DIRTY CASH (MONEY TALKS)

When In Doubt

The Thames has always been a graveyard. It drowns the secrets of kings and cutpurses alike, swallowing gold and bone with equal hunger. Tonight I walked its banks at low tide, lantern in hand, boots sinking into mud that stank of salt and rot. The fog curled in tendrils about my legs. It seemed to resist the flame, drawing closer when I stepped away.

I had been told of mudlarks, children who prowled the shores at dawn, prying coins and trinkets from the filth. They swore they had seen a sentinel, black-armored and vast, standing waist-deep in the water as though in parley with the current. I found them huddled beneath a pier, faces pale, their rags soaked.

“He listens,” one boy whispered, showing me a clay shard upon which he had drawn the sigil with a trembling hand. “He listens to the river, and the river answers.” The mark was crooked, yet even so it prickled the skin. I paid them for the shard and told them to stay away. They fled as if my words were a curse.

I walked further, past barges that lay low in the water like hulks. The tide was falling. The mud gleamed with refuse. And there, just beyond the reach of the lantern, I saw prints in the clay. Not human. Too broad, too deliberate, as though a gauntlet had pressed down upon the earth itself. The tide did not fill them. The water avoided them, leaving them dry.

The air grew heavier. I felt it again, that silence, deeper than thunder. My lungs labored as though I had descended into some cavern. I raised the lantern. The fog shifted.

A shape rose in the water. Not fully, not even half. Only the suggestion of helm and shoulder, the arc of a blade reflecting the starlight through mist. He did not advance. He stood, unmoving, listening.

I called out, though my voice cracked. “Why these deaths? Why these marks?” My words fell flat, devoured by the fog. The river itself seemed to speak instead, its gurgling echoing like language in the throat of something vast.

The figure inclined its head, as though acknowledging me. Then the tide rose, sudden and sharp, as if obeying a command. I staggered back, the lantern nearly extinguished. By the time I steadied myself, the shape was gone. Only the prints remained, dry upon the shore.

When I returned to my lodgings, an envelope lay upon the desk. No seal. No sender. Only one line written within: He is not a man. The ink had bled into the paper as if cut into it.

I should leave this case. I should walk away, yet I cannot. Each step forward feels less like pursuit and more like a summons. If Grathok listens to the river, then perhaps the river itself has hired me.

God preserve me.

— Nathaniel Harrow

Chapter X: Interrogatory — The River

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