Skulduggery 8: Building a Criminal Empire

by Logan Jacobs

  “Oh,” Ava murmured and then just buried her head against my chest again.

  I let her rest against me for another few minutes, and when she finally pulled away again, she seemed more relaxed and confident. She turned around and reached for the door handle, but I rested my hand against the frame to stop her.

  “Don’t you think we should really get going?” the blonde assassin asked. “Dar and Penny will think that something happened to us.”

  “We’ll catch up to them in just a minute,” I said and then laid my hand on her shoulder. “But first, I think we need to go over some ground rules.”

  “Like what?” Ava pivoted back around to face me.

  “Like how we’re going to make sure you stay safe,” I said. “I won’t let anything happen to you or our baby, and that means I can’t let you do everything that you usually do.”

  “You can’t stop me from coming with you back to the Gold City,” Ava said.

  “I wouldn’t want to stop you,” I replied. “I just want you to be more careful than usual, and I’m probably gonna want to limit the number of missions that I send you on.”

  “That seems fair,” the blonde assassin said with a quick nod. “I promise I’ll be careful, Wade. I won’t let anything happen to our child.”

  “I know you won’t,” I said. “And I need you with me, so you can still come to the Gold City, just as long as you do exactly what I say.”

  “I understand,” Ava replied. “I’ll do whatever you think is best for us, and I won’t put myself into any unnecessary danger unless you think it’s safe enough.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “But I’m still gonna find an excuse to use my new bow,” Ava added with a little smile. “She’s too pretty to waste, and I haven’t gotten a chance to test her out on a real target yet.”

  “We’ll find a good target for you,” I laughed. “In fact, a bow is probably one of the best weapons you can use, since it means you don’t have to get too up close and personal with your enemy.”

  “Well, then that’s the plan,” the assassin said. “If we run into trouble, I’ll use my bow whenever possible, and I’ll stay close to you so you can always have my back.”

  “You know, I will,” I replied.

  “And maybe…” Ava hesitated. “Maybe let’s not tell anybody else right away. I want it to be… I don’t know, I kind of just like the idea that it’s our secret right now.”

  “Something that’s just for us?” I nodded. “I know what you mean. We’ll keep it under wraps for now, but I can’t promise that will last for too long. I’m too excited about it.”

  “Really?” The beautiful assassin smiled a little wider.

  “Have I not made that clear?” I grinned and swept her up into my arms again. “I want to shout it from the rooftops, Ava. But I won’t… at least not yet.”

  “Okay,” Ava said and bit her lip.

  “Now we really should probably go,” I said with a smirk. “Otherwise, Dar and Penny might start to think that we’re currently trying to make a baby.”

  Ava laughed, and I opened the back door of the bakery for her. As soon as I had locked it up behind us, we hurried south through the halfling district toward the meeting spot with our friends. It had just turned dark outside, but it was still pretty early in the evening. The temple ritual must not have gone well for the day elves, since the night elf priestesses seemed to have won this round.

  Still, even though it wasn’t really night time yet, I knew that we needed to move quickly if we were going to make it all the way back to the catacombs, through the portal, and through the Gold City, all so we could make it to the big party there on time.

  As we moved forward through the streets, I placed my hand on the assassin’s lower back, and even though she jumped a little at the sudden pressure, she glanced up and smiled.

  “We’ll be good parents, right?” Ava whispered.

  “Of course, we will,” I said. “How can you doubt that?”

  “I’ll never let anything happen to our child,” the assassin said as her blue eyes seemed to spark with fire. “I’ll never let anyone take it away from us, or throw it in the gutter like trash.”

  My hand slipped from her back to her waist, and I pulled her to a stop beside me in the middle of the street.

  “Ava,” I murmured, “you won’t be anything like your parents. I don’t know why they threw you away, and I sure as shit don’t know how, but you’re not them.”

  “And neither are you,” Ava said as she reached her fingers up to brush my cheek. “Thank you, Wade.”

  “Come on,” I said with a smile. “I’m pretty sure I just saw a flash of red hair up ahead.”

  When we reached the street corner where our friends were supposed to be, Dar and Penny stepped out of the shadows to meet us. Dar was halfway through some handheld concoction of meat and fried dough, and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t anything that Osman had made.

  “And just where have you two been?” Dar demanded. “You took long enough to get here.”

  “Long enough for you to get another snack, I see,” I snickered. “Where did you even find a street vendor open at this time?”

  “I know people,” my halfling friend sniffed.

  “You mean, you know food,” Penny said. “If it can be eaten, Dar will know where to find it.”

  “Remind me to ask you whenever we get back where I can find some fried pickles,” Ava said.

  “Oh, I know just the place for that!” Dar said and then took another bite of his fried dough. “You go left at the--”

  “She said when we get back, Dar,” Penny said with a roll of her eyes. “We’ve got to get down to the human district now, since apparently these two can’t keep their hands off each other long enough to walk down the street.”

  “We weren’t--” Ava started.

  “Not that I blame you.” The redheaded pixie winked at the blonde, but then she turned and winked at me, too. “Or you, for that matter.”

