The Last Resort (Highmast Series)

“That’s the thing about this city, Mags,” Hastra said bitterly, “It poisons us all in different ways.”

Maggi looked up at her anxiously as they strode through the sloping, cobbled streets of Highmast together. Hastra hadn’t been the same recently, and it was beginning to worry Maggi.

It started, she mused, on that day that Gregyr, the temporary leader of the Rat’s Nest crew, had gone missing. The crew had grown more anxious with each passing hour and Maggi had watched it all with bemusement. It had seemed to her that folks often disappeared in Highmast, especially down in the lower levels, and it wasn’t really worth making all this fuss. But that was the thing about the Rat’s Nest, they were…she wasn’t really sure of the right word… loyal? They seemed to genuinely care about what happened to each other.

Family, her mind whispered. They were like family. And families worried, apparently, when folks went missing unexpectedly.

The crew had scattered through the city when it became apparent that Gregyr was not returning, leaving Maggi to ‘guard the nest’ – code, she’d learnt, for leaving her out of things they thought too dangerous for her tender years. They'd only popped back in periodically to share the fact that they’d got no news, each time the half-hope they didn’t know they’d been clinging on to slipping further and further from their eyes, until the cramped and crowded lair had become stuffy with tension and misery.

That was when the note had arrived. It had been slipped in under the door of the Rat’s Nest, which was in itself worrying, for the magical wardings on the door should have stopped anyone un-listed from entering. The second worrying thing was the stench of death and corruption clinging to it, wafting oozily from the parchment as if it were on fire. The third and perhaps most worrying thing was the words scribbled upon it in scarcely legible spider-trails.

Gregyr is still alive for now, it read. He’s been badly poisoned and is close to death. Contact me for a trade.

It was not signed.

Apparently, it did not need to be because the crew looked at each other in horrified understanding.

“It’s got to be a trap, surely?” Calli, the bossy red-head, had said.

“We can’t take the chance that it isn’t,” Hastra had insisted.

“Dae the Dark always takes more than she gives, Hastra. She’s not offering us a trade out of the goodness of her heart.”

“I don’t care, Calli. Not when Gregyr’s life is on the line.” Hastra had glowered at Calli, her hands on her hips. Maggi had glowered at Calli too. She was never really sure if Calli and Hastra were friends or not, and she had decided not to like the red-head, just in case.

“We don’t know even know where Dae is these days,” Big Gristo, the one-eyed muscleman, had grunted.

 “She’ll be in the city somewhere. You couldn’t pry Dae out of this city with a crowbar. We just have to find her.”

Silence swam through the small, stuffy room, and everyone seemed to hold their breath at once.

“Yes,” Calli had said quietly at last. “You’re right, Hastra. We’ll find her. We have to.”

And that, it seemed had been that, as if Calli’s words meant more than Hastra’s somehow. The crew had gone tumbling out of the underground lair up into the streets above and this time Maggi had obstinately refused to be left behind.

She hurried her footsteps now, scurrying after Hastra as she strode around the city. Hasta had disguised herself as a Shortwalk today—one of the messengers that delivered missives around Highmast. She wore a brown leather jerkin and grey wool tunic, her thick black hair piled up underneath a tricorn hat and calf-high boots besmattered with grime, her gender indistinguishable beneath the mud. Maggi wore the same uniform in miniature, though hers was adorned with the blue cloak all the city apprentices wore. Well, she was an apprentice, she supposed, just not for the Shortwalk messengers.

Their uniform let them wander through all walks of the city unheeded, and it was a privilege they had taken full advantage of today. Maggi thought her spindly little legs might drop off, they were so tired, but even so, she quickened her pace a little now, trying to mimic Hastra’s willowy stride.

“Why do they call her Dae the Dark anyway?” she asked aloud. Hastra shrugged down at her.

“She’s a darkwitch. Oh, she’s not…bad, as such, but she touches the magics the mage-witches won’t and she trades in favours rather than gold, and that is always a dangerous currency. It never stops people from coming to her when they run out of other options though.” Her voice was light enough, but tense nonetheless. “Come on.”

She made an abrupt left turn and hurried down the sloping paths, along the back of the warehouses, to the edge of the slums and Maggi hurried to shadow her footsteps.

