Skulduggery 8: Building a Criminal Empire

by Logan Jacobs

  So far, other than a lot of security at different parties and places we’d been to, none of the structures in the Gold City seemed like they had been built to withstand any kind of real attack. This city had clearly been established as a pleasure resort. The type of place that elves and other races could visit, or even live in, to forget about the rest of their lives. The weather was perfect, the women here were beautiful, and there were more games and types of entertainment than I had ever seen in one place before.

  But even though Tevian’s new estate looked like a gaudy eyesore, I could tell that it had been built for more than just looks. And that wasn’t just because there weren’t any windows on the first floor. It was because there were narrow slits on the second floor between each window, and they were the perfect size for archers to sight their targets through. And it was because there was a trench around the base of the mansion, and it was wide enough to hold burning oil in case of an attack.

  Maybe the Gold City had a darker past than it wanted to admit.

  Of course, it had been built with the labor of all the oppressed races, so it wasn’t exactly newsworthy that the Gold City might have more than few skeletons in its closet, but I did think it was particularly interesting that Tevian had chosen such a spot for his new home. It was like he expected trouble to find him, or maybe he just expected to stir up some trouble himself.

  I was happy to help out with either option.

  When I was satisfied that I had learned everything I could from the top of the tree, I started to shimmy my way back down to the ground. I picked my way carefully around the corpse, and then I moved a little faster down the rest of the trunk.

  I was just about to swing down to the ground when Ava whistled a warning.

  “Go back up!” she hissed, even as she and Penny both grasped the branches below me and started to pull themselves up into the tree. “Somebody’s coming!”

  Chapter 7 - Tevian

  I shot another pulse of blue energy toward the far wall of my bedroom, and this time, it finally hit the narrow archer’s window at just the right angle that it slipped out the crack and disappeared into the night outside.

  I rolled my eyes and sat up in bed.

  It had been a shitty night, and all I wanted to do was sleep it off, but I couldn’t even seem to accomplish that much. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt like I was back at the party, and every time I felt like I was back at the party, I felt like I saw that red-haired bitch.

  I had never even wanted such a ridiculous party to celebrate the fact that I had just done my job, but the city officials had insisted, so it had been easier to just go along with it. Besides, it wasn’t like I really minded all the praise and recognition. The Ancients knew that was more than Commander Vardreth or the guildmaster had ever done for me.

  Fucking Clodia.

  I flung another pulse of blue energy toward the archer’s slit, but this one landed on the wall and just fizzled out before it fell to the floor.

  No, it wasn’t really Clodia’s fault, even though she was part of the problem. But she wasn’t the cause of the problem, and she certainly wasn’t the cause of everything else that had gone wrong for me.

  That honor belonged to no one but that fucking human thief.

  As soon as I thought about Wade, I threw a pulse of blue fire toward the wall that was so big it left scorch marks against the stone when it landed.

  I had thought that I just needed some time away to clear my head, and I had imagined that a difficult task like destroying the wild orcs would be enough stimulation to distract me from the thought of what had happened back home.

  But every time I had speared a wild orc like a stuck pig, and every time I had sliced off one of their heads like the top of a wine bottle, I had imagined that it was Wade on the other end of my spear or that it was Wade whose head I had just cut off.

  Well, that wasn’t completely true.

  Sometimes, I imagined that it was that red-haired pixie bitch instead.

  Still, no matter how many wild orcs I slaughtered, it was never enough to make up for the fact that Wade was still alive and that I’d been forced to leave my own city because of him. But I didn’t just want to kill him now. I wanted to see him suffer first, and sometimes on nights when I couldn’t sleep, I liked to imagine all the horrible things that could have happened to him or his friends since I left town.

  And I had a pretty fucking good imagination.

  The most obvious horrible thing was a fire at their bakery. I imagined that it might break out in the kitchen, but maybe everyone would have been asleep upstairs, and by the time they woke up to the smell of smoke, the entire downstairs would have been engulfed in flames.

  Of course, everyone would probably just jump out the window at that point, but I liked to think that at least one or two of Wade’s friends wouldn’t make it out in time.

  But whenever the fire at the bakery scenario started to feel stale, I would move on to the next daydream, and that usually involved Wade’s women and that fucking theatre they were always at. After all, the Entertainment District was a dangerous place to be, and anything could happen there.

  That long-legged dancer of his might get caught out in the streets by some unfriendly men, or even better, she and that pixie bitch might be cornered somewhere together. The redhead looked like she would probably put up a fight, but there was only so much that two fucking women could do against a whole crowd of violent men intent on raping every hole of the women’s bodies.

  But even when I let those fantasies play out to their fullest in my mind, they always left me with the problem of Wade. Even in my worst-case scenarios and my most vivid dreams for him and all of his friends, Wade somehow always managed to find a way out of whatever fantasy I imagined might kill him.

