Warhammer-Blood on the Reik 02-Deaths City by Sandy Mitchell

Author:Sandy Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2005-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

‘I like it,’ Hanna said, glancing around the narrow room. ‘It’s very homely.’

‘Thanks,’ Rudi said, not quite sure how to respond. It was the first time he’d ever lived in a space that was exclusively his, and the first time he’d ever had a guest in it, unless you counted the other residents of the watch barracks he’d made friends with since moving in here a month or so ago. The accommodation was a little more spartan than it had been at the Dancing Pirate, and the food in the mess hall considerably more basic, but he couldn’t have afforded to carry on living there on a watchman’s wages anyway. ‘Not bad for a shilling a week.’

‘Is that all?’ The girl sounded impressed. ‘I’m paying nearly twice that.’ She shrugged, trying to sound cosmopolitan, like the lifelong city dwellers they were slowly becoming used to living among. ‘But that’s Templewijk prices for you.’ Kris had found her lodgings near the college, in a boarding house occupied entirely by female students and guarded by a landlady Rudi strongly suspected had been a pit fighter or a templar marine in her younger days. The only occasion on which he’d attempted to visit he’d been stopped at the door by a muscular arm casually carrying a meat cleaver and asked his business in no uncertain terms. Only his watchman’s hat, he suspected, had prevented him from being ejected bodily from the premises.

Hanna had laughed when he told her, having been grudgingly admitted as far as the front parlour, where a couple of equally uncomfortable-looking young men in scholar’s robes had been waiting for their own friends.

‘Don’t let her fool you,’ she’d said. ‘Clara’s bark’s a lot worse than her bite.’ But Rudi had been more than happy to leave when she’d suggested eating at a tavern she liked nearby.

‘Are you all right for money?’ he asked awkwardly. Hanna nodded, resting her elbows on the small table which occupied most of the space left free by the bed and the chest of drawers, which now contained all of Rudi’s worldly possessions with considerable room to spare. Except for the bow and his sword, which were propped up in one corner.

‘I’m getting by. The college is letting me help out in the faculty of Herbalism and Alchemy.’ She laughed at his awestruck expression. ‘It’s not as exciting as it sounds, just boiling things and distilling things mostly, so the students don’t have to prepare their ingredients from scratch. It doesn’t pay much, but it covers the rent.’

‘Any progress on the other thing?’ Rudi asked cautiously, noticing the faint bulge in her headscarf was still present.

‘Not much, no,’ she said, a more sombre expression crossing her face for a moment. ‘The good news is Professor Aaldbrugh has seen things like it before. He even prepared a few for the temple of Manann a couple of years back, when their witch hunters broke up a major Chaos cult.’

‘So he must know how to get it off,’ Rudi said, with a sudden flare of optimism.

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