer than she has any right to be, especially coming out of your cock. but I don’t aim to so much as touch her.”

“And why’s that?”

Theiner had to thread the needle. On the one side was insult, and on the other was pride.

“There’s three kids of women for a man like me. The first kind is one you pay to fuck, and then to fuck off. That ain’t Asenith. The second kind is the kind you keep in a cage and buy pretty things for, for when you have time away from... business. Your daughter don’t look like the type to be kept. She’d fucking break the cage, shit on my head, and fly off.” He took a heavy swig of eel piss and waited for Hiw to ask about the third. Hiw didn’t disappoint.

“You’re missing the third kind, Moc Mien.”

“The third kind of woman for a man like me is the kind you go to war for. The kind you slit throats for. The kind you burn down cities for, just to see her smiling in the flames.” He leaned forward and looked directly at Asenith. “Everybody knows you can’t take a marsh girl out of the marsh, and if you try it, it means war.” He looked back at her father. “I ain’t about to start a war for a girl who, for all I know, might think my face looks like hammered shit.”

Geraint scratched at his chest and considered Theiner’s words. He turned to his daughter.

“Do you think this city fuck looks like hammered shit, daughter?”

“No, Da.” She smiled at Theiner. It was not an innocent smile.

“If he was to come courting you, would you entertain him, girl?”

Asenith searched Theiner’s face. “I would not, Da,” she finally said.

“And why is that, daughter?”

“Because I think he would start a war for the woman he loved. If he loved.” Her face grew serious, even contemplative. “Maybe he loves somebody. Probably he loves somebody. But it ain’t me.” She paused for a moment, then spoke again, quieter. “Maybe I should be glad of that.”

“Talking to the trees, just like yer mother. Any fucking way, don’t try and fuck my daughter, Moc Mien, and we can be friends.”

“You’ve got my word, but I can’t say it’s without a little regret.”

“So, friend, what the hells do you want?”

Theiner put his jug aside, with more than a little relief.

“I want to skull-fuck Biter. I was hoping you could help me make that happen.”

Hiw blinked. “I’m not saying I’m fond of the old runny turd,” he said after a moment, “but I am saying we’ve been making each other a lot of coin for a long time. Why should I put a boot in now? And more to the point, why for you?”

“Because I’m going to bring you something you’ve wanted for a long time, and haven’t yet managed to get.”

Hiw laughed, exposing none-too-clean teeth. “You’ll find few men more satisfied in life than me, Moc Mien. I’ve got everything I want.”

“You don’t have Lord Horn’s fucking head.”

Hiw went still. Behind him, Asenith smiled. It was the most vicious smile Theiner had ever seen.

Geraint Hiw shrugged off his furs and carpets and sat up straight.

“You do that, Moc Mien, and we can talk terms. Favorable terms. When you give me that fucker’s noggin. Until I have Horn’s head in my lap staring up at me, you and your Red Threads can fuck right off.”

Theiner knew a dismissal when he heard it. He stood, looked Asenith straight in the eye and gave her a small bow just for the fuck of it, and left the hut without another word.

The flatboatman who had brought him was still waiting, picking his teeth with a fish bone and scratching his ribs. Theiner stepped aboard and sat down, and the man pushed off from the weathered dock and began to pole them back to civilization.

“Done then,” the man said after a time.

“For now. I’ll be back in a day or two.”

“Then I’ll take ye.”

Theiner nodded.

“Seen her, then,” the man said after a stretch.

“I did.”

“Fine as porcelain, that one.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Her momma had the Sight.”

“Was she not marsh folk, then?” Theiner had never heard of a mudfoot with any magic, old blood or new.

“She was not. Not by blood anyway. Foundling, is what they say. They say the Old Man of the Marsh himself put her in the arms of the chief-that-was, a babe wrapped in a sea-silk swaddling cloth. ‘S what they say, anyway. Anyhap, Asenith’s momma knew things, sure enough, queer things, and her daughter’s just the same.”

Theiner grunted. The marsh folk loved a good story.

“Sight or not,” he eventually said, remembering her feral smile, “she’s one woman I wouldn’t care to upset.”

~ ~ ~

Eighty percent of the cargo smuggled in by Hiw’s people, Theiner had long ago estimated, was brought in under an agreement with the top three crews in Bellarius. The Biters, Lilyflame and the Black Heart crews ruled the underworld, and had for decades.

The Triumvirate, or just the Trium in the street, had had a stranglehold on the black market for decades. The Gentry, with their deep pockets, had been their best customers. The Blacksleeves had been on the payroll of the Triumvirate, and hadn’t even bothered to hide the fact. It had been so since before he was born.

