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CHAPTER 1

 I waited, squatting in the shadows cast by the old warehouse on which I leaned. Sheets of rusted metal were nailed onto the timber frame to create makeshift walls. The old warehouse was a tall building, once used by herb dealers to pack and ship herbs to healers, apothecaries or food handlers. Inside the prisoner screamed as my Tool worked him over. I scraped the dirt from under my fingernails with my small punch knife and tried to block out Marv’s stomach churning sound. The scream, gargled and strained rang out in my ears; it made me picture what Dole was doing to him. I closed my eyes in attempt to block out the pictures of the interrogation and the sound of Marv but that only made it worse, flashes of images crossed my mind, of bodies, thousands of them, piled up in mass graves. They were on fire. The smell of their burning flesh suddenly consumed my senses once more. The smoke, black as night, billowed from their burning bodies and created a cloud which blocked the high sun.

 I screwed up my face and blocked out anymore sickening thoughts. My time in the Royal Guard was something of a distant memory, one I’d rather forget but can’t. It made my line of work very hard, I was a Hunter now, of information, items and people, sometimes people held out on me, pain was the natural result but pain meant screaming and blood and memories.

 I left the army soon after Ragstaffe; I couldn’t handle it anymore, the killing, the burning, and the blood. That was when I took refuge in the slums of Seren.

 The City of Seren wasn’t a pleasant one. A proud history overshadowed by a troubled present. For the Royals the high life was nothing new, they ate their meat, drank their wine and sat in luxury. Their palaces and manors were filled with expensive trinkets and items which granted comfort rather than survival. They were ignorant of what lay beneath their high life. The criminal underworld was a living, breathing organism. It flowed and moved and survived off careful organisation and people performing roles to keep things running smoothly. The Royals only thought of us as scum, as petty thieves who kill, torture and mug each other down here in the slums of Seren, but they’re wrong. They don’t realise how far our reach goes and how much grip we have on the throats of people in power. We’re so much more. Some of us are trained assassins, some are skilled craftsman when it comes to forgery, blacksmiths and healers, and some are even great politicians who, if their past was forgiven, would be granted a seat at the Table of Lords. The Royals don’t know too much about us, and that’s the way it should be.

 I scowled at the morning’s sun that had just appeared over the rooftops of South Seren; it trickled down the straight faced, terraced buildings. A light fog had spread over the uneven streets giving an eerie feel to the morning. The wet stones that paved the pathway between the low story buildings shone an almost black in the sun’s light. People hurried passed the warehouse as they went about their daily routines afraid of the noises within. Now and then someone would open their shutters and tip waste onto the pathways. It is because of this and the history of the warehouse that the still, moist air smelt of s**t and piss and also had a tinge of spice that gave a light burning sensation to my nostrils every time I inhaled. The sky was a murky red smudged with orange and light blue �" a pallet of colours I always hated.

I rubbed the back of my neck to ease the pain that had grown over the past few hours. The feeling of numbness had started to spread through my legs and my back was feeling like someone had kicked me repeatedly.

 The door to my right scraped open and out stepped Dole. His small, hazel coloured eyes squinted from beneath his bushy brown brows. Dole was an interrogator and a regular Tool of mine. He stood as wide as the door frame; he wore brown trousers with braces that stretched over his broad shoulders which seemed to pack muscle upon muscle, so much so that his neck had almost disappeared. Any neck left was hidden beneath his wiry beard. His hard face screwed up in the light.

 “Mornin’ already?” he rubbed his red stained hands on his leather apron; they seemed to scrape over the apron’s surface, rough hands from a lifetime of labour.

 “Marv talking?” I nodded to inside the warehouse.

 Dole shook his bald head which was wet with sweat. “Got another lead?”

 I shook my head as I stood and tucked my knife into my belt. Dole stepped aside, holding the door as I entered. The smell of herbs intensified. I was used to this smell though, I’ve had to visit this warehouse on several occasions, all of my interrogations happened here.

 Sat in the middle of the empty warehouse was a man. Marv. Blood covered him from head to toe. Dole came in and stood next to me. Light shone through the windows of the warehouse, they were set high up on the walls and poured onto the concrete ground.

 I looked at Dole with a raised eyebrow.

 Dole shrugged his meaty shoulders.

