Consideration for Scoundrels

EIGHTEEN

Cautiously, Sean Montgomery turned the naked blade over and over again, making another slow rotation of the weapon, the tip nicking at the glass countertop. Sunset had come and gone, and he wondered whether or not the girl had tried to run. He hoped not. Despite the fact he very well could have handed her over to her death by involving the Noctaum, he didn't want her to end up in some unmarked hole in a potters field. That surprised him at first, but he still remembered the hollow-cheeked girl she'd been not more than two years ago; stepping through his door bold as brass, and telling him what his dear old mum was yapping on about from beyond the grave. The Noctaum had wanted her alive then, too sweet a prize to waste, and maybe they'd spare her now.

Montgomery wasn't a fan of the nighthawks, the watchers in the dark. But then again, every city had its secrets; the rich and powerful consolidating their influence wherever they could stretch their fingers to clutch even the crumbs. He was paid, he was left alone. Montgomery kept his business to himself; the Noctaum didn't care about a few trinkets here and there, so long as it was one of their scavengers bringing them in. But shit like what happened that afternoon? With McDara coming through with this god damn sword and smoke on her fingertips? He didn't know what the Noctaum wanted with the dead, but he was sure as shit that they'd want to know about her. She'd come asking questions, looking for answers, and if she lived maybe she'd find them.

If she lived.

The shutters began to rattle. The peeling wood on the opposite side of the window knocking hard enough that some of the inlaid shelves began to shudder. The noise was enough that Montgomery glanced up at the window. There was a fog rolling through from the Thames, thick and dark. Not unusual for this time of year. He turned his attention back to the weapon. Of course, he'd seen hundred of blades come through his shop; mainly those with edges centuries dulled, metal eaten away by rust. He pressed a thumb against the edge of the blade, just enough to feel like bite of steel, still razor sharp against his flesh. Although it looked similar, he doubted it was Damascus steel; it wasn't possessing the telltale watery pattern of light and dark metals that would otherwise have shimmered the length of the weapon. But this metal was dark, darker then Montgomery had seen before, the designs that swirled across seemed a purposeful chaos. He hasn't had a chance to ask the scavenger just where she'd found it. He'd assumed by her unwillingness to even alert the Noctaum to the fact she had gotten herself into some deep shit, that it was bad. Not trespassing, she'd never come to him if she had dared, but not something that coven of freaks would look to kindly upon either. The chapel, it had to have been the chapel.

Explaining to the Noctaum what he had seen, Montgomery had felt like a mewling eejit as he recounted the fact McDara has stormed her way into his shop less than an hour before spooling shadows from thin air. But decades of service, of no questions, no concerns, had at least granted him an the courtesy of a conversation with Carrigan when he'd rung.

"You do know you sound completely off the cot?" They'd asked as soon as Montgomery had finished.

"Aye."

"And if I didn't know you so well, I'd say you were deep in the bottle."

"But 'ye do." It had been years since he'd had a drink. Montgomery rubbed at his chin. "She's got herself into some kind of trouble. Bad trouble. Came in asking questions about a blade."

"A blade?" The voice on the other end of the phone had grown sharp. "Do you still have it?

Where is it now?"

"Oh aye, got it right here. An insurance policy for the scavengers attendance tonight."

"And you're sure she'll cooperate.?"