But then the world had got turned upside down. Or at least Bellarius had, and that was about as much of the world as Theiner had any active interest in.

With the assassination of the Syndic and the Telemarch, civil war had bloomed in the City on the Mount, hot and bloody. More important to Theiner and the other crews in Bellarius, the Blacksleeves ceased to be.

Some got taken by the Just Men, or whatever the fuck they were calling themselves these days. The revolutionists decorated the docks with impaled Blacksleeve corpses, and if anybody shed a tear, they did it in private. Some of Bellarius’s lawmen got drafted into one or another of the Gentry armies. Some’d simply lit out for parts unknown. Whatever. The Blacksleeves had gone from one of the most brutal and corrupt police forces on the Dragonsea to a bad memory almost overnight, and nothing had yet been put in place to fill the void.

The Northern League coalition forces that had eventually brought a rough order to the city were interested in stopping riots and hunting down revolutionaries, not policing crime. Or making back room deals with the crews who controlled vice in Bellarius, come to that. Not yet at least.

The Gentry, though somewhat lessened in number, were still around and still had most of the money. Those who had fled the ‘unpleasantness’ quick enough to keep their heads were returning, now that the Northern League had driven the revolutionists back underground. Those Gentry who’d perished in the early revolutionary fervor all seemed to have country cousins to inherit their titles and their towers at the top end of the Girdle.

Those hayseed cousins quickly discovered the attractions and appetites of a Great City, and having no frame of reference, were generally more than happy to pay greater sums for satisfaction than their executed relations had. It was a good time to be in the bad business. Every crew had more.

Theiner didn’t want more. He wanted it all, tied up in a fucking bow.

~ ~ ~

“Hardside, then,” the boatman said rather unnecessarily as he poled up to one of the the shitty, ramshackle, very informal docks that connected the marsh to the city. Theiner dug a silver and a gold mark out of his pocket and passed them to the man.

“That’s too much.”

“Silver’s for today. Gold’s for you to take no custom but me for the next three days. When I come back, I won’t want to be waiting.”

“Well enough. You know where to find me.”

Chapter Two: THE MARE

“Go fuck yourself, Moc Mien,” Dolly greeted him as soon as he walked through the door to the Mare.

“Nice to see you too, Dolly. You’re up early. Or is it late?” He cut her a glance as he hung his coat on the rack by the door. She wasn’t dressed for work, not that she should be at that hour. Her copper hair was in a bun, and her face was free of cosmetics. She was wearing cotton instead of silk. Not the outfit of a working girl. But she had definitely come on business.

“Eat shit.”

“Not really a breakfast person.”

“You want to tell me why you sent your fucking bean counter to tell me a joke that was about as funny as the clap?”

“Do I strike you as a comedian, Doll? Does Oran, for that matter?” Theiner asked as he made his way to his private office, past Hurk and Fallow who were dicing in a corner. He took in the rest of the Mare with a quick glance. Four straits were sitting at the bar, looking varying shades of nervous. They were obviously waiting to have a word. Being a crew boss meant dealing with whatever fuckery arose in the crew’s territory, now more than ever since the Blacksleeves were history.

They could wait.

Jural was sprawled out on the quickly disintegrating couch they’d taken as debt repayment, drinking from a jug and casually bleeding onto the floral embroidery from a gash in his forearm.

“You alright?” Theiner asked the small man.

“Right as rain, boss. Just a scratch.”

“Then fucking clean it and bind it, you lush. We just got that gods damned couch not two weeks ago.” Thiener shook his head and continued on to his office, Dolly dogging his steps, a petite cloud of hate and expensive perfume at his back.

Red was on duty. The bald, ugly, heavily muscled man opened the door for him, and he went to his desk and sat. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and let it out slow in an effort to shift his mind from future plans to the here and now of day-to-day business.

When he opened his eyes again, he opened them on Dolly standing at the door, fists on hips and fury in her eyes. Furious or not, she knew not to enter without an invitation. Or even speak to him until he bid her. Outside his door was, at least notionally, the Mare – a public house open to all. Once you stepped past the threshold into Theiner’s office, you were very much standing in Red Threads territory, and the rules were different, and more brutal.

“You were saying?”

“You need to reverse your dim-witted decision, Moc Mien.”

“Oran doesn’t count beans, he counts coin. Your sisters don’t bring in enough, he tells me, and Oran is many unpleasant things, but never wrong when it comes to money. Sit.”