 I walked over to the naked body, stepping lightly through the pool of blood that had gathered on the stone floor, it was thick like syrup and the sun glinted from its smooth surface. The only thing that broke the blood’s surface was Dole’s giant boot prints, two of them just in front of Marv’s carcass. I inspected the damage. Different shades and hues of purple, red and black covered Marv’s face; he no longer had any defining features. There was no where I looked where I didn’t see a cut or a bruise or a swelling of some kind. His face had become a giant ball swollen from the amount of blows it took from the slabs of meat, Dole called his fists. His fingertips and toes had been smashed by one of the many heavy apparatuses Dole had laid on a nearby table. I dared not to look.

 I hated this part of my job, hunting these people was bad enough but looking at the bloody remains left by my Tool just felt wrong. The smell and the sight of the body created an eerie atmosphere. The death of a man should be filled with respect, preachers should be muttering words about souls and the Netherworld as the body is lowered into the freshly dug grave. There was nothing respectful about the way this criminal had died. But it had to be done.

 Certain people believe individuals needed to be treated harshly for a number of reasons, whether it was to get information, an item of some sort, to get respect or fear from someone, or even �" in some cases �" just for fun. Personally, I thought it could have been avoided, it always could be.

 “All of that and he still kept quiet,” Dole said, running his fingers through his beard.

 “Hard man to crack, our Marv,” I took off my flat cap and stroked my hair that had fallen out of my eyes, whilst I tucked my cap into my back pocket, “possessions?”

 Dole nodded over to a table in the corner, a pile of clothes, a belt and some pouches and satchels were thrown on there. My footsteps echoed throughout the large warehouse, it was a common place for me to do dealings, mainly because the enormity of the building gave off an air of importance and authority; it also made the prisoner feel small and insignificant. That and the many exits it had in case the Roaches came sniffing about my business.

 I started rifling through the objects on the table. Marv was a Resource; he had gained a reputation for being able to get anything for anyone, royal or street, large or small, he could get it for you. Unfortunately, everything came at a price. I had had dealings with Marv, asked him to retrieve something for me, but he was a greedy son of a b***h, and since the last time we spoke, his price had gone up considerably.

 “S**t, s**t, s**t.” His pockets were empty and his pouch filled with nothing but coin and a few documents of which I had no use for.

 “Anything?” Dole came and stood next to me once again, his massive frame cast a shadow over the table in front of me.

 I shook my head.

 “Nothing? S**t, what’s all this about anyway?” Dole turned back to Marv shaking his head again.

 Inside one of Marv’s hidden pockets was a small, metal, cylindrical object no larger than my smallest finger and no fatter; a symbol was etched into the surface, carved by a steady hand somebody who had experience with engravings. The symbol was two lines crossing each other with a circle surrounding them. I tucked it inside my jacket pocket before Dole could see. Anything else Dole could find was his, as per our agreement. “You stick to what you know,” I turned and walked away leaving Dole with no more than three silver coins and the sight of my back. “Clean this mess up, will you?”

 “Sure thing, Boss,” he said from behind my back.

 I left the warehouse and stepped back out onto the street. People were still avoiding coming near the entrance as they went about their daily routines but the street was busier. I hadn’t planned on the interrogation lasting all night, the last thing I needed was attention. I pulled my cap back on and began to walk.

 I took a left and headed out onto Archer’s Walk, a web of narrow alleyways lined by high walls. The name comes from hundreds of years ago when archers stood on along the walls and volleyed the attack from the infantry of Jűr when they attempted to take Seren City. The morning’s sun couldn’t reach me here. The darkness eased the tiredness in my eyes. I took out my pipe, a cherry wood bowl with a very rare stem and mouthpiece made of amber. I had inherited the pipe from my father after he died and even though my first thought was to sell the old pipe, I couldn’t bring myself to part with it. It was the only thing my father had left me.

 I packed some tobacco into the bowl’s chamber and bit down on the mouthpiece. Marv had held out on me and I needed to know what he knew. A lot of people will ask for an item from a Resource like Marv. I needed information that my Boss had demanded from me. Rumours were being heard about my boss, Don. Rumours that he wouldn’t be best pleased about if e heard them, and he wasn’t the easiest going of men. I had to find the source, especially now that Marv was dead.

 I struck a match.

 “Cal?”

 I stopped with the match inches away from the tobacco, my punch knife already at hand and a quick look over my shoulder.

 “Geez Mouse, I could have killed you.” I said, slipping my punch knife back into my belt.

 It was my Mouse; we called him this for his youth. He ran a mob of children, young petty thieves; most of them were pickpockets and eyes for people like me, it was a way for them to make some extra coin in the slums of Seren. I could tell that when he grew up he would be a useful ally. “Sorry Cal. Thought you were quitting?” he nodded at the pipe in my mouth.

