The Horned Scarab

By Matthew Marchitto

Arn knows better than to get embroiled with the city's crime lords, but when a monk turns up dead and a panicked old friend fears for his life, Arn has no choice but to set things right. He'll get dragged deep into Ghorad-Gha's underbelly, where the biggest, baddest crime boss reigns, The Horned Scarab.

Ghorad-Gha, once magnificent city of clay and bronze, crumbles. Those prosperous few burden the shoulders of the downtrodden. In a city of forgotten glory, the lawless thrive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Marchitto
• Release date: Aug 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370494644

Matthew Marchitto

Matthew Marchitto is a writer with a penchant for creating worlds both bizarre and wondrous. He writes fantasy and science fiction with an action adventure bend. You can read his most recent novella, The Boneman, in Three Stories About Ghosts. Prior to that he self-published two novellas, Moon Breaker and The Horned Scarab.Matthew lives in Montréal, Québec, where he spends his days brushing up on his French, creating new weird worlds, and giving scritches to the goodest pup.

Book preview

The Horned Scarab

(The Investigative Privateers #1)

Matthew Marchitto

Table of Contents

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Underbelly Brigands

The Below

Scrounging for Scraps

Lawless

Excommunicating Kancey

Glyphs

Rising Tides

The Ritual Spell

Epilogue

About the Author

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Marchitto

All rights reserved.

Cover Art by Skyla Dawn Cameron

Copyedited by Jennifer Anderson

Interior Design by Skyla Dawn Cameron

SMASHWORDS EDITION

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to:

Jennifer Anderson for the initial copyediting of this story and making sure it was the best it could be. Check out her website clearingblocksediting.com.

Skyla Dawn Cameron for the awesome cover art and interior design. Visit her website at skyladawncameron.com.

Underbelly Brigands

Orfur plunged his hands into the basin and watched the water turn red. A man’s heart burned in a brazier. The smell of roasting meat filled Orfur’s chamber. He rubbed a pinch of powder between his fingers, sprinkling it over the fire. The flames shimmered green and the heart turned black. He fixed his gaze on a jade eye. Orfur inhaled the smoke. It weighed heavy on his lungs. His heart beat faster, stronger. It resounded in his ears. The deep pounding of war drums. Then it subsided. Only a taste of exultation.

A whimper from across the chamber. A man bound and gagged to a stone slab. He glared to a similar slab where a body lay still. Its ribs splayed. Orfur loomed over the man, raised his dagger, and plunged it deep into the man’s chest.

Ghorad-Gha was his city, and it was rotting from the bottom up.

In a time long before Orfur, Ghorad-Gha had housed a million souls. Less than half that number now worried the streets. Clay and stone cracked, wood splintered and moldered. The River Rund lapped at the ancient foundation pillars. The city had lost its heart.

In the belly of Ghorad-Gha were the lawless. They held it on their shoulders and kept it from falling into the Rund. The industry in Ghorad-Gha—bronzesmiths and smelters, tanners and tailors, carpenters and craftsmen—fed the Tarr. The lawless fed Ghorad-Gha.

The governor, masters, and ministries all knew it, even as they left it unspoken. Orfur planned on showing them who truly owned the city.

***

Arn leaned on his whalebone staff and stared at the River Rund, curving between the peaks and forests of the Tarrlands before it disappeared over the horizon. It shimmered in the noonday’s sun, taking on a fiery glow. The river reminded him of his childhood home on the Northern coasts and how he’d once watched the sea in much the same way as he watched the river now.

He gripped the seastone beads around his wrist. A prayer teased the back of his throat, but he forced it to subside.

A heavy hand touched his shoulder. We should not keep him waiting, Rohqim said. The Akui removed his stone hand and hefted a two-handed bronze mace onto his shoulder. Rohqim had a hawkish nose, a barrel chest, and the white marble skin characteristic of all Akui. Standing still, he seemed a statue.

Arn turned from the docks and faced the Rundian temple, a thick pillar of stone that rose six stories into the sky and pierced the foundations of Ghorad-Gha through the depths of the Rund.

Arn knocked on the wooden door with his staff.

