City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [28]
Voices came to him through the hubbub as a few masked men nodded in his direction, or even stood up to give him vague acknowledgement. Others turned back to their tables, their faces anonymous behind their masks.
This place was a sort of decrepit tavern extending into a former marketplace, and had become a hang-out for mainly the two largest street gangs in Villiren – the Screams and his own, the Bloods. You could buy yourself the best of anything down here. Blades and drugs, ultra-strong alcohol and women, as well as decent cuts of reindeer and seal, or the more nutritious types of seaweed, for variety.
Three of his youngest recruits, none of them older than twelve, stood giggling over a crate of porno-golems. ‘Put those fucking things down!’ Malum shouted. ‘They’re not for you. Get out of here.’
He cuffed one lad around the ears and the three scampered off. Sighing, he realized his work here was endless.
Two of his men sauntered over to him, JC and Duka. The young red-headed brothers had been there from the beginning, when his business activities had turned to the darker side of life. Always ready to hand when he needed men to call in credit or clear up debts, they’d become his surrogate family early on, turning from callow boys into men he could trust. More to the point, they too had been bitten.
JC and Duka were now in their late twenties, and equally tall, but JC always wore a black mask while Duka wore none. They could almost have been twins, otherwise, but JC had tribal-motif tattoos all over his neck and chest, and possessed the most ferocious blue eyes, while his brother’s were green. JC therefore looked the tougher of the two, but in reality he was more mellow, even slightly spiritual, and this helped to disguise his alcoholism. The brothers had been through a lot together – turf wars and smuggling and suffering bad drug trips, and they treated Malum like a wiser, older brother. They came from a vast family and Malum had always been welcome at their table after he was first bitten – they helped to set him straight again.
He now greeted them both in hand-slang, fingers and palms crossing according to the old code.
JC spoke first: ‘Malum, how’s it going? Thought you was working with those soldiers.’
‘Not until midday,’ Malum growled. ‘I was hoping to meet up with Dannan first. Seen him anywhere around?’ The man he spoke of was the bastard son of a banshee, a man who consequently called himself a banHe.
‘Not seen him,’ Duka confessed, burying his hands back in his pockets.
‘Anything important?’ JC slurred, and Malum could detect an alcoholic glaze in his eyes.
‘Some union activity we need to interrupt. And I just wanted to make sure we’re in agreement before we go to meet the soldiers.’
Duka muttered, ‘None of us give a damn about what those soldiers are up to.’
‘We might not have a choice in the end, and that’s what I’m afraid of. Don’t even know what it is they’re fighting. They suspect trouble’s on its way here so who knows what they’ll want from us.’
‘Hey, will you need us all to fight too?’ Duka said.
Malum wasn’t a military man, and he had no concern about the Empire. His own turf was all he cared about. ‘Forget about it for now.’
‘Right,’ JC muttered. ‘Hey, last night we got ourselves a crate of pirated relics off a dealer who said he’d just been to Ysla.’
‘Where’s he now?’ Malum asked.
‘Dead,’ JC replied, as Duka disappeared down one of the nearby passageways. ‘We dumped him in the harbour last night with his coat pockets full of masonry.’
‘You drink him first?’ Members of his gang had a habit of draining their victims before Malum himself could get to question them.
‘Nah, he smelled of bad blood – cultist-tainted or something.’
Malum grunted a laugh. ‘Are the relics any good? I don’t want any of