Watcher of the Dead

Watcher of the Dead by J. V. Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Watcher of the Dead by J. V. Jones Read Free Book Online
Authors: J. V. Jones
that call
came from the Maiden. Sarcosa would leave and go to her and he, Angus
Lok, would never know.
    Angus lived to know. The Maiden was
hiding in this city and he needed to know where so he could send her
to hell. The woman who had slain his wife and daughters in cold blood
could not continue to live.
    He would die rather than allow it.
    Shifting his position, Angus warded
against numbness in his feet and legs. He needed to be ready to
depart any time. Any figure passing in the darkness might be Sarcosa.
    It was easy to find information once
you had a name. Surgeons needed income like everyone else. They could
not afford to keep themselves hidden. Inquiries, lightly pressed, at
the gold market north of the water gardens and the Great Round east
of the fortress had supplied the facts that Angus had needed. Sarcosa
lived on the east bank, on this street. He doctored an exclusive
clientele of lords and ladies, rich merchants, bankers, and
captains-of-the-guard. He was said to have paid visits to the
fortress. By several accounts he was a fine-looking man,
silver-haired, dignified, striking in his black cloak and boots. His
rooms were modest, as he chose to spend his money in other areas of
his life—young prostitutes, Angus understood—and because
of that, he rarely saw patients there. Sarcosa was a beck-and-call
surgeon, attending the rich and privileged of Morning Star. He came
to you.
    Armed with this information, Angus had
investigated the street. He was cautious in his movements, as he
could not rule out the possibility that the Phage knew exactly what
he knew. The surgeon’s rooms lay directly east of the water
gardens, the park of man-made canals, fountain walks and lily ponds
where the rich and well-dressed displayed themselves on fine days.
The street was quiet and boasted few businesses. Its character varied
depending on its closeness to the water gardens. West was good, east
bad. Drainage was a problem in the eastern section, and great ditches
and culverts had been dug to divert floodwater. The sheltering walls
of many of these culverts had attracted the most desperate men in the
city. As soon as Angus had spotted the community of ragged,
dirt-eating beggars on the far corner of the surgeon’s street,
he had begun to design a plan. The beggars stopped water from running
down their culvert by building a makeshift dam of scrap wood, rotten
clothing, animal hides and dung.
    If they could block water. He could
free it.
    It was easy. The west part of the
surgeon’s street lay below the high-water level of the Eclipse.
Break the floodwall downstream and water came pouring into the water
gardens and the street, blocking off roads to the north, west and
south. East was the direction the surgeon now had to turn to leave
his street. East to this crossroads, past the watcher who was waiting
there.
    Angus had followed Sarcosa on every
trip he had made over the last four days and nights, ghosting behind
him, an unremarkable figure in a dun-colored coat. The surgeon had
tended rich dowagers in their manses while Angus had stood outside in
the shadows, looking in. When the surgeon had taken dinner in a
well-favored tavern, Angus had waited at a safe distance, far down
the street but in sight of the tavern door. He had accompanied the
surgeon to a mummer’s show and followed him later as he stopped
at a small house to leech a patient. Later still the surgeon had
visited a pleasure hall. Angus joined him for the long walk home.
    When the sick called for Sarcosa he no
longer arrived alone. A shadow trailed him, sometimes at a distance
as far as three hundred feet. Look and you were unlikely to see it.
But the shadow always saw you.
    Angus barely slept. He ate scraps off
the street, bread slid from vendors’ stalls in passing, chunks
of boiled meat thrown into the culvert as a charity by the Bone
Priests. He drank the water. With every day he became more invisible,
as if dirt and raggedness

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