Read Online Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) by Matthew Colville - Free Book Online Page B

I ask more questions. I notice things. Like this was written under duress, that was written by someone writing down what someone was saying as they were saying it. I say things like ‘I don’t think this is what the guy said, I think he said something else, and whoever copied this down misheard him.’ He’s interested, but he never answers any of my questions and after a while he stops coming in, I think he said something to my uncle, I dunno. Too many questions, I thought.
    “Couple of weeks ago he comes in, tells me who he is, asks if I want to come work for him. Doing what, I ask. This,” Aiden gestured around the trampled mud of the courtyard. “Just look at things, think about what might have happened.
    “’Why?’ I ask.”
    Aiden looked from Fandrick to Rayk.
    “’Because you don’t think like a copper,’ he says. Ok? That’s the whole story. He hears about what happened here, he sends you two and a little while later, I don’t know why, he sends me. He tells me not to put up with any of your shit, I say ‘there’s not going to be any shit because I’m going to show up and start asking questions and they’re going to ignore me,’  no offense. I didn’t know who you were, I don’t know anyone, I just know how people are, and he says ‘tell  them you’re in charge and I said so and  if they don’t like it, good,’ and that was it and here I am, alright?”
    Fandrick sneered at him, but said nothing. “Alright,” Rayk said, and nodded.
    “So it’s not deathless, whatever it is,” the young special watchman said.
    “If you say so,” Rayk said.
    “But it seems like it to anyone who sees it and that’s good enough for now. So why does someone summon ghouls at a hanging in the morning.”
    “They want to kill a lot of people,” Rayk offered.
    Fandrick snorted. “Well they take the prize, then.”
    Aiden pointed at Rayk and squinted.
    “Rayk,” she said. “Fandrick,” she pointed to her partner.
    “Fandrick what do you think?” Aiden asked.
    Fandrick didn’t say anything for a little while.
    “Could have been an accident,” Fandrick said. “Ritual goes wrong or…or maybe someone has something, a reliquary, an artifact, they don’t know how it works, they come down here and try it out.”
    Rayk looked to Aiden.
    “That seems alarmingly plausible,” he said.
    “Alarming, why alarming?” Rayk asked.
    “You tell the castellan someone in the city can make this happen,” he indicated the morass, “and they don’t even know how they did it or why. See how he reacts.”
    “Yeah,” Rayk agreed. 
    “Let’s try it another way,” Aiden said. “If it weren’t an accident, then why? Why would someone do this?”
    Rayk sniffed. Pulled out a nail, fired it. “There’s someone in the crowd they want to drag,” she said, taking one herself, “and they don’t want anyone to know.”
    Aiden nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “They have the means to indiscriminately kill a lot of people, so they use it here.”
    “Indiscrim…what?” Fandrick asked.
    “Means they don’t care who gets killed. All these people die, fine, long as their man goes down.”
    “He went down alright,” Fandrick said.
    “Or she,” Aiden said.
    Rayk nodded. “Lotta women come to the hangings.”
    Fandrick looked at her. “Why?”
    She shrugged. “It’s mostly men getting hung.”
    “Huh,” Fandrick said, as though that explained it.
    “Maybe someone getting revenge on the hangman for someone he killed?” Aiden asked. “Kills people all day, that’s gotta make a lot of enemies.”
    Fandrick and Rayk looked at each other. Aiden noticed. “What?” he asked.
    “Hatchetman wears a hood,” Fandrick said. “So you don’t know who he is. There’s maybe twelve of them work for the watch. They got shifts, schedules. Just like ‘us,’” he sneered. “Wear the hood so no one knows who they are, which is which.”
    “Oh,” Aiden said. “Well, that makes sense.”
    “This is a lot of