“This is not acceptable. You’re cutting our throats.” Dolly threw herself into in the visitor’s chair and leaned forward, putting her elbows on the desk, which gave him a prime view of her ample bosom. It might have been inviting if she hadn’t been staring daggers at him.

He let a little grit into his voice. “That we are not. If we were, you wouldn’t be here giving me shit far too early in the morning. You’d be in a ditch, bled out, wearing a second smile. Have a care with your fucking metaphors, Doll.”

Give her credit, she didn’t shrink back or show fear. But her next words lacked the previous heat. And volume.

“It’s too much.”

He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk, causing her to recoil. After the marsh, the soles of his boots were approximately as clean as the souls of those in the room.

“Well then, I suppose you’ll just have to accept the unacceptable. If you and the girls want to stand on any of my street corners, that is.”

“Sten charged half what you’re asking, Moc Mien.”

“First off, I’m not asking. Second, Sten was stupid, and is now dead. Third, and most importantly if you ask me, Sten was a lazy, useless piece of shit who charged you that half in return for fuck-all. When you and your sisters pay me protection, you actually get protection. If it turns out a john is a fucking twist, he fucking disappears and he never comes back.

“Lastly, none of my crew will be demanding any side payments, not in coin nor in trade, and if they try it, all you have to do is tell me and I’ll serve you their balls on a plate.” He opened his hands and gave a small shrug. “If you don’t like the terms, the sisterhood is welcome to sling their wares anywhere else they like that’s not my fucking territory, and no hard feelings.”

Dolly shook her head. “Double is too much. Some of the sisters could barely make Sten’s fee.” The last had the tone of an admission, one she preferred not to make. To Theiner, it was the whole point.

“Then they should be out of the game, Dolly. This is not a charity. If they’re too old or to fucking ugly to sell snatch, they need to find another line of work.”

“What other line?” she spat, eyes flashing.

In answer, he pointed to the crewman who was guarding the door. “Red.”

“Yeah boss.”

“Have I made you money since I started leading this shit-brained crew?”

“A fuckload, boss.”

“And what would happen if I stopped making you and the lads money?”

“We’d get rid of you, boss.” Everybody knew a crew boss only left his position one way - as cooling meat. It was for life. How long that life turned out to be depended almost entirely on how successful the crew was under their leadership.

He turned back to Dolly. “You and the other sisters want to start a retirement fund, I’m all for it. Hells, I’ll even pay in personally. But the fee doubles starting tonight. No more discussion.” The truth was, once the slappers had cleared out, the rest of the sisters would start to make more money. Substantially more. He suspected Dolly knew it, but still had enough decency to pretend she didn’t.

His doubling of the protection fee would drive the going rate up. The clearing out of those working girls who were too old, diseased or ugly to be in the game would leave fewer choices for the johns, but better-looking, healthier girls could naturally charge higher prices without much complaint, and even if the johns did complain, they'd still pay. And when the wares on display improved, the girls'd get a class of customer with deeper pockets, and likely better hygiene. Once word got out, that was. Which he would make sure happened.

Dolly stood up. “You’re a cold son of a bitch, Moc Mien.”

He shrugged. “It’s a cold world, Dolly. You can sell your body ten times for a copper a throw, or once for ten. I know which I’d choose.”

“You think I work for coppers?”

“You? Not a chance. It’s the ones that do I want to see the back of.”

She almost spat on the floor, but thought better of it at the last instant. She turned to go.

“Dolly.”

She turned back to face him, her jaw tight. “What?”

“You’re too quality to be working the street. And too sharp.”

“The fuck is it to you? You want to set me up in my own room?”

“No. I want to put you in charge of the Scepter. The perfumed side of it, anyway.”

Her hard look gave way to one of suspicion. “Last I heard, that was Biter property.”

“Listen again in two days. Keep it to yourself until then.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it, Moc Mien,” she replied after a moment, then pushed past Red, slamming the door on her way out.

“Boss,” Red said after the echo had died. Theiner grunted in reply.

“Why’d you let her talk to you like that?” Red had seen his crew leader cut men just for looking at him wrong.

Theiner gave a small shrug. “She’s just trying to look out for her people, same as me. Unlike me, she’s too soft to cut out the dead wood. Or at least not sufficiently motivated. Later, when business picks up, she’ll forgive me. Or at least forget she hates me.”

“You really gonna give her the Scepter?”

“Maybe. Not the tables, just the rooms upstairs.” He stretched his arms, and his back. “Gonna need new management.”

If Dolly took the step up off the streets, he’d know she was sufficiently hard to do the job properly. Probably. If she didn’t, well then she didn’t.

