The damp smell of sulfur dripped from the rusted tin roof. Griff "Rat" Sludge huddled outside the entrance to the Soot Street Scamps' hideout, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the stolen brass thimble he had torn from an old prostitute's apron when he was twelve. It still carried the musty scent of cheap perfume.
In his other hand, he held a walnut pipe—a mudlark's pipe given to him by Edrick.
Griff had deliberately applied two drops of Blackbeard's signature whale oil to the seam of the pipe bowl earlier that morning. Now, by the light of the kerosene lamp, the oil glistened viscously on the wood grain.
His dirt-covered nails dug deeply into his palms, reminding him of the task Edrick had entrusted to him: to make Mordy Ashdown believe that the three missing brothers were victims of the Blackbeard Gang.
Griff, who had grown up on the streets, knew this was a one-way street. After doing Edrick's bidding, there was no turning back. But if he refused now, Edrick would kill him without hesitation and sell him into the filthy salt flats.
He deliberately rubbed his nose with his sleeve to make himself look like a fool softened by cheap rum. In the Rust District, anyone who was too sober wouldn't survive three nights.
"See that?"
He pushed open the door with determination, his voice like a broken gong, scaring the rats on the rafters. He raised his pipe above his head, the oil stains tracing silver-gray arcs in the flickering light. "Mudlark had this thing stuck in his pipe. It's whale oil that stinks like the docks, the kind Blackbeard's gang uses to clean their knives."
Dirk "Rat" Jenkins, who was using his teeth to pry open the barrel's wooden stopper, cursed as he leaned in, his nose almost touching the pipe stem: "Damn it! That's the same fishy, sweet stench. That kid said last month he couldn't stand this smell, that it reminded him of his mother's sea monster spit!"
Griff shrugged and deliberately rolled the pipe halfway around in his palm, revealing the letter "M" engraved on the inside, the initial of Mudlark's father's surname, which all the thugs in the Rust District recognized. "I found it in the mud under the iron bridge this morning,"
he whispered, running his thumb over the oil stains, leaving a faint half-fingerprint on the pine table. "The pipe was stuffed full of this stuff, stinkier than Edgar's wife's pickled fish barrel."
The low whispers of the thugs suddenly turned into hissing gasps. Next to Eli's empty seat, Jem's cast-iron gauntlet was still leaning crookedly on the weapon rack. In the dent on the edge of the gauntlet, Griff had secretly rubbed some whale wax this morning, which was now melting with his body heat and giving off a faint fishy sweet smell, exactly like the smell on the cuffs of the Blackbeard gang members.
"And Brick's belt." Griff took half a piece of rope out of his pocket, and the whale wax on the knot glistened like pearls in the light. "This broken rope is our Scamps' coarse hemp, but the wax..."
He scraped off a little with the tip of his dagger and held it up to Dirk's eyes. "The old cripple at the wharf said that only the Blackbeard crew have this stuff in their pockets. They use it to seal the knots so they don't rot."
He deliberately let the blade scrape across the knot, and the wax flakes fell into Dirk's wine bowl, creating a circle of tiny oil spots.
The sound of pine chairs scraping against the floor tore through the air.
Mordy "Soot" Ashdown stood up, the iron anchor cufflinks on his sleeves clanging against the tin cups on the table. He stared at the pipe in Griff's hand, and the old scar that had been whipped out by Blackbeard's whale oil whip three years ago suddenly twitched.
"Bullshit!" His boots ground against the floor, and chunks of coal tar in the brick joints cracked. "Mudlark never set foot on a whaling ship in his life—"
"But Blackbeard's men have been on his corpse," Griff interrupted, slamming his pipe down on the table, the whale oil seeping into the wood grain and forming twisted iron anchor shapes. "Lame Tom saw Bill's men dragging sacks under the iron bridge the day before yesterday, and that's the smell coming from the corners of the sacks."