The door opened to reveal a short, round man in red robes tied with a hemp rope belt, his skin the same dark brown as Arn’s. But where Arn’s tightly coiled hair and beard was short and black, this man’s salt-and-pepper hair grew in a cloud around the balding crown of his head.

Hello, Kancey.

Kancey quickly glanced over Arn’s shoulder to the docks beyond and then back into the temple.

Come, he said.

Kancey led Arn and Rohqim through the Rundian temple. They passed a hall where river water cascaded from the roof, and another with a large pool in its center. Monks in red robes knelt before the pool with their foreheads touching the water. Their narrow corridor ended at a descending set of stairs, and after two more flights Kancey finally showed them into a small room.

A resounding booming and slurping filled the unadorned room as the River Rund lapped against the stone walls. No one would be able to hear them speaking down here. Arn guessed that they were below Ghorad-Gha. Rohqim fought to conceal a shiver.

Were you followed?

I don’t think so. What’s happened Kancey?

Kancey ran a hand over his head and nearly jumped as a wave crashed against the stone walls. I think I’ve done something terrible. Depths, I may have signed my own death warrant.

Just tell me—

It was a sell, like any other. Except this time, it was something from the Below.

The Below?

Beneath the temple. It goes on and on—straight into the Rund and perhaps even deeper. We have a story about how this temple is connected to another world, the world of Rundos, beyond the riverbed. There are passages and tunnels as intricate as an anthill and rooms filled with old relics and artifacts. We go down to catalog what we can, but we haven’t even explored a quarter of what’s down there.

Kancey let out a long breath and rubbed his face. Kancey was a mover. He knew how to get things from one point to another without anyone else knowing about it, a feat made easier by his proximity to the docks and his Rundian robes.

And you found something in the Below?

A severed piece of statue made of dark green stone, not quite like jade. I don’t even know what part of the statue it could have been—some sort of appendage, maybe. Looked like something that could bring some tarrsims our way.

Our?

Delo, a fellow monk, knew about it. I showed it to him, and he found a buyer in Ittun. He’s always been good at selling things to faraway places.

So, this isn’t the first time you’ve sold something from the Rundians?

Kancey shrugged. I arranged the transport. We received the first half of the payment before we sent it away, which is typical, but then the second half never showed up. We thought the buyer was scamming us, but then Delo turned up floating in the river, bloated and gray and— Kancey shivered. I haven’t left the temple since.

Shit. Arn ran a hand over his beard. Who would want you dead for selling a piece of statue?

I don’t know. We figured it’d be easy. Who would care about a piece of odd-colored stone? Sell to someone with too much money and be done with it. Quick. Easy.

Could the Rundians have caught on to what you were doing?

Even if they did, they wouldn’t execute us slyly. There would be a ritual, a trial, a procession. The Rundians are nothing if not traditional.

Arn tapped his staff against the stone floor. Could Delo have pissed someone off? Maybe it has nothing to do with the statue.

We kept our heads under the current, and that’s how we both liked it.

Okay, okay. Tell me about the statue piece.

Like I said, it looked like an appendage or maybe the end of a horn. But from the way it twisted, it was probably a tendril in the image of Rundos. It was covered in small glyphs.

Do you know what they said?

I’ve seen them before on other artifacts, but I didn’t bother trying to read them. Sell it, forget about it, remember?

Arn pinched the bridge of his nose. You’re not giving me much to go on.

Kancey wrung his hands. We might be able to find another piece of the statue, in the Below.

Show me.

Not now. Come back tomorrow night, and stay near the back door. If the Rundians find out I’m letting you into the Below, we’ll both go to the depths.

Kancey led them back through the hall, up the stairs, into the fountain chamber, and out the door. The monk spared Arn an anxious glance before closing the temple door in their faces.

Should we be worried? Rohqim asked.

Arn scanned the piers. A dock worker averted his gaze.

Better to expect the worst.

They had just left the docks when a messenger boy in a tattered tunic jogged toward them, his sandals slapping against the cracked street tiles.

Are you Arn and Rohqim?

Yes.

Lodee wants to see you.

***

Lodee slammed a fist into her palm so hard it sent a small plume of pale dust into the air.

This is the second night in a row, she said. They’ve taken from the storehouses too many times now and when I find them—

Rohqim placed a hand on Lodee’s shoulder, and she buried the end of