  “We were actually just, uh, wrapping things up at the bakery,” I said.

  “I’m sure you were,” Penny laughed. “Come on, or we’ll be late to our own party.”

  “You know it’s not our party, right?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s like what Ava pointed out earlier,” Dar said. “It doesn’t really matter whose party it is, just so long as we make it our own by the end of the night.”

  “I’m not sure that was exactly my point, but okay,” Ava said.

  The four of us continued on through the halfling district, then the dwarven district, and finally through the Entertainment District like we owned the whole city.

  After all, we basically did.

  We had businesses in every district of the city, and we also had people who worked for us and who sold our whiskey in every district. We had the captain of the elven guard on our payroll, we had destroyed the dwarven guard, and we had complete control over the city’s sewers to help us move ourselves and our whiskey without anyone ever seeing us.

  And on top of all of that, I was the goddamn leader of the city’s Thief’s Guild. Of course, I still wasn’t used to the silver pin on my cloak that told everyone that was my position, but then again, I hadn’t had much of a chance to wear it over the last few weeks. We had spent almost all our time in the Gold City, and I had decided to keep the pin hidden whenever we were there.

  In our own city, I needed to be Wade the Thief, leader of the Thief’s Guild and technically an official of the elven empire. But in the Gold City, I needed to be Wade the Businessman, so I always slipped the silver insignia into my pocket before we went through the portal.

  After we left the Entertainment District, we entered the human district and headed for the sewer entrance that would drop us down right in front of the door to the catacombs. Now that we paid the human gang here to keep the streets clean, we didn’t have to worry about any ambushes from unlicensed thieves, or worse, so we reached the sewer entrance without any troub
le.

  Once I made sure that no one would see us drop down below the street, I lifted up the grate, and all four of us made our way down into the sewers. After I lifted Penny up onto my shoulders so she could close the grate after us, we turned toward the door to the catacombs, opened it, and then hurried down the long stone path that led to the door to the portal room.

  I used the light from the Opalstone amulet to light our way forward, and the soft blue glow made everything around us look ghostly. Of course, it probably didn’t help that we were inside a catacomb that had been here for hundreds of years. That alone would have been enough to make all the bones along the walls seem like they might still be moving every time we passed them, so the blue light really just made it easier to notice.

  When we finally reached the portal room, I glanced up at the plaque that had Jeremiah Badgett’s name on it and took a deep breath. I still didn’t know very much about him, but I knew that he had been a human hero who tried to rebel against the elves.

  Sure, maybe it hadn’t gone too well for him, but whenever I saw his name, I felt a little burst of pride and a little glimmer of hope. After all, my father had somehow known who this human rebel was, since it was his handwriting that had led me here in the first place. And if that was the information that had gotten him killed by the elves, then that was all the more reason for me to take inspiration from this portal room.

  Because one day, I would finish Jeremiah Badgett’s work.

  And on that same day, I would finally avenge my family’s deaths.

  “Hello, Wade,” the female voice of the door said when I placed my hand on the smooth stone. “Hello, Wade’s friends.”

  “Hello, Door,” they all responded, since the door had never given us any other name to call her by.

  “Oh, and a very special hello to you tonight, Miss Ava,” the door said.

  “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” Penny demanded.

  “I mean no disrespect,” the door chuckled. “I only thought Ava deserved one extra greeting tonight. Wade knows why.”

  “Um, thanks,” the blonde assassin murmured, “but you really don’t need to-- in fact, I’d rather you--”

  “I’m sure she appreciates your extra greeting, since it’s very thoughtful and everything, but I’m afraid we’re in a little bit of a hurry,” I said quickly, before the door could announce anything about Ava’s pregnancy.

  Somehow, a talking door that knew my woman was pregnant wasn’t as much of a surprise as it should have been. But I guessed that after seeing Rainbow Keys that dissolved after I used them and a magic amulet that could freeze time, there wasn’t a lot left that could surprise me when it came to magic.

  “Ah, I understand, Wade,” the door responded. “Will you be going back to the Gold City tonight?”

  “That’s the plan,” I said, “as long as you don’t mind keeping watch like normal.”

  “I live to serve you, Wade,” the door purred. “No one will come through while you are gone. I will make sure of it.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said.

  The heavy stone door rumbled open to admit us, and once we were all inside, she shuddered back into place, so we were left alone in the huge silent chamber.

  “Alright, everybody ready?” I asked.

  “Um, aren’t you forgetting something?” Penny demanded and pointed to our clothes. “If we’re going to a party, we’ve got to get dressed for it first.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Then let’s just hurry up about it, so we don’t show up too late.”

  Penny grabbed our party clothes from where we’d left them stashed in the portal room, and she handed them to all of us before we all turned around to change separately. We had left clothes in several different places so that we would always have access to whatever outfits we might need, so we had some clothes here, some in our new warehouse, and some, of course, we kept in our own city.

  After all, I could afford to buy us all as many clothes as we needed to have now.