 “Trying and obviously failing.”

 “You know you should, it’s bad for you.” The Mouse tucked his hands in the pockets of his single-breasted waistcoat. His trousers were torn and dirty but he still looked smart for a boy of his age. “My uncle smoked, he choked on some black stuff a few years back.”

 My eyebrows rose as a sign to change the topic of conversation.

 Taking the hint, he said, “You wanted to know when Breaches rolled into town. He’s here.”

 I perked up. Breaches was another Skip, “where?”

 “Black Cross, number eight.”

 I flipped him a bronze and took a change in direction. Black Cross was on the other side of town. I passed through the market; a few dipped caps from reliable informants and allies came my way through the traffic. People were pushing passed each other, shoving shoulders, shouting, haggling. The sea of noise from the busy market drowned out any conversations with people I had along the way. Hearing whispers, rumours, gossip, the word on the street was always something worth listening to. Nothing of any importance jumped out at me.

 I stopped on Black Cross, a square of blackened concrete slabs twenty feet by twenty. The Cross was lined with stalls, shops, barbers and healers. If you needed anything legal, this was where to come, mainly because of the Roaches that were posted at the various points standing in the deep green uniform with their long swords hanging from their silver belts. We referred to them as Roaches, short for cockroaches; they policed the streets, albeit turning the other way for most things but their presence still made people wary. Most of them consisted of soldiers home from their circulation at various training camps or in foreign lands. A typical private would spend four months in the army, four months policing, and then back to the army with the cycle only changing if war was declared in which they would spend however long it takes in battle and would be replaced by trainees on the streets. War for us was paradise; however we haven’t had a war since Ragstaffe against the Jűr.

  The buildings surrounding the square comprised of different architecture and stature, they came in various sizes from tall and skinny to small and fat. Tarp of different colours were stretched in front of the stores to shelter the shoppers from any rainfall which may occur that day, the different stores had different colours to match their stock. The classic three were red tarps for fruit stalls, blue for clothes and green for barbers.

 I stood at the centre and looked toward a number ‘eight’ carved into a wooden door on the left of a red tarp. I made my way over.

 The door was nothing special, no traps and no surprises. I turned the handle, the door didn’t budge. I pulled out my dagger from the scabbard strapped to right side of my lower back; a thick blade the length of my forearm, picking the lock would only draw attention to a legal part of town. I wedged it between the lock and frame and shouldered the door open, to anyone watching from a distance, it would only seem like I turned the handle and nudged the door open as if it were my own. I quietly stepped in stealing a few grapes from the fruit stall as I did so and closed the door behind me. The staircase was narrow, so much so that the walls touched my shoulders as I stood and listened for any sign of life above.

 Silence.

 I slipped up the stairs, keeping my feet away from the middle of the steps where the squeak of a loose floorboard is most likely. I popped two grapes into my mouth and bit down, the juice exploded along with the sweet flavour, instantly I felt a little more hydrated and awake. I made it to the top and there lying on the bed in front of me was Breaches, fast asleep. The air was heavy, and smelt of something rotten. The only source of light was a few rays from the sun creeping through gaps in the broken shutters, small specs of dust danced in the sun’s beams. I swallowed the grapes and threw the last one in.

 Lawrence ‘Breaches’ Smith was small and fat; his red hair matched his freckled face. He wheezed between snores as he slept in the shape of a starfish, the thin mattress bowed beneath him. He was the next best thing to Marv and, hopefully, was easier to crack. Where Marv specialised in Resources, items as well as information, Breaches knew where people were, hence his name for breaching people’s privacy. He had eyes on every corner and an ear in every room. No one would suspect him based on appearance �" I allowed myself a light chuckle at the thought of him squeezing up that staircase �" but Breaches was quite the trickster and all round smartarse, it was just my luck that he was a coward.

 I walked over to the water basin, filled a bowl with dirty water and threw it over the fat starfish.

 Breaches jerked and attempted to sit up, he coughed and spluttered. He rolled over onto his side and spat the water onto the floor.

 “Damn it!” command was in his voice until he looked at me, his black, beetle like eyes widened. “Cal? Um... w-what are you doing here?” his tone was squeaky, high pitched and hard to listen to. This man wasn’t blessed with anything to help him with the ladies.

 “Well, well, Breaches, skipped town for a while, huh?” I said, standing over him in an attempt to look intimidating. It worked.