But she would.

Nobody stayed on the streets if they could help it. That’s one thing every street rat knew, down in their bones.

“Why do you care what a whore thinks?” Red wasn’t bright, even by crew standards, but unlike most of Theiner’s crew he had a curiosity.

“Never piss off the working girls. Not permanently, anyway. There is no better source of information. And information can flow in many directions if you’re not careful.”

He watched Red’s homely face as he chewed that. It seemed to be too big a bite to swallow.

“If you say so, boss.”

An impatient knock sounded at the door, and then Oran bustled in from the small, tidy room in the attic of the Mare where he practiced the dark arts of accountancy. He was not a big man, but he was whip-lean, and he was a full member of the crew, which meant he’d got his blade wet. Oran sat down in the chair Dolly had just vacated.

“That woman said unpleasant things to me,” he said.

“Well then that makes two of us,” Theiner replied.

“The Cive matter.” Oran jumped from topic to topic with no warning or transition. His mind was like a brightscale in the shallows; darting and fast and nearly uncatchable. Theiner had got used to it. It put others off.

“Last we spoke, that was settled on the money end. Has something changed?”

“No. It’s still settled. But that’s twelve percent of our sinking fund. The boys have expressed concern.”

“The boys, eh?” Theiner pulled a bottle and two glasses from a drawer and set them on the table. He poured out two short ones. Oran waved his away, and Theiner pushed it towards him. The price for disingenuousness. Oran didn’t like to drink; it slowed those darting thought down.

“Most of the boys haven’t the least clue what a sinking fund is, and most of them would be quite surprised to learn that we had one if they were informed of such.” Theiner sipped, and waited.

Oran took his glass in hand, put the contents back in one shot, and pushed the turned-over glass back at Theiner.

“You took me on to make sure this crew never went into the red.”

“I did, yes. And because I saw what you did to Havrem Merdh with my own eyes.” Havrem Merdh had been practically unrecognizable when Oran had finished with him, and had deserved it by all accounts.

“Cive is a money pit. A bottomless one. He’s addicted to the cards, and he’s got the brains of a gull. He’ll be bankrupt within a year. Less. You’ll never see that money back.”

“I know all that.”

“I know you do, but it had to be said. I don’t know what your plan is, and I don’t have to, but it had to be said.”

“So what’s the problem then, Oran? Just speak it plain.”

“I don’t like taking from the sinking fund, Moc Mien. That’s not what it’s for.”

“A sinking fund is for the repayment of debt. We are repaying Cive’s debt.”

“A sinking fund is for the gradual repayment of a debt, not all at once, and this particular sinking fund is for the Mews, not Lord Cive’s cack hand at cards.”

Theiner sighed. “How much money do you think the Scepter brings in on the daily?”

Oran took the abrupt change in topic in stride. “Gross or net?”

“Take-home, Oran.”

“I’d estimate five hundred marks on a bad night, ten times that on a good one.”

“Well then now you have some figures to estimate how long it will take to replenish twelve percent of the sinking fund.”

“These two things are connected.”

“Very much so. And when lordling Cive throws away his new lease of life at the card table again, we will be there for him, again – only that time, it will cost him his shipping business. Now, have I explained enough to calm the waters of your disturbed ledgers?”

By rights, he didn’t have to explain any of his decisions as crew boss. In reality, any crew boss who started acting like a tyrant would soon enough find himself bleeding out in an alley, or getting acquainted with the mud at the bottom of the marsh. When it came to money, he needed Oran safely in his corner. The rest of the crew might be indifferent at arithmetic, but Oran was decidedly not, and they listened to him unquestioningly when it came to matters of the purse.

“Alright, boss,” Oran finally said. “But next time not the sinking fund.”

“Fair enough. Now fuck off, eh? And send in the first straight on your way.”

The first straight was a tailor with a shop down on Timber. He was a withered fellow whose fingers worked the brim of the half-hat in his lap like it would save his mortal soul. He had a problem with light-fingered kids in the neighborhood. Theiner made a note and promised to see to it.

When you paid the Red Threads protection, you got protection; it was just good business sense to Theiner’s mind. It kept the citizenry from begrudging overmuch what they had no choice but to pay. There was only so much good will a crew could ever hope to build up, but there was a lot of ill will they could avoid by not being rapacious, and by sorting out problems no one else could or would.

Still, it was fucking tedious, the petitions. It also kept the bread and butter of most crews, barring the Triumvirate, coming – so he took it seriously.

The next two brought him problems that were just as mundane, but the last man had a problem that caught his attention.