He watched Mordy's uneasy pause and knew he'd bet right. As a rat raised in the trash heap, he'd learned long ago: to make a cat believe there's a snake in a mouse hole, the best method isn't to scream—it's to smear the hole with snake skin. And the pipe and rope in his hands were such snake skin, making every living soul believe the stench of death came from Blackbeard's ship's hold.
The thugs' hands reached for their knives, and someone kicked over the wine jug next to Jem's empty seat, spilling the liquid mixed with whale wax onto the floor, reflecting Griff's mottled face.
Dirk suddenly grabbed the pipe and brought it close to his nose, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. As a veteran who had been imprisoned by the Blackbeard gang, he knew better than anyone that this rusty, sweet smell was the harbinger of death.
In the Rust District, where even the moonlight was obscured by coal dust, the most deadly weapons were never blades, but these speechless objects. They were more powerful than any testimony because they carried the unique scent of Blackbeard's gang and the fear engraved in the bones of the Rust District's thugs.
That night, as a light rain tapped on the tin roof, Griff hid behind a pile of sacks and watched the gang leader walk toward the Cathedral of Luminous Pragis.
The cathedral stood silently in the night, its outer walls washed shiny by the light rain, its mottled stone carvings and reliefs seeming to tell of past glories and secrets.
The tall main tower pierced the night sky, and the Triangular Holy Emblem at the top glowed a pale golden color in the dim light, solemn and mysterious. Fine rain slid down the edges of the emblem and dripped into the dark alley, filling the air with a mixture of wet cold and incense.
The church was so quiet that all that could be heard was the sound of rain and the distant echo of the bell tower, as if the whole world had held its breath.
Mordy "Soot" Ashdown pushed his creaking dung cart into the alley behind the church. In the iron bucket on the cart, semi-solid dung water bubbled with a sour smell. This was his disguise: a dung collector in the southern district of Stellaxis.
The thick night fog, tinged with the smell of rust, seeped through his coarse cloth apron. He tapped the bucket rim with his dung scoop, startling a crow perched on the roof of the dilapidated outhouse.
As the wooden door swung open, a putrid ammonia smell mixed with the scent of sea salt hit his nose.
A bearded man wearing a gray felt hat was defecating: "My cargo—did you burn it?"
If Griff or Edrick could have entered the toilet at that moment, they would have immediately recognized the man in the gray felt hat as the leader of the Blackbeard Gang at the wharf, Blackbeard himself, Blackbeard Erebus Thorn!
Who would have thought that the two gang leaders, who were like water and fire on the surface, would meet privately in a church toilet, and that they seemed to be very familiar with each other?
However, Griff didn't dare to get too close and could only lurk anxiously outside the solemn church courtyard.
Mordy, who was supposed to be his mortal enemy, worked expressionlessly while whispering, "The Pureblood Order wants me to take your wharf by the 10th of next month."
Blackbeard grinned and said in a nasty voice, "You really dare?"
Mordy snorted, "You killed three of my men."
Of course, he was referring to the three men killed by Edrick. At this point, Mordy was still unaware that the three undercover agents he had sent to the wharf had been exposed.
Blackbeard was certainly not going to let him off the hook: "You burned a shipment of my goods."
Mordy didn't deny it. That had been his plan all along. The Rust District wharf was now in chaos, with the fire department and police rushing to Blackbeard Wharf.
The two fell into a brief silence. They were actually loyal to the same person, but they had often fought privately over territory and sabotaged each other. Their subordinates, of course, had no idea what was going on between their bosses, and everyone thought that the two were mortal enemies.
In fact, the relationship between these two men was very complicated.
"Do you know that that shipment belonged to the Pureblood Order?" Blackbeard said coldly, "It was supposed to be delivered to the Kingdom's Magic University."
"The Pureblood Order?" Mordy was taken aback. "I thought they would wait until I took over the wharf before making their move."