Though only eight or nine, Maggi had thought she knew all of the harbour city where she’d lived for all of her scanty life by now. She knew all of the silk-houses and gin dens down by the corpse canal, which threaded through the backstreets. She knew the warehouses, both those legitimate and…less legitimate…strictly guarded by the musclemen studded around the bay. She knew the wharfs and docks where the large merchant ships came in, and the smart harbours where the noblemen kept their private vessels. She knew the guild-houses, ale-houses and banking houses, the insurance men and the guardsmen. She had even occasionally ventured up the winding hill, over Main Bridge, to the nice part of town, where the looming presence of the Seasalt Palace watched over all the preening estates of the noblemen. She hadn’t thought there was any part of the harbour city that she didn’t know.

Today she had learnt better. Today, she had been to the towering messenger house in the merchant quarter, looking like a column holding up the open skies. She had been to the gaols where the guardsmen kept the low-level trouble makers of the city—somewhere she had always strenuously avoided before. She had been through a dozen different ale-houses she had never seen before, trading coins and promises for information or whispers of information about the elusive Dae the Dark. And each dead-end they found had only increased Hastra’s manic determination, and yet there still seemed to be acres of city left unexplored. Embarrassment scalded Maggi. How could I have been so arrogant to think I knew it all. I will never learn all of Highmast. The thought was both disheartening and yet, somehow, beautiful. This city is living, and growing and breathing and it will always keep its secrets.

The slums they ventured through now were especially grim, and that was coming from a sewer rat. The beggars lying in doorways and gutters were skeletal and apathetic, watching her through darkened, hooded eyes, folks that even the sewer gangs and silk-houses wouldn’t take.

 “Is this it?” Maggi asked as they eventually pulled to a stop in front of a hovel. Even ‘hovel’ was a generous term for the poorly constructed windowless shack falling apart before their eyes.

“Let’s hope so,” Hastra said grimly. A knife had materialised in her hand like magic, and she applied it to the lock on the door.

Thick black smoke began pouring out the door, sharp with the acrid smell of burnt, corrupted magic. It was nothing like the mage-witch spells Maggi had ever seen. Hastra tried to wave it away, but it clung to her thickly, and when Maggi tried to pull Hastra away, the smoke forced its way into her mouth, nose and eyes too, clinging to her skin like vicious, nebulous hands clawing its way into her body. Maggi fell to the floor, covering her head with her hands, but it didn’t stop the smoke.

“Dae,” Hastra choked out, falling to her knees. “Please, it’s Hastra. We got your note. We’ve come to trade.”

The smoke cleared instantly and Maggi looked up through streaming eyes to see an icicle of a woman, standing there in the doorway, looking down at them, tall, thin, and so pale that she seemed half a ghost already. There was no way to tell how old she was. Although the veins bulged out through her thin skin in blue streaks across her arms, and her hair drifted up off her head like pale white wisps of smoke, she stood unbent above them and her skin was not wrinkled. Even her eyes were cloudy white. The same foul smell that had clung to the note surrounded her—as if all her internal organs were rotting inside that pale, unblemished body. She smiled a surprisingly charming smile.

“I would have thought you knew better than to try to force your way into my home, Hastra. You know I take care of myself.” Her voice was easy and melodious and seemed much younger than her white hair suggested.

“I wasn’t sure it was really you. We’ve been chasing your shadow all day.”

“Oh yes?” Her white eyes turned to Maggi, who flinched back out of the way. “And who’s the kid?”

Hastra staggered back to her feet, still wheezing out the last of the smoke.

“This is our new apprentice, Maggi. I can vouch for her”

“A sewer rat, I see.”

Maggi bristled. She had scrubbed off the scent of the sewers a dozen times or more, she couldn’t still smell like it now. But a long, thin finger only pointed to the slight bulge in Maggi’s tunic pocket and the secreted scrap of bread Maggi had hidden there.

“Sewer brats always horde food,” Dae said. “They never know when they’re going to eat next.”

Maggi burnt, not sure if she was being mocked or not. She burnt even brighter when Hastra said:

“We’ve been trying to break her of the habit, Dae, but these things take time.”

She hadn’t realised the other crew members had noticed her subtle scrounging.

Hastra straightened up, brushing the last of the smoke off of her Shortwalk uniform.

“You have Gregyr, Dae? Let me see him.”

“Let's trade first.”

“Come on, you know better than that. We have to see the goods before we make a deal.”

Dae considered her for a long time and then took a step back. Maggi shuffled closer to Hastra apprehensively, but Hastra just gave her a grim smile of encouragement and pushed her way into the hovel.

