Chapter 5 Rat Hunting
Daisy was on the rat’s trail before dawn burned off the night fog. Market day always started early, the air still thick with yesterday’s piss and the threat of today’s rain, but the alleyways already crawled with hungover vendors, shivering kids, and would-be thieves. The red-eyed rat didn’t so much scurry as stride, weaving with deliberate purpose between spilled cabbage heads and hunks of fish too rotten for even the slum cats. It never looked back. It knew it was being followed and didn’t care.
She tailed it past the onion hawker’s stall, past three drunkards vomiting into a communal ditch, and under the legs of a hunchbacked fruit seller who kicked at it with a muttered curse. Daisy matched the rat’s every turn, keeping to the gutters, never once taking her eyes off the glossy red beads for eyes. For a moment, she lost it in a crowd clustered around the lard vendor’s wagon, argument brewing over a fistful of greasy coins, but then she saw the rat again, perched on a plank, staring straight at her.
“Go on, then,” she breathed. The rat vanished around the corner.
The chase ended at a building Daisy knew only by reputation. The Golden Chalice squatted at the intersection of wealth and vice: a tavern with stained-glass windows and guards at both doors, the sort of place where a week’s wages could vanish in an hour, and nobody would ever come looking. Its sign, a chalice brimming with gold leaf, gleamed even in the murk. Daisy watched from the shadow of a broken lamppost, heart drumming.
The rat pressed itself flat, squeezed under the threshold, and was gone.
Daisy circled the building. She found the back entrance by smell, meat gone sour, wine spilled, and left to fester. The alley here was too tight for a cart, but just wide enough for a body to be dumped without fuss. Daisy kept her hand on her baton as she approached the door, which was already ajar, propped open by a wedge of suet gone gray with age.
The kitchen was chaos: pots and pans, shouting, steam, a rotund chef brandishing a cleaver at anything with whiskers. The rat was here too, and not alone: a half dozen of them clustered under the bread racks, waiting. Daisy grinned despite herself. She respected the audacity.
The chef saw her and narrowed his eyes. “You the new rat girl?”
Daisy nodded. The man didn’t even ask her name, just jerked a thumb toward the cellar stairs. “Take it up with the boss. He’ll pay you double if you clear them tonight.”
Double? Daisy didn’t argue. She ducked past the chefs, grabbed a stale roll off the counter, and shouldered through the half-open door to the cellar.
The stairs creaked. The air was heavy with damp and old vinegar. She waited for her eyes to adjust, then flicked a match and lit the stub of a candle from her satchel. The flame threw shadows against the stone walls, each one quivering as if alive.
The cellar was worse than she expected. Barrels of cheap wine lined one side; the other was packed with crates stamped with the sigil of some noble house. There were rat droppings everywhere, black and wet. She listened, heard the faint, high-pitched whine of dozens of rats, and something else, a sound like damp cloth being twisted.
Daisy set her traps quick: three spring-wire rigs near the steps, another two behind the wine barrels. She baited them with bits of sausage and waited, knife in one hand, baton in the other.
The rats came to her. They moved as a pack, red-eyed and fearless, weaving through the maze of crates like soldiers on parade. The first one sprang the trap with a snap loud enough to echo; the second died to the baton. But there were more, and they kept coming, scrambling over the bodies of the fallen, jaws clicking.
Daisy held her ground, swinging in tight, efficient arcs. Blood and fur splattered her arms. A big one, a matriarch, judging by the yellowed teeth and ragged ears, lunged for her face. Daisy caught it mid-air, slammed it against the wall, and felt the bones crunch.
She exhaled, wiped her brow, and started bagging the bodies. The job was never clean, but she’d learned to work quick and think about the pay after.
As she finished, she heard voices overhead. Not kitchen hands or drunks, these voices were smooth, oiled, and sharp with laughter.
Daisy killed her candle and pressed herself flat against the wall, straining to listen.
“…told you, the Lord’s got a new one. Caught it in the Eastwood, did he not?” The voice was high, nasal, and very sure of itself.
A grunt in reply. “He keeps them caged for his guests. Like a menagerie, but bloodier.”
“You saw it?”
“I did.” A pause. “Magnificent. Worth a year’s stipend just to see the handler try to feed it. Poor bastard lost a hand. Screamed like a banshee.”
“That’s nothing. Heard the last handler tried to let it loose. They caught him and turned his blood to glass.”
Daisy edged up the stairs, careful not to make a sound. She found a knothole in the wood and pressed her eye to it. She saw the nobles then: three of them, lounging at a table, each with rings worth more than her family’s whole street. One wore the livery of House Ravensworth, the silver serpent stitched into his cuff.
One leaned in, voice lower. “They say the Lord’s menagerie is for research. Experimenting with crossbreeds. Magic in the blood, you know.”
The Ravensworth noble snorted. “It’s for pleasure. I’ve seen what they do to the beasts. Anyone who tells you different is lying.”
“I heard he’s got a wild one now. Unbroken. More power in a drop of its blood than…”
“Shut your mouth.” The third noble, older, flinty-eyed, hissed the words. “You want to end up like the handler? Keep gossiping, see where it gets you.”
The first noble sneered, but changed the subject. “Who’s dealing with the pest problem? This place is crawling.”
“New girl. Looks like a street rat herself,” the kitchen hand replied from the doorway, voice muffled by the heavy door.
The nobles hooted. “Watch she doesn’t poison your stock,” one jeered.
Daisy backed away from the knothole, heart thudding. The cellar felt colder than before. She finished her work in silence, muscles tight, mind racing.
When she climbed back to the kitchen, the chef was waiting with a sack of coins. He glanced at the blood on her shirt, then at the bag of dead rats.
“You kill them all?” he asked.
“Enough,” Daisy replied. She took the coins, counting twice.
Outside, the morning had turned to rain. Daisy ducked under an awning, counted her coins again, and stared at the water running down the gutter. She thought of the nobles and their laughter, the way they talked about blood and magic like it was nothing. If the nobles could steal power from the wild things, so could she.