  “I’m glad the Gold City is fucking rich,” Dar said as he changed. “If I have to dress as your bodyguard, then at least all the guards there are dressed damn near as nice as the nobles are here.”

  “I like our outfits,” Ava said. “I’d much rather dress as a bodyguard than anything else.”

  “That’s because you get to wear all black,” Dar said, “and we all know that’s your favorite color.”

  “Oh, really?” I grinned. “I thought it was blue. Or maybe pink.”

  Ava pivoted toward me with a glare, but no one else seemed to notice anything, so I just laughed.

  As soon as we were all dressed, I glanced over our outfits to make sure that we were all ready. Dar and Ava both wore sleek black tunics and leggings, and Penny was dressed in a deep purple gown that hugged tight along her waist and through her hips, but then it flared out to cover her athletic legs. We had planned for her to go as my date to this party, while Dar and Ava were going to pose as my bodyguards.

  We all armed ourselves with our new weapons, and then I finally took the magic compass out of my pocket. I aimed it at the mosaic map on the ceiling of the huge chamber, and then I adjusted it slightly so it pointed at the city we were headed to.

  After I held it there for just a few seconds, the stones around one of the massive archways around the room started to glow with a soft golden light. I held the compass in place for a little longer, and when the stones in the middle of the golden archway vanished, I knew the portal was ready for us to go through.

  “Let’s do this,” I said, and then I led the way through the glowing arch.

  As soon as I stepped through the portal, I immediately took a step to the left to stay hidden from anyone who might be in this area of the Gold City. The portal came out in one of the major attractions of the Gold City, the Hanging Gardens.

  The name sounded goddamn dark, but I had quickly realized that the name didn’t refer to any kind of executioner’s work. It just meant that all of the flowers in the garden were planted in terraces that were all stacked on top of each other. Each terrace was a little smaller than the one just underneath it, so the stacks of gardens all formed massive pyramids all around us.

  Almost all the flowers were hanging vines that draped down over the sides of the stone terraces, and the portal from our city opened up through one of the stone terraces on the earth itself. Luckily for us, this particular terrace was even more covered up by pink and violet flowers that swayed over the portal entrance, so whenever we came through it, no one could see us.

  Once I was on the other side, I waited for Ava to come through the portal next, followed by Penny, and then finally by Dar. Once we had all come through, I slipped the compass back into my pocket, reached back to feel the wall that we had just walked through, and patted it to make sure that it was stone again.

  The first time we had tried to go back to our own city, I had been worried that there would be some trick to opening the portal from this side. I had thought there might be a chance that we’d get stuck in the Gold City, but as soon as I raised the compass and pointed the marker at the stone wall that we had come through, the stones had simply vanished, and we had been able to walk right through them and back into the catacombs.

  I squeezed Ava’s hand and then slipped my arm through Penny’s. Dar and Ava got into position right behind us, and then the four of us left the Hanging Gardens and started through the streets of the Gold City toward the mansion where the party was supposed to be held.

  The Gold City couldn’t have been more different from our own town. For one thing, it was a lot fucking bigger, but it wasn’t just the size that set it apart. It was built between a massive mountain range and a huge lake, so the climate was much milder all year-round than it was in our own city.

  We had already learned that a lot of elves traveled here in the winter to escape harsher weather in other places, but the city was also packed year-round, and there was one very good reason for that.

  Th
e whole city was like one big Entertainment District.

  There were casinos and brothels on damn near every street corner, there were as many illegal fights as there were legal ones, and the city constantly held races for carriages, wagons, boats, and people-- basically, for anything that could move.

  Well, anything that could move and that people could place wagers on.

  But that was probably because almost everyone in the Gold City was rich as fuck, and that included us. Of course, like any city, there were slaves here, just like there were underpaid workers, but for the most part, this city was designed for one thing and one thing only: to make sure everyone had a good goddamn time.

  It was early evening here, too, but the sky was a little lighter than it had been in our own city. There was still a tinge of light on the horizon, but there were enough street lamps to make up for it, so I didn’t have to wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  After all, this was the Gold City, and we had very quickly learned that meant that no one ever really closed up shop here. All the stores and brothels were as brightly lit with lamps and candles as they were by the sun in the middle of the day, so if I didn’t look up at the sky, I could almost fool myself into thinking that it was still daylight out.

  We were close to the mansion now, so I double-checked to make sure that my Thief’s Guild pin was safely in my pocket with the rest of the Rainbow Keys. Once I was sure it was secure, I glanced up and down the road just out of habit, and then we started to move down a cross-street that would take us to the mansion a little faster.

  There was a small spice market on this cross-street, so I slowed down just enough to glance over their wares. It was one of a dozen different spice markets in the city, but we hadn’t been by this one yet, so I was curious what goods they sold that the other markets might not have.

  It didn’t take long to figure out.

  Almost all of the spices here were illegal, or at least, they would have been in our own town. I recognized some of them as mild poisons, but there were even more of them that were meant to take the edge off. Some of the spices would get a person high, some of them would make them feel like they could float, and a few of them might make them feel like they could fucking fly.