The smell was even worse, within. It was so thick that Maggi choked upon it, heaving and retching against the stench. Even the sewers smelled better than this.

Hastra barely seemed to notice it. She had hurried over to the figure stretched out in a fetid bundle of shawls and blankets. There were strange pearl-like black beads of liquid on his skin, pulsating gently in oily darkness.

Maggi went to poke one, but Dae clutched onto her wrist with a surprisingly firm grip.

“They are sucking the poison out, child. You don’t want to touch those.”

“Who poisoned him?” Hastra asked, her eyes running over Gregyr anxiously. Maggi looked down at him, too.

Poor Gregyr was a mess. His skin was grey and gaunt, stretched tight over his bones. His mess of thick, iron-grey hair was flat and thin now, sticking to his head in lank and sweaty rat-tails. Hastra stroked it aside gently, her eyes welling up with tears.

“I’m not sure,” Dae said. “I thought perhaps you could tell me.”

“We don’t know. Gregyr went out to deal with a client and never came home. We don’t know who she was, he wouldn’t give us her name.”

Dae tutted under her breath.

“I thought Gregyr would know better than that. He’s not usually so foolish.”

“We’ve all been making foolish decisions lately…” Hastra stopped herself. She rubbed her hands over her face. “Where did you find him, anyway?”

“His body was found in the corpse canal and Henkin owed me a favour.”

Hastra hesitated, looking up at the dark-witch.

“He wasn’t…” she paused and rephrased it carefully. “He was still alive when you brought him here, wasn’t he, Dae?”

Dae laughed grimly, and again, Maggi shuffled closer to Hastra.

“Well, you know what they say about dark-witches, don’t you? They’ll stoop to anything. Wouldn’t stop at a bit of necromancy, would they?”

“Answer the question, Dae,” Hastra insisted tersely.

“Yes, he was still alive. Just. He’s a stubborn one, that one.”

Maggi couldn’t tell if Dae was telling the truth or not. She looked up at Hastra, hoping to find a clue in her expression, but Hastra was clearly feeling conflicted, too. After a tense moment, Hastra clearly decided she didn’t want to prod any further on that issue, because she said:

“And what is it that you want to trade, Dae?”

“Duchess Rike’s purball necklace.”

The words echoed through the small hovel almost smugly. It was an impossible trade, and even Maggi knew it. Purball stones were charmed to hide important documents within them, deeds, wills, legal bargains. They were worth more than diamonds and were guarded appropriately. The Rikes' whole fortune lay strung around the Duchess’ neck and she had mage-witch attendants guarding and protecting her daily. There was no way even an expert thief and con-artist like Hastra could get within ten feet of it.

“And what would you want with it anyway, Dae? You could hardly claim the lands even if you owned the deeds.”

“My business is my own. But if you want Gregyr’s life returned to you, you’ll do as I say. I could always return the poison to him, if you prefer. That’s the wonderful thing about leechcraft, Hastra, it flows both ways,” she said sweetly, and Hastra cursed under her breath. She looked down at Gregyr, still lying limply by the fireside.

“I will need to discuss this with the crew,” she said, getting to her feet. “I cannot make a trade that large without agreeing it with everyone.”

“You’d better hurry, Hastra. I might not still be here by tomorrow…” Dae warned. "That's the other thing about dark-witches, isn't it? We like to disappear." She laughed again, sweet and melodious, but it sent the hairs on the back of Maggi's neck prickling.

Hastra sent one last look at Gregyr, nodded tersely and then beckoned Maggi away. Maggi gratefully scurried out of the hovel and the thick black smoke sealed the door shut behind them as they left.

“Gregyr always said he was going to get out,” Hastra said softly to her as they hurried back to the Rat’s Nest to find the others. “He always said he was going to retire somewhere quiet to the country and leave Highmast behind one day. I suppose I should have known better than to believe him. Folks never truly escape Highmast. It gets into your chest like rot, and into your mind like madness, and it lingers in you. He’d have left if he wanted to, but somehow, you never really do. The thing about this city, is it poisons everything it touches,” Hastra said again, just as she had done an hour earlier. They turned out of the alleyway out into the shaded sunlight beyond. “But if you live here long enough, sometimes you get to learn the antidotes, too.”

Maggi looked up at Hastra, still struggling to hide her grief and fear beneath a taut smile. I really hope you’re right, she thought.