"You fool, you think the Pureblood Order came to you to cooperate? They're plotting against you! I'm the one they really chose to cooperate with, but you idiot accidentally burned their cargo," Blackbeard said, shaking his head.
"Are they out of their minds!?" Mordy stopped his work and fell into deep thought. "If they've already partnered with you, why did they contact me? Although burning the warehouse was my own decision, they should have anticipated my actions toward the docks, right?"
Blackbeard looked at his foolish colleague with a touch of pity. "On the surface, my backer is a councilor, part of the royal faction. But you and I are friends of the Ordo Solis Eclipse."
"But we're both part of Ordo Solis Eclipse," Mordy said bluntly. That was why the two of them had met in the bathroom of the Ordo Solis Eclipse church in the middle of the night—they were there to report to their superiors.
"The Pureblood Order doesn't know that I'm also a member of Ordo Solis Eclipse. They're cooperating with you on the surface, but they're actually trying to catch you attacking the wharf so that the royal family can use it as an excuse to launch an investigation. You know you can't withstand any investigation!" Blackbeard said, looking at the church outside the bathroom and the moon above it. "Strange, it's already this time, why hasn't Bishop Lacus come tonight?"
According to the agreement, when the moonlight streaming through the bathroom window passed the third ridge of the church's triangular spire, Bishop Lacus's carriage should have appeared. Just as Blackbeard's fingers tapped the cover of his pocket watch, a faint "clang" echoed from the top of the church—as if someone had shattered a crystal goblet with a silver spike.
The three-sided emblem, standing as tall as a person, rippled with dark patterns in the moonlight. The steady glow of the holy light first contracted eerily, then burst into sparks from the edges.
The silver-plated prism surface cracked open in spiderweb-like fissures, and the liquid silver light trapped inside seeped out in a thin line, burning faint wisps of smoke on the brick wall still damp with morning dew. The scent was like burnt roses, and the pure gold holy emblem at the very top tilted with a clang.
The explosion came without warning, but only a muffled crackle like firecrackers.The middle of the prism suddenly burst open, revealing a fist-sized gap, and the overflowing silver light condensed into tiny stars in the air, which disappeared in an instant. Blackbeard saw that the bolts at the base of the holy emblem were melting. That emblem, which symbolized the most sacred and exalted god of the Luminous Church, an emblem even greater than the royal flag of Stellaxis, had actually exploded!
Immediately afterward, a terrifying aura of despair descended from the sky. Blackbeard and Mordy watched as the dark night sky split open, and wisps of white mist seeped through the crack, falling into the church and piercing the glorious dome as if to welcome them.
The force was too terrifying. The two gang leaders were like children facing a giant, unable to muster any resistance. Griff, hiding outside the courtyard, was so scared he almost wet his pants.
Then the alarm bells rang out, waking the entire Cathedral of Luminous Pragis. The priests rushed out of their resting places in panic and ran toward the church, but no one knew what had happened.
Blackbeard and Mordy tried to leave the restroom, but there were too many people, and they had no chance to escape. They could only pretend to be squatting on the toilet.
Half an hour later, the noise gradually subsided, but there were still unsettling vibrations coming from underground. The two gang leaders felt it was time to leave, but as soon as they stepped out of the bathroom, they were met by a large group of people marching toward them. These people were all women and children, their hair disheveled and their faces dirty, looking quite strange.
They instinctively tried to flee, but the leader simply waved his hand and seemed to recite a spell, causing them to lose consciousness and collapse to the ground.
Blackbeard and Mordy only managed to catch a glimpse of the two leaders—one was a young woman in a tattered dress with a striking figure, and the other was a young man in ragged clothes. Griff, hiding behind the yew tree, froze in place upon seeing this. He recognized the young man as none other than Edrick, the man he both hated and feared!
Who was the woman who had so easily knocked Blackbeard and Mordy unconscious? And who were the large group of women and children following behind them!?