 “I-I wasn’t running, honest.” he stood up, he came to chest height on me, and I wasn’t the tallest man in Seren.

 “Then where’d you go?” I pushed him back onto the bed; it took quite a bit of force considering his weight. I took out my punch knife and began digging the dirt from under my fingernails again. I must have looked even more intimidating because Breaches’ mouth flapped several times before he spoke again, his neck wobbling like the namesake of a turkey.

 “I �" uh �" needed to visit a cousin.” His eyes darted back and forth with unease. Clearly a lie.

 I smiled showing more of my teeth than I would any other time. “A cousin, eh?”

 Breaches hesitated but still managed a nervous nod.

 “Where is he?” I stopped smiling. Enough games, I was too tired to keep this up.

 “Who? My cousin?”

 I lunged forward and straddled his large, round stomach; it actually felt strangely comfortable considering I had been waiting outside the warehouse all night. I tried not to show any satisfaction on my face while I held my knife to his eye, my left hand struggled to grip his thick throat but I tried.

 His small eyes darted to the point on my knife, his pupils grew larger and a bead of sweat ran down his small forehead.

 “You know who,” I said.

 “H-he’s not here,” Breaches’ eyes began to well up, he blinked and brushed the tip of the knife with his eyelashes.

 “Don’t lie to me, I won’t ask you again, where is he?”

 “I can’t tell you, he’ll kill me.”

 “What do you think I’ll do to you?” again I flashed my teeth. I let the threat sit with him for while, waited for it to dig its way through what little courage he had left. There was a bang on the door outside, Breaches had Watchers. “I’ll make this nice and simple. Five. Four.”

 His mouth flapped again, his neck jiggled as he did so.

 “Three. Two.”

 “Richmond, third floor.”

 Richmond was a stack of flats about seven stories high. It was back the way I had come.

 I tapped his cheek playfully with the back of my hand but made sure I added a bit of a weight behind it. “You better be right, Breaches, or I’ll be back.” I walked over to the shutters and opened them, considering it was only the second floor, the drop was enough to get my heart beating; I stood on the sill, ignoring the nerves and pulled myself onto the rooftop above.

Reviews

[Silent Wolf]

This is an amazing first chapter! I love what you did here! I can see that you pay attention to details, which is a good thing in my book, for I do too. :3 I noticed a few unnecessary commas and a few necessary quotation marks, but other than that, the grammar seems to be fine. (I'm like, a grammar Nazi of sorts. Not as strict, but grammar is like frustrating to me when it's messy/ sloppy... :3)
100/100

[SuicidePact.]

Great first chapter !

[Zachary_James]

oh my THIS IS amazing.. Reading on.

[Morrigan Nicole]

Can't wait to read more!

[Morrigan Nicole]

Okay, so I could not help but read this again, and I am still impressed as I ever was and I was still shocked to find Marv's mangled corpse and the skillfull way Cal takes advantage of his prey and fallowers. He is such an amazing character! So slick and sly with his games and tricks. Again, a gripping first chapter!!! Makes me miss your other books. Where did they go? I never finished them and would love to be able to!

[Callum]

Intriguing and suspenseful. Reading on...

[Coyote Poetry]

You are a storyteller. You brought me in with a strong lead and the story got stronger. I like the main character and his struggle. Left a open ending. Thank you for the excellent opening chapter.
Coyote

[Hayley]

So far I have noticed your articulate way with describing scenes and the characters. I think this is a good introduction, as Ch. 1, to the rest of the book.
You had my attention from the beginning, and your planning of the chapter really shows; It flows very nicely without being choppy.
I like how you have made Cal relatable to the reader, though he is a violent character. That is very hard to do, considering the brutality of his work, as shown by his thought process and dialogue.
The only advice I would have is from a grammatical standpoint. Be careful of your usage of commas. For example, sometimes you place a comma where it is not needed and other times you use one where a period should be.
Overall, this is very intriguing. Nice work!

[Frantzuu]

Instantly added to my library. You have a wild imagination man. I shall read the next chapter tomorrow. Thanks for sharing. :)

[Robbie~xoxo~]

Wow! You really worked hard on this!...and it shows in the details that you have incorporated in the scenes, and the descriptions of your characters. I like "Cal"- your main Character...although this is an eerie story, (prisoner screaming in building of old warehouse), I got a glimpse of Cal's sense of humor, which shows range in your Character's personality. I like it... Nice write!