  If there was a fire at the bakery, he escaped out the window in time. If there was an ambush in one of the city’s seedy areas, he always managed to fight his way out. Even when I imagined an act of nature like a flood or an earthquake, Wade somehow swam to shore or jumped to safety right out of the earth itself.

  These were supposed to be my goddamn fantasies, not his.

  But if that was true, then why did I always feel like the side character in my own fucking daydreams?

  I clenched my fists to douse the remaining magic fire in my palms. It didn’t matter what I thought about or how much I tried to practice my magic. All I could think about was that damned party that I had just left, and the fact that I could have sworn on the sacred empire that I’d seen that red-haired pixie bitch there.

  I knew that was impossible, of course, but it didn’t change what I’d seen. Or at least, what I thought I’d seen. I had just started that stupid fucking speech, and I had been doing quite well if I said so myself, but then I had looked out into the crowd, and I swore that I had seen Wade’s redhead at the bar.

  I would have recognized her hair anywhere, or at least I thought so, and the moment that I’d seen her, I thought for sure I had seen Wade right beside her. But the second that I blinked, Penny and Wade had completely disappeared, and since the only way that could have happened was magic, that meant they couldn’t have ever been there in the first place.

  Didn’t it?

  “Fuck,” I swore as I slid down from the bed and began to pace the room.

  Of course, they hadn’t been at the party. That was the most ridiculous thing that I could have imagined, and it didn’t matter that I thought for sure that I’d seen them.

  But the math didn’t add up.

  When I’d left their city, I’d had my magic and enough coin to pay for a passage over the water, so it hadn’t taken me long to reach the Gold City. But for a common thief like Wade and a common whore like Penny, it would have taken a minimum of a few months to get here overland. They didn’t have the advantage of magic on their side, just like they didn’t have enough coin between the two of them to pay for new shoes, let alone for a passage downriver.

  I knew it was impossible tha
t I’d seen them tonight, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling. And it wasn’t just the fact that I thought I’d seen them-- certainly, that bothered me, but that wasn’t all. Actually, that wasn’t even the biggest thing that was keeping me awake right now.

  It was the fact that I had definitely seen someone with red hair at the bar, and when I’d blinked, she’d been gone. Maybe it wasn’t Penny, even though I couldn’t help but feel like it was. But even if it wasn’t her, that didn’t change the reality of the situation.

  Someone with red hair had been at the bar one second, and the next second, it was like they had never even existed.

  The only way that could have happened was for someone to use magic, but I hadn’t sniffed any out at the party, and no one else had seemed to notice anything, not even the other people at the bar where the redhead had just been. Maybe I just couldn’t smell any unfamiliar magic over the scents of all the food and perfume at the party, but it seemed strange that no one seemed bothered by the sudden disappearance of a red-haired woman in the middle of my speech.

  Something definitely felt off in the Gold City, and I was determined to find out why.

  I slipped on my turquoise and silver bathrobe, tightened it around my waist, and strode out of my private chamber toward the main lobby of my new mansion. Once I had come down the stairs to the first floor, I grabbed my short sword from where it hung on the wall by the entrance and then pushed past the front doors out into the night.

  “Sir!” the soldiers in front of my manson all said at once as they clicked their heels together.

  Now this was a disciplined unit. It wasn’t like the shit-for-brains soldiers that I’d been stuck with back home, but their lack of motivation was mostly Golierian’s fault, not mine. That stupid prick couldn’t discipline soldiers any more than he could keep it in his pants.

  I still didn’t know how he had managed to earn himself my promotion. He wouldn’t have known an opportunity if it came and slapped him across the face, but apparently, he had made the right connections with someone powerful along the way. And if this mystery person had been able to make even Golierian look good, then they must have been really goddamn powerful.

  “What can we do for you, sir?” the elven lieutenant beside the front door asked, as he signaled for his unit to return to their usual positions.

  “Have you seen anything… out of sorts?” I asked. “Anything that would make you think--”

  I stopped myself. Everything I wanted to ask sounded crazy when I thought about saying the words out loud, so I just left my sentence unfinished instead.

  “That would make me think what, sir?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “I just mean, have you seen anything unusual tonight?”

  “Not at all, sir,” the elven lieutenant replied. “No reports of anything unusual from the assassins, either.”

  “And you’re sure that they would… you know, report anything wrong?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the junior officer said. “The assassins in this city are well-trained, and they know the signal to give if anything goes wrong or if they see trouble approaching.”

  “Of course,” I said. “And you haven’t heard from them at all?”

  “They’ll only report if there’s trouble, sir,” the lieutenant explained again. “And they’ve been silent tonight.”

  “Alright,” I said. “Let your soldiers know that I’ll be checking the perimeter of my estate, both inside and outside. Just for good measure.”

  “Absolutely, General Tevian,” the elf responded with a click of his heels.

  I hated when the soldiers called me that because it reminded me of everything I’d had to leave behind me. At the same time, I doubted that these elves had seen very many generals in their lifetimes, so it was hard to correct them. After all, I might be the only elven general that they ever had the privilege to meet, so it would be cruel to take that away from them just because the title reminded me of that fucking human thief back home.

  I waved the elven lieutenant away, descended the front steps, and started to make my rounds.

  Naturally, everything was exactly as it should be, but I had made sure of that when I hired these soldiers and the assassins outside my estate walls. When I had bought this mansion, I had put up with the insufferable comments and sly eye rolls from the other elves in this city. They all seemed to think I wanted to relive my glory days, or that I had some great vision of the Gold City as the middle of a war zone, so that was why I wanted a secure fortress like this.

  I didn’t really think that would happen, at least not any time soon, but I also wasn’t stupid enough to think that it couldn’t happen. The other races were as untrustworthy as they were cunning, and there was no way to predict if or when they might try to rise up and kill us all in our sleep.

  But even when I tried to explain this to the other elves here, they all thought I was ridiculous. They all thought that I was over-dramatic, like I insisted on looking for trouble where there wasn’t any.

  Well, they would be sorry if trouble ever did come their ways.

  But even if all the other races rose up and started to slaughter elves in their homes, I wouldn’t offer the officials here any help, at least not any of the ones who had laughed at me. Even if they begged me for shelter then, I wouldn’t admit a single one of them past my front gate-- not when they had mocked me and called me a fool who was too busy living in the past to enjoy the present.

  I shook my head as I started down the side of the mansion and inspected everything here. The walls were secure, the trench was ready to be filled with burning oil at a moment’s notice, and the soldiers that I had positioned here all snapped their boots in uniform precision as I passed them.

  The elven nobles of the Gold City might not understand, but these soldiers did. They understood what it meant to defend their empire, and they understood that at any moment, the other races might try to rise up and overthrow us, and that was why we had to be vigilant. That was why we had to constantly remind them of their places, so they wouldn’t start to get any wild ideas.

  As I passed by the marble fountain on the side of my mansion, I paused and glanced up at it with a smile. This was the kind of statue that should be on every street corner in every elven city, but apparently, the officials of the Gold City thought that a sculpture of an elf pissing on a human might not send the right message.

  Fools.

  It was exactly the kind of message that I wanted to send, but the officials insisted that statues like this made people less likely to spend their money on the many entertainments of the city. Personally, I didn’t give a shit what people spent their money on, or how much they spent.

  I thought it was a fucking disgrace to see all the races mingle together at the casinos and entertainment halls anyway, but that was how they did things here, so I would have to abide by their stupid fucking rules for as long as I lived in this city.

  And at least I had found good work here.

  After I had been forced out of my own city, I hadn’t been sure where I would go at first, but I was a goddamn elven general, so I’d be damned if I couldn’t use my skills to earn myself a new home. Then I’d heard about the Gold City’s wild orc problem, and I had made my way here as quickly as possible to volunteer my services.

  This city had a decent elven fighting force, but it was far too small to deal with the rampant orc problem that they had. But the officials here insisted that they needed to spend their money on more gaming halls, more gladiator arenas, more stupid fucking gardens, so they didn’t invest enough money into the only armed force that stood between them and destruction by the wild orc population.

  They really were lucky that I had come along when I did.

  I finally tore my gaze away from the fountain sculpture and continued toward the back of my mansion. Everything was even more quiet back here than it was in the front of my house, but that was half the reason I had chosen to buy this place, anyway. The
rest of this city was so loud and bright, but at least here in this neighborhood, I knew there would always be quiet and darkness.

  I glanced up at the wall at the back of my estate and at the treetops that extended up above the top of the wall. As I gazed up at them, one of the trees suddenly swayed like it had just been hit with a gust of wind, but the other tree at the back of my estate didn’t move at all.

  Something was wrong. There was no reason for one tree to sway when the other one was still, unless someone was trying to climb up it and scale my walls. Even the assassins I had hired knew better than to cause so much movement in a tree, and if they had to move, they were supposed to wait and time it to happen at the same time a breeze came along.

  I turned on my heels, tightened my grip on my short sword, and sprinted toward the front gate of my estate.

  “Sir?” the elven lieutenant called when I reached the front of my house again.

  “Stay here for the next ten seconds,” I hissed, “and then take half your men to the back of the house. Someone might be trying to break in.”

  “Yes, sir!” the junior officer responded.

  Then without another sound, I slipped through the front gate and raced toward the back of my mansion. If there was anything wrong or if there was anyone back there, I planned to catch them off guard, and that was why I had chosen to approach them alone and in my nightrobe.

  They might be able to hear the approach of half a dozen elven soldiers, but they would never hear me. I was a goddamn night elf, for fuck’s sake, and that made me as invincible as it made me invisible. As soon as I came around the corner of the back wall, I raised my short sword in preparation to attack.

  But there was no one there.

  Everything was completely silent, and both trees at the back of my estate were perfectly still. Only the top few branches of each tree rustled a little bit, but I felt the breeze on my face at the same time, so